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The day was bitingly cold, and Sarah couldn’t get over this cough.  It clawed at her lungs like an angry cat, and made her whole body shudder with pain after a real bad fit. No matter what she did, whether it be downing a cough drop or sipping hot soup, the tickle in her throat and the cold in her chest would not subside.

Finally, Sarah took the long trip to the doctor.  She started the car, toured the highway, and waited impatiently for her exam, hacking all the way.  The room in which she waited was cold, too, just like everywhere else, and made her shiver. Not only was it cold, but crowded.  A pimply-faced adolescent beside Sarah snapped his gum obnoxiously and plugged his ears with the rubbery tail of an iPod. His worry-stricken mother across from him pinched her eyebrows together and held her lime green handbag in a vice-like grip.  Her husband beside her bounced his knobbly knees in a leisurely way, absent mindedly humming and stroking his wife’s hand.  He leaned over and whispered something in her ear, a twinkle lighting his eye and a sleepy smile lifting his cheeks.  The woman’s deep wrinkles of concern shallowed as her face loosened; her frown became a girlish grin and she looked years younger.  The couple shared a kiss(arousing a disgusted protest from their son).  Sarah merely looked down and fiddled with her wedding band.

“Sarah McKonnor?”  called a hollow-sounding voice from the receptionist with the phone in her ear, nose-deep in her computer screen.  Sarah stood and made her way through the aisles of chairs and toward the office door, doing her best not to trip over the fellow-patient feet draped across her path.

The nurse was a young girl, fresh out of college, with a ring on her finger and a hope in her heart.  Her chipper voice and bubbly smile conveyed an outgoing newlywed attitude, and no one she had ever come across could say the quite disliked her.  However, the amicable nurse had met her match in Sarah that day.

“Could I have you step over here for your height and weight, Mrs. McKonnor?”

“I’m a ‘Miss’.”

“Oh? Alright. MissMcKonnor?” She smiled charmingly and gestured for Sarah to step onto the scale while clamping papers onto a clipboard covered in cartoony thermometer stickers.

Grudgingly, Sarah slipped off her flats and stepped up onto the machine, wincing at the cold metal as it met her bare skin. Sarah frowned as the little red needle sped past the “150 Ibs” mark to land in less favorable territory.

“Mmm.” The thin, pretty nurse mumbled, pressing her tongue into her cheek, eyebrows pinched in pity, and she made a mark on her papers.  Sarah fiddled with her ring again, betting all she had that the blond had never weighed more than one-hundred twenty pounds before. “We’re in exam room twelve, Mrs.–er, MissMcKonnor.”

Sarah shuffled into the room and lifted herself onto the examination table, wishing with all her heart that her nurse would leave.

“Alright, so what is bothering you today?  Sore throat? Vomiting?”

‘Your high pitched squeak of a voice for one…’ Sarah thought, but didn’t dare say.

Sarah pushed down her disdain for the woman and ran through her symptoms, listing them as if reciting a particularly riveting section of Webster’s. She described the painful coughing fits and the wheezy breathing which followed.  She told her of all the nights she’d woken in a sweat with a fever. Of how no amount of blankets could bring coveted warmth to her shoulders and back.  How her chest always felt so heavy.

The nurse only nodded, scribbling her bubbly letters onto Sarah’s exam papers, then looked up and smiled.

“Okay! We’ll swab your throat for strep, but this sounds a bit like pneumonia. Dr. Throbb will be in in a moment to confirm!”

Sarah frowned, but kept her mouth shut about how one shouldn’t look so happy around one so sick. How one shouldn’t keep a joyful sound in one’s voice while talking to someone so miserable.  However, Sarah remained silent about all that as she waited for what seemed like an hour for five minutes of a doctor’s time to tell her what the nurse already knew: she had pneumonia. But none-the-less, Sarah waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally, just as the ailing woman had dropped from her perch on the table to leave, a quirky, middle-aged man with gray hair and bright brown eyes shuffled into the room.  He peeked over his half-moon spectacles to examine Sarah, the spark of wisdom reflected in his face. “Hello, Mrs. McKonnor, I’m Dr. Throbb.” She winced at his use of honorific, and noticed that, for a man in his mid-forties, Dr. Throbb seemed so much older than he was. His smile lines and worry wrinkles matched each other in depth and the beginnings of liver spots sprinkled his pale arms and balding head, leaving Sarah to wonder if she was mistaken in her guess of his age.

“It seems as though you have acquired an H1N1 virus, Mrs. McKonnor. Other wise known as–” Dr. Throbb went on, but Sarah’s world froze with fear.

“The nurse told me I had pneumonia.” She said stiffly, trying to keep her voice from shaking. The doctor nodded his head slowly, touching his pen to his lips, mind elsewhere now that he’d delivered his patient his news.

“Yes, we considered that. However, when the strep test was negative, I thought I’d better test you for the Swine Flu, and…” His voice faded away as Sarah’s heartbeat quickened.

“I’m going to die?” the sound of Sarah’s voice audibly rose in pitch, and she collapsed into the doctor’s swivel chair, head in hands. Dr. Throbb looked down at her in concern, a frown upon his wrinkled face.

“Why, no, my dear.  The H1N1 virus is the same as any other influenza. It merely requires the proper care, and then–poof– all gone.”

Sarah looked away from the doctor, twisting her ring about her finger uneasily. She wasn’t about to believe this man. This stranger.  Beyond that twinkle in his eye Sarah could tell he was untrustworthy. That he would be unsympathetic.  People could die from this… this… Swine Flu. She knew that one from experience.

“I’m afraid you don’t know what you are talking about, Dr. Throbb. People die from this thing.” Sarah fought the tears pushing at the corners of her eyes, and resisted the consequential urge to cough. Yes. People died from this, and he–this supposed practitioner of medicine– was denying it. Making light of it. Pretending like it never happened.

“Same with any other influenza.” He sighed, pushing his glasses back to the top of his nose and scribbling something on a peice of paper, “But there’s nothing for that. You know, someone once said, ‘It’s an unfair life, but it is certainly one worth living.’ I think it was that author…Abby Gale. Ever heard of her?”

“No.”

“Too bad.  But it’s one of the truest statements I’ve ever heard.” Anger rose in the pit of Sarah’s stomach, it’s heat contrasting pleasantly against the cold in her chest, almost making her forget she was ill. She removed her wedding band and threw it on the ground, ignoring how nauseated the movement made her.

“What do you know?! Did someone you love die from H1N1?!” The doctor was still, which Sarah took as surprise at her sudden action. She felt a wave of dark pleasure pass through her bones at the thought of scaring this man. Or… was that the feeling of a swoon coming on? She closed her eyes to keep herself from throwing up, but continued talking. “They told us the same things you’re telling me now. That the virus rarely kills someone. But it killed Charlie. MyCharlie. Don’t tell me ‘It’s no big deal’. It is.”  Sarah looked away from his face deliberately, glanced over the floor, searching for where the ring had landed, and realized it lay beside his polished worn-leathered shoe. He bent over and picked it up, eyes downcast.

“Ms. McKonnor, I’m sorry for your loss. That’s a hard thing to go through.  However…” He lifted her palm in his, and purposefully placed it into the willowy woman’s palm. He looked in her eyes, sincerity on his face. “…I want to let you know that life is worth living if you still have something to live toward.” He closed her hand around the ring, and opened the door to the exam room, holding her gaze all the while.  Finally, he looked away as he closed the door and Sarah was left all alone.

She sat in the swivel chair for a long time, thinking about what had just occurred. About how bright his milky brown eyes had been. About how the doctor’s gray hair had an air of wisdom about it, and how his left hand was barren of jewelry.  Maybe Sarah McKonnor would have something to live for from now on.

After all, she was only forty-two.

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