It's been four months… what can I say, I forgot about this story… maybe I have an early stage of Alzheimer's. Oh dear this would be bad.
"Now what makes you say that?" the therapist stared at Bella for the longest time in her infuriating calculating way. As if she could actually cut her open with her eyes and dig out the secrets she was so convinced Bella was hiding in her emaciated body. Dr. Grace was the leading expert in teenage psychology and yet she hadn't made any progress with Bella's case in the four months they had been meeting.
Four months of prison, with no contact with the outside world whatsoever. For one Bella wasn't allowed to read magazines or watch television for fear that seeing the "perfect movie stars" would make her condition worse (as if, Bella would scoff, since she would never compare herself to those heifers). Worst of all she was not allowed visitors as it was considered a privilege she had not yet earned.
Four months without seeing Edward and it was almost enough to make her try to get better so she could see him. Then she would pinch her thigh to get the thoughts out of her head and force herself to do a set of one hundred jumping jacks that left her passed out on her bed where she was woken by an unaffected Rosalie.
"I asked you a question Bella." Dr. Grace was glaring at her with beady brown eyes and then writing yet another annoying note on her evaluation of the session. Most likely it read something like Patient is continually unresponsive to questions and requires persistent repeating of the same question until an answer is extracted. Bella could not care less what this chunky psychiatrist thought ofher; she was fat and therefore of no consequence.
"Yes I heard you." Bella hissed, sitting up from the horribly cliché lounge chair in the middle of the room where she was forced to lie every meeting. Bella struggled to keep the look of vertigo off her face that sitting up abruptly had caused; it would only give the doctor more to write about on her stupid little clipboard. "I chose not to answer." She collapsed back on the pillow and wished she had three blankets to cover herself with.
"Well Bella you can't get better unless you talk to me." Bella wanted to mutter that she didn't need to get better in the first place; there was nothing wrong with her. The doctor stared at her silently for a moment and then scribbled a long note on her paper, leaving only the sounds of the pen scratching for a while. Bella was starting to nod off when Dr. Grace suddenly spoke, "We are done for today. Try to think of why you're still in the hospital for when we meet next Tuesday."
Bella rolled her eyes at the doctor's pathetic attempts to make her spill all her deepest feelings and thoughts to her. Did no one ever think that maybe-just maybe- she didn't have a reason for what she was like other than wanting to be thin? That just maybe she wasn't trying to cope with some traumatizing event in her childhood or trying to make up for the love she didn't receive from her parents?
No, she had to have reasons because normal little girls don't starve themselves until they see the outline of their bones through the skin just because they like the way it looks. It always has to be a way to get back at someone. Bella always thought that those kinds of people did drugs or had sex as a way to piss their parents off.
Bella always thought the human race as a whole was too pathetically nosy for its own good. They always had to have answers; they couldn't be content with things just being. Why does anyone need to know why Bella did what she did? No matter what Edward says her actions do not directly affect him. She wished she could tell him that; nothing really matters because it's not happening to him.
"Oh Bella everything you do affects me!" Bella muttered in a fake whiny voice as she walked back to her room, scuffing the toe of her slipper on the floor. She reached her room and found Rosalie folding and packing her clothes into her suitcase. She found out she was being transferred to a facility in New York since her father- who had custody of her- was moving there for work and he had to take his baby girl with him. Tomorrow.
"Therapy with Dr. Grace is the worst form of torture they can inflict on me here." Bella groaned, collapsing on her bed and then dragging the blankets over her icy body. Bitterness crept into Rosalie's face at the mention of the doctor. She felt a deep and brooding resentment toward the horrible old woman who forced so many of the girls to be trapped in the bowels of the facility for far too long. Longer than anyone deserved.
A pang of jealousy washed over Bella as she realized Rosalie could and most likely was off to a more high scale institution where she would be prescribed pretty blue pills that would make her feel better and her therapy sessions would be about her and not her problems. A place where she actually had the chance to fix herself and return to the real world of dress up and smiles.
Bella turned away from Rosalie and closed her eyes, falling asleep quickly, exhausted from the amount of energy she expended from an already negative reserve. It wasn't long before she fell into a painfully familiar dream she dreaded every time she went to bed. She didn't even know if it was a dream or her mind torturing her continuously with memories she hated.
When Bella was a real girl she had a father who loved to take her out to the La Push reservation where they would walk on the beach for an hour every Saturday morning followed by breakfast at Fork's diner. She ordered the same triple stack of chocolate chip pancakes with two strips of bacon and a mug of cocoa every time. And she would eat it all.
Charlie would watch as she stuffed forkful after forkful of hot, sweet pancake into her sticky mouth, chomp on the crispy bacon, and slurp down the cocoa, smiling as she enjoyed the meal. It wasn't until she reached the age of fourteen that the calories, fat, and sugar caught up with her and she ballooned to the size of a baby whale.
The waitress came up to her one fateful day shortly after Bella turned fourteen, her arms loaded with the plates, and smiled at Bella. "Still eating the same breakfast every Saturday huh Bella?" Bella smiled and nodded her head, dumping syrup over the stack. "Well it looks like your metabolism slowed down a little. I would have thought you would have switched tone of our fruit dishes. See you later then." Then she walked away to take an order at the next table.
Bella didn't think anything of it until she got home and was taking off her muddied pants and noticed something on her body that she never saw before; fat. Rolls and rolls of flubbery, blubbery fat. Her legs jiggled when she shook them, her stomach rolled over the waistband of her sweats and she had a double chin.
The words of the waitress came to mind, telling her she no longer had the body of her slim young self, ruined by the sugary goodness of the diner's pancakes. She realized it wasn't just the pancakes she ate every Saturday. It was the candy she had in her bedside table drawer, left over from Halloween. The bags of chips and cookies she munched on while she did homework. It was the pizza her father brought home most nights because he was too tired to make an actual meal.
It was her father. Her father who was never home except on Saturday mornings when he took her to the beach and then to pancakes. It was her father who was never around to tell her to put down the junk and grab an apple.
How could he have done this to her? Bella cried as she stared at her fat self in the mirror. No, she amended, how could she do this to herself? She thought about the girls at school who were so skinny and pretty and talked to boys and boys liked to talk to them. Then her mind turned to something she heard about in health class. Eating disorders; bulimia and anorexia.
She had wrinkled her nose at the thought of someone starving or making themselves throw up in order to lose weight then but at that moment however she wanted to do whatever she could in order to be skinny. So when her father called up the stairs to tell her he had to leave for a work emergency she made the decision to do something about her weight.
She turned on the shower, stripped off her clothes, got in the shower, put her fingers in her mouth, wiggled them a little, and… nothing. She gagged a little but nothing came out like she expected. She became frustrated so she pushed a little harder and a little clump of pancake fell out of her mouth. She was encouraged so she did it again and again and again. Retching and spewing bile she finally sat up, her back sore from hunching over. But on her face was a triumphant smile; she had done it.
Bella woke up from her dream with a start, her heart racing and cold sweat covering her forehead and dripping down her back. It wasn't like it was a particularly exciting dream; it was just her mind teasing her with images she would rather purge from her mind like the food she would purge into the toilet bowl or shower drain three times a day.
The room was dark and everything was silent; not even the television coming from down the hall or some girl crying like one was most nights. Bella sat up, slipped on her thick pink robe, and pulled the belt tight around her waist. She whispered Rosalie's name but no answer came from the other bed in the room, leading Bella to fear the worst.
She reached for the lamp on the table in between their beds and switched it on; already knowing what she would see when she twisted the little knob. Rosalie's bed was empty and perfectly made with only a folded piece of paper resting on her pillow. Bella flopped onto her ex-roommate's bed, dragging herself farther up until she was lying in the middle on her stomach. She could still smell Rosalie's shampoo in the pillow and couldn't believe the hospital was so cheap that they didn't even replace the pillows with fresh ones.
Then she remembered the letter which made the thoughts of whether she was sleeping on the same sheets and pillow dozens of others had used leave her mind. She unfolded the paper slowly, wondering what the letter held in store. Was it a lamentation of how sad she was to be leaving her? Was it a hate filled message, telling Bella she was the fattest and ugliest person she had ever met? Those questions ran through Bella's mind until she started reading.
Bella, I can't believe I have to say goodbye to you through a letter. Nurse Pam just told me my dad is going to pick me up earlier than I expected so I decided to write a letter since I don't want to wake you up from such a peaceful sleep. So I guess I'll start by saying I love you, you crazy, beautiful bitch. I don't think I will ever meet anyone that I love as much as you. During the time we spent together I felt like I could- and did- tell you everything, stuff that I could never reveal to anyone. Isn't it strange how you can meet and love someone you find in the worst place in the world? I know someday we'll be together again to keep each other strong as we go through this horrible life. You have to promise me that you won't give in and get fat but also stay strong and don't die. Don't you dare leave me or I'll find you and kick you're skinny butt. In turn I'll promise to stay strong enough to be with you. Goodbye Bella, my dearest friend. I love you and I hope I can see you soon. Love Rosalie.
Bella was in tears at the end of the letter, her nose dripping and falling onto the paper, smudging the ink, blurring the words. When the words became indiscernible Bella panicked and dabbed at the droplets on the page, trying to save the beautiful letter written by her best friend. A few words were ruined but as a whole it was still understandable.
Bella wiped her eyes and nose, frowning at the gross green mucus that soaked the tissue paper, trickling over the sides. After discarding the tissue, Bella stood from the bed and left the room, feeling the need to get out of its confines and stretch her legs. She wasn't sure if everyone was sleeping so she was careful where she placed her feet and attempted to avoid stumbling.
The hallway seemed darker than it should have been and even the nurse's station didn't have a sound coming out of it, not even the low murmur of the women who were her keepers. She made it to the empty living room and switched on the television, absently changing channels, never interested in anything showing.
It was a while before she finally found one of the horribly cheesy Lifetime movies about a mother struggling with her rebelling daughter. One of thousands that they show. Bella always complained that they were unrealistic and all were the same; previously perfect daughter changes due to rape/drugs/abusive boyfriend and the poor mother tries to find out what's wrong and save her little girl.
But this one seemed to be different than the awful low-budget ones the channel always played. It was different because it was about a girl with an eating disorder and her struggles in a rehabilitation clinic. A girl who was thin, pale, and dark-haired. Those similarities were enough to capture Bella's attention and pull her into that movie for the next hour and a half.
By the end Bella could hardly believe how much of herself she could see in the character Cassie. It offered Bella a whole new perspective on why it was that people wanted her to get better. Were people crying over her right now wondering if she would get better? Was there a memorial at school where people prayed she would get better (she seriously doubted that one)?
Bella was astounded that a movie she would have written off as pathetic and cliché if she had just read the summary had been able to make her think in such a way that a doctor had failed at for four months. So when morning finally came and the hospital was once more filled with the sounds she was used to, Bella had made up her mind that she would really honestly try to get better. It would be a long road but now she knew that she had quite a few people in her life that she had to keep living for.
Even if it meant she would have to get fat.
There it is- chapter 4. Hope everyone has a decent Thanksgiving.