whatever the hell was happening to me, it wasn’t getting any worse. Oh, it was bad. My jaw was throbbing, my head was pounding, and I couldn’t see for shit, but I probably wasn’t dying.
The other was the first inkling of suspicion that whatever the hell was happening to me might not be medical in nature.
If you’re thinking I should have suspected that from the get-go, I’m not arguing. But it’s really, really hard to think straight when your skull feels like it’s being split open with a railroad spike and you can’t see.
And . . . I wasn’t sure what to do with that suspicion.
So instead I hoped like hell it was a medical issue and went through the whole trial-and-error bit to pull up my contacts on my phone. Elusive letters and numbers skittered across my vision, but if I concentrated like crazy, I could make out the contacts with photos assigned to them. Since I was kind of lax about that, there were only two, my mom and Jen. And while, on the one hand, I really wanted my mommy right about now, I also didn’t want to freak her out, so I jabbed at the screen until Jen’s contact came up.
“Hey, Daise.” She answered on the second ring. “What’s going on?” I was so relieved to hear her voice, I had to choke back an involuntary sob. “Daisy?” Jen’s voice sharpened. “What’s up?”
“Not sure,” I whispered. “Either I’m having an aneurysm or I’ve been hexed.”
“Are you serious? Jesus! Did you call 911?”
“No.” I closed my eyes. Blocking out the light helped a very little bit. “Can’t see to dial.”
“Okay, hang on. I’m coming to take you to the ER.”
“Wait, wait!” Now that my panic was ratcheting down a notch, the prospect of massive medical costs alarmed me. As a part-time employee, I didn’t have health insurance, which had never worried me that much because I never got sick. And I’d never had to explain the quirks of my hell-spawn physiognomy to unfamiliar doctors. They’d probably want to hospitalize me for my temperature alone. “I just . . . it really might be a hex, Jen. Or a migraine! What if it’s a migraine?”
“What if it’s not?” she asked with acerbity. “And by the way, why do you think it might be a hex?”
“Long story.” I cupped my right hand over my pulsating jaw. “I’ve got a toothache, too.”
“A toothache?”
“I know, I know! But seriously, it feels like someone’s trying to chisel it in half.”
“Okay, listen.” Jen’s tone was pragmatic. “It doesn’t sound like you’re dying. More like maybe you have an impacted wisdom tooth or something. Maybe you’re having a severe reaction because you never freakin’ get sick. Let me call Doc Howard and see if he can take a look at you, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Call you back in a sec. Oh, and, Daise? If he can’t, I am taking you to the ER,” she warned me.
“Okay,” I repeated.
Within three minutes, Jen called me back to say Doc Howard would see me and she was on her way to pick me up. Within ten minutes, her ancient LeBaron convertible pulled into the alley. I grabbed my messenger bag, put on my hobgoblin-cracked sunglasses, and fumbled my way down the stairs, my head swimming with pain. Even with the sunglasses, the sunlight hit me like a ton of bricks. Closing my eyes again, I began feeling my way around the LeBaron to the passenger side.
“Jesus!” Jen got out of the car and steered me by the elbow. “You look like crap, Daise. Are you sure you don’t want to go to the ER?”
“Yeah.” I slid into the cracked vinyl seat. “I’m sure.”
“Are you aware that your sunglasses are broken?”
“Uh-huh.” I leaned my head against the headrest.
She put the car in gear. “Just checking. Now what the hell’s up with this hex business?”
I got the gist of the story out on the drive to the doctor’s office. Jen listened in disbelief, saving her commentary until after my appointment. I’d known Doc Howard since I was barely out of diapers. Even though I never got sick, Mom took me to the town doctor for all my regularly scheduled checkups. He took my temperature—which he pronounced Daisy-normal at a hundred and five—and blood pressure, listened to my heart, peered into my ears and eyes and throat with the bright-light scope thingy; or at least he did his best. It hurt so much I had a hard time keeping my eyes open during