Sarah hadn’t been in Ukraine long enough to feel comfortable with her Russian at the ticket windows. She assured me that transactions at train station "kassas" were still formidable, if not impossible navigations for her. Zoya, the “local counterpart” assigned to Sarah by the Peace Corps, went with us to interpret at the ticket window. My ride home required a local bus-train connection, and we couldn’t have booked it without her. Sarah and I caught a bus out of Berdyansk, her assigned town on the Sea of Azov. Our last ride together was four hours inland to Zaporozhye, the oblast capital. Before we knew it, we had to say goodbye. Then, I’d train alone to Kyiv. After that, a transatlantic flight home. I walked alone toward Zaporozhye Station, into the chill and lengthening shadow of an oncoming October night. I saw no welcome in the eyes of the locals, as they looked out from passing trams. “He who smiles is a fool…” I’d learned at least one Ukrainian saying on my visit. It sure felt lonely in practice. The garbled PA announcements and chaos of train station people were a lot for me, and the stress of the situation blossomed into a peculiar headache. I tried some water from the two-liter tower I bought from the station "magazin". No relief. I tried a “No. 1 Bar.” The ice cream seemed to make things worse. After two bites, I abandoned it, a sad token for the trashcan in the now-dying light. Hoping fresh air and familiar drugs would help, I went to sit outside at the apron of the trackbays. The only open seat was on a bench beside a solitary old woman, over-jacketed for the mild cool. A red and blue checkered “Babushka bag” was tucked under the bench at her feet. “Priv’yet!” I nodded, remembering not to smile. “S’Drasvut’ye.” She scowled back. I’d made the error of addressing an elder with an informal greeting. I wasn’t a fool for smiling, but my grammar was another matter entirely. I sat down anyway, and started to go for the big guns to fight my headache. Headache powder- a truth I’d retained from my upbringing in the American South. Beside me, Baba seemed curious about my act of sliding the white powder off the envelope and onto my tongue. “Sto te dely-ich?” Baba asked what I was doing while I swigged a chaser of water. My charades failed. My powder failed to provide its usual, instant relief. While my headache amplified, Baba kept asking scowling questions. For the most part, I had no idea what she was saying. I lacked spirit to keep trying with charades. “Ya ni’z nay’yu…” I pulled out my passport and pointed at the eagle, its gold foil barely showing in the dim. “…Ya a-meri-can-ets. Ya gavaryut po-rooskie plo-ho. Isven’eets’ye.” I looked at Baba and shrugged. After explaining (as best I could) that my command of Russian was poor, I offered a final apology; one of the few treasures in my impoverished bank of foreign vocabulary. Then, I cradled my forehead in my hands and prayed (in English) for my blasted headache to go away. Baba kept on, but her voice softened. “Ah, America…” Still rambling, Baba laid her hand on the back of my hung head. Deep breaths. The more air I took in, the fainter the chaos sounded around me. Baba kept her hand in place, and the cadence of her rambling softened as much as her tone. Her interrogation had transformed; into something between prayer and the universal consolation only a grandmother could give. The pain in my head faded, and all the traveling in front of me started to seem less like a hopeless calamity, and more like adventure again. Before my overnight to Kyiv moved to the top of the arrivals board, Baba worked herself up from the bench, patted my shoulder, and gestured toward her "electrichka" commuter train arriving on the first track. “Do’svitanya.” Baba nodded. Not quite smiling, she gave a terse almost swatting wave. Then she disappeared into the throng boarding the electrichka. With that, making my last local connection in Ukraine, I was convinced that I’d taken a cure.