A beautiful mess

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Too many loose ends. Piper felt there were no explanations offered, just heaps over heaps with loose ends. Her mother’s sudden death – uncommunicated – Will coming over, Derek offering her this job, the hotel, the suitcase, the divorce, this case, the toilet situation… she was sitting in the stall, on the tank, feet up on the ring, elbows on knees, forehead in hands, breathing slowly, trying to fend off a panic attack. Why were there so many loose ends in her life?


The pressure in her head was building up, like the weather before a storm gets heavy and pressing, so was the migraine threatening to erupt inside of her brain. As the pounding of a very small, yet very real, jackhammer, she felt the side of her head, right above her right ear, throbbing. Her hair was twitching gently. She pressed her fingers against the vein, feeling the blood being pumped through in short, spastic pumps. The gall was building up in her stomach, slowly rising towards her throat. She swallowed, several times, quickly, to stop from throwing up. If the gall reached her tonsils, she would have to heave… a burp, swallowed and resurfacing again. She suppressed the urge to release it, loudly, and swallowed, time and time again. The side of her head was throbbing faster now.


A sharp pain, like a sudden flash of lightning, nearly knocked her off the toilet. She grabbed the walls of the stall to remain balanced and sat up, straightening out, leaning her back against the wall. She leaned her head backwards, as much as she could, and closed her eyes. It was harder to breathe, harder to swallow, sitting like this, but it released some of the pressure inside her skull. She inhaled through her nose, held the air in her lungs for as long as she could, until it started to hurt inside of her, that sharp, tingling pain, like thousand needles had been pushed in through her chest, into her lungs. Then she opened her mouth slightly and released the air again, slowly, emptying her lungs so completely, she could feel her diaphragm contract.


She tried to roll her head, slowly, side to side, listening to the bones creaking and feeling all the nerves twitching. Another pulsating jerk on the side of her head. She bit her teeth together, smashing her head hard against the wall behind her. Stop it! Stop it, stop it, stop it!!!! The welcome, familiar pain spread from the back of her head and over her skull. For a moment, she could focus on the pain she had inflicted on herself rather then the pain that she had no control over what so ever.

She exhaled, again, slowly, sat up, opened her eyes up. Her eyes were simmering, vision’s blurred. It took her a good couple minutes to regain 20/20 vision, to feel confident enough to leave the bathroom. She had suppressed the panic attack by exchanging it for the migraine. It had been years since she had learned that if she calmed enough to stop the panic attack, she could make her body develop a migraine instead. She hated migraines, but at least she could handle them. She could never, and would never be able to, handle her own panic attacks.

She stood up, slowly, trying her legs out. Her knees felt still a little like rubber. Debris from the panic attack that wouldn’t happen. She straightened out her shirt, exhaled and opened the stall door, leaving the bathroom. Entering the conference room again, she was her old, controlled self. She felt the sudden, sharp pains of migraine dull out and move onto a throbbing, inner pain, like somebody had inserted a disc of pain over her eyes, into her brain. This was good. This meant she had averted another episode. She was getting good at this now…


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