Migraine
By Lauren
Disclaimer: I do not own the Thunderbirds, nor am I making any money with this.
He finished scrubbing the shiny red pointed top of Thunderbird One with a heavy, pain filled sigh. Alan Tracy had not meant to spray the top of Scott's bird with mud, honestly; but it had happened and Scott had looked like he was going to spit fire when it did, accident or not. It was not Alan's fault Scott had set Thunderbird One down at the bottom of a tall hill, in an area that had just had three days of heavy rain that had caused massive flooding. The place had been nothing but mud!
As Alan had sat staring out the window of the passenger seat in Thunderbird Two, while Virgil carefully landed her on top of said hill, that he had first noticed the headache starting. Since then, it had only been building, not even lessening after the rescue had been successfully completed several hours later. In typical Alan style, he had chosen to just ride it out with out any aid of the little green pain relieving pills in the birds first aid kits. They almost always went away on their own after a few hours, only this one was not going away at all, in fact it seemed to only be getting worse.
Every time he bent down now the pain tripled, if that were even possible, so it was a massive relief to finally be done cleaning Scott's "Bird" as that had required a lot of bending. Alan stepped out of the giant hanger into the bright sunny outdoors, intending on the shortest route to his room, but stopped immediately upon entering the blinding glare of the overly bright sun. A vicious stabbing pain slammed in to his head at seemingly every spot. He quickly stepped back into the dim hanger with a painful moan that sounded more like a cry, trying desperately to relieve the enormous pain. It went down slightly in the darkened building, but suddenly even the hanger was to bright.
Alan felt a hot, stinging, sour bile come up, he quickly fought it back down before he would have yet another mess to clean up. Slowly he made his way, the long way; through the large house his sweaty hands shielding his eyes as he slowly, leaning against walls; made his way to his room.
He could smell dinner, grandma's wonderful cooking wafting through the multiple story home, an occurrence that normally made your stomach growl with hunger and without will your feet would take you straight to the kitchen. Today it had the opposite affect for Alan, his stomach flipped, nose wrinkled in an attempt to stop the smell, then the nasty bile reappeared. He fought it back down once more, this time it was much harder to do; he put his hand over his nose and mouth in an attempt to stop the smells from getting in.
Alan slowly stumbled into his large bedroom not even bothering to shut his door, that would take to much time and effort and he only had one thing on his mind besides the pain, pain reliever. He opened his medicine cabinet and grabbed the red bottle with green writing, almost dropping it to the floor when it touched his sweaty hands. He eyed it's child proof lid insidiously, he had trouble lining up the arrow with the dot perfectly on good days, now he was almost seeing double.
The time and effort it took to open the stupid pill bottle brought tears of pure pain to his eyes, he had, had to turn on the blinding bathroom light to see the little dot on the bottle only making the pain even worse. Finally the top opened, flipping through the air and on to the floor somewhere in his room, he didn't bother looking for it, instead eying the bottle of green pills in the bottle. His head was telling him to take as much as he could to relieve the stabbing pain jumping around his head, surly one or two pills would not be enough. He settled for three, his mind telling him that he wanted the pain to go away, not to kill himself. Though that option was looking brighter by the second as the pain somehow increased even more, he was beginning to become convinced that it was possible for your head to actually explode. Wouldn't that be a sight for his family to walk in too.
Alan grabbed the empty trashcan that normally sat beside his messy desk, even though the brief second of bending over to pick it up nearly did him in; and dropped in beside his bed as he laid down. He was dismayed to find that this did not help the pain at all but only seemed to make it worse still, there was no way however that he was getting back up.
Soon the only thing he could think about was the pain and how much he wanted it gone. Another wave of bile appeared, this time he didn't even have the strength to force it back down. Rolling over he let the acidic bile come out into the red trash can. He would have been thinking about how thankful he was that he had thought to bring the can with him, however vomiting was causing a much worse pain then he had ever known before, so the thought never even came to his mind. After letting go of both breakfast and lunch he dry heaved in agony for a few minutes, tears unknowingly running down his cheeks. Wiping his face with his sleeve he rolled back over burying his face in his pillow sobbing in utter agony.
He had no idea how long he had been laying there, it felt like years. All he knew was that the pain was not even abating to a bearable level. The thought that he should go take more pain reliever crossed his mind but he didn't move and inch in fear of making the headache even worse. He heard a voice calling his name down the hall and even though the voice was still fairly far away it still sent more daggers into his brain. He kept mumbling 'shhhh' but the voice only seemed to be getting louder. Tears reappeared in Alan's eyes as the voice spoke from right above him.
"Alan?" It was Scott's voice and it sounded like he was yelling. Another sob racked his body and he missed the frantic calls for help his bother made. He was unaware of his family plus Brains filling his large room until someone tried to move him. Suddenly more bile rose, only he had nothing left in him. He began to dry heave once again much to his horror. He felt wonderfully cool hands holding his forehead. He heard someone asking him what hurt and tried to mumble out head but was not sure if he had made a coherent word. Someone seemed to understand however as suddenly there was a pinch in his arm as a needle was put in, something was injected and his whole body went blissfully numb. Alan sighed in relief as his body went limp against his fathers arms who was now holding him up. He heard the word migraine before he fell into a wonderfully drugged sleep.
When Alan woke again, blissfully pain free; he was surprised to be laying in his own bed which now had clean sheets and a freshly laundered blanket. He had somehow gotten out of his muddy uniform and into his pajamas and the soiled trashcan was nowhere in site. Sitting in an arm chair, that had not been there before; beside him was his father sound asleep, his head tilted in an odd angle that would no doubt hurt later. Alan looked out the window to see if it was day or night only to see Scott's silhouette against the brightness of a full moon, night sky.
"You okay Scott?" Alan croaked out in a loud whisper. Scott turned quickly and grinned.
"I should be asking you that, you scared the crap out of us." Scott stated quietly as he walked up to the bed, sitting at the end of it.
"Sorry, what happened?" Alan asked.
"You had a monster migraine. Brains gave you a powerful pain reliever, then took you to the infirmary to give you a brain scan. It showed us just how bad it was. When Brains described what you must have been feeling it had given me a headache." Scott looked worried.
"Have you ever had a headache like that before?" Their fathers voice startled them. Alan looked over at him and shook his head.
"Nothing like that one. I've had some bad once that made me nauseous and a bit light sensitive before but it's never gotten that bad." Alan answered relieved beyond belief that it was over. Jeff nodded.
"Lucy used to get them. She carried a bottle of extra strength migraine pills with her everywhere she went. She found that if she took them at the first signs of pain, she could avoid them all together for the most part. They say it's heredity, I'm surprised you're the only one who has gotten them so far." Alan nodded not liking the fact that he was more then likely going to have more of these in the future.
"Brains is going to the mainland to get you a prescription migraine medication. I want you to carry them with you at all times." Jeff stated sternly. Alan nodded with a sigh, already trying to figure out where in the world he was going to keep them in his IR uniform. Scott seemed to read his mind.
"Brains is also creating a pocket in your uniform for you to store at least a few pills. We might just end up placing a bottle in all the Birds first aid kits as well." Alan nodded, he hated that everyone was going to so much trouble over him, but just remembering the pain stopped him from saying anything.
"Thanks." Alan stated sincerely.
"No problem Sprout." Scott grinned widely.
"And don't call me Sprout." Alan mumbled out of shear habit, before smiling still relieved at the lack of pain and a family that loved and would watch out for him.