Chapter Text
Eight-year-old Elijah gripped the edge of the front desk in the school office, waiting for the young receptionist to get off the phone. He sniffled and looked around for a box of tissues but the only one was on another office desk further in the back. He took a deep gargly sounding breath to pull his slowly dripping snot back into his nose. When the lady finally got off the phone, she looked at him expectantly.
“Um, I need to call my dad,” he managed out, so little speaking taking a whack of strength from him. He slid a sticky note across the desk. It was a note written by his teacher explaining that he needed to be sent home sick. The lady brought the note closer for her to read and then looked back to Elijah. “You need a tissue?”
He just nodded and moved to rush behind the desk but kept his spot when the lady went over for him and brought the box of tissues to the front desk. Just in time as the cold drip was coming down from his pinkish nose again, he ripped a tissue from the box so fast that it dragged the box right off the desk and down to the floor. He laughed through wiping his nose and picked the box back up. “Sorry,” he mumbled, flicking a half embarrassed half amused look at the lady.
She laughed at him and smiled, holding her hands under her chin. “Dial 9 first, then dial your dad’s number.”
He nodded and, while still wiping his nose, he picked up the corded phone off the base that had an overwhelming number of buttons on it. It took him a moment to be able to process what he was doing, like he almost forgot. When he did get the number dialed, he held the phone up to his ear and listened to the ringing, gripping his other hand to the edge of the desk while he waited.
There was a moment of silence like someone picked up.
“Dad?”
“Hey Eli, what’s up?”
“My teacher says I should go home because I don’t feel well.”
“Oh, well do you say you don’t feel well?”
“What?” he laughed. “Yes, I guess I say it too.”
“Okay,” he chuckled. “I’ll be right over okay?”
“Okay.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
He sat waiting in one of the padded chairs, hugging his arms to his chest. When his dad entered the office, there was a brief exchange between his dad and the receptionist, and then they were on their way.
As they exited the school, the chilly Fall air bit at Elijah and he shivered in his thin jacket. He looked around the empty schoolyard. The air was actually refreshing on his nostrils, even if it was pretty cold out.
“Hey.”
He looked at his dad. “Yeah?”
“I guess the stuffiness you woke up with this morning was more than just the morning sniffles, huh?”
He smiled smugly at his dad. “Yeah.”
They stopped at the Tim Horton’s drive thru and his dad got him a medium white hot chocolate, which ever since Elijah knew about it, has always been his favourite.
Back at home he sat on their couch with a blanket over him sipping from his hot chocolate, but disappointingly he couldn’t taste it as well as he normally could. A side effect of drinking the hot chocolate he was noticing too was that his nose was running a lot more. He looked over at his dad who was standing with the Roku remote browsing through Netflix. “I need a tissue.”
His dad pointed at what he was just realizing is an empty tissue box on the coffee table. “Okay um, I’ll go get a new box.” He set the remote down and went off for a few minutes to grab new a box of tissues from the storage closet in the kitchen. When he came back, he sat down snuggled up to Elijah and plopped the tissue box down on the coffee table. “Here, look at me,” he said softly. His son looked at him and the dad just smiled. “It’s really dripping isn’t it?”
“Dad! Tissue?!
Laughing, he got a tissue and wiped it for him. “Okay, blow.” He scrunched the tissue right up to his nose after he got rid of what had already dripped. Elijah blew his nose and let his dad wipe off anything left over. “So what do you wanna watch?” he laid a clean tissue flat on the table’s surface and then set the dirty tissue on top of that.
Elijah smiled at his dad curiously. “Dad, you wanna know something?”
“What?”
“You’re weird sometimes.”
“Oh yeah?” He laughed, and it clearly took a moment for him to realize Elijah was talking about what he did with the dirty tissue.
“I like you weird though,” Elijah continued. “Otherwise you might be too boring.”
“Boring?”
He giggled at his dad’s reaction.
Even if he was down with what was becoming a pretty bad cold, the nice part was of course that he got off school early and got to just chill on the couch with his dad watching Netflix.