She skipped off to the staffroom to get her things while Paul returned with three mugs of piping hot tea. He placed them down on the desk and slid the cleanest one towards their poorly guest. “Here ya go, fella. Drink up.”
“Thank you,” the man replied weakly. He seemed to have gotten a little better since sitting down, but was still looked decidedly unwell. “I’m sorry to put you all out like this,” he said. “I just felt as though I was going to pass out. I just…I just headed into the nearest shop.”
“So you’re not interested in getting yourself a shiny new phone then?” Paul joked.
The man didn’t laugh. His head kept falling towards the desk as if he was having trouble holding it up.
“So what’s wrong with you?” Nick asked.
The man shook his head and spattered the vinyl surface of the desk with bubbling drops of spittle. “I-I don’t know. I’ve been feeling under the weather since yesterday morning. It got really bad this afternoon, though. I think I must have the flu or something.”
Nick nodded. “Yeah, probably. Might be worth getting yourself down to see the quack. People underestimate the flu and how bad it can make you feel.”
The man nodded. “Soon as my wife picks me up, I’ll be heading straight to my local doctor, don’t you worry.”
“Your wife sounded pretty poorly, too,” Nick mentioned.
“She has whatever I have, but she only started feeling ill this morning. Must have caught it from me.”
Nick sipped his tea and tried to ignore the smell of wet fart drifting continuously over from the other side of the table. “Well, I hope you get well soon, buddy, because you look like death warmed up.”
The man’s head slumped to the desk with a thud!
Paul and Nick exchanged worried glances.
***
Fifteen minutes later when his wife arrived, the man was still face down on the sales desk.
His wife tottered into the shop looking almost as bad as he did. Her eyes were bulging and bloodshot, just like her husbands, but they seemed a little more lucid and less dazed. Her mousy brown hair, still kept neat in a tight ponytail, gave her the look of a woman that just soldiered on, no matter the weather.
“Hi,” Nick said to her, keeping his distance.
“I’m here to take George home,” she said, before sneezing three times in quick succession. “Is he…is he here?”
“Yes,” Nick pointed to him, “but I think he’s napping.”
The woman staggered towards the sales area at the back of the store. Her steps were uncoordinated and clumsy. Her husband – George – managed to lift his head and look at her as she came over to him. He seemed unable to do anything more than that, though, and remained seated.
Nick shook his head. Wow. I really hope I don’t catch what they have.
Paul headed over and placed one of his thick hands on George’s shoulder. “The missus will get you to the doctor now, fella. You’ll be right as rain.”
Like a thrashing animal, George snapped his teeth at Paul’s hand, clamping down his jaws like a salivating pit bull. Paul yelled out, yanking back his hand back and wrenching it free. He clutched it to his chest and cursed in his native Punjab. “Haram Jada!”
George looked completely startled, as if he had no idea what he had just done. “I…I’m so sorry. I…”
“George!” his wife cried. “What the bloody hell are you playing at?”
He looked tiny and afraid; a scolded man. “I’m so sorry,” he gushed at Paul. “I…I don’t know what came over me.”
Paul shook his injured hand and seemed totally bewildered by what had just happened. “N-no problem, fella,” he said. “I’ll just put it down to the fever.”
Nick frowned at George’s wife. “Maybe you should get him to a doctor, right away.”
She nodded, embarrassed. Then quickly ushered her husband away, chastising him all the way out of the shop.
When it was just Nick and Paul left alone in the store again, they looked at each other in confusion.
“The fuck just happened?” said Paul.
Nick shrugged. “Hell if I know. How’s your hand?”