A beginners guide to sick days

Great. Mom and Alexandra are sick. Leo too. And I, Maxine, am stuck taking care of everyone. Who’s so sure I’m not gonna get sick? And why does everyone have to get sick at the same time? Good for nothing viral fevers. Zack was absolutely no help, of course. Just walks in and out of the house as he pleases, and then yells at me when he gets sick like the rest of us. That guy really needs to learn to take care of himself. I feel sick just thinking about having to take care of all these sick people. Someone help!

For the billionth time this morning, I was running to the room from the kitchen with a glass of strained orange juice for Leo, soup for Alexandra and tea for mom. If this happened one more time someone’s gonna have to pick up my dead body from the staircase. Is it possible to die of exhaustion from running up and down the stairs 15 times an hour? I gave Leo his juice, mom her tea, and started feeding Alexandra the soup. She threw up after the first sip. Just perfect. 

After I cleaned up the mess I tried to feed her the soup again. It was too cold by then. I ran down to reheat it and brought it back up to her. Now it was too hot. Jeez, can’t she just settle for whatever she’s getting? Somehow she finished the soup. I went back down and sat down on the sofa, exhausted. And guess who decided now was the perfect time to show up? That’s right, Zack Martin. “Hey, Max, the new half-pipe in the park’s open. I wanna be the first to try it before it's covered in blood.” “I can’t. I gotta stay home and take care of mom and my siblings.” “Alright, have fun skating on a bloodstained half-pipe.” Why is he so annoying?

After I finally got Zack out of the house, I sat down on the sofa. With everyone asleep and Zack wasting all his time on the new half-pipe, I had around five minutes before something else happened and I needed to run around trying to fix the mess. Sadly, even five minutes was a grossly overestimated guess. The second I sat down, mom was up calling me. “MAX! Can you bring me more tea?” With a sigh that probably shook the windows of the house, I was up and in the kitchen again. What am I? A housewife?

I took the tea up to mom. I was halfway out the room when Leo woke up. Ugh, why can't he put himself back to sleep? With a ton of struggling, I got him back to sleep and went down. 2:05 pm. And now I gotta make lunch. I don't wanna have to look at anyone's face at this point. I wanna hole up in my room and watch sitcoms on repeat.

Okay, so I survived making lunch. And everyone's peacefully asleep. Five minutes of peace and quiet. Sadly it takes my laptop five minutes to turn on. I guess there's no watching anything for me just yet. I settled down on the sofa again, and, as if on cue, Zack high-tails into the house. “I only fell off the half-pipe seven times! I'm improving.” Wow. That's improving. I opened my mouth to yell at him to get out of the house. I couldn't get my voice to come out. Oh no! I'm sick too!