Sick?

Sick: /’sik/ affected with disease or ill health.

My co-worker, Gillian, called me at my desk this morning around 8 a.m. She was out in the lobby of our office and couldn’t get in because she’d left her electronic key card at home. The seal-barking hacking cough I heard before I even got to the door, and the blood-shot left eye I saw upon my arrival, told me that the missing key card was the least of Gillian’s problems this Monday morning. 

“Are you okay?” I asked as I let her in.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“It sounds like you’re sick,” I said.

“Not really,” says Gillian. “I got my son’s cold. Oh, and I have pink eye.” Last week, pink eye was going through her son’s daycare center like the plague. Gillian had to call her Mom into town to take care of her son once he got it and had to be quarantined—or at least wasn’t allowed to set foot in any sort of child care center. 

Funny how mom’s are never really sick—even when they’re running a low grade fever, hacking away and, oh yeah, have pink eye!