One Flu Over The Cuckoos' Nest

Poor Jesse is having the sniffles. He started coughing a little over the last couple of days and yesterday, his nose was all runny.

Mae goes into a frenzy, "You gotta send him to a doctor!" It wasn't that I refused to. Just that it was 2am and I thought it best to see how Baby was doing in the morning before we made our decision. But there's no talking to Mae when she gets this way. "Okay, okay, I'll take him when the clinic opens," I relented.

We finally manage to see Doc only at noon. Her appointment was all filled in the morning. "He's coming down with a flu," Doc said. "It's probably a virus." Doc prescribed a syrup medication for cough and cold and another one, in case he got a fever. And she gave us a little syringe to administer the medicine.

Last night, we decided to give Baby his medication. However, we caught him at a bad time and he was kicking up quite the fuss. He was crying so much that Mae's heart was breaking right there and then. And I wasn't helping. I had that dead serious face that sort of told Mae, "You asked for this." It's fun toying with guilt.

Anyway, I slowly drew the medicine into the syringe. For effect, just before I pumped its content into Jesse mouth I held the syringe up to my eyes, furrowed my brows, took a deep breath as I examined the drug. I was looking every bit like those CIA torture specialists that we've been watching in our DVD collection of 24. Heh! Nothing like a little TV to fuel the imagination.

Then Mae broke. "NO, NO!!! I don't want this!" She held Baby close to her and pulled him away from me. She must have been close to tears. I went a little too far. I can be a real asswipe. "It's okay, it's okay," I comforted her. "It's not so bad," I assured Mae. By then, I was back to my 'good spouse' mode. "Here, have a taste," I said as dripped a little droplet on the tip of my forefinger. She tasted it and at once determined that it wasn't gonna hurt Baby or make him uncomfortable.

Curious, I took a lick too. Maple syrup!!! Man, they should've had this when I was a kid. Back then, Grandma use to ground up a Panadol, mixed it with a little water and forced it down our throats. Getting sick was hell. Not anymore, apparently. Now we've got maple-syrup-flavoured drugs.