No, No, Norovirus!
In the summer of 2024, I started hearing stories about hikers falling deathly ill after visiting Havasu Falls. Some even had to be airlifted out. The headlines were twisted with concern, bordering on alarmed.
Then one morning, my spouse, who was reading the news in bed, announced, “It was Norovirus.” I felt something leave my body.
I was transported back to the winter of ’23. One night I went to bed feeling slightly off. I wouldn’t have even described myself as feeling sick. It was early and I fell asleep immediately.
I awoke at the witching hour. I was still not fully conscious but registered that something was wrong. My intestines were making gurgling sounds that were so loud I was afraid I’d wake my spouse.
I slipped out of bed and hurried to the guest bathroom. What did some deep part of me know, even half asleep, that what was about to happen should not desecrate the sacred spaces I shared with my spouse? Maybe the thing that drives a sick animal to find a hidden place in which to die. It was pure instinct.
The guest bathroom was a few yards from my bed. I was feeling queasy when my feet hit the floor. By the time I reached the bathroom door, I was entirely gripped by nausea. And I mean gripped. It was like the wrathful hand of God was squeezing my body like a tube of toothpaste. The intensity of it brought me to my knees. Before I hit the ground, I was projectile vomiting. It wasn’t like the days of my youth, or my drinking days, or any other days for that matter. Not only did I have no control over my body, I felt like I was being tossed around by an orca or caught up in a landslide. I was helpless.
For a short second, I considered praying for my life. But before I could formulate the words, the force of the vomiting opened the floodgates on the other end. You know how sometimes you hear an idiom, and you realize you didn’t really understand it until you saw the original context? Like, maybe you never understood the word, “flighty” until you kept chickens? That is how I now feel about the word “floodgates”.
I think I was holding onto the bowl, but I may have subconsciously inserted that detail later to give myself some human dignity. I was a living fountain. In some grotesque way, it was strangely beautiful in its symmetry. I do remember wearing long flannel pajama bottoms, green and navy-blue checks. I remember because I had no time to remove them. I also remember being stumped about how to handle the situation, had I been able to move. It didn’t matter anyway; I couldn’t stop vomiting to turn around and sit on the toilet. I think I may have also been crying involuntarily. I remember thinking, in an out-of-body kind of way, how someday this would be funny.
I am sure this whole disaster only lasted a few minutes, although in the way of these things it felt much, much longer. Eventually there was nothing left inside my empty shell of a body, and the fountain slowed and stopped. I remained as I had fallen, half draped over the bowl, one leg stretched out behind me and the other twisted under my body, like some sad version of the “running man” yoga pose. I finally tried to move but I slipped. I asked myself whether it was funny yet. It was not.
I heard a quiet knock on the door. My spouse gently asked whether I needed help. “No!” I cried. “Don’t come in!” Maybe I added, “please,” I don’t know. We had only been married three years then. They could not see me like that. Maybe God even had to turn away, you’re on your own with this one, man, sorry.
I think I vomited once more, weakly. Then, shaking and feeble, I disrobed where I stood and climbed into the shower. Cleanup was strangely easy, given that I felt that I had crossed into Hell and returned, diminished and sorry.
Norovirus changed me. I understand now that whatever I think about my pretty little brain, I am merely a two-ended tube of fluid, with pretensions.
Later, I told my little sister about what happened, and how I had been at such a loss in the moment. “You hold the trash can, and sit on the toilet,” she explained. I will never forget her wisdom.
My thoughts and prayers lingered with the hikers for days. I imagined the heat, the lack of running water, the long hike out. I bet some couples went there, newly in love. Could romance survive such conditions? True love? I could only hope that in the end everything came out alright.
Horror Sleaze Trash 