Toddling Along: Hurts
By Gemsong

I thought there was no way to be more miserable about this situation than being stuck in the body of a toddler. I was wrong. I was blinding wrong. I don’t remember ever going through this. Hell, I don’t even remember going through this with Charlie. I think Sara had to deal with that. The woman was a saint and warrior to deal with it.

You have no idea what I’m talking about. I’d rather have a root canal. I’d rather have a staff blast. I’d rather get smacked with a hand device. Anything but this.

“Hurts,” I mumbled around my thumb. I didn’t take it out of my mouth and Daniel didn’t even try to make me. I was sitting on his lap with his arms around me. His hand was on my back in a soothing manner, but it didn’t stop the pain at all. All I could do was sniffle and lean my forehead against his chest.

“I know it does, Jack,” Daniel murmured. He glanced beside him at Janet who was sitting beside him holding my hand.

She shook her head at the question that must have been in his eyes. “Daniel, he needs someone trained to handle this,” the CMO of the most secret organization in the world said. “I simply don’t have all the right training.”

Janet is here for only one reason. I wanted her here. And I made enough of a fuss until she gave in. I had no idea how effective miserable wails and tears were on her. I would have tried it years ago if I thought it would have worked. Well maybe not. One small upside for the toddler size and big brown eyes full of tears. If I had to see a pediatrician I wanted a trained set of eyes on him.

“Dr. Jackson?” a voice said. “We’re ready for you.”

It was the nurse. Lisa I think she said her name was. Pretty and nice. Sigh. If only I were big again. But then I wouldn’t be here. Figures.

Daniel got up holding me. Any plans Janet had for sitting this one out were crushed because I wouldn’t let go of her hand. So the three of us trouped into the exam room where Doctor Durdan was waiting for us.

As Daniel tried to set me down on the exam table, Janet rattled off my symptoms for the doctor’s benefit. So I was clingy. Can you blame me? We compromised with me on the table holding my hand. Not what I wanted. And since I had hold of Janet’s other hand, my thumb couldn’t be in my mouth.

Durden leaned down to my level and looked me in the eyes. “All right, big guy,” he said in that adult-talking-to-a-kid voice. “Let’s take a look at you.”

Okay, I didn’t handle the exam well. The poking and prodding was bad enough. But when he got to examining my right ear, I lost it. It was all Daniel and Janet could do to keep me under control.

The results? Other than having a temperature of 102, I also had a fairly bad ear infection. Do you know what they have to do to treat it? Let’s just say I was seriously considering calling Ba’al over to the house for pizza and a hockey game. We won’t go into the mild inflammation of my tonsils.

It seemed like hours before the torture was over. Miserable? Oh god I was miserable. I was in Janet’s arms while the doctor gave Daniel the instructions oh what to do when we got home.

I couldn’t wait to get away from that place and Anubis’ chief torturer. And according to Janet’s soothing murmur in my ear, there was ice cream in my future that sounded really good to me right then.

Bet they weren’t thinking about how ‘cute’ I was. Okay, I confess, I got a little revenge for the ‘cute’ moments they get. Yes, I cried a lot. Okay, howled, wailed and sobbed. And only ‘dada’ and ‘mama’ could comfort me.

Doctor Durden assured them that their ‘son’ would be just fine in a couple days. The scary part? They didn’t correct him.

I might be in trouble.

Fini