Headaches

Story

"I thought you were a good musician, McCartney. Now I see that I was wrong! Your ideas are all incredible stupid!" Paul was getting tired of John yelling at him. He had a pretty bad headache as it was.

"Okay, John, that's enough. Please try to calm down," Ringo demanded. "George has been off talking to George M. for quite a while. Will you please go find him, Paul?" Paul left the room, grateful for the excuse to get away from John.

When George saw Paul, he knew immediately knew that something was wrong. "Paul, are you okay? Have you been fighting with John again? Do you have another headache?"

"Both," Paul replied, noticing how worried George looked. Paul had been having headaches a lot recently. He had them through most of their recent tour, possibly because of stress. He had felt better while the Beatles were on vacation but the headaches had returned immediately afterward. George knew this probably meant that they were from stress but he was still worried that Paul's problem was more serious. He had been getting headaches himself from thinking about it.

"Please go to the doctor," George begged. "Find out what's wrong."

"I want to . . ." Paul trailed off looking scared. "But I don't know if I want to find out what's wrong.

George pulled Paul into a hug. "It's going to be okay, Macca. Try not to worry about it too much. You've been pretty stressed out recently and that's probably all it is."

"But every time I think about going to the doctor, I remember what happened to Stuart. He kept getting headaches and then Astrid suddenly told us he was dead. I didn't like Stu! I was mean to him so maybe I'm being punished for it," Paul said, crying now.

"Take a deep breath, Paul," George soothed. "Think about how unlikely that is. And even if it were true, there's a high chance that the doctors could figure out exactly what's wrong and save you. You'll be okay." Paul just sobbed harder.

"Do you want to go see a doctor right now? That way you won't be able to procrastinate anymore." Paul agreed.

"I'm taking Paul to the doctor," George announced to John and Ringo before leaving.

"Why?" John looked surprised.

"He's been having headaches so often."

"How often?" Ringo asked. He wondered how he hadn't realized. Maybe he was too distracted by his new girlfriend, Sophia.

"Almost every day," John looked like he was about to cry. "I'll call you guys after," George said quietly.

George sat in the waiting room of the doctor's office for what felt like hours. When Paul finally returned, George could see he was crying again.

"What did he say?" George asked anxiously.

"He said I'm okay," Paul informed him. "I just get too stressed out. But he said he wants to talk to you and I'm worried he's hiding something from me."

"Is there something wrong with Paul?"

"Nothing serious," the old man told George. "He just worries unnecessarily and hasn't been getting enough sleep. I just wanted to tell you that he might need some help calming down every now and then, particularly since I think he feels like he needs to worry about things that are not really a problem. I told him to tell you if he can tell he's starting to get a headache. Make sure he rests and remind him when something is not worth worrying about. And tell your friend John to try not to insult Paul too much."

"Your okay," George told Paul happily. "He just told me to try to keep you from getting too stressed out about little things."

Paul laughed and cried for almost the entire car ride, letting his emotions flow freely. George realized how much Paul had been thinking about seeing a doctor and how scared he had been. "I'm just going to take you home now, okay? We can get your car from the studio another time." It didn't seem like a good idea to let Paul drive right now.

"Do you want to come over?" George smiled. He had been hoping Paul would ask, partly because he thought Paul would be able to relax more easily with a friend there to talk to and partly because he just wanted to be with Paul.

Ringo paced back and forth in his living room. He had nothing to distract him from how worried he was about Paul. Sophia had found work as a secretary and she was working now. When he heard the phone ring, he was almost too nervous to answer.

"Rich, this is George," Ringo heard the person on the other end say. "Paul's okay. Just tired and stressed."

"Thank God," Ringo breathed.

"Do you want to come over to Paul's house later? We're going to watch a movie."

"Sure."

"Good," Ringo heard the smile in George's voice. "Brian said we can have tomorrow off."

As soon as he put the phone down, Ringo heard a knock on the door. When he answered it, he found that John was waiting there looking anxious.

"Is he okay?"

George simply glared at John. "You don't care. Why are you even asking? And no, you can't see him. I'm not going to let you hurt him any more than you already have."

"Please just tell me how he is, okay?" George noticed that John looked very sad.

"He's okay. Just gets headaches from stress," George sighed tiredly. "I guess you can come see him. He might be asleep though."

George and John found that Paul was, in fact, asleep. John didn't want to disturb Paul but thought it might actually be better if he did. Kneeling beside the bed, he took his friend's hand.

"I'm sorry, Paulie," John whispered.

Paul opened his eyes. "I know you are, John. Just try to be nicer, okay?"

When Paul awoke a few hours later, he felt much better than he had in several days. George and Ringo would be looking out for him and John would at least be trying.

Note: Thanks for reading! All comments are welcome.