Elena Vanishing (6 page)

Now my nose hurts deep inside, and the back of my throat
hurts. My forehead is aching, too. I touch it and discover a big tender lump between my eyes.

Careful of the tube, I continue searching the bed. My glasses! Where are my glasses?

A hazy, faceless blob floats into the twilit room and comes close enough that I can identify it as a nurse.

“Do you have my glasses?” I ask.

“So you've had enough of being a drama queen,” she says. “Stunts like that aren't going to get you anywhere! You're off to a great start, trying to cheat the minute you arrive. Well, breaking rules isn't going to work out anymore, I can tell you that.”

This makes me feel bad for a minute. She's right, I did break the rules. And I've always been the good girl, the one teachers love. How did that good girl end up in prison?

“Do you have my glasses?” I ask with a little more humility.

“So she's stopped her charade,” says a man's voice, and another blob floats through the door. I parse this one out to be a doctor with a stethoscope around his neck. He comes close enough that I can read the name on his coat. It isn't Drew Center. I'm in a hospital emergency room. My heart lifts briefly. I work in an ER like this.

“You know what this has been?” says the doctor blob to the nurse blob. “This has been a complete waste of your time. I don't know how you put up with it.”

Now I realize that those are people hurrying past the white light coming in at my doorway. My eyes are so bad, I see nothing but splashes of shimmer and shadow, like a view of pond water through a microscope. Paramecium-shaped forms propel themselves about in the hallway outside. They block and overlap one another.

“My head hurts. Where are my glasses?” I say helplessly. This is a caring profession! Aren't these people supposed to care?

“You pitched off the table onto your face,” the nurse says sternly. “You might as well stop the nonsense. We've seen it all, trust me. We've seen it ALL.”

“Next time, be more careful,” admonishes the doctor. “Pitching fits!” he adds to the nurse. “I don't know how you put up with it.”

“Oh, I don't,” says the nurse. “I don't put up with it at ALL.”

In a flash, I'm so boiling mad that it takes all my self-control not to scream. I didn't ask these two blobs to judge me. I didn't ask for anything! All I did was leave my hospital volunteer job, where I was actually
nice
to our patients, in order to attend a counseling session with the limp-mustached shrink three weeks ago.

Or has it been four weeks now?

The blobs continue bullying me until they run out of things to say. I sit stock-still, a blank expression smooth across my face, and stare at the pond water beyond them. What the
hell
has happened to my so-called life? This is starting to get surreal!

As soon as the blobs leave, I unhook my nose tube from the pump and go padding around the ER in my bare feet. The nose tube drips brown streaks down the front of my prison top, but I don't care what people think. They don't look like people to me anyway since I don't have my glasses on. I might as well be alone.

Eventually I find a tiny bathroom, complete with shiny handrails and an emergency pull cord that knocks me in the face as I bend over the toilet. I shove it aside and vomit every one of their hateful, bullying, mud-brown calories right out of my stomach. The nose tube comes flying out, too. I rinse my mouth and peer at the yellow tube in the bathroom mirror. It threads into my nose and out the corner of my mouth. It looks disgusting.

You look like a mental patient
, says the voice in my head.
You look like the kind of person they lock up.

So I yank out the nose tube and throw it into the toilet. Let it stop the thing up.

Let the toilet vomit it out, too!

I'm shaky and weak now. I wander back through the pond water, clutching doorframes, until one of the dim rooms beyond feels familiar. I crawl back into bed. Eventually, the nurse blob comes to retrieve me and drives me through windy darkness back to Drew Center.

She says nothing about my missing nose tube or my chocolate-streaked shirt. Doesn't she even notice?

Or—have I dramatically defied her in a way she expects?

You broke down and acted like a mental patient
, growls the voice in my head.
You look like a loser! You deserve to be locked up.

It's the middle of the night. For my first day out of bed, it's been pretty stressful. The nurse blob walks me down a wide empty hall to a room with two twin beds. I squint. Another girl is already sleeping in one of them. She doesn't stir while I change into pajamas.

My glasses are on the bedside table. I fall asleep with them in my hand.

Next morning, the girl who tried to give me her Oreo cake isn't at the table for breakfast. I feel frail and sick. My forehead throbs where the knot is. As I stare at the plate of food facing me, I can hear someone down the hall screaming hysterically and very loudly. The staff are giving each other looks they seem to think I can't see or understand—but I can and do.

“Shit!” the tiny woman to my right says. “Why does someone always wig out every damn meal? Like I can eat to this background music.” She's cutting a blueberry pancake into little pieces and grouping them according to blueberry percentage in each piece.

“Karen, you aren't allowed to do that.” A nurse leans over her with a new pancake. “Eat it normally, okay?”

“Screw you!” Karen screams. “You messed me up! Screw you!”

The nurse sighs. “You have twenty minutes left to eat, so get started.”

Karen begins to cry quietly, spearing her new pancake with her fork until it's imprinted with tiny holes. She sags against me, and I squeeze her hand in sympathy.

Instantly, the nurse is back. “Elena, honey, move over here.”

Eyes smarting, I pick up my tray and move to the next table. Can't I do anything right?

“What the
hell
?” Karen says. “She wasn't doing anything!”

She flips over her tray and runs down the hall. Staff run after her. I keep my eyes on my plate and try to ignore the sounds of the scuffle that ensues.

Listlessly, I begin to chew dry pieces of pancake. No butter. No syrup. It isn't like eating pancakes at all. At first I glance at the other thin, unhappy eaters, but they avoid my eyes. So I give up and stare at my plate.

Not even one full day, and already I hate this place.

When my plate is empty, I can leave the table. But I can't go to the bathroom. We're not allowed into the bathroom for an hour. The toilets there flush with a key that we don't have, and a staff member inspects what's in them before they get flushed.

I can't bear to even think about that.

I wander out into the main hallway. Big locked New England doors range down one side of it. Big windows line the other. Next to the nurses' station sits Susannah in a yellow plastic chair. She's really scrawny, and with her big brown eyes and long hair scrunched up on top of her head in a ragged ponytail, she looks very much like a little girl who is lost and can't find her way.

That's the punishment chair. You're put there for doing things wrong.

Susannah was sitting in the yellow chair yesterday when I came in. That's how I know her name. I smiled at her as we walked by with my suitcases, but the nurse noticed.

“Baby,” she said, “don't even try with that one. Susannah won't change, so don't even try.”

That made me look back at her as we walked away. And Susannah leaned forward in the yellow chair, hair spilling over her thin little face, and she smiled back at me.

Now I slide into the seat next to hers, and together we watch a squirrel dance up the side of a tree trunk outside. I'm so tired. The sunlight is almost hypnotic. It dazzles me.

“You're very young,” Susannah says. “When I first saw you, I thought you were old. But you're very young.”

Her voice sounds disappointed, as if she needs something desperately, but I'm not it.

She doesn't see perfection
, whispers the voice in my head.
What about your makeup? Have you checked your makeup?

But I'm not allowed to have my makeup bag here.

My face burns. “Actually, I'm seventeen,” I say.

Susannah smiles, opens her journal to a blank page, and begins to write. We sit in silence. Bathroom break is announced. I need to go. But I need people not to look in my toilet when I go, so I stay where I am.

Now it's time for art therapy group. Groups are mandatory, so I get up. Susannah doesn't. She reaches out to touch my arm.

She whispers, “I am going to be here forever.”

In art therapy, we're doing something with construction paper. I'm too tired to grasp what it is. Then a staff member calls me out of the art room and walks me through a door she unlocks. She says the psychiatrist will be meeting with Mom and me.

It feels strange to walk into a normal-looking office and be able to sit down on a couch next to Mom. After what I've been going through, I expect her to be on the other side of a glass wall, talking to me through an orange phone.

Mom looks upset.

“They called me last night,” she says, “but they wouldn't tell me where you were. Good Lord! What made that goose egg on your forehead?”

She doesn't look any happier when I tell her.

The psychiatrist comes in—another psychiatrist. He's short and neatly dressed, and he has the sloping shoulders and comfortable belly of a penguin.

Mom starts talking right away.

“All the literature I've been able to find,” she says, “explains that pseudoseizure patients don't really go unconscious, and they take care not to hurt themselves. But what about that bruise? And I've seen my daughter stuck with a needle while she was unconscious, and she didn't react. What's causing these blackouts, and what exactly are they? Are they related to the thyroid problems the hospital found? Elena's never blacked out a single time before this summer.”

That's not true. I think I did black out once before. But I'm not going to remember that.

“I couldn't say,” the psychiatrist answers. “It's too early to tell.”

“Too early?” asks Mom. “What do you mean? Why too early? She's been in hospitals now for almost a month. They ran so many tests on her that her chart's an inch thick. What data do you need?”

“Well, I haven't had time to look at her chart yet.”

I watch Mom struggle to hold on to her good manners. It's nice to be on the sidelines and see someone else get angry for a change.

“Elena's been here for twenty-four hours,” she points out. “You knew she was coming for a week. You could have asked for her chart at any time. When is someone going to look at her chart?”

The psychiatrist smiles disarmingly. “These things take time,” he says.

“I can appreciate that you have your routine,” Mom says. “But we've already spent the time. My daughter has been in the hospital for a month, and in spite of all the care they could give her, she's done nothing but lose more weight. Protocols, feeding pumps, the whole nine yards—she's still below the weight she was the day she went in.”

Relief floods through me. After weeks of not knowing, I almost have my number again. I don't know what it is, but I know what it isn't: as much as it was the day this all started.

Take
that
, you damn psychiatrists!

“Yes, well. Their protocols weren't like ours,” this psychiatrist says with a touch of pride.

That washes the happy feelings out of me again.

He's right
, says the voice in my head.
He'll get you fattened up.

Mom glances at my bruised forehead. “Yes, I can see that your protocol is different,” she snaps. “With all due respect, I'm reluctant to let doctors continue to experiment on my daughter. I want quantifiable evidence that this is the right treatment and that it's working. Your facility didn't even want to take her at first. Her weight was too high, you said. And she's got these other health problems going on—heart problems, thyroid problems. At least tell me this: does she even have anorexia?”

“Well, we really can't be sure yet,” the psychiatrist says.

They keep talking, but that's all I hear. Oh, my God! I knew it. I
knew
it!

It's true!
shrieks the voice in my head.
It's true! You're a fat, flabby mess. You don't deserve to be here!

The room whirls. My stomach upends, and I feel myself choke on acid. They didn't want to take me. My weight was too high. Whatever my number is, it's too high!

You're a failure!
wails the voice in my head.
You can't even do self-destruction right! You think they care about getting you healthy? You're not even sick enough for them to care!

The psychiatrist and Mom are standing up now. The meeting is over. But I can't go back out there. I can't face the real anorexics, the ones who know what I am.

They're rolling their eyes behind your back! They can't believe you're in here. The staff get together and whisper about you: “Did you hear about her weight? Can you believe it?!”

“I just don't know what to do,” Mom says after the psychiatrist leaves. “I keep waiting for a doctor to sit down and talk to us like he's got a grasp on the facts. This is all so touchy-feely, this whole ‘maybe, maybe not' stuff. I swear, it wasn't this bad when I had cancer!”

“Please get me out of here,” I beg her, close to tears. “I don't belong here, I know I don't!”

“I tell you what,” Mom says, “I'll go back to the hotel and call Dr. Harris—you remember, the psychiatrist who saw Valerie in Texas. He's the only psychiatrist who's ever given me a straight answer, and I know he specializes in eating disorders.”