LOM Chapter 11. Vomit Comet
I did not get my second wind. The breeze coming off the ocean was a little cool, but the sun was warm and so was the sand beneath my towel. I stayed on the beach and watched my friends surf, occasionally making trips to the toilet. I took a little pleasure from watching their rides, but mostly I was frustrated at myself. My illness had become a serious problem, and I had already flushed too much of my summer down the toilet. I was going to wind up back in school with no money and out of shape for water polo if nothing changed. I resolved to call Dr. Kudafer first thing the next morning. By the time Pete and Matty were finally done surfing, I was in a deep funk.
We went back to the SeaGeezer to clean it out and change for the drive home. I put my clothes and toiletries back into my bag and remade the bed in my room, then helped Matty and Pete put back together the sofa-bed in the other room. Lastly we cleaned up the kitchen. There were still two beers and Pete had to drive, so I took one.
“What about your medicine?” Matty asked. He had already nearly finished his beer, and was staring at mine covetously.
“If it doesn’t work anyway,” I said, “beer’s not going to make it work any worse.” I popped the top on the can and took a big swig. After sitting in the sun all morning, the cold beer felt good going down. I took another gulp.
“Dude, finish that up,” said Pete. “We need to get going.”
I tried to down it in one long chug, but my gut resisted and reversed. I bent over the kitchen sink and vomited.
“Holy shit, Wesley,” said Matty.
Searing bile poured out of me in blasts, splattering all over the kitchen sink. I kept going until I was empty, then coughed and spat into the sink.
“Are you okay?” asked Pete.
“Yeah,” I groaned. “I don’t know what happened. It just all of a sudden – my stomach –
” I leaned over and vomited some more. My eyes filled with tears in the acrid stench from the sink.
“Let’s wait outside,” said Matty.
“Come get us if you need anything,” Pete said. He and Matty left me alone.
I slumped down against the cabinet and tried to catch my breath. After a few minutes I decided the nausea had passed, and stood up again. My knees were weak and I had to pull myself up with my arms. The sink was disgusting, but at least it was all in the sink. I turned on the water and use the dish hose to rinse the bile off the sink walls. As the water ran I turned on the dispose-all in the sink, letting it digest what I couldn’t before it all washed into the sewer line. I rinsed out my mouth with tap water and spat, then rinsed that down the sink as well.
Pete and Matty were waiting for me at the car. We put my bag in the trunk and I sat in the back seat.
We were on the highway back to Orlando in a few minutes, and it was enough for my stomach to recharge.
“Oh, Christ, pull over,” I yelled to Pete. The car swerved onto the shoulder and I opened my door. I leaned over without unbuckling and puked into the grass.
“Try not to get that shit in my car, bro,” said Pete.
“Jesus fuck, Wesley,” said Matty. He had turned around in his seat to watch me puke. “How much of lightweight are you, dude? That’s fucking disgusting.”
I had to dry heave several times before my stomach let me respond. “It was only one beer,” I said. “It must be something else.”
“Yeah, it was only one beer,” said Matty. “One beer too many.”
“Leave him alone, dude,” said Pete. “He doesn’t need your shit.”
I hawked and spat, then wiped my mouth. “I think I’m done,” I said.
“Like done done? Or just done for now?” asked Matty.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We might need to pull over again. My stomach is still pretty fucked up.”
Pete put the car into gear and we merged back into highway traffic. The windows were up and the air conditioning was on, and rock music blasted from the speakers. We only made it a few miles before Matty yelled to make himself heard. “Dude, that smells awful.” He rolled down his window. Pete smelled it, too, and groaned as he rolled down his window. The smell was me. I smelled like vomit. I rolled down my window, too, all the way. The white noise from the rush of window drowned out the music for the rest of the ride, but the cool across my face helped me keep my stomach together.
League of Mortals by Duncan Cross is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
When Pete and Matty dropped me off, my mother came to the door to greet me. I tried to avoid her, but she leaned in to kiss me.
“Mom,” I groaned. “The guys – ”
“Oh, I’m sure they – wait, why do you smell so bad?”
“I got car sick,” I said. I looked to Matty and Pete, but they were already backing out of my driveway.
“You never get car sick,” she replied. “Have you been drinking?”
“Mom – I’m just sick,” I said.
“Have you been drinking?” she repeated.
“Yeah, but it was just one beer -”
“‘Just one beer’?” she echoed. “You come home with vomit on your breath and tell me it’s ‘just one beer’? You’re grounded, and the SeaBreezer is off limits to you and your friends.”
“It really was just one,” I said. “It made me really sick.”
“Maybe that will help you learn your lesson,” she said. “Take your things and go to your room. When your dad gets home, you and he are going to have a talk.”
I took my things to my room and unpacked. My wet swimsuit went to the bathroom, to hang on the towel bar in the shower. Everything else went on the floor of my room. I crawled into bed and tried to nap a little, but my stomach was too cramped up from all the vomiting. I curled up under a blanket anyway.
Dad got home a couple hours later and knocked on my door. I told him to come in, and he sat on the edge of my bed.
“Mom says you’ve been drinking,” he said.
“One beer,” I replied. “One lousy beer.”
“Look,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how much it was. The point is, mom really doesn’t approve of this kind of thing. That’s probably my fault: I was kind of a partier back when we met, and more than once she saw me in pretty bad shape – definitely worse than you are right now. She wants me to talk some sense into you and get you to stop drinking, but I’m not really as worried as she is. You’re a good kid, you get good grades, and a few drinks now and then won’t kill you, so long as you respect your limits. I think you’re probably most of the way to learning your limits already – ”
“Dad, it really was one beer,” I said. “I didn’t even finish it before I started blowing chunks.”
“One beer?” he said.
“One frickin’ beer,” I said.
“Really?” he asked.
I looked up at him and nodded. “Really.”
“And it made you sick?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Were you already dehydrated or something?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure you’re not allergic?”
“I never had this problem before,” I said. “Not that I’ve drunk that much.”
“If one beer made you sick, you might be. That would be tragic – I mean, you’re not even in college yet. You’ve got your best years ahead of you, and to find out now you’re allergic to beer – ” He shook his head in sympathy, then laughed. “This one time, when I was a sophomore at Florida, my buddy and I stole a keg from a frat party and rolled it back to our dorm. We drank probably ten beers a day for the following week, and – ”
I groaned. Even the thought of more beer was nauseating.
“I’m not helping, am I?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, I’ll leave you alone then. I’ll tell your mom not to worry too much. Next time go slow, and try to drink enough water to keep you hydrated – even if it is just one beer.”