Page 20 of Barrett

9

BARRETT

It had been a long night, or day, if I wanted to consider the double shift I’d worked. One blended into the other, and before I knew it, I quietly entered the apartment so I wouldn’t wake my brother. I crawled into bed and let out a long sigh. I was finally home.

A low groan came from Marshall’s bedroom. I waited, not sure if he was dreaming or in pain. Marshall still got migraines, even though he was on medicine. Not everything helped though. Some didn’t work at all. Plus, his insurance wasn’t the best. It was what we could afford since it was out of pocket.

With Marshall only working part time, I paid for him to have insurance. It was steep, but nothing I couldn’t handle. The better the insurance, the more it cost though. And with the money I kept in the bank as a cushion and me doing less work for Jordan, thanks to the new case I was on, I had to be careful with money. I was always planning for a what-if future. What if I wasn't here? What if Marshall had to pay all the bills? How many years could he do what he loved on what I’d saved without having to find a full-time job he’d hate?

Another groan had me pushing the blankets aside and climbing from bed. I went to Marshall’s room, slowly opening the door.

“Mars?” I whispered.

“My head.”

“Did you take anything yet?”

“No, don’t want to move.”

“Okay, let me get it.”

Sometimes, he took his migraine abortive, and it worked right away. In others, the migraines were so bad they didn’t seem to touch it. I always checked with him before handing him the little dissolvable tablet, so I knew how much, if any, he’d already taken.

I found the blister pack in the bathroom and tore off a tablet. The good thing was he didn’t need water to take it. The bad part was sometimes he felt sick to his stomach from the migraine and the taste of the pill didn’t help.

Back in his bedroom, I handed him the tablet and watched as he put it in his mouth. There was enough light coming from the window, where the blinds didn’t cover it, that it wasn’t pitch-black in the room. The last thing I would do would be to turn the light on.

“Thanks,” he muttered and turned onto his side.

I pushed the small garbage can over, just in case he felt sick. He didn’t usually throw up, but I always had to be prepared.

Instead of sitting beside him, I chose the floor. Movement on the bed could make him feel worse. He said it sometimes compared to the rocking of a boat.

“Where’s the pain?”

“Left eye.”

I tried to recall the weather and remembered there was a system coming through. It wasn’t cold enough to snow so it would just be a heavy dose of rain. That meant the barometer was down and most likely causing his migraine.

“Do you want an ice pack?” I asked.

“No.”

There was another medication he could try—another abortive. The cost was over two thousand a month out of pocket since Marshall’s insurance refused to cover it. There were also injections he could take, but that was another medication they declined to cover that was expensive. They stated he had to try a list of other medications first. He’d been through a few, but not all. My brother needed medication to feel better and had insurance, yet they didn’t want to cover what the doctor prescribed. They wanted him to try cheaper alternatives before paying for the expensive drugs, the ones specifically made for migraines that could help him.

If I brought up paying out of pocket for the medications, Marshall immediately shut me down. He didn't want to spend money on it and preferred to take what the insurance covered.

He’d been doing good too. The past week or so he only had one mild migraine. The weather shifting wasn’t his friend.

I wished I could do more for him, that I could take the pain away. Not only did it make him unable to do much, but it affected other aspects too. If this migraine was as bad as I thought it was, he was going to feel hungover tomorrow. Not in the same way being drunk affects people, at least that was what I’d gathered when he tried to explain it to me. It was more of a mental fog, where he couldn’t focus or do what he wanted quickly enough. Like his brain wasn’t back to fully functioning yet. The pain would be gone, but the side effects from the migraine would linger.

Since I couldn’t do anything, I stayed on the floor and was ready to jump in at a moment’s notice. I also watched the clock. At the two-hour mark, I could give him another dissolvable tablet to help with the pain.

When I heard his soft snores, I quietly stood to retrieve my phone from my bedroom and tiptoed into his room to sit on the floor once more. I really should get a chair for in here.

Opening the bank’s app on my phone, I checked the balance in my savings accounts. One was the money I was able to put aside from work. The other was Jordan’s money. The money that helped me save what I could and save for those what-if scenarios.

Yes, Jordan paid me well, but it wasn’t steady. It was sporadic as hell and more when shit went sideways. For instance, when Vail was being held by his crazy-ass ex, and I helped stage the scene of bloodshed and kept the heat off Jordan. I got a nice lump sum for that. Of course, that was when my car decided it had enough of running and needed more repairs than it was worth. So, some of the money went to a car. Not a new one, but a decent one. A car to get me where I needed to go and didn’t have over two hundred thousand miles on it.

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