Ok, I totally know I shouldn't have changed the style of writing, but it
was just a little bit easier for me to write in this style as opposed to
the one I used in the first chapter. It allows the storyline to come across
a little clearer. I hope it's not too difficult for all the millions of
readers reading this ^_^
Thanks to all of the people who reviewed, I really really appreciate it. Again, thanks to the dragonflies who have supported me while I write this, and who were nice enough to act excited when I finished this chapter. This fic is dedicated to you guys.
~*Angela*~
"Move your ass. I swear to god, I'm not losing this game." I hissed it in her ear as she passed me, tripping over her own feet. Damn, she's going to lose this game for us.
Sighing, I tossed Elizabeth the ball, urging her to just toss it over the other team to the 'queen'. She took the ball, dropped it, and picked it up quickly, throwing it right into the middle of the other team. I screeched and clutched my head. The other team cheered. They threw it over our heads and their king caught it easily. Another of them went across. But Trowa fumbled the ball and I snatched it out of the air. I could feel the adrenaline pumping through my body, the only thing that was keeping me going.
"Yes!" my team cheered me on. Now it was just Elizabeth and me. Do I get myself to the other side, or do I give her another chance to let the other team win?
"Yes!" my team cheered as Elizabeth tossed the ball to our queen and she caught it. She gave me a thumbs up as I jogged fast around my half of the hall. I was now the only defence for my team. There were five members left on the boy's team, so if I got myself across, we win, but if I was the only one on my side, I had no chance of catching a single ball.
"Camilla, just get the bloody ball! Jump high!" my team shouted help and tips at me, trying to help me get across.
"I'm 5'4, how am I supposed to jump up ten feet in the air?"
I was positive my luck had run out. Feeling helpless I just ran fast around the hall, tearing along the dividing line and hoping that one of the boys would fumble the ball and it'd roll onto my side.
"Ok girls, time is up. Camilla's team wins! Now go get changed!" the teacher blew the whistle and the boys hissed; feeling jousted out of a game they thought they had won. I was so elated that I bounced up and down. A familiar voice called out to me and I turned around, standing still.
But I couldn't stand still, because the whole world was tilting upside down. I fell to the floor as my legs gave way beneath me. The floor spun up and slammed into my side, I can't understand it, what is going on? I heard voices around me, shouting. Someone screams and I could hear the sounds of feet thundering on the floor. But my brain just caved in as his strong arms lifted me up and carried me.
*******
"Camilla?" his voice is muffled, like I'm underwater, or he's wearing a facemask with padding. Crazy images of Duo wearing a pillow over his face dance through my mind. In my daydream I am a mermaid, tail flicking and ribs showing, my long hair covering his face as I kiss him. I smile, as I feel his lip brush mine.
"Camilla, are you awake?" his voice is sharp now, and my sides hurt. I can feel something in my mouth. I try and sit up so I can spit it out, but he puts only the lightest pressure on my shoulders and I am unable to get up. I start to panic and I try to thrash around, but I can barely move; my muscles have deserted me. "Don't try to get up. Here," he puts his arms around me and holds my head while lifting me into a sitting position. He takes a tube out of my mouth and I feel like he's ripped out my throat. As I sob quietly he just holds me.
"Where am I? Why did you bring me here? Have I missed English?" questions rush through my mouth, but they come out stuttered and rasping.
"You're in the medical wing. I thought you'd been here before. I brought you here because you collapsed, and you've woken up in time for fifth period. But you're not going." He looks deep into my blue yes with his purple ones, and I see something stern there, anger maybe? "What have you eaten today?"
"I.I had some, some.. Just stuff Duo. Just some stuff. I'm tired."
"Tell me the truth." I try to lean against him, try to catch the smell of his body, the smell of the boy I love. But he holds me away, and my weak body puts up no resistance. I see with some surprise that I am wearing a hospital gown, and I was lying in a hospital bed. The long ward s blocked out by screen curtains. Duo is sitting on the bed next to me, wearing his usual outfit, jeans and a button down black shirt, but he's also wearing this expression that I've never seen before on him. This expression of hurt and betrayal and, anger, again.
"Duo, tell me where I am? Please? I'm scared."
"You're in a special hospital. Please just answer the question. Please Angela. For me, ok?"
"Don't call me that! I told you! That's, that's not my name anymore." I realise I'm kidding myself, but what can I do? When your only chance of escaping yourself is becoming another person, what else are you supposed to do?
"Ok, ok" he holds me against him again. I feel safer, but as the nurse comes in and ushers him away I feel small again. As she takes the needle and slides it into my arm I can only lay on my side, not looking at it, and cry for myself.
*****
~*Duo*~
Tell me then, what am I supposed to do? I got her off the pills and off the diets. Well, I thought I got her of them. But when she won't even speak to me properly how am I supposed to react.
"Duo," the nurse whispers to me. "Would you like to stay here? I can allow you maybe ten minutes, but then I'm afraid you'll have to leave. Visiting hours closed an hour ago." She looks at me in that blank yet compassionate way that the nurses here have been looking at me for years now. Like they're saying 'he's got some kind of habit' or 'he'll die, wish I could fatten him up.' It annoys me, but I'm learning to ignore it, get on with living my life.
"Yes, I'd like that very much. Thank you Doris." I know her well. She was the nurse that looked after me on my first trip to the hospital. It's seems like ages ago now, but it's still pretty clear in my mind. I had taken too many laxatives before a party, and I hadn't eaten anything. I started drinking and popping pills. When I woke up I was in hospital after having my stomach pumped. Doris was there, checking my pulse and making sure all the tubes where in place. I, like Angela, had almost choked on the tube running down into my stomach, pumping liquid food into me. But she held my hand until Trowa and Quatre came, and then she let me take it out to talk to them.
"Ok duo. You just take care of her. She's pretty, and she doesn't need all the things that you made yourself put up with. Look after her, ok?"
"Yeah Doris. Thanks." She left, and instead of going back in to see Angela, I just stayed sitting on the bed I was in. she was crying now, I could hear it. But what was I supposed to do? When someone changes their whole identity and personality to escape something that's impossible to escape, then wont tell you about it, what are you supposed to say to them? What possible words are there?
So I just sat there, on the edge of an empty bed, and wept for her.
*****
~*Quatre*~
"Do you think we should get her a get well present?" I'm trying to think of what could possibly cheer up a person in a hospital. Having been in one, I should know, but my sister was there and it was in the middle of a war, not the most normal circumstances. "Like a fluffy animal or a CD or something?"
"I dunno. Where's everyone else?" I know Duo doesn't want to talk about the whole thing, and I understand. When my father died all I wanted was peace, or revenge. But Camilla isn't dead, and there is no reason for him to just ignore the matter altogether. But I suppose I can't force him to speak about it.
"Heero's gone out with Faye and Wufei and Trowa are shopping for playstation games. Oh yeah, Gerry said could you possible go over to his place and pick up something. He said that you ordered a package of TWW and he can't store them anymore."
He is mildly interested in this information, for oh maybe, a nanosecond? Then he turns his attention once more back to the computer screen. He's been typing for days, non-stop almost, since she woke up, and everyone wants to know what he's typing but he won't tell us.
"Ok, tell him if he stops by I'll be free on Tuesday next week. Have we got any Ex-Lax?" this remark totally throws me, until I see his (very weak) smile over the top of the laptop.
"Not funny man. Really not funny." I look at him. He's laughing a bit. That's one thing at least. So I just rolled my eyes, slid lower down on the sofa, and let the remark pass.
"Ok, I'll quit making 'jokes'. But seriously, can you get me a drink?" he gives me this look, like, I don't know. Like he's up to something, but he doesn't want me to know. So I just look at him.
"What d'you want? We got coke, lemonade, coffee, water, blah blah blah. What'll it be?"
"What alcohol have we got?" now I know something up. Duo drink, ok, I'll grant you that. But not usually at two in the afternoon. Usually, at two in the afternoon he's outside, playing basketball and drinking water. Except for the past week or two, since Angela or Camilla or whatever she's calling herself got into the hospital, he hasn't been going outside too much. In fact, he hasn't really been to keen on anything. And the last three days since he went to visit her, all he's been doing is listening to the radio and typing on his computer. And trust me. Listening to Clive Warren and the typing of computer keys until three in the morning isn't exactly my idea of how to spend a night in bed. But I'm not going into what my idea of a good night in bed is.
"Um, I don't know. Why don't you just check the liquor cabinet?" when he just looked at me and didn't make a move I got up and went toward it. "Why don't I just do it for you? It's not like I was doing anything important. Like, say, you know writing articles so I can keep my job or anything." I carried on talking, almost to myself as I turned my back on him and bent down to look in the cabinet. But suddenly I didn't feel good. If it were a movie, the scary music would be coming on. I felt kind of like the person in the film who everyone hates, because everyone else knows what's about to happen, and that the person in the movie is gonna be a dumbass and walk straight into a trap. So I turned around really quickly. Duo was still sitting there, his fringe was in his eyes and he was just looking at me, this blank expression on his face. He was biting the inside of his cheek, which made me nervous. I read somewhere that when someone bites the inside of their cheek it usually means they're thinking of something either dangerous, or sad. But what can you do when you got no proof against a guy? So I just turned back around and started reading the labels on the bottles.
"Um.. You got Jack Daniel's, Baileys, Jose Cuervo, Southern Comfort, Archers, Bristol Cream.wait a minute." Then I had to reach really far back, because I couldn't see the labels or anything on the bottles. So I'm reaching around, scrabbling in the cupboard, making one hell of a noise. And then I get an idea. What if he was waiting for this moment when I was making a lot of noise to make his move? So I turn around, and he's moved. Ok, so he moved about a foot to the left and that was it. But he still moved. Then he just said;
"It's ok. I'm actually just gonna go for a walk. See you." So just like that, he turns off his laptop (not before activating the password protect), gets up, grabs his jacket, and leaves. I want to do something, go after him and kill him or something. But what am I supposed to do? When your best friend won't talk to you about his girlfriend being in hospital, and then he starts acting weird, what is a guy supposed to do?
So I just sat there and uncapped a bottle of Jack Daniel's.
*******
~*Angela*~
They're giving me food. So much food. It's just like they're trying to make me choke to death on the disgusting hospital slop that they serve here. I mean, if it was gourmet food, specially prepared by a chef from France, I still wouldn't touch it. But mashed potato's and gravy with peas? Yuck!
They won't even let Duo come to see me, although Doris understands and sneaks him in now and again. He wont bring me pills or anything, but he did bring me a bottle of laxatives that I managed to hide under my pillow until Doris gave me another shot and they found it.
I haven't been getting any visitors, mostly because everyone from school is too afraid to come and see me. I don't know why. Victoria came to visit but only the once. After that she phoned and said that her mother had said she didn't like her going down to the hospital. As if.
At least I have the ward more or less to myself. There's only Julianne James Michael and me. Julianne and me don't get along very well, because in the first couple of days I was here she wouldn't speak to me. I made some remark or other, and she took serious offence. I think I asked her whether she was anorexic or bulimic. She's in denial, wont acknowledge that she has a problem.
Michael's a sweetie. He defended me, saying I was so jacked up on morphine and cough syrup that I probably didn't know what I was talking about. He's in the bed three down from me, and at night he usually lets me listen to the radio on his Walkman. He's into really cool music, like 3 Doors Down and Finch. He once confided in me that when he was thirteen, he liked Hanson. I promised I wouldn't tell a soul. Well, I promised that when I stopped hyperventilating from laughter I wouldn't tell a soul.
James is ok, I guess. He's really hot, and has a gorgeous body, perfectly thin. He must be about 92 lbs. He's even thinner than Duo. Which is kind of the problem. He's been in the hospital almost solidly for about three years. He keeps Od'ing on diet pills and having heart attacks, so now they just keep him in and wont let him out. Well, when Duo came to visit me I noticed James totally eyeing him up. I thought it was just cos maybe James was gay and thought my boyfriend was totally hot, which he is. But when duo left James started totally cutting into me, talking about what a bastard Duo was, and how dare I bring him in here. Well, how was I supposed to know that James and Duo had been in the same wards a couple of year's back? I defended Duo, but James told me some stuff I didn't know. I'm not going into it, but at last we agreed to disagree. Now James just leaves the ward if I tell him Duo's coming, and we get along ok.
James gave Michael and me all these cassettes and we hooked up the Walkman to some speakers the hospital gave us. So during the day we lie there and talk, or we sing along to whatever is playing on the cassette at that moment in time. As a room, our favourite is 'When it's over' by Sugar Ray, it's kind of our anthem now. But Michael loves 'Summer girls' by LFO. James jokes that the line 'I think it's fly when girls drop by for the summer, for the summer' is all about seasonal anorexics and bulimics. They're the ones who 'get' an eating disorder for certain seasons, like they crash diet for the summer weather so they can wear skimpy outfits, then when they collapse they claim they have an eating disorder. James would know. He says there are three girls who have done this for the last two years.
There used to be a girl in here called Amelia. She left about four days after I woke up. They told us that she moved to a different part of the hospital to recover. But Doris told us that she really died. We all felt really bad, cos she was only twelve. She didn't even really understand what was wrong with her, and it scared her a lot. She would eat, but almost immediately she would run to the bathroom and start throwing it all up. She could throw up without even using her fingers, she would just contract her stomach muscles and retch, and it would all come out. They strapped her into her bed to stop her running to the bathroom. Michael told me about it, because it was before I came to the hospital. They strapped her arms to the side of her bed, and her legs to the end. Then they made her eat. They thought that it would help, cos she wouldn't be able to run to the toilet and puke. But she just did her little trick and it all came up. Michael said that it gave the whole room an excuse not to eat for the next three days, so everyone was thankful to Amelia. When she left and we found out what had happened we cried for her. It was sad to see someone so young dying of something she didn't even understand.
But what can you do? She was young, yeah, but she had the same problem as the rest of us, so we mourned for a bit. Then we just forgot, and moved on with our lives.
Thanks to all of the people who reviewed, I really really appreciate it. Again, thanks to the dragonflies who have supported me while I write this, and who were nice enough to act excited when I finished this chapter. This fic is dedicated to you guys.
~*Angela*~
"Move your ass. I swear to god, I'm not losing this game." I hissed it in her ear as she passed me, tripping over her own feet. Damn, she's going to lose this game for us.
Sighing, I tossed Elizabeth the ball, urging her to just toss it over the other team to the 'queen'. She took the ball, dropped it, and picked it up quickly, throwing it right into the middle of the other team. I screeched and clutched my head. The other team cheered. They threw it over our heads and their king caught it easily. Another of them went across. But Trowa fumbled the ball and I snatched it out of the air. I could feel the adrenaline pumping through my body, the only thing that was keeping me going.
"Yes!" my team cheered me on. Now it was just Elizabeth and me. Do I get myself to the other side, or do I give her another chance to let the other team win?
"Yes!" my team cheered as Elizabeth tossed the ball to our queen and she caught it. She gave me a thumbs up as I jogged fast around my half of the hall. I was now the only defence for my team. There were five members left on the boy's team, so if I got myself across, we win, but if I was the only one on my side, I had no chance of catching a single ball.
"Camilla, just get the bloody ball! Jump high!" my team shouted help and tips at me, trying to help me get across.
"I'm 5'4, how am I supposed to jump up ten feet in the air?"
I was positive my luck had run out. Feeling helpless I just ran fast around the hall, tearing along the dividing line and hoping that one of the boys would fumble the ball and it'd roll onto my side.
"Ok girls, time is up. Camilla's team wins! Now go get changed!" the teacher blew the whistle and the boys hissed; feeling jousted out of a game they thought they had won. I was so elated that I bounced up and down. A familiar voice called out to me and I turned around, standing still.
But I couldn't stand still, because the whole world was tilting upside down. I fell to the floor as my legs gave way beneath me. The floor spun up and slammed into my side, I can't understand it, what is going on? I heard voices around me, shouting. Someone screams and I could hear the sounds of feet thundering on the floor. But my brain just caved in as his strong arms lifted me up and carried me.
*******
"Camilla?" his voice is muffled, like I'm underwater, or he's wearing a facemask with padding. Crazy images of Duo wearing a pillow over his face dance through my mind. In my daydream I am a mermaid, tail flicking and ribs showing, my long hair covering his face as I kiss him. I smile, as I feel his lip brush mine.
"Camilla, are you awake?" his voice is sharp now, and my sides hurt. I can feel something in my mouth. I try and sit up so I can spit it out, but he puts only the lightest pressure on my shoulders and I am unable to get up. I start to panic and I try to thrash around, but I can barely move; my muscles have deserted me. "Don't try to get up. Here," he puts his arms around me and holds my head while lifting me into a sitting position. He takes a tube out of my mouth and I feel like he's ripped out my throat. As I sob quietly he just holds me.
"Where am I? Why did you bring me here? Have I missed English?" questions rush through my mouth, but they come out stuttered and rasping.
"You're in the medical wing. I thought you'd been here before. I brought you here because you collapsed, and you've woken up in time for fifth period. But you're not going." He looks deep into my blue yes with his purple ones, and I see something stern there, anger maybe? "What have you eaten today?"
"I.I had some, some.. Just stuff Duo. Just some stuff. I'm tired."
"Tell me the truth." I try to lean against him, try to catch the smell of his body, the smell of the boy I love. But he holds me away, and my weak body puts up no resistance. I see with some surprise that I am wearing a hospital gown, and I was lying in a hospital bed. The long ward s blocked out by screen curtains. Duo is sitting on the bed next to me, wearing his usual outfit, jeans and a button down black shirt, but he's also wearing this expression that I've never seen before on him. This expression of hurt and betrayal and, anger, again.
"Duo, tell me where I am? Please? I'm scared."
"You're in a special hospital. Please just answer the question. Please Angela. For me, ok?"
"Don't call me that! I told you! That's, that's not my name anymore." I realise I'm kidding myself, but what can I do? When your only chance of escaping yourself is becoming another person, what else are you supposed to do?
"Ok, ok" he holds me against him again. I feel safer, but as the nurse comes in and ushers him away I feel small again. As she takes the needle and slides it into my arm I can only lay on my side, not looking at it, and cry for myself.
*****
~*Duo*~
Tell me then, what am I supposed to do? I got her off the pills and off the diets. Well, I thought I got her of them. But when she won't even speak to me properly how am I supposed to react.
"Duo," the nurse whispers to me. "Would you like to stay here? I can allow you maybe ten minutes, but then I'm afraid you'll have to leave. Visiting hours closed an hour ago." She looks at me in that blank yet compassionate way that the nurses here have been looking at me for years now. Like they're saying 'he's got some kind of habit' or 'he'll die, wish I could fatten him up.' It annoys me, but I'm learning to ignore it, get on with living my life.
"Yes, I'd like that very much. Thank you Doris." I know her well. She was the nurse that looked after me on my first trip to the hospital. It's seems like ages ago now, but it's still pretty clear in my mind. I had taken too many laxatives before a party, and I hadn't eaten anything. I started drinking and popping pills. When I woke up I was in hospital after having my stomach pumped. Doris was there, checking my pulse and making sure all the tubes where in place. I, like Angela, had almost choked on the tube running down into my stomach, pumping liquid food into me. But she held my hand until Trowa and Quatre came, and then she let me take it out to talk to them.
"Ok duo. You just take care of her. She's pretty, and she doesn't need all the things that you made yourself put up with. Look after her, ok?"
"Yeah Doris. Thanks." She left, and instead of going back in to see Angela, I just stayed sitting on the bed I was in. she was crying now, I could hear it. But what was I supposed to do? When someone changes their whole identity and personality to escape something that's impossible to escape, then wont tell you about it, what are you supposed to say to them? What possible words are there?
So I just sat there, on the edge of an empty bed, and wept for her.
*****
~*Quatre*~
"Do you think we should get her a get well present?" I'm trying to think of what could possibly cheer up a person in a hospital. Having been in one, I should know, but my sister was there and it was in the middle of a war, not the most normal circumstances. "Like a fluffy animal or a CD or something?"
"I dunno. Where's everyone else?" I know Duo doesn't want to talk about the whole thing, and I understand. When my father died all I wanted was peace, or revenge. But Camilla isn't dead, and there is no reason for him to just ignore the matter altogether. But I suppose I can't force him to speak about it.
"Heero's gone out with Faye and Wufei and Trowa are shopping for playstation games. Oh yeah, Gerry said could you possible go over to his place and pick up something. He said that you ordered a package of TWW and he can't store them anymore."
He is mildly interested in this information, for oh maybe, a nanosecond? Then he turns his attention once more back to the computer screen. He's been typing for days, non-stop almost, since she woke up, and everyone wants to know what he's typing but he won't tell us.
"Ok, tell him if he stops by I'll be free on Tuesday next week. Have we got any Ex-Lax?" this remark totally throws me, until I see his (very weak) smile over the top of the laptop.
"Not funny man. Really not funny." I look at him. He's laughing a bit. That's one thing at least. So I just rolled my eyes, slid lower down on the sofa, and let the remark pass.
"Ok, I'll quit making 'jokes'. But seriously, can you get me a drink?" he gives me this look, like, I don't know. Like he's up to something, but he doesn't want me to know. So I just look at him.
"What d'you want? We got coke, lemonade, coffee, water, blah blah blah. What'll it be?"
"What alcohol have we got?" now I know something up. Duo drink, ok, I'll grant you that. But not usually at two in the afternoon. Usually, at two in the afternoon he's outside, playing basketball and drinking water. Except for the past week or two, since Angela or Camilla or whatever she's calling herself got into the hospital, he hasn't been going outside too much. In fact, he hasn't really been to keen on anything. And the last three days since he went to visit her, all he's been doing is listening to the radio and typing on his computer. And trust me. Listening to Clive Warren and the typing of computer keys until three in the morning isn't exactly my idea of how to spend a night in bed. But I'm not going into what my idea of a good night in bed is.
"Um, I don't know. Why don't you just check the liquor cabinet?" when he just looked at me and didn't make a move I got up and went toward it. "Why don't I just do it for you? It's not like I was doing anything important. Like, say, you know writing articles so I can keep my job or anything." I carried on talking, almost to myself as I turned my back on him and bent down to look in the cabinet. But suddenly I didn't feel good. If it were a movie, the scary music would be coming on. I felt kind of like the person in the film who everyone hates, because everyone else knows what's about to happen, and that the person in the movie is gonna be a dumbass and walk straight into a trap. So I turned around really quickly. Duo was still sitting there, his fringe was in his eyes and he was just looking at me, this blank expression on his face. He was biting the inside of his cheek, which made me nervous. I read somewhere that when someone bites the inside of their cheek it usually means they're thinking of something either dangerous, or sad. But what can you do when you got no proof against a guy? So I just turned back around and started reading the labels on the bottles.
"Um.. You got Jack Daniel's, Baileys, Jose Cuervo, Southern Comfort, Archers, Bristol Cream.wait a minute." Then I had to reach really far back, because I couldn't see the labels or anything on the bottles. So I'm reaching around, scrabbling in the cupboard, making one hell of a noise. And then I get an idea. What if he was waiting for this moment when I was making a lot of noise to make his move? So I turn around, and he's moved. Ok, so he moved about a foot to the left and that was it. But he still moved. Then he just said;
"It's ok. I'm actually just gonna go for a walk. See you." So just like that, he turns off his laptop (not before activating the password protect), gets up, grabs his jacket, and leaves. I want to do something, go after him and kill him or something. But what am I supposed to do? When your best friend won't talk to you about his girlfriend being in hospital, and then he starts acting weird, what is a guy supposed to do?
So I just sat there and uncapped a bottle of Jack Daniel's.
*******
~*Angela*~
They're giving me food. So much food. It's just like they're trying to make me choke to death on the disgusting hospital slop that they serve here. I mean, if it was gourmet food, specially prepared by a chef from France, I still wouldn't touch it. But mashed potato's and gravy with peas? Yuck!
They won't even let Duo come to see me, although Doris understands and sneaks him in now and again. He wont bring me pills or anything, but he did bring me a bottle of laxatives that I managed to hide under my pillow until Doris gave me another shot and they found it.
I haven't been getting any visitors, mostly because everyone from school is too afraid to come and see me. I don't know why. Victoria came to visit but only the once. After that she phoned and said that her mother had said she didn't like her going down to the hospital. As if.
At least I have the ward more or less to myself. There's only Julianne James Michael and me. Julianne and me don't get along very well, because in the first couple of days I was here she wouldn't speak to me. I made some remark or other, and she took serious offence. I think I asked her whether she was anorexic or bulimic. She's in denial, wont acknowledge that she has a problem.
Michael's a sweetie. He defended me, saying I was so jacked up on morphine and cough syrup that I probably didn't know what I was talking about. He's in the bed three down from me, and at night he usually lets me listen to the radio on his Walkman. He's into really cool music, like 3 Doors Down and Finch. He once confided in me that when he was thirteen, he liked Hanson. I promised I wouldn't tell a soul. Well, I promised that when I stopped hyperventilating from laughter I wouldn't tell a soul.
James is ok, I guess. He's really hot, and has a gorgeous body, perfectly thin. He must be about 92 lbs. He's even thinner than Duo. Which is kind of the problem. He's been in the hospital almost solidly for about three years. He keeps Od'ing on diet pills and having heart attacks, so now they just keep him in and wont let him out. Well, when Duo came to visit me I noticed James totally eyeing him up. I thought it was just cos maybe James was gay and thought my boyfriend was totally hot, which he is. But when duo left James started totally cutting into me, talking about what a bastard Duo was, and how dare I bring him in here. Well, how was I supposed to know that James and Duo had been in the same wards a couple of year's back? I defended Duo, but James told me some stuff I didn't know. I'm not going into it, but at last we agreed to disagree. Now James just leaves the ward if I tell him Duo's coming, and we get along ok.
James gave Michael and me all these cassettes and we hooked up the Walkman to some speakers the hospital gave us. So during the day we lie there and talk, or we sing along to whatever is playing on the cassette at that moment in time. As a room, our favourite is 'When it's over' by Sugar Ray, it's kind of our anthem now. But Michael loves 'Summer girls' by LFO. James jokes that the line 'I think it's fly when girls drop by for the summer, for the summer' is all about seasonal anorexics and bulimics. They're the ones who 'get' an eating disorder for certain seasons, like they crash diet for the summer weather so they can wear skimpy outfits, then when they collapse they claim they have an eating disorder. James would know. He says there are three girls who have done this for the last two years.
There used to be a girl in here called Amelia. She left about four days after I woke up. They told us that she moved to a different part of the hospital to recover. But Doris told us that she really died. We all felt really bad, cos she was only twelve. She didn't even really understand what was wrong with her, and it scared her a lot. She would eat, but almost immediately she would run to the bathroom and start throwing it all up. She could throw up without even using her fingers, she would just contract her stomach muscles and retch, and it would all come out. They strapped her into her bed to stop her running to the bathroom. Michael told me about it, because it was before I came to the hospital. They strapped her arms to the side of her bed, and her legs to the end. Then they made her eat. They thought that it would help, cos she wouldn't be able to run to the toilet and puke. But she just did her little trick and it all came up. Michael said that it gave the whole room an excuse not to eat for the next three days, so everyone was thankful to Amelia. When she left and we found out what had happened we cried for her. It was sad to see someone so young dying of something she didn't even understand.
But what can you do? She was young, yeah, but she had the same problem as the rest of us, so we mourned for a bit. Then we just forgot, and moved on with our lives.