Editor’s Note: The piece below was published in The Weekly’s 2018 “Joke Issue.” All content, quotations, and other editorializations are entirely fictitious. 

Early into the second semester, kids from all around the school visited Nurse Anne Nelson’s office because of an overwhelming breakout of the flu. On the morning of February 8, Nelson came into school, and throughout the day she noticed herself starting to feel sick. She could not stop coughing, and when at one point she couldn’t handle it any longer, she took her temperature to find herself with a fever of 102˚F.

“It was school rules,” Nelson said. “I had to send myself home.”

She has been at home recovering from her case of influenza for three days now. Her daily lunch buddies, Upper School English teacher Mike Mahany and 6th Grade science teacher Peg Zerega, were surprised to see a sign on her door saying, “Nurse Anne is out, see front desk for an emergency.”

They rushed straight to the front desk because Nelson’s not being there for lunch was, of course, an emergency. When they got there, Greg Reames, one of the security guards, told them that she was out with the flu.

“I had so many of my students out from the flu,” Zerega said, “I wasn’t even that surprised.” Zerega and Mahany relocated to the cafeteria to have their lunches there for the first time in twelve years. Numerous students gave them weird looks and asked why they weren’t in the nurse’s office.

“I’ve seen them eating in the Nurse’s office for eleven years now!” freshman Ethan Butler-VanderLinden. “When I saw them in the cafeteria, I was shocked.”

“She was looking really flushed and did not seem to be feeling to well so I gave her some of my Mountain Dew,” Mahany said. “I thought that it would fix her, but I guess that’s not how it works!”

Nelson is expected to make her return to school in one week, after hopefully being fully recovered and not showing any more symptoms.