Our brains are sick but that's okay

The closer a fic is to the top, the longer ago I wrote it. If you're new here, pick a fic near the bottom for both our sakes lol.

Madix

Riley

Dakota

Blair

Micah

Alexi

Mateo

Shawn

Jory

Dev

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Sickfic Drabbles: One shots with random OCs in no particular order

King + Consort (No Emeto + NSFW/Indigestion)

King + Physician (No Emeto/Cold)

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Madix’s stomach tried its hardest to digest the sludge of food that he had forced down his throat all that day. It wasn’t his fault—the nachos had such bubbly warm cheese that called his name, and the burger had caramelized onions that begged him to approach. Now all the grease and sugar coated his gut in a layer of grime. His tummy burbled sickeningly as it attempted to deal with the overwhelm that a day at the fair had caused.  

He staggered next to Dakota who seemed to be dealing with the food expertly. He had been a fool to think that he could keep up with his best friend. The man was a pro at putting away every dish they came across. 

Poutine, easy. Ice cream, no problem. He simply sighed contently after every bite that got Madix feeling more and more like a zombie. 

It was a struggle to pick up his feet, but he had to keep up, or else Riley and Blair would run off into the crowd, never to be seen again with their significant others. 

At least Dakota hung back with him, even if it was because he kept getting distracted by the food vendors and not because he noticed Madix’s deteriorated state. He jumped excitedly in line for a beaver tail. 

Madix swallowed thickly as he came to stand next to his friend. The Canadian treat gave off the sickly-sweet aroma of syrups and cheesecake. The people around them carried their oversized pastries that dripped with thick white frosting or a drizzling of rich chocolate. 

“I think I want the brownie one!” he said, pointing to the sign ahead. “It has Nutella on it! Do you want to split it with me?” 

Madix moaned and jammed his head into Dakota’s shoulder. “…. Ugh.” 

“Okay fine, jeez? How about the strawberry cheesecake?”

"Noooo..."

He gave his arm a jerk. “Why you sound so mopey, Maddy?” 

“Too much food…” he slurred out. His chest hitched with a hiccup. The nausea made all his muscles stiff. “I don’t feel good. How can you still be hungry?” 

“Classic mistake.” Dakota pulled his greenish friend into a side hug. “We’ve moved beyond our primitive needs. Hunger has nothing to do with it anymore. It’s all about the experience.” 

“Oh, I think I’m in for a doozy of an “experience” any minute now.” 

Dakota chuckled at first, but then quickly wondered how much Madix was joking. The boy next to him swayed with fatigue. His eyelids were droopy as if his full stomach were weighing every part of him down. Personally, he felt only the beginnings of fullness, but Madix was nearing the end of his limits it seemed. 

He took off his sunglasses, only then realizing how quickly the sun had set. The sky was now purple and pink, and Madix’s cheeks were grey. “You do look pale, buddy. Maybe take a break from the rides and food.” 

“Yeah, I think I have to. I’d like to sit down as well, but I don’t want to lose Riley and Blair.” 

Dakota waved this away. “I’ll text Blair that we stopped for a break. Look, we can sit under that tree, there’s a bench.” 

Dakota ate his pastry happily while next to him Madix wondered what was going on with his belly. He was full, but this level of nausea was intense. If he were at home, he’d most likely be on the bathroom floor by now. Here, he was not sure how far a walk the nearest bathroom was. Instead, he would focus on keeping the food down until he had time to digest. 

Dakota was not helping with the way he devoured the chocolate mess of dough and oil.  

“Ugh, Kota. I want to go home. I think I may actually throw up, but there’s a lot of people here.” He hugged his belly.

“You feel that bad?” The sudden development surprised him. “I’ve seen you eat way more."

“I don’t know why…” Madix burped and let out a nauseous moan. “I just feel really fucking sick.” He glanced at his friend with his glassy eyes. “Would you hurry up and eat that already. It’s dripping onto your hand.” 

Dakota licked the precarious drop of icing. “It’s messy, I’m sorry.” After three huge bites and finger licking, he finished the treat in time to see Madix shudder and gag. 

Madix suddenly stood up on shaky legs. This was bad. He could feel pressure growing in his throat. Rising. 

“Oh God, I can’t keep it down.” He tried to speak through the nausea and the hand that covered his mouth. “One second.” He wandered away from the main road, away from the bench where they sat, and beyond the fenced in grass. 

Dakota quickly followed his swaying friend. 

“Oookay, I guess we’re going on a little excursion.” He grimaced at the retch that tore up Madix’s throat. He grabbed his friend’s arm to steady him. “This is a good spot to let loose, Maddy. I’ve got you.” 

A shower of vomit came gushing from Madix’s mouth. It was orange and frothy. His poor belly squeezed in on itself tighter. Another mouthful of greasy mush added to the puddle at his feet. He felt the muscles in his back tense continuously as the heaves sent him forward. 

A groan of misery escaped him. 

Dakota kept a firm grip on his woozy friend. It was odd to see him so weak. Every gag pushed him around like a puppet dangling on a string. “Kneel here, Madix. You’re swaying a lot and I don’t like it.” 

“Don’t feel good,” he slurred. A hiccup made his chest jump and more slushy vomit splattered onto the grass. The sound gurgled in his throat. “Ugh, my belly. I’m so full.” 

Wave after wave came up from Madix’s upset belly. It was relentless and slow. Whenever he thought he was finished, the nausea shot back through his body. Droplets of sweat coated his forehead, dampening the strands of hair that hung in front of his eyes. 

Dakota brushed the hair off his forehead. It was not a hot night and yet still Madix was melting. “You’re so out it, man. I think you have a fever.” 

Madix nodded lazily. “Yeah probably. This is a lot.” He blinked quickly. “I can’t focus long enough to…to…do anything.” 

“You don’t have to do anything but sit. Wait until you feel better. Do you still need to puke?” 

“I think so.” He rubbed his stomach. “It’s like gurgling, my belly. This was not a good time to eat fair food.” 

I should, I miss it.

My characters are often on my brain. Sometimes scenarios come to my head, but it's hard to make it go beyond an idea.

🤢

The brain contains a collection of neurons that together make up what is known as the vomiting center.

It tickles me in a somewhat unpleasant way that we have only discovered this specific center that governs a bodily function. We have plenty other bodily mechanisms that are equally as important to our health, so why is there just a center for throwing up? Sure, vomiting is crucial from an evolutionary standpoint—In the event that we ingest something poisonous, we need a means of getting the toxic substance out quickly. Full digestion and subsequent excretion takes too long, especially if we're dealing with a fast-acting poison. So vomiting, as much as it is an uncomfortable process, is foremost a lifesaving code built into the computer that is our brain.

But why does it have an entire brain structure dedicated to it? We don't have a sneezing center. We don't have a pus secretion center. So why does puking reign supreme?

I'm actually not here to answer that question because I really don't know the answer myself. I'm here just to think about the oddities of the human body. I'm intrigued by this topic because vomiting is a very physical and obvious form of distress or sickness. It brings with it societal implications such as drunkenness and pregnancy. It is also a deeply emotional and psychological process.

Think about the emotions you would feel. Embarrassment, anxiety, shame, disgust. Not only that! But the emotions you feel when it's happening to someone else. Disgust, empathy, anxiety, sympathy, concern.

Vomiting is biological, social, and psychological! The interdisciplinary science nerds are going crazy with that trifecta.

Okay, I bet I could think of many more human things that would light up all three categories, but I’m going to stick with the vomiting center because it's on my mind ever since a case of food poisoning derailed my friends-giving night.

Patient zero was technically the rotisserie chicken that was hosting the bacteria E. coli, but for the sake of my story we all understand that the real patient zero was the first person to eat the contaminated food. I wasn't keeping track of who ate what when—all I know is that my boyfriend showed his symptoms first.

It started with fatigue. While our group of friends chatted in the talking circle, Jamie regressed into a drowsy and grouchy state. He didn't add to the conversation. I wasn't even sure if he was listening. His eyelids drooped as if he had pulled an all-nighter.

The next symptom surprised me because he went from being a still couch cushion to a fidgety ball of tension. His knee bounced up and down. His lip became the target of violence from his teeth. His complexion dulled to a lifeless gray. In eleventh grade, I remember dissecting piglets. The baby pigs were the color of clumpy milk and rotting livers. That is what Jamie looked like. This symptom is called nausea.

Nausea is a lovely warning system...if you weren’t my boyfriend Jamie who decided to ignore the warning signals. He is a stubborn man who does not like submitting to an illness. His nervous system was working as it should, detecting unsafe bacteria in his stomach and sending the proper signals to the brain by way of the vagus nerve.

His tummy, and remember all of our tummies, was in the process of detecting something funny about that chicken. Just then, the bacteria that was in the chicken was releasing a wonderful little toxin called Shiga toxin.

Jamie's brain got word of this toxin and started the necessary emergency protocol.

His belly was churning and gurgling from the excess of gastric juice that was trying to coat his stomach lining, dilute the toxin, and move the bacteria along. It's all very intentional but that fact would not have eased Jamie's mind. He was only focused on the fact that he felt horrible.

Some of the emotional consequences of vomiting were starting to appear. Embarrassment was setting in as his belly let out wet gurgles. Dread started to squeeze his throat, bringing him to the edge of panic. He even felt guilty that he was possibly about to ruin the mood of the party by revealing his ailment.

Another time I will talk about the emotional states that bring on tummy troubles—yet another fascinating feature of the vomiting center! It's funny to me that the two bodily results can swap places. Each can cause and be caused by the other. But more on that later because my boyfriend was moments away from heaving his half-digested dinner on the living room rug.

Looking back, it's remarkable that I didn't, nor did anyone else besides Jamie, feel sick yet. He was alone in his suffering for now. My poor boy. I wish he had pulled me aside to tell me how he felt. We could have avoided the following event.

Jamie's body had long since abandoned the hope of pushing his Thanksgiving meal safely through his digestive track. Other unpleasant symptoms would appear from his intestines later, but just then his brain had to handle the mess in his belly.

His stomach had stopped moving, leaving the spoiled food to putrefy in the acid and juices. Pockets of gas bubbled up from this soup. The burps rose in his throat, filling his mouth with the foul taste of bad meat.

The vomiting center authorized the next stage: Salivation to protect his teeth from the acid that was about to fill his mouth. You would think that Jamie would finally heed this warning. But no. Everything had happened much too fast to react logically.

His abdominal muscles contracted to push the tainted food up his esophagus. I imagine it was like playing the bagpipes. Muscles squeezing the bag until something productive came out.

Jamie is the type of person who didn’t care about his food touching on his plate. It was all going to end up in the same place anyway. In contrast, I never let my mashed potatoes touch the chicken. The peas never touched the potatoes, and the gravy never touched the peas. Obviously, I knew that the stomach turned my meal into one big brown sludge, but I did not want to think about that. That night, I got a reminder that it really doesn’t matter how your food is presented on the plate. It was all going to look the same inside your body. 

Jamie’s meal did not stay inside his body unfortunately…or perhaps fortunately because it really had no business staying there. His brain had been right to authorize a purge. Too bad it had to feel so awful for him. 

I could describe gravity in the same scientific way that I’ve been describing vomiting, but you know what liquid splattering to the floor looks like. You can imagine a cascade of thick liquid falling from a person’s mouth. I could describe the guttural heaves made by the throat opening and closing, but I have a feeling you can hear it all on your own. 

Vomiting relies on muscular contraction, just like exercising, so it was no surprised that Jamie was sweating from the exertion. My poor boyfriend was shaking and gagging and generally looking terribly unwell. 

Public sickness causes a fascinating phenomenon that is once again due to evolution. Sympathetic vomiting. Our friend Tara who had not eaten any chicken that night because she was vegan found herself running to the bathroom all the same. The monkey part of her brain didn’t care that she hadn’t eaten the tainted food. Evolution created something like this: Jamie sick. Jamie maybe poisoned, that not good. Me no wanna be poisoned either. Idea! Make stomach do same thing. No poison here. Foolproof plan. 

Oh vomiting center, you are funny. 

Not all humans react the same way. Don’t worry—Jamie got all the comfort and care he needed to recover from the embarrassing incident. It certainly helped when the rest of us started developing symptoms. He was no longer alone in his suffering because human physiology tries its best to work properly in every person. Thankfully, each of our vomiting centers detected the same health risk and promptly dealt with it in the only way it knew how.