A Slice of Heaven

by Sherryl Woods

  “Who’s she?”

  “She’s the nutritionist who’s going to help make you well again. She’ll regulate your food intake and teach you about nutrition.”

  “My mom owns a restaurant. She knows all about food.”

  “I’m familiar with Sullivan’s,” Dr. McDaniels said. “It’s got a great menu. Too bad you haven’t been eating what your mom serves there.”

  “Who says I haven’t?” Annie said belligerently.

  “The scales don’t lie,” the doctor replied gently. “And the fact that you’re here is pretty telling, too.”

  Annie studied Dr. McDaniels for a minute. She didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d be cruel or make too big a deal about something. In fact, she looked more sad than mean, as if she felt bad that Annie was here, and really wanted to help. Annie wasn’t ready to trust her yet, but she couldn’t dismiss her the way she’d wanted to at first.

  “Could you find my mom or my dad for me?” she asked. She knew she didn’t sound half as brave as she had earlier.

  “Of course. I’ll tell them to come by as soon as your meeting with Lacy is over,” the doctor promised. “It’s very nice to meet you, Annie. I think we’re going to make a lot of progress together.”

  Annie watched her leave the room, then closed her eyes again. There had to be some mistake, she told herself. There had to be. But somewhere deep inside, she knew that Dr. McDaniels had been telling the truth.

  Without even realizing it could happen, Annie had almost killed herself.

  When the door to her room opened again, Annie was hoping it would be her mom and dad. Instead, the woman who walked in, wearing white slacks, a brightly flowered uniform top and thick-soled white shoes, had spiked black hair and a pierced eyebrow. The uniform and name tag gave away the fact that she was a hospital employee. Otherwise Annie would have thought she was a college student or maybe a member of some rock band.

  “Hi, Annie,” she said cheerfully. “I’m Lacy Reynolds.”

  “The nutritionist,” Annie said, surprised.

  “Ah, I see Dr. McDaniels told you about me.”

  “Not that you’d be so young and cool-looking,” Annie said candidly. “I wish my mom would let me pierce something.”

  “When you’re my age, you can do whatever you want. See? There’s something to look forward to.” The woman grinned at her. “Doesn’t mean I’m not tough, though, so watch out. When it comes to what goes into your mouth in this place, I’m in charge, and believe me, there’s nothing that happens that I don’t find out about.”

  Despite the warning, Annie couldn’t help liking her. At least she laid everything out there so you understood the rules.

  “Dr. McDaniels said you were going to talk to me about food,” Annie said. “My mom knows all kinds of stuff about food and I hang out at her restaurant a lot.”

  “Then you know something about food, too,” Lacy said. She took a small notebook out of her pocket. “Let’s talk about what you’ve been eating lately.”

  Annie squirmed.

  The nutritionist continued to wait, her pen poised above her pad of paper. “Well?” she prodded.

  “I eat a lot of different stuff,” Annie claimed eventually.

  Lacy gave her a disappointed look. “Here’s the first rule with me, Annie. You have to be honest. If I don’t know where you are, then I don’t know how far we have to go. Let’s be specific. What did you have to eat the day you wound up in here?”

  Annie tried to think back. She’d skipped breakfast that day except for a few sips of water. At school she’d bought a salad in the cafeteria and eaten a few shreds of the carrot on the top. When her friends had come over, she’d made a pretense of eating the pizza her mom had ordered for them, but one bite had made her feel sick.

  “I wasn’t feeling hungry that day,” she said eventually.

  “Come on, Annie. Just be straight with me.”

  “I had a salad for lunch and pizza when my friends came over,” she said, embellishing the truth.

  Lacy didn’t make a single note, just kept gazing at her until Annie blinked and looked away.

  “Okay, I ate some of the shredded carrot on the salad and a bite of pizza.”

  Lacy nodded and finally made a note. “Any idea how many calories that is?”

  She shrugged. “I told you, I wasn’t hungry.”

  “A hundred at most, and that’s if you’re even being honest with me. Nobody can survive on that, Annie. You do understand that, don’t you?” She waited until Annie nodded before going on. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. You and I are going to work out a plan. While you’re here, you’re going to have three meals and three snacks a day. At first these will be very small, just a couple of hundred calories more than you were eating, but we’ll increase the amount until you’re up to the number of calories you should be eating.”

  “No way,” Annie protested. The thought of all that food made her feel physically ill.

  “Here’s the alternative, then,” Lacy said, her tone unyielding. “You’re not going to starve yourself on my watch, so we’ll insert a feeding tube to make sure you get the nutrition you need. You need to think of food as medicine for now. It’s the thing that will make you well and allow you to go back home and live a full and happy life. I know that’s what you want, and it’s my goal to make sure you get it. It’s up to you to decide which way we go with this.”

  The thought of a feeding tube made Annie cringe. “What kind of food?” she finally asked.

  “You and I will decide that together, along with some input from your folks. At first it will be really simple, basic things. Maybe some fruit or crackers and juice, part of a turkey sandwich. Someone on staff will be here when you eat to make sure you eat everything you’re supposed to for each meal or snack. If there’s something you can’t eat or can’t finish, we have a nutrition shake you can have to replace the calories. You might only need an ounce or two, depending on how much of the meal you don’t eat.”

  Annie was appalled by the regimen. She was going to feel like some kind of animal in a zoo with people watching every bite she put in her mouth. “How long does this go on?”

  “For as long as it takes to get your lab work normal and your heart rate back up. Your whole team will make that decision. That’s Dr. Lane, Dr. McDaniels and me. The monitoring of your food will go on even after you leave here. I’ll work with your folks to see that they understand the food plan.”

  Annie felt tears welling up in her eyes, and turned away. “I don’t think I can do this,” she whispered.

  “I think you can,” Lacy said. “And we’re all going to be here to help. We have another girl like you here right now who’s almost ready to go home. You could talk to her if you want to. It might help you not feel so alone.”

  “No,” Annie said, shaking her head adamantly. She didn’t want someone else knowing her business.

  “Okay,” Lacy said. “Let me know if you change your mind. In the meantime, I want you to write down some of your favorite foods for me. I’ll be back a little later and we can plan your menu for dinner and a snack tonight and for the whole day tomorrow, okay?”

  “Whatever,” Annie said, still not looking at her. How had she ever thought Lacy Reynolds was cool? She was just another adult on some kind of power trip. Maybe if she told her folks that, they would get her out of here.

  She sighed when she heard the door to her room close. Who was she kidding? Her mom and dad were way too freaked to take her home. And somewhere way down inside was this nagging feeling that she ought to be freaked, too. But if she admitted that, what then? Food was the one thing in her life she’d been able to control. Dieting was the one thing she’d been really good at, though her body still wasn’t as perfect as it could be. Now all these people wanted her to stuff her face and ruin everything.

  Terrified by the image of herself as fat and ugly, she buried her face in her pillow and let the tears flow.

  Ronnie was on
his way back from the cafeteria when Linda McDaniels stopped him in the hall.

  “Annie’s asking for you,” she told him.

  He almost bolted past her, but she put out a hand to stop him.

  “She knows she has a heart problem and that it was brought on by her eating disorder. The nutritionist met with her, too. Annie’s in denial right now, so don’t push her too hard to accept the truth. She’ll come around to it on her own.”

  “You told her?”

  “She’d figured out some of it. As I told you at the beginning, sometimes my role is to be the bad guy and lay out the hard truths. It’s best to get everything out in the open, along with the plan for what happens next.”

  He ran his hand over his head. “What am I supposed to say to her?”

  “If she has questions, answer them if you can. Otherwise leave it up to the doctors, the nutritionist or me to clarify things for her. Really, all she needs for the next couple of days is to know you’re in her corner and that she’s going to be okay. The rest will come in time.”

  “Did you tell her about the therapy sessions?”

  “Only that there would be some, not how difficult or intensive they’re going to be.”

  “How did she react?”

  The psychologist grinned. “She told me she didn’t need therapy, of course. Part of my job will be to convince her otherwise.”

  “God, how did things get to be such a mess?” Ronnie lamented.

  “That’s what we’re going to figure out,” Dr. McDaniels assured him. “We will unravel this, Mr. Sullivan.”

  He gave her a weary look. “She’s always been a good kid, you know. Great grades. Lots of friends. A zillion different activities.”

  “Sounds like an overachiever,” she said. “Ironically, when that same sort of determination is turned to something like dieting, it can backfire. But let’s not worry about that now. Let’s just get her physically healthy and then we’ll take care of whatever issues brought her to this point. Lacy Reynolds, the nutritionist, has already explained the basics of her food plan, so Annie can begin to see food in a more realistic light—as fuel for the body, not an enemy.”

  Ronnie nodded, grateful for the calm, reasonable approach McDaniels was offering. Without it, he had a hunch he’d be punching his fists through walls by now.

  “Go to your daughter,” she encouraged. “I’ll see if I can track down your ex-wife and send her in, as well.”

  “I think she went home to get some rest,” he said.

  “I’ll call the house, then.”

  “Try her cell phone,” Ronnie suggested, jotting the number down for her. “She’s more likely to answer that.”

  “Will do. Thanks. I’ll be in touch later,” the woman said, then strode off.

  Ronnie followed her with his gaze, wishing he were half as confident as she seemed to be that Annie would come through this crisis okay. A part of him wished Dr. McDaniels would come with him to visit Annie. She knew exactly what to say to his daughter, while he didn’t have a clue. The situation probably called for calm diplomacy and tact, neither of which were his strong suits. Now that the shock of Annie’s appearance had worn off, now that the doctors were more certain she would recover, he wanted to blast her for the stupidity of her actions. He had a hunch that would be counterproductive.

  Schooling his expression into something he hoped was neutral, he went back to her room. At first glance, Annie appeared to be sleeping again. Relieved, he took his customary place in the chair beside her bed and let his mind wander to the way she’d looked the last time he’d seen her before leaving town.

  She’d appeared sad and disappointed, but at least she’d looked like a normal teenager, with color in her cheeks, a hair-style that framed her pretty face and a body that was just beginning to round out with womanly curves. He’d been scared to death about what would happen when her interest in boys turned serious, how he would cope with the whole dating thing, but as he’d sat in his car on the street that day two years ago, he’d realized that he wouldn’t even be around to play a role in whatever decisions she would soon start to make about boys.

  If he’d been thinking straight then—or in all the months that followed—he’d never have left her to make her way through that hormonal minefield without a father’s input. His input. It was a regret he’d live with till the day he died.

  “Hi, Daddy,” Annie said weakly, snapping him out of his memories.

  “Hey, sweetheart. How are you feeling?”

  “Better now that you’re here. When I woke up before and you were gone, I was scared you’d changed your mind and decided to leave.”

  “I promised you I wasn’t going anywhere, didn’t I?”

  She nodded.

  “You can count on that, baby. I’m back for good.”

  She smiled and once again closed her eyes, leaving Ronnie to go back to his bittersweet memories.

  Dana Sue was outside Annie’s room and about to push the door all the way open when she heard Ronnie’s voice. She bit back a gasp at this confirmation of what Maddie had told her earlier. Her ex was planning to stick around Serenity even after this crisis passed.

  Whirling about, she marched back down the hall to the waiting room, where she’d left Maddie.

  “Ronnie is staying. I heard him tell Annie he’s back for good,” she said, pacing agitatedly. “Why would he say that and get her hopes up?”

  “Maybe because that’s what he’s planning to do,” Maddie suggested.

  Dana Sue scowled at her. “What am I going to do? I have to stop him.”

  “Even if this is what’s best for Annie?” Maddie asked reasonably.

  Dana Sue stopped in front of her. “Having Ronnie Sullivan back in her life is not what’s best for Annie,” she snapped, then resumed pacing.

  “I wonder if Annie would agree with that,” Maddie said, her tone mildly reproachful. “I think you’re projecting your feelings onto Annie. You’re the one who doesn’t want Ronnie around.”

  Dana Sue scowled at her again and continued walking.

  “Sit,” Maddie ordered. “You’re making my head spin. Now let’s consider this rationally. Annie needs her father in her life. Even you theorized that his leaving might have had something to do with this decision of hers to obsess about her weight. Doesn’t it make sense that having him back might—”

  When Dana Sue was about to interrupt, Maddie held up a hand. “That it just might be the one thing that could turn Annie around?”

  Dana Sue sank onto one of the hard, plastic chairs. “Maybe,” she conceded reluctantly. “But I hate the idea. I don’t want him here. I want to be the one who fixes this.”

  Maddie barely managed to contain a smile. “Does it really matter who fixes it, as long as Annie is healthy again?” Her gaze narrowed. “What are you really afraid of, Dana Sue? Are you scared he might actually be able to get through to Annie in a way you couldn’t? That’s what it sounds like you’re saying.”

  “No,” Dana Sue said at once. “That would be selfish.”

  This time Maddie didn’t even bother trying to hide her grin. “Then it must be that you’re scared he might get to you.”

  Dana Sue sighed. Maddie was more accurate than she wanted to admit. She was tempted to deny it, but this was Maddie, her best friend. She’d never let her get away with it. “So what if I am?” she grumbled.

  “Then make this all about Annie. Set your ground rules about how involved he gets in your life. Keep your distance from Ronnie, but don’t try to keep him from your daughter.”

  “Why do you always have to be so damn rational and reasonable and right?” she groused.

  “It’s a natural talent,” Maddie said, laughing. “I probably should remind you that I was none of those things when Cal first came into my life. I fought that just as hard as you’re trying to keep Ronnie from sneaking back into yours.”

  “And we all know how well that turned out,” Dana Sue said wearily. She was doomed.


  Unless, she thought, brightening, unless she took total charge of the situation, just as Maddie had said. She could establish the ground rules and Ronnie would just have to live with them. He would spend time with Annie on her timetable, under her conditions.

  Then she remembered that one of Ronnie’s favorite pastimes was breaking rules, and some of her good cheer evaporated. Still, she could try. She could raise a fuss, keep him off balance and erect enough barriers to keep an NFL lineman from getting through. She could demand he leave, and then find some compromise, so she’d come across as the reasonable one. Actually, it might be kind of fun to match wits with him again.

  “We need to go outside and wait for him,” she told Maddie, leaping back to her feet. “Now.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “No, hold on,” she said, pausing in midstride. “I’ll go outside and wait for him. You tell him to take a break. I’ll ambush him as soon as he leaves the building.”

  Maddie stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “What are you going to do, Dana Sue?”

  “I’m going to banish him. He’ll refuse to go, naturally. Then I’ll agree to some compromise, one where I set ground rules, just the way you told me to,” she told her innocently. “Ronnie won’t know what hit him.”

  “Couldn’t you just walk down the hall and have this conversation with him in here?” Maddie suggested. “That’s what mature adults do. They work things out.”

  “We’re talking about Ronnie,” Dana Sue said. “Quiet, rational conversation doesn’t accomplish much. The decibel level required to get through his thick skull is best reserved for outside.”

  Maddie frowned. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “It’s an excellent idea,” Dana Sue assured her. “Just do your part. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  When she was satisfied that Maddie would somehow manage to roust Ronnie from Annie’s room, she headed downstairs and outside to lie in wait for him. The prospect of having the upper hand for once had her humming happily.

  After a couple of minutes, she realized that the tune she was humming had been their favorite song way back when. She cut herself off in midnote and got busy working her temper back into the danger zone. All it took was imagining him tangled up in some motel room bed with a woman he barely knew. Maybe later Dana Sue would try to figure out why, after two years, she could still summon that image on command. Perhaps it was because it was so handy whenever she felt her resolve weakening.