504. Ziggy’s Diary: 32

Not cholera. Typhoid. I’m here for another two weeks, they say. The fever is down but there are various reasons why they have to keep my here. I have only grasped the bare minimum. They don’t talk to me much. Maybe I’m contagious, still?

The clerk brought the credit card to the hospital while I was unconscious. So I have that now. As soon as I am stable enough to walk I will try that travel agent again. As soon as I am cleared to return. I feared this might be something they won’t let me into the country with but as far as I have been able to determine from peppering the staff with questions, I’m not the first American tourist to come down with it and the others were allowed to go home.

There’s no phone here that they will let me use. But I would not call and worry people now. The last thing they all need to do is freak out that I’m stuck in an Indian hospital for two more weeks.

No, I’ll fly home, get my game face on, and meet everyone on my own terms.

(Thanks for reading Ziggy’s Diary! Daron’s narrative picks up again on Tuesday! -ctan)

32 Comments

  • Averin says:

    I am such a dunce, I just noticed you can vote DAILY on Top Web Fiction.

    In awe of how many plausible, realistic details you weave, Ctan.

    • ctan says:

      Thank you!

      (Re: Top Web Fiction, I think you can vote daily, but the votes still only count once per week. I think so serials that post more often don’t have an automatic leg up on those who post only once a week.)

  • Joe says:

    That was a great diary, thanks!

  • Connie says:

    typhoid! Oh, no!

    And there he goes again, closing himself off. Pretending. ‘Getting his game face on’ because he doesn’t feel worthy enough to be worried about, strong enough to feel vulnerable.
    :shakes head: Ziggy, Ziggy, Ziggy…

    • ctan says:

      Yeah, typhoid. Fortunately that’s something people can make a full recovery from, though it’s completely debilitating while it’s happening. I was just reading an article about a major league baseball player who caught it while on vacation!

  • Whatisit says:

    That was really nice, getting to see inside of Ziggy’s head for a while and also what he was up to during this time… His current situation quite sucks, though

  • LenaLena says:

    No! No ‘Game Face’!

  • Seana says:

    I was thinking the same thing as Connie about pretending and putting on a game face. *shaking head* Zig, sweetie…. *sigh*

    I had to have a typhoid vaccine and wound up having a reaction to it. Talk about making me sick! I definitely wouldn’t want the real thing. Ugh!

  • Seana says:

    Just an FYI, ctan, idk if it’s me, but I can’t reply to a comment. I’m told “Can’t find the ‘commentformid’ div” I’m on an iPhone outside the US, if that makes a difference. I’m not tech savvy, so I’m unsure. Just thought I’d let you know. =-)

    • ctan says:

      Huh, how odd. I’ll have to test that with my iPhone. It might be something in the theme that I can’t fix myself, though. I’ll poke around. Thanks for letting me know!

  • Averin says:

    No spoiler, but what an awesome bene in my mail-and who knew you can do that with a guitar and it remains playable?

  • Billy says:

    Alright, Zig. Let’s not go all the way back to square one.

    ctan, I have the same problem Seana does on all of my devices.

    • Cecilia Tan says:

      Billy, I’m testing it out now. Seems on the iPhone I can reply if I Exit the Mobile version of the site, but I get the same error as Seana in the mobile view.

  • Billy says:

    All of my mobile devices are Android based. The code it keeps giving me is:

    ERROR:Can’t find the ‘commentformid’ div.

    • ctan says:

      Yeah, it doesn’t seem to matter the platform, just that it’s the mobile site. Well, a stretch goal in the next Kickstarter is a website revamp… (I’ll be launching it on April 9.)

  • Seana says:

    Ok, so the issue isn’t me and my tech-ineptitude….then again, my Kindle had to reboot…twice…when I tried to open the bene as a PDF. *sigh* My devices hate me. It’s not long, so I’ll just read it on my phone. I really want to know! *looking across the room at guitar as imagination runs wild* Hmmm….

    • daron says:

      Try opening the .mobi file on your Kindle instead of the PDF? Mobi is optimized for Kindle devices.

      • ctan says:

        When did you get so tech savvy?

        • daron says:

          Are you kidding me? A Kindle is way better for bringing on the road than a heap of paperback books. Plus then I don’t have to search for a bookstore in a strange city at odd hours when I get to the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and am like fuck what happens next…

          for example.

  • Seana says:

    Yeah, I opened it as a PDF so I could email from my Kindle App to my Kindle Keyboard. If I opened it as a mobi, which is what Kindle docs are, then I’d have to read it on my iPhone which makes my eyes go all WhaaWhaa after awhile. (BTW, that’s the actual medical term.)

    As for Kindle vs book, that’s it EXACTLY! But given I live in Japan, even if I found Harry Potter (for example) during that late night bookstore run, I wouldn’t be able to read it this..and that, well, just isn’t as fun. How else am I to get my literary porn *cough* I mean books if not on Kindle? 😉

  • cayra says:

    It was very interesting to see Ziggy’s thought processes and development like that, thanks for writing the diary! It gave me a bit to think about for myself, too.

  • s says:

    Thanks so much for this. I really needed some Ziggy-time.

    • Bill Heath says:

      ctan, it just struck me that with some selective elements from the first 450 or so posts to give context, Ziggy’s Diary could be a stand-alone novella as with Spanish Nights.

      Frankly, the title that comes to mind is “Magical Mystery Tour.” That certainly describes a trip through Ziggy’s brain.

      • ctan says:

        I thought about releasing Ziggy’s Diary as a standalone but ultimately I decided it was too singular to the work to be readable by someone who has never read DGC. It’s so constantly referential I think it might feel like reading a fanfic of something where you’ve never seen the original. Maybe I should try to get some people who have never read DGC to read and comment on whether it makes any sense…

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