Elena Vanishing (24 page)

“You dissociated,” Dr. Greene tells me.

“I was circling?” I ask. “Hands and feet?”

She hesitates and glances up at Susan. Susan answers, “Not circling, no.”

You were screaming!
exults the voice in my head, and when it tells me, I know it's the truth.
You screamed like a lunatic. You made a complete ass out of yourself!

I sit up awkwardly and dab at my face with the crumpled tissue I find in my hand. It's no use. I can feel that my face is a mess.

Look at the other girls staring. They're afraid of you now! They'll be talking about this for days. You're a sideshow freak!

The patients are hanging back, their faces solemn. Oh, no! What do I look like? What do they see?

Snot, spit, and chaos. Chaos! You're losing it, you crazy bitch!

Soap and water! I've got to wash my face. I need to put on makeup—now!

I scramble to my feet, pushing through the hands that reach out to steady me.

“No, I don't need help,” I hear myself saying. “No! I don't need
help
! Leave me alone! I'm
fine
!”

It's the beginning of April. I've been in residential treatment for two
months—two months of day-and-night monitoring, endless therapy sessions, calorie quotas, and pills.

I'm on eight pills a day now. They still haven't touched the misery. All they've done is make me feel sleepy and stupid.

That's because you are stupid
, whispers the voice in my head.

I'm sitting at one of the long tables in the main room with my journal open in front of me. I've been on the same page now for half an hour, but nothing is coming to mind. I hate myself. I hate my life. I hate my new body. I can feel my flabby thighs flattened out wide against the chair.

Every part of me is flabby now.

Even at my lowest weight, I didn't like my body. I wanted it slimmer, smaller, finer, until it erased itself completely. I wanted my body to melt away like mud sliding off a sheet of glass, until the clarity of my soul could shine through.

But in the treatment center, they're piling that mud on.

I can feel it forming around me. It's thickening my arms and thighs and clinging to my midsection. The beautiful wings of my collarbones have sunk into puffy flesh. All over my body, fat has swaddled and
expanded me, until I've lost the feel of who I am, the feel of my knee bones joining my tibias and my tibias hooking onto my pointed hips.

All I feel now is pudding—pudding everywhere, under a jiggly skin.

You're a slack-jawed, vacant-eyed swine
, says the voice in my head.
It won't be long till your bloated body pops and floods the room with a layer of jelly.
And in an instant, images pour through my mind: bright red blood flowing across the floor.

Breathe. Don't shiver. Breathe. Come on, now, that's no way to think! Focus on calming the anger.

I didn't even know I was angry till I got to Clove House.

My phone dings, and I glance at it. Here's a welcome distraction: Valerie sent me a new photo of Gemma. Valerie's at home with Mom and Dad now because Clint's getting ready to go into basic training. She has my room (her and my room), and Gemma has the media room.

Clint's staying there for a few weeks, too. We've started texting back and forth. Even though he's more responsible than just about every other guy I know, he has a real streak of fun in him. I love him already. If I'd had a brother to grow up with, I would have wanted him to be like Clint.

Homesickness wells up inside me. Everybody's there having fun with the baby, and I'm stuck a thousand miles away.

Your fault! You're a loser. You lose.

I look at the new photo. Gemma's lying in her car seat, snuggled up in a pastel-colored fuzzy blanket. She has dark bangs already, so she doesn't look like one of those bald alien babies. She pretty much resembles an obese dwarf. Gemma's not smiling yet. She's still too little. Instead she's staring out at the world as seriously as if it's a personal goal of hers to figure out just what the hell is going on.

She looks so funny that for a second, I forget my surroundings and laugh. But then I feel my midsection jiggle up and down, and I'm right back where I started: in a state far from home, in a city I don't know, in a mental illness treatment center, in a pair of shabby gray sweats, in an ever-thickening layer of blubber that is crushing my soul like an egg in the belly of a python.

I glance at my journal and discover that I've written:

I feel so fat. It feels like I am going to explode.

That's enough journaling. Too much truth.

But as I close the journal, a note scribbled across an earlier page catches my eye:

Remember when I told you you were too beautiful to be here? Still true.

No name is next to the message, but I know it's Stella.

The first day I got here, right after I arrived, a whole group of patients burst into the main room, screaming and shouting and carrying on. I thought they were having hysterics, but I found out later that they were just celebrating somebody's birthday.

As they rushed by me, Stella broke off and confronted me.

“You're beautiful,” she said. “Why are you here?”

“Screw you,” I replied.

It was a rocky start, but Stella broke the ice later in her own unique fashion. She's a day patient—in treatment ten hours a day, seven days a week—and she used to bring her own water bottle from home. One afternoon, as I was moping in a corner, she sat down on the floor next to me.

“Have some water,” she said and handed over the bottle.

Ugh!

“I don't need to drink your water,” I said stiffly. “I can get my own.”

Stella looked amused. “No, you can't.” So I decided to humor her and took a gulp.

It was straight vodka.

I gasped and spluttered, and then we both laughed. We've been close ever since. But tomorrow is Stella's last day in treatment. She's leaving me here. Evey is already gone. Evey's insurance wouldn't pay anymore. She didn't want to stop treatment, but she had to.

I take the journal to my basket. When I walk back into the main room, Sam is standing in the middle of it in Tree Pose, with her right foot against her left knee.

“Elena! Elena!” she says, hopping a little on her left leg.

“Sam!” Ms. Carter calls from the kitchen. “No exercise!”

“Elena, come do mod-podge,” Sam says. So we take a stack of old magazines from the art room and sit down at one of the tables, and we cut out words and pictures to glue together into a collage.

Pretty soon I'm having fun. Sam's good mood is erasing my bad mood. But then Emily comes out of the office wing and ruins it.

“Elena, Dr. Greene and I need to talk to you.”

Shit! What is it this time? Insurance problems? More pills?

They've had enough of you
, says the voice in my head.

Can that really be true? I know they don't like my attitude, but I've done just about everything they've told me to. They made me call Mom and Dad and tell them about the rape and miscarriage even though I hated it. Dad sounded so hurt and baffled, and Mom's voice sounded thin and far away.

“It happened a long time ago,” I said to Mom. “Maybe you don't believe me.”

Mom said, “Remember that German psychiatrist you went to see back then? The one who tested you for hours?”

“That's right, Anita's psychiatrist. I remember going to see him once.”

“You went to see him because we could tell something was wrong. From one weekend home to the next, you changed. We would find you awake at one, two in the morning. You couldn't sleep, and you stopped eating.”

“Mom, this isn't a big factor in my eating disorder,” I said. “It's really no big deal.” Because it wasn't the rape that caused my eating disorder, it was being forced to go to the boarding school. But I didn't tell her that.

“I think it's a big deal,” Mom said on the phone. Then there was a pause. “Why didn't he find the trouble then—the German psychiatrist?” she said. “Why did he tell me you were fine?”

“Because I lied my ass off,” I told her.

Thinking about those phone calls now makes me angry. Look at the pain Emily made me cause! I follow her down the hall, fuming and worrying. What the hell do they want from me now?

Whatever you do, it won't be enough for these people
, says the voice in my head.
You're a loser. They want you to lose.

Dr. Greene is sitting behind her desk. She's both a doctor and a leggy blond, which is an unusual combination, and she's smiling slightly, as always. For some reason, Dr. Greene thinks I'm interesting. I seem to entertain her.

Emily pulls up a chair to sit by Dr. Greene. I don't want to sit, but I do. My instinct tells me to prepare to run. What will it be? Drugs? Medical tests? Dismissal?

“Elena,” says Dr. Greene, “the care team needs to move your quota up to five thousand calories a day.”

Five THOUSAND?
screams the voice in my head.
Five THOUSAND!

Panic swamps me. It's a good thing I'm sitting down, or I really would run out of the room!

Emily sees the look on my face.

“You've been doing well,” she hastens to assure me. “You're gaining weight, but it's not going fast enough. We know this is very hard on you; we understand. . . .”

“You don't!” I say. “You don't understand!”

They look a little startled, and I realize I'm yelling. Okay, dial down the rage. Emily and I have been working on that.

“Here's the thing,” I say. “Here's what you don't understand. Here's exactly how I feel. Let's say you have claustrophobia. It's so bad, you don't like to hang up your jacket in the closet, even though the door's open. And now let's say you go into treatment. And your treatment is getting locked inside a tiny box—
six times a day!
”

“It's not like that,” Emily says. “You know we wouldn't ask you to do something dangerous.”

“Oh, it's not dangerous,” I say. “It's not like the staff won't let you out. In fact, they're really sweet. They even let you paint your box
your favorite color. And then, when they let you out, they ask, ‘How was that for everybody?'”

Dr. Greene's smile is broader now.

“But six times a day,” I say, “you have to fold up like a pretzel, with your feet tucked up to your butt. And when you're wedged in as well as you can be, they close the lid and turn the lock. And every few weeks, they call you in and say . . .”

“‘We need to move you to a tighter box.'”

That's Dr. Greene. She's really enjoying the box idea.

“It's a very good analogy,” Emily says with caution. “It's great that you're expressing your feelings so well. But this is something your insurance company is pushing, and it's a reasonable next step. We need to get you to a two-pound-a-week weight gain.”

“Not without a tube,” I say. “I need a tube.”

“You know we've tried,” Dr. Greene answers.

Most of the patients at Clove House have a little yellow tube snaking out of their noses, taped with fabric tape to their cheeks. All day it stays put and does nothing, but at night it's hooked to a pump. When their calorie quota needs to be upped, they get a little backpack to carry around, and then the tube works day and night. The meals they eat stay small, but they still gain weight.

But nose tubes don't work for me. I can't keep them down. I've purged so much that my gag reflex is hypersensitive. I purge as quickly and easily as I cough, whether I want to or not. They've tried repeatedly to place a nose tube, but it comes up every time.

“Then I want a PEG tube,” I say.

I covet Sheila's PEG tube. She acts like she's the queen of all of us, and in a way she is because she has the one thing we all want. The PEG tube is my Holy Grail. If I get one, I won't have to eat. The central worry of my life—gone.

Emily shakes her head. “That's a solution of last resort. It's
temporary at best, and it's not without risks. It's a significant surgery, and it could affect your eating for days.”

No food or drink after eight the night before surgery
, gloats the voice in my head.

“The thing is, we've tried,” Dr. Greene chimes in. “We've discussed it with your insurance company. They won't go for a PEG tube.”

There it is: the insurance company gets in the way again. And I'm one of the lucky ones. At least my company is letting me stay in treatment as long as I need to. Most of the patients here got forced out of treatment after just a few days.

Like Evey. She cried when they made her leave. She knew she wasn't ready.

Evey deserved recovery. You don't
, says the voice in my head.
They'll force you out, too. You're trouble.