this is what it looks like

Tomorrow she will have to call in sick, there is no way she can muddle through another day like this. You’d think university students would be at least somewhat better at keeping their germs to themselves than pre-schoolers but it sure doesn’t seem that way. Hours of teaching in a lecture hall where the air seemed thick with viruses – at least two thirds of the students were coughing and sneezing and blowing their noses – all but guaranteed that she’d catch something before the week was over, and indeed she has. Maybe several different colds, even. The nasal symptoms certainly feel more intense than they usually do.

Going outside in the chilly air makes her nose run even more than it already was, and she is already out of tissues. She could have brought some paper towels before leaving her office, of course, but she forgot. Her head feels like it’s full of snot, it’s hard to think through the sinus pressure. But her nose is running so persistently that she ends up having to wipe it on the sleeves of her coat. Nasty, but desperate times and desperate measures, and all that. All this exhausted university professor really wants is to get home, take a hot shower, make a steaming cup of tea, and go to bed. Sleep this cold off.

“EeeISSSH-ISSSHHH-huhDISSSHHHIEW! Oh God, it just won’t stop!”

She wipes her nose with her sleeve again, thankful it’s late enough that none of her students is around to see what she’s reduced to. Her classroom authority would never recover.

The bus pulls up at the stop, and she groans when she sees how crowded it is. But she feels like death warmed over, and it’s starting to rain and she doesn’t have an umbrella, so there is no way she is going to walk home, even if it isn’t that far.

***

Oh please don’t sit next to me, Chloe thinks when the woman in the red coat steps onto the bus. She is in her late 30s or early 40s, attractive, or would be if she had been healthy, but she is visibly bogged down with an awful cold. Her nose is almost as red as her coat, there are dark circles around her eyes, and when she makes her way down the aisle Chloe realises that she has streaks of snot on her sleeves. Eww. You’d think grown women with a civilised appearance would at least know to use a tissue or something.

Keep going, keep going, she quietly urges the sick woman as she gets closer to Chloe’s seat, but rather than continuing further down the aisle, the woman stops next to her.

“Is this seat taked?” she asks in a thick, stuffy voice. She looks exhausted. Chloe does feel bad for her, it’s not that, but she really doesn’t want to catch that cold; she has to work the whole weekend and she already knows it’s going to be hell. She doesn’t need a cold on top of that. But her polite nature overrules any self-preservation she has, so she moves to the window seat with a sigh of resignation.

“Thag you,” the sick woman says and takes the offered – well, forced-offered more like it – seat. Her snot-streaked sleeve brushes against Chloe’s purse for a moment and Chloe involuntarily makes a disgusted face, but the other woman doesn’t notice. She has a faraway look on her own face and Chloe realises to her horror that the woman is about to sneeze. The sick woman, right next to her, so close she can feel the feverish heat from her body, is about to sneeze a ton of contagious droplets into the air Chloe has no choice but breathing.

She’s going to cover, Chloe soothes herself. Of course she is. Maybe that’s why her sleeves are so gross, because she has sneezed into them. Not perfect but way better than uncovered. Yes, that’s it, of course it is.

But the woman merely holds her hands up in front of her face, several inches away, and when the sneeze comes out it’s wet, it’s messy, and it’s essentially uncovered because she’s sneezing at her hands rather than into them.

“Heeehhh-ISSSSHHHEW!”

Nothing is contained, and the sneeze spatters everywhere. Chloe holds her breath, but the smallest droplets are still mingling in the air like tiny dust particles when she has to surrender to her body’s need for oxygen and inhale again. Which she does at the exact moment that the woman’s red, cold-filled nose explodes again, this time halfway turned towards Chloe and thus sending an abundance of droplets teeming with illness in her direction.

“EeehhD-ISSSHHHIEW!”

Chloe can feel some of the spray hit her face and her brain just blanks out for a moment. This can’t be happening. 

“Oh shit, I’b so sorry,” the woman says and sniffles thickly. “I hope I didn’t get you with that. I didn’t feel it cobig. These sdeezes are so udpredictable. Do you by ady chadce have a tissue?”

Little late for that now, isn’t it? Chloe thinks, but shakes her head, still in shock from what just happened.

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

She will in a couple of days, of that she’s now convinced, but not now.

“Oh. Thags adywa… ahh…”

Fuck politeness, this time Chloe pulls her scarf up over her nose and mouth and turns towards the window, pushing up so close she’d melt into it if she could. Become one with the window. Glass panes don’t catch colds. Oh to be a glass pane for this ride. Or not be on this ride at all. Yes. That would be light-years better than sitting here and being exposed to what sounds like the nastiest cold she has ever encountered in a public setting. Why is this woman not at home? Why is she even out in public with something this contagious? Why?

“…ahhh-DISSSSHHHHIEW!”

Chloe can feel the woman’s body convulse with the force of the sneeze, which is not suppressed at all, it’s let out with the same gusto as if she was alone in her own home.

The woman sniffles again, a disgusting, snotty sound, and then starts to cough a raspy, chesty cough. She coughs almost nonstop for the rest of the ride, and the only ‘cover’ she provides is a loose fist placed approximately two inches from her mouth.

Kill me now, Chloe thinks. Or I’ll be murdered by at least one patron when I come to work on Friday.

***

Madeline is in her late 40s and is the embodiment of the epithet ‘attractive older woman’, though she would likely send a contract killer after anyone who calls her ‘older’. But she is objectively beautiful, and she is of the opinion that she certainly should be, considering how much money she has invested into her appearance. Whatever flaws her appearance used to have she’s paid professionals to correct. It has all been done very tastefully, she has no interest in looking like some of those celebrity freakshows who don’t know when to stop going under the knife.

Right now, she is annoyed, though you’d never believe it because she doesn’t want to frown. It gives you wrinkles. It’s not worth it just because the waitress serving her is sniffling all the time. Not obnoxiously loud, but it really is relentless.

“You keep sniffling, are you ill?” she interrupts the young woman as she rattles through the wine list with a thick voice, sniffling every few seconds.

“No ma’am,” she replies, and she’s blushing. “My apologies. It’s allergies.”

“This time of year?”

“A gentleman here is wearing a cologne my nose doesn’t quite agree with,” she says.

“I see,” Madeline says. She doesn't really care. She just wanted to alert the young woman to her unpleasant habit so she'll stop.

She orders the wine she wants and as the waitress jots it down on her notepad, there is an expression crossing her face, first briefly and then it returns and lingers, an expression like she’s about to sneeze. Eyes narrowing, eyebrows knitted, nostrils – they are decidedly pink around the edges – flaring. This waitress has a very, let’s call it ‘expressive’ nose, and there is no doubt in Madeline’s mind that it’s tickling. Her nostrils flare wide and they twitch, almost like a bunny’s nose. Of course, a bunny has a small, adorable nose while this young woman’s nose could really benefit from an appointment with Madeline’s plastic surgeon. It’s much too long and too wide to be particularly feminine, and otherwise her features are delicate and pretty. Of course Madeline would never say it, it would be rude, but it’s a pity such a pretty face is so dominated by a nose that big.

After a few seconds, the expression fades and the waitress’s face relaxes again. In fact, her shoulders relax too, as if she was fighting with her entire body to hold back a sneeze. Well, it’s a good thing she succeeded, because Madeline would not take kindly to staff snotting all over her dinner table.

As the waitress keeps taking Madeline’s order, she tries to sniffle quieter, and less frequently, but all that really accomplishes is that it sounds wetter. There is a look of immense worry in her eyes when she can turn away and head back to the kitchen.

Chloe walks as fast as she can, but not to the kitchen, but to the staff bathroom. She has barely managed to close the door behind her and get her arm up to her face before the sneezing begins. It’s impossible to hold them back longer than a few seconds, they just won’t be controlled; once they start to build inside, she has to make a run for it so the patrons won’t notice. She is very careful to cover each of the dozens upon dozens of itchy sneezes that comes on throughout the evening, direct them firmly into the crook of her arm, so she won’t spray them everywhere like that inconsiderate bitch on the bus who she definitely caught this from – but even when she’s not sneezing her nose is so unbelievably itchy. It feels a lot like her spring allergies when it comes to the intensity of that itch, but there is nothing in bloom this time of year that she’s allergic to, and the cologne excuse was just that – an excuse. If you have no choice but to be here, there’s no reason to put off the patrons.

“HehhNKKT-nnkt-Tsshhoo! HaaaESSSHHH! NNKTissshhhoo!”

Her nose is still burning with the urge to sneeze, but she thinks she can stave them off for a while now. She grabs some paper towels and blows her nose forcefully, then washes her hands thoroughly.

She really is trying to be considerate, but that itch is so annoying, she keeps having to rub her nose without even thinking about it. And the wetness inside her nose, teeming with viruses eager to move on to other hosts, sometimes gets on her hands when she runs her knuckles or her fingers or even the heel of her hand back and forth underneath her burning nose. These viruses then hitches a ride on the plates she carries, the glasses she fills, the menus she hands out. Still, while she involuntarily ends up passing the viruses to most of the patrons she serves that weekend, only one of them actually comes down with the cold.

That one patron is Madeline.

***

Madeline wakes up that Sunday morning with a prickly throat and blocked sinuses. She thinks of the sniffly-nosed waitress while she gathers her luggage for her trip cross-country, and just knows those ‘allergies’ she claimed it was, was really the cold that is now claiming Madeline as its next victim.   

By the time she’s at the airport, Madeline’s surgically perfected nose has developed this irresistible tickle resulting in small fits of stifled dainty sneezes that she suppresses into an expensive handkerchief. To begin with, she puts the lace-edged handkerchief away between each fit, but she soon decides it’s more convenient to keep it in her hand all the time. The tickle just keeps coming back, it feels like she has a very fluffy feather stuck somewhere deep within her nose, tickling and tickling. It might go away if she let out a sneeze, but she will not. Her natural, unrestrained sneezes are about as unladylike as can be, harsh and loud and spraying, and not something she allows herself even if she is alone.

The tickle is relentless, though, and her nose is already getting red. Well, that’s not terribly surprising, she has very fair complexion (along with her arctic blue eyes and ash-blonde hair it earned her the nickname Ice Queen in her circles) and the continuous brush of the handkerchief along with the brewing inflammation in her nose takes a toll on her skin. But one look in her makeup mirror when she has boarded the plane and she is assured that it is far worse than she thought. She looks like she’s been suffering from this drippy, tickly cold for weeks rather than hours.

***

The flight attendant does a double take when she sees the attractive middle-aged woman in the expensive skirt suit take her seat in first class. She sees a lot of rich people in expensive suits, including some very good-looking ones, that’s not what catches her eye. It’s how impossibly cold-ridden she looks. Her nose, too perfect not to be the work of a talented plastic surgeon, is cherry red, a stark contrast to her very pale skin. Her lips, coated with a discreet layer of soft pink lipstick are parted. She must be very congested.

That woman is going to have a real problem as soon as the pressure changes, the flight attendant thinks. But she knows better than trying to tell the first-class passengers the unfortunate facts of life. They complain and the company always sides with them because money.

She still looks at the woman when those red, tender-looking nostrils quiver, flare, and then are hidden behind a thin barrier that consists of a handkerchief. It looks like it has been used quite a bit already; there seem to be fewer dry spots than wet ones on it. The woman proceeds to sneeze a series of very restrained, tickly stifles, her entire body shuddering with the force she suppresses.

She’s not going to be able to keep stifling like that throughout the flight, not unless she’d rather blow out her eardrums, the flight attendant thinks, still blissfully unaware that it's everybody else's eardrums that will be in danger on this flight.

“Amanda? Could you come over here for a moment?” her colleague says, and she momentarily forgets about the lady with the cold as she goes to see what Luisa needs.

***

A while later it’s no longer possible to forget about the lady with the cold. Amanda knows from experience that it’s painful to fly when you’re congested, but for this woman the air pressure seems to do something more: it makes her sneezing worse. Not just the expected amount with changed air pressure and irritated sinuses. Much, much worse.

If she sneezed a stifled fit of four, five sneezes in a row every twenty to thirty minutes earlier, she now sneezes seven, eight, even ten times in a row every ten minutes. When these bigger sneeze attacks started, she was still trying her hardest to stifle, then she started doing everything within her power to simply hold them back – an endeavour that was doomed to fail if her nose tickled as much as it appeared to.

And now she just can’t deny herself the release any longer.

The first completely unrestrained sneeze cuts like a whipcrack through the cabin, and Amanda is certain she isn’t the only one who jumps. But that sneeze is only the first of eight, and the rest of them ring out like thunderclaps, one right after another. They’re so loud, they sound so desperate, almost painful – actually, scratch the ‘almost’ – and they’re also spraying, dripping, soaking wet.

That fit alone sounded like she could wring that handkerchief out after. Amanda hopes that these powerful outbursts was what she needed to once and for all quell that tickle in her nose that had plagued her since before she boarded. For everybody’s sake.

The lady mumbles an apology to the people who turns to stare at her, and goes into the bathroom, presumably to blow her nose. She sure can't rely on her handkerchief to take in any more of what her swollen mucus membranes produce, that’s for sure.

When she returns to her seat she begins to flip through a magazine, but Amanda can tell from the hazy look in her eyes and the way she’s pressing the saturated handkerchief against the underside of her aggravated nose, that she needs to sneeze again.

She holds out for almost five whole minutes before she can’t even pretend to focus on the magazine. Then her breath begins to hitch, and she franticly presses the handkerchief even firmer against her damp nostrils during the buildup, almost as if she’s trying to block the sneezes from coming out. As if that would help.

This time, ten of those wet blasts are being screamed into the expensive, drenched fabric. While fetching a box of tissues for her, Amanda is frankly both horrified and impressed. This is surely not going to last the entire flight; no one is able to sneeze that loudly and that frequently for any prolonged period of time… right?

Well, yes and no. The frequency of the sneezes goes down somewhat after the first hour or so of this, but not the volume or the number of sneezes in each attack. Now she sneezes about an even dozen in a row of those ear-splitting, waterlogged, throat-scraping RAH-AAAASSSHHHOO’s and HERRRIIIIISSSSHHHOO’s and HAA-RREESSSSHHHAAH’s and HUH-RUUSSSSSSCHHUH’s once an hour or so for the rest of the flight.

The now useless handkerchief has been abandoned, unceremoniously stuffed into the side pocket of her purse, crumpled tissues filled with clear, contagious mess are spilling over her lap after her desperate attempts to blow that troublesome tickle out of her nose, she has resorted to trying to muffle the sneezes into the blanket by her seat, embarrassed beyond words, but some of these monumental explosions of noise, spray and germs catch her off guard and come out completely uncovered. Amanda has never heard a woman that small sneeze that loudly before, and she has never witnessed a cold as aggressively symptomatic as this one before either. She doesn’t know whether the air in the plane that is just one big concentrated cold soup by the time the plane finally touches ground again, but she’s willing to bet the other first-class passengers will all catch that cold, at least.

Normally she wouldn’t really care; public transport of any kind is a petrie dish and everybody catches a cold once in a while, it’s no big deal. But in this particular instance it’s very unsettling news, because Josie is going to her old college friend’s wedding the day after tomorrow and Crystal is… well, she is…

While Josie tries to find a nicer word for bitch, the flight attendant pauses mid-sentence, takes several hitching breaths, her eyelids fluttering briefly. She hesitantly raises her arm a little, ready to aim her sneeze into her elbow, but eventually exhales without sneezing.  She waits a few seconds, as if to be absolutely sure the sneeze is gone, before she lowers her arm again, sniffles and goes back to speaking, but this time her voice has an even thicker quality to it.   

***

Amanda feels her cheeks burn as she picks up where she trailed off and keeps talking. This cold is still settling in, but it’s getting ominously comfortable in her nose already. It first started last night with a touch of a sore throat, that kind that is more a discomfort than pain, where you swallow repeatedly to see if it’s still there, and it always is. When she woke up this morning that uncomfortable sensation was gone; she was a bit more congested than her usual morning congestion could account for and it lingered longer, but nothing that really set off alarm bells. She had no doubt this was the beginning of a cold, however; there was no way she hadn’t caught the cold from that first-class passenger the other day. That woman had looked and sounded like she was a week deep into the worst cold in the history of mankind, sneezing uncontrollably. And Amanda had been the one to serve the first-class passengers the entire flight, she had picked up the snotty tissues and the damp, sneezed-in blanket that woman had left behind, like a trail of contagion.

Follow the trail of contagion and get your very own cold, Amanda thinks, but it’s not funny on any level. 

She had honestly believed that her version of this woman’s cold would be much milder, based on the first symptoms, but when she arrived at work, her nose was running almost nonstop with clear watery mess. Every time she sniffled to maintain control of this drip, that intense, almost pepper-like, sneezy feeling flared up deep inside her nose.

She isn’t sneezing with the same ferocity or anywhere near as often as the lady in first class had, but she is far sneezier than she’d normally be from a cold. Sometimes, like now, they just tease her right up to the edge before leaving her itchy-nosed and unsatisfied, other times she sneezes once, feels like she is done, until the tickle returns a couple of seconds later and then result in a whole fit. Thankfully, with her being used to high altitudes, she believes she will be able to keep them at the very least half-stifled, but it has a price. Her sinuses are pounding and she’s pretty sure her whole face looks swollen.

Take-off was painful, as she had known it would be, but when they level out, the pain is replaced with an overwhelming itch, and Amanda turns away from the passengers, bring her arm up to her face, and lets the sneezes take over.

***

Josie sees the pretty flight attendant lean into the crook of her arm, breath hitching, and this time it’s no false start. A soft but wet “Hihh-NTSCH!” sprays into the sleeve of her proper navy blazer.

Well, at least she tries to contain it…

“Hihh-TSSHH! IHHKTSSHH! TSSHoo!”

She keeps sneezing, as if that first one had removed a seal that unleashed an uncontrolled storm of sneezes.

Oh God, Josie thinks as the other woman hurries to get away from the sight of the passengers.

Josie can still hear her sneeze; it sounds like she does everything in her power to keep the sneezes quiet, soft, restrained, but they are coming faster and faster and sounding like they melt into one another until it sounds more like tisssh-issshh-issshshhhshhh!

I do not want that cold, Josie thinks. If Crystal even suspects that I’m sick it’s going to ruin her ‘perfect wedding’, and that’s gonna be everyone’s problem.

The flight attendant with the very itchy nose must have sneezed at least twenty times in rapid succession by the time she finally manages to get herself together and stop. Josie can hear the fit taper off, and then a soft but very productive noseblow. She hopes that the sick woman washes her hands after, but she isn’t sure.

When she steps back out a few minutes later, she has reapplied some concealer on her nose, but she is unable to stop sniffling. The kind of wet, light, persistent sniffling that isn’t very loud, but quickly grates on your nerves. 

Josie notices that when she’s near the passengers; serving them or leaning in to listen to them, she tries to avoid sniffling, but every time she turns around to go back after this, Josie can see a trail of thin, watery snot slowly trickling out of her nostrils. She disappears behind the curtain, and then follows another noseblow. This cold is worsening in real time.

***

The middle seat of Josie’s row is empty, and the elderly woman in the window seat appears to have dozed off already. Either a veteran flyer, or someone who needs to dope herself up on sleeping pills to get through it, Josie assumes. It could have been a rather pleasant flight, if Josie wasn’t constantly reminded that she was sitting in a tin can with recirculated air and at least one person with a doubtlessly contagious cold. Ironically, for once it doesn’t seem like any of the passengers are sick; there is an occasional cough, but it doesn’t sound as urgent, persistent, or ticklish as a cough brought on by illness.

But as the flight goes on, the flight attendant’s sneezing and sniffling becomes more and more frequent instead. She is lovely and service-minded despite her own obvious ailment, and she does attempt to downplay her symptoms as best she could. It just seems to get more and more difficult for her.

Well, Josie is definitely not going to call for her, not once during the entire flight. She is not going to eat or drink anything served by someone so obviously contagious. No way. It’s only a few hours, she doesn’t need anything to eat or drink in that time. Each time the sick woman walks past Josie’s seat, Josie holds her breath. She is glad she isn’t an actual germaphobe; she has no idea how anyone could deal with the anxiety that came with it, if she is this anxious just this one time.

Her plan to avoid any form of close contact with the cold-ridden stewardess might even have worked, if only Josie’s seat neighbour hadn’t woken up mid-flight and pressed the button above her, calling for the flight attendant’s attention.

***

Josie steels herself when the pink-nosed woman leans over her seat. The elderly lady has a very soft voice, and the flight attendant seems to struggle to hear her, leaning in even further. Her face is less than two feet away from Josie’s, in fact, she can almost look right up into her nose.

Josie tries not to, tries to ignore the whole scene and pray the ill woman will step away soon, but she can’t not look. It’s like watching your own demise coming closer with no way of escaping. That’s overly dramatic of course, but the interior of that rosy nose is damp, as in, she can see watery snot moving inside. The flight attendant’s nose twitches; holding back on the sniffling for so long seems to make it tickle again. She wiggles her nose. She flares her nostrils. Stretches her upper lip. Scrunches up her nose. She has a picture-perfect version of a ‘cute button nose’ that Josie, who has a large, wide nose, had been so jealous of as a teenager, but at the moment she isn’t jealous of that nose at all. Even if it wasn’t sporting a shade like pink rose petals it would still look like an extremely tickly nose. If she’d had both nostrils stuffed to the brim with feathers and downs, that nose couldn’t have looked ticklier.

And it’s visibly running, too. Josie watches with increasing apprehension as liquid begins to gather right underneath the nostril that’s mere inches away from Josie’s face. She hopes it won’t begin to run down that twitching upper lip and maybe drip down on her.

The flight attendant seems to be concerned about the same thing, because she gives a quick sniff to recapture the escaping wetness. 

This is a terrible mistake, and Josie realises what’s about to happen a split second before the woman leaning over her takes one single sharp, deep breath and turns her head away from the woman she’s talking to, about to sneeze. But in her haste, instead of turning to her left where all she would have hit with the virus-infused outburst is the backrest of the row in front, she turns to her right and unleashes a huge, spraying double-sneeze downwards.

“HEYISSSSHHHHEW-IIISSSSHHH!“

Right in Josie’s face.

And before Josie can fully comprehend what just happened, the cold-ridden woman sneezes again, blasting Josie in the face with a third, high-pitched and even wetter outburst, before she manages to pull all the way back into the aisle and get a hand up in front of her face.

“Oh God I… hehh… I am s-so… hahhh… so s-sorry,” she stutters, but even as she tries to apologise, she keeps building up to another sneeze.

“It’s… it’s okay,” Josie says, almost stunned. No, it isn’t okay, not even remotely okay, but what is she supposed to say? It wasn’t on purpose.

“Excuse me,” Josie mumbles and gets up, walks past the woman who is sneezing into her elbow again (if only she’d done that a few seconds ago!), and goes to the bathroom to wash her face and say a prayer that her immune defence is strong enough to fight back this accidental assault.

***

Josie fights bravely with the determination of a real trooper, armed with an arsenal of vitamins and other things that claims to prevent colds, but she has to admit defeat on the evening before the wedding.

Colds are normally slow-burns for her, symptoms coming on slowly and gradually, and if this cold had behaved the way they usually did, she might have managed to get through the wedding without showing obvious symptoms.

This cold does not behave that way. This cold just marches in and takes over. Her nose, normally as resilient as it is big, surrenders without a fight; she views it as a deserter.

She knows that she somehow has to find a way to suppress the sneezes when she’s in company, and sneak away somewhere and let them out when she can. Because if she doesn’t show up to the wedding, there will be drama. Nobody ditches Crystal.

Of course, if she shows up obviously contagious, there will be drama either way.

Josie puts on her bridesmaid’s dress – Crystal insisted on bright purple silk, which isn’t something Josie would ever choose for herself. She is a voluptuous woman with generous curves, and the dress is uncomfortably tight, making her feel trapped and suffocated. She doesn’t even want to think about having to sneeze in it, but her itchy nose makes no promises to stay calm.

It'll be fine, she tells herself.

But the redness around her nostrils is glaringly obvious despite the makeup, and the tickle inside them is not going to remain ignorable for very long.

It’s going to be bad.

***

She had no idea how bad.

Crystal is as insufferable as she was in college, and Josie wonders why she even agreed to come here. She doesn’t fit in with these people anyway; they’re loud and entitled, rude and selfish. The groom is worshipping Crystal in a way that at least suits her perfectly, but other than that he hardly says two words to anyone.

Maybe he’s just overwhelmed.

Josie is overwhelmed, anyway, that’s for sure. Or rather her nose is. Crystal has decided to go all-in with the same colour scheme as the bridesmaids’ dresses, and all decorations are a light, pastel purple. It’s beautiful. Unfortunately, the wedding bouquet, along with the majority of the flower arrangements, consists of lavender and lilacs to stick with the colour theme.

Josie’s nose, when not under siege by this rapidly developing cold, has few enemies. But lavender is one. The scent alone is enough to make her nose itch something horrible. As if she isn’t in trouble enough trying to handle her cold, which is very firmly settled within her sinuses, tickling and teasing, wanting to push her over the edge at the worst possible moment.

She holds back so many sneezes during the ceremony and stifles even more of them. She pinches her nose between thumb and index finger and tries to swallow the sneezes, keep them contained within her body, nothing is allowed to come out.

She gets a couple of strange looks, but not too many, and she doesn’t really notice most of them. She is too concentrated on her nose, burning underneath her fingertips. It would feel so good to just sneeze, just let loose, but she doesn’t want to disturb the ceremony, and she knows that even if a sneeze is triggered by her lavender allergy, the cold is flourishing inside her and she must be peak contagious right now. She would feel so bad if she gave Crystal a cold right before her honeymoon.

***

At the party after the ceremony, Josie is getting more and more fed up. The dress is uncomfortable, Crystal is even more insufferable than she remembers, the other guests are snobs, and her nose just can’t keep fighting against the amount of sneezes that tries to come out. All the lavender with its pollen and strong fragrance keeps nearly tipping her over the edge, but she can handle it.

Her cold, however, is only getting more pronounced. She isn’t sure how she knows it’s the cold and not the lavender, but… she knows.

Then Crystal, who hasn’t really picked up on Josie’s predicament at all, (which actually is good news for the struggling, sneezy woman), seals her own and Josie’s fate when she shoves her wedding bouquet in Josie’s arms.

”Hold these for me, Jo, I need the ladies’ room right now.”

And with that she’s gone, leaving Josie’s exhausted, tormented, cold-ridden and allergic nose to deal with the unexpected floral ambush. The flowers get in her face; in fact, one of the lavender stems goes straight up her right nostril, not just brushing at the edge, but going deep inside her nose and digging into her already aggravated mucus membranes. The sneeze is practically immediate. She tries so hard to hold back, that the sneeze that ends up pushing itself out of her comes out sounding nothing like her normal sneeze.

”UH-WOOSSCHUH!”

A thin string of transparent snot hangs between her attacked nostril and the flower when she opens her watery eyes to look at the aftermath. She sneezed out the lavender sprig, but she can feel that it’s not out in its entirety. There is something stuck in her nose; pieces of petal maybe, or worse; pollen. Before she can really do anything, she sneezes again, and this time it’s altogether uncontainable. She ends up misting the bouquet with abundant spray.

”HATSSSSSHHH!”

She sniffles, and immediately sneezes again, spraying yet another substantial cloud of droplets over the flowers.

”HAAATSSSHHHHUH!”

Her large, rounded nostrils flare wildly, determined to get rid of the irritation once and for all.

”Snff!-snnfff! HAA-AATTTSSSSHHH!”

Each time she sneezes, it shifts whatever is stuck in her nose, but doesn’t expel it, it only brushes against the inside of her nose and makes her sneeze again.

”AaaaKSSSHHHH! HAAASSSSHHHoo!”

Her dress is straining to allow her the room to sneeze, but that’s the least of her problems right now. Whatever got lodged inside her nose is still there. Poking and prodding at the inside of a nose that is getting desperate to free itself from this torture.

”AAAAKKKSSSHHHUUH!”

Quickly, she reaches for something to blow her nose into, getting hold of a napkin. She gives her suffering nose a one-handed, forceful blow, and, thank God, whatever was stuck there finally comes out. She isn’t someone who looks at the tissue after blowing her nose, but she needs to know what it is.

A flower. One of the small flowers on the stem, fully intact. She can swear the fragrance is still stuck in her nose even if the flower is out, but maybe that’s just because the bouquet is still so close to her face. She shudders and rubs her nose frantically before she looks down at the mess and droplets she has just sprayed all over the bouquet, horrified.

What have I done??

The part of her that has had it with these people and the whole situation, finally pipes up.

Why not do it again; make sure she gets an extra wedding gift for the honeymoon?

No, I can’t do that.

But then she thinks about how many times Crystal has gotten her sick through college because she’s so utterly careless with her germs whenever she catches something. Like that time Crystal got her sick in time for a very anticipated date, leaving Josie stuck in the dorm with a high fever and tissues up her dripping nostrils, while Crystal, mostly recovered thanks to Josie’s caretaking, went out. And hooked up with Josie’s date.  

Okay, yeah, why not. Revenge is a dish best served cold, they say, and a cold is exactly what I have to serve up.

She carefully inspects the flowers and wipes off the most obvious wetness. She doesn’t think Crystal will notice the rest; the newly minted missus has shifted focus to gifts, cake and champagne, not bouquets, veils and vows.

When Crystal returns from the bathroom, she takes the flowers and rejoins the party, not asking why Josie isn’t coming. Josie considers just leaving, but no, she is going to give Crystal a cold as an additional wedding gift before she heads home to a warm cup of tea and a movie instead of this lavish idiocy.

Her nose is tingling with this sneezy need, nowhere near satisfied with the sneezes earlier, so she decides to make the most of it.

The table with gifts is closest by, so she makes her way over to it, looking around to make sure no one is there to see her. Her nose is so sensitive, that she only needs to touch the side of it with her fingertips to set off that burning urge again. Her breath hitches, and then she hovers on the edge for a couple of suspenseful seconds, before snapping forward with a:

“HAAA-TSSSHHHHEW!”

Spray disperses in the air above the gifts, lazily floating down and settling on them. Josie feels a moment of guilt, but it’s too late now; her nose is already gearing up for another.

“Aah-ETSSSHHHHoo!”

Sniffle – gasp –

“- HEH-TSSSSHHHHEW!”

For a moment she wonders if this was a mistake and that she’s never going to stop sneezing now that she started; it’s not really how her allergies work, but if her version of the flight attendant’s cold is anything like the source material, it’s going to be an exceptionally sneezy one.

“IITTSSSSHHHOO!”

But she doesn’t have to worry, four sneezes in a row is apparently what her nose is capable of at the moment.

They were all very wet, too, so she won’t need more to thoroughly contaminate the wedding gifts. Crystal will surely handle the gifts by herself, not letting her husband butt in even if he wants to. It’s just her nature.

She continues to the champagne glasses, of which two are very conveniently engraved with MR and MRS in golden cursive letters – Josie isn’t sure if she thinks that’s cute or tacky, but it’s convenient for her purposes anyway – and takes the one engraved MRS. This time she doesn’t even have to touch her nose to set it off, it’s already eager to sneeze again, so all she has to do is hold the glass in front of her and let them rip. A very tickly rapid triple bursts out of her, coming so fast and so furiously that she almost drops the glass.

“AAASSSHHH! AAASSCHHH! HAAASSSHHHOO!”

She could probably keep going forever, the way her nose burns, but she pinches it with her free hand, squishing it so hard between her fingers that the next couple of sneezes are contained and eventually stops the acute need altogether.

If she sprays too much on and in that glass, it’s bound to be obvious even by the time they pop the champagne. With her nose back under her control – reluctantly – she wipes the most obvious droplets off and puts the glass back.

One more stop before she makes her escape. The wedding cake.

The cake, as extravagant as the rest at this wedding, is decorated with real lavender, lilacs and violets. Josie’s nose twitches again at the very sight, but she leans in close and sniffs them. Lavender is the only flower she’s allergic to, but the scent of the lilacs when her nose is already this raw and sensitive may be one straw too many.

She backs off a little, her nose is tingling with an intensity she’s never experienced before, and she doesn’t want to be too close when she sneezes, worried that the force of the sneezes from too close a distance might disturb the elaborate cake decorations.

She inhales deeply, this time filling her lungs to capacity so fast that her dress finally gives up on her. The front abruptly rips in a vertical tear, making the previously modest cleavage so revealing her breasts are almost entirely exposed. Her bra is sturdier than the dress, though, and at least keeps things in place, but the dress is ruined.

Her need to sneeze is so strong that she barely notices her dress tearing, and she sprays five rapid, strong, and most of all wet, sneezes all over the beautiful cake.

“HAA-ATSSSSCHHH-AASSSHHH-AAATSSSHHHHEW! HAH-TSSSSHHHHoo!-HAA-AKTSSSHHHHUH!”

She tries not to sneeze too loudly, not wanting to draw attention to herself, but even if they’re not as loud as they want to be, they’re louder than she wants them to be.

One last sneeze sneaks up on her as she turns away, and she sprays this one all over her exposed chest and bra.

She feels like she could be set off again just from a sniffle, and decides that it’s time to ditch the party. She holds the remnants of the dress front together while she hurries to the bathroom and cleans herself up the best she can. When this is done, she goes to get her coat so she can hide the ruined dress and then she heads for the door. But she bumps into Crystal before she can get away.

“You’re not leaving, are you?” Crystal pouts, as if Josie’s presence was particularly important to her in the first place. “We’re going to cut the cake and pop champagne soon…”

“I’m sorry,” Josie says, hears how congested she sounds and gets an idea. She fakes a sob. “I’ve had a wardrobe malfunction,” she says and shows a glimpse of the ruined dress under her coat. “I can’t stay like this.”

Wardrobe malfunctions is something Crystal would take seriously, and she does.

“Oh noooo! I understand, but thank you so much for coming, it was wonderful to see you again!”

Yeah, I really felt welcome, Josie thinks cynically, but when Crystal throws her arms around her, Josie returns the hug with warmth. It may be fake warmth, but the entire friendship has been fake, so why not?

“You too, I hope you have a wonderful honeymoon!”

And a very bad cold, she adds to herself before letting go and heading outside.

The door has barely closed behind her before she sneezes again, but that’s no surprise. She knows she’s not done sneezing, not by far, it’s like her nose is only getting started. Even if she gets away from the allergens, she still has this cold.

And soon enough, so will Crystal.

***

AAYIISSHHHH!

AAATISSSSHHH!!

One… two… three…

Angelina hates that she’s counting, but it has become almost a bizarre game to see how long that guest can drag out the tension between the second and the third sneeze.

Eight… nine…

HAAYYESSSSSHHHEW!!!

Angelina raises her eyebrows. Last night she held out for almost twenty seconds. She’s either getting tired of her own drama, or her cold is getting worse. Both options seem almost impossible to the hotel’s front desk clerk; that guest is the kind of attention seeker that never gets tired of her own drama, and there is no way that cold can get any worse.

The newlyweds were a problem from the get-go. Well, not the Mister, he is quiet, nerdy, and seems completely submissive to his unbearable wife. But the wife. She was already sick with a horrendous cold when they arrived, sneezing up a storm of altogether uncovered sneezes, and seems to feel it’s her duty to share her misery with everyone. She keeps loudly declaring how she “simply can’t believe her bad luck getting so sick just in time for her honeymoon,“. Angelina thinks it seems more like she’s in fact very pleased with having caught such an attention-grabbing condition. Or at least caught a condition that allows her to show off those attention-grabbing sneezes.

She has the lung capacity of a goddamn Amazonian warrior anyway, because Angelina can hear her sneeze from the front desk almost no matter where in the hotel the woman is. Thankfully the rooms are mostly soundproof, otherwise Angelina is certain they’d get disturbance complaints from other guests.

One of the maids disclosed to her that it seems like the woman is actually blowing her nose into the towels and sheets in their suite. Somehow, Angelina isn’t surprised. Nor is she surprised when that poor maid comes to work with a nose so red it rivals a certain pop culture reindeer’s, sneezing every five minutes. It must be a biohazard inside that room, with all the cold viruses whirling around in the air and covering every surface.

Heralded by the sneezes, the couple in question comes out to the lobby, dressed for a night on town. The wife certainly isn’t dressed like she’s feeling very sick; the skirt is very short, showing off long, tanned legs, the top is low-cut and sleeveless, the boots high heeled. She does have a jacket with her, but she’s not wearing it yet.

Her nose is… indescribable. Its redness is so intense it almost jumps out at you, as if it’s signalling the danger you’re in if you stand too close when that tickle hits. No makeup can stand a chance against that cold.

A sneezy look comes over her face. She grabs her husband’s arm.

“Wait baby, I’m gonna… I’m gonnaaaahhh…aahhh… AAHH…!“

The show is on, Angelina thinks. The same pattern as every time she’s sneezed since arriving five days ago; not covered, not restrained in any way, if anything she exaggerates.

She has turned to her right, the sneezy look on her face so intense that Angelina almost feels the urge to sneeze herself, just watching her.

“AAAATTSSSHHIIH!“

She sneezes all over her husband’s arm and hand, even from a distance Angelina can see spatter on his expensive wristwatch.

The sneezy expression doesn’t leave her face, and she turns to her other side, releasing the second.

“HAAYISSSSHHHH!!“

This one showers a petite woman who chooses this unfortunate moment to walk past them on her way to her room, and shower is the exact right word. The spray ejected from the sick woman’s mouth and nose is so plentiful it resembles a shower stream when illuminated by the lamplight, and the sneezing woman is almost six feet tall with her high heels on, towering over her petite victim who stands no more than 5’3, tops.

The woman makes a disgusted face and walks faster to escape, but the damage is already done; she has been soaked with that cold.

The dramatically sneezy woman doesn’t apologise; she doesn’t even notice that she sprayed someone else with her sneeze. Instead she makes a big scene out of sniffling, hitching, and fanning her face with her hand, shaking her head a little as if the tickle is being forced into her nose from the outside and she tries to evade it.

… six… seven.. eigh-…

And then she snaps forward, using her entire body to deliver this third and most dramatic sneeze, no attempt whatsoever to contain this extreme cold to herself.

“AAAYYYIIIISSSSSSHHIEWW!!!“

A giant cloud of droplets of various sizes sprays out in front of her, much of it falling down over the table and potted plant nearby. The plant probably doesn’t mind, but whichever guest sits at that table later, touching the virus-covered surface, might.

Also, some snot flies out of her nose and onto her cleavage.

“Oh, eww,“ she says, as if she couldn’t easily have prevented this outcome herself, and then the husband takes out a tissue and hands it to her.

Now, he hands her a tissue??

But she can’t even take it before she erupts again.

“AAAIIISSSSHHH!“

Spraying him head on.

“AAATTSSSSSHHHIH!!“

Spraying a bouquet of flowers in another passing guest’s hand. At least the flowers prevent him from getting it in the face, but Angelina hopes whoever he brings flowers to won’t put their nose into them and smell them, or they’ll inhale a noseful of cold germs too.

“Hah… ahhhhh… AAAH-!“.

That look of dramatic agony, head leaning further and further back, hand waving…

Three… four… five…

“HAYYYISSSSSHHHIIIH-HAH-! ISCHHH-ISSSCHHH…!!“

Just a moment’s trembling anticipation before the grand finale this time.

“HEYYYYIIISSSHHHOOOO!!!“

Unbelievably enough, that cold actually seems to get worse.

Get out already, Angelina thinks. Go contaminate a club or restaurant downtown with your germs instead.

“You didn’t bless me,“ the woman pouts.

“Bless you, honey,“ the husband says, obediently enough. “Well, do you think we should ask?“ he continues, as if he’s not rattled at all by her behaviour.

The wife lets out a drawn-out, snot-filled sniffle while she wipes the mess off her cleavage. She doesn’t blow her nose, even though it’s obvious that she needs to. She hands the tissue back to him, and he puts it back in his pocket without blinking.  

“Okay,“ she agrees, and they head towards the front desk, hand in hand.

Towards Angelina, who dearly hopes that the red-nosed germ spreader has sneezed enough now to last her a while.

“Excuse me,” the husband says. Angelina puts on her best customer service smile.

“What can I do for you?”

“We’d like to know which is the best Italian restaurant nearby?”

Angelina knows exactly which the best Italian restaurant near the hotel is, but she is not going to recommend it to them and doom the poor owners to catching that cold. She’s mentally going through the other restaurants she knows, and picks one, not quite at random. As it so happens, her cheating ex-girlfriend works there.

She names the restaurant, and the husband asks for directions. Angelina is just about finished giving them when she glances at the wife, who is once again bothered by her cold, scrubbing at her nose with the palm of her hand, sniffling and groaning.

“… snrfff… ugh… snrrrrffff!”

It sounds more like she wants attention for her condition than actual, genuine struggle. Angelina hopes that if she gets it without sneezing, she’ll be pleased enough.

“Are you alright, ma’am?”

It feels ridiculous being so polite to someone so ignorant of good manners, but it is her job.

“Oh, yes, I’m fine, it’s just this stupid cold, it makes my nose so… ahhh… so tihhh…tiihhh… hihhh…”

Oh God, no, Angelina thinks as she looks at those nostrils, containing her doom, crimson red and ready to explode.  

This time the sneezy woman deviates from the pattern, but not to Angelina’s benefit.

“TIHHH-HISSSSCHHHIH! Tickhhhly…. AHHHISSSSSHHH!!”

Both sneezes are sprayed straight ahead, not even a slight turn to the side. Angelina backs up, but the spray range of these sneezes is inescapable and easily cross the desk to where she is.

”AAYIISSSSHHHHIEW!!”

And immediately a desperate gasp and repeat.

”AATIIIISSSSHH!! AAAAYISSSSHHH!”

Shaking her head, looking desperate, but seemingly enjoying the attention she’s getting from people in the lobby who are staring at the free horror show.

”Oh no… I gotta… aahhh… I’m g-gonna… sneeze agaihhh… hah-hahh-HAAHDD-RISSSSCHHHHHOO!!!”

She belts out this last sneeze almost triumphantly.

After this fit, the desk is coated in contagious spray. Angelina can still see some mist in the air that hasn’t settled yet, the sneezes were that wet. Now she has this woman’s cold in her hair, on her face… probably in her nose, too. She’s speechless. She looks at the husband, waiting for him to at least offer an apology on behalf of his wife, since it doesn’t seem like she’s going to herself.

What he does is to fish out the tissue and offering it to his wife with a soft ‘bless you, babe’, but she declines it. There is a trail of mess running down her face, but she nonchalantly wipes it off with her hand, then wipes her hand on her skirt.

She looks at Angelina, expectantly.

She cannot possibly expect me to bless her after she sneezed her cold all over me, can she? Of course she can. She is the main character in her universe.

“Bless you,” Angelina says reluctantly.

“Thank you, oh, this cold, oh my gosh you have no idea, I’ve never had a cold quite like it before…”

“Yes, you have,” the husband reminds her. “Remember when we were in Vegas? You just couldn’t stop sneezing when we were playing poker, you were so sick, my poor babe.”

She ignores him, now she’s basking in attention from Angelina.

“It’s so sneezy! They just come out of the blue, it starts to tickle and it’s so intense, I just can’t stop it!”

Really? I'm certain no one around you has noticed, you’re being so discreet about it, Angelina thinks.

Then this hotel guest delivers the ultimate absurdity:

”I reallyhope I’m not contagious or anything.”

They finally walk out of the lobby and onto the streets. The dramatic sneezes can still be heard for a while, though they get fainter.

Angelina needs a drink.

She really, really needs a drink.

She asks the female cop taking statements to hold on a moment, then sneezes into a tissue, gently massages her nose through the tissue for several seconds, and sneezes again before lowering her hand.

It's obvious to Tess that this woman has a really bad cold, no matter how much she tries to be stoic about it. She has sneezed seemingly every couple of seconds the whole time Tess has been here about the fight in the hotel bar, either into a tissue or the crook of her arm. She has dark circles around her pretty eyes, and while she has made an effort with her makeup, the continuous use of the tissues – the one she holds now isn’t the first she’s used since Tess arrived – rubs any powder and foundations off her nose in no time, making it redder and redder as time goes by.

“Excuse me, officer,” she says, quickly dabbing at her nose again as if to make sure nothing has leaked out of it. She has an interesting nose; not exactly big, but with nostrils that are naturally wide, making it look like they’re constantly flaring. When she breathes, there’s an almost bubbling sound from inside her sinuses, which she seems quite embarrassed about, but she’s also reluctant to give her full nose a proper blow in front of an audience.

Tess smiles and tells her it’s fine.

“Coming down with something?” she asks, even though it’s glaringly obvious that this cold has asserted dominance over this woman’s sinuses. She is not coming down with anything; she is very, very down with this cold already.

“Oh God, yes,” she says and laughs, a raspy laughter that turns into a chesty cough that she smothers into her elbow. There is a bitter, almost angry undertone to that laughter, and as soon as she gets her cough under control, Tess learns why.

“We had a guest last week who had a really horrible cold and never covered her mouth when she sneezed. Just sneezed freely no matter where she was. I could have caught it at any time during her stay, of course, she was spreading it everywhere, but I think it happened the evening before they checked out. She sneezed all over me; I wish I was exaggerating, but she really did. It can’t be that hard to cover your mouth, can it?”

Tess, who rarely covers her mouth when she sneezes either – who wants snot and spit in their hands or on their clothes, honestly? – only hums in response.

“Either way, I’m confident I caught whatever sneeze plague she had. I nevehhh…”

Her naturally flared nostrils flares even wider, almost impossibly wide in Tess’s opinion, and then brings her hand back up to capture the sneezes in her spent tissue.

“Eehhmptschhoo! EhhmpSSSHHoo! Hah…MPTSSCHoo! ‘scuse me again, oh my God! I never sneeze this much from a cold normally,” the desk clerk says and shakes her head, still with the tissue to her face. “It’s not even as bad as hers, but it only started two days ago. I don’t think it has peaked yet.”

She pinches her nose in the tissue and rubs it, up and down, trying to alleviate an itch that seems relentless.

“Sounds like you need to take a sick day,” Tess remarks.

“Yeah, right,” comes the sardonic response, followed by a wet noseblow as she finally accepts that she can’t make it through this conversation without blowing her nose. “If I’m gone one day, this whole place falls apart.”

Tess thinks it looks like this woman is the one who’s about to fall apart, but keeps her mouth shut.

That noseblow proved too much for the heroic tissue, and the cold-ridden woman disposes of it in the trashcan, which is already housing many of its fallen comrades. She then immediately takes a new one from a box that’s two-thirds empty, and rushes to get it up to her face before she has to sneeze again. She does manage to catch the sneezes, but it’s at the last moment. 

“Hehssshhoo! Essshhhooo! HgnnNTSSSHHoo! Oh my Gohh-hhhESSSHHHHoo! God, ‘scuse me, I… hhhESSSHHHHoo! I’m so sorry about this…”

Tess waves it off. She’s not here to interview the clerk about her cold, notable as it may be.

“Can you tell me anything else about the incident?”

“I think that’s it,” she says, once more massaging her nose with the tissue she just sneezed into. “I only saw parts of the brawl; I called you right away.”

“As you should,” Tess says and smiles. The woman in front of her looks completely drained, but she manages to return the smile as she removes the tissue from her face. Her cheeks are flushed, either because of the force of the sneezes or because she’s embarrassed. Maybe she’s running a fever, too. If her job is as stressful as she alludes to, she’s bound to get a bad run of every illness she catches.

“Well, if you think of anything else that can be of help, no matter how small, call me,” Tess says and stands up, handing over a card with her cell phone number and the number to the station.

“It’s embarrassing, we never have bar fights in our hotel bar,” the woman says, and she sounds almost offended.

“Never say never,” Tess says. “Whenever there’s alcohol and people at the same place, fights can happen. Actually, whenever there’s more than one person in one place, fights can happen, especially if there is a pre-existing disagreement underneath, as seems to be the case here.”

“I suppose,” the sick woman replies, balling up the tissue and rubs it under her irritated nose, first lightly, then harder, really pressing it up against the underside of her flared nostrils. It looks painful against the already chafed skin, but she doesn’t stop. Her eyes get an unfocused, sneezy look in them, but she visibly fights it off and exhales in what’s half relief, half disappointment.

How itchy is that nose anyway? Tess wonders.

“We’re getting this sorted,” she promises and extends her hand. The other woman only looks at it first, hesitating.

“I should probably not shake hands, I don’t want to pass this on,” she says, gesturing to her face with the hand holding the very well used tissue. Her nose is the main recipient of the gesture, Tess presumes. That progressively redder, nostril-flaring nose. “I promise you, officer, you do not want this cold.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I never get sick,” Tess says in a flippant tone.

“Never say never, was it?”, the woman responds, her eyebrows raised, but when Tess doesn’t pull her hand back, she takes it briefly.

“Feel better,” Tess offers, and then she goes to find her partner, who’s been interviewing the other staff.

Behind her, Angelina sneezes again into another tissue, over and over, grateful that the cop has left so she doesn’t have to struggle so hard to hold them back as much as possible. For every time she has sneezed during this conversation, she has held back an additional two sneezes. She has never been this sneezy before in her entire life, and that says a lot because she has pretty awful allergies early in spring. This is something else entirely.

She hopes the handshake hasn’t doomed the policewoman to the same miserable fate, but she did insist on it and Angelina was careful to cover her sneezes.

What she doesn’t really think about is that she held her tissue in her right hand – or both hands – and thoughtlessly moved it to her left hand to shake the other woman’s hand. She has been sneezing and blowing her nose so much into each tissue that she can feel the wetness through them, in fact that’s when she decides to toss it and grab a fresh one. She doesn’t want to waste tissues when she is going to need every single one to get her through the day. So no matter how careful she has been to cover every sneeze, there were still viruses in that handshake, now passed over to Tess’s hand.

Walking out to the lobby where her colleague waits, Tess reaches into her pocket and takes out some Tums. All the coffee she’s had on an empty stomach today doesn’t sit well with her, but it’s okay, it’ll be better in a little bit.

It doesn’t cross her mind that she’s touching the antacids with the same hand she just shook the sick desk clerk’s hand with, and then puts them in her mouth. But even if it had crossed her mind, it wouldn’t have made a difference, because the cold-ridden woman had covered her sneezes so carefully, and besides, Tess never gets sick anyway. A little heartburn from way too much coffee is the only thing that bothers her healthy, athletic, fit body.

***

“AaaaSSSCHHOO-ASSSCHHOO-hah-GEHSSSHHH-OOO…!! Hahh-HARRGGSSHH! Fuck be!”

“Holy fucking shit, Tee,” her partner Ben says, laughing. He is driving and that is a good thing because Tess can not stop sneezing today. It’s only getting worse. They come with no warning, just a sharp pinprick in her nose and off she goes; there is nothing she can do about it but let them out.

“I kdow, she says and scrubs at her nose with her knuckles. “Ugh… srrrrfff. This cold really hit be like a tod of bricks. Snnrrrkkk. Guhh…-AAAH-RGSSSCCHHGH!-snrrrkk. I’b so stuffed up it’s dot eved fuddy. ARGGSCHHHH!”

”Here’s a radical suggestion; blow your nose,” he says.

”I would if I could… snnrrrfff… dothig cobes out… huhrresscchhh!”

”Well, stuff sure comes out when you sneeze, anyway,” he says.

“Are you saying I’b gross?”

He shrugs, grinning.

“If the shoe fits…”

“I didn’t kdow you were such a gerbaphobe,” she says.

“I’m not,” he replies, “I’m just making an observation.”

“HARRGSSSCHHH!” Tess sneezes without abandon and a string of clear snot is violently ejected from her tormented nose along with copious amounts of substantial spray. Some is spattered across the glove compartment in front of her, most is on the front of her uniform.

“As I was saying,” Ben says and hands her a napkin with a small, dried coffee stain but otherwise clean.

Tess takes the napkin and grumpily wipes her nose and uniform. The droplets covering the glove compartment will dry on its own, no one but her and Ben will see it anyway and she can’t be bothered. She is annoyed with her nose not giving her any warning; she usually has plenty of time to turn away and sneeze to the side or towards the ground. Also, she has always been a messy sneezer, but this cold makes them messier than normal.

“I cadt help it,“ she says, “I cadt feel theb cobig.“

“Tee, if you don’t blow your nose soon I’m going to need a translator to understand you,“ Ben says as he pulls into the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store.

“Fide, I’ll get sobe tissues while you fill up od gas,“ she says and gets out of the car.

When she returns from the convenience store, she’s already on the second tissue, blowing her nose with all her might while walking towards Ben, who laughs again.

“Nothing coming out, huh,“ he says as she tosses the two used tissues in a trash bin as she walks past it, then digs out a third tissue from the puny travel pack she bought.

“Now it’s all coming out at once,“ she grunts and sneezes again, this time taking advantage of the force of the sneeze to blow her nose. She hasn’t fully gotten the tissue up to cover her cold-tortured nostrils though, so Ben is treated to the unpleasant view of her nose ridding itself of a wealth of mess in one strong blast.

“God, there’s so much snot,“ Tess comments, both disgusted and fascinated by her body’s expulsions.

“Yeah, I kind of noticed,“ her partner says as she cleans herself up, blows her nose for a fourth time, and discards the used tissues.

“How do I sound now? “ she says.

“Say something with lots of n’s and m’s, “ he asks her.

She thinks for a moment.

“Cinnamon buns and M’n’M’s.“

He nods with a perfectly straight face.

“Yeah, I think I can get by without a translator now.“

She gives him the finger and opens the door on the passenger side, but just as she’s about to get in, another sneeze sneaks up on her.

“UH-ASSSSHHH!“

Tess snaps forward as with every sneeze before this one, but this time the car door is in front of her and she whacks her head against it, hard enough to split her eyebrow. Blood starts gushing.

“Fuck, that hurt,“ she says, dizzy from both the impact and the sneeze. Ben takes one look at it and cringes.

“Yeah, we’re going straight to the ER, you might need stitches,“ he says.

Tess objects, but it’s only symbolic; it hurts like a motherfucker.

***

“How did this happen?” Dr Jasmine Ashford asks. She’s the head of the hospital’s emergency department, and right now she may be a bit rougher in her examination than she’d be with a civilian; she is not overly fond of the police force in this city. Far too many of them shoot first and ask questions later, causing rather than preventing the influx of gunshot wounds to the ER, and then they come in with fairly minor injuries expecting to be treated first.

“Oww, careful, Doc! I just split my entire head open!”

Jasmine rolls her eyes. Minor injury, major drama.

“I know it looks concerning with all the blood, but head wounds always bleed a lot. It’s really just a scratch, you don’t even need stitches. I’ll just clean this out and tape it. Now, how did this happen?”

The cop looks uncomfortable. Her cheeks begin to flush red, a similar shade to that of her nose. She is visibly and audibly sick with a really bad cold on top of everything, and frankly looks and sounds like she should be home in bed rather than out in uniform.

“Well?”

“I sneezed.”

“You… sneezed?” Jasmine doesn’t smile, her face is completely expressionless, but behind her stoneface she is amused. Not by the injury itself; she’s not so callous she thinks anyone deserves to be in pain, but by the ridiculous way she acquired it.

“Yes. I sneezed. So what?”

“Well, I’ve seen burst eardrums and burst blood vessels in the eyes and even a cracked rib from sneezing too hard, but I’ve never seen a head laceration caused by sneezing. Humour me, please. Do elaborate.”

“I hit my head on the patrol car door when I sneezed.”

This time the briefest expression of amusement crosses the doctor’s face as she begins to tape the laceration.

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. It’s this fucking cold’s fault, the sneezes just take me by surprise,” the cop mutters, and, as if on cue, she whips her head to the side – Jasmine scowls, knowing she has to start over with the taping – and sneezes over her shoulder. “Huuh-GGTTSSCHHGH!-snrrrrfff-GUHHESSSCHHHoo!”

The sneezes are wet and snotty, and without a word, Jasmine hands her a tissue so she can clean herself up.

“Can you get me anything for this cold? snrrrrffff. It’s fucking killing me.”

“If you plan to keep banging your head against things when you sneeze, that does sound like a valid concern,” the doctor says dryly, “but if you avoid doing that from now on, this cold isn’t going to kill you. There are over-the-counter medications to ease the symptoms.”

“Those things don’t do shit.”

“No, they actually don’t,” the doctor agrees, “but it’s the best we got. There’s no cure for the common cold.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, well, a cold is nothing compared to a lot of things we see here in the ER, so… just drink lots of clear fluids – by that I mean water – and rest, let it run its course. Maybe put on a helmet so you don’t hit your head again,” she adds as an afterthought while she starts over with taping the laceration on the cop’s forehead.

“Very funny, Doc.“ But she does smile.

“Thank you, I’m doing stand-up comedy as a side gig.“

“Don’t quit your day job.“

Jasmine chuckles.

The uniformed woman leans her head back a little.

“Hold still please, I’m just about done,” the doctor says and looks away from the laceration she’s been taping just in time to see the patient’s red nostrils, gleaming with mucus, flare wide and her mouth fall open, sucking in air in a deep gasp. The doctor takes a step back, but she’s a moment too late.

“AAARSSSSCHHUH-AH!-HARRGGSSSSHHHuuh ! ”

Jasmine winces when she feels the spray on her face. It’s not that she hasn’t been sprayed and splashed with all kinds of body fluids before; of course she has, she works in the ER. It’s that as much as she trivialised the common cold when speaking to the patient, she absolutely despises having one herself. She is a woman who very rarely, almost never, gets sick with anything. She is among those few lucky enough to carry the gene that makes her immune to the norovirus, she has no chronic illnesses, allergies or sensitivities, and she hasn’t had a cold in five years or so. But in the rare instances that she does catch a cold, it goes straight to her nose and tends to stay there for the whole duration. It’s like an endless goddamn carnival of sneezing and noseblowing. It never goes to her chest but it tends to linger in her sinuses, keeping her in that loop of sniffling, sneezing and blowing her nose for even longer than any normal person is symptomatic from a cold.

There is no reason to believe this will be the cold that gets her when she has treated God knows how many people who have coughed in her face the past few weeks, and come out of it perfectly fine, but the risk is there and it’s a thought she’d rather not entertain.

The patient wipes her nose and looks at her with a sincere apologetic expression.

“Sorry, Doc. I told you, they come out of nowhere. It caught me off guard.”

Jasmine sighs and finishes the taping.  

“Don’t worry about it. It happens. I’ll get you some Ibuprofen for the pain,” she says and walks off, taking a detour to the bathroom and washes her face.

She’ll be fine. It may be a potent cold, but her track record all but guarantees she’ll get out of today’s little mishap unscathed.  

***

ER nurse Caitlyn cannot believe her luck when Dr Ashford, head of the ER, comes in for her shift a few days later, dragging an absolutely frothy headcold with her. That cute cop with the wicked heavy cold sneezed her right in the face a couple of days ago, but Caitlyn has seen similar things happen before and Dr Ashford never caught a thing from either patients or colleagues. That woman simply never gets sick. Flu season after flu season, Caitlyn has been working the same shifts as this doctor, and even when the entire staff passes something back and forth, she never gets as much as a sniffle. Caitlyn has hoped to see her with a cold someday but never dared to believe she actually would. But now that glorious day has come.

Jasmine is a beautiful woman in general, but Caitlyn’s favourite feature of hers is her striking nose, it’s so majestically chiselled that it could have been a work of art – not the kind of symmetrically perfected, boring art that the plastic surgeons up on the fifth floor create, but the distinct, unique kind only nature does and only when it feels particularly forthcoming. It’s very prominent but not to a point where it completely takes over her face, it’s angular in just the right places, curved in just the right places, with an ever so slightly upturned tip and arched nostrils that allows you to see a bit of its inside. It’s a fantastic nose, but unfortunately also very resilient; Caitlyn has never seen her sneeze, not even a random sneeze, much less from a cold.

Today, this gorgeous nose is an angry scarlet red, from the tip to high up on the bridge. The rims of her nostrils are even more irritated, burning with a miserable yet somehow elegant shade of ruby red. The glimpse into the even more irritated inside of her nose reveals that it’s glistening with moisture, threatening to spill out of those cold-battered nostrils at the slightest provocation… such as breathing.  

Caitlyn has never seen this nose look so sensitive before, and the prospects of finally getting to see her sneeze are good, to say the least. The flaming redness from the viral infection suits her nose beautifully, just like Caitlyn has pictured in her mind many times, usually at home with one hand down her pants.

Jasmine, unaware of the delight her dreadful cold brings to her colleague, is focused on the prickle that seems to fill her entire nose. She furiously rubs the heel of her hand against her hot, squishing, liquid-filled nostrils, then pushes the tip of her nose upwards – leaving a very distinct horizontal crease across the bridge – while giving a thick, repulsive snort.

“…snrrrkkkk…“

“Good morning, doctor,“ Caitlyn chirps, unable to completely hide her selfish joy to see this beautiful, always in-control woman practically overflowing with something she cannot control at all.

“It is not,“ the doctor deadpans, then buries her face in the sleeve of her lab coat and aggressively barks out a dry-sounding one-syllable sneeze. It sounds like her sinuses are so blocked with congestion that nothing shifts inside, so the full power of the sneeze has to force itself out through her throat, clawing at her vocal cords on its way out.

Dry sneezes aren’t Caitlyn’s favourite type, but Jasmine’s sneeze is fantastic nevertheless. The angry desperation in the sound, it’s delicious.

“Oh, bless you. Why not? “

Oh, she knows she shouldn’t push her luck like this, but she has worked with Jasmine for several years and has never seen her as much as touch her nose before. To see her display this formidable cold and being grouchy about it, is so hot that Caitlyn feels a little bit lightheaded.

It turns out Jasmine may hate having a cold, but she has no objections to talking about it.

“It’s not a good morning because I have a raging head cold of… snrrkkk… of epic proportions and… snrrgggkkk… and m-my nose is… is… haahh-…“

She buries her nose and mouth in the crook of her arm again, barking out another rough, very sick-sounding sneeze, only wetter this time.

“-RAHESSSCHHooo! “

“Bless you, doctor.” It almost comes out as a purr.

 “ Problematic,“ the doctor finishes as if Caitlyn hadn’t said anything, and pours hand sanitizer into her hands, rubbing it in with a look of utter gloom on her face. 

That lovely nose being problematic today, huh? Caitlyn immediately decides to stay close to Jasmine this shift. She wants to see more of this.

She gets her wish right away; perhaps it’s the strong fumes from the hand sanitizer, perhaps her nose just really is that sensitive from this cold, but the gloomy look on Jasmine’s face is slowly replaced by a pre-sneeze expression. It’s the sneeziest pre-sneeze expression Caitlyn has ever seen, and she is something of a connoisseur on the subject; it’s like every fine muscle in in Jasmine’s face is perfectly tuned to create the optimal pre-sneeze face.

Jasmine holds up a finger in that universal ‘hold on’-gesture.

“I feel more coming,“ she says in a breathy voice and slowly begins to raise her arm, but not covering prematurely, meaning Caitlyn is treated to more of this unintentional visual erotica.

The sick doctor’s pre-sneeze face is a study in itchy suffering, from the trembling, parted lips to the deep-red, needy nostrils, to the fluttering eyelids and the fine lines between her eyebrows becoming visible. A tear begins to run down her cheek as she squeezes her eyes shut.

“Oh God,“ she whimpers, then leans into the crook of her arm, sneezing heavily. It sounds almost like she’s wrestling these sneezes out of her agonised airways, slamming them into the sleeve of her white coat. Her shoulders shudder from the force.

“AAATT-JIHHSSSSHHH!! HATTT-JIHHSSSCHHHoo!!”

“Bless you, doctor! Wow, are you okay?“

Jasmine shakes her head, still with her face hidden in her elbow, eyes closed. She takes a deep sniffly breath before lowering her arm.

“Doh, I’b dot okay. This cold is ad idsult.“

She sniffles again.

“I deed a tissue,“ she says and walks away, sniffling thickly, as if those sneezes loosened up the congestion which is now flooding her nose.

If so, Caitlyn thinks ‘a’ tissue, singular, is very optimistic.

***

Jasmine certainly has problems with her nose today. She is a complete mess. She keeps blowing her nose with a thick, gurgling, wet sound and yet her nose is still overflowing with cold. She sneezes into the sleeves of her lab coat. She sneezes into tissues she has stuffed into her pockets, or which are readily offered by Caitlyn or other staff. She sneezes into the collar of the warm, soft knitted sweater she’s wearing under her lab coat. She sniffles, she snorts, she sneezes. She comments on how her nose feels. She sneezes. She complains about her cold. She sneezes. She does not apologise about her excessive sneezing. And she sneezes. 

To Caitlyn it feels like the entire shift consists of phrases and nose-based sounds like

“Where are the… uh, hold on, I have to sneeze… AaESSSCHHH! Ugh, this damn cold… where are the discharge forms?.

“Wait, I’m so itchy… hahh… harusssshhh! ERSSSSHHHHuh! Ugh... you were saying?“

“… snnnrrrkkk… ugh I’b so congested agaid I can’t breathe through by dose… snrrrrgggkkkk…“

 “And of course now my nose is running like a faucet instead.“

“Did you do a… test… uhh… for… what’s it called… arrgh, I can’t even think today! My entire head is full of snot, there are no brain cells at work anymore. HuhASSCHHH! Pregnancy test, oh my God!”

“This is ridiculous, I need to sneeze so much… I swear this cold is a punishment from a higher powerREESSSHHHH!“

“Uh-oh, here we go agaihh… HATSSSHHHH! ERRASSHHH! HAESSSSHHHEH! I just can’t stop sneezihhNGGSSSSHHHIEW! Isssschhew! HARRSSHHHOohh! Yes, of course I’m sick, you think I’m sneezing like this for the sheer fun of it?“

“Oh come on, why do I need to sneeze again…?! ATSSCHHHihh-ISSSSHHHIH-HITSSSSHHHOOO! Snrrrrfff… Am I done? Please tell me I’m done… no… haahh… HATSSSHHHOO!”

“Ugh, my nose… it’s so…I still feel a sn-… sn-issschoo-isschhih-ahhissshhh! Ghh-ISSSHHH-ESSSHHHOO-ESSSHHHIH-whatthehellisthisSSHHHOOO!!“

“Ugh, I feel like someone’s shoved a feather up my nose, it tickles so much, right here, and I can’t…. I can’tTIEEESSSHHHH! ESSSSCHHHOO! I can’t get rid of it…“

A few hours of listening to this endless cold-tickle-congestion-sneeze-related whinging, feeling like she’s in the middle of a sneezefic, Caitlyn is about ready to hump the good doctor’s leg. If it had been a busy shift she would have had something else to occupy her mind, but it’s been very slow.

When an emergency does come in, Jasmine calls for Caitlyn and gives her the most jaw-dropping task imaginable.

“I need you to wipe my nose for me.“

“Huh??“

Caitlyn is sure she misheard that. There is no way she actually said what Caitlyn thought she heard.

But Jasmine repeats the thing that Caitlyn thought she couldn’t possibly have heard. When Caitlyn just stares at her, dumbfounded, the doctor decides to clarify.

“I need both hands, my nose is running, and I obviously can’t drip on the patient. It’s no different from wiping sweat off a surgeon’s brow, get over here and bring the tissues!“

Caitlyn would argue that it’s very, very different for many reasons, but she has sprung into action automatically; there’s a patient that needs help and if she has to do something incredibly erotic for the oblivious doctor in order to do her part, then so be it.

At first, she just takes one tissue and wipes off the mess that leaks out of those red, feverishly hot nostrils, dabbing at the underside of her nose with a hand that wants to tremble but that she won’t allow to.

“That tickles,” Jasmine says in a breathy voice. “You’re gonna make me sneehh…”

Before she can finish the sentence or do what her body threatens (or promises) to do, Caitlyn snatches a whole bunch of tissues and holds them over her nose and her mouth, and it’s just in time too because Jasmine, trying and failing to hold back, sneezes a really messy, closed-mouthed, half-stifle into Caitlyn’s tissue-covered hand. She takes a sharp, deep breath that is muffled by the tissues, and sneezes again. This time she doesn’t even attempt to stifle. She’s clearly not good at it anyway.

“..haaGH-YIIH-ESSSSHHHOO ! “ 

“Bless you, doctor,” Caitlyn says. It’s an incredibly sexy-sounding sneeze, making her swoon for a moment, and she’s relieved she manages to avoid moaning out loud when blessing her.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jasmine mutters, ignoring the blessing like Caitlyn suspected she would. It’s alright. She says it mostly for her own pleasure anyway.

Somehow Jasmine has managed to keep the pressure steady while the other doctor is intubating. Caitlyn is standing close enough that she can feel Jasmine’s breath hitching throughout her body. Her chest is rising and falling in erratic waves before she sneezes into Caitlyn’s hand again. Hard.

“ESSCHHHOO! ISSCHHHOO! ESSCHHOO-EESSCHHHAH!” A viscous, snoring inhale, followed by a harsh, snotty “HARRUSSCHHH!” that is so forceful that Caitlyn only barely manages to keep the tissues clasped over the lower part of her face. 

“Bless you, doctor,” Caitlyn says again, again the blessing is ignored.

“This isn’t going to work,” Jasmine says, “just put a mask on me, please.”

Why didn’t you put one on yourself right away, before you sanitized your hands and put on gloves? Caitlyn wonders but doesn’t say out loud. Most likely she just didn’t think about it; if she usually never gets sick, anything that has to do with working through a cold just isn’t that close to mind.

Another nurse grabs a mask from the container on the shelf and hands it to Caitlyn, who currently functions on two levels; one is the stone-cold professional that just does what needs to be done, the other is fluttering around in the clouds of lalaland feeling like she’s practically jacking off the head of the emergency department in front of God and everyone.

“Okay, blow your nose first and then I’ll put the mask on you,” Caitlyn says to the doctor, whose nose may be a disaster zone, but her hands are still professional, working on muscle memory, they are not distracted by what’s going on above her shoulders.

“Fucking cold,” Jasmine mutters, “is there any limit to this humiliation?” But she takes a deep breath and blows as hard as she can into the bundle of tissues Caitlyn holds over her nose. Caitlyn can feel it through the layers of paper, the hot, contagious mess drenching the tissues, and there is far more of it than she thought. Luckily the trashcan is close enough that she can drop the whole wad into it right away. She can’t wipe the residual wetness off the other woman’s face, the tissues are far too soaked for that, so when she puts the mask on her, it sticks to her skin. Jasmine makes a grimace behind the face covering.

“Better double-mask me,” she says in a clipped tone, and Caitlyn puts a second layer of surgical mask on her. The mask is barely in place over the first when Jasmine lets loose with a colossal, watery sneeze. And another, and another. Undeterred, she starts giving orders through the sneezes, and Caitlyn wonders briefly if she’s in heaven or in hell while she calls up to surgery to see if they can take over the patient.

Once the patient is stable and wheeled off to surgery, Jasmine disappears. Caitlyn has a good idea of where; the ladies’ room. She’s going to clean herself up, because she must have sneezed almost a dozen squelching wet sneezes into that mask and gotten all of it ricocheting back in her face.

Caitlyn doesn’t follow her. On one hand it’s due to a sense of guilt mixed with sympathy: she thinks Jasmine deserves a little bit of privacy, without being quite so enthusiastically sexualised by her perverted colleague. On the other it’s basic self-preservation: she fears that if she’s subjected to one more thing originating from Jasmine’s anguished sinuses in the next few minutes, be it sound or fluid, she’s simply going to cum in her pants.

“Wow,” her nurse colleague says, leaning against the wall. “What a cold she caught. I hope we’re not all going to catch that monster from her. I’ve never even heard her sneeze before, much less having full-out sneezing fits like that.”

I hope I catch it, Caitlyn thinks. She doesn’t enjoy getting sick herself, despite her odd little kink, but she’s making an exception for Jasmine. There is something wildly sensual about the idea of having her viruses inside her own body.

“She can’t help it,” she says. “We’re always a physician short here, she can’t call in sick for a cold either way.”

“I know. Poor Dr Ashford,” the other nurse says.

“I don’t need to be pitied,” Jasmine says from behind them, as if she hasn’t spent the whole shift ‘informing’ (which was really very thinly veiled complaining) everyone about every detail of her misery.

The other nurse excuses herself and scurries away, not wanting to test the exact level of grouchiness this cold gives the doctor.

Jasmine sighs. She looks a bit embarrassed.

“Thank you for helping me out earlier. That got really disgusting, I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” I should be the one thanking you, she adds in her head.

“Have you heard from surgery? How’s the patient doing?”

“Better than you are, I think,” Caitlyn hazards a joke.

“Good God, let’s hope so, because I feel like I’m at death’s door,” Jasmine says and rolls her eyes. “Before you say anything, yes, I am indeed going to complain the rest of the shift, if we’re supposed to have gender equality, then I can and will have man flu instead of a plain cold.”

“For what it’s worth, that cold sounds bad enough to qualify,” Caitlyn says, and Jasmine laughs. It’s a raspy, wheezy laughter, but it’s genuine enough.

“Sorry to say, but I think you might find that out for yourself in a day or two,” Jasmine says and blows her nose.

“I…” hope so, is what Caitlyn almost says. “I’ll be fine,” she corrects herself.

“Let’s hope. By the way, I meant what I said; I don’t need to be pitied. I am very good at pitying myself, it’s a real talent of mine, so I don’t need others to. Just let me keep at it, that’s how I cope.”

Caitlyn chuckles.

“Got it.”

“Aaaand now I’m going to sneeze again,” Jasmine says in a resigned tone. She twirls her hand in front of her face while she’s building up to it; it’s not that ‘dramatic fanning’ thing that some girls do, this is more of an impatient gesture; ‘hurry up!’

Caitlyn is watching as the sneeze takes hold of the doctor little by little. It’s a slowly building, torturous sneeze, but eventually she explodes into the already used tissues she’s holding.

“AaaRSSSHHHuh! HaRSSSHHHHuh!”

They scrape at her throat and it sounds like it hurts.

Caitlyn has cooled off enough that she can handle it without a panty emergency. Barely.

“Bless you, doctor,” Caitlyn says again, not expecting any answer this time either. But Jasmine gives her an exhausted smile.

“Thank you. Now I need coffee, or I’ll fall asleep in a corner somewhere before the shift is over.”

“Good idea.”

“Which one? Coffee or falling asleep in a corner?”

Caitlyn laughs.

“Both sound good, but coffee is probably best while on the clock.”

“Unfortunately, you are correct,” Jasmine says and leaves to get that coffee. She sneezes several times walking down the corridor, head bobbing forward with harsh, noisy sneezes into wilting tissues.

Caitlyn lingers, not sure if all this is really happening or if she’s having the most vivid sneeze dream of her life.

***

Caitlyn knows that she’s needed at work, and the cold that she indeed caught from Jasmine isn’t anywhere near as bad, at least not yet, but she calls in sick anyway. She won’t miss out on further dreamy observations in doing so; Jasmine gave up a few hours into yesterday’s shift and went home, declaring that she would go hide under a rock for the rest of the week, and if they needed her, they should think long and hard about it and then call in someone else. No one has quite figured out yet what to even make of Dr Ashford with a cold, other than a collective ‘what the hell was that?’.

Caitlyn doesn’t want to pass this cold on, that is one reason to stay home, but she would be utterly useless either way because now that she has processed the whole thing, she is endlessly horny thinking back at the sexy doctor’s nasty, sexy cold, and how Caitlyn somehow held out the entire shift without touching herself.

Now she’s going to make up for that self-restraint; she can’t stop thinking about how it felt to hold that tissue to Jasmine’s red-hot, streaming nose and wipe the mess off her chafed philtrum, to feel her wet, contagious sneezes through the layers of Kleenex, and to innocently say ‘bless you, doctor’ every time that ailing, dripping, reddened nose erupted with yet another one of those offensively messy sneezes.

Her clit is throbbing just recalling these memories. She’s had multiple orgasms – fits of them, you could say, as intense as the sneezing fits Jasmine’s delicious cold gave her – numerous times already, but her craving pussy still wants more.

Caitlyn rolls over on her back in bed, closes her eyes and thinks back to what it was like, putting the mask on the helplessly cold-ridden doctor and how she immediately sneezed over and over into that mask without holding back even the slightest, such desperate and such juicy sneezes, she must have nearly drowned in her own cold behind that mask and yet Caitlyn knew her nose still wouldn’t stop tickling because those strong, torturous sneezes just kept coming, those awfully wet sneezes, those indecently juicy sneezes… no, let’s call it what it was, snotty sneezes, such snotty sneezes just exploding right into that flimsy little mask, her exquisite, ticklish nose sneezing out torrents of mess… it was shocking how such an elegant nose was capable of producing such loud, uncontrollable noises and a deluge of something as inelegant as snot… 

Caitlyn’s hand goes back inside her panties for the umptieth time since she got home after That Shift, the cotton fabric is as drenched with her juices as Jasmine’s tissues were drenched with snot, her swollen folds hot and wet, her clit steadily pounding with need, needing this orgasm as badly as Jasmine’s nose needed the sneeze, and she only has to touch herself for a few seconds before she reaches climax, riding the wave of multiple orgasms again and they feel even better this time than any of the many times before… but she still knows it won’t be the last time she’ll need to do something about the state the doctor’s godawful cold puts her in.