Sternutation

Andrea had joked about it for years, every time the pollen or mold or dust appeared and the plants did anything besides just sit there and be green. Popping antihistamines like M&Ms, to the point where she could take a benedryl at 6 am and go all day without nodding off and a myriad of various prescription drugs as soon as they hit the market kept her functional, but only barely. When asked, she said she only had two sinus infections a year; they just lasted five months each. When she would have a sneezing fit walking from her car to the grocery store, and someone would inevitably after blessing her ask what she was allergic to.

Her flippant reply, “The entire state of Kentucky!” was more accurate than most people realized. After several different allergy tests, basically if it grew from the ground or had fur, fluff, or feathers, Andi was allergic to it. Having discovered this in her early teen years after being very sickly as a child (untreated allergies, she now knew), even her job was centered around it. Not only had she been around nurses her whole life, hospitals were supposed to be free of such allergens. For at least her twelve hour shifts, she would be free from them. If only she had calculated the large hayfield a quarter of a mile from the hospital. If there was any movement to the air as she walked inside, she was a sneezing, sniffling, red-eyed mess the whole shift.

Andi has been to every doctor, allergist, chiropractor, witch doctor and old medicine woman she could find. She followed every bit of advice her grandmother, her best friend’s grandmother… well, anyone’s grandma who had a home remedy, everything from honey to dandelion tea to an ancient old woman who put a big stick up beside her and broke it at her height and told her that when she outgrew the stick she would outgrow the allergies. She just couldn’t tell the old woman that she was twenty-five and had not grown vertically in ten years and would never grow taller than the stick. The only thing that offered the slightest hint of relief was a fairly strong immune suppressors, which were far too dangerous to take for allergies. Though in one particularly rough summer she had been given three with the promise to stay inside and away from all other people for a week.

The joke had originated over the fact that she was usually okay for a few months in the dead of winter. The first suggestion was from an allergist with a dry sense of humor. “My dear, have you considered continuing your career elsewhere? Alaska, perhaps?”

She had laughed and replied that she would just be allergic to bear fur, and took the new medication he prescribed. Three weeks later, with severe lower abdominal pain and praying the constipation was yet to become a bowel blockage, she flushed the rest down the toilet. Another strikeout, but not the worst side effect she had dealt with. So again, she just suffered with the severity of her body’s response to the environment she had always been in.

After a horrible sneezing fit with a nosebleed in the middle that ended with the nurses station looking like a set from a Tobe Hooper movie, and a new housekeeping employee quitting on the spot, the senior housekeeper smiled at her gently as she cleaned up what looked like a murder scene. “Where you born here, honey? If I were you, I would consider a different climate. Arizona, maybe?” She smiled at the older lady, still leaned back with a bloody towel on her nose, but dust, sand, rodents and scorpions? No thanks… Sounded even worse than this haven for pollen, mold, and furry critters!

But the idea picked at the back of her mind. As she fought through the mold and decay of later fall into the relative peace of winter, the more and more she thought about it. Her parents had retired and moved to Florida into an RV park next to a lady who called herself “Sunshine” and wore a lot of tie-dye. She and her boyfriend of six months had broken up a few months ago, ditching wedding plans and canceling reservations. Becca, her best friend from childhood, had married and moved to Montana last spring. There really was no real reason for her to stay in this inhospitable place that her body seemed to hate.

It was crazy. Absolutely nuts. Who would actually do what she was thinking? But sure enough, they did need nurses at the Antarctic research station. It took a lot of time on the phone, a thousand emails, and a dozen face-to-face Zoom meetings and more than one psychological evaluations, but before the first day of spring dawned in Kentucky, Andi was on a cargo plane headed south. As far south as it could go before they would be going north again. The idea of a new start in a place inhospitable to everything but her overactive immune system filled her with excitement as the plane landed on the unending expanse of ice. She could see the outline of something in the distance that was either the research station or a rather small mountain range. Hardly able to sit still during the landing process, as soon as the doors opened she burst out like a bat that had been trapped in a Mason jar. Taking in a deep breath of the first pollen and allergen free air of her life, it felt like breathing in for the first time. 

Andi felt like she could run a mile. Even in her carefully chosen climate gear (special ordered to be down and feather free and synthetic), the blinding whiteness and the stark emptiness of the place were somewhat overwhelming. One of the supply crew handed her a pair of sunglasses out of his coveralls and handed them to her. “Everything reflects here. You will need these.”

She looked at them in wonder as she slipped them on, muting the unrelenting light. In the past, sunglasses had been used to cover red, watery eyes and avoid kind strangers asking her if she was okay or if she needed help. More than once, her red and swollen eyes had led to an embarrassing moment when someone told her that “he was never going to change” and that she “didn’t have to live like that”. After trying to explain that it was just allergies and she wasn’t actually seeing anyone, sunglasses just seemed the best answer. She hadn’t thought to pack them here.

The convoy of what looked like the mutated offspring of jet-skis and tanks that transported her and the supplies to the research station stopped to refuel just outside of the compound and she climbed out to look around. There really wasn’t much to see, flat whiteness broken up by rocks, but to her, there had never been a more beautiful sight. No plants, no critters, no dust. And a research station, it had to be cleaned meticulously without allowing dust mites or dead skin cells to add up. Finally, finally, she was free of the curse that had plagued her since early childhood.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, she sneezed. Eyes widening, she pulled up her goggles to look around and sneezed again. Maybe just leftovers in her system. Maybe she had picked up a minor virus before she left but after the blood tests. Maybe- the thought cut off as Andi sneezed again.

The crewman who had given her the sunglasses tilted his head sympathetically. “Allergies? Sorry, it’s just the beginning of molting season. Might want to get some antihistamines when you get settled.”

Her jaw dropped in disbelief. “Molting season?!” 

“Yeah,” he said, capping the fuel tank. “I know they look all rubbery on TV, and sometimes people forget they are really birds.”

Still somewhat lost, she asked, “What are?”

The man grinned. “Penguins. Their feathers are a real nuisance about half the year. Cute and cuddly, my ass!”