Swineflutopia | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Swineflutopia | Previous Challenge Entry
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01/09/10
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Wendy hated getting her yearly physical about as much as her students did. The walls looked like they had been painted nauseating colors on purpose. Across the waiting room a boy had started a fit of sneezing on the magazine rack. Perfect. She had just thought about thumbing through Good Housekeeping to find dinner, but all hope of rosemary chicken had been infected by the teeny drops of germs now gracing the cover.

“Wendy Englewood?” a nurse in Spongebob scrubs queried at the threshold of what Wendy know come to know as Swineflutopia. As an answer, Wendy stood tall and proud, and tugged her kerchief tight around her neck. “You can follow me,” the nurse said with a smile.

“What would you imagine that I would do, as I began to see you flaunting down the hall without me?” Wendy said defiantly, “By the way, it is pronounced EN-Glewood. The emphasis should be placed on the ‘En’, as in EN-tropy, and other such words,” here the nurse just flipped her ponytail, as if she was expecting this sort of behavior, and began “flaunting” down the hall.

“I like that scarf your wearing,” the nurse said a few minutes later as she shifted the metallic weights on the scale. “This,” Wendy said in her most bombastic tone yet, “Is no ‘scarf’. It is a handkerchief spun from real silk-” and here as the nurse looked dully at her, Wendy decided to emphasize a few points, “From SILKWORMS-” and here, still, a look of boredom, “FROM CHINA!”

“If you’ll just step this way Miss Englewood, I also noticed you needed a tetanus shot, so I’m sending one of our nurses down to take care of that immediately,” the nurse who seemed only to raise her voice if she was in cardiac arrest said as she entered a small room. Wendy’s silence was nothing short of shock. The needle and the nurse arrived, promising to puncture the skin exactly on the count of three.

“One,” the nurse began.

“Ow!” Wendy startled, “You needn’t play childish games with me girl; I’m a grown woman. One whom you specifically promised to wait until another two seconds had passed. Now if I die from some horrible illness this vaccine gives me, I’ll sue this OFFICE for depriving me a promised two more seconds of MY LIFE!” she finished exasperated. The Spongebob nurse popped her head in waving a small plastic cup.
“Would don’t mind giving us a sample Miss Englewood?”

“I beg your pardon-”

“That’d be great,” the nurse said sitting the cup on a table.

It was quiet in the bathroom. Wendy had just collected a sufficient sample and was about to set it in the designated area. Then it happened. Slowly, and like a horrible dream, the cup slipped from her hand, and crashed to the floor, completely spilling its contents. Wendy was mortified. Cleaning it up would just be- Oh, the very thought of it made her sick. But leaving it? That would be absurd.

“Mom, I gotta go!” a voice said outside the bathroom door accompanied by the noise feet make when they do the potty dance, “I can’t hold it!” In a split second, the door that Wendy thought she had locked had been flung open, revealing her mess to the whole staff. “Ewww! Gross!” The king of Swineflutopia said running in, and then quickly running out when he saw Wendy. “Mom is there another bathroom?” the little boy said disappearing down the hall. Wendy looked at the group of nurses starring in disbelief into the bathroom. One of them burst out laughing. It was the Spongebob nurse. Wendy wanted to cry. Thankfully one of the nurses entered the bathroom with rubber gloves, a disposable mop, and bleach.

Needless to say, Wendy was, for the first time in her life, humbled. After the fact, though, whenever she told her class, she would always laugh the loudest. She was a nicer teacher after that. Every Christmas break she would invite the entire class to her house for rosemary chicken. The most drastic change, however, was when a certain sneezy boy entered her class some years later. He burst in, unannounced, proclaiming, “Good morning Miss Englewood,” placing the emphasis in the wrong spot. Wendy made it up then in her mind that he was going to be her favorite student, and he was.

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