by Joe Mallon             

I drive down a double-lane highway.  You know the kind.  Usually runs between towns just bigger than small. No light, dark…, lonely.  

God, my head. The migraines.  The Beast never leaves.  Seven days in a row. 

A river to my right.  Too dark for me to tell, it’s only a guess.  I slow at every turn. I’m afraid of the river.  If it’s there.  

The dark scares me.  

In my rearview mirror, the lights of a distant car closes in.  It’s on my bumper, blinding me. Frightens the hell out of me.  

Cherry lights start to whirl.  The police.  It’s the police.  I pull over to the side of the road.  The gravel underneath me makes me shaky, careful.  The river scares me.

I sit, hands on the steering wheel, ten and two.  The police car’s spotlight passes through my car, flashes the license plate.  It hits the mirror.  He blinds me again.  

The car door opens.  A single policeman slow-walks to my car.  A county trooper.  I lower the window.  Hands back at ten and two.

He leans in.  He smiles.  He shines the flashlight on me.  “Evening, sir.  License and registration, please?”

“Sure, I’m going to reach for my wallet in my back pants, okay?”  I’m careful with the police.  Especially at night, on a lonely road, only the two of us.

“Yes, sir.  Go right ahead.”  Still smiling.

I fish out my license and registration.  He shines the flashlight in the backseat.  I’ve heard about this kind of thing.  Plain View something or other.  No warrant needed.  

I watch too much TV.

My hands sweat, although I know the back seat is empty.

I hand both to him.

He looks at them.   Hands them back to me.  He smiles again.  “Do you know why I stopped you?”

I shake my head.  “No.  I don’t.”

“You were going seven miles over the speed limit.”

“Sorry, I’m not from around here.”  He’s stopping me for seven miles over?

Same smile.  It never changes.

“Will you get out of the car please?”

“What?”  

“Please exit the car.”

He opens the door and I get out.  What could he want with me?  God, it’s dark.  “Officer, my head.  It hurts so badly.  The pain is awful.”

His eyes narrow.  His head tilts.  “Are you okay to drive, sir?”

I nod. “Yeah.  Yeah, I’m fine.”

“I want you to walk a straight line.”  He points to the white line on the highway.  He walks ten feet away.  “Walk towards me, please.  Straight line.”

Like I’m some kind of drunk.  I am humiliated.  But I do it.

“Okay.  You’re fine.  Tell me about your head.”

“The pain.  Migraines.  Seven days straight.  It starts behind my eye.  Then to my forehead.”

“Have a cousin,” he says.  “Has something like that.”

“My brain.  It feels like it’s breaking through my skull.”

We talk for fifteen minutes.

“Okay, he says.  “You’re good to go.”

“Wait,”  I say.  “Can we just stand here?  Maybe talk some more?  Sometimes it just helps to talk.”  The night is so black I can see him only due to our car lights.  No stars, no moon, nothing.

He studies me.  

Time passes. Five minutes? Ten minutes? Or ten seconds?  His silence.  He’s trying to trap me.  Then… he nods.  “Okay.  We can talk.”

We talk for another ten minutes.  Migraines.  Not headaches. There’s a difference, I tell him.  He nods, like he understands. I tell him about the hospital stays.  Sox or Cards? I ask him.  He laughs.  “National League all the way.”  Hates the Cubs.  My turn to laugh.  

“Is there a river by the road?  I thought I heard a river.”

Shakes his head.  “A river?  Why would you think that?”

I hunch my shoulders. “I’m not from around here.”

“A river.”  He chuckles to himself, shaking his head.

My heart beats faster.  Maybe he’s going to arrest me.  I shouldn’t have asked about that damn river.

The dark, the river, the cop.  I hate the dark.  And I know there’s a river there. My chest hurts.  I try to take a breath.  It’s nothing but a gasp of air.

“You alright?” asks the cop.

I try again. It’s harder and harder to breath. My chest.  

“I can’t breathe.  My sternum.  It’s bursting out of my chest.”  I lean on his car.

“Whoa there, fella, I just got it washed.”

“Please.  Help me.”

The cop laughs. “Looks like you’re dying.”  He stretches his arms back with a yawn, then straightens his hat.  “Time for me go.”

“No.”  Another gasp.

***

I jump up, a scream stuck inside me, throwing the covers off.  They are soaked.  I am bathed in sweat.  No police car, no county trooper. No river.  Only the darkness of my bedroom and the pain exploding in my head. My chest heaves, craving the stale bedroom air, scared of the darkness of my room, of my blistering pain, of everything.  My body shivers.  What was that song?  “At night I wake up with my sheets soaking wet with a freight train running through the middle of my head.”  That was it.  A freight train.  Through my head.  Unstoppable.

Jesus.  It was a… Dream.  A fucking dream.  I study the room, peering through the darkness.  No one here.  Only me. 

I hate it.  God, I hate the dark.

I grab the towel I place by the bed at night. I wipe the sweat off my body. I look at the clock.  Four in the morning.  I take another towel and lay it on the sheets.  I grab a dry blanket.  I lay there, shaking, frightened by the vividness of the nightmare.  I collapse into a fitful sleep.

At seven, the alarm goes off.  I get out of bed, exhausted.  I should sleep longer.  I won’t.  Nine hours is enough.  It’s what I need, with these headaches and all the damn medicine.  I want to sleep less, I want to do more.  But I’ve come to terms with my limitations. No.  That’s  not true.  Not really.  I charge forward.  Fuck the migraines.  They won’t control me.  No.  Not me.

God, my head still aches. Arthritis of the head, I told my doctor.  I can’t catch a break.  I reach for the bottle of Vicodin.  I grab one.  I swallow it dry.  

I shower, make an omelet.  I head to my coffeeshop for a cup of joe and the Trib. Same routine.  

I take a long swig of the steaming hot dark roast.  The caffeine, god, it’s like I’m a cokehead.  Relief.  Relaxation.

Then another chug, deeper, longer.  

It is in that moment—after that second swig — that I realize that today, Saturday, I, Michael Nolan, am going to die.  

Jesus Christ.  It’s against all reason.  It terrifies me.  The reality of it.

No.  It’s not rational.  I am not suicidal.  Not really.  I don’t want to hurt myself.  But I am convinced.  Today I will die.  

I stare at my coffee.  Maybe I’m drinking too much of it.  Maybe it’s spiking my blood pressure.  I stand, staring at the cup.  I grab it and throw it, half full, in the garbage.  If I live, I swear I’ll never drink the stuff again. 

I run out of the coffeeshop and head home.  I lay on the couch, my head screaming.  The coffee didn’t help.  I take every drug I have. Another Vicodin.  One of them has to work.   I don’t want to die.

The drugs reduce the migraine to a dull ache.  I can go for a run.  A two-mile run might help.

It feels good.  The pounding of my feet.  I pick up the pace. Wait.  No.  I have to slow down.  What about my heart?   Is that what’s wrong? The strain could be too great.  I’m not in shape for this.  I don’t want to drop dead on the street.  Today is the day I die.  But not like this.  Not running.  I slow down.  I slow to a crawl.

I collapse on the couch, sweating. I should not be exhausted, but I am.  No.  I am depleted.  Slower than a normal run.  But I’m alive.  I didn’t drop like a stone on Prospect Avenue.

Nighttime arrives.  I’m getting closer.  I watch a movie.  The clock moves past ten.  I am afraid to go to bed.  I don’t want to die in my sleep.  God, don’t let me die in my sleep. 

I pull out my journal. I want to write this down.  All of it.  In the event I die.  Someone should know.

The words won’t come.  I am stuck.  Please, no.   I have always loved the feel, the scratching of my pen on the surface of the paper, vibrating through my hand.  I can hear it, a sound I have grown to love. 

But now, now words fail me. 

I’m a positive, upbeat guy.  People tell me that.  I am, right? Always have been.  But this?  This constant pain, that’s now moved into its eighth day?  I see my doctor on Monday. I know she will hospitalize me. It will be the seventh time.  I will watch the steady drip, drip, drip of a cocktail of drugs through an IV, three times a day, three hours at a stretch.  I will take drugs that will knock me out. I will have nothing but a window to look through.  If I’m alive.

And dream of cops stopping me on lonely highways in the dead of a moonless nights.

Yeah, I’m an upbeat guy.  But this?  Is this it?  Is this my life?

The words begin to come.  Slowly.  Painfully.  My hand hurts.  I keep writing.  Each word is an effort.  Eleven-thirty. I’m exhausted.  I can’t make it to midnight.  I put my pen down.   I’m afraid. 

I know what I must do now.  I head to the bathroom.  I must take my evening batch of migraine medicines.  Four of them. One of them helps me sleep.  A muscle relaxant.  

I take the first three medicines.  I pick up the fourth.  The bottle of muscle relaxants.  I’m supposed to take only one.  But what a day.  Would it hurt to take more?  For sleep?  Two, maybe?  Three?  Four?  Maybe a drink or two?

I stare at the bottle, thinking the unthinkable.  I unscrew the top.  

A tear drops down my cheek.

I’ll leave this story until tomorrow morning.  Yes, tomorrow, if I’m blessed to see the dawn, the early morning sunlight, hoping it brings with it a new and unexplainable joy to my life.