It wasn’t pity over his past, either; although that did make me ache for him when I thought about him as a child. Such a terrible beginning he’d had, but he’d overcome it, and his strength was one of the things that I loved.
It wasn’t something I planned on revealing, not to him or anyone. I just carried it around with me. My love was my treasured little secret. He’d hinted at a future together, and we were about to move in together. He was even letting me make decisions about the new place. That did not equal love or something more.
I knew that, but at the same time, I knew this was all new for Dylan. The man obviously felt something for me, or else I wouldn’t be here now. I was something new for him, something he wanted to hold on to. It could be simple infatuation, or it could be love, but I doubted he’d ever risk his heart enough to tell me.
His birth mother had destroyed his capacity to trust implicitly, but I thought I had about as much as he could give one person. I knew for a fact that I was the only woman he’d ever allowed to live with him. He was adopted by the James couple, he’d had no choice about whether he lived with a woman then, but when he’d become an adult, he hadn’t allowed it. He hadn’t allowed himself that human connection until I came along.
Maybe, in time, he’d allow himself to feel the things we were all supposed to feel, that we were allowed to feel, but for now, Dylan remained closed off.
This whole situation now was because he wouldn’t allow himself to connect with me in that way. I didn’t know if he saw it as a weakness, the need to connect, or if it just hadn’t occurred to him that I would accept him, whatever the problems that came along.
My head started to throb the more I thought about it. I turned my head long enough to read the time on the clock on the wall. It was three am, and I was supposed to get up at seven with Dylan.
I fell asleep for a little while, but my stomach was so upset it had woken me up. I moaned a little, and tried to sit up. What was wrong with me?
I stumbled off of the couch and made my way to the bathroom. We had some pain relievers in there, and I took two with a sip of water from the sink. I decided a hot shower might help the pain in my head and crawled in. The part that should have told me that this was more than just a normal headache was the fact that I did all of this with the lights off. It hurt too much to turn the lights on.
I stood there, unmoving, while the water poured down over my head. The pain didn’t decrease, but it did become more bearable. I stood there for ages, until the water started to go cold, and then I got out. After I wrapped my hair and body in towels, I made my way back to the couch and pulled the blanket over me.
My stomach rebelled the minute I put my head down, and I sat right back up. That helped the nausea, so I crammed myself into the end of the couch, and soon I’d fallen asleep again. Though it must not have been for long, my hair was still wet. The towel had come loose from my hair, and I used that as an extra pillow, too miserable to even call out to Dylan.
I doubted I’d be going anywhere when he got up, except back to bed. The nausea became unbearable. I tried to drink some more water, and that made my stomach completely rebel. I was violently sick and probably made some rather pitiful noises, but I couldn’t help it.
The violent actions of my muscles only made my head hurt worse, and I began to cry because I was in so much pain. What the hell was wrong with me?
I wanted to call out for Dylan, to tell him something was wrong, but it hurt too much. The nausea seemed to finally pass, at least the vomiting did, and I moved to the tile wall. I slid down to the floor and used a towel as a cushion, but the cool wall against my temple felt good.
I fell asleep again, this time for a much longer period. My hair was dry when I woke up, the nausea was back with a vengeance. I thought it was impossible to be so sick. I hadn’t eaten enough that day to throw up so very much. This time, I knew I made a lot of noise. I was exhausted, in pain, and unable to control myself. I just wanted to sleep and forget what was happening, but I was too sick.
It felt as if the vomiting went on for hours, and the sound of the flush when I felt like I was done made the pain in my head scream a whole lot louder.
I curled up in a ball on one of the rugs. My towel had come undone, and I didn’t care if I was naked and on the bathroom floor. I managed to find enough energy to pull the towel over me as a blanket, even if it was still damp, and fell asleep.
This happened two more times, the pain in my head increased with each new wave of nausea, and I wondered if I was going to die, alone on the bathroom floor. What a way to die, I thought as I curled up under a blanket, reeking of vomit, naked.
I could just hear my family and peers now. She wasn’t very good at being a Thompson, my father would say. I taught her to have more dignity than that, my mother would sniff. My brothers would probably sneer and walk away, if they bothered to pay attention to the news at all. My nieces and nephews might miss me, but my family, the people I’d associated with before my little rebellion?
I knew they were all wrong; this wasn’t how I deserved to die. I was a strong, independent woman. I was too stubborn for my own good, most of the time, and certain of my own abilities. I was through and through a Thompson.
Right now, I was just a pitiful young woman curled up on the floor, certain she was about to die. I reached out an arm; I wanted water, I wanted pain relief. I wanted Dylan. Even the act of trying to speak hurt, used up energy, and I was too exhausted to fight off the pain.
I didn’t want Dylan to find me like this, and that only made me cry harder. Something was wrong, and I was too far gone to call out to him for help.
Dylan
Emily was already out of bed when I woke up and stretched out to pull her to me. It amazed me how quickly I’d come to hate waking up alone, even if it meant Emily was up already and not far away. I liked to pull her to me while we were both soft and warm from sleep, and maybe kiss her neck while my hands went down to places that were eager to be brought back to life.
Not this morning. I sighed, got out of bed, and stretched again. It was a beautiful morning, and the sun was a bright gold light that spread across the bedroom in a warm haze. Something wasn’t right, I realized when I saw the door was open. I couldn’t smell coffee, and Emily always made coffee when she first got up. It was the very first thing she did.
I frowned and went into the kitchen. She wasn’t there, and she wasn’t in the living room either. Trudging back to the bathroom, I found the door closed, so I knocked. “Emily?”
The door opened a crack, and there was no answer, so I decided to go in and get my business out of the way. I’d barely had time to try to figure out where she was when I saw her on the floor.
I stopped and stared down at her on the floor. “Emily?”
For a second, images of the past flashed in my head, my mom as she overdosed, or the thousand times I’d woken up to go to school to find her asleep in the kitchen or the bathroom, always on the floor. That was when her dosage needed to be increased. Now, here was Emily. Emily wasn’t my mother, and she wasn’t on medications that would make her wander in the night.
“Emily!” I cried out, suddenly full of fear. I bent down and found her warm, to my relief, and she made a sound as I pushed to her back. “Emily, wake up, what’s wrong with you?”
It all came out as one sentence, and my hands raced over her body, looking for any sign of injury.
“Dylan…” I heard her whisper. “Hospital, please. I’m so sick.”
“Baby, what’s wrong?” I pushed her hair out of her face and looked at her. I couldn’t see that anything was wrong, and she didn’t have a fever, so it must have been something internal. “Where does it hurt, what’s wrong?”
“My head…” Her hand fluttered up to her head and then down to her stomach. “I’m so sick, Dylan, please.”
“Alright, sweetheart, let me get you up off the floor.” I picked her up in my arms to carry her into the bedroom. “Let me just run to the bat
hroom and get us dressed.”
I knew she’d die of embarrassment if I took her to the hospital with only a towel on, plus it was far too cold, and would probably get us pulled over if a cop saw her. Fuck, why was I thinking about such stupid shit? I raced to her closet, found a long black dress that she sometimes wore out when she did errands, simple, loose, and easy to get on. I put some socks on her feet and a pair of sneakers, then threw on a pair of trousers, a black sweater, and shoved my feet into a pair of loafers.
I picked up my keys, wallet, and then her. She’d barely responded to any of it and moaned through most of the process of dressing. Whatever was wrong with her, it wasn’t good. My brain wanted to race with possibilities, but I didn’t have time for that. I just wanted to get her to the hospital.
Maybe I should have called an ambulance, I wondered as I glanced over at her in the passenger seat of the car. She was curled up against the window, her hand over her mouth, with her seatbelt on. She had her jacket over her head and whimpered every time I hit a bump. Emily was very ill.
When I got her into the hospital drop-off area, I parked the car and asked her if she could walk in or if she wanted me to carry her. From the depths of her jacket I heard a pitiful voice. “I don’t think I can stand, Dylan. My head hurts so bad.”
“That’s alright, Emily. I’ll get you in there, honey. Don’t you worry about that.” I managed to get her out of the car and carried her into the emergency department.
A woman with a bored face and very long acrylic nails looked up at me. I saw a slight roll of her eyes as she turned away from the woman beside her, and she looked at me with a look I can only describe as … doubtful. “Can I help you, sir?”
“My girlfriend is ill, she needs to see a doctor,” I stated the words as calmly as I could, despite her apparent disinterest. I knew hospital workers were overworked and underpaid, and I knew they saw a lot in their daily lives, but a little compassion for people wouldn’t be unwarranted. I felt like a naughty child who had interrupted the teacher as she instructed the class.
“Well, we need her to fill out some forms, register, and then she can see the doctor.”
“I don’t think she can, her head hurts so bad she can’t stand the light.”
“If she can’t fill out the forms, sir, we can’t see her.” Her expression was dull, as if my problem was no concern of hers.
“Give them to me, I’ll fill them out.” I took the clipboard.
I let it fall to the floor and sat Emily on a chair. I’d snagged her bag too, and though I felt like I was invading her privacy, I dug around in her purse until I found her driver’s license and insurance card. Emily was quiet the whole time I filled the forms out and leaned against me until I got up to take the papers to the hateful cow who had given them to me.
“She’ll need to stop hiding under that coat when the nurse calls her back, sir.”
I blinked at the woman, so angry I wanted to strangle her, but I didn’t say anything. I swear I heard her say “druggies” as I turned away. I turned right back around.
“Pardon?” I asked, my eyebrows somewhere around my hairline.
“Nothing, sir. You can sit down now.”
I stared at her and wondered why the staff in hospitals always acted like they were doing you a favor that you weren’t going to pay out your nose for, all while treating you as if you were a scum of the earth. I hated the whole atmosphere and the attitudes that made you feel powerless from the moment you stepped into the place.
I let it go because Emily needed help, and quickly.
Luckily, it was quiet at that time in the morning, and a nurse came out to get
Emily for triage. Emily kept the jacket over her head, but she found the strength to walk into the private office. I went with her and explained how I’d found her this morning as the nurse took Emily’s vitals. Emily perked up enough to explain how she’d gone to the couch because she couldn’t sleep, had made some hot chocolate, and then the nausea had hit.
The nurse asked Emily a slew of health questions, none I knew the answers to, some I did. Emily answered what I couldn’t and denied ever having a migraine before, or being on medication for it. When the nurse asked that, a lot started to make sense.
By the time Emily was in a room and a doctor had come in, she’d started to fall to sleep. The doctor was a cheerful woman who soon had nurses and staff running around and doing their jobs. A few hours later, the same doctor, a plump redhead with a happy demeanor came in to give us news that we thought was good.
“Emily, you’re having a migraine, I do believe. The hot chocolate made it even worse, I’m afraid. We’ll give you a few shots that will help the pain, relieve the nausea, and I’ll send you home with a few prescriptions. If the pain gets worse, you need to come in to see us; otherwise, you need to set up an appointment with you general practitioner and have this evaluated, alright?”
“Yes, thank you, doctor.” Emily had her head beneath the hospital sheet still, but she was well enough to answer the doctor so that was good.
I felt relieved. Migraines were a common enough thing, but we’d have to find out why she was having them. I smiled at that thought. We would have to find out. She wouldn’t go through this alone. I was already thinking of us as a team. Not long ago I’d have cringed at the idea of a ‘we’, but it didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I felt happy about it.
A nurse soon came in and administered three drugs to Emily. She explained to Emily what the medicines were, and that Emily needed to spend the rest of the day in bed, asleep if she could manage it.
“I’ll take care of her, don’t you worry,” I assured the nurse.
We had to wait for the nurses to be sure Emily wouldn’t have an adverse reaction to the medicines, and then she was finally released. She was well enough to walk out without her jacket over her head this time. As we left, I saw the woman who had initially greeted us, and I made note of her name. I’d have a word or two with someone about her and her attitude later today.
I helped Emily get into the car then took her home. She was still quiet, but I knew that was exhaustion. She’d already said the pain was gone now.
When I helped her into bed, she hugged my neck and thanked me.
“There’s no need to thank me, Emily. You needed help, and I’m glad I could give it.”
“That was the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. The nausea. Fuck, I hope I never have another one.”
“From what I read on my phone while we waited, you may never have another one, ever again. We’ll keep our fingers crossed, shall we?”
“Thank you.”
“I’m going to pick up your medicines, get a few things at the store, and then I’ll be back, alright? You get some sleep while I’m gone, and I’ll be back before you know it.”
I heard her mumble a reply, and she was asleep before I even left the room. Sleep was the best cure, so I left the house quietly. I thought I might have trouble getting her medicines, but the pharmacist knew me by now and only asked me to sign for her pills after I showed my ID. I didn’t complain and went on to the grocery store. I bought a few things: some kind of gourmet chicken soup in a tub, some crackers, ginger ale, and a few other things she might want once she woke up.
I didn’t know what else to do for her, other than provide the things she might ask for when she woke up. She was still asleep when I made it back to the penthouse, so I put the groceries away, and headed to the home office I’d set up. I needed to make a few phone calls and get that out of the way.
Emily was still asleep at dinnertime, so I made myself a sandwich and waited for her to wake up. I’d never seen a human being in that much pain. Some people might scoff, oh she had a migraine, so scary, but they haven’t seen the way it hit her. She’d said she’d vomited several times, the poor thing. She’d fall asleep, wake up, throw up, then go back to sleep.
I’d had headaches that made my stomach turn, but not that bad. It must have been excruciating. And wh
en she wouldn’t let the light near her eyes, I knew how bad it really hurt. I wanted to wake her up to take the medicine, but thought that might do more harm than good. If she was asleep, she didn’t need the medicine.
I didn’t have a lot that I wanted to do, so I went into the living room to surf around Netflix. I found a series that looked interesting and did something I’ve never done before. I binged out on that series like a boy who’d just discovered masturbation and had a week to spend alone.
I didn’t think I’d ever spent that much time doing nothing, and by the time Emily woke up at ten pm, I was sure I needed to find more free time. I chuckled as I got up and went to check on her. I’d paused the series several times to go check on her, and every time an episode ended I’d gone in. Now, I went in and found her awake but in darkness.
“Dylan?” she asked as I came in. “Why is it dark?”
“Because you’ve slept all day, sweetheart.”
“You’re kidding?” She slid up in the bed. “It’s actually ten pm? I thought the clock was wrong and the world had ended.”
“No, babe.” I chuckled softly and sat beside her. “Do you want something to drink or eat? I brought you some chicken soup and ginger ale.”
I brushed hair out of her face and leaned down to kiss her smiling face.
“That sounds heavenly. A nice cold drink.”
“How’s your head?” I saw her face was clear of pain and her eyes were alert.
“It’s good, much better than it was.”
“Good. I still think you should take some of the medicine, and I think you should call your doctor tomorrow.”
“I’m going to, don’t worry. I don’t ever want one of those again.”
“Good. Let me get you a drink, then I’ll put the soup on.”
She took the medicine and ate the soup when I brought it in, and within an hour she was asleep again. Around three in the morning I heard her cry out in agony and went in to find her rolling around on the bed. Oh dear.
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