Last night I was awakened by my youngest standing next to my bed saying “Dad, Ema’s crying and I don’t know why.” I hustled up there and sure enough, she was sobbing. I asked what was wrong and she said “My head hurts so bad! It feels like an insane pounding.”
It’s been a long time since she had a headache in the night, but even that one wasn’t like this. I could tell she wasn’t entirely awake, she had that half asleep slur to her speech. I asked her if she could come downstairs for medicine and she said she didn’t know, so I went and got some ibuprofen.
She said almost immediately that she felt better, far too fast for the medicine to have helped. She started to settle down nicely, so I went and told Soph that she’d done an excellent job coming to get me. When I went back to Em she was curled up in her usual “I’m going to sleep now” position, but when I asked her how she was doing she said her head was starting to hurt more, and maybe it was her pillow. I asked her to roll over and face me, and she said that felt a lot better.
Her eyes closed, and I could tell she was starting to drift off, so I took one hand and stroked the back of it. Just as she was falling asleep she said “Thanks Dad”.
“For what?” I asked.
“For taking care of me when I hurt really bad”, she answered.
That made my heart all happy and stuff.
♥