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“Oh,” you say, “it’s you again.”
You suppose you were due for another visit from this one. It’s been all of four days. Last time he’d come in complaining that his stomach hurt and you asked him if he’d had anything to eat in the past, say, four or five hours and he’d looked preoccupied while he counted backward on one hand, and you’d sighed and rootled through your own lunch and tossed him the chocolate-chip granola bar. “Eat,” you’d said. “Nurse’s orders.”
This time he does to his credit look legitimately wan, his face a paler shade of copper-coffee than usual--or perhaps he’s just not flushed with rage as usual. “What seems to be the problem, Mr. Vantas?”
Karkat, unasked, flops into the chair in front of your desk. It is a small chair and you keep meaning to ask maintenance to find you one that has four leg caps instead of three. “I don’t feel good,” he says.
“So I gathered.” He hands over the hall pass: okay, he’s coming from History, a class he usually likes--or dislikes less than the others; this is possibly more than just a diversion from the ennui of being asked to learn things. “What seems to be the problem?”
“My head really hurts. And I’m getting these...weird sparkly things. All sort of drifting inward.” He describes the smooth sliding motion of a migraine-aura sparkle. “And I kind of feel like I want to puke.”
“Right,” you say. “Come and lie down. When did this start?”
“Two periods ago,” he says, listlessly, getting up and following you. He drags his backpack behind him on the floor. It has anarchy symbols in whiteout on it as well as less identifiable squiggles in sharpie and ballpoint. “Pyrope’s been passing notes past me to that asshole Strider and it was like one of them started sparkling or something. My head hurt all day but it’s worse now.”
You pull the curtain around the narrow infirmary bed. You can’t really turn out the lights altogether but you can cut off this bank of fluorescents at least. Vantas lies down without comment and curls up on his side, a tight comma of a teenager, hands pressed to his head. “Karkat, have you ever had anything like this before?”
“No,” he says, muffled in the pillow and his hands. “It fucking sucks.”
“It does, yes.” You sit on the edge of the bed. “I think you’re having a migraine. I’ll call your dad to come and get you.”
He moves a hand and looks up at you. “What makes them happen?”
“Nobody really seems to know. There are some things which trigger them in some patients that don’t do anything in others. Caffeine, chocolate, that kind of thing can sometimes set one off. Blinky lights. Stress is another one. And hormones.”
“Ngh, stress,” he says and replaces the hand. “Fucking stress.”
“Language,” you remind him.
“...sorry, Nurse Maryam, gosh-darned stress.” You smile a little: there, that’s your Vantas. So much of what he comes to see you for is so clearly of his own making, and you wonder if he’s actually admitted that to himself yet. This is different, he’s actually unwell rather than just having stupid blood sugar fluctuations from not eating properly or working himself up into panic attacks about matters of the heart.
Mostly you talk him down. Sometimes you make him tea, or ginger tea, and the two of you sit and talk and you don’t feel all that bad for enabling him to miss this or that chunk of class, which you probably ought and you are an irresponsible care provider, but...you think, really, that so much of it is because he’s so wound tight inside his own head and talking to anyone, even if it’s you, can do no harm and may do much to help.
He’s so fiercely unhappy about so many things. He’s tiny, for one: tiny and wiry-taut and thrumming with pre-rage energy; he gets teased for his weird name (“It’s Indian, you ignorant piece of shit”) and for his height and for his intensity, and since he started noticing people and wanting to perhaps hold hands with them it’s only gotten worse. You think he hasn’t really worked out yet whether he likes girls or boys or both, and this is another thing that is going to send him panic-attacking and nervous-stomaching and probably now migraining to your office, poor wretched vivid inimitable kid.
You think he wants the world to be a nicer place than it is.
“I’ll call your dad,” you say, putting a hand on his shoulder. Your nail varnish is very dark, probably unprofessionally so, and has a green iridescence where the light slides over it.
“Mngh.”
“It’s okay. I know you feel awful, believe me, I get them myself from time to time. The best thing to do is lie down in a quiet dark room and, if you can keep them down, sometimes OTC headache meds do something.”
He blinks up at you under the hair. “Why do you get these?”
It’s your turn to blink. “I’m...not sure, Karkat. Why do you ask?”
“Cause you’re...like....you’re a grownup and you don’t have to deal with all this idiotic high school bulls...crap and it’s not like people are being jerkwads and passing notes around you and...”
“Oh, Karkat. No. No, it happens to a lot of people. But certainly stress can make it worse, and I know high school is not an unstressful experience.”
He doesn’t say anything, just pushes his fingers closer to his skull, pressing against his forehead as if this will do anything about the pain. You know that briefly it feels as if it does, and you rub his temple gently for a moment before going to call his father.
It’s a brief conversation: unsurprisingly it turns out Mr. Vantas has had one or two in his time and knows roughly what to do, and also agrees it might possibly be time to have Karkat go in for his annual maintenance and tuneup at their family physician’s practice. You like practical parents. You don’t necessarily get to deal with them that often.
Karkat is curled even tighter when you get back and, well, look, just this once, you turn off all the overhead lights and you come over to very carefully sit on the edge of the bed. “He’s on his way, okay? I’ll write a note to your teachers.”
“mngh” is all he says. Oh, poor kid. Poor pointy sharp-around-the-edges kid. “...c’n. c’n you do that again?”
“Do what again?” but by the time you’ve said it you know what he means and you gently rub his temples in light circles, your fingers cool against his skin, and you wish not for the first time that it were possible to fast-forward through the miserable awkwardness and intensity of puberty and first love and not have to go through things like realizing that Terezi Pyrope and Dave Strider were officially going out, in the rarefied parlance of the school.
Karkat makes a little noise and you think it’s the good kind of noise not the “I’m about to be ill, please stand clear” kind of noise but with kids it’s difficult to tell; he just relaxes a bit, eases out of his tight unhappy shrimp-curl, as you go on rubbing. Good. You prefer not to be hurled on, despite being a school nurse, if you have a choice in the matter.
“Ms Maryam?” he says, or murmurs, behind his hands.
“Yes?”
“‘nk you.”
Oh, dear. You are so very fond of this boy. “Shhh. You’re welcome, dear. It’ll pass. I promise, this will pass.”
You are not even sure, as you say the words, to what you are referring.
