In Darkness, Shadows Breathe by Catherine Cavendish

Author:Catherine Cavendish
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense, supernatural, thriller, horror; gothic fantasy, dark fantasy, creepy stories
Publisher: Flame Tree Publishing
Published: 2020-12-01T11:13:09+00:00

Chapter Ten

The migraine started the following morning.

I’d suffered with them from the age of three or four but hadn’t had one for a few years, yet it began in the same old, sickeningly familiar way.

Joyce had helped me have a bed bath, taking care with all the dressings and the temporary catheter. Not to mention the cannula, still providing me with measured doses of morphine for the pain. That hadn’t been as acute as I had feared, but now, leaning back against the freshly changed pillows, a jackhammer began down the right side of my head, quickly rising to a crescendo before I even had time to press my buzzer.

Joyce was there within a couple of minutes. “How are you feeling?” she asked, frowning. “You’ve lost all the color from your face.”

“Rotten all of a sudden. I feel as if I’m going to be sick. Migraine,” I said.

“I’ll be back in a second.”

With the taste of bile in my mouth, I closed my eyes, swallowing hard. I heard the little trolley being wheeled in. It contained everything the nurse needed to perform the routine round of observations. She pressed a disposable bowl in my hands, just as I retched. I struggled to open my eyes, now leaden with pain. A thin trickle of bile dripped into the bowl.

She put the thermometer in my ear, and pressure cuff around my left arm, as my head thumped ever more painfully.

“Your temperature’s a little high and your blood pressure is way too low. It’s odd because everything came out normally a couple of hours ago.”

I opened my eyes as Joyce pulled the sheet aside to get a better look at the urine bag attached to the catheter. She flipped through the notes and I closed my eyes against the pain, which was joined by the shimmering, flashing lights the migraine always brought on.

“I’ll get you a couple of paracetamol,” she said. “Do you still feel sick?”

“Not now,” I said.

“I’ll leave you a spare bowl just in case.”

I could tell she was concerned, but at that moment I couldn’t care less. All I wanted to do was sleep off the banging in my head.

It seemed only seconds later that I opened my eyes and Mr. Waring smiled down at me. “Right. Nessa, we’re going to do a couple of tests to check your kidney function, so a couple of nurses will wheel you down.”

The banging in my head had subsided a fraction but I still felt weak and listless. The morphine push had been removed. “That may have contributed to the migraine, although you used very little of it.”

“The surgical pain isn’t too bad, but this headache’s awful.”

“We’ll soon have you fit again, don’t worry.”

It took Joyce and another nurse to heave me out of bed. I felt enormous, bloated and knives of pain sliced through me. I had no strength and, despite their reassurances that it was all perfectly normal, I felt as if my body was disowning me, getting its revenge for having so much scalpel work.

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