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It started with Jeremiah.
He came home from his first week of lifeguard training on Tuesday evening, complaining about being tired and having a headache. By Wednesday morning, he was hunched over the kitchen sink, retching up what little he'd managed to eat for breakfast while Laurel rubbed his back and made worried motherly noises.
"It's probably just something he ate," Susannah said, though her voice carried that particular brand of maternal concern that meant she was already mentally cataloging symptoms. "Or dehydration from being in the sun all day."
But when Jeremiah spent the rest of Wednesday alternating between violent bouts of vomiting and equally violent trips to the bathroom, muttering about how half his training group had called in sick, we all knew it was more than dehydration.
"Stomach bug," my mom diagnosed grimly, emerging from Jeremiah's room with a thermometer and a look of resignation. "He's got a low-grade fever, and he can't keep anything down. We need to keep him isolated and hope the rest of us don't catch it."
Famous last words.
By Thursday morning, Conrad was the next casualty. I found him in the downstairs bathroom at six AM, kneeling on the tile floor with his head hanging over the toilet bowl, dry-heaving because there was nothing left in his stomach to bring up.
"Oh, Con," I whispered, immediately dropping to the floor beside him. His skin was clammy and pale, beaded with sweat, and when he looked up at me, his eyes were glassy and unfocused.
"Don't," he managed, his voice hoarse and raw. "You'll get sick too."
But I was already reaching for him, pressing my palm against his forehead. He was burning up, worse than Jeremiah had been. "How long have you been like this?"
"Since about three." He slumped back against the bathroom wall, breathing hard. "Started with cramps, then..." He gestured weakly toward the toilet.
I grabbed a washcloth from the linen closet and ran it under cold water, pressing it to his forehead. He closed his eyes and leaned into the touch with a soft sound of relief.
"We need to get you back to bed," I said.
"Can't. Might need to—" He cut himself off, pressing a hand to his mouth, but the wave of nausea seemed to pass. "Might need to throw up again."
"Then we'll bring a bucket. You can't stay on the bathroom floor."
Getting Conrad upstairs was a production. He could barely stand without swaying, and every few steps he had to stop and breathe through another wave of nausea. By the time we made it to his room, he was shaking from the effort, and I was half-carrying him.
I settled him in bed with a large mixing bowl from the kitchen, a sleeve of saltines he definitely wasn't going to be able to eat, and a water bottle with strict instructions to take tiny sips. Then I went to check on Jeremiah, who was somehow even worse—sprawled across his bed, moaning softly and clutching his stomach.
"How are you feeling?" I asked, even though the answer was obvious.
"Like I'm dying," he croaked. "Everything hurts. And I can't stop—" He rolled over suddenly, grabbing for his own mixing bowl, and spent the next five minutes bringing up bile and what little water he'd managed to drink.
That's when I noticed the sounds coming from the master bedroom—Susannah's voice, tight with misery, and the unmistakable sound of someone being violently sick.
By noon, my mom was down too, which left me as the only person in the house still standing. Four people with the same aggressive stomach bug, one functional bathroom (the upstairs toilet had chosen this exact moment to start backing up), and me trying to play nurse to everyone while staying healthy myself.
"This is a nightmare," I muttered, standing in the hallway with my arms full of dirty towels and empty water bottles, trying to figure out who needed attention most urgently.
That's when I heard Conrad calling my name, his voice weak and desperate.
I found him hanging over the side of his bed, dry-heaving into the mixing bowl. His fever had spiked again, leaving him shivering despite the sweat soaking through his t-shirt, and when he looked up at me, there were tears in his eyes.
"I can't stop," he whispered. "Every time I think it's done, it starts again."
I sat on the edge of his bed and rubbed his back while he rode out another wave of retching. His spine was sharp under my palm, and I could feel the way his whole body was trembling with exhaustion.
"When's the last time you kept water down?" I asked.
"I don't know. This morning?" He slumped back against his pillows, the mixing bowl clutched against his chest like a security blanket. "Maybe yesterday."
"Conrad, you're going to get dehydrated. You need to try—"
"I can't." His voice cracked. "Every time I drink something, it just comes back up worse."
I knew he was right. I'd watched Jeremiah go through the same cycle—sip water, throw up water, feel worse, repeat. But seeing Conrad like this, so completely miserable and unable to keep even the smallest amount of fluid down, made my chest tight with worry.
"Okay," I said. "Ice chips. Tiny ones. Let them melt in your mouth."
I was halfway to the kitchen when I heard Jeremiah calling for help from his room, his voice high and panicked. I found him trying to get out of bed, swaying dangerously.
"Bathroom," he gasped. "Need the bathroom, need it now—"
But the bathroom was occupied. Through the door, I could hear Susannah being sick, and based on the sounds, she was going to be in there for a while.
"Jere, can you wait? Or use the bowl?"
"Not that kind," he said, and the look of mortification on his face told me everything I needed to know.
"Okay, okay. The downstairs bathroom?"
We made it halfway down the stairs before Jeremiah doubled over with a cramp so severe it left him gasping. He barely made it to the downstairs toilet in time, and I stood outside the door listening to him alternately throwing up and dealing with the other end of the virus, feeling completely helpless.
This was how I spent Thursday—running between four different patients, trying to keep everyone hydrated, emptying mixing bowls and washing them out, changing sheets when someone didn't make it to their bowl in time, and slowly watching my own energy reserves dwindle.
By evening, Susannah was delirious with fever, muttering about calling the doctor and something about needing to cancel her book club. My mom was marginally better but still couldn't keep anything down except ice chips. Jeremiah had finally stopped throwing up but was dealing with persistent diarrhea that had him making frequent, urgent trips to the bathroom.
And Conrad... Conrad was scaring me.
His fever was hovering around 103, and he'd been throwing up for almost eighteen hours straight. Every time I checked on him, he seemed smaller, more fragile, curled up under his blankets and shivering. He'd stopped trying to drink water altogether because it just made the vomiting worse, and I was starting to worry about serious dehydration.
"Con," I said, sitting beside him as he clutched his mixing bowl. "I think we might need to take you to the hospital."
"No." The word came out as barely a whisper. "Just need to sleep."
"You can't keep anything down. You're burning up. This isn't just the flu anymore."
He tried to sit up to argue with me, but the movement triggered another bout of dry-heaving that left him gasping and shaking. When it passed, he looked up at me with eyes that were too bright, too glassy.
"Don't leave," he said, so quietly I almost missed it.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"No, I mean..." He closed his eyes, breathing carefully. "Stay here. In my room. Don't want to be alone if I—" He didn't finish the sentence, but I understood.
So I moved my pillow and blanket into Conrad's room, setting up a makeshift bed on his floor. It wasn't ideal—every few hours, he'd wake up needing to throw up, and I'd hold his hair back and rub his back while he retched into the bowl. Between episodes, he'd sleep fitfully, occasionally muttering my name or reaching out like he was looking for me.
"You're going to get sick," he mumbled during one of his more lucid moments, around two in the morning.
"Probably," I agreed, pressing a cool washcloth to his forehead. "But I'm not leaving you alone."
"Why?"
It was such a simple question, but I didn't have a simple answer. Because I cared about him. Because seeing him this vulnerable and miserable made something in my chest ache. Because the idea of him going through this alone was unbearable.
"Because," I said instead, and he seemed to accept that.
Friday morning brought a new development: I woke up with a familiar churning in my stomach and barely made it to Conrad's mixing bowl before I was throwing up the crackers I'd eaten the night before.
"Shit," Conrad said, his voice still hoarse but more alert than he'd been in days. "Belly, no."
But there was no stopping it. Within an hour, I was as sick as the rest of them, and Conrad—who was finally starting to keep sips of water down—found himself in the surreal position of taking care of me while still recovering himself.
"This is backwards," I mumbled, my head in his lap while he held a cold washcloth to my neck. "I'm supposed to be taking care of you."
"We'll take care of each other," he said, and something about the way he said it made my fever-addled brain focus on his face. Even sick, even exhausted, he was looking at me with an expression I'd never seen before—soft and careful and maybe a little scared.
"Conrad—"
"Shh. Rest. We'll talk when we're not dying."
The next few days blurred together in a haze of fever and nausea and the strange intimacy that comes from being completely vulnerable with another person. We took turns holding each other's hair back, sharing sips of electrolyte solution when we could keep it down, sleeping curled together on his bed because we were both too weak to maintain any pretense of propriety.
There was nothing romantic about it—we were both too sick, too miserable, too focused on basic survival. But there was something else, something deeper. When I woke up with my head on his chest and his arm around me, when he rubbed my back through another bout of dry-heaving, when we shared a sleeve of saltines like it was communion wine—it felt like we were learning each other in a completely new way.
By Sunday, the worst was over. Jeremiah was back to keeping down toast and complaining about being bored. Susannah and my mom were weak but functional, arguing over who was going to brave a trip to the grocery store. And Conrad and I were sitting on his bed, sharing a ginger ale and marveling at the fact that we'd gone twelve whole hours without throwing up.
"I think we survived," I said.
"Speak for yourself. I feel like I got hit by a truck." But he was smiling, the first real smile I'd seen from him all week.
"A truck full of stomach flu."
"The worst kind of truck."
We sat in comfortable silence for a while, taking tiny sips of ginger ale and listening to the sounds of the house slowly returning to normal. Jeremiah's music from downstairs, the mothers debating soup versus crackers, the blessed quiet of no one actively being sick.
"Belly," Conrad said eventually.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For staying. For taking care of me." He paused, looking down at his hands. "I know it wasn't exactly glamorous."
I thought about the past few days—the mixing bowls and the fever dreams and the way he'd looked so small and scared in the middle of the night. The way he'd taken care of me when I got sick, even when he could barely take care of himself.
"It wasn't supposed to be glamorous," I said. "It was just real."
He looked up at me then, and there it was again—that expression I'd seen when I was delirious with fever, soft and careful and maybe a little hopeful.
"Real," he repeated, like he was testing the word.
"Real," I confirmed.
Later, much later, when we were both fully recovered and the house was back to its normal summer chaos, we'd have to talk about this.
But right then, sitting on his bed with ginger ale and the afternoon sun streaming through his windows, we were just two people who'd survived something terrible together. And maybe that was enough. Maybe that was everything.
"Next time," I said, "we're quarantining Jeremiah on the beach."
Conrad laughed, and the sound was better than any medicine.