Milkshake Hearts

Chapter 90: Inspection

Courtney ends up falling asleep not ten minutes after they arrive home, curtains drawn and bedroom door mostly closed as she sprawls across their bed with a pillow over her head again. Shayne, for his part, finds a handful of tasks to quietly do around the apartment – dusting the bookshelf, putting away some dishes, and tidying up the mess of consoles and controllers under their TV – after they first get home. There is a thread of worry about Courtney still swimming through his head, though, and it drives him to pull out his phone and sit down onto their sofa, thumb hovering over a new message to Pam. They're all friends with her – even Ian, despite her being his ex – so it wouldn't be a problem for him to text her, but this time...

"Hey Pam, hope things are going okay for you at the moment," he starts the text, before typing and erasing the rest of the message at least five times before he settles on something he's comfortable with.

"No pressure to answer if you don't want to or you've got other stuff going on. Someone I know had a really bad migraine (we think) for the first time ever today, and Ian mentioned you might know a bit about that stuff. Person isn't great with medical stuff, avoids doctors where she can, but she had the full spinning/blurry vision, almost passed out, headache nausea etc and it's never happened before. Just wondering how seriously that kind of thing is usually taken, whether you got any golden tips on whether I should be pushing her to consider seeing a doctor?"

He hits send after another full minute of hesitation, immediately shoving his phone over onto the coffee table as he rapidly stands up and moves across to the kitchen to try and find something else to do. He paces nervously for thirty seconds, before his text tone goes off and he freezes.

"Dammit," he mutters to himself, inwardly kicking himself over his own nerves as he paces back to the coffee table to grab the phone, seeing it is indeed a reply from Pam.

"Are we going to keep the person nameless, or should I tell you I know you're talking about your lovely fiancé? 😉" Pam's text reads, and it makes Shayne smile at his own predictability.

"Okay, yeah, it's her... Happened at work. Hence having Ian say stuff about it," he types, in return, watching as it immediately shows as read and the typing bubble pops up. It's a good two minutes he stares at the screen until he receives a response.

"Firstly, don't worry yourself too much, Shayne. It could quite easily be nothing, sometimes a migraine might just happen as a one-off because she was stressed or had a bit of physical tension or something and in that case, as long as it passes, you can probably just leave it. That being said, my doctors have always been pretty intent on monitoring that kind of thing, especially the visual distortion (technical term is aura) and if the almost passing out was sudden. If it does happen again, it might be worth seeing someone about it just to get a more specific opinion for her, and they might want to do some testing (MRI, bloods, heart monitoring if the passing out becomes more of a thing etc) or refer to neurologist (some of them specialise in migraine) to be absolutely sure there isn't some other underlying issue causing it.

Hope it's nothing, by the way, and pass on my well wishes to Court. I've got a bit going on at the moment so I haven't been chatting much with anyone, but I did get the save the date and I look forward to hopefully seeing you both at your wedding!!"

He reads over the message for a little while, running it all through his head, before he settles on the first paragraph. It could be nothing, and she did say she was tense. It could never happen again. He takes a deep breath, feeling himself calm down and relax into that thought. It's probably fine.

"Thanks Pam, appreciate the info. Sorry to hear you've got a bit going on, hope it's all manageable, and I do hope we see you then," he sends a quick reply, content to leave the conversation there as he sets his phone down again to follow his desire to move into the bedroom.