Mary and Daphne #50 (Patreon)

“Daphne, please take the medicine.”

“I don’t really want to,” I said while laying across the bed. You know how when you’re trying to help someone and they’re not letting you, you still really want to help them but also shake some sense into them? That was Mary, standing over me.

“Your doctor wrote the prescription for you for a reason,” she reasoned.

“I know. It’s just ... I’d rather it was just for emergencies.” Anti–anxiety medication. Sure, I’ve been kind of anxious with 2020 basically having assaulted me and the stress just sort of accumulating, but I’m really not a medicate–my–emotions person.

“It’s for when you’re having a tough day,” she said and sat down next to me.

“It’s not that tough,” I reasoned back.

“You haven’t slept through the night in three weeks, Daffy.” She was stroking my hair. If only every time I wake up at two in the morning I could wake her up and make her do that until I fall back asleep, I’d be the most well rested person ever.

“But ... what if it makes me weird?”

“Weird how?”

“I dunno.”

And then she stopped stroking my hair and sighed. “Do I have to hide your medicine in a piece of cheese,” she said jokingly but not so jokingly.

“(Sniff).”

“This, Daphne. This right now. You’re turning into a basket case. You need to get a full night’s sleep. You will feel so much better tomorrow.”

Me? A basket case? Just because I’m been veering between depressed and pissed off and I’m rarely laughing and am pretty much just fed the fuck up with pandemic life and not going anywhere and not doing anything or seeing anyone or every other fucking thing that’s wrong with this fucking year? I mean, okay, so maybe that’s a thing...

“Which do you want,” Mary asked me, “the pill or the pill and a spanking?”

“Yes,” I blurted out and started to gently sob. I mean, I guess I’m just done holding in whatever. And I haven’t been holding in much, but maybe what little was left. Like I’ve been trying to pretend this is all somehow normal or okay, and it’s not. It’s just not. The next few months are scaring me. Heading into winter like this, I imagine this sorta feels like how winter felt before modern times, when the prospect of not seeing Spring was very real for people.

I’m not scared of not surviving. I’m just scared that March of next year is gonna be a whole new world and that it’s not gonna be a world that makes room for people like us. The world we had pre–pandemic wasn’t perfect at all, but I liked it. Seven months into this bullshit, it seems like things are going to be a lot better by Spring or a lot worse. I guess the uncertainty of it has been keeping me up.

Does Mary handle this shit better than I do? Yes, like she does lots of things. Does it help that she has things to do every day to take her mind off it? Definitely. With winter ahead, even the little things I’ve been doing to stay busy like spending too much money on plants are going to go away. I’m just down, and nothing seems to cheer me up lately. At least not for very long.

“Okay, baby, up ya get then.”

I got up, and turned to put myself over Mary’s lap, got about halfway into it, and instead sat myself down on her thigh and put my head on her shoulder.

“No spanking after all,” she asked me and started petting me.

“No.”

She reached over and took the pill and a glass of water off the nightstand. “Open ... swallow.”

It went down easy enough. I don’t know why I didn’t want to take it. Maybe I just need to stop thinking of medicine that helps me feel better emotionally as different from medicine that helps me feel better physically. Also, I didn’t feel well physically. The not sleeping and the not eating well and the always being tense certainly haven’t helped.

“Good girl. That was easy, wasn’t it?”

“Mhmm.”

“Let’s get your ready for bed.”

“No.”

“You’re about the lose the choice of whether you get a spanking, little girl.”

“I mean not yet. I just wanna stay like this for a while.”

“Kay.”

The other thing about me and new medication is I always have a much, much stronger reaction to it the very first time I take it. The second time, my body knows what to expect and I don’t get all floopy. The first time? With that medicine?

“How’d you sleep,” Mary asked me when I came downstairs the next morning.

“Like a log.” Literally, the kind of sleep where you sleep so deep you don’t even move.

“Feel better?”

“Mostly.”

“How’s your diaper?”

Other than not remembering her putting me in it? “Fine. Can I take it off so I can go take a shower?”

“Lemme see first,” she said.

I rolled my eyes pretty hard and shuffled over to her. She pulled the string on my pajama pants and they just fell around my ankles.

“All dry,” Mary pronounced me after feeling me up.

“Of course it is.” I stuck my tongue out at her. Which I guess means I was feeling a little better. “But I really hafta pee, so...”

“You don’t wanna eat first?”

“Nope.”

“Fine, but we’re taking that shower together,” she promise-threatened. “Step out.”

I stepped out of my pajama pants, and with a swat to my butt, we were on our way back upstairs.

“Thanks for making me take the medicine.”

“It’s for whenever you need it, Daffodil.”

“I know. Thanks for taking care of me.”

“Thanks for letting me.”

“Thanks for asking me to marry you.”

“Thanks for saying yes, Daffodil.”

“Love you.”

“Love you more.”