The Mindful Migraine

Helen slapped the alarm into silence, then leapt out of bed.  In the shower, her mind roved over her wardrobe as she picked out the blouse and skirt she would wear to work.  She deliberated on whether to wear stockings or not.  “Not,” she said to herself as she remembered it was meant to be a warm day. 

For the rest of the morning, she followed the exact same routine she did every work-morning, right down to blowing herself a kiss in the apartment’s hall mirror before turning to the front door to leave.  She stopped and turned back.  There under her right eye was the hint of a dark smudge.  She leaned closer.  It looked like she’d been out on a bender last night.  “Well,” she giggled, “half my head went out.”

She sighed, and as quickly as she could, she grabbed her concealer out of her handbag and dabbed it under her eye, mindful that time was tight if she was going to make the train.

Soon after, she walked through the sliding doors of her office, smiling at the new receptionist who gave her an uncertain smile in return.  Pushing her bag under her desk with her high-heeled foot, Helen raised her eyebrows at her friend Layla and tipped her head towards the kitchen to say “coffee?”  Layla narrowed her eyes but nodded.

Once in the kitchen, Layla grabbed Helen by the shoulders and whispered, “what on earth happened to you?”

“Nothing?  Why?”

Layla scowled and waved her hand in circles around and around her eye and cheek area.

Helen shrugged and let herself be dragged into the staff bathroom.  In her reflection, Helen saw that the smudge under her eye was back.  Worse.  She now looked like she had a black eye.  There was no puffiness, but the area all around her right eye was a motley purply-blue. 

“I swear I feel fine” she said to Layla’s reflection, “honestly!  I watched rubbish TV last night and crashed early.  It’s not what it looks like…” 

Hanging her head, Helen scurried back to her desk, grabbed her handbag, and returned to the bathroom.  She applied more makeup, laughing at Layla’s frown, then went back to her desk.  The makeup didn’t seem to help.  She became increasingly aware that people were whispering about her behind their hands.  Less than an hour had passed when her boss approached her, and as casually as possible suggested Helen might like the day off. 

“I’m OK,” Helen replied, “I’m not sure what’s happening, but there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m as fit as a fiddle and super-psyched to punch out that report and…”

“Home or doctors,” the boss interjected, “and don’t come back until you’re… ready.”

Helen sighed and poked her toes through the straps of her handbag and dragged it out from under the table.  She picked up her bag and headed for the door, doing her best not to make eye contact with anyone.  She wondered why her boss had suggested the doctors.

On the train home, Helen noticed more people checking her out.  Their eyes swept her up and down, but not in a creepy or predatory way.  Everyone seemed worried.  Helen noticed that one woman looked positively distressed.  Glancing down at herself, Helen realized with horror that the “bruises” that had been on the right side of her face seemed to have bloomed on her right arm and right leg.  She stared at the one near her elbow and realized it looked exactly like a finger mark.  She pushed down on it… hard.  It didn’t hurt and when she lifted her finger away it changed color the way sunburnt skin does, going from pale to dark before her eyes.  “Hmph,” she said, “strange.”

Helen got off at the next train stop and made her way to the new doctor she’d recently switched to after the old one had become too… handsy.  The elderly lady behind the front counter didn’t even look up from the paperwork she was leaning over as she said, “we’re absolutely full to the flippin’ brim today, and, surprise, surprise, the doctor is running late, so… maybe call for an appointment and…”  The lady froze.  After staring hard at Helen for several heartbeats, she eventually said, “go on through,” and waved Helen down the hall towards her consultation room.

To Helen’s surprise, none of the frazzled patients slouching in their waiting room seats said a word.  As she turned to follow the doctor down the corridor, Helen noticed that the receptionist nearly dropped her cup of tea as she returned to the counter.  “Free pass,” Helen laughed uncomfortably as the woman quickly shut her gaping mouth.

As soon as the doctor shut the door behind Helen, she reached over and lifted Helen’s short sleeve up for a better look at her forearm.  The doctor muttered “may I?” as she pulled the neck of Helen’s blouse sideways to peer at her chest.  She folded at the waist to lean down to look at Helen’s knee.  She even used a timber popsicle stick to poke a few of the dark splotches.

“I feel fine,” Helen said, “honestly, I feel completely normal.  I haven’t done anything, or gone anywhere, or met anyone, or…”

“Car crash,” the doctor said, “or sky diving accident… maybe…”

Helen laughed, “no!  Reality TV on the couch last night, and gluten free cereal for breakfast, then the train to work.  I never do anything crazy… ever.”

The doctor frowned for a second and then picked up the phone on her desk, “could you please call Anne Bo for me,” she said, then hung up.  Before Helen could wonder what Anne had to do with anything, the doctor was asking questions: “stomach-ache?  Headache?  Fever?”

“Nothing.  I swear, I feel exactly like I do every day, I’m just… blotchy.”

Only she wasn’t ‘blotchy’ anymore.  Helen glanced down and realized that the fingerprints that had been up and down her arm and leg had grown larger, and more numerous.  They had merged.  One half of her body was now almost entirely blacky-blue, while the other half of her body was her usual lily-white.  She held her two hands up in front of her face and turned them this way that.  They looked as if they belonged to two completely different people.

“I look so different,” Helen said, “but hand on heart, I feel no different.”

The doctor poked and prodded her a bit more, taking Helen’s blood pressure and temperature, making notes all the time.  A few minutes later, the doctor’s head tipped to one side, and she froze again.  A second later, Helen heard a wailing siren cutoff abruptly.  There was some sort of commotion in the waiting room.  Someone knocked on the door, and when the doctor opened it, Helen saw two paramedics standing outside.

The nearest ambulance driver gasped dramatically as he rushed to pull a mask out of his pocket.  His colleague quickly did the same.  Now it was the doctor’s turn to gasp dramatically.  She rushed to tear open a packet of disposable masks, dropping several on the floor in her rush to strap one to her face.

Helen debated whether to make a run for it, but she was genuinely curious to figure out why half her body was changing color, so she decided going to hospital might be a good idea.  “I can walk,” she said as she stepped toward the door.  The paramedics leaned backwards as strange sounds escaped from behind their masks.  “Or I can ride on your wheely-bed-thing,” she sighed.

On the way to the hospital, Helen started remembering all the stories she’d heard on the news about people passing away in the back of an ambulance due to the overcrowding and underfunding of local hospitals.  She almost laughed out loud at the idea of dying from starvation when she didn’t even feel sick.  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and did a meditational body scan.  She really did feel fine.  From the tips of her toes to the top of her head, she felt absolutely, one hundred percent, perfectly fine.

While she was scanning her head she thought of her twin brother.  From the time he was 11 he’d been getting migraines.  They always, always, started in his right eye and then progressed across the rest of his face.  His right eye.  She tried to sit up.  The paramedic beside her, who was now wearing a full HAZMAT suit, pushed her gently, yet assertively, back down.

“I have to call my brother,” Helen said, “he’s my twin… sometimes twins share issues… they have reciprocal pain… maybe he’s in trouble…”

The paramedic nodded and muttered some form of assurance which was lost in the chaos of the hospital driveway.  Helen almost laughed again when she felt herself being whisked out of the van and into the hospital.  “So much for waiting,” she said, as moments later she found herself in a sterile white room with plastic sheets and tubing draping from the ceiling. 

There were three medics in the small room, all fussing over her as they stood her up in the middle of the room.  All of them were suited-up and Helen recognized she was in some form of quarantine.

“I want to call my brother,” Helen said to these people, trying to make eye contact with them through their full facemasks, “he gets migraines, and I’m worried about him.  He gets so sick, and his meds don’t always work… his insurance doesn’t cover the new treatments… he misses so much work… his mortgage is at risk… please…”

One of the medical staff, nodded their plastic head at her.  Helen thought it was a woman, but she wasn’t sure.  The medic began to help Helen get out of her work clothes and into a hospital gown.  As she was getting changed, Helen noticed that the division between her normal and bruised side, the light and dark, was a straight line that ran exactly down the middle of her body.  She couldn’t see her own face, but she assumed from the way they were all staring at her, that the neat dividing line which she could see on her chest and belly undoubtedly continued up and onto her face.  She briefly wondered if they would shave her hair off to see if the line went over her scalp. 

“I need to call my brother,” she said again, louder this time, “I look bad, but I feel perfectly fine, but my brother, he looks fine but feels terrible.  They’re hemiplegic migraines.  You know?  The ones where you look and act like you’ve had a mini-stroke and one half of your body becomes paralyzed?”

The lady next to Helen spun her around and tied the hospital gown across Helen’s back.  Even though it was embarrassingly loose, Helen had the uncanny feeling she was being strapped into a lunatic’s jacket.  “I refuse,” she almost screamed, “to assist you any further until…”

“We’re trying to get through to him,” said a voice that seemed to come down from the ceiling, “we’re just having some trouble reaching him; perhaps he’s sleeping.”

Helen nodded and calmed down a little bit.  When she saw someone removing a towel off what looked like a tray of medieval torture instruments, she panicked again, “you don’t get to run any tests on me until I speak to him.  I won’t be your guineapig until then.  Did you know there’s a billion people around the globe that get migraines?  It’s one of the most disabling diseases known to man, but there’s almost no research funding.  It’s a disgrace quite frankly.  Here I am, feeling fine and you’re throwing who knows what mountain of cash at me just because I look quirky, but he has these near-death experiences and… nothing.  He gets no help at all!”

“We have him on the line,” the voice from the ceiling said, “but you need to be brief; experts are on their way, and we need to run some tests.”

“Ok, ok,” Helen said desperately as she reached for the handset that someone was holding out to her.

“Hello, hello?” Helen said into the phone.

“Yeah, I’m here,” the voice of her brother replied slowly.  Helen scrunched up her eyes in dismay; her brother was sick with migraine.  She could hear it in his voice.  It was a bad one.

“I’ve been trying to get them to listen to your story… to pay attention.  Are you OK?”

“Oh Hel…”

There was a long pause, and Helen realized someone at the hospital had disconnected the line, whilst someone else was tugging her towards the bed.

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Take care taking care people, Linda xx

[PS – if you want more short stories, all 13 are in the ebook here: GOTHIC]