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It was midday, and Janine was a very particular blend of energized and exhausted. She used to think this was unique to elementary school teachers, but she’d started to realize that it was maybe just unique to her. Her kids were at lunch, and she had a little bit of a breather before it was time to attack the afternoon.
“Okay, was anybody else’s classroom freezing this morning?” she asked as she bustled into the teacher’s lounge. “I swear I could see my breath during the Pledge of Allegiance.”
“So cold!” Jacob agreed, looking up from his bento box. “My fingers were too stiff to hold the whiteboard marker, so I didn’t write anything on the board. Whenever I needed the kids to take notes on something, I just shouted it out cheerleader style.”
Melissa frowned. “Cheerleader style?”
“You know,” Jacob went on, “gimme a P! Gimme a U! Gimme an R! Gimme an I! Gimme a T! Gimme an A! Gimme an N! What’s that spell?”
There was an awkward silence as Melissa and Barbara stared at him, unimpressed, and Janine put the letters together in her head. “Puritan!” she exclaimed.
“You got it!” Jacob replied, tapping the end of his nose. “So yeah, that was my workaround. Just takes a little longer. Long story short, I’m half a chapter behind schedule now.”
Janine sat down, opening up her lunch bag to see what Tuesday Night Janine had thought to pack for her: a banana, four carrots, and a bag of chips. Eh, she’d had worse. “What about you, Barbara?” she asked, peeling the banana. “Is your classroom cold?”
“I dress in thoughtful layers and keep extra throw blankets for any child who needs one,” Barbara replied archly. “So it makes little difference to me.”
The conversation shifted to the misadventures of Melissa’s niece’s baby shower, so it took Janine a few minutes to realize someone was missing. “Hey, where’s Gregory?” she asked.
Melissa briefly looked around the lounge, like she’d just noticed too, and Jacob said, “Huh—haven’t seen him since this morning.”
Janine smiled, shrugging. “Maybe he just went out for lunch,” she suggested. She turned back to Melissa, “Sorry, what was that about getting shaken down for the cake?”
She tried to get back into the swing of the teacher’s lounge small talk, but once Janine’s brain got onto something, it was like a dog with a bone. Before she knew it, she was standing up. “I’ll be back,” she announced. “Just gonna…check on something.”
Janine headed out and down the hallway, making her way to Gregory’s classroom in what she told herself was a 100% casual manner. Nothing wrong with checking in on a colleague, nothing wrong with putting a bit of curiosity to rest. Just making sure everything was good. Who didn’t want things to be good, right?
When she reached Gregory’s room, Janine saw him through the window in the door, sitting at his computer as he ate his lunch. Well, mystery solved. Janine sometimes had a slight tendency to make a bigger deal of something than it actually was.
She knocked as she poked her head in. “Hey!”
Gregory’s head jerked up as he turned to look at her, looking a bit startled. “Hey-- hey, Janine,” he said, then glanced back down at his sandwich.
“You’re eating lunch in here?” Janine asked.
“Yeah,” Gregory said. “Just had a f-- few things to catch up on--” His head jerked back again, and he cleared his throat.
“Really?” Janine said. She came into the classroom, shutting the door behind her. “Anything I can help with? Two hands are better than one.” She frowned. “No wait, that’s not it….”
But Gregory replied, “Naw, I’m g-*hmmp!*-good.”
That audible “*hmmp!*”, and the grimace that went along with it, put the head jerks into context. “Sounds like somebody has the hiccups,” Janine remarked, lightly teasing.
For a second, Gregory looked as though he was going to try to deny it, but then he sighed. A low “*hup!*” popped out of him, and he snapped his mouth shut. “Yeah,” he admitted. “They just started out o-- of nowhere, *hmmk-mmp!* right after I dropped my cl-*llk!*-my class off for-- lunch.”
“Lemme guess,” Janine said. “That’s when you realized you had ‘things to catch up on’ in your classroom by yourself?”
Gregory gave her a sheepish glance. “I m-- I mean…” he said, trailing off into another hard “*hmmp!*”
He managed to keep almost all his hiccups either silent or quietly muffled, and yet it was practically impossible to hide that he had them. From the way they were making his head jerk, they were pretty hard, and they interrupted his speech every few seconds. Based on what she knew about Gregory, Janine completely understood why he was hiding out.
“I can help you get rid of them if you want,” she offered.
At that, Gregory shifted uncomfortably in his desk chair, muffling a “*hmmk-mmp!*” in his fist. “I, um, *hllp!* - I already tried dr-- drinking water and holding my-*hmmp!*-breath,” he said. “And I don’t re-*hip!*” he grimaced, “don’t really like-- trying any of the cr-*hllp!*-crazy cures. I’d rather j-- just have the hiccu-- ups at that poin-*hmmk!*”
Janine raised an eyebrow. “Would you really, though?”
From his expression, she could tell she was on her way to convincing him. “Come on!” she wheedled. “I’ve got a cure with, like, a 90% success rate.”
“Is that-*hmmp!*-right?” Gregory said.
“Please, I’m a second-grade teacher,” Janine replied. “Of course I have a go-to hiccup cure. Minimal craziness, I promise. Like, 3 out 10 on the crazy-cure scale, max.”
Gregory was quiet as he thought this over, jerking with a few hard silent hiccups. Finally, he sighed and said, “Fine. L-*uck!*-let’s give it a-- a try.”
Janine grinned brightly. “Great!” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
She hurried next door to her classroom for supplies. A minute later, she returned to Gregory’s room, armed with a brimming plastic cup of water and a sugar packet.
“Okay,” she said, “here’s how it goes. Shake out the sugar on your tongue, close your mouth, and wait for it to dissolve. Then swallow, and drink a full glass of water.”
Gregory didn’t seem to know what to say to that, and a “*hup!*” snuck out of him. He cleared his throat, brushing his knuckles self-consciously against his mouth.
“I’ve neve-*hrrk!*-never heard of a-- a hiccup cure with multiple-*hmmp!*-steps before,” he said.
“Like I said: second-grade teacher,” Janine reminded him. “I’m a professional, Gregory.”
He winced a little as a hard hiccup made his head snap back. “Okay,” he said, accepting the sugar packet Janine handed him.
Gregory tore open the packet, and with a sheepish glance at Janine, he shook the sugar out onto his tongue. With his mouth open, his hiccups were louder, and a “*hok!*” and a “huk-ulk!*” escaped him before he got through it.
“Now close your mouth,” Janine prompted. Gregory did as she said, looking grateful that the hiccupping-with-his-mouth-open part of the process was over.
As he jerked with quiet “*hmmps!*”, Janine added, “Wait for it to dissolve, then swallow.”
They waited, quiet except for Gregory’s muffled hiccups. Then he caught her eye, nodding a little, and she saw his Adam’s apple bob.
“Good—now the glass of water,” Janine said. “Drink it down without stopping.”
Gregory picked up the cup, drinking continuously until he drained the glass. Then he let out a long, careful breath.
“Did it work?” Janine asked hopefully.
He was quiet a bit longer, but then Gregory said, “Yeah, I think so.”
His soft, slow smile gave Janine a warm feeling in her stomach. “Thanks,” he said. “I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do if they didn’t go away by the time lunch was over.”
“Happy to help,” Janine replied, grinning. “Most of my teaching skills aren’t transferrable to other parts of life, but that one comes in handy.”
“What did they think when you ran to the teacher’s lounge just to get a sugar packet?” Gregory asked, leaning back a little in his desk chair. Curing his hiccups had made a world of difference. He looked visibly relaxed now, or at least as visibly relaxed as Gregory ever was.
“Oh, I didn’t have to go all the way to the lounge,” Janine told him. “I have a stash of those in my room.”
Gregory smirked, but in a sort of fond, amused way. “You keep sugar in your classroom?”
“For hiccups!” Janine said. Wasn’t it obvious?
“For hiccups,” he echoed. “Of course.” He glanced at the clock. “I have to pick my kids up in ten minutes. Not much point in going to the lounge now.”
“Oh, okay,” Janine said. “I’ll leave you to it. Glad we could get rid of your hiccups.”
“Thanks,” Gregory said again, “really.”
Janine smiled at him. “Any time.”
She stepped out into the hallway again, preparing to face the afternoon powered by a banana, four carrots, and half a bag of chips. But right that second, Janine felt ready to take on anything.