I tell her as slowly as I can, but the pain is sharpening and the nausea is creeping back in and I don’t want to be on the phone anymore. I don’t want tobeanymore.
“Okay, I got it, I—”
I cut Hannah off by hanging up. Her voice was hurting my ears. Hopefully, she’ll find what I need and put it in the taxi and hopefully by the time the car’s here I’ll be able to get up and answer the door and find my purse and pay the driver and stand upright long enough to get my cold compress and pour myself a glass of water, even though that all sounds utterly impossible. Indeed, it takes all the energy I have to find a pair of pyjama trousers and a T-shirt and throw them on my naked body as I crash back into bed. Just before I close my eyes again, I’m aware of Deborah Harry climbing up on the bed next to me and curling up on the pillow next to mine. She’s done this before – kept me company while I struggle through a severe attack – and I’m grateful for her company, not least because it’s silent and still.
“Same shit, different day and flat,” I tell her but she doesn’t reply, which suits me fine.
Because right now, I just want to disappear again. I want to forget that the world exists. I want to forget that I exist.
*****
The doorbell wakes me and while I am still swimming in a sea of pain, I’m doing just that, swimming. Not drowning. Not anymore. The hot tightness across my eyes and around the left side of my head has eased a little. The pain is no longer taking my breath away, although it still pulses with my heartbeat. And I’m able to crawl out of bed and stumble out of my flat and down the short corridor to the front door without knocking into anything.
“Fucking hell, you look like shit,” Hannah says, when I open the door.
I only have one eye half-open but even with that limited vision I can see that she still has her football kit on, her cheeks are still flushed pink from exertion, and her hair is pulled back in the high ponytail she always has.
“And you look sweaty,” I mumble.
“Well, your sense of humour is still intact,” she comments before spinning me round, quickly but not ungently. “Back to bed with you.”
“You’re not going to look after me?” I say, the horror loud and clear in my voice. But still, I walk back into my flat and collapse onto the bed. I close both my eyes now I’m safely lying down again.
“I’m going to administer your drugs and make sure you’ve had a glass of water or two.”
At that comment, I’m aware of how dry my throat is but also how unsteady my stomach feels. Even water threatens to destabilise the tentative return to normality now the worst of the nausea has passed.
“Just give me my drugs,” I say, sitting up and holding out a hand in the vague direction I think Hannah is standing.
“First water,” Hannah says and her bossy voice has never annoyed me more. But then I’m quick to remind myself she’s just given up hours of her time and navigated a decent chunk of London by public transport to come to my aid and I make a quick silent promise to expend what energy I have left on not pissing her off or being the ungrateful bitch I clearly am.
Oh, goodie. Time for the self-loathing part of a migraine.
A glass of water is thrust into my hand.
“Drink,” Hannah says and while I am still full of gratitude for her, I am also reminded of all the many reasons I kept Hannah at a distance when I was having a migraine. It’s not that she didn’t care; Hannah is not an uncaring person. But she’s not a natural caregiver. She doesn’t find it easy to be presented with illness or any kind of physical flaw and I have never known anybody moan more about being ill than Hannah when she had a 24-hour food poisoning bug after a dodgy take-away. Rightly or wrongly, Hannah sees illness as weakness and while I know she never blamed me for my chronic illness, and indeed she has stepped up today when I need her most, I can almost feel how much it’s costing her to “look after” me in this peculiar, bossy way.
Because I want it to stop just as much as she does, I take a sip of water.
“There,” I say, facetiously. “My pills please.”
I hear rustling and eventually the soft slide of the box being opened. “How many?”
“They’re definitely my Sumatriptan?” I squint an eye open again and the light in the room pierces me all over again.
“I think so, although don’t ask me to repeat the name.”
“Two, please.”
The pills are dropped in my hand and I waste no time shoving them in my mouth and swallowing them down dry.
“More water,” Hannah orders.
I give her only a quick resentful look before taking another mouthful of water.
“Where’s Deborah Harry?” Hannah asks.
I glance around as much as I can before the light starts hurting again. “I don’t know. You know what she’s like. She comes and goes.”
