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