sliding down the wall

“If you are not working again today, will you take Beach so I can go hiking?” I am in grey pajama bottoms dotted with tiny white polar bears and a faded hoodie. My voice barely audible through the deep congestion, I sound like a frog that has mistakenly eaten a mouth full of soggy cotton. 
“Take her where?” He asks. If I wasn't so miserable I would have laughed. Instead I offer only the thin line of what needs to be said, “Watch her. Be her parent.”

“You are going to go hiking?” Inside his voice is the image of me tossing and turning all night, struggling to breathe; freezing under the fire of fever.

My eyes are hot and my head sticky but I answer, “Yeah, if you don’t go to work I am.”

I can picture myself sitting in the softness of deep snow at the mouth of the trickling canyon I plan to be swallowed by. I can already hear the sound of my snow pants and the wind catching on that annoying corner of my best ski jacket. The place that when my hood is up rubs against my face leaving a patch of red angry skin all winter.

It is sort of delusional to plan to summit. Sort of delusional to think I would make it even half way. Delusional I could hike this sick- but I have done it before. The sound of him moving around in the kitchen fades. He figures he doesn't need to answer me.