Page 54 of Man Flu

“Okay, mommy, I’m on duty. Get it?” she laughs.

“I got ya,” I tell her with a snicker.

I retrieve a glass from the cupboard and fill it with water before jogging back up the stairs. As I make my way into the bedroom, I find Logan hanging half out of the bed, one foot on the floor and the other under the covers. “That doesn’t look comfortable.”

“I can’t move,” he moans.

“Well, I brought you some water,” I say, trying to sound more composed than I feel. “You should drink some, so you stay hydrated.”

He looks at the glass for a long second. “Hannah?” He squints one eye as he glances up at me. “Do you have a straw maybe?”

“A straw?” I question.

“Yeah, so I don’t—I can’t move.”

I almost want to give him a second to tell me he’s kidding, but by the pathetic look on his face, I don’t think that’s the case. “Um, yeah, sure, I should have a straw. I’ll be right back.” I set the glass of water down on the nightstand and head back downstairs to the kitchen.

Rick is still groaning or moaning—I can’t tell the difference between the two sounds. Funny, how I always found that to be quite a turn on … err … definitely not so much now. At least he’s still in the bathroom, though. Cora is leaning against the wall outside the hall bathroom, holding her head as if she has a headache. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

“This is exhausting,” she says. “Do you know that Dad sounded like a crying dog in the middle of the night last night? I wanted to tell him to grow up, but I figured I’d get in trouble.”

This child is one hundred percent me. “I shouldn’t be saying this, but you’re right,” I tell her. “Daddy probably caught the flu you had, but he’s acting much worse than you did when you were sick. You see, when a man gets sick, it’s kind of like the world is coming to an end. They don’t handle it very well, at all.”

Cora looks utterly confused by my brief explanation about the male species. “I thought men were stronger than women, though?”

Oh dear, I thought I taught her better than that. “Physically, like their muscles … yes, a lot of them are stronger than women. However, women can handle more pain and discomfort than men. That’s why women have babies and men don’t.” This isn’t a great lesson to be teaching her, especially with a lot of my opinion thrown in right now, but she needs to be aware of what the male brain considers to be true. Plus, I’m still mad, and I need to lash out at Rick and his entire gender right now. I’m not exactly objective about this situation.

“I wondered why women were the only people to have babies. Daddy said it was because women need something to do when the men work.”

If my eyes could pop out of their sockets, they would have by now. Cora is unaffected by the look Rick causes my face to contort into. It’s nothing new to her, but right now, I’d like to kick him in the nuts, then the stomach again. He deserves that and more.

It takes everything I have not to say anything to Cora in response to what she said. Instead, I place my hands on her shoulders and offer a smile through gritted teeth. “Can you find a straw for me, sweetie. I’ll be right back.”

I huff and inhale a few times before making it to the downstairs bathroom where Rick has made himself comfortable. “Women have babies so they have something to do while the men work?” I snarl, hardly moving my lips enough to enunciate.

“What?” he chokes out.

“You heard me.”

“Ugh, Hannah, I was kidding.”

“Cora didn’t think you were kidding. What the hell is wrong with you? She’s a girl who will eventually be a woman, and that’s what you want her to think? You want her to end up with a womanizer like you?” I realize I’m being louder than I should, considering Cora is in the next room, and Logan is upstairs, but this man has crossed yet another line, and I am totally losing my cool.

“I’m sorry, Hannah, okay?” He drops his head back into the toilet bowl.

“No! It’s not okay! While you were at work, I sat on this floor alone for twenty weeks straight, puking my brains out. It wasn’t because I needed something to do while you were flirting with your secretary. Every doctor’s appointment you missed was another opportunity you lost out on, the experience of seeing your daughter grow from a tiny seed into a full-size baby. I watched life grow within me while you watched every woman’s ass at your office. If you want to call that a woman’s job, that’s fine, but just realize, you have dug yourself even further into the pig pen. You are so dirty and vile, there’s no chance any woman would want to live with you forever, no matter how many smoothies she feeds you.”

Wow, that felt good. “Geez, Hannah, take it easy, will you? I’m dying here.”

“Good, get the hell out of my house because I have a man upstairs I’d like to tend to.”

“You can’t be serious,” he argues.

“I’m as serious as you were the day I called to tell you I had food poisoning at thirty weeks pregnant. I needed you, but you said you were too busy to come home. What were you doing until eleven that night?”

“I’ll go,” he concedes.

“Now.”