Dead Heat

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I wondered if I was dying. I wasn’t afraid to die, but, such was the pain in my gut, I wished it would happen soon.

I’d had food poisoning before, but this time it was particularly unpleasant, with agonizing cramps and long bouts of retching. I had already spent most of Friday night kneeling on my bathroom floor with my head in the toilet, and, at one point, I became really concerned that the violence of the spasms in my abdomen might result in me losing my stomach lining altogether.

Twice I resolved to get myself to the telephone to summon help, only again to be doubled up by a fresh round of dry-heaving. Didn’t my bloody stupid muscles realize that my stomach was already empty, and had been so for ages? Why did this torture continue when there was nothing left in me to throw up?

Between the attacks, I sat sweating on the floor, leaning up against the bathtub, and tried to work out what had brought on this misery.

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