I was home by six, found some left-over General Gao’s chicken I could smell without gagging and settled down in front of the tube. I’d TiVoed Monday Night Raw on USA network and wanted to catch it before tomorrow’s Friday Night Smackdown. A few guys at work let it slip that Triple “H” had won his match, but I needed to see the strategy he used against Batista. The best plan would be for him to save a few moves to surprise Shawn Michaels in their upcoming Pay Per View brawl.

Anyway, by seven, I was almost done the program, having fast-forwarded through that blowhard Vince McMahan and his tired old rant, when I started to sniffle. Christ, another cold and I’d just gotten over one three weeks ago. Or was it something in the Chinese food, but the Hong Kong Garden never goes overboard on the hot stuff. Ten minutes later I had graduated from snuffling to full blown sobbing. I was like a school girl after a bad break up. Thirty-seven years old and bawling my eyes out. The last time I remember crying was that season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where she really dies but comes back from the peace of the beyond to the ongoing crap she has to put up with every day in Sunnydale. She yearns to be dead again. It’s real poignant. I think that was the year my mom died so there might have been a connection there too. But that was years ago!

By eight I was a basket case, curled up in a ball in front of the TV hugging some stupid throw pillow like it was a life preserver and crying my eyes out. Then I began to have trouble breathing, gasping for air between sobs. My tee shirt was soaked, but I couldn’t stop long enough to change.

I thought a cold shower would shock me out of it, but things got worse. It was a torrent. I got no sleep. I had to sit upright in the La-Z-Boy; otherwise I’d drown in my own tears. At 6:00 AM Friday morning I called in sick to Hoskins. They used to have a number where you left a message but absences ran too high so they went back to the approach of speaking directly to your supervisor, convincing him you were really sick. I lied and said I had a bad cold. It must have sounded true because hard ass Hoskins told me to take it easy and get well soon. That’s the most civil he’s ever been to me in the nine years he’s been the Postmaster.

When I got off the phone with him I called Nadine because I knew she’d nag me anyway. She lives for health problems, hers and passing strangers. She’s kind of okay but forty-two and battling a weight issue. I know she has the “hots” for me, but I’m not that desperate yet. Still, she’s the closest thing I have to a friend down there so I wanted to give her the update. I envisioned her wolfing down a half dozen Boston crèmes before she answered. She was sympathetic but quickly saw right through the bad cold story.

“It sounds like you’ve been crying.”

“A little bit.”

“My god, what happened? Are you all right? Did someone die?”

I decided to let it out. “I really don’t know what’s happening. It came out of the blue last evening. Sometimes it slows down to a gentle weeping but most of the time it’s all out blubbering. I haven’t been able to eat, not that I’m hungry. I was drinking Diet Coke but figured that, if I stopped, I could dry up wherever tears come from.”

“I had an uncle in his eighties who used to get very emotional towards the end of his life and cry at the littlest things. You met him that night you jump started my car so we could make the Christmas party.”

I had no recollection of an uncle, fixing her car or any Christmas party. Another surge of tears was nearing high tide.

“Michael, are you okay?”

“I’m having an episode. It’s tough to cry, talk and breathe right now.”

“Oh my god, I’ll be right there and take you to the emergency room. Just hang in there; I’ve got to throw some clothes on. Five minutes, ten tops.”

I tried to protest wanting her offer to help, but I’d quickly gone from whimpering to a full bore deluge in record time. It was my worst attack yet.

*****

When Nadine got to my place I must have looked a wreck. She saw the shape I was in and hugged me. That started me crying even more as I slimed up the shoulder and front of her “Mail Early in the Day” sweatshirt big time. Somehow she got my damp tee shirt changed and strapped me into her car for the ride to St Joseph’s. During the drive she had a country music station playing which really put me over the edge. Some trucker lost his rig in a Texas Hold’em game so his girl walked out on him. I was in such dire straits when we got to the ER waiting room that I just leaned against Nadine, tucking my face into her right side to muffle the sound. I couldn’t tell the nurse much so Nadine did all the talking. No, she told them, I wasn’t depressed, nothing hurt, and my life was fine except for the continual crying. They tried oxygen, but that was a bust as I kept filling the mask up with tears. When I finally saw the doctor he couldn’t find anything wrong; all the tests came back negative. There is no disease that makes you cry all the time, but they decided to admit me anyway, inserting an IV to replace the fluids I was losing and knocking me out with drugs for twenty-four hours.

So that’s how I spent the start of President’s Day weekend, zonked out in a hospital bed with Nadine there day and night reassuring me over and over again that I was going to be okay. Late Sunday afternoon they let me go. I was down to a trickle as far as the tears went. Nadine told people at work that I had pneumonia so when I got back to work I wouldn’t get treated like a weirdo. I had to see the hospital shrink before I signed out. I explained the situation. I answered all the family history, childhood trauma and sex questions as normally as I could. He nodded and scribbled. I got a prescription for anti-depressants, and the name of a colleague who might be able to fit me in early next week.

Nadine drove me home. I begged her not to stay. I didn’t want her poking around my stuff. I have some Naked Women’s Wrestling Volumes 1 thru 5 DVDs from Australia that I’d rather she not know about. Also, I wanted to get my life back to normal. She was put out but I couldn’t help it.

Even with sleeping pills I spent a rocky Sunday night. There were times I was shaking in my boots because I thought it was going to start up again. As it was I could barely handle the slight sniveling that came and went every few hours. A fear of being afraid, I guess.

Nadine came over on President’s Day Monday with enough food for an army. Aside from the fact that we are both post office “lifers” we don’t have much in common. She killed time explaining a new diet she’s on, something with no white food in it. A lady was touting the book about it on Oprah. When that topic exhausted itself, I suggested we watch TV. Nadine went through all the channels to sort out any depressing shows which might lead to a crying onslaught. We watched some kids’ shows on PBS devoted to sharing before I took command of the clicker and settled on a station that was running an Andy Griffith Show marathon.

We both dozed the afternoon away. I woke up at dusk. Nadine was pocketed in my La-Z-Boy snoring away. The shrink suggested that subconsciously my crying might be a manifestation of loneliness. He brought up Nadine’s name thinking that we were an item since she was badgering the staff about my receiving the best care. I knew that a single word, a simple gesture from me, and we would be in my bed heaving our aging flesh against one another like beached dolphins. Then there would be a celebratory, post coital pizza delivery, Hawaiian for me, sausage and mushroom on her half. At eight I’d introduce her to the WWE on Monday Night Raw, and we’d boo Vince together, maybe even make out one more time before the Fox News at ten. Then it would come to a dead stop. I would want my own bed. Her gall bladder and thyroid problems were not conversations I cared to share. And there were the guys at work who had a million jokes related to Nadine’s fat ass, especially the letter carriers who have it in for us wimpy counter people anyway. The Morlocks versus the Eloi from Wells’ The Time Machine as Jimmy Amos, one of the long haul drivers, once put it.

I got up from the couch, muted the set and tossed an afghan over Nadine. I owed her that. I jotted a note saying I’d taken a couple sleeping tablets, was settling in for the night and wanted to be up by 5:30 at the latest so I could get to work early. She was welcome to stay on the couch if she wanted.

I went to my bedroom, bolted the door and lay down. I still had my symptoms, but it was best not to think about them or it could incite an attack. I heard her stir around nine, the front door open and her car groan to a start in the February cold. I waited an hour to make sure she hadn’t gone out for something, got up and dragged myself back to the living room. The TV was still on. She’d tuned it to a Home Decorating program, the kind where people run a few errands and come back to find their old living room has morphed into wicker love seats, geometric wall hangings and earth- toned walls. I plunked down on the couch and tried to get comfortable. I was beginning to cry a little. I found a channel that was showing the first episode of Smallville, a classic in my view. It’s the one where the circa1990 sign entering the city proclaims it the Creamed Corn capitol of the United States until the detritus from a dying Krypton hits and then, ten years later, it’s now dubbed the Meteor City, rife with curious tourists. I watched for a while as young Clark discovers his powers bit by bit and copes with his Lana Lang infatuation. She is totally in love with some jock guy. No one understands Clark, not even his parents, so he spends time alone in the barn staring at the heavens through his telescope. He just wants to be a normal guy and play on the football team. I was tearing up pretty badly towards the end when Clark saves Lex from a car wreck so I turned it off and sat in the dark. The trick, I was discovering, was not thinking about anything. If I did that the crying seemed to subside. I could investigate Zen or yoga, maybe that would help. Some people have cancer. What’s a few tears by a federal employee.