Two coins

"Dad, Dad, Jack's choking, come inside!" one of the girls called to me while I was doing yard work. I threw my clippers on the ground and raced inside to the following scene. Jack is throwing up everywhere, Mom is holding him up right in the downstairs bathroom. I picked Jack up and brought him over to the kitchen sink, Mom followed with a worried look on his face. He had yogurt for breakfast, that smells gross partially digested.

Just a half hour before I was sweeping off the patio, he was looking at me through the window laughing and screaming, in the best of moods. I couldn't believe he just suddenly turned so sick.

We washed his face off, but still it came. Maybe he is sick. We planned on going out that night, that would figure. The throwing up subsided and Mom cleaned up the bathroom while I held him.

"He's been laughing and getting a long so well." Mom went to the doctor's office earlier in the day to make sure Jack wasn't getting another ear infection, but the doctor didn't see one. "He stinks, he needs a bath," so we headed up stairs to give a still very uncomfortable, although not throwing up, Jack a bath.

He was sluggish even in the bath and that's not like Jack at all. He's always splashing, standing up, pulling things around the tub in the water . . . I gave him a lollipop to clean out the yucky taste in his mouth, that would revive him. He enthusiastically started on the lollipop.

After a few licks, he pulled back suddenly then started heaving: one heave, two heaves, three heaves, and up came this mass of mucus, part of which clanked on the porcelain tub. The clanking came from two pennies. Immediately Jack squeaked and looked for my hand, and lunged to the sucker.