Sophie woke up the next morning, feeling a lot better. Strangely enough, she didn't feel the usual pang of hunger or she had grown so accustomed too. Looking down at her arm, she spotted the reason why, an IV had been meticulously placed in the bend of her arm, she knew administering fluid to rehydrate her, fatten her up was more like it. She suddenly became very self conscious. This would ruin days of all the accomplishments she had achieved. She had lost 7 pounds in the last week, and had finally successfully starved herself for six days, with only one binging session.
Although angry, she decided to be smart about the removal. After removing the layers of tape and tegaderm from the IV and pausing the machine, she carefully pulled the small tube from her arm. Using her teeth to rip the bit of tube that had laid inside her arm, she replaced the rest of the iv, using a new tegaderm and tape to make it look like the iv was still in her arm, when in reality, the whole thing was just laying on her skin with tape atop.
Just as she was finishing, she heard footsteps outside. Panicking, she quickly tidied the bed, hiding the trash under her blanket. She prayed it wasn't her purple clad uncle, who would know immediately she had tampered with the IV. It was, she gulped. Seeing Sophie awake, he proceeded to check the IV. He sighed when he saw the machine. "D*mn" Sophie cursed under her breath. She had paused the machine.
Don resumed the machine and soon the tape on her arm exploded off, dripping saline all over the floor. Donnie looked up at Sophie. "I was gonna take it out Sophie!" He yelled, quickly unplugging the machine. "Why would you do that!? You can't do this! You can barely stand up. Why won't you let us help you!?" Don finally took a breath as he looked to Sophie, ready to cry. Sophie felt terrible, she knew he was only trying to help, but she couldn't relax thinking about that liquid being pumped into her, plumping her up.
Sophie stopped, being very careful with her next words. After she thought about it for a moment, she sighed. "Could I have some water and an orange?" Sophie asked gently. "At least I'll know what I'm eating." Don looked at her strangely, reminding her she didn't like oranges. She nodded. "I'm not eating for enjoyment." Don nodded, it was a start at least.
Separating the segments carefully onto the plate, she portioned out two to eat. Donnie saw this. "Five, at least eat five. Please Sophie." She growled under her breath. It was about ten calories a segment, which was a lot, but she complied. Along with the orange, Don had set half a piece of toast on the plate. She glared at him, this time, he returned the glare with three times the force. "Now Sophia!" After the first two segments, Sophie heard her stomach churning, obviously rebellious to the intake of food. Donnie pointed to the glass of water. "That'll stop the churning." Sophie nodded, taking a sip of water. After two hours of eating unmercifully slow, regretting every bite, she had finally cleaned her plate.
Finally allowed to leave the table, although still under the eagle eye of her purple clad uncle, she made her way to her room, that now housed a small crib. Inside, Thomas lay still, now breathing much easier. Forcing herself to look down at his legs, she wondered how bad they were injured under the layers of white wrap. "You should be resting." Leo said. Coming up from behind her. Looked at the sleeping toddler, he wondered aloud. "Why'd you save him?"
"Sensei told me too." She said quietly, her eyes focused on Thomas.
