Takes on Spots: Two, by Sophonisba [backstory challenge]
-title- Takes on Spots (2/5)
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-rating- Suitable for general audiences.
-characters- Rodney, Jeanie
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine.
-word count- 1101
-summary- In which it is imperative that Meredith not get chicken pox.
Takes on Spots: Two
The year Meredith McKay was eleven, his parents planned a week-long family trip to Montréal. They would stay with an acquaintance at McGill that Meredith's father hadn't managed to enrage yet. During the days, Meredith and Jeanie would be shown the many interesting historical and cultural sites of Montréal, and in the evenings, the elder McKays would be able to go out and enjoy themselves while the acquaintance's teenage daughter looked after their two.
Then Jeanie started feeling ill. Their mother came in to take her temperature and noticed the spot on Jeanie's chest. And the other one on her arm.
"Chicken pox!" their father snorted when he heard. "Really, of all the..."
"She should finish with it just in time for Montréal," his wife assured him.
Meredith was already screaming at his sister from the safety of a closed door and three meters of hallway.
"Jean Dymphna McKay, you unmitigated idiot! I haven't had chicken pox yet!"
"I didn't get it on purpose!" Jeanie wailed.
"We won't be able to go to Montréal, and Dad will be snarly all summer, and... "
"Then you'll just have to not get chicken pox," their mother announced, attaining the head of the stairs. "You'd better sleep in the guest room for the duration; get everything you need out of your room, so you won't need to go upstairs while she's contagious."
Meredith made a face -- he didn't like the idea of sleeping on the ground floor; the guest bedroom's windows faced the street -- but the idea of quarantine made too much sense to argue, and so he didn't.
So the pattern was set: Meredith would wake up, dress himself, eat his breakfast (a cooperative effort between himself and his mother), arrange what he was going to do that afternoon and receive funds if necessary, catch the bus to school, and after school either come home on the bus or take public transportation to the library or, on two occasions, museums. Surprisingly, it was only the geology museum that balked at allowing an eleven-year-old to wander the halls unsupervised; they called campus security, and campus security called his father. Dr. McKay declared that earth sciences fostered disordered thinking and mental petrifaction. Meredith decided he quite concurred.
On the other hand, although he was hesitant to come into the house while Jeanie roamed around inside it -- after the first day or two of bed rest, she had felt well enough to get up and move around, if sensitive enough to light that she pulled the shades down whenever the sun was out -- often enough the weather made being outside pleasant (if cool enough that Meredith was glad of warm wool). Moreover, the one pine tree behind the house not only had enough strong branches spaced evenly for good climbing, but had three in just the right spatial relationship to each other for a comfortable seat with a backrest and a foot support. Granted, it was more than a little difficult to climb up with a book in hand, but Meredith soon enough arranged a rope so that he could tie a bag of library-or-other books to its end and haul the bag up to his level.
A week after the quarantine began, he was in his tree-seat reading a book on nuclear fission when Jeanie called to him from the house. "Mer, I'm bored."
"What do you expect me to do about it?" he demanded, looking up. "You're going to get in trouble if Mom finds you on the roof."
Jeanie pulled the blanket from her bed more tightly around herself and leaned back against the second-story wall next to her open window. "I'm bored, and I feel like guh."
"With all the oatmeal you've been eating, I'm not surprised."
"Mer-e-dith! I have not been eating it! It's for my BATH!"
"Sure, sure, that's what they all say," her brother smugly pronounced, secure in the knowledge of oatmeal baths as one of the traditional treatments for full-body itching.
"It's not funny! I'm tired of itching..."
"Bet it sucks," he offered generously. He took hold of the stub of the lost-in-a-winter-storm branch before him and leaned forward, peering across the meters of empty air. "I think you've got some in your hair."
"Ew. Where?"
Meredith leaned back and pointed to his own head.
Jeanie felt. "I think that's a pock."
"Don't scratch it!" Meredith yelped. "You'll get germs in it and it'll scar."
"Where would the germs come from?" Jeanie asked irritably, although she did lower her hands. "I just had a bath."
"There are germs on your skin all the time, only they can't get in," he explained very superiorly. "Unless there's a hole in your skin or something."
"But I just washed!"
"In alcohol?"
"Oonnnnrghh!" Jeanie grunted, flapping her blanket at him.
"Hey, if that one's scabbed over," Meredith nobly ignored his sister's frustration, "are the others? I can't quite tell from here."
Jeanie scrutinized her arm. "I think so."
"Have Mom check -- if they all are, you're not contagious any more, and I can sleep in my own room again."
"The guest room smells much nicer," Jeanie argued, and Meredith snorted.
"Not when I'm camped in it, it doesn't."
Jeanie's pocks were in fact all crusted over, and so the next day she and Meredith were given the run of the house again, after its rooms had received the most thorough cleaning known to Canada, and then an impromptu airing out after Meredith had started a coughing fit. (He blamed the lemon-scented cleaning fluid. Their mother hoped aloud that Meredith wasn't getting any more hypersensitive than he was, as not putting something of notable mass in one's mouth was considerably easier to avoid than getting molecules wafted into one's nostrils. Meredith was depressingly sure that he was, which just figured.)
Coughing fit aside, he remained disgustingly healthy until they left for Montréal, eighteen days after they'd seen the first of Jeanie's pustules.
Three days into the vacation, the McKays gleefully pronounced him uninfected. Their hosts were less than thrilled that this was the first they had heard of any possible infectiousness on the part of their guests, and relations remained strained for the rest of that week.
Years later, when the varicella vaccine was first released for public consumption, Dr. McKay (no longer Meredith) made certain to be among the first to receive it. It had been bad enough anticipating a worse case than Jeanie's, but he knew too much about the standard adult prognosis.
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-rating- Suitable for general audiences.
-characters- Rodney, Jeanie
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine.
-word count- 1101
-summary- In which it is imperative that Meredith not get chicken pox.
Takes on Spots: Two
The year Meredith McKay was eleven, his parents planned a week-long family trip to Montréal. They would stay with an acquaintance at McGill that Meredith's father hadn't managed to enrage yet. During the days, Meredith and Jeanie would be shown the many interesting historical and cultural sites of Montréal, and in the evenings, the elder McKays would be able to go out and enjoy themselves while the acquaintance's teenage daughter looked after their two.
Then Jeanie started feeling ill. Their mother came in to take her temperature and noticed the spot on Jeanie's chest. And the other one on her arm.
"Chicken pox!" their father snorted when he heard. "Really, of all the..."
"She should finish with it just in time for Montréal," his wife assured him.
Meredith was already screaming at his sister from the safety of a closed door and three meters of hallway.
"Jean Dymphna McKay, you unmitigated idiot! I haven't had chicken pox yet!"
"I didn't get it on purpose!" Jeanie wailed.
"We won't be able to go to Montréal, and Dad will be snarly all summer, and... "
"Then you'll just have to not get chicken pox," their mother announced, attaining the head of the stairs. "You'd better sleep in the guest room for the duration; get everything you need out of your room, so you won't need to go upstairs while she's contagious."
Meredith made a face -- he didn't like the idea of sleeping on the ground floor; the guest bedroom's windows faced the street -- but the idea of quarantine made too much sense to argue, and so he didn't.
So the pattern was set: Meredith would wake up, dress himself, eat his breakfast (a cooperative effort between himself and his mother), arrange what he was going to do that afternoon and receive funds if necessary, catch the bus to school, and after school either come home on the bus or take public transportation to the library or, on two occasions, museums. Surprisingly, it was only the geology museum that balked at allowing an eleven-year-old to wander the halls unsupervised; they called campus security, and campus security called his father. Dr. McKay declared that earth sciences fostered disordered thinking and mental petrifaction. Meredith decided he quite concurred.
On the other hand, although he was hesitant to come into the house while Jeanie roamed around inside it -- after the first day or two of bed rest, she had felt well enough to get up and move around, if sensitive enough to light that she pulled the shades down whenever the sun was out -- often enough the weather made being outside pleasant (if cool enough that Meredith was glad of warm wool). Moreover, the one pine tree behind the house not only had enough strong branches spaced evenly for good climbing, but had three in just the right spatial relationship to each other for a comfortable seat with a backrest and a foot support. Granted, it was more than a little difficult to climb up with a book in hand, but Meredith soon enough arranged a rope so that he could tie a bag of library-or-other books to its end and haul the bag up to his level.
A week after the quarantine began, he was in his tree-seat reading a book on nuclear fission when Jeanie called to him from the house. "Mer, I'm bored."
"What do you expect me to do about it?" he demanded, looking up. "You're going to get in trouble if Mom finds you on the roof."
Jeanie pulled the blanket from her bed more tightly around herself and leaned back against the second-story wall next to her open window. "I'm bored, and I feel like guh."
"With all the oatmeal you've been eating, I'm not surprised."
"Mer-e-dith! I have not been eating it! It's for my BATH!"
"Sure, sure, that's what they all say," her brother smugly pronounced, secure in the knowledge of oatmeal baths as one of the traditional treatments for full-body itching.
"It's not funny! I'm tired of itching..."
"Bet it sucks," he offered generously. He took hold of the stub of the lost-in-a-winter-storm branch before him and leaned forward, peering across the meters of empty air. "I think you've got some in your hair."
"Ew. Where?"
Meredith leaned back and pointed to his own head.
Jeanie felt. "I think that's a pock."
"Don't scratch it!" Meredith yelped. "You'll get germs in it and it'll scar."
"Where would the germs come from?" Jeanie asked irritably, although she did lower her hands. "I just had a bath."
"There are germs on your skin all the time, only they can't get in," he explained very superiorly. "Unless there's a hole in your skin or something."
"But I just washed!"
"In alcohol?"
"Oonnnnrghh!" Jeanie grunted, flapping her blanket at him.
"Hey, if that one's scabbed over," Meredith nobly ignored his sister's frustration, "are the others? I can't quite tell from here."
Jeanie scrutinized her arm. "I think so."
"Have Mom check -- if they all are, you're not contagious any more, and I can sleep in my own room again."
"The guest room smells much nicer," Jeanie argued, and Meredith snorted.
"Not when I'm camped in it, it doesn't."
Jeanie's pocks were in fact all crusted over, and so the next day she and Meredith were given the run of the house again, after its rooms had received the most thorough cleaning known to Canada, and then an impromptu airing out after Meredith had started a coughing fit. (He blamed the lemon-scented cleaning fluid. Their mother hoped aloud that Meredith wasn't getting any more hypersensitive than he was, as not putting something of notable mass in one's mouth was considerably easier to avoid than getting molecules wafted into one's nostrils. Meredith was depressingly sure that he was, which just figured.)
Coughing fit aside, he remained disgustingly healthy until they left for Montréal, eighteen days after they'd seen the first of Jeanie's pustules.
Three days into the vacation, the McKays gleefully pronounced him uninfected. Their hosts were less than thrilled that this was the first they had heard of any possible infectiousness on the part of their guests, and relations remained strained for the rest of that week.
Years later, when the varicella vaccine was first released for public consumption, Dr. McKay (no longer Meredith) made certain to be among the first to receive it. It had been bad enough anticipating a worse case than Jeanie's, but he knew too much about the standard adult prognosis.