True Crime

In late October of 2019, I sat in the ER waiting room with a white plastic bracelet dangling around my wrist. I was two months into my first-ever migraine and I was waiting to be seen. I was also waiting for the arrival of someone I barely knew.

The waiting room was much smaller than I’d imagined for serving San Francisco’s largest research hospital, with just enough space for a vending machine, a reception desk encased in glass, and a couple dozen chairs. Between the chairs and the desk was a swinging, screeching door that led back into the ER. A true crime marathon played on the TV as I wilted in the corner. Though I couldn’t bear to open my eyes very often—why were the ceiling lights so unbearably bright?!—I had no choice but to listen to the harrowing stories of unsolved murders that blasted through the speakers.

The pain squeezed my head like a straightjacket. It had taken most of the past two months for me to see a neurologist, who expressed neither surprise nor concern over how long this headache had been going on. She started me on steroids, but so far, they hadn’t helped. In fact, the morning after swallowing the first of the steroids, I woke up to a barrage of sharp, stabbing pains directly above my left eye. Every new stab made my vision go black. The first of these episodes made me scream aloud into the pre-dawn dark, both out of the pain and out of the fear. This wasn’t an encouraging turn of events. The stabs, which the neurologist didn’t call me back about, were what forced me into this ER waiting room.

One of the true crime episodes that aired on the TV was about the rape and murder of a young woman in a public park. The victim had the same name as me and was roughly my age, 27. Had I been looking to adopt a more positive outlook on my situation, there it was, served on a silver platter: at least I wasn’t the other Natalie. I have since wondered who actually got the shorter end of the stick. There are, after all, fates worse than death.

Whenever the door swung open with a screech and released a person wearing a bracelet like mine, I pictured an empty bed being wiped down, and waited with bated breath. The nurse with the clipboard was now scanning the list of names and symptoms. My name was on there, likely with nothing more than “headache” listed beside it. Mead, Natalie Mead. Mead, Natalie Mead, I would chant over and over in my mind, employing my telepathic powers to the greatest extent possible. But the nurse kept choosing people who had checked in after me, people cradling broken limbs or bloody faces. I gathered that I was not meeting the requirements of an actual emergency.

I had brought nothing with me to pass the time. I hadn’t been to the ER since getting bronchitis in college, and I didn’t remember needing to wait very long back then. But even if I had come prepared, I’d been so tired, and so depressed from laying on the couch over the past two months, I couldn’t have focused enough to read a book. Some people listened to music or watched videos on their phones using one earbud (or none at all), but videos made me nauseous and I couldn’t stand the idea of headphones—my ears were throbbing, every part of them sensitive to the touch. Another migraine drug the neurologist had prescribed made me absentminded and forgetful. So for hours I sat by myself, feeling a little bored, a little scared, but mostly feeling nothing at all.

There was, at least, a major complication to ponder: The stabbing pains had stopped since I’d arrived at the ER. This sounds good, but it was not. Because until the next onslaught came, I looked normal, not at all like someone experiencing a medical emergency. Sure, I had slept only three hours the night before, but I looked better than most of the other people there. I told the triage nurse I was having a migraine when she took my temperature, because it was the only word I had available, but I had yet to prove just how bad the situation was. Was I lying to her? Was I blowing this whole thing out of proportion, making a big scene for no reason? Was I delirious?

If the stabs didn’t return by the time I got called back, they would probably send me home to yet another sleepless night. What would I do then? It’s not like I could conjure the stabs like a genie, like a rabbit out of a hat, though I wished I could, to corroborate my story.

Then again…

As crazy as it sounded, I knew at least this was true: the stabs in my head were, somehow, coming from my gut. Each attack I’d had so far was accompanied by an intense stomach ache, and eating made the stabs even worse. So when Joyce texted me, offering to come to the ER, I made a plan. 

Joyce was an acquaintance from church. I’d met her only a few months earlier, when she first started attending Sunday services. This is what I, so far, knew about Joyce: she was forty-something, a lawyer, and from Dallas. (Her parents moved there from…Taiwan? Hong Kong? I always got them mixed up.) I, on the other hand, was a twenty-something software engineer who could find neither Taiwan nor Hong Kong on a map. But when Joyce heard of my plight and offered to keep me company until my husband got off work, I was in no position to refuse, nor did I stop to wonder how a lawyer found the time. Joyce had recently moved to San Francisco from New York City, so perhaps she didn’t have many friends. This still didn’t explain why she showed up in the ER in the middle of a work day. After all, who goes to the local hospital to make friends? That’s what pottery classes and volleyball leagues are for. But Joyce, I was soon to learn, had a gift of being present with people, and of not turning away from the sight of suffering.

Joyce arrived wearing makeup and a nice blouse underneath a long down jacket. I wore no makeup and an Instagram-branded hoodie that had never, ever been washed. She sat down next to me, holding out an almond cookie in a white paper pastry bag.

This was the plan: Snacking would bring on more stabbing headaches, and stabbing headaches would get me through that swinging door. In short, I’d eat to my own destruction. I didn’t tell Joyce the specifics of the plan. I’d only asked her to bring me a snack. I couldn’t afford to lose my accomplice in this act of self-sabotage. And really, what was I supposed to say? The situation was too complicated to explain to someone I barely knew. Someone like Joyce.

The cookie had its intended effect. Looking back, I only remember doubling over every few minutes beneath another round of stabs, and Joyce reacting to the more intense bouts with appropriately sympathetic groans. She held my hand and rubbed my shoulder. 

“I’m so sorry, Natalie!” Joyce said.

“Sorry for what?” I replied.

“I think the cookie made the stabs worse.”

“What? Don’t be silly. Actually, is there any left? I’d like another bite.”

The pain had forced my eyes closed. I felt a piece of cookie touch my palm, then lifted it up to my mouth. After swallowing, I pressed my hands into my eye sockets, hard. Anything to keep more shards of light from cutting their way through the darkness. And then, another round of stabs. I groaned. Joyce took a sharp breath.

This is when the narrator on the TV mentioned a knife found at the scene of the crime.

“How ironic!” Joyce exclaimed with a mischievous smile in her voice. “You both got stabbed!”

I laughed, and for a moment, was in a world free of pain.

I heard the door squeak again. Mead, Natalie Mead. I thought in the nurse’s direction. Mead, Natalie Mead.

“Mead, Natalie Mead,” said the nurse.

Joyce sprang up from her seat and extended her hand. 

“Keep your eyes closed,” she said. “I’ll guide you back.”