But I knew. So did Lexi.
The next morning on my way to weights and vitals I found her. She was in the fishbowl, a single bedroom in the middle of the unit with a wall of windows so nurses could keep an eye on her at all times. It was the closest thing Wallingfield had to a hospital room. Lexi was asleep, curled up in a sad little ball in her knitting-dog PJs. I got a lump in my throat just looking at her. I raised my hand to knock on the window and wake her up, like I always did, for weights and vitals, but I stopped myself. She needed her rest. And to be honest, I didn’t know what to say.
A few minutes later, when the nurse weighed me, I swear I saw her write down a nine and a four. For a second I completely forgot about Lexi. Had I gained 4 POUNDS?
In four days?
Talk about making an already bad morning worse. I could practically feel the fat on my lower back increasing as I tugged on my robe. Miserable, I walked back and climbed under my duvet, which didn’t smell like home at all anymore, and almost wished I’d done burpees with Lexi when I’d had the chance.
An hour later I stopped by the fishbowl on my way to breakfast. Lexi was sitting cross-legged on the bed, writing in her journal. Her arms looked like chicken wings with the meat chewed off. So did her legs. I shuddered. The curtains were wide open. She could close them only when she was changing, and even then, only for a minute at a time. I felt weird watching her, like I was invading her privacy.
I wanted to turn and leave, but Lexi saw me before I could. She didn’t smile.
I stood in the doorway. “Hey.”
“Hi.” She kept writing, her journal filled with cramped cursive.
“How are you?”
“Fine.” She spoke with no inflection.
“How long do you have to stay in here?”
She shrugged. “My therapist said I have to sign a contract or go home.”
“Do you mean Michael?”
“Yeah. He said I needed to show more dedication to my recovery.” Frowning, she scratched out the last sentence she’d written, pushing on her pen so hard it made a hole in the paper.
“Oh. Is Michael nice?”
“He’s okay, I guess. Why?”
“Nothing really. I’d just wondered, because yesterday, after your meeting with him, you seemed upset.”
She paused for so long I didn’t think she’d answer. When she did, her voice was soft. “Michael showed me my medical records.”
“He did? Do they usually do that?” I’d assumed medical records were off-limits, like our weight.
“I don’t know. I asked him.”
“What did they say?”
“I have something called mitral valve prolapse. My heart valve doesn’t close right anymore. Blood can go backward in my heart instead of forward.”
“Were you born with it?”
“No. They think anorexia caused it. It’ll probably never go away. They say I’m lucky, that MPS isn’t fatal, but it makes me feel sick sometimes. I get migraines. Sometimes, I’m so dizzy I can’t even stand. And every once in a while my heart gets all fluttery, which freaks me out. I always think I’m dying when that happens.”
“Oh.” Panic bubbled up in me like acid reflux. Did I have MPS, too? My heart hammered away and felt loud in my ears. How could I never have listened to it before?
Lexi bent over her journal again. At the far end of the hall, the doors opened for breakfast. “Hey, Lexi, the dining room just opened,” I said. “Come on.” She had to eat. She had to protect her heart.
“You go on ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.”
I doubted that. “Lexi, please come with me. Maybe you could try to eat just a little?” She didn’t answer. “Lexi, I’ll eat with you. Please?”
“Okay, Elizabeth,” she said. “Fine.” With great effort she hauled her frail body up off the bed. “But do me a favor.”
“Sure, what?”
“Don’t waste your time worrying about me. Be scared for yourself. Really, really scared, because that’s what’s going to make you better.”
She stared at me for a long second. Then, together, we walked down the hall to the dining room.
At breakfast Lexi sat with Willa and me, which I took as a good sign. When she looked at her eggs like they were a pile of poop and didn’t even bother to pick up her fork, I took that as a bad one.
Willa cheered her on. “Come on, Lexi, you can do it!”
“Yeah! Go for it,” I said. In solidarity I took a big bite of my eggs. They felt like plastic and tasted worse. If they wanted us to eat, you’d think they’d at least make the eggs taste good. I gagged a little. I tried not to let them fall back out of my mouth. I swallowed, somehow, eyes watering. “See?” I said. “Not too hard!”
“Oh my God, that was terrible,” Willa said. I thought I saw the corner of Lexi’s mouth tug upward.
Encouraged, I took another bite, this one smaller and easier to manage. “Yum!”
Even Willa got into it. “Look, I’m taking a sip of my milk now!”
Lexi pursed her lips together and started to cry. Willa took her hand. I rubbed her shoulder.
Lexi shook her head. If she didn’t eat, she’d go home. Again. This was her second official attempt at treatment. What if she was one of those girls with eating disorders who never got better? Twenty percent never did. I’d learned that in my old support group. The number hadn’t bothered me much before, but here? Holy crap. These were the kinds of girls they were talking about.
If you did the math, just fewer than five of the twenty-four girls in this dining room would never, ever get over their eating disorders. And if you wanted to get really morbid, one girl here might even die, since twenty percent of those who never get better do, either from health complications or by suicide.
I didn’t want to die. Or for Lexi to die, or Willa, or anybody else here.
“Come on, Lexi,” I said. “You can do this.”
She took a tiny bite. She swallowed.
Our response was to holler like fifth graders at a Taylor Swift concert. Even Kay gave a whoop. And that’s how breakfast went. Lexi taking a taste, us cheering. When time was up, Lexi looked like she might puke all over the table, but her plate was empty. And, focused on Lexi, I ended up with an empty plate of my own. And nobody in that entire room had to have an Ensure.
They let Lexi out of the fishbowl the next morning, and I had a roommate again.
13
I didn’t want to admit it, but I was excited for mail call that afternoon. But when we arrived, only one package lay at Nurse Jill’s feet. You could feel the disappointment ripple through the room. Everybody lived for mail call. It really was the highlight of our day.
The package was a brown cardboard tube covered with Janis Joplin stamps, just like last time. My heart blipped, but I didn’t dare hope. The first package was probably a fluke. A second? Impossible. But then Nurse Jill held it up at boob level and called my name. I had the weird urge to turn to everybody else and apologize for being the lucky one, but I managed to rein it in as I took the tube, clutching the smooth, cool surface against my body. Twenty-four pairs of eyes stared at me.