Chapter 50 : PEG’s, NG’s and other devices of torture

“Bella, is that you?” I asked gently stroking my fingers over the photo in front of me like it might have been possible to reach in and save the girl that was staring back at me.

“Yep, that is how I used to look, about a week before I was admitted to this place. I weighed about 72lb (five stone 2 ounces.) I was very poorly.” The picture was tattered around the edges now but showed the outline of a pale translucent tiny half creature. A tiny layer of flaking skin was stretched over a frame of ribs and hips. Her thigh was about the same size as one of my wrists. This proved it in my mind. I was not anorexic, nowhere near it. I was not sick. Not sick like the minimal girl barely propped up against the chair in the photo, half a fake smile on her tired lips and the people around her. They all knew that the person in the centre was never going to see another birthday like the one she was celebrating in the picture. The girl in the middle either hated the lens of the camera because she thought it made her face too big or… She was simply waiting to die. Whatever was easier for her.

“Bella, you were so tiny. I mean you still are but this is painful.”

“I thought I was a fat cow in these photos. I couldn’t bear to see myself in the mirror and the only reason they go a photo of me was because if I moved of the chair there was a good chance I would faint. I hated myself. I sill hate my body but I’m slowly starting to see that that isn’t all of me now.

“That would be a nice way to think.” I said gently under my breath smiling to myself before wincing as Sophie growled in the back of my head and I winced away, subconsciously sucking in my belly.

 “To get that tummy flat Mi you are going to have to eat something.” Bella almost snapped as she saw the movement of my belly pulling inwards. “At the moment it’s just a piece of skin between two hip bones!” That was impossible, I was simply huge.

 “I don’t want to upset you again Bella, maybe I should go.” I suggested slipping myself off of the end of her bed and making for the door.

 “No don’t go Mi, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be so snappy with you. I’m honestly not a bad person it’s just you bring back a lot of things inside of me. That’s what Anorexia does Mi. It fucks you up, it shows you something that no one else can see. It makes you hate yourself and alienates everyone around you. Your whole life becomes a maths equation of calories and fat content and the things that really matter, like friends and family or the people you love all fall away because you so despite to please Ana.” (Anorexia) Bella said walking around her room as she talked. She took twenty five footsteps before she stopped in front of a big poster of  Alice Cullen and rested her head against her mumbling something incomprehensible under her breath before turning to look at me again her eyes foggy with tears

“I know you are refusing your meals and the Ensure Mi. They will let you get away with it for a while but it won’t last long. They will make you eat.” Bella said sternly yet softly.  I shook my head, trying to block the thought of food. I would never be as thin as Bella, Even if I never ate again. So that was Ok. Once I looked thin and beautiful I would start to eat again. I would never look like the Bella in this picture or the one sitting in front of me now for that fact and they couldn’t make me eat if I didn’t want to, not the staff or anyone else in the world could take that away from me. Bella scowled.

“Mi, at the moment you look like me in that photo. You act like me in that photo. You say the same things, use the same excuses. Mi Honey I would do anything to stop you doing this to yourself. It destroys me to look at you.” Bella said closing her amber eyes making two tears fall out over the edges so they could play on her cheeks. She was crying over me? Impossible, but I started drinking the juice anyway. Maybe I could manage half after all. I hadn’t eaten breakfast and I had just thrown up so it wasn’t a huge amount of calories and it would make…

“Mia Thin is beautiful. Imagine being thin and lovely. You could do anything you wanted to do. You would be happy if you were thin. Don’t trust her Mia she just wants to make you fat and stupid. Stay with me and together we will get through it. I will look after you Mia; you don’t need any one but me.”

I smiled at Sophie’s voice .She had saved me from a slip up. When it came to being thin Bella was another enemy. I could only trust Sophie. Her words where like the finest silk caressing my body; she could make me believe anything she said.

“Mi, listen to me not her.” Bella shouted abruptly coming over to me again and cupping her hands around my face,  making  me look into her glittering eyes.

They were lovely eyes, transparent amber with streaks of dark brown spinning out from the pupils. The stories these eyes could tell, and now they delved into my soul searching for something, something to grab hold of. A handle to pull me back by but finally she took her eyes away from mine and looked down at her jeans, another two tears falling down to splash on them. She had obviously not found the humanity in me she was looking for. Did she realise I was too far gone to be saved, to want to continue to live.

“I know it’s too much to ask of you Mi. I still listen to my Ana more then I should. She still has a hold over me too.” She twisted with her fingers uncomfortably trying to think of something else to say.  “They will make you eat Mi, one way or another.” It was my turn to roll my eyes at her. They couldn’t force the food down my throat. They couldn’t stop me from becoming thin. They couldn’t take the last bit of control I had.

“I do eat. Sometimes,” I smiled. “They won’t force me to eat.”

“Yeah I thought that too.” Bella snapped at me an edge of anger in her voice that I never heard before as she turned around and yanked another picture off of the wall and shoved it into my face pointing at a small white tube that snaked out from her nose and settled behind her ear.

 “That’s an NG tube!” Bella snapped. The placed it up my nose one week after I entered here and this,” Bella pulled her tee shirt up and over her head in one fluid motion, “Is a PEG tube! It’s horrible isn’t it?” Bella said bitterly prodding at the delicate maze of tube that was surgically placed into her stomach. “Mi, one way or another they will make you eat.”