13. Nicola
Nicola
I can’t decide which light is worse: the crack of sunlight bouncing in from the window or the white light still on in my bathroom, hitting the mirror and stabbing me in my right eye. I cover my head with the duvet and try to block it out.
I peel back the comforter and squeeze my eyes shut.
My sweaty palm smacks across my forehead, trying to cover my eyes, a pure instinct to get rid of the assaulting light.
At the dresser, I fumble around for a spare packet of Imitrex.
They seal each goddamned pill individually—paper with a peel-and-tear corner that, once removed, reveals a blister pack beneath. The bastards are really hard to open.
I tear it with my teeth and manage to put the pill into my mouth, the bitterness making me gag. Broken images fill my mind from the night before. A flash of the grocery store, then my own face in the mirror. What happened to me?
I amble to the bathroom, clutching my side, my one leg still dead, a sharp stab of pain in my temple. My hand flicks on the tap, and I bend over to slurp in some water and swallow down the two bitter pills, the taste metallic and chalky at the same time.
My legs buckle, my stomach lurches, and I vomit everything back into the sink, the white pills clattering against the porcelain.
I blink my eyes open against the blinding light, trying desperately to see where the pills have gone, but it’s too late.
The drain rattles with a deep, hollow sound as it carries the pills away from me.
I hobble back toward the medicine cabinet, searching for more Imitrex. Another packet, another tear and hack open with my teeth. I swallow at the sink and hunker down to the floor, praying I will keep them down this time. Twenty minutes is all I need for them to work.
I pry myself up, a thought fresh in my mind. Did I take my pills last night? I can’t remember. Why can’t I remember? Everything is broken images, flashes here and there, the occasional color or sound coming through.
Why is the migraine so bad?
What did I forget?
Was it something I ate?
My head presses against the cool slab of the tile floor to keep the throbbing at bay while the drug takes over.
Migraine, migraine, what the hell are you?
Migraine, migraine, go away soon. My stomach heaves, threatening once again to cast the contents of my stomach onto the floor, but I push it back.
I roll my forehead along the tile. Migraine, migraine, migraine.
Die, you horrible migraine. The light pierces my head, needle-like, stabbing.
The sun is rising, meaning time is marching on.
The Imitrex slowly begins to numb the pain, and I start to remember the night before.
She was here.
A stab of pain—agony in my head—and the nausea returns.
Quick relief. I know how to get it. Another packet, another pill.
It takes all my effort to crush it against the sink with the back of a toothbrush and gather the fine powder into a line so that I can lean down and inhale the lot with one easy uptake, the bitterness suddenly down my throat, stinging my nose.
A quick bite of pain crosses my skull before it eases. Serenity. Relief, sweet like a breath that has been too long held.
Now do you remember?
I shake my head, willing the full recollection forward, but it doesn’t come.
My stomach lurches again. I gag, and a terrible heave of bile comes up that burns the back of my throat.
I roll my head back and forth and press the temple, hoping for relief, and suddenly, I remember how it started.
The voice.
The face staring back at me, so sure. So confident.
I remember now.
She was here.
And because she was here, I didn’t take Topamax.
She knows. Of course she does.
Smart bitch.
The last time she was here, I didn’t have Topamax. She’s been paying attention.
I muscle myself up onto the toilet and sit, holding my head in my hands, trying to remember. The weight of my torso like a thousand pounds of lead. I need Topamax. I need to think. I need to remember.
I shake out my leg, cold and dead. The nerves pop and prick inside my foot, ankle, and calf, resisting the movement.
I rise and limp toward the medicine cabinet, blood rushing to my foot, my nerves awakening.
I find my bottle of Topamax and examine it.
Empty. A memory comes back, thick and sudden, like waves rolling toward me from the deep sea: tiny pink pills emptying into the toilet, the tinge of pink on the water. My lifeline—all 120 tablets—gone.
It’s not just the hundreds of dollars it will cost me to refill the prescription, nor the withdrawal that will come during the agony of waiting for them. It’s that she knew my dependency, my need. And she took them anyway.
A slow chill meanders up my spine, the steady creep of panic. With the pills, I’m numb, but I’m me at least. I’m here. I can control things. Without them, the panic attacks and migraines get worse.
But of course, when I’m weak, that’s when she thrives.
She’s enviably strong in those moments. Me, but not me at all. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. She is part of me, but better. I almost believe in her, this woman. As if she can do anything. As if she can survive anything. She was made for that.
So why am I afraid?
“What happened?” My own voice echoes, scratchy, tired, like sandpaper on sandpaper. My temples thump with a deep, stabbing pain once again, a warning from within. She is here now with me. I am her vessel.
“Martha, Martha. What did you do?”