Chapter 256 : Abandonment issues

.

Without really realising I had gone to sleep. I woke up curled up in a tight ball at the top of the mattress with my fingers curled underneath it. I wasn't sure how I had allowed myself to go to sleep I had wanted to remain alert in the ECA so I knew exactly what the cameras would see but with Esmee lulling me to dreamland with her sweet and perfect voice There hadn’t been a chance.  I looked around the room for Esmee but as I had feared from not feeling her beside me she was not there. I was alone again in the windowless prison of egg box foam with nothing more than a dim night light aglow in the center casting an eerie shadow over the room. It made me fear the corners that where cast in complete darkens. It made me miss windows, freedom.

Loneliness and a sense of abandonment throbbed like a hollow void in my stomach making my muscles tighten in agony until I felt like I would throw up over the floor. I would have done anything to have her just sat in the corner of the room again so she could sooth my scared mind. I couldn’t understand it she was there when I went to sleep and gone before I had woken up. I tried to tell myself that it was just because the night shift had ended and the morning nurses where now patrolling the corridors and eating breakfast with people. That was the logic answer. I knew that but my emotions where set haywire. They were convinced that she had been eaten by lions or blown away by a tornado. It was convinced that she hated me.

Unable to stop myself I felt the sobbing rise in my chest and brake out of me in a moan of watery pain. Not sure what else to do I curled myself up into the same ball and rocked backwards and forwards my whole body shaking in the rhythm to what had quickly become uncontrolled sobbing. My soul drowned in the deepest blackness and the nausea clenched at my stomach. There was no way of knowing what time it was or who was on shift but I knew no one would come no matter who hard I cried. The person in the CCTV could simply turn off the sound if he couldn’t stand the echo of my tears.

There was no let up at the internal torture that ripped up savaging my body and I cried unstoppably even though my throat was sore and my head felt like it would explode from the tension that pulled across my fore head. If anything the more my head hurt the more I sobbed because I couldn’t take the pain. I tore at the skin under my pajamas with my finger nails but because I was known to use them as a weapon weekly they whey where clipped down so they could do no damage. Even if they could have ripped open the skin it wouldn’t have made any difference. This pain was beyond the healing powers of cutting. Only everlasting sleep could calm me now or maybe her face at the door.

There was a beep of a card key opening the door and the main lights blinked into life illuminating the room around me causing the grey textured foam to become more prominent as it burned itself more firmly into the corners of my memories. I already knew that the ECA would be in the flashbacks from my future if I was doomed to have to live through it.

“Mi.” Edward said gently placing his hand on the small of my back which only caused my sobbing to intensify. “It’s breakfast OK.I have brought up some Ensure juice for you to have if you feel like it.” I shook my head as an answer as I tried to work out where I could fit the breaths in between the jerky waves of tears that made my back arch and my body shake with the pain. Edward went down to his knees beside the mattress. “Is there something I can do to help Mi?” He asked gently like he was addressing a frightened abandoned puppy.

I shook my head feebly against the plastic of the water resistant mattress that my hot sticky body clung to like a suction cup to a window. How could I tell him I was scared that Esmee wasn’t there anymore when I knew in reality she had just gone home and was by now probably snuggled up in bed with the duvet over her head? How could I tell him I hurt because she didn’t say goodbye when that wasn’t even in her job description? How could I logically tell him I was scared that she would never come back and see me again? That I felt truly abandoned by her.

“I could stay here for a little while if you want Mi. You don’t have to talk to me but I think that it is important that you know you don’t have to be alone with your pain. You choice I can go away, or I could sit in the Corner, or stay here with you by your bed.

 “Stay Here.” I stuttered loudly in between the waves of tears that consumed me still. I didn’t know if my body would have been able to cope with another person swiping a piece of plastic in the door and escaping while I was forced to live with the demons. I prayed for the end of my tears but they seemed to not stop. Like there was a never ending supply of them backed up somewhere, like I would cry forever.

Edward sat down on the floor close to my curled up body and looked over me not speaking just watching me closely with concerned eyes. I pulled my hands up over my face and hid behind them.  I really didn’t want to be left, yet crying like this in front of someone was too embarrassing 

“So, did something trigger this?” Edward asked eventually, finding some words to say. They had not been the words that he was looking for but he used them when there was the lack of something better to use.

 I shook my head my breath shuddering in my chest. It was a lie but the truth was horrendous and wrong. I didn’t want to feel that way about being left in the ECA, I knew how a hospital was run in shifts and that Esmee was going to go home when the morning broke. I just did feel it, and it was wrong.

 “Well you are obviously very upset Mi,” Edward commented leaning forward and taking hold of one of my hand while resting his other hand over my fore head. “You’re also boiling hot.” He continued gently, removing his hand and getting up and walking over to the door to the bathroom In the ECA, swiping his card key making the door swung open to reveal the shining white behind it. He grabbed some bathroom towels from the dispenser he ran them under the water before returning to me and pressing the cool wet towels to my fore head. His face was soft and warm when I subconsciously smiled; the cold towels felt glorious on my scolding skin.

“I am going to go and get a qualified nurse OK Mi so they can check you over properly, make sure that your temperature is just due to all of you complicated emotions. I won’t me long.” Edward rose to his feet.

 “Don’t leave me.” I begged the panic rising in me at the thought of his back leaving into the sunlight and the padded door swinging shut behind him with a menacing click. The ECA was driving me mad like I expected before it would have never been a problem.

“I won’t leave you for long, I am literally going to get a nurse and come back with them OK.” Edward soothed as he reached the padded door and swiped his card slipping out of the door the click resounding behind him encaging me securely in my prison. I was alone again, and it hurt.      

Chapter 255 : Sing me to sleep

Mi

Sing me to sleep
Sing me to sleep
I'm tired and I
Want to go to bed
Sing me to sleep
Sing me to sleep
And then leave me alone
Don't try to wake me in the morning
'Cause I will be gone
Don't feel bad for me
I want you to know
Deep in the cell of my heart
I will feel so glad to go

Asleep

The Smiths

After forty five minutes Doctor Jordan returned to the unit and did his assessment while in the ECA after complaining about the fact I was not in my pajamas. He decided to leave me in the ECA for 48 hours for observation and then he left demanding that Esmee went with him as there were other patients that needed her time. I had protested and I had screamed, feebly hitting my wrists against the padding of the walls and trying to burst out through the door but of course there was nothing I could really do, he had all the power over me now. He was effectively god in the walls of apple gate house. I spent hours crying after my screaming had passed but eventually that passed as well and there was nothing. I sometimes heard the faint calls of other patients in the hall way and the groaning of the food trolley. No one came to see me throughout the days unless it was to open up the little bathroom at the end of the ECA so I could use the loo. Or they came to syringe feed down the tube in my nose after I refused the liquidized meal that was presented to me in a plastic cup. Apparently there was a chance of me trying to choke myself if I was given solid food.

Esmee started her night shifts the second night I was in the ECA and without Dr Jordan she was the highest in charge so she chose to spend the entire night in the corner of the room writing in folders and trying to talk to me but I had nothing to say. I felt completely destroyed and the depression had taken me to a whole new level, it appeared that rock bottom was actually a myth, something people used as a form of hope, but there was no rock bottom, despair and depression where actually bottomless pits.

“You need to sleep Mi.” Esmee said getting up from her position in the corner and approaching me. I had been pacing the room for what felt like hours counting the steps in my head. I had got to 10,013 when Esmee took hold of my hand stopping me causing me to spin round and stare at her like she had just electrocuted me with her touch. Tears welled up and spilled down my cheeks at the sight of her gentle features but they didn’t really have any feeling with them. I had not stopped crying inside any way.

“Your shattered baby girl and you need to sleep.” Esmee repeated gently raising up one hand and wiping the tears off of the side of my face. “Your body is screaming at you to give in. you have been awake for over twenty four hours and you’re body needs sleep to heal, without it you’re not even giving it a chance. Let me get you some Zopliclone to take, or at least some Lorazapam to take the edge off of the feelings.

I shook my head biting hard on the bottom of my lip before dragging my eyes away from her so I could keep pacing the room. Counting was the only thing I had left now. Sleep was for the weak. For the not pure people and I would be perfect in or out of the ECA. I didn’t care if it killed me, I hated life anyway. What was the point?

“Come on, that’s enough Mi.” She took hold of me by the shoulders and headed me towards the mattress that occupied the corner of the room and pushed me down onto it.  I instantly started to rock back and forth counting the movements. “Lie down for me, come on,” Esmee said even more softly as she sat down on the mattress next to me and uncurled my limbs, pulling my body down to a lying position with my head rested in her lap. I tried to resist but my body had no strength left to fight. She could have done anything she wanted to me there and then and there would have been nothing I could do about it. I was once again someone else’s dolly. The only difference was Esmee played nice; that I was thankful for.

Esmee smoothed her fingers over my tangled hair with one hand while she held on to my hand with the other, tracing her finger tips over the scars that were on them. She also sang very gently under her breath forcing my muscles to give up the fight to remain on guard. I had no chance against her voice I would have to sleep, and I did. 

Chapter 254: For him i survived

Esmee

My breath caught over and over again in my chest as I peered down in to my underwear. There was no way I could be seeing what I was seeing. They still said I was thin. That I was very thin for what I should be. They changed the dressings on my hip bones every day because they told me if they didn’t they would become infected. They told me the only reason my hip bones needed the dressings was because there was no fat or muscles to protect the fragile bones underneath and the cotton on my trousers where rubbing away my lifeless flaking skin. They told me all the emergency drip feeds and Tubes up my nose were important just because without them my fragile heart would stop beating. They told me it was a necessity when they kept me on one to one observations confined to a bed using a commode because even the little effort of me getting to the bath room would burn calories that I just couldn’t afford to lose. They told me those calories were life and death. They said that I was tiny and little and that I was dying, that one day my heart would shudder and die because there was nothing left to keep it going any more. They were all lying. Very thin people didn’t have a menstrual cycle. Dangerously thin people didn’t get periods. I was fat. They had lied and I was to hurt to bounce back from it.

I screamed silently into my hands. Every intense feeling needed to get out from me. I wasn’t big enough to feel all of them so much.  I wanted to cry the most. I begged my body to give in and let me sob with great tears like I was feeling on the outside, but, it had been years. I had forgotten how to cry in the traditional way. Even when they told me that I had to come here, that I had been sectioned under a section 3 of the mental health act I had not cried, instead I got angry. I didn’t know why they were all so desperate to save a worthless life. I wanted to die, or at least I wanted them to see how bad I was inside my own brain.  

 I grabbed a tampon out of my bag and with shaking hand inserted it causing pain to ripple up through my entire body. Retching with the pain I fell to the sink and held on for dear life so I didn’t fall to my knees screaming. I had never had a period before. My tampons were strange white decorations to me that up until this point  my mother had told me to keep with me just in case. She never told me it would feel like you were being ripped apart when you inserted them. She never told me that it felt like your soul died when you first experienced this strange step into the adult world.

It was then I looked up from the sick I saw it, sneering at me from the stupid unbreakable mirror in front of my face. I knew it was there, they had been using it for days by force because my section allowed them to force treatment, but now looking at it I knew that it was there - The tube that crept up my nose and hung over my left ear the white surgical tape crossed just under my eye. Anger seeped through ever part of me replacing the pain that had once been there. The tube was what had done this to me, what had turned me even fatter then I already was. The tube had ruined everything, because of that tube I would not die from malnutrition, because of that tube I was falling apart inside and there was no hope of me dying to escape the pain. Suddenly it was obvious, so simple that I was mad I hadn’t thought of it before. The tube had to go.

With shaking hands I ripped the tape off of my face and yanked down on the tube making the splitting pain come back again but I didn’t care I was doing what I should of done a long time ago. I was talking back my control. I pulled again this time harder which started the gagging but I kept on going until the last of the tube was out and lying bloody in the sink in front of me. Then the sickness came, the heavy retching sickness where I spat more blood then I had ever seen before into the sink in front of me.

“Little Monster. I am coming in little monster you know there is no way I can stay out here and let you make yourself sick. Do you want to land up on bed rest again?”

“I am called Esmee!”  I shrieked trying to wipe the blood off of my face but only smeared it worse as the blood began to drip out of my nose as well. I turned on the tap to try and was away the blood and grabbed a paper towel wiping my nose.

“Make yourself decent Esmee I’m coming in. I heard the keys rattle in the bathroom door as the pain pushed up the back of my throat and o threw up brilliant bright red into the sink in front of me again at the same time as the blood pushed its way more forcefully out of my nose. There was going to be no lying that I was in trouble this time around. Even I knew that I had entered into a game that I wasn’t going to get back from. I was dying and it scared me but it meant that it would be over soon. If I could get out of the unit before the staff could stop me.

“ Wowah, Ok Esmee. Ok I am going to help you.” I watched in slow motion as Ryan took his radio and lifted it to his lips to alert the other staff with radios that there was an issue going occurring. They talked in code so the patients didn’t know what was coming but after a while you learnt the codes and there was one we all feared… “Could I have some C &R staff up in bathroom one please we may have an issue with EM.”

 “No!” I shouted blood flying from my mouth at the same time as I shouted. I would not allow them to take me out. “I am leaving right now.” I stammered wiping the blood from my lips with the back of my hand even though more filled it. It tasted of metal and rust. “I hate this OK. I hate this unit and all the nurses and other people I am not crazy, so why don’t you just hand me your damn keys so I can get out the damn front door and away from here! They told me that Apple gate house was a bright and shiny new unit to help people like me and guess what it hasn’t Ok. I have been here five month now and nothing has changed! So I am leaving. So give me your fucking keys!” I yelled thrusting my hand out in Ryan’s direction so he could hand over his keys to me and for a second it looked like he even considered it before thinking better of it.

“Esmee even if you were informal I wouldn’t be able to let you go right now but you know as well as we do you are detained under a section 3. We are not able to let you leave the unit and if you try we will have to stop you.” Ryan headed towards me his body ready to pull me down to the ground in a man restraint, but I had been there too long. I had done it far too often and I knew where to hit a man the hardest and Without thinking of the consequences or how I would hurt him I thrashed out with my legs and  landed a kick right in the crouch.

Ryan groaned as he fell to the floor curling up into the foetal position.  I took my opportunity to grab his keys and kicked the radio away from his hands that were searching for the big red panic button that shone from the to, after I headed for the door. I knew the key they all used for the front door and once I was out there was nothing stopping me I was free and I knew what I needed to do. I needed this to be the end.

Breathing fast I tripped to the top of the stares before vomiting two more huge mouths full of blood over the new carpet. I then stumbled down the stairs leaving a trail of blood as I went. I knew my destination and I knew why I had to get there but everything moved too slowly, there were too many stairs and I couldn’t run as fast as I should to get to the front door The walls were closing around me, my legs were bending in the wrong direction and time I reached the bottom stair I heard wailing and the staff shouting. Ryan had raised the alarm.

“Esmee. Esmee stop you are bleeding badly and we need to take a look at it.” I ignored the chiming Of Mandy’s voice that was now heading closer to my direction; I didn’t want it to be her. I actually liked Mandy when my head was feeling ok. We had had good times laughing together about a certain book or film, sometimes she even got me to eat but not today. I was too far gone to be saved today.  I rattled through the keys with shaking hands. They were all kept together on a big metal ring, the kind of keys that prison guards taunted their prisoners with by spinning them around on their fingers just outside of their reach. The nurses did this all the time to their patients in here too. They treated us like animals that they could lock up and release when they wanted to. We were nothing but their toys.

 From behind me a hand came forward over my shoulder and grasped it around the keys before trying to tug them out of my hands which made the sharp edges of the keys dig into the flesh on the palms. Mandy had caught up with me before I had managed to make my exit.

“Esmee, honey what’s going on my love? Why are you acting like this? Why don’t we go and let a nurse take a look at you then we can have a chat together. It will be OK sweetheart and you know that you really aren’t allowed to leave with your section. We could always write up an appeal if you really want to leave.” I felt my body soften slightly under her voice. I could have fallen for Mandy, I had done before…

“Get off of them! Get off! I shouted my head spinning my mind snapping back to the job at hand from the sudden intense burning in my throat and the blood that filled my mouth and dripped down over my lips and from my nose.

“Esmee you aren’t allowed to have these keys and I can’t let you leave the unit.” Mandy said again sterner this time before tugging the keys one final time causing them to cut big lines into my flesh before they left my hand completely. My freedom gone and I was so close. I had to stop her! Without thinking what I was doing I reacted and punched out hard landing a blow right in the middle of Mandy’s nose which caused a crack and blood to spurt from it in all direction, she also dropped the keys onto the floor so she could swear loudly and cup her hands over her heavily bleeding nose.

“I’m sorry OK.” I mumbled going to my knees and grabbing the keys from the floor praying that I had the energy and centre of balance to pull myself up again.  “I don’t like to hurt people, and defiantly not you Many, I wish it wasn’t you. You are the best damn nurse in this place, but I have had enough and I need to leave and I couldn’t let you ruin that, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt it too badly and I’m sorry.” I moaned finding the key for the front door and opening the lock with a satisfying click before letting the world outside flood in.

I recoiled back into myself at all the sounds and the smells of the outside world came up to smack me right in the face. I had been inside too long, inside a prison where the windows opened just a crack and the staff talked to you like you were likely to respond by dribbling and a series of one syllable sounds. The strange thing was though there was a part of me at that moment that considered closing the door with me still back inside the building. It almost seemed too scary. At least inside my cage I only really had myself to fear.

“It’s Esmee! Yes little monster Esmee! She has keys! She is bleeding!”  The staff Shouted behind me to each other as Mandy tried to make a grab for my ankle.

“The little monster is leaving,” I whispered taking one last look over my shoulder before pushing my body out of the door and into the heat of the July sun running. My body didn’t want to run.  I felt far too weak to run and every time my feet hit the floor my stomach clenched and more blood ran down over my front onto the pavement, but I run anyway. I knew the staff wouldn’t take long to compose them self’s and I knew they would try to catch me. I also knew I didn’t want to be caught. I could not deal with the pain any more. This was my last stand. My last dance for life and it hurt.

The two dressing pads on my hips pulled at my skin and with every step I felt the skin rub off and the blood start to drip down onto my underwear but still I kept on running. I needed to keep on running. I didn’t know where I was going or how I was going to get there but there was no way I could get caught again. There was no way I could just go back there and let them shove more drips in me, let them keep me confined to a bed where they could make me even fatter than what I had already become.

After I ran for what felt like a long time my body came to a stop before my mind wanted to and I bent over into the gutter throwing up over and over again spraying blood over myself and the grey gravel underneath. Every part of my body hurt and I could barely breathe from the blood that gathered in my throat but it hurt too much to keep expelling it over the floor. This time I was really drowning in my own blood, in my own panic .That was when I saw the sharp edges of the broken beer bottle looking up at me from the gutter and I knew what to do. Even though I was already bleeding it seemed natural to cause more to make the pain go away. With stumbling bloody hands I reached out and grabbed at the bottle. It had always helped me before and what did it matter if It didn’t right now, there was nothing else left anyway. It already felt like I was drowning in my own blood, if the cuts killed me it would be a relief. If the suffering would just disappear for one tiny minute it would be worth it. I was done. It was over.

The glass cut deep into the thin skin on my arms and the blood flowed quickly out onto the pavement and over my clothes but still there was nothing more I could do apart from keep cutting longer and deeper cuts into my arm. With every cut the pain slipped away, with every long deeper cut the feeling that I wanted and grew to love took over my senses and all I knew was I wanted more. Needed more.

 “Woah honey, stop hurting yourself. Give me that bottle OK, you’re bleeding a lot and I have to help you. Whatever it is I can help OK. Well I will try but you have to give me that glass.” 

“Go away unless you want the same fate as Ryan, I growled slicing the bottle hard down on the inside of my wrists causing a jet of deep red blood to spurt out across the gravel and into my eyes. “I am not going back to that place! I want to die OK.”

“I don’t know where your from or who you are Honey but I have called an ambulance to come and give you some help. I am a student nurse and I am not going to lose a young girl before I even get my licence OK. Now I have to put pressure on that wrist and you have to tell me why you are throwing blood up all over the pavements. You can also tell me why the hell you are using a broken beer bottle to cut into your own skin!” The unfamiliar man behind me said gently before crouching down next to me and squeezing his hands hard against the gaping wound in my wrists but the blood kept pumping out any way trickling through the cracks in his fingers like sand through a fist.

“I’m Emmet by the way.” The man said softly before ripping the bottom of his tee shirt and making make shift bandage around the wounds on my arms. “Is there any chance of you telling me yours?”

“I thought for a second wondering if there was a trick somewhere behind his kind words but he seemed honest and I decided it didn’t matter if he wasn’t there was nothing left anyway. I would be dead before the ambulance got there anyway… and, I sort of like this man… why I didn’t know.

“I’m Esmee and I ran away,” I moaned, everything crushing down on my chest as I placed my good hand over the top of Emmet’s hand. My body shivered involuntary as our skin touched.

“Ran away from where Esmee?” Emmet insisted, his voice as gentle and as smooth as crushed silk

.

 “Apple gate house. You know the new child loony bin. I ran away because they made me fat Emmet. I had spent my life trying to get thin and pretty and perfect and they section me under the mental health act and shove me in there for nearly six months now and put tubes down my nose and they make me fat and nasty and horrible so I runaway. I have the keys.” I sounded like an idiot. 

“You think your fat?” Emmet asked shocked. Then it dawned on him “What! A tube in your nose! Esmee you had an NG!” Emmet yelled spinning me around to face him. “Esmee there is no NG in your nose now, what the hell happened?” Emmet shouted shaking me roughly by the shoulder like he was trying to rattle the words out of me

“I tore the stupid thing out OK!” I yelled causing more blood to escape out the corners of my mouth onto the floor. “Because I am screaming OK, I am shouting and I am screaming inside and I can’t stop and there is nothing else left in me and you know what I really want to do Emmet! I want to snuggle up in that over muscular chest of yours and I want to cry until I have no more tears left in my body but I can’t do that A. because you are one of the hottest men I have ever seen and I am a fat stupid loony child that has run away from the mental unit and B. it has been so long since I actually cried I think I have forgotten how! I yelled shaking Emmet’s hand of my shoulder before coughing up more blood onto the floor in front of me. It was the worse chat up line on earth. Why the hell had I said any of that. Why was I like I was?

“Right Esmee shut the fuck up for a bit and open your gob!” Emmet shouted over me as he tried to hook open my mouth with one of the fingers on his free hand.

“What? Get the hell off of me!”

“ No, open your damn mouth already! I need to check your throat, if you have pulled your NG out you might have perforated your oesophagus which means you might be bleeding out which means you might die and I don’t want that to happen.” Emmet groaned trying to make a tourniquet out of the rest of his shirt to stop the blood pumping so fast out of my wrist and into the gutter next to me. For a moment I was caught off guard by the shape of his muscles in his chest, the way the sunlight glowed against them. Not to mention the way they moved when he breathed. I would have fit against those muscles perfectly if I had been permitted to lay there. He was amazing, an angel and even though it was stupid if he was mine I would stay here with him. I would have done anything to be his but I wasn’t and why would he want me anyway? I was useless.

“I am not scared of dying Emmet; in fact I would quite like it.” I let my lips curl up into a smile before I puked more blood onto the gutter in front of me making me feel like my chest was actually tearing in half from the pressure of it. There weren’t enough holes in me for the blood to drain away from.

“Well I am scared of you dying OK Esmee. I am really scared.” Emmet said his voice shaking as he used one of his fingers to help remove the congealed vomit out of my mouth and onto the street while I slumped back heavily into his body unable to support my own weight any more. As I suspected I fitted perfectly but he didn’t seem to notice and why would he? There must have been someone else waiting in the background for him, another person who fit more than perfectly. He would have had a girlfriend at home, an eighteen year old with silky long platinum hair and baby blue eyes that sparkled. I would never be one of those girls and he would never love me.

“You have an arterial bleed in your wrist,” Emmet shouted beginning to count on his finger., “ You could be slowly drowning in your own blood  and there are wounds on your hips that go down to the bone which means you could die from an infection! Hell Esmee it will be a damn miracle if you don‘t die right now and I do not what you to die in my arms! You are what 14 years old.” he snapped exasperated and defeated his perfectly sculpted shoulders slumping into his chest.

“16!”  I spluttered trying to sound grown up and defensive but all I really managed was to  sneeze and vomit at the same time causing blood to pore out the end of my nose and mouth making the world spin around me a little more .It would be over soon I was going under. I would never be with my angel.

“Well I am 19 OK a whole three years older than you and I am sure as hell too young to die so by default that makes you too young to die OK!” Emmet threw my arm up into the air as the blood pumped through his makeshift bandage and the cracks in his fingers.  His breath was shallow and his face had become red in his panic. He seemed generally scared for me and I had no idea why. I was nothing to him just a poor little freak he found bleeding on the streets and he was nothing to me in reality yet with my last ounce of strength to fight I tried to comfort him. After all he may have been nothing to be but that didn’t mean I wasn’t all ready completely in love with him.

“Emmet I have felt like I am dead inside for so long. Hell I am such an emotional freak now that I can’t even cry. So dying is not the worst thing Emmet, for me dying is good. For me it means an end to the hurting.”

“You cannot die Esmee OK! You just can’t!” Emmet snapped his eyes wet.

“Why?” I shouted back at him Exasperated. I had given him reasons, good reasons according to my head. Why did he care?

“Esmee, do you believe in love at first sight?” Emmet asked his voice suddenly less shaky and a lot more passionate as he once again pulled my body around so he could look into my eyes and I could look into his. His eyes where jade green and sparkling and deep as the ocean and they did something amazing they made mine fill with tears and my bottom lip quiver. They made me cry and hell I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry so badly. My sorrow had been buried for over a year and now it was rising in glorious salty tears.

“Why?” I stuttered a single tear falling down over my cheek. “What has love at first sight got to do with me dying here?”

“Everything, because I never did OK! Because I thought the whole idea was stupid and irrational and something designed to sell Hollywood movies but then I came across you sitting in the street and I see your face and those beautiful black eyes and all that changes in an instant because I do believe in it now. I believe in it because I have set my eyes on you and I love you Esmee! I have spent all my life waiting for you and  I love every damn part of you so that is why you are not allowed to die because I just know you are the half that will make me whole and without you I never will be!” 

"Then i will stay for you," I whispered just as my head was taken

Chapter 253 : with my mothers eyes

 My body shook as I crawled unsteadily across the floor towards Esmee. I chose not to sit on her actual lap again but close by her side. She was so diminutive it seemed almost abusive to actually sit on her with my height and my new absurdly big weight to my name.  She looped her arm around my shoulder excepting my choice.

“Now Mi I need you to take deep breaths with me OK,” Esmee said, her voice smoother and less harsh now.

“I…I…I can’t.”

“Yes you can, now breathe in through your nose with me and then breathe out through your mouth.” I saw Esmee shoulders smoothly rise and fall in big circles as she emphasized her breathing. I tried to copy her. To expand my lungs against the gunge and elastic bands that kept them constricted but none of the badness would brake inside of me. Her soothing didn’t even touch the edges of my despair, but I kept trying. I kicked with all my might towards the surface of the water that was drowning me but there was no let up, there was no brake. I was going to drown and I almost wanted to. I was only fighting for her anyway.

“This is stupid!” I growled at myself between my teeth before punching at my stomach again. Esmee made a grab for my hands but I was quicker than her. She winced as the pain shot up through me. I refused to feel it like somehow my nerves should have been less sensitive then the rest of the world.”

“Mi, you have to stop doing that…” She wrapped her arm over my shoulder again and pushed my hands against the floor with hers so I could land the punch that had been aiming for my thighs. I hated her for that, for taking away the last things that I had left. She had been one of them to make me fat, she had thought nothing about holding a cup of feed in the air and watching as it drained away to feed a body that I hated anyway.

“Push her away and if she won’t let go slap her, punch her! Hell, bite her if you have to. She did this to you.” The voice scared me more than usual It wasn’t Sophie, just my own thought, amplified.

“I can’t OK! I can’t fight and I can’t breathe! I am not like you Esmee I am not strong!” I yelled pushing her away from me.

“Esmee’s eyes changed turning through the emotions she needed to feel until they settled somewhere between irritation to… to… anger. I could see the ruby red bolts appearing through the back. She had identical eyes to my mother’s when she was angry.

 “Mi, when I first got my period back after two years of weighing less then you do now and being force fed through a series or drips and NG tubes I went insane. I pulled my NG tube out putting a tear in my oesophagus. I kicked one male staff nurse in the crotch and I broke a female nursing assistance nose before stealing their keys skipping the hospital and cutting my arms so badly I needed a full blood transfusion and over one hundred stitches. So what do you think Mi? Do you think I felt strong back then?” Esmee snapped her breath heaving inside of her chest.

I guessed that probably was a no.

Chapter 252 : Starting to drown

I found reality again quicker then I was ready too. My eyes swooped open again almost as quickly as they had shut well at least that was what it felt like. However I was now on the floor laid on my side with one arm above my head and the other rested against my chin. Unless I was now mastering the art of collapsing into the recover position i guessed Esmee must have done it.

“It’s just a defense mechanism for your body, it’s like an overheat button on a kitchen appliance. Things get too much it just cuts out to prevent damage.”

“I have never been compared to a washing machine before,” I said as I moved my body upright again. In some ways she was right though I still had the feelings that I had before and all the time I was awake and aware of them they grew bigger. But the distress they had been causing me had calmed now or at least my body refused to react to it with such force.

“We not appliances we are hell of a lot more complicated than that but for just that bit it’s a good way of explaining, things. Well at least it’s a good way of explaining why I am not rushing to get you medical attention.”

“I’m fine now. I’m just week and it’s my own fault anyway. I am stupid. This whole strange reality is stupid. Something’s happened that I can’t change, but I can’t live with it. So where do I go from here, how do I get out of here alive? I can’t… I can’t cope with this. I need… I need to stop what’s happening to me.” There was no way of explaining it. There wasn't an emotion big enough to describe the distress of the agony that attacked every one of my nerve ending. I just knew I had no tools to fight it. Even losing the weight wouldn't have made the problem retreat fast enough. I felt disgusting; like I might as well have had a giant sign above my head announcing that I was bleeding from my vagina again. It was irrational but I had no idea how anyone could react to that in any other way then pure disgust.

“I am disgusting, I squeaked, allowing myself to weep again as I bundled my body up into a ball that felt too big and rocked backwards and forwards. “I feel so physically and mentally vile and I am in so much pain.”

“You Are Beautiful. There is no way you are going to believe that, and I am sorry because it’s probably even uncomfortable to hear, but I can’t carry this conversation on without telling you that inside and out I see stunning beauty shining through.”

 I grimaced at the sound of her words. I hated that she believed what she was saying. She saw some sort of beauty in me behind the scars and the fat and the ugliness of my feelings. It was like she saw me through a magic lenses or threw cursed eyes. I was like the haggard witch that turned herself into a beauty to play her nasty games.

“You can talk to me,” Esmee whispered her tone lower then it normally was. I responded by shaking my head and trying to scoot away from her but she stopped me by wrapping one of her arms over my shoulder and holding my hand against my lap with the other. The three neatly stacked rings on her finger made me smile for a few seconds. It was something I wanted. I denied it to myself because I didn't want to live, but if I had too - If I had to go on in the world – marriage would have been something that I wanted. More precisely a marriage like hers, I wanted to love someone as much as she loved Emmet. She had someone to fight for when it came to the end of the world… and he would never find her disgusting.

“Did something happen with your body when you went to the bathroom this morning Mi?”

 I nodded. What was the point in lying to her? I hadn't wanted to tell her but that was only because I didn't want her to laugh but even if she did she would have been right with that as well. My reaction to a normal function was stupid; even I knew that, that didn't take the feelings away though.  

 “I started my period this morning Esmee,” I whispered. The words where more terrible said aloud to another person, they sounded even more stupid and it made everything even more helpless. There was nothing she could do to make it go away, she wouldn't have a solution. She probably wouldn't even see the problem.  “I know it’s stupid and natural and…”

“Shhhh… It’s not stupid, and it makes no difference whether it’s natural or a good sign even. To you it must be terrifying and that is the feeling that matters. I think what we should try and work out is what about it exactly is the trigger point for your anxiety.”

I looked down at my stomach from where is sat and concentrated for a few seconds as I saw the skin stretch and then fall back into place keeping time with my breathing. It filled holes that before where empty. Far from what I wanted I seemed to have taken up even more space in the world. Venom pooled around my muscles.  “It means I’m fat,” I groaned, punching at my stomach. Esmee shook her head in a warning but I ignored her and punched at it again making her scoot back over the floor and grab both of my wrists in her hands holding them down to my knees. I sighed exasperated pulling my hands into tight fists even though after all this time the one of them was still considerably weaker than the other. I growled again even more frustrated at myself and my crumbling body. I was falling apart from the inside out.

“So all of this is purely about weight than? There is nothing deeper to it than that?”

“I’m fat!” I snapped unwilling to listen to other theories. I knew in the end they wound hurt more.

“I think that maybe you are more scared because your body is doing something else to you that you have no control over. You didn’t know this was coming and you don’t know how to make it go away. It’s scary stuff honey, I’m not judging, I just think it is good for you to understand what all of this is really about.

“Why do you all have to look for the deeper meaning in everything all of the time! It’s not about control it’s about looking like a small planet!” I pulled my body out of Esmee’s the tears building up again inside my chest. It was because she was right. She knew everything about me before I even did. It wasn’t fair.

I scratched hard at my arms my head shouting at me again and bashed my head against the wall hoping to feel some pain but the padding cradled my head. I growled sobbing loudly my throat gurgling with the effort of trying to make my crying less noisy. I bashed my head again harder than before is.”

“Come on, I wasn't done with my hug yet Miss Dorado.” Esmee said tapping her lap for me to come and curl back up on. I wanted to. I wanted to do just that more than anything in the world but for some reason I couldn't. Some monster inside of me was keeping us apart.

“I want to hurt myself Esmee. Not be hugged,” I said breathing uneasy. “I want to rip the skin off of my arms and knock my head so hard all of the thoughts will just go away and… and…” I stopped the breath coming faster in my chest, “and I am starting to drown Esmee.” The words dropped away to nothing.

“That is why Mi I need to you crawl over here now and sit in my lap and let me hold you tight while I do some breathing exercises with you. You can beat this. We can push through it. You don’t need to hurt yourself.”

“It won’t work. Breathing exercises are stupid!” I growled as my body slipped further under the waves in my head and I started to fight for my breath. I needed the water surface, I needed to breathe again and I knew how to find it if only Esmee would let me get to it,

“Mi, this is how you stop! This is how I stopped. One day I didn't just wake up and not feel like I was drowning any more. Do you think I got better all by myself one day Mi, because I didn't Ok. I plunged my hands into bowls of ice, I snapped elastic bands against my wrists, I dyed my skin with food coloring and I went cold turkey. I cried for Hours into Emmet’s chest and Emmet watched completely powerless as I spent hours shaking and shivering clutching onto a washing up bowl where I was sick over and over again because I needed to cut, because I was drowning under the waves in my head. Now Mi get your arse over here into my arms and try! I know you are capable of beating all of this!”