Chapter 27: The Evil God
The Cooper house on Sunday morning had found its way back to itself.
Mike could feel it the moment he came through the door behind Connie and Sheldon — the specific quality of a house that had been frightened and hadn't forgotten it, but was choosing, consciously, to be okay. Missy was in a floral dress running a circuit between the living room and the kitchen for no apparent reason other than the pleasure of moving. Georgie was on the couch with a stack of DVDs and the focused energy of someone who had decided that a normal Sunday was the correct response to an abnormal Saturday.
George was at the head of the dining room table, which was where George belonged.
Mary had made a breakfast spread with the particular thoroughness of someone who had needed to do something with her hands since six that morning and had chosen cooking as the vehicle. The table held cheese and egg omelets, bacon rolled into soft flour tortillas, a potato and egg scramble, fresh-squeezed orange juice.
It was, by any measure, a lot of eggs.
"George," Connie said, coming through the door and looking at him with a warmth she hadn't often directed at him across the years — the warmth of someone who had done a private accounting overnight and come out the other side with a different set of numbers. "You look good."
George looked at her for a moment with the mild surprise of a man receiving something he hadn't been expecting from that particular direction. Then he smiled — easy, genuine, the smile of a man who was alive and at his own table on a Sunday morning and understood what that was worth.
"Feel better than I deserve to," he said.
Sheldon had come in behind Connie and was now standing at his chair in his white button-down and cross lapel pin with the composed dignity of someone who had things to contribute to this morning.
"George's recovery is partly attributable to my intervention," he said. "I negotiated with God on your behalf. You should know that."
George looked at his youngest son — the white outfit, the pin, the absolute seriousness of the face.
"Sheldon," he said, "I don't know what to do with you."
"That's fine," Sheldon said, sitting down. "Most people don't."
Missy appeared from the kitchen, clocked Mike at the table, and immediately stopped running. She sat down beside him with the composed grace of someone who had definitely not just been sprinting through the house.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," Mike said.
She reached for the orange juice and poured herself a glass with great dignity.
Mary called them to bow their heads.
Grace at the Cooper table had the particular quality it always had — Mary's genuine faith, George's patient compliance, Georgie's bowed head and wandering attention, Missy's sincere participation when she remembered to have it.
Sheldon, this morning, prayed.
Actually prayed — quietly, under his breath, with the earnest focus of someone who had made an arrangement and intended to honor his side of it. Mike, sitting nearby, caught fragments:
...bless George with continued good health... and if possible, address Missy's ongoing habit of leaving her socks in the living room... and perhaps encourage Georgie toward more regular personal hygiene...
Mike kept his expression completely neutral.
Amen from Mary, and Sheldon was still going.
"Sheldon," Mary said, gently.
He finished his sentence and looked up. "I had a comprehensive list."
"I noticed," Mary said. "Eat."
George reached for the beer in the mini-cooler beside his chair — a habit so established it happened without thought, his hand moving on autopilot.
Mike pulled the medical report from his jacket pocket and set it on the table.
"George," he said. "I got this from the hospital last night. Your blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar are all running high. The doctor's notes flag alcohol and diet as primary contributors."
George looked at the paper. Looked at his beer. Looked at Mike.
"You took my medical records," he said.
"I asked for them at the nurses' station and they gave them to me."
"That seems like it shouldn't—"
"George," Mary said. She picked up the report, scanned it with the focused attention of a woman who had been married to this man for seventeen years and had been waiting for something like this to be on paper where she could point at it. Her expression moved through several things. "Mike, how serious is this?"
"Serious enough that it happened once already," Mike said. "Not so serious that it can't be managed. The main things are alcohol, diet, and adding some moderate exercise." He looked at George. "Nothing extreme. Thirty minutes a day, a couple of walks, cutting back on the beers. That's the basic version."
George looked at his beer can with the expression of a man saying goodbye to something.
"I'll exercise with you in the mornings if you want," Mike offered. "Light stuff. We go at your pace."
"Dad," Georgie said, from the other end of the table, looking at his father with an expression that had the previous evening's fear still visible underneath it. "Come on."
George looked at his eldest.
Then he looked at Mary.
Then he looked at the beer.
He put it back in the cooler.
"Fine," he said, in the tone of a man making a decision he was going to be annoyed about and was making anyway. "I'll consider it. The exercise thing."
"That's good enough for now," Mike said.
"I also negotiated with God specifically about your health," Sheldon added, helpfully. "So you have multiple lines of support."
George pointed at him. "You're going to stop wearing that outfit, right?"
Sheldon looked down at his white button-down and cross pin. "In time," he said. "I have a commitment to honor."
George looked at Mary.
Mary passed him the egg scramble.
They were midway through breakfast when Mike felt it.
Not dramatic — just a low, specific discomfort in his stomach, the kind that was unusual enough to register because his physiology almost never registered anything. The Demon Body processed food aggressively and efficiently. He didn't get sick from food. The fact that something was signaling meant the something was significant.
He set down his fork and ran a quick internal assessment.
The eggs.
He looked at the basket on the kitchen counter — large, brown, a lot of them. More than a family typically had on hand.
"Mary," he said carefully, keeping his voice level. "Where did those eggs come from?"
Mary was mid-sentence with Connie about something. She looked up. "The eggs? George brought them in yesterday. From next door — Billy Sparks, the boy who lives down the road. His family keeps chickens."
"When did you get them, George?"
George frowned. "Yesterday at noon. Billy brought them over while you were all at the hospital. Left them on the porch." He paused. "Why?"
The discomfort in Mike's stomach had localized into something more specific. He knew this feeling from the system's medical knowledge — the early-stage signal of something that wasn't going to stay early-stage.
"Stop eating," he said. "Everyone. Now."
The table went quiet.
"Mike—" Mary started.
"The eggs have been sitting unrefrigerated since noon yesterday in August heat," Mike said. "That's twenty hours. Something's off."
A beat of silence.
Then Georgie, who had been eating steadily for the past ten minutes, set down his fork and put his hand slowly over his stomach.
His face had gone a particular color.
Then Mary's hand went to her midsection.
Then Connie's.
George, who had eaten the most of anyone, had the most emphatic reaction — his face went from flushed to pale in approximately four seconds.
"Billy Sparks," he said, through his teeth, "has ruined my second day in a row."
"I'll get the car," Mike said, already standing. "George — keys."
George, with the admirable commitment of a man who was actively unwell and still functional, fished his car keys from his pocket and handed them over without argument.
"The Suburban," he said. "More room."
The next few minutes had the specific controlled chaos of moving five food-poisoned people toward a vehicle.
Connie was managing, which Mike had expected. Her constitution appeared to be made of something other than ordinary human material.
Georgie was upright and functional, handling it with the stoicism of a seventeen-year-old who was not going to be dramatic about this.
Missy was pale and had lost all interest in the floral dress.
George was navigating the situation with the dignity of a man who had been through worse in the past twenty-four hours and was not going to let Saturday night be upstaged.
Mary was praying, which was Mary's response to most acute situations.
Sheldon was standing very still in the middle of the dining room.
He was no longer in his white button-down. He'd taken it off — it was folded on his chair with the cross pin placed neatly on top — and he was in his usual Flash t-shirt, and his expression had moved through several stages of theological processing and arrived somewhere specific.
"God," he said, to no one in particular, with the clipped tone of someone filing a formal complaint, "specifically promised the protection of this family. This is a clear breach of covenant." He picked up his backpack. "I want it on the record that I fulfilled my obligations."
A small, bright point of light drifted off him — the output of someone whose worldview had just been forcibly reorganized and was generating the particular energy of a mind working very hard.
[Intelligence +2]
Mike absorbed it on the way to the door, Sheldon tucked under one arm.
God bless, he thought, which under the circumstances was either ironic or completely sincere, and he wasn't sure which.
He got Sheldon into the Suburban and went back for Connie.
The drive to the hospital was, by any objective measure, not Mike's cleanest piece of driving. The Suburban was large, everyone in it was uncomfortable, and the back seat had developed a specific atmosphere that required the windows down.
George, in the passenger seat, was providing navigational guidance between significant pauses.
"Left here."
Pause.
"Light's green."
Longer pause.
"Drive faster, son."
Mike drove faster.
The ER intake team at Medford General had processed the Cooper family twice in less than twenty-four hours, which produced a specific expression on the admitting nurse's face — not judgment, just the particular recognition of someone noting a pattern.
"The Coopers again," she said.
"Food poisoning," Mike said. "Eggs. Unrefrigerated, August heat, approximately twenty hours."
"All of them?"
"Everyone who ate breakfast. Six people."
She was already reaching for intake forms.
George, arriving at the desk behind Mike, managed to look simultaneously terrible and somehow still like himself.
"Hi again," he said.
"Mr. Cooper," she said. "Let's get you situated."
(End of Chapter 27)
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