Carina was lying in bed and heard Maya getting up next to her. She opened her eyes and looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table, which read 5:01 AM. She saw Mays approaching the bedroom door dressed in her running gear.

Carina rolled over in the bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. She would never be able to understand how Maya was able to work out and go running with such fierce motivation and discipline. And at five am! Carina did not want to leave the bed, let alone go for a run at this ungodly hour. Drifting into sleep again, she heard her alarm going off at 6:45 am.

She got up and went for a shower, only semi-awake she saw that Maya couldn't have come back yet due to the lack of water in the shower. 20 minutes later, she headed for the kitchen and decided to make pancakes with fruit for breakfast. Just as she was about to flip the first pancake, she heard the front door opening and an out of breath, sweaty and exhausted looking Maya came in.

"Morning", Carina said smiling, "how was your run?"

"Good", Maya replied between two breaths.

"I'm making pancakes, I have to leave for work in half an hour, but we could eat together now."

"Sorry, I'm gonna head for a shower first", called Maya already hurrying towards the bathroom.

"Okay, there'll be some left for you.", Carina said.

While she could certainly understand that one wanted to shower after working out, it did seem like Maya had almost fled from Carina and the pancakes as soon as she had seen them.

Carina sighed, hoping that Maya would at least have some breakfast after running for more than two hours.

When she had showered, Maya only left the bathroom once she heard Carina leaving the apartment. Exhausted from her excessive workout she got dressed and was happy to see that her once very tight pants seemed to fit loosely.

The run had satisfied her, so she allowed herself to eat all of the leftover fruit, a couple of raspberries, strawberries and pieces of banana. It had already become a routine for Maya to list everything she consumed meticulously in the notes on her phone.

Recently, she had also started adding the durations of her workouts. It felt deeply satisfying to see on how little food her body could still perform on and keep going without anybody noticing it. She did realise that it wasn't exactly healthy but after everything that had been going on lately, with her father, Carina and the pandemic it felt like the only variable of her life that she was able to control right now. And she was good at it.

"And it's not like I'm underweight or that I couldn't switch back to eating more again, if I wanted to.", Maya thought.

Today was her day off before her shift would start again tonight. She had a couple of errands to run before she decided to do an upper body workout after having some salad and baguette for lunch.

Carina was on her lunch break outside of the hospital to be able to take the mask off for a bit when she saw one of her colleagues from psych. Before she could even realise what she was doing, she got up and went over:

"Hey, do you have a second?"

"Hey Carina, sure. What's up?"

"I was just wondering if you could tell me what the early signs of anorexia nervosa are and when it's time to intervene?"

"Oh, is it a patient of yours?"

"Um... yeah."

"Do you want me to do a consult?"

"Oh, no. That's not necessary. I'm only suspecting it at the moment, I think it would overwhelm them right now. I just wanted to see if I could give them some advice and if my observations are even correct."

"Okay, no problem. So, most prominent is a rather significant weight loss in a short amount of time, restricted eating, sometimes excessive working out to compensate food intake, avoiding certain types of food that are high in calories and fat, and mainly just spending an excessive amount of time a day thinking about food intake and weight."

Carina went over each point in her head and was alarmed when most of the, seemed to fit Maya's behaviour to a T.

"Carina, you okay?"

"Yeah, sorry. What did you say?"

"I was just asking whether you wanted me to give some pamphlets with basic info and some addresses to receive help and support."

"Yeah, sure. That would be great."

Maya headed for the station in the evening, Andy knocked on her office door and asked whether she wanted to have some of the dinner with the rest of them, but Maya replied that she had already had eaten at home and had to catch up on some more paperwork.

A few hours later, the alarm went off for the first time that shift. When Maya jumped up, she felt her vision blurring as she tried to grip onto her desk as she was swaying. Her ears were ringing.

Half a minute passed before the fog started clearing. She hurried out to the apparatus floor, the others were already in the truck, engine and aid car and Andy eyed her suspiciously.

Carina had arrived back at Maya's place, or their place as she reminded herself. They were planning on starting to move Carina's stuff here as soon as both of them would have a day off. Looking through her bag to fetch her phone in order to charge it, she saw the info pamphlets she had been given.

During her shift she had gone through them in her office. Carina's worry had only increased when she had read how deadly anorexia could be and how quickly some people ended up in an ever tightening downwards spiral.

Of course she couldn't know for sure that Maya was anorexic but her gut feeling was telling her that something was off with Maya's behaviour that spoke against a physical issue. She had realised how urgent it was to get help as early as possible.

She just hoped that Maya wouldn't be in denial about it. There was very little she would be able to do to help Maya if she wasn't willing to get help. Carina remembered the time when she tried to get Maya to realise that her father had been at least emotionally abusive towards her throughout her entire childhood. And what her being in denial had lead to...

Carina had no desire to through anything like that again. It was not like she didn't trust Maya, she had apologised and worked on herself but her girlfriend's emotions -especially her anger- was at times hard to deal with and pushed others away and herself to extreme, unreasonable and harmful behaviour.

Carina thought that she would have to reassure Maya that she was in no way blaming her for this or that she wasn't angry with her whatsoever.

In order for this to work she would have to get Maya to trust her enough so that she would confide in her and tell her what was going on.