Chapter 28: Deadly Breakfast
The ER doctor worked through the Cooper family efficiently — vitals, tongue, pupils, the standard food poisoning assessment — and arrived at his conclusion with the mild relief of someone who had been braced for worse.
Mild poisoning. No gastric lavage required. Saline solution, activated charcoal for the more severe cases, antibiotics, rest. Everyone was going to feel bad for a day and be fine after that.
George, hearing this, let out a breath that had apparently been waiting since the drive over.
"Twice in two days," he said, to no one in particular. "That's a record."
"For this family?" Connie said, from her chair. "Not necessarily."
Connie looked around the treatment area and found Mike standing near the back wall, doing what Mike tended to do in group situations — present, watching, not requiring anything.
"Mike," she said. "Get over here. Let the doctor look at you."
Mike had been hoping this wouldn't come up.
The Demon Body had processed the whole thing in the time it had taken to get everyone into the Suburban. Whatever the eggs had put into his system, his physiology had handled it with the efficient indifference it applied to most physical challenges. He felt completely fine, which was the problem, because fine was not what anyone else looked like and the gap was going to be noticeable.
He sat down in front of the doctor.
The doctor checked his tongue, his pupils, his color, his temperature. Did it twice. Looked at his chart, looked at Mike, looked at Connie.
"You're certain he ate the same food?"
"He was the first one to say something was wrong," Connie said. "He felt it before anyone else did."
"Hm." The doctor looked at Mike with the specific expression of someone whose professional framework was being asked to account for something that didn't quite fit in it. "Your readings are completely normal. Better than normal, honestly. No inflammatory markers, no gastric distress indicators." He paused. "You're the healthiest person in this room by a considerable margin."
"I have a strong stomach," Mike said.
The doctor looked at him for another moment. "I'd like to run a blood panel, just to be thorough—"
"I'm fine," Mike said. "Thank you."
The doctor looked at Connie.
Connie looked at Mike with the particular expression she used when she had noticed something she was filing away for later. Then she looked at the doctor.
"He's fine," she confirmed.
The Cooper family spent the rest of Sunday in various states of horizontal recovery, which the Texas heat did nothing to assist. Mary's bed, George's recliner, Georgie's bedroom floor because he'd decided that was more comfortable than his mattress for unclear reasons. Missy made one valiant attempt at activity around three in the afternoon and retreated within twenty minutes.
Sheldon read.
Mike checked on everyone at intervals, made sure the water glasses were full, and spent the afternoon in the backyard running his circuits with the uncomplicated energy of someone whose body had encountered a food poisoning event and filed it under minor inconvenience.
By evening, the Coopers were functional. By Monday morning, they were fully themselves.
Connie made breakfast.
This was notable. Connie's relationship with the kitchen was one of selective engagement — she cooked when she felt like it, which was less often than her skills warranted, and she felt like it this morning.
The table held pancakes, bacon, fresh fruit, and two large glasses of milk — one for Mike, one for herself.
"Drink it," she said, sitting down across from him and picking up her glass. "Protein helps the body clear residual toxins. Basic chemistry."
Mike looked at Connie with a glass of milk instead of a Lone Star.
"You doing okay?" he said.
"I'm fine. Drink your milk."
He drank his milk.
They ate in the particular comfortable quiet of two people who had been through something together and didn't need to talk about it to acknowledge it.
"You want to tell me why the doctor couldn't find anything wrong with you?" Connie said, after a while.
"Strong stomach," Mike said.
Connie looked at him over her glass with the expression of a woman who had been around long enough to know when she was being given a partial answer.
"Strong stomach," she repeated.
"Yes."
She drank her milk.
"Alright," she said, in the tone of someone making a deliberate decision to leave something where it was.
He crossed the street to the Coopers' at seven-thirty, which had become the established routine — George drove past the school on his way into work and it made more sense than Connie driving a separate trip.
The Cooper house in the morning was exactly what it always was, which was to say: organized chaos.
Mary was at the kitchen counter assembling Sheldon's lunch with the practiced efficiency of someone who had been doing this for years, each component placed with care that looked automatic but wasn't. She looked up when Mike came in.
"Have you eaten? I've got sausage left."
"Already ate," Mike said, dropping into the couch with the ease of someone who had stopped feeling like a guest approximately a week ago. "Thanks though."
The dining table was the usual Monday morning scene.
George had finished his breakfast and was performing the parental function of checking his watch and looking meaningfully at three children who were in various stages of not being ready.
Georgie was methodically searching through every condiment on the table for something that would make Mary's breakfast more interesting, his expression conveying that he had not yet found it.
Missy was engaged in the delicate operation of removing every bell pepper from her scramble and relocating them to the edge of her plate without this being detectable, which it was.
Sheldon was eating his sausage with focused efficiency, the clip-on bow tie already on, clearly the most prepared person at the table, making up for this by being the one who would find something to comment on in the next sixty seconds.
Mike watched all of this with the comfortable attention of someone watching a show he'd grown fond of.
Sheldon stood up.
It was the kind of standing up that wasn't intentional — the body overriding the plan — and the expression on his face was the wrong kind of wrong. Both hands went to his throat.
George looked up from his watch. "Shelly, what—"
Sheldon's face had gone from its normal color to red to something approaching purple in the time it took George to finish the sentence, and the sound he was making, or rather not making, communicated everything.
Sausage. Lodged.
George's instinct activated before his reasoning did — he grabbed Sheldon, flipped him upside down, and started patting his back with the vigorous commitment of a large man applying the wrong solution with full conviction.
Sheldon's face, now inverted and receiving a significant volume of blood from gravity, achieved a new and alarming color.
"George." Mike was already off the couch. "Put him down. Heimlich."
"The what?"
"Abdominal thrusts. Put him on his feet, stand behind him, arms around the waist, hands just below the sternum — I'll show you."
George set Sheldon upright. Mike positioned George's hands, demonstrated the motion once, stepped back.
George applied the thrust. Then again. Sheldon's body jerked but nothing moved.
Sheldon, Mike noted, had gone very still in a specific way — not the stillness of unconsciousness but the stillness of someone using every available cognitive resource to not panic, which was an interesting choice for someone currently turning purple.
"Again," Mike said. "A little more pressure."
Three more attempts. Nothing.
Mike looked at Sheldon's face. Looked at the situation. Made a calculation.
"Georgie," he said, without raising his voice. "Come here."
Georgie was already on his feet, ketchup from the scramble still on his fingers, his expression having moved well past the point of thinking this was Sheldon being dramatic.
"Hold his face. Both hands on his cheeks — just stabilize his head."
Georgie looked at his hands. Looked at Mike. The ketchup was very visible.
"Now, Georgie."
Georgie moved toward Sheldon.
Sheldon, who had been managing the experience of oxygen deprivation with remarkable composure, saw his brother's ketchup-covered hands approaching his face in slow motion.
His eyes, which had been going slightly glassy, sharpened completely.
Every neuron Sheldon Cooper possessed — the ones that had been occupied with survival — redirected instantly toward a single, overwhelming stimulus: those hands are going to touch my face.
"No."
It came out with a force that was entirely disproportionate to how much air he'd had available to produce it, and the sausage came with it, departing his throat with the decisive finality of something that had been given sufficient motivation to leave.
Georgie, by reflex, caught it.
He looked at what he was holding. Looked at Sheldon. Looked at the room.
"I saved your life," he said.
Sheldon had straightened his bow tie before he'd finished coughing. He looked at Georgie's hand with the expression of someone surveying damage.
"You should wash your hands," he said. "Immediately and thoroughly. Use soap."
"It's ketchup, Sheldon—"
"Those hands," Sheldon said, with the precision of someone issuing a formal statement, "were approximately four inches from my face. The psychological impact of that proximity, under the circumstances, was measurably worse than the choking."
Georgie looked at the sausage in his hand. Looked at Sheldon.
"You're welcome," he said, and threw the sausage in the trash.
"If Mike hadn't needed my assistance," Georgie added, to the room, "I would not have volunteered."
"Noted," Sheldon said.
"And for the record—"
"Georgie," George said, from the chair he'd collapsed into the moment Sheldon started breathing again. He had the specific exhaustion of a father who had had his youngest child go blue in a dining chair and was not yet recovered from that. "Finish your breakfast."
Georgie sat down.
Mary came out of the kitchen.
She looked at the room — George in the chair, Georgie eating his scramble with studied calm, Sheldon adjusting his bow tie, Mike standing in the middle of it all with the composed expression of someone who had managed a situation.
"What happened?" she said.
"Nothing," George said, in the tone he used when something had definitely happened but he needed sixty more seconds before he could discuss it.
Mary looked at the trash can, which had a sausage in it. Looked at Sheldon, who was standing very straight. Looked at George.
She turned and went back to the kitchen.
"Five minutes," she called. "Or you're all walking."
Sheldon looked at the remaining sausages on his plate.
"I'm done," he said.
"Sheldon, you need to eat—" George started.
"Those," Sheldon said, "attempted to kill me. I won't be finishing them."
George looked at the sausages. Looked at his son. Made the executive decision that this was not the hill.
"Fine. Let's go."
A small, bright point of light drifted off Sheldon as he picked up his backpack — the specific output of someone whose morning had involved near-death, theological crisis, the psychological horror of ketchup hands, and survival, all before seven-fifty AM.
[Intelligence +2]
Mike collected it on the way to the door.
He looked at Sheldon, who was adjusting his bow tie for the second time, clip-on perfectly level, expression composed, already moving forward.
You are, Mike thought, an extraordinary person.
"Sheldon," he said. "You're going to be late."
Sheldon looked at him. "I'm ready. I've been ready. The delays have all been external."
He walked out the door.
Mike looked at Georgie.
Georgie looked back at him.
"Every morning," Georgie said.
"Every morning," Mike agreed.
They followed Sheldon out.
(End of Chapter 28)
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