They spent the next hours mostly chatting about some light-hearted things, Maya appreciated the distraction because she hated the feeling of having a full stomach. Around noon Dr. Bailey came back in, checking on Maya. Everything was healing as well as could be expected. Her vitals were still not where they should be but remained stable. The doctor hadn't expected an improvement but was glad that there were no complications.
Before leaving she looked at Carina: "DeLuca, could I talk to you outside for a second?"
"Um, yeah. Sure."
As both of them walked out of the room, Maya felt a bit irritated. Were they talking about her? Was it about Carina's work? And if so, why would they have to leave for that?
Carina was just as confused.
"Have you had a chance to talk to her yet?"
"Um, we did talk a bit, but we haven't talked about treatment yet."
"Okay, so it was good that I didn't mention it in front of her. I asked someone to come talk to her today, she is a nutritionist. I could also ask a therapist, but I wanted to ask you and her first as to not overwhelm her, I think it's best coming from you."
"Yeah, I think I will have to bite the gun and talk to... what?", she questioned as Bailey was looking at her with confusion and amusement.
"You mean bite the bullet."
"Yes, bite the bullet. Why do I even attempt using these stupid American idioms? Anyway, she had some trouble with breakfast this morning and with lunch coming up..."
"She will be okay, DeLuca. She has you to support her."
"Si, I just hope that she is open to therapy."
Bailey patted her arm and Carina went back into Maya's room, biting... whatever, some kind of metal.
Maya looked annoyed but her voice sounded neutral: "What did you talk about?"
"Here we go", thought Carina, "off to a great start."
"She just wanted to ask me whether we had talked about the things yet.", Carina answered in an attempt to calm Maya down, decking that the truth was the best way to go.
"And why can't I be part of that conversation?", anger now clearly detectable in Maya's voice.
"She didn't do it to upset you, she just didn't want to overwhelm you, Bella. I'm sorry if you felt like we left you out, but that was not the intention."
Maya took a deep breath: "You're right. I'm sorry. I just feel like I'm not in control of... of... I don't know."
"I know this must be really hard", Carina said sitting down, glad that this didn't blow up into another fight. Now was as good a time as any to start that conversation: "So you don't have to decide anything right now but please listen to me and consider this. I think that we are going to need some professional help, not because I don't want to help you, but I won't be able to by myself.
I think that we should look into some therapists, I know some from here but that's your choice.
And Dr. Bailey asked a nutritionist to come talk to us later today, so we can try to make a plan.", Carina stopped talking; looking at Maya who had dropped her head. Everything that she had just told her was probably adding to Maya's feeling of not being able to make her own decisions right now and be in control. She had no idea how she would react. Maya remained silent.
"Bambina, can you please tell me what you think?", Carina asked carefully.
Maya met Carina's eyes, tears glistening in her eyes.
"I... I know that I need help but I...", she was afraid of admitting this, "I'm scared." Maya looked really small.
Carina got up and sat next to her and gave her a careful hug: "I know. I know. But I'll be here for you. As long as you want me to. Taking these steps take a lot of courage and it's not easy. But we will get through this."
Maya just nodded and leaned into Carina's embrace, the feeling of relying on someone else scary, unfamiliar, vulnerable.
Half an hour later a bubbly and cheerful woman came in, introducing herself as Julie, the nutritionist. She represented everything that Maya didn't feel at this moment, but she seemed nice enough and genuine.
Carina could see that Maya was extremely nervous and anxious and attempted to reassure her by squeezing her hand. Maya hadn't known what to expect from a nutritionist, but it was more along the lines of being told how much she had to eat and that she had to get her act together in order to be healthy. To her surprise and relief that wasn't at all what happened. Julie asked her a couple of general questions first, before going over to the topic of food: "I know that this isn't easy for you to talk about, and I definitely won't try to force you to agree to something that won't work for you. That would actually be very counterproductive. So, I now want you to make a couple of lists: At first the green list with foods that you feel most comfortable eating, then the yellow list with foods that are a little harder, then the red list and lastly the blacklist with foods that you feel like would be impossible for you to eat at the moment."
Writing these took some time but with Carina's encouragement she felt like she was allowed to write down what she felt rather than what a 'normal' person would expect. Julie then started making plans with them; Maya was surprised to see that she was allowed to choose so many things herself instead of being told what to do.
In addition to that, they started slowly by increasing the number of meals and food so that Maya wouldn't have to go from 0 to 100 immediately.
Julie made clear however, that Maya would have to be able to follow these plans with support and be open about it if something wasn't working for her. In case she couldn't do it in the long run, they would have to resort to a higher level of care. Maya didn't ask what that meant but she could only imagine that that would lead to a lot less control over her food intake. In the end the meal plans only contained few foods from the red list and none of the black list.
"We don't want to force you to eat things that are too hard right now, eventually you can work on moving foods to the yellow and green list in therapy."
When Julie had left, Maya was exhausted but felt like she had a chance at being okay eventually for the first time. It was soon time for lunch however and Maya realised that what has seemed possible in theory turned out to be harder in reality: it took her almost forty minutes to eat a small portion of rice, chicken and vegetables. She wasn't at all used to eating that frequently and that much, however stupid it might seem.
Carina noticed that Maya's mood plummeted; she had barely spoken since eating and seemed a million miles away.
"Talk to me Bambina. What's going on in your head?"
"It's nothing, it's stupid."
"Maya it's not stupid if it's bothering you. You can tell me."
Maya sighed and hesitated a few seconds before confessing: "I just thought I would be able to do this when we made the meal plans and it seems so ridiculous but it's so hard to eat right now and I don't know if I can do this.", tears started streaming down her face.
Carina embraced her in a hug: "Shh, it's gonna be okay. Thank you for telling me how you feel. It's okay that this is hard, and it will become easier with help and time."
When Maya had calmed down, Carina decided to ask: "Have you thought about therapy yet?"
Maya let out a shaky breath: "Um, I don't know. I have no idea how I'm supposed to talk to a stranger about my problems."
"You will get to know them over time, though."
"Yeah, I know. I... I thought about maybe calling Diane, she is the only person I've ever talked to like that, and I feel like she kind of understood me... but if you think that..."
"No, that's a good idea, Bambina. It's great if you felt comfortable with her, do you want to call and ask her?"
Maya eventually gathered enough courage to make the call, Diane immediately agreed, setting up an appointment for the day after tomorrow.
