Chapter Seven
I woke up the next morning feeling seriously exhausted. A pain seared into the back of my neck like a heated knife. I took some paracetamol and made my way to town to meet Suki, arriving at the bookshop twelve minutes late. Poor girl was stood there looking very awkward.
“Sorry!” I said. “I’m not feeling too great today.”
“It’s ok,” Suki said, forcing a smile.
We entered the shop and climbed the stairs to the Mind, Body and Spirit section on the first floor, where Suki quickly chose The Rider Waite Tarot Deck. They cost just a little more than the book token, so she paid the surplus with cash, then we went to The Coffee House, which was just two doors down from the bookshop.
I ordered a small black coffee and a sticky bun, hoping the caffeine and sugar would make me feel better, but I felt quite sick and, despite the pills, the pain was now boring into my skull like a power drill. Suki excitedly studied her present, but I had little interest as I felt so ill.
We arrived at work just before twelve o’clock and found out we were both serving on the box office window for the first hour. I could have done without having to speak to people, but I decided to attempt to plod on, hoping the tablets would begin to work very soon. To my horror, my first customer was Dirty Dudley. He stood very close to the window, and I immediately smelled the stale cigarette/pickled onion combo Suki had told me about. I looked at his big bulbous red nose, his greasy mop of hair, his bloodshot eyes, his pudgy face, and his stumpy nicotine stained teeth. I felt severely queasy. Then it happened. I puked up part digested coffee and sticky bun all over the computer keyboard. Dirty Dudley’s face was a picture as I looked up to apologise, strands of slimy sick between my lips. He screwed up his face dramatically and shielded his eyes before walking off in disgust.
Suki helped me down from my seat and led me to the ladies’ loo to continue my puking. The pain in the left side of my head and all down my neck and back was so intense I felt like I was going to die. Every bit of light felt as though it were piercing my eyes like needles. I was shaking and hurling and sweating and going hot and cold. I’d never felt so ill in my life. My feet even felt swollen and painful.
“Do you have tummy pain?” Suki asked from outside the cubicle door.
“No – my head’s exploding!”
Then I heard Kalisha’s voice. “Oh no!” she exclaimed. “She said her head’s exploding. We need to call an ambulance. We’ve just heard Nancy from the publicity department is in hospital with suspected meningitis. It must be going around!”
“Oh no!” Suki cried. I heard her gasp and then wash her hands for a prolonged time.
“You stay with her while I phone emergency services,” Kalisha said. I could hear her high heeled shoes clip-clopping away through the ladies’ room and down the corridor. Every clip and every clop hurt my head intensely, then I threw up yet again.
A few minutes later, a slender, female, dreadlocked paramedic arrived. I emerged from the toilet, wanting to die.
“You do look a mess!” she said, looking at me in pity. “Tell me about it.”
“I’ve been very sick. Bad pain –especially in my head, neck and back,” I said weakly, cupping my hand over my left eye to lessen the pain from the light just a teeny weeny bit. “I keep going hot and cold – I’m freezing now.”
“I can see the light is causing pain,” she said. “Can you touch your chest with your chin?”
I lowered my chin to my chest.
“Well done!” she said, smiling sympathetically. “I’m just going to take a blood sample to check your sugar levels.”
She produced a little blue plastic instrument and held it to my thumb. I felt a pricking pain, but the pain was very small in comparison to all the other pain I was feeling.
“That’s fine,” she said. “Blood sugar’s normal. We need to investigate further. I’m calling an ambulance for you.”
Minutes later, two scary looking forty-something female paramedics appeared – one short and pudgy with glasses, the other a little taller and very lean with spiky blonde hair.
“We’re taking you to hospital,” the pudgy one said.
“Feeling a bit grotty?” the other one asked.
“A lot grotty,” I answered, sticking my face down the loo for another puke.
The women waited patiently before escorting me through the foyer in front of a small audience which included Suki, a pair of middle aged female hippy types and, much to my horror, Tyrone!
The pudgy woman helped me into the ambulance and the spiky haired one shut the doors and jumped into the drivers’ seat.
The ambulance set off – thankfully travelling at normal speed. Had it been travelling fast with a blaring siren, I think I’d have died! As we travelled, the pudgy woman asked me questions about my illness and I told her the same as I’d told the paramedic. I almost felt like I was being cross questioned to see if there were any inconsistencies in my story. Was it not obvious I was ill?
We arrived at the hospital about fifteen minutes later. I was put on a static trolley and they drew the curtains around me. I lay there feeling awful. The light was too bright and I cried as I wretched into the sick bowl.
A couple of nurses popped in and out briefly to check me. Then a doctor finally appeared – a beautiful Jamaican lady. I was pleased it hadn’t been a beautiful Jamaican man – I’d have probably fallen off the trolley. Yet again, I had to go through my list of symptoms. Were these people not communicating with each other?
She went away for a while, then returned about ten minutes later to take an armful of blood – I hadn’t realised such ginormous syringes existed. Then she announced, “We’ve got a bed for you on Sunflower Ward.”
I was briskly wheeled into the dark, dismal, depressing expanse of greyness which really needed to be renamed Storm Cloud Ward. It couldn’t have been more opposite of a sunflower. All the other patients looked at least ninety, I felt really sorry for them being so old and ill in such a horrid place. Then I was wheeled into a private room off the side of the ward. At least this room was a little lighter and brighter.
“You’re not to come out of here,” the doctor said. “We don’t want you infecting the other patients.” Then she decided that, as I’d lost so much fluid with nasty stuff coming out of both ends, I needed to be on a drip. So she inserted this needle into my hand with a plastic thing sticking out of it and I was wired up to a drip.
I lay there alone thinking about the Halloween party in four days’ time. Was I going to miss it? Was Suki going to meet someone there and win the challenge? Would I even be alive in four days? I wondered if Suki had used the tarot cards yet. Had she predicted death for me? Or perhaps she’d predicted that I’d live, but lose the boyfriend challenge. I lay there, obsessing over it all. Thoughts tumbling around and around in my cement mixer head.
Then Mum arrived in tears, which made me cry too. “I’m so sorry baby,” she said. “I knew you looked a bit pale this morning, but I had no idea it was so serious.”
“I had a cider last night for Suki’s birthday,” I said weakly. “It might just be a hangover.”
“Hangovers don’t normally put you in hospital,” Mum answered through sobs. “But I guess it’s possible. I hope that’s all it is.”
Then a tall, elderly, bald doctor appeared. “We’re sending you for a brain scan,” he said. “The porter will come for you soon.”
He’d hardly left the room when a miserable looking bent over old man appeared with a wheelchair. He helped me into the chair and shoved my medical notes into a pouch in the back of it. I was wheeled down a confusing maze of corridors, Mum hurrying along by my side. We reached the x-ray department and I was called straight into the scanning room and placed on a table, feeling like the end of the world had come. My head was inside a big doughnut shaped scanning thing for a very brief time before I was whisked back to my little room on Sunflower Ward.
Mum sat with me, holding my hand and holding back tears. Then she said s
he was nipping to the loo and I must have fallen asleep because next thing I knew it was night time. A dark, stocky middle-aged nurse stood by the side of my bed. She beeped a thermometer thing close to my ear and declared my temperature was normal.
“Where’s Mum?” I asked.
“Visiting hours are over now,” the nurse said coldly. “I’m night staff.”
Next thing I remember was waking up to the sight of morning sunlight streaming in through the window. I got out of bed and walked unsteadily to the toilet –which was in my own private little bathroom - so I didn’t step out and kill all the ninety-year-olds with my germs. I felt a bit floaty and giddy. I still had a headache, but it was duller now. I did feel very weak and exhausted though. I crawled back into bed and a plump, blonde male nurse appeared. “How’s Yazmin today?” he asked. “Still think you’re dying?”
“I’m a bit better,” I said, feeling grateful to be alive and enjoying the sight of the golden sunshine, even though it hurt my eyes.
“Temperature’s great!” he said. “Good sign!”
I was offered breakfast by an odd looking woman with a big purple afro and thick black painted eyebrows. I half expected her to produce a net of juggling balls and start entertaining me. I opted for coffee and a bowl of cornflakes, which I ate cautiously, worried I may not keep any of it down.
A bit later, two bespectacled doctors, one young and one middle-aged, appeared and gave me the good news it wasn’t meningitis. The blood tests and the scan were both normal.
“Can I go home today?” I asked hopefully.
“We don’t see why not, if you’re feeling better,” the middle-aged one said. “We believe it was a bad migraine. Have you had one before?”
“No,” I replied.
“We see from your notes you’d had alcohol, lack of sleep and copious amounts of coffee in the couple of days leading up to the attack.”
“That’s right. I don’t think I’ll ever drink alcohol again after this though.”
“Sensible lady. Well, take it easy for a couple of days and, if these episodes become regular, see your doctor.”
“Regular?” I cried. “I don’t want to go through that again!”
“We hope you don’t,” the younger doctor said.
At two o’clock, Mum arrived to collect me. I sighed with relief as the hospital exit door slid open and I spotted our battered old green Ford in the carpark. I felt so glad to be alive as we travelled home in the afternoon sun.
“Your gran suffered from migraines – that’s why she couldn’t work,” Mum said, as we sat down at home to enjoy a cup of tea.
“I know,” I replied, worried I was going to suffer the same fate. “It’s no wonder Gran couldn’t work - spending half the week in agony.”
“That’s why we were so poor. Still, they can do a bit more for people nowadays, so don’t worry too much.”
“I slept really badly a couple of nights ago, so I drank loads of coffee to stay awake the next day, then I had a big glass of cider for Suki’s birthday. The doctors say all those things together probably triggered the migraine.”
“I’m not surprised!” Mum said. “You’ll have to borrow some of my lavender mist if you have trouble sleeping again. It works wonders.”
“OMG!” I exclaimed. “Did you spray some a couple of nights ago?”
“Yes – that’s when I bought it, I think.”
“But you don’t like lavender.”
“I know. But someone at work recommended it to me and I thought I’d give it a go. The smell’s kind of grown on me.”
“That’s why I didn’t sleep that night – I thought it was a ghost!”
“Ghost?”
“It was an unfortunate coincidence,” I sighed. “Two or three days ago, a couple of women at work mentioned the lavender lady – a ghost who supposedly drifts around the theatre smelling of lavender. Then I smelled lavender in my room that night and I presumed it must be the ghost – I never dreamed the smell would be coming from your room coz I knew you hated the scent.”
Mum’s face twisted in guilt. “You thought the ghost had followed you home?” she said.
“Yes,” I said, my face cracking as I began to see the funny side. “But then it led to all the coffee, then I had alcohol.”
“Oh lord. I’m sorry baby.”
“You weren’t to know. Do you think I’ll be well enough to go back to work the day after tomorrow? It’s the Halloween Party – Suki and I have been looking forward to it.”
“I don’t know,” replied Mum. “You’ve had quite an ordeal.”
Stars and Hearts Page 7