The Mindful Migraine

“One last time,” Jim said as he opened the dating app.  He hated to think how much time and money he had wasted to go nowhere and get nothing, but today could be his lucky day so, “one last time.”

He popped a heart onto several lovely lady’s profiles, skipped a couple more (they looked out of his league), and ummed and ahhed over a woman who said she worked in a bank.  Two months ago, he had gone on a date with a “day trader” who had given the waiter twenty dollars to move them to a better table.  She’d been all about how she was “flush with cash” and they could go “halvsies” on dinner, but of course, they hadn’t.  She’d ordered lobster and champagne and then gone to the bathroom and never returned.  The staff at the restaurant were very patient, but not understanding enough to let him pay his half of the bill only.

Jim decided to give the bank-worker a miss, just in case, then swiped across to the next profile.  Kim.  He smiled, “Jim and Kim.”  He got a little ahead of himself and imagined the two of them being introduced into parties for the next three decades as “Jim and Kim… Kim and Jim.”  He read through her description of herself, and took in all the normal nonsense people wrote, but was surprised that she included “occasional migraines” with a sad face emoji.

His cousin Julianne got “occasional migraines.”  He’d seen her crash and burn at a wedding not long ago.  Another time at Christmas, she’d thrown up in his mother’s rosebushes.  He sighed a sigh that was half commiseration, and half endearment for someone who was honest enough to admit to being sick on a public profile.  Jim hearted her profile picture, then swiped back and forth a few more times, before he noticed that a heart had appeared next to his name.  He opened it and laughed; it was Kim.

The double-heart meant that the text-chat portal opened.  To Jim’s utter amazement, an hour of effortless conversation went by, which she ended by saying she had to go, but could she have his phone number so they could maybe organize dinner?  Without a second thought, he posted her his number.

*

Friday night came around, and Jim was waiting outside the front of the restaurant.  As he mentally prepared himself to be stood up, he glanced to his left, and there was Kim, coming down the street, looking exactly like she did in her profile picture.

As they were taken to their seats, Jim was quick, although profusely apologetic, to suggest they go half-half, and Kim was refreshingly fine with it.  Still feeling the burn from before however, Jim kept his order small and was relieved when Kim did too.  Everything went swimmingly.  The conversation flowed, and she had a delightful laugh that didn’t feel contrived at all.  She radiated goodwill and he reflected it right back.

When the meal came to an end, the bill was split exactly down the middle and Kim glanced down at the table and asked shyly, “do you live nearby?”

“I do,” Jim replied.

“So…”

“You want me to walk you home?”

“No Jim,” she laughed, “I was angling for a night cap.”

“Oh… yeah… right…”

“I don’t usually…”

“No… of course not… but yeah… sure… come on over.”

In his mind, Jim was panicking.  He lived in a studio apartment.  ‘Shoe box’ was probably more accurate.  The couch folded out to make a bed.  He couldn’t even remember how he’d left it this morning; in our out?  When was the last time he cleaned the bathroom?  Was there anything in his home to offer as a night cap?

As they passed the bottle-shop on the way home, Jim turned in, but Kim laughed.

“I should have been clearer,” she said, “I’ve already drunk more than my fair share tonight – I was hoping for a cuppa.”

“Tea?”

“You don’t drink tea?”

“Yeah… ‘course… tea it is…”

His mind started racing again – did he have tea and milk?

When they arrived at his apartment door, Jim asked Kim to hang back for a minute, and went inside to check his room.  Couch not bed – tick.  Toilet not flushed – but rectified – tick.  Milk in the fridge and some teabags at the back of the pantry shelf from his mother’s last visit – tick.

“Come on in,” Jim laughed.

As the kettle was boiling, Jim told Kim about the boxset of ‘Twilight Zone’ episodes he’d just bought online, and suggested they watch them.  She didn’t look interested, and instead, pulled an old RomCom DVD out from behind the TV.  His ex, Helen, had left it behind two years ago.  Strangely, he quite enjoyed the movie this time around.  As they drank their tea, Kim laughed at all the same places he did, and sighed whenever he felt the movie was trying too hard.  She even let her knee brush against his knee from time to time, and grabbed his arm, just once, when there was a jump scare.  Jim decided that for their next date they should watch a horror movie.

As the RomCom wound to a close, he noticed she was slumping in the couch, falling asleep.  He ummed and ahhed about what to do.  He didn’t know her from a bar of soap.  Did he really want her in his home overnight?  He almost laughed out loud – of course he did!

He grabbed his blanket off the arm of the couch and threw it over her, then he put on an extra jumper and lay like a gentleman on the floor nearby.

About an hour later he heard a noise and opened his eyes.  Kim was crouched down beside his couch, hunched over something.  His heart leapt into his mouth.  Where had he left his phone… his wallet…  Jim started to pat down his pockets, when Kim spun around quickly.

“Sorry,” she whispered, “I was trying not to wake you up.”

“What are you doing?”

“This,” she replied as she lifted what looked like a tea-towel with an extension cord into the air, “it’s my migraine hat… I must have had too much to drink at dinner… I know it looks ridiculous, but you put the hat on for three minutes and it makes your migraine go away.”

Jim sat up, calmer now.  His phone and wallet were both on the floor beside him, and he remembered that his cousin Julianne also had a migraine hat.  He couldn’t remember whether hers got hot, or cold, or sent a pulse through your brain, but he did accept that it was a ‘real thing’.

“Does it work?” he asked.

“I sure hope so,” she replied, “I only got it today… I had to go on the dark-web and pay a motza for it… the last one did nothing… is it OK if I plug it in?”

Jim nodded, and Kim plugged in the hat, and moved over to sit on the couch.  Kim pulled the hat, that was more like a long beanie, onto her head and all the way down so that it covered her eyes and the top of her nose.

“There’s a red light on the side,” Jim said.

“Great,” she answered, “that means it’s working.  Apparently, the light will go orange in about a minute, then when it goes green it’s done its job and removed your migraine for good.”

“Wow,” Jim said, surprised it was working so fast and the light was already turning orange.  He’d have to tell Julianne about it.  He made a mental note of the ‘II’ symbol on the front, unsure whether it was meant to be two I’s or the number two, or maybe even the Gemini sign of the zodiac.  A second later he announced, “it’s green.”

Kim nodded and sighed a deep, contented sigh, and lifted off the hat.

“Can I try it?” Jim asked as she gently placed the hat in her lap. 

“Sure,” Kim smiled, “I don’t know if it’ll work if you don’t get migraines… but have a go.”

Jim swapped places with her on the couch and pulled on the hat as Kim crouched down on the floor in front of him.  She watched as the light turned from green to orange and said, “nearly there,” and then smiled and said, “that’s it” as the light turned red.

Pulling the hat off, Jim confessed he felt nothing.  And they both laughed at the joke that it was probably because he had an empty head.  A few minutes later, Kim suggested that she had better get home as she had to work tomorrow and didn’t want to risk her migraine coming back.  As she walked to the door, however, Kim suggested they catch up next weekend for another dinner date.  Jim tested the idea of a horror movie and was thrilled when she nodded and even pecked him on the cheek with a whispered, “thank you.”

*

It was just after dawn on Monday morning when Jim woke up with a splitting headache.  As he pulled himself up, a wave of nausea came over him, and to his despair, he vomited on the floor beside his couch-bed.  He thought back to last night.  What had he drunk?  And how much?  But he couldn’t come up with anything.  It wasn’t a hangover.  He thought about what he had to eat, but cheese on toast had never been a problem before.  Perhaps the flu, he wondered, as he dragged himself into the shower.

He texted work to say he couldn’t make it today then called Julianne to describe how his head felt like it was being crushed by a boulder… but only one side.  She listened patiently and then told him it sounded like he had a migraine.  She offered to pop in after work with a few bits and bobs to help, but told him that staying hydrated, cool and quiet was the best he could do for now.

Later that evening, Julianne handed him a box of tablets, “I shouldn’t be doing this, but just looking at you, I’m pretty sure you have a migraine, and this will help… but you gotta get yourself to a doctor soon to get it properly diagnosed… and you know, get your own gear… it’s so odd to get your first migraine so late in life… did you bang your head or something?”

Jim shook his head and swallowed the tablet.  He listened as Julianne explained what the lavender roller was for, the peppermint air spray, the wet cloth for his eyes, and, and, and.  So much paraphernalia for a headache!  After she had him settled back in his bed, and had been gone for an hour, Jim felt the medicine kick in.  To his enormous relief, he started to feel half-human again.  The pain wasn’t gone-gone, but the worst of it seemed to be wearing off. 

He phoned in sick again the next day, but managed to make it to work on Wednesday where the boss chewed him out for not having a doctor’s certificate.  As he waited in the doctor’s waiting room later that night, he texted Kim.  She didn’t reply, and when he looked up her dating profile, it was gone.  He called her number, and the phone company answered with a mechanical “this number has been disconnected” message.

The evening got even worse when the doctor refused to write him a script for migraine medication, telling him it was most likely just a bad headache, try to drink more water and stress less.

*

The next couple of days went on normally enough, although Jim found that he was more sensitive to light and noise than he remembered.  When Friday night came around, there was no Kim, no movie date, no sign of her anywhere.  It was as if she had never existed.  To prove to the universe that he didn’t care, he took himself to see the horror film without her.  About an hour in, there was a scene where the killer and the college girls were all dancing at a night club.  The lights in the club were flashing and strobing and pointing straight into Jim’s eyes.  He started to feel unwell.  First his stomach rolled over, and then one side of his face started to ache.  This felt familiar; a migraine was coming.

Jim stumbled home.  The trip was a blur, except for the part where a passerby told him he was a disgrace as Jim vomited into a trashcan.  He fell into his bed and left a message on Julianne’s phone weeping about the misery of being so sick again… so soon.

She turned up the next morning with some groceries; sports drinks, flavored water, ginger biscuits, a fruit salad where the pieces had already been cut up into bite-sized pieces, a bag of jellybeans.  After she unpacked the food onto the counter, she pulled a hat out of her handbag and walked towards Jim.

He gasped; “a migraine hat!”

Julianne smiled, “sure, it’s not perfect but it…”

“…gets rid of your migraine for good!”

“I wish!”

“That’s what she said,” Jim said as he rushed to explain.

Julianne frowned and told him he was dreaming, but Jim was certain, and after Julianne had gone home, he became certain of something else…

*

When Monday came around, Jim went to work, but reluctantly.  After making several mistakes and bringing the team-pace down, he was sent home with a warning: whatever he was up to on the weekends had to stop or he would be fired.

By the time he was home, Jim’s mind was relatively pain free.  He turned on his laptop and although it took many hours, he eventually learnt the basics of the dark-web and found what looked to be the same beanie that Kim had used. 

Once he had placed an order for the hat, stressing about how he was going to pay off his next credit card bill, he opened the dating app.  He went onto his home page and adjusted his profile description to read “occasional migraines” and then went to bed to sleep.

*

A week passed, and Jim decided to change his profile again.  Three women had liked him, and opened a chat, but all of them had wanted to talk to him about their migraines.  He couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think you could double-dose someone with migraines.  He removed the description on his page, but at the last minute replaced it with “occasional flares,” something he had recently read on a chronic pain website.  He hoped it was vague enough, but enticing enough, that non-migraine people would reply.

When Sunday morning came around, he pushed his backpack further up onto his shoulder, and smiled as Melody approached him where he was standing in front of the library.  He already had a corner booth scoped out that had its own power-point in the corner.  Melody shook hands with Jim and laughed that she hadn’t been to the State Library since she was a teenager on a school excursion and some kid called Mateo had swiped a rare book for a lark.

Jim laughed and used his new library membership to chivalrously swipe the double doors open for her.

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(the end)

Take care out there! Linda xx