her knees.
The cuff releases.
The nurse makes a note on a clipboard. “Stand.”
Jennifer stands. Black dots prickle her vision,
edging out the beige of Heather’s bedspread.
Jennifer wobbles.
The nurse grabs her elbow, hands like claws.
She steadies Jennifer. “Don’t pass out.”
Jennifer sneaks glimpses of the nurse.
She’s the youngest nurse so far,
auburn hair in a chin-length bob.
White, like all the other nurses she’s seen.
She’s wearing decent clothes: Outback Red shirt
tucked into paper-bag waisted jeans, size eight or ten.
When the cuff releases, Jennifer plops back down,
bundling under the covers. She’s shivering now.
Shivering burns calories.
Nurse Trendy—who still hasn’t introduced herself,
let alone said, “Good morning”
or “How was your first night?”
or “Did you sleep well?”—
finishes her notes.
She sets a folded paper gown on the foot of Jennifer’s bed.
“Put this on and come to the nurses’ station for weigh-in.”
In the other bed, Heather moans and turns over.
Nurse Trendy wheels the blood pressure machine
toward the door,
stopping to rattle a keychain
and unlock the bathroom before she leaves.
Jennifer sits up.
The bathroom is free.
“Do not take a shower,” Nurse Trendy says, returning.
“I’m putting a urine hat and jug in the bathroom.
Use the hat to collect your urine for the next 24 hours,
and pour it into the jug.
Tomorrow morning, bring your jug to the nurses’ station.”
Jennifer’s stomach contorts.
This place was supposed to make her feel safe,
help her get better.
But it is foreign and alienating and scary
and it makes her feel alone and hopeless.
She has felt this before.
But those times, all those times,
she had her eating disorder
for protection, distraction, company.
Jennifer takes the paper gown into the bathroom.
She closes and locks the door,
lifts her nightshirt,
scrutinizes herself in the mirror behind the sink.
She looks the same as yesterday.
Her stomach feels reassuringly empty.
Turning sideways, measuring her waist
by the width of her arm,
she decides that she hasn’t gotten bigger yet.
She sees the same thing every time she looks in the mirror:
two images, stacked, one on top of the other,
like the clear plastic overlays
of the human anatomy pages in the encyclopedia.
But instead of layering musculature on bones,
or veins and arteries on organs,
Jennifer’s transparencies are her whole self, fat and thin.
In one, she’s ribs, hip bones, tiny breasts.
A very skinny, but not skeletal, fifteen-year-old girl.
In the other, she’s double chin,
curving tummy,
cellulite butt,
thighs touching.
A grotesquely fat human hippopotamus.
She drops her nightshirt back down.
Under the sink, on the brown floor tiles,
sit two plastic urine collectors.
They look like old-timey nurses’ hats,
but with a spout for pouring.
One says “Johnson” in black marker,
the other “Moore,” which must be Heather’s last name.
There are also two empty plastic two-gallon jugs,
one marked for Johnson, one for Moore.
Jennifer fits the urine hat onto the toilet rim,
sets the seat down over it.
Her pee is noisy hitting the plastic.
It is splashy and stinky.
She pours her urine into the jug,
and a little spills on the floor.
She wipes it up with toilet paper.
She wonders about pooping.
She wants to get it over with
while she can close the bathroom door,
wipe in privacy, flush the toilet herself.
But maybe she should wait until after she gets weighed.
She wants every ounce to count.
Is that cheating, though?
And if it isn’t…
what about drinking water from the tap?
Not a lot. Just a cup or two.
She looks in the mirror again.
Surely she can get better without gaining weight.
And anyway, she can’t function in real life
without her eating disorder,
because who would she even be without it?
Who is the girl with the eating disorder,
if she doesn’t have an eating disorder?
Nothing.
No one.
A nonentity.
She squeezes her eyes shut,
tries to ignore the monster.
She wanted to come here, didn’t she?
Because she knows
there must be a better life for her than this.
She needs to fight.
She takes off her nightshirt,
puts on the paper gown,
and goes to the nurses’ station.
Someone is already being weighed.
The rest of the patients have to wait in the hall.
About half of the EDU patients are here.
The skinny ones.
Tired, quiet,
they’ve all just rolled out of bed.
The walking skeleton is chewing her fingernail.
Another girl is pacing, twitchy,
like a caged animal.
Jennifer can’t remember their names.
She waits in line.
It’s freezing.
When her name is called by the thin, beak-nosed nurse,
the one she asked directions from yesterday,
Jennifer steps into the room.
The nurse pats Jennifer down
like she’s checking a criminal for guns.
“Put your back to the scale.”
Jennifer turns and steps up, backwards.
It’s an awkward motion,
and when the foot plate wiggles, it’s hard to balance.
The nurse clanks the sliders on the scale.
“I know you girls count the noises
so you can figure out your numbers.”
“Huh,” Jennifer says.
That wasn’t in any of the books or specials.
That’s a level above any of the tricks she knows.
The nurse continues, “We move the weights all around,
to throw you off track.
So don’t even bother to try to guess your weight.”
The nurse seems so bitter and unpleasant.
She reminds Jennifer of the nurse
in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
What was her name?
“Hm,” the nurse says, frowning.
“Step down and then back on.”
Jennifer does.
The nurse’s frown deepens as she clanks the sliders.
She riffles through the pages in Jennifer’s folder,
looking for something.
“Jennifer, I’m going to ask you a question,
and you need to be honest with me.”
Jennifer’s stomach tightens.
What now?
“Okay,” she says softly.
“Did you tank this morning?” the nurse asks.
“Tank?” Jennifer says.
She doesn’t know that term.
The nurse sighs heavily.
“Did you drink water this morning before weigh-in?”
Jennifer shivers; it feels like an arctic wind is blowing.
She can sense eyeballs and ears at the crack in the door.
“No.” Jennifer shakes her head. “No, I didn’t.”
Should she admit that she thought about it?
Or would that make her look guilty?
“You weigh a lot more than you look like you should.”
It sounds like an accusation, but Jennifer relaxes.
“Oh, that’s what you mean.” Jennifer keeps her voice low.
She doesn’t want the other patients to hear.
“Yeah, I always win at amusement parks,
you know, those booths where the guy
tries to guess your weight?”
The nurse doesn’t respond to this.
She taps Jennifer’s file.
“According to the self-report on your admission interview,
yesterday you weighed less than you do right now.”
“Well, that’s okay, isn’t it?” Jennifer asks.
“I’m probably supposed to gain some weight?”
She feels nervous again.
“Not by cheating,” the nurse snaps.
“I didn’t cheat,” Jennifer says
through the lump forming in her throat.
The nurse flips through the pages of Jennifer’s file.
“And where is your admission weight?
Didn’t they weigh you as soon as you came to the unit?”
Jennifer shakes her head.
“Not that I remember.”
“Not that you remember!” the nurse snorts.
“Don’t you sound like quite the young politician.”
“No,” Jennifer says. “I just don’t remember because…
yesterday feels like a blur.
But I don’t remember being weighed, no.”
“Well!” the nurse says.
“That is a huge mistake someone made.
Patients should always be weighed, first thing.”
Eyeing Jennifer again, she says,
“Just looking at you I can tell something is off.
You’d better tell me, right now.”
Nurse Ratched.
The name pops to Jennifer’s mind.
That was the name of the nurse in Cuckoo’s Nest.
Evil, power-mad, contemptuous.
Yes. That is the perfect name for this woman.
“I didn’t…there’s nothing to tell you,” Jennifer says.
Panic is creeping into her voice.
Nurse Ratched says, “Jennifer.
I am going to give you one more chance to be honest.
Did you, or did you not, tank this morning?”
“No,” Jennifer says, tears spilling.
“I didn’t. I swear.”
“Do you have weights on your body?”
“No!”
“You will need to take off your gown.”
Unwrapping her paper robe, Jennifer thinks
maybe there is nothing worse than being falsely accused.
Except being falsely accused
and being forced to stand naked in front of your accuser.
She lets her paper gown fall to the floor.
It rests against her calves in stiff peaks.
“Is there anything in your underwear?” Nurse Ratched asks.
“I’m going to have to look.”
She stretches the waistband of Jennifer’s underwear
and peers in, front and back.
Jennifer has never imagined humiliation like this.
“All right,” Nurse Ratched says. “Nothing there.
And your stomach doesn’t look too distended.
You can put your gown back on.”
The paper rustles
as Jennifer puts her arms through the gown,
wraps it around herself,
holds it closed with crossed arms.
She wipes her cheeks and running nose
with the back of her hand.
Ratched is writing in the file.
“We can’t prove tanking, but you can bet
Dr. Wexler and the rest of your treatment-planning team
will be hearing about this.”
“But I”—Jennifer can barely speak,
she’s hiccupping sobs—“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Nurse Ratched says, “Your tears don’t work on me,
and they won’t work on Dr. Wexler.
I’d say you’re not off to a very good start here.”
What should she do? What can she do?
“Can I go now?” Jennifer mumbles.
“Can you go? I’m not stopping you!” Nurse Ratched says.
“Jennifer, you need to learn
that everything you do here is your choice.
If you want recovery,
you need to choose to work this program.”
Quietly Jennifer says, “I want recovery.”
Ratched says, “We’ll see about that.
We’ll just see about that.”
Back in her room, in the bathroom,
Jennifer splashes cold water on her face,
rinses out her red eyes,
takes deep breaths to try to stop crying.
What will happen to her now?
How can she make them believe her?
She rubs Noxzema on her cheeks.
Washes her armpits with a washcloth.
Gets her clothes from the dresser
and puts them on in the bathroom.
Heather is still asleep.
Stiffly, Jennifer makes her way to the lounge.
The Today Show is on.
Bryant Gumbel is saying that it is
the 25th anniversary of JFK’s assassination.
They’ll be interviewing Kennedy historians
for the next three days.
Monica is on the couch, smoking.
She motions for Jennifer to come sit.
“Sad,” Jennifer says,
nodding toward the TV,
trying to make conversation.
“Yeah, it is sad,” Monica agrees.
She glances over at Nurse Trendy,
then lowers her voice. “So, did you tank?”
Jennifer shakes her head,
mouths, No.
“Really?” Monica whispers.
“You can tell me.”
“I didn’t,” Jennifer says.
“But the nurse didn’t believe me.”
“Nurse Sheryl.” Monica nods.
“We call her Nurse Ratch—”
“Ratched!” Jennifer choruses,
immediately covering her mouth because she said it too loud,
and Nurse Trendy definitely heard.
“Jinx,” Monica says.
“You owe me a Diet Coke.”
“I thought we can’t have diet soda,” Jennifer says.
“When we get out of this hellhole…” Monica blows smoke,
waving her hand to move it away from Jennifer.
“Oh. Okay,” Jennifer says, wondering:
will she really be able to go back to
Diet Coke,
or would that break the rules of recovery?
“How often do we have to get weighed?”
“Every day, except weekends.”
“Ugh.” Jennifer pinches the bridge of her nose.
She has such a headache already.
“But it won’t always be Nurse Ratched,” Monica says.
“And once you hit maintenance, it’s only twice a week.”
“And blood pressure?” Jennifer asks.
“Is that every day?”
Monica nods, reaching for a tin ashtray from the coffee table.
She presses the butt of her cigarette onto it.
“Vitals every morning, including weekends,
until you’re medically cleared. Five days a week after that,
until you hit maintenance. Then twice a week,
same days as weigh-ins.”
“How long will it take for me
to get medically cleared?” Jennifer asks.
Monica wrinkles her nose. “It depends on—”
“You don’t want to know,” a girl interrupts,
leaping over the arm of the couch
and onto the seat next to Monica.
It’s one of the African-American girls.
She looks college age, eighteen or nineteen,
and she’s wearing a Syracuse sweatshirt,
dark blue with orange letters.
She’s as beautiful as Denise Huxtable,
with the same flawless skin,
bright eye shadow. Curly hair in a small Afro
held back from her face with a scarf for a headband.
“It would just depress you,” the girl says,
setting a pack of cigarettes on the arm of the couch.
“Oh. Are you?” Jennifer asks.
“Medically cleared?”
The girl nods. “Yeah, all of us are except, let’s see…
Amanda.” She points to a thin, very young-looking girl
with frizzy hair who is starding near the doorway.
“And obviously also Thriller over there.” She nods
to indicate the skeletal girl who sits almost motionless,
looking at her hands.
“Thriller,” Jennifer whispers. “Like the video?”
“Yeah. Not her real name obviously,” Denise Huxtable says,
“but it’s fitting, don’t you think?”
“No, Bronwyn,” Monica says. “You’re right about Thriller, but not about Amanda. She got medically cleared.”
Bronwyn Bronwyn Bronwyn, Jennifer thinks.
She’s never heard this name before,
and she doesn’t want to get it wrong.
Bron-wyn. Remember:
Denise Huxtable’s real name is Bronwyn.
“Are you at your maintenance weight yet?”
Jennifer asks Bronwyn,
hoping the answer will be yes,
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