Scene 001
Headache Defense
The fluorescent glow of the desk lamp made Ezra’s eyes water. He traced a line of text on the screen and made a note on a piece of paper in front of him. He heard Sam’s bare feet on the tile as she approached.
“You know what today is,” she said, leaning against the table.
“Tuesday,” Ezra guessed, rubbing the three days of stubble on his chin.
“You were discharged yesterday.” She crossed her arms. “Forty-eight hours ago you were in a hospital bed and couldn’t even speak. You’re still wearing the gauze.” She tapped his arm.
Ezra’s eyes followed her hand to his arm.
“I’m aware.”
“Did you eat?”
Ezra didn’t answer.
Sam pushed off the doorframe and went to the kitchen. He heard the fridge open, the bread bag crinkle and a knife against the cutting board. She came back with a sandwich and set it on top of his slides.
Ezra sighed, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Sam.”
“Eat the damn sandwich.”
Ezra ate faster than he meant to, which told them both something about how long it had been since his last real meal.
“Forty. Eight. Hours,” she said, watching him eat. “You just had a headache that put you in a hospital bed for two nights. If you push like this, you’re not defending a thesis Thursday. You’ll be in a dark room with all the blinds shut.”
“I defend this in two days, Sammy. I don’t have time to sleep eight hours a night this week.”
“You have time to sleep six. You have time to eat something besides coffee and whatever’s in that granola bar wrapper I found under your pillow, which, by the way, we need to talk about.”
He almost smiled despite himself. “It was a strategic snack location.”
“It was a health code violation.” She reached over and closed his laptop, gently, the way you’d take a knife from someone who wasn’t using it right. “Come on, you can panic about slide seven in the morning.”
“I’m not done.”
“You’re done for tonight.” She held up the small orange bottle from the counter, the preventive his neurologist had prescribed months ago and that he only ever remembered to take when someone stood over him. “Take this and come on.”
“You’re bossy at midnight.”
“I’m bossy because the last time I wasn’t, you ended up on a morphine drip.”
“Touché.” He mumbled, swallowing a pill. She watched him swallow it and turned off the desk lamp, following him back to the bedroom.
Sam woke early the next morning to make breakfast for Ezra. He was going to have a long day and Sam knew it.
Ezra woke to the smell of bacon, eggs and coffee. He didn’t bother pulling on a shirt as he walked to the kitchen. Sam had already made his plate.
“Morning,” Sam handed him a cup of coffee and sweet cream, just the way he liked it.
“Thank you and good morning,” Ezra kissed her cheek and she slid a plate in front of him.
Ezra was two bites into his food when Sam started talking.
“You have rehearsal at ten and lunch is at one. No, you can’t cancel it. No you can’t move it. You’ll be resting from two to three, don’t care if you don’t want to, you’re doing it any way. Dinner is at six and no, you can’t be late.”
“That’s a schedule,” Ezra mumbled between bites.
“You’ll starve on your own schedule.” She sat across from him with her own plate. “How’d you sleep?”
“Fine.” He caught her look and exaggerated his movements. “Really, it was fine. No headache.”
Sam smirked. “Good. Let’s keep it that way.”
Ezra stuck to Sam’s schedule because, apparently, there was no alternative. He rehearsed twice and didn’t argue when she put lunch in front of him. At three, he laid down, swearing he would only think for an hour, but he slept instead.
At six, Ezra was at dinner, but still going over his material.
“You’re going to be great up there,” she said, clearing the plates. “You know that, right?”
“I know my material.” Ezra pinched the bridge of his nose.
“That’s not what I said.” She kissed the side of his head on her way to the sink.
Ezra’s defense started at nine. By ten-thirty, he was discussing methodology when he smelled the sharp tang of mildew.
That was the first warning sign of an impending headache.
He cleared his throat and kept talking.
Ezra had moved into discussing the results of his analysis when his vision went spotty and the low humming drone in his head made it hard to hear.
The second warning sign, it was getting closer.
Ezra’s speech slowed down as he struggled to focus, but the examining panel didn’t notice.
During the Q & A section, a new sensation flooded through Ezra, a hollowing grief that threatened to steal his breath and the smell of rain wafted through the room but the windows were closed.
The whole episode lasted for thirty minutes and he finished the defense.
Ezra was in the parking lot when he collapsed. He fell to his knees as a painful blinding light seared through his vision. He forced himself into his car and three minutes later, he was pulling into the apartment. By the time he made it inside, the headache was in full force.
Ezra did the only thing he knew to do. He turned off every light and closed every blind. He cranked the cool air to sixty-eight degrees and laid very still.
He didn’t call Sam, he couldn’t stand the noise. He didn’t text, it was too painful to look at the screen. He laid in their bed, waiting for his own brain to stop trying to kill him.
Sam came home to a cold, dark apartment two hours later. Ezra was curled around a pillow, holding his head. Sam didn’t say anything, she went to the kitchen and pulled an icepack from the freezer, wrapping it in a towel on her way back.
Sam brushed Ezra’s dark hair behind his ear. He made a sound that wasn’t quite words when she laid the icepack on his head.
By midnight, Ezra was sitting propped against the headboard, and she handed him a carton of fries still warm enough to fog the container. Beside it, a vanilla milkshake.
“This is not a balanced meal,” he said in a whisper. “But it’s perfect.”
“This is a post-episode meal. Different food group.” She climbed onto the bed beside him, stealing a fry before he’d taken his first. “This one lasted a while Ezra.”
He ate slower than usual, careful of his stomach, but he ate. Somewhere between the fries and the ice cream the tight line of his shoulders came down half an inch, and by the time they set the empty containers on the nightstand he’d stopped flinching every time she moved the lamp.
“You successfully defended today,” she said quietly, settling against him. “Headache aside. You still did that.”
“I don’t remember most of the last thirty minutes.”
“You were successful, focus on that.”
She pulled the blanket up over both of them and turned the lamp off. Sam hoped the dark would do what it usually did for him.
Ezra shuffled into the kitchen slower than usual the next morning. His body was heavy, still recovering from the headache. Sam already had two mugs going, his exactly the way he took it, hers the way she took it, an arrangement so old between them it didn’t need discussing anymore.
“Feeling better baby?” she asked.
“Mostly.” He wrapped both hands around the mug. “Weird thing happened during the defense.”
Sam chuckled, shaking her head. “Weird how?”
“I don’t know. For a second I wasn’t really there.” He frowned into his coffee, setting the cup down. “It did what it usually does, the smells, the vision thing, but this time, I don’t know. It smelled like dirt and rain.”
“That’s new.”
“I know.” He rubbed at his eyes. “I also had this dream last night. Same kind of thing, dirt, rain, but there were flowers. I don’t remember details, just the feeling. Like something was gone.” He shrugged, a small, dismissive motion. “Probably just stress. Two years of thesis work catching up to me in one weird week.”
“Ezra.” Sam set her mug down. “That’s twice now.”
“It’s nothing, Sammy. I’m fine. Besides, you just made coffee and I, apparently, successfully defended. Let’s enjoy it.” Ezra smiled wide, he forced it, but he did it.
“To a successful defense.” She smiled, though it didn’t quite reach all the way.
Ezra was feeling better. Samantha didn’t trust that.
