have been lifted,
now that the first bites are down,
now that she must eat,
she is famished.
Unappetizing as her food is, she devours it.
Afterwards, she is surprised
not by the fact that a nurse checks her tray,
lifting the napkin, looking inside the empty milk carton.
No. She is surprised
by what is missing:
guilt.
Guilt about how hungry she was,
about what she ate,
and how fast.
Guilt has been the biggest part of her meals,
bigger than NutraSweet
and food-moving and calorie counting,
and tonight, it is missing.
After dinner, time is not linear,
nor is the hallway,
and Jennifer gets lost
on the way from the lounge to her room.
She must ask a nurse for directions.
The nurse she finds is around the same age as Nurse Bosom,
but this nurse is crookedly thin,
with a grayish-white complexion,
a pointy beak for a nose,
and short, straight hair the color of sand.
The nurse eyes Jennifer with suspicion,
like she thinks there is no way
anyone could be so disoriented.
“Jennifer,” she says. “It’s three doors in a row.
Lounge, nurses’ station, your room.”
She makes karate chop motions
to indicate the doors she’s naming.
“Do I need to note this behavior in your file?
Your room is right there.”
There is a man in Jennifer’s hometown
who walks the old slate sidewalks in fancy dresses,
pillbox hats with lace veils,
white gloves and shiny pocketbooks,
his hips swaying as he talks loudly to himself.
The first time she saw him, Jennifer asked her mother why.
Why would a man dress like a woman?
Why does he talk to himself like that?
Mom had answered, gently, “It’s shell shock.
From Vietnam.
He does that because he’s hurting, and because
it’s the furthest he can get from being a soldier.
He doesn’t know how else to be.
The shock of war made him a little crazy.”
That is what Jennifer feels:
a little crazy.
Shocked by being here, and watching her parents leave,
and knowing she cannot sign herself out,
cannot call them for 48 hours,
cannot see them for seven days,
cannot go anywhere but this hall,
cannot open windows,
cannot breathe fresh air.
She is locked in,
like prison.
Inside her, a war has been raging
and no, there haven’t been machine guns or napalm,
and yes, this prison has soft beds and a television,
but still, somehow,
she is a prisoner of war.
Shell-shocked.
• • •
Before bedtime, Jennifer changes into her nightshirt,
quickly. She doesn’t want Heather,
who still hasn’t said more than two words to her,
to assess her body.
Jennifer slithers into the bed she made
in the nebulous hours between dinner and snack,
which was yogurt. Jennifer had never eaten yogurt before.
The container looked as big as a bucket,
and Jennifer shoveled load after load
of the tangy, sour, runny stuff into her mouth,
as tears dripped down her cheeks.
Now Jennifer opens her Calvin and Hobbes book, but
her eyes slide along the panels,
reading the same comic over and over,
until Heather grunts that it’s time for lights-out.
Jennifer lies in the semidark
(hall lights on, door open at least five inches)
and squeezes Bearibubs to her chest.
She cries silently.
Soon Heather’s breath becomes heavy,
dragging into ragged snores.
Jennifer shifts to find a patch of pillow
that isn’t damp with tears.
When will her tears run out?
She hopes maybe tomorrow.
She listens to the sounds of older patients,
with later bedtimes,
talking, moving from lounge to bedrooms.
Eventually the unit quiets.
All night, at regular intervals, a nurse comes into her room.
Jennifer can’t see Heather’s clock,
but she guesses the visits must be hourly.
The nurse is quiet, but Jennifer is either awake
or dozing so lightly,
antennas alert,
that the soft shuffling rouses her.
The nurse moves in the same pattern every time.
She opens the closet’s two sliding doors,
then closes them quietly.
She touches the things on Heather’s dresser,
then Jennifer’s, hands patting and deliberate,
like they are feeling for something specific.
The nurse goes to Jennifer’s bed
and stops, listening.
Jennifer keeps her eyes closed, pretends she is asleep.
Playing possum, Mom called this when Jennifer was little.
She would curl up onto Mom’s lap and close her eyes,
pretending to sleep through everything, even tickles.
What is this nurse listening for? Breathing?
Is she making sure Jennifer is still alive?
After listening to Jennifer, the nurse continues her routine.
She feels the nightstands between the beds,
touches the two lamps attached to the wall
above their headboards.
The nurse listens at Heather’s bed,
and Jennifer listens to the nurse,
until her soft footsteps trail out the door.
Every time Heather moves, her bedsprings squeak.
So, not every EDU patient is a skinny white teenager.
And the rooms aren’t bright, and the nurses aren’t friendly.
What other assumptions will turn out to be wrong?
• • •
Jennifer snaps to attention,
awakened not by the quiet nurse
but by the sound of screaming.
It’s a woman’s voice, wailing, shrieking, manic,
coming from down the hall:
“I AM JESUS CHRIST!
JESUS! I AM JESUS!
WATER INTO WINE!
I AM JESUS!”
Another voice speaks from the hall, over a loudspeaker.
A calm but firm male voice intones,
“Code Blue. Code Blue. Adult Unit.
All available nursing staff to Adult Unit.
Code Blue. Adult Unit.”
A door bangs.
The footsteps of more than one person
run down the hall,
past Jennifer’s room, around the corner.
“I AM JESUS!
WATER INTO WINE!
I AM—
NO!
GET AWAY!
NO NO NO NO NO NOOO!”
And the sounds of physical struggle.
The soft crash
es and oofs
of people wrestling.
Hurting each other.
“NO NO!
PLEASE NO!
Please no!
Nooooo,
nooooooooooooooooo.”
The screams slip into wretched moans.
Oh, God. What have they done to the woman?
Is she pinned under nurses’ knees and hands?
Are they forcing her into restraints?
Are they stabbing her with a hypodermic needle
loaded with tranquilizers?
The moaning fades
and stops.
There are more sounds of movement,
like someone being dragged—
that’s what Jennifer is picturing—
and the loudspeaker clicks.
“All clear. All clear.
Code Blue is neutral.
All clear.”
Footsteps pass her room,
one or two nurses,
and the door at the top of the stairs unlocks,
locks again.
Heather is still snoring.
She slept through it all.
How is that possible?
Jennifer thinks of Kelly,
who snores, but would never have slept through this.
Her best friend since the first day of kindergarten.
When had their sleepovers started? That year? Or first grade?
Whispers and giggles in the dark,
bridging bed to sleeping bag.
Back when Jennifer knew how to laugh,
when happiness came easily.
They still have sleepovers,
they do all the things best friends do,
but it’s been years since Jennifer felt like her laugh
has been anything but false, hollow.
When did it change?
When did she stop being happy?
She thinks back.
Second grade, her worry got overwhelming.
She cried every morning,
certain her mother would die,
or an earthquake would split the world,
or guerrillas would attack while she was in school.
Third grade, fourth, fifth: the anxieties changed,
but the distress was constant.
Worry colonized one-third of her brain,
and she needed another third to fight it,
or appease it with routines and rituals,
all while appearing well-adjusted.
It was exhausting.
And over those years,
sadness seeped into that last third of her mind,
so slowly it was hard to notice,
like the old story of how to cook a frog.
If you throw a frog straight into boiling water,
it will jump right out,
but if you put it in cool water,
and turn up the heat slowly,
the frog doesn’t notice
until it’s too late.
• • •
Jennifer rolls onto her back, blinking at the ugly ceiling.
The TV specials and anorexia memoirs had, of course,
prepared her for the occasional dramatic moments
in a hospital:
an anorexic freaking out about gaining weight,
a bulimic getting caught vomiting.
The familiar turmoil of eating disorders.
This is different.
So completely different.
This is primal.
This is Code Blue,
and physical struggle,
restraints.
This is delusion and danger.
How many of the patients here are dangerous?
How dangerous are they?
Is there any protection from them?
Jennifer’s bedroom door doesn’t even latch.
And also—
what did they do to that woman?
How did they subdue her?
What can they do to patients in this place?
Terror shimmers through Jennifer’s body.
What fate could await her if she does something wrong?
What if she temporarily loses it, goes crazy?
What would they do to her?
Straitjacket?
Handcuffs?
Tranquilizers?
Strapped to a bed?
Sedated?
Holy God.
Jennifer waits, waits, waits,
for her heart to slow to normal.
They won’t do that to her.
She isn’t delusional.
She just has an eating disorder.
She is a good girl with an eating disorder.
She will follow the rules.
She will get better.
Nothing like that will happen to her.
She should sleep.
But now her bladder won’t let her get comfortable.
She has to pee,
she always has to pee in the middle of the night,
but it’s different here; her bathroom is locked.
She turns onto her side,
tries to forget about her bladder,
closes her eyes,
waits for sleep.
It’s no use.
She is wide awake
and her bladder aches.
She can’t wait any longer.
She gets out of bed,
tiptoes to the door,
peers up and down the brightly lit hallway.
She’s on the lookout for crazy people.
When she’s sure the coast is clear,
she pads in bare feet to the nurses’ station.
A woman sits at the desk.
She is the first person Jennifer has seen
who is dressed like a nurse.
Royal blue scrubs, white cardigan, white clogs.
This nurse is making notes, humming to herself.
“Excuse me?” Jennifer whispers,
but the nurse doesn’t look up.
Jennifer clears her throat to try again.
The nurse jumps,
brings a hand to her chest.
“Oh, sweetie. You startled me.”
“Sorry,” Jennifer says,
but she’s thinking, I startled you?
Shouldn’t you always be on high alert for Code Blue?
“You must be Jennifer,” the nurse says.
“I’m Beverly, the night nurse.”
“Hi,” Jennifer says, lifting her hand in a feeble wave.
Standing in her nightshirt, no sweatpants,
Jennifer feels small and child-young.
And isn’t that what she wanted all along?
Wasn’t an unreachably low target weight
her attempt at being small, child-young,
like a baby bird needing gentle care?
But this small and child-young is different:
it feels exposed and vulnerable.
“You okay, hon?” Nurse Beverly asks.
Not accusatory, like the day nurses.
Just concerned.
Jennifer nods, shrugs.
“I guess so?”
Nurse Beverly tilts her head.
“Did that little incident wake you?
Oh dear. What a welcome.
Rest assured that doesn’t happen every night.
Did you need something?”
“I have to pee,” Jennifer says.
“Sure thing, sweetie.”
Nurse Beverly takes a large ring of keys from the desk.
She unlocks Jennifer’s bathroom and
says,
“Since it’s so late, you can use the bathroom unsupervised.
Just be sure to close the door all the way when you’re done.
It will lock automatically.”
Alone in a closed room for the first time since she arrived,
she watches her tears drip onto the tile floor while she pees.
Tuesday, November 22, 1988
The light pops on,
a cold hand clutches her wrist.
Jennifer sits up.
“No. Don’t move. Stay down.”
It’s not a friendly voice.
It’s not Nurse Beverly.
The icy fingers dig between tendons to find a pulse.
Jennifer stays down,
rubs her eyes with her free hand, squints.
The light from her bedside lamp is glaring.
The nurse makes a tsking noise.
She sounds irritated.
Jennifer feels herself start to worry.
Did she do something wrong?
Why is the nurse mad?
She runs through possibilities, but she thinks
she did everything she was supposed to yesterday:
ate, followed all the rules, turned her light out on time,
and after using the bathroom last night,
she went straight back to bed,
shutting the bathroom door.
She even checked that it was locked.
It was okay to flush, wasn’t it?
The nurse hasn’t even said “Good morning,”
doesn’t seem to be trying to be quiet,
even though, judging by her snoring,
Heather is still asleep.
There is a blood pressure machine on wheels
next to Jennifer’s bed.
It has two coiled tubes:
one leads to an adult pressure cuff,
the other, pediatric.
The loud rip of Velcro,
the rough texture of a cuff sliding up her arm.
The nurse is using the pediatric size.
Jennifer is proud of this.
This cuff is a boa constrictor,
squeezing tighter and tighter until
click, the air hisses out and the pressure slackens.
“What are my numbers?” Jennifer asks.
Her pressure is always low.
The nurse snaps, “You know I can’t tell you that.”
Actually, Jennifer didn’t know.
But she should have guessed.
“Sit,” the nurse directs.
“Legs over the edge of the bed.”
Outside of her blankets, the room is cold,
and Jennifer shivers.
From this angle, Jennifer can see Heather’s digital clock.
It’s 6:38.
It’s her first morning at Samuel Tuke.
The cuff tightens again.
Jennifer watches goose bumps rise on her forearms,
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