I found the love of my life in the doctor’s office. He was strong and his nose blew like a siren. I have a weakness for noses. All flu fairies do. Noses, and throats, and chests.

But he took Vitamin C every day, and I simply couldn’t get through to him. He visited his doctor several times a week, buying pills for headaches, and stomach aches, and elbow aches. I hated that doctor. Why did he visit her so often? Was he in love with her? He certainly wasn’t sick. I guarded him jealously, and knew full well he was incapable of sickening unless it was at my hands. No disease could possess him if it wasn’t me. Still he visited that doctor.

I wept mucusy tears and watched him at night – the rise and fall of his chest; still all unhindered by my attempts to nestle near his heart. It wasn’t that I had never loved before – I had. I’d thickened the throats of many a man, sometimes for weeks. But it never lasted.

But one day my doctor-obsessed love watched a program on TV about the dangerous side effects of excessive vitamins. He stopped chewing through Vitamin Cs from that point on. My moment came at last. His immune system was weak; he didn’t eat his greens. The other pills he took were nothing but sugar. I grabbed his body and made it mine.

He sniffled and snorted and blew his nose till it puffed up like a red, red rose. I held my breath; I held his till he coughed and sputtered and I swooned in ecstasy. His eyes brightened with fever and his skin glowed with ill-health. He visited the doctor daily. She patted his hand and sent him away without a cure.

He didn’t return to the Vitamin C. He didn’t take any real pills at all. He was mine, mine! Forever mine.