That was over a week ago. Since then, he’d taken his medication like a good little doobie, and tried to behave. Done a halfway decent job of it, too.

He’d been the doting husband, the loving father… And he was sick to his stomach the entire time.

Not because he disliked being either thing, far from it… No, it was the medication.

If he took it before he ate, he had violent stomach cramps and nausea. If he took it with food, he quickly lost his appetite, and once he had digested the little bit he’d eaten, it was as though he hadn’t eaten. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if he tried to take them on a full stomach.

The children vomited enough, thank you very much, and his stomach was larger than both of theirs combined.

But hey… it was a small price to pay for a regular life, right? A little nausea, and he wouldn’t be making a run at Ronald Reagan’s “Undisputed Heavyweight Championship of Alzheimer’s” title until he was old enough to run for president, which is when it would come in most handy anyway. Who needs to make excuses when you don’t even remember your bad decisions?

Bad decisions like Monica Lewinski.

Bad decisions like Iraq.

Bad decisions, like banning stem cell research, which could cure crazy things like Alzheimer’s and Second-Impact Syndrome.

Bad decisions, like trying to finish your months worth of medication three weeks early. That was his bad decision du jour, and it was a doozy. Ha ha ha… If that shit was supposed to shrink the swelling in his brain, then he’d taken so much he’d better not lean to far to either side, or his mind would fall to its death, and he’d be left talking like a Shawn Collins promo.

A what?

He looked at himself in the mirror, noting his pale, clammy skin and inability to have both his eyes open the same amount at the same time. He was pretty sure that that, along with his perpetual stupid grin, were good signs that he’d taken WAY too much medicine.

Those of you thinking this is a strangely lucid line of thought for someone who is dying of acute toxic shock induced by overdose will be happy to note that the last words out of his mouth on the way to the side of the tub were “…I wonder when they’ll bust out the big wooden Cross.”