Tales from the Cooinda Cycle: Memory Seven

My head throbbed, the pain was nauseating and I felt as if I was going to faint, or throw up… or both.

But I couldn’t do that, and I couldn’t stop. I was making the tenth free drink for the day, and trying to serve another that I had just completed making. There had never been this many residents at the cafe at one time, as well as the regulars around this time, there were faces I’ve never seen here.

Another wave of nausea, the lights are so bright. I’m sweating, why did the staff put the heater on in here?

“There’s the next one’s drink, can you take it to them please?” I say to the Young Man as he walks past, wheeling yet another old yet new face towards the queue.

I don’t know who had the bright idea to have a ‘Walker Wash’ day down in the courtyard, and whoever did clearly didn’t think through the possibility of spacing them out more, or that because they decided to offer a free drink from the cafe while the walker was washed that I would be run off my feet and unable to keep up with no one to help me.

The pain in my head throbbed once again, it was so bad I wanted to just crawl into a ball and cry. That’s it, I’m done, I thought.

I can’t do this anymore, I need to get out of here. It’s actually killing me.

The migraines had been growing worse every week, and like clockwork they struck on Wednesday, usually I could manage to get through the day by throwing down handfuls of paracetamol and ibuprofen at regular intervals and by spending any break time locked in the closed hair salon and sitting in the dark. Today there was no escape, no light at the end of the tunnel save for the blinding and disorientating lights in the ceiling of the cafe. Every time I looked towards them, new sharp spikes of pain smashed my head, and the feeling of needing to throw up returned.

I placed the newest cup of coffee onto a saucer, placed a biscuit next to it, and called for the Young Girl, then pointed at the patron who was waiting for this drink.

Finally, A small lull in the madness, everyone seated in the cafe had their drink, and no new residents had come down yet, maybe they finally twigged on to staggering them. Those ‘washing’ the walkers were barely keeping up either, it was ridiculous, all this for a glorified wipe down of a walker and clear out of the basket attached.

I looked out into the cafe tables and saw the Old Man, he was sitting across from a tiny old lady I had not seen before.

“Hello,” he said to her softly, I barely heard it from where I was, but I don’t think the lady caught it at all.

“Hello…” she said to him in the tiniest of voices.

“Hello…” he said to her, clearly thinking she did not hear him and did not respond to his initial greeting.

A few delicate moments pass and it’s clear she has not heard him yet again.

“HELLO!” he shouts, lunging across the table in a violent burst of energy I did not think he had.

OW...

The internal laugh I have and the pressure from withholding an outward response causes my body to nearly shut down from the burst of pain to my head.

I take a seat on my little stool in the cafe, hidden from view for a few brief moments of freedom.

“A milkshake please!” says one of the nurses, popping through the serving window and giving me a scowl for my apparent sitting down on the job.

The pain resurfaces once more…

I make the milkshake, I serve the last customers, and then eventually after the same loop of making drinks and bursts of pain, there is finally no one left to serve. I clean and pack the cafe, then rush to a bathroom where I kneel for what felt like thirty minutes, waves and waves of nausea hit me like the ocean on sand.

But to no avail…

I did not return to the cafe that day, I hid in the darkened salon for an hour trying to gather the strength and will to drive home. I pondered whether to leave early or just stay hidden for the rest of the day. I look at my watch.

I could cry, it’s only 12:30pm. I still have four hours left for the day.

No More.

I pass by the front desk and inform a staff member I’m going home early, I have a migraine. Why I didn’t just do this earlier I’ll never know, that stupid part of the brain that doesn’t want to let the team down.

I’m not even sure how leaving early works, but I sign out and go home….

Putting off the pain of today until tomorrow’s bill, in this never ending nightmare.