Work Through the Pain

I blinked bleary eyes, trying to see the neon green numbers on the alarm clock from my horizontal position on the bed. Nine am? I must've slept in. I flipped onto my back, trying to decide whether to wake up or keep dozing. Dozing fought valiantly, but my guilty conscience won, admonishing me for lying in bed so late. The cat had no desire to cuddle with me, so I resigned to getting out of bed. And then it hit me. As soon as I sat up, pain shot through my head; a lightning bolt through foggy sky, disrupting the air around it and sending shock waves through my body.
"Are you okay?", John asked.
"I don't know", was all I could reply. I stood up slowly, holding onto his shoulder to steady myself as he watched, concerned, from his perch on the foot of the bed. I reached for Tylenol, a constant staple in my purse, but bending over just made it worse. I clutched the left side of my head, straightening as quickly as I could, and took the water from his outstretched hand. I swallowed the two, white pills with the ease of a veteran and hoped they would work.
"Honey, why don't you just stay here and rest", he urged. Lying down would be nice, but, stubborn as I am, I insisted on driving home. I promised I'd be fine, the drive is less than five minutes, I'll be sitting down the whole time. "Okay," he conceded, "but don't make me regret this."
I haven't had a debilitating headache in a long time. I'd woken up on my left, but had only been that way for an hour. Normally I can handle that, lately, at least, but I guess I'm just touchy. Heaven forbid a day passes without remembering my surgery.
I made sure to turn my head slowly as I backed out of my parking space and turned right onto the street. As long as I moved slowly I was okay. Okay-ish. What hurt more than driving was carrying everything up the stairs to my third-floor apartment: purse, backpack with computer, bag of last night's dinner and a key lime pie we'd made for dessert. My knees went weak and my head throbbed at each landing. All I kept thinking was that I'm going back to work. Erica, if you're gonna start working again, you have to push through it, nagged at me.
"Beauty is pain, honey", is what my mother told me when I was learning how to walk in heels. But life is pain. Life hurts, but I can't let it stop me from living. What I need to do is work through the pain, because it's not stopping anytime soon.