"We are convinced in the teeth of the evidence that there is something fundamentally flawed about us, something that needs fixing and yet is unfixable."
Chapter 12: First Bad Habit
You're like my first bad habit, I can't live without it
I can't give you up (give you up)
And even though you're trouble, I come back for double
I can't say 'enough is enough.'
I'm a part of you, you're a part of me
And I know it's wrong, but I can't get free.
When Camille's dad checks her into the Palm Woods, she spots James and Carlos in their usual corner of the lobby, already looking bored and like they want to stir up some trouble. She smiles to herself as they engage themselves in what looks like an intense thumb-wrestling match before turning back to say goodbye to Mr. Roberts.
When he's gone, she goes up to her room to put her bag away, pulling out a full water bottle. She drinks from it deeply, ignoring the voice in her head telling her she's not doing herself any favors. So what if it's just water weight? She needs to hit a certain number on the scale for her weigh-in this weekend, or her doctors might start recommending a more intensive approach to her treatment. And that is not what she wants. At least, she doesn't think so.
Because, really, she's fine. She's totally fine.
She keeps her food down when she eats, anyway. She's still controlling her portions in an almost militant fashion, and she's starting to obsess over burning calories in any way she can, but knowing her problem and overcoming it are two totally different things.
So maybe she isn't fine. But one thing is for sure… she doesn't want anyone to know how hard it is. Not her dad or her friends, and especially not Logan.
Logan's usually here by now, so she heads for his and Kendall's room and knocks on their door to see if anyone will answer.
He looks surprised to find her there; she's never visited their room.
"Hey. Come in."
"Thanks. Nice place you have here," she grins.
"Ha. Would you like a tour?"
"Oh, yes, please."
"Excellent." He offers his arm out to her and she takes it, holding back a giggle. He leads her one step into the small room. "Well, here we have my side of the room." Logan gestures to his bed and his desk, where a couple of small things lay neatly in place. "And over there," he nods towards Kendall's side of the room, empty because he hasn't yet arrived, "is my roommate's side. You might know him. Tall, blond guy. Wears a lot of plaid."
Camille does giggle at this and lets go of Logan's arm. "Very impressive," she says sarcastically.
She sits on Logan's bed, folding her legs up Indian-style and rests her back against the wall, continuing to sip from her bottle. Logan likes how she makes herself at home—how she doesn't make things weird by being overly polite. He joins her on the twin-sized bed, leaving a respectable gap between them, but close enough that—if he wanted to—he could accidentally brush his arm against hers.
"We've missed you at lunch the past couple days," Logan tells her. "You're not avoiding us, are you?"
"No," she shakes her head. "I was gonna talk about it in group today-Stephanie and I made up. We've been doing a lot of catching up."
"Oh, wow. That's great. How's it going?"
Camille bites her lip. "It's… weird."
"Why?"
"Well… It's just kind of weird not being able to tell her everything, you know? Like, it used to not matter, because my group life and my home life were so separate. But now that we're all friends and our lives are all tangled together, I can't be as open with her without betraying you guys' trust. So it just makes things awkward because she knows I'm holding back." Camille lets says all of this quickly and without pausing for breath, shoulders slumping when she finishes. "And I want things to be good between us again, but I don't know how to be the same friend to her I was before."
"That's tough," Logan murmurs. "But I'm sure you guys will work it out. You've been friends forever, right?"
"Yeah… But what have I missed with you guys? What's new?"
"Hmm, well…" Logan squints as he thinks. "Carlos' art teacher entered him in another competition. Kendall's still ignoring his dad. Jett's trial date has been set. Oh and, I got into Stanford," he adds with a small smile.
"What?" Camille squeaks. "You did?" She throws her arms around his neck tightly in congratulation. "Logan, that's amazing! You must be so excited! Why aren't you excited?" She demands, realizing that he isn't matching her enthusiasm.
"My dad says I can't go," he replies glumly. "He and my mom think it's a bad idea."
"What?" She says again. "No, you have to go!"
"It's a no go," Logan sighs. "They still think I'm one wrong move away from trying this again," he turns his left arm outward so that Camille can see the scar she's so familiar with.
Almost automatically her fingertips find their way to his forearm and she traces the skin there lightly, sending a shiver down his spine that has nothing to do with the temperature in the room. She blushes when she looks up and finds Logan staring at her, and she retracts her hand quickly.
"Sorry." Camille tucks some hair behind her ear, to have something to do with her hands.
"No, it's okay. I don't mind," he grins. "I'm glad that they don't weird you out."
Camille runs her finger down the length of his arm again, over his wrist and across his palm before finally intertwining her hand with his, not meeting his eyes, as if embarrassed by her own daring. Logan squeezes her hand with his gently to let her know that he's fine with it. More than fine, actually—overjoyed might be a more appropriate term. He'd been debating it in his head forever, whether it was a good idea to get more involved with Camille than he already was. On the one hand, they both had definite issues they needed to work through, and a relationship might not be where they needed to focus their attention.
But on the other hand… Logan had started to realize that Camille was like a magnet to him. He gravitated toward her, even when they were with all their friends. He felt strangely empty when she wasn't around.
He needed her.
His breath is sort of caught in his throat, but she seems to be waiting for him to say something, or do something since she's just looking at him expectantly. With her other hand she fiddles with her hair again but freezes when Logan softly brushes it away from her face. She turns toward him, and this time it's she who has to forcibly remember to breathe. Camille's heart pounds and her eyes flutter closed as Logan leans in, lips parted ever so slightly. She tilts her head toward him, feeling the spark of anticipation for a brief moment. She can feel his breath on her chin as the gap between them closes, agonizingly slowly because even now, he seems unsure. Hesitant. But finally Logan gathers his courage and grazes his lips against hers, electricity coursing through both of them for the smallest of seconds until the door to Logan's room bangs open and Kendall Knight strides in.
Camille and Logan spring apart, moment ruined, both blushing deeply.
"S—sorry," Kendall half stutters, half laughs. He turns his laugh into a hasty cough as Camille and Logan both glare at him. "Should I come back?"
"No," Camille rolls her eyes and slides off of Logan's bed, messing with her hair again and uncapping the water bottle once more. "I'll see you guys in group."
When the door shuts behind her Kendall grins at Logan. "Was I interrupting something?"
"Not at all," Logan says, voice dripping with sarcasm. "That's exactly how I planned for our first kiss to go."
Kendall has the grace to lock apologetic. "Whoops. Sorry," he says again. "But, I mean, you could have locked the door or something."
"It's not like that's what she came in here to do," Logan says exasperatedly. "It just happened. Or, it would have." He gives Kendall a pointed glare and the taller boy bites the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing again.
"Come on," Kendall smirks. "It's almost time for group."
Logan groans but gets up from his bed to follow Kendall out the door.
True to her word, Camille talks about her concerns with having Stephanie back in her life, while Jo frets over the upcoming trial, and Kendall voices his internal struggle over whether he should start speaking to his dad again. Their doctor makes them play a team-building game in which they all have to join hands and criss-cross over and under each other until they're untangled. It's great fun, for the most part, except that James' hands are really sweaty, and that Carlos isn't as flexible as he needs to be in order to get this done, and that Logan can't help but stare at all the scars on Lucy's arms now that they're in such close proximity. Her shirt rides up a little bit in the struggle and he can see some on her stomach too, and he doesn't know why, but for some reason those make him much sadder than the visible ones.
When their doctor leaves them for their half-hour of unsupervised bonding time, the group sits on the floor with each other, not saying much, and not really needing to.
After a minute or two, James speaks.
"My therapist says I only have to do two more weekends after this," he says, lying flat on his back and staring up at the ceiling.
Kendall sits up quickly. "Really?"
"I'll still have to meet with her every week. But I won't have to spend the entire weekend here anymore."
"That's awesome, James," Jo congratulates him. "It's gonna be great for you."
"How?" James snorts. "I'll just go back to spending my weekends with my crazy mom or my moron of a stepmom. You guys are my only real friends now, so what good will it do me to not be in here anymore?"
"You'll be able to have a real life again," Lucy murmurs, sitting cross-legged on the ground, eyes downcast as she refuses to meet James' gaze.
"You guys are my real life."
"If there's a problem at home preventing you from being more open—"
"There isn't."
Lucy crosses her arms defiantly and looks right into her doctor's eyes. She's kind of fascinated with how good a liar she's become. Or maybe it's that telling the lie so many times to so many people has made her stop realizing she's even lying.
"I just feel that as time has gone on, you've become even more distant with me than usual," says the woman. "Resistance is to be expected, especially from someone your age, but overall, I would have hoped to have made more progress with you at this point in your treatment, especially since, being eighteen, your presence here is largely voluntary."
She fidgets in her seat uncomfortably for a moment but says nothing else.
"But we have noticed the improvement in your cutting," her doctor comments gently. "It's not nearly as bad as before, am I right?"
"Right," Lucy mutters.
"And I believe I'm right in assuming that the friendships you've made with your group have a lot to do with that?"
"Carlos and James, mostly," she says, finally looking up at Dr. Witter. "I mean, we're all friends. But I'm closest to them."
"Why is that?"
"I don't know," Lucy shrugs. "I guess because… in spite of how different they are, they're really kind of the same. At least, to me."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Carlos is crazy. He's reckless and always up for anything new. He'll do anything to make someone laugh. People think he's dumb, but he can be really insightful when he wants to be. He's sensitive. He cares about people's feelings. And James… he's more reserved. He doesn't like making a fool of himself, and he puts on a show of acting more mature than he actually is. But he can definitely be a goofball too, you just have to coax it out of him first."
"So what makes them so similar?"
Lucy thinks for a minute, trying to figure out how to express what she feels about them. "The fact that they'd do anything for each other, and for Logan and Kendall. They cling to each other like nothing I've ever seen. I've never had friends like that. So even though they're all monumentally different, that's the one thing that unites them. And recently… James and Carlos have started to include me in that. They let me into their world even though I don't do the same for them. I don't deserve it—I don't deserve them—but they don't treat me any different."
"You shouldn't feel as if you don't deserve to be treated well, Lucy," Dr. Witter says. "Regardless of your personal life, you should never feel that you don't deserve to be loved by your friends."
"But I don't," Lucy protests before she can stop herself. "They do everything, they are everything for me, and I can't give them back the same! They love me and I can't reciprocate it. I don't know how."
"Now, when you say they love you, do you mean romantically?"
Lucy nods.
"And do you feel the same way? About either of them?"
"I don't-" She starts. "I can't."
"Why can't you?"
"I don't trust…" Lucy stops again, wringing her hands.
"You don't trust them not to hurt you?" Dr. Witter guesses.
"No," she says firmly. "Not them. Me. I don't trust myself not to hurt them."
"Why is that?"
"Because that's what I do," Lucy shrugs. "I don't get close to people. Especially not guys. No one can get hurt if you don't have any expectations."
"Would this refusal to get close to anyone have anything to do with the incident that happened when you were fourteen?" Dr. Witter refers to Lucy's file, flipping through a few pages until she finds the notes she's looking for.
Lucy's heart skips a beat and some images flash through her head that she can't suppress. Jack slamming her bedroom door, throwing her on the bed. She struggles, but he's too strong. He pins her down and she's scared and she knows what's about to happen and she can't do anything about it. He's too close and then it hurts and he's ignoring her tears and her cries of pain and he just keeps going until she thinks she might break and it's worse than anything he's ever done to her before—all the times when he's touched her or made her touch him—worse than anything she could ever imagine and she feels so utterly, utterly helpless.
She blinks and looks up. Of course, this is not what Dr. Witter is referring to. She's referring to the lie Lucy told her. The one where she was dating an older boy who pressured her to have sex with him before she was ready. The one where the boy dumped her shortly after.
Lucy shrugs and looks down again.
"Being over-sexualized at a young age can have serious repercussions on a girl's emotional development," Dr. Witter says gently. "There's nothing to be ashamed of, Lucy. It was out of your control. He took advantage of your feelings and talked you into something you weren't ready for."
Lucy continues wringing her hands, listening to her therapist give her advice on something that isn't even applicable to her. Jack didn't talk her into anything. He made her. But she can't tell anyone that. She's too ashamed. Ashamed that she lets him do this to her, that she's powerless to stop it.
"I wasn't entirely truthful," Lucy mumbles, closing her eyes to block out her surroundings. "He didn't manipulate me. He didn't just talk me into sleeping with him. He forced me to. I said no and it didn't matter."
"He raped you."
Lucy nods miserably.
"Does anyone else know?"
"Jo Taylor."
Dr. Witter frowns for a moment, trying to place the name. Then a look of understanding crosses her face. "I see. Well that does change the details of our discussion, but in essence, there are a few main things that are the same."
"Like what?"
"Like the fact that being forced into something you weren't ready for has seriously affected your emotional stability and your self-esteem and your perception of yourself. You engage in sexual activity with men because you don't understand what kind of emotional attention you're looking for. You want to feel loved, but you don't know what that actually feels like, especially because you don't see your own self-worth. And until you recognize that, you won't be able to truly love anyone else."
"But how am I… how do I do that?"
"It takes time," says Dr. Witter kindly. "But you have to learn to trust. Trust yourself and trust others."
"And what am I supposed to do about Carlos and James? I keep going back and forth between them and they say it's not messing with them, but I know it is. I'm going to ruin their friendship."
"Honestly, Lucy, I can't tell you what to do. You have to follow what's in your heart. But I would advise against anymore sexual activity—with either of them—until you can sort out your feelings. You base your relationships on sex, which is fleeting, rather than give yourself time to see if you can make a deeper connection. Maybe because you're scared, or maybe because that's all you've ever known. But either way, you have to start to take control, and only you have the power to tell yourself what you want."
At dinner that night, Jo watches Camille closely. She knows her roommate has a weigh-in this weekend, and those always stress the thin girl out, nearly to the point of break down. Camille drinks glasses of water as if she's a camel, trying to store it all away and hold onto it. But her food—she's falling into her old habits. Chewing ridiculously slowly. Cutting up her meat and pushing it around her plate. Bringing food to her lips and then suddenly joining the conversation, acting as if she's merely been distracted from her dinner rather than purposely ignoring it.
"Camille, you need to eat something," Jo says quietly.
"What?" Camille questions innocently. "I have been."
"No, you haven't. I've been watching you."
Logan looks over at the two girls, raising his eyebrow at Camille. Slowly, Camille spears a piece of chicken with her fork, staring down at it malevolently, and raises it to her mouth. She chews it for much longer than necessary, wishing she could spit it out, but Jo and Logan's actions have alerted the others to her silent struggle, so with much regret, she swallows the bite of food and follows it with some water.
This seems to satisfy Kendall and Lucy, who return to their discussion on the evolution of Coldplay, and Carlos and James, who go back to antagonizing each other by stealing bits of food and elbowing each other every time they try to take a drink.
Logan and Jo aren't so easily placated.
By the time everyone finishes their meals, Camille still has more than half of her dinner in front of her. Logan's hand rests on her knee reassuringly and she focuses on it, feeling its soft weight pressing on her. Everyone stays at the table with her in solidarity, even though it's free time now and Carlos had wanted to go outside and play basketball. But he doesn't even glance toward the door longingly or fidget around like he usually does when he's bored.
Bit by bit, Camille eats her dinner, both hating them all for forcing this on her and loving them fiercely for caring. They're all the last ones in the dining hall by far, and their free hour is almost up by the time Camille swallows her last bite, but no one minds having spent their time like this, knowing that the girl has had many ups and downs where her recovery is concerned.
Logan takes her hand as they walk out of the dining hall, linking his fingers with hers, ignoring the shifty grins shot at him by Carlos and James and the smirk that Kendall—who's probably remembering how he walked in on them earlier—has on his face.
Camille's stomach is in knots from dinner, and as much as she hates it, hates admitting it to herself, she wishes she hadn't eaten it. She wishes she could get rid of it. It's not fair, she thinks, squeezing Logan's hand subconsciously. It shouldn't be this hard. But weigh-ins stress her out because they force her to think about her eating habits, and being stressed makes her want to shut down and stop eating. So the very thing that's supposed to be helping her keep track of her recovery is something that makes her wish Stephanie had never gone to her dad and told him what was going on with her. It's such a fucking catch-22, and she doesn't know how to break the cycle.
And honestly, she's not sure what she wants more—to reach her goal weight for the doctors, or to still be under it.
But she can't say that out loud to anyone. Not her friends and especially not her doctors. They'll just think she's crazy. That maybe she needs more intense treatment than they're currently giving her, and that's the last thing she wants. The worst part is that Camille knows she needs the help; she just isn't sure she wants it.
There are some days when she feels invincible. Days when calories don't matter and her portions aren't controlled and she doesn't want to immediately lock herself in the bathroom and empty herself away. Days when she's just Camille and she's normal and she lives an utterly ordinary existence with her dad and her friends and her homework.
But there are also days when she's anxious. When she's nervous and she feels heavy and she looks in the mirror and all she can see is the fact that her ribs don't show as much they used to and how she can pinch fat around her hips and thighs. Those are the days when she gets migraines and shaky hands and maybe even blurry vision but none of those matter because restricting her food intake is the most important thing, except maybe for worrying about how she's going to get away with it.
Logan stoops down to hug her before he follows Kendall to their room for the night, and Camille briefly kisses his cheek before going into her own room, where she frets about the next morning's weigh-in. Jo shows signs of wanting to talk about it, so Camille pretends to be preoccupied with writing in her journal and going over her meal plan until her roommate turns over and goes to sleep.
Camille turns out the light, trying not to focus on her wooden limbs or her full stomach or the fact that the bathroom is only feet away and if she wanted to, she could creep out of bed and lock the door before kneeling in front of the porcelain toilet that is both her savior and her captor.
Even as she's thinking, No, no, no, Camille silently eases her feet to the floor, being careful not to stumble over anything on her way across the room. Her heart thuds loudly in her chest, and she's sure that any second now, its rhythmic beat, frantic with anxiety, will wake Jo. She holds her breath until she feels the cool tile beneath her bare feet, closing the door as quietly as possible before turning on the light. Its powerful florescence blinds her momentarily and she squeezes her eyes shut against the harsh glare, groping for the doorknob so she can click the lock.
The bathroom is small, consisting of one toilet, one shower with a plain beige curtain, and a sink over which hangs a grimy mirror. Camille looks at the toilet, agonizing over whether she's really about to do what she thinks she is. She takes a step forward, then pauses, listening hard. She thinks she heard the bed creaking, the cheap mattress and frame groaning as Jo turns over in her sleep. Taking a gulp of air, Camille grabs her toothbrush from the holder on the sink and clutches it to her chest, still not positive that she knows what she's doing.
The bed creaks again, and Camille freezes, terrified. She lifts the lid on the toilet and sits on the ground, staring at it from a few feet away. It's been so long since she's done this; since that time she had dinner at Stephanie's house. Weeks and weeks of progress down the drain, and for what? Because she's scared of her weigh-in?
The thin girl draws her knees up and rests her forehead against them, closing her eyes as she argues with herself.
You're supposed to be getting healthy.
I'm fine, she tells herself. I'm doing fine.
You don't need to do this.
I just feel so heavy. I want it to stop.
You need help.
I know I do, she thinks. But I don't want it.
While she's wrestling with herself she doesn't hear the squeaky mattress telling her that Jo has woken up and noticed the bathroom light from the door, so she nearly has a heart attack when the soft knock followed by Jo's sleepy voice sound from the bedroom.
"Camille? Are you okay?" Her voice is muffled but she sounds worried.
Camille doesn't respond right away. How can she? She's far from okay. Her heart races against her ribcage and her lungs feel like they're working hard to force oxygen through her body.
"Camille?" Jo knocks again, louder this time and there's a note of panic in her tone.
"Y-yeah," Camille chokes out from her spot on the floor. She balls her fingers into fists, squeezing hard, her nails digging into the palms of her hands, forcing her to focus on the present. Her eyes are shut tight; she feels like she might be drowning inside herself.
"What's going on in there?" Jo demands. "Are you sick?"
"No…"
Jo jiggles the doorknob, attempting to get inside the bathroom. "Camille. Can you open the door?"
Camille shakes her head, forgetting that Jo can't see her.
"You're scaring me, Cam! Open the door or I'm going to go get someone!"
Still clutching her toothbrush, Camille crawls toward the door and reaches up to unclick the lock, at which point Jo flings it open to find her roommate hugging her knees and nearly in tears. Jo kneels down and wraps her arms around the distressed girl, who's shaking in her anxiety and breathing shallowly.
"What's wrong? What happened?" Jo asks.
"Need help," Camille says into Jo's shoulder, wringing her hands together.
"Okay. Okay, let me go get a nurse—" Jo starts.
"No!" Camille cries, fretful. "Logan. Get Logan."
"Camille, I can't leave you here alone—"
"Please," she begs. "Not a nurse."
Jo struggles with herself for moment before making a decision. "Okay. Just… I'll be right back, okay?"
Camille nods as Jo lets go of her, shaking and still short of breath. She's starting to see spots on the edges of her vision and she's feeling nauseated; she barely notices when Jo runs out of the room in a panic. Her stomach's churning now and even though this is what she came in here to do, she thinks, this is not what she wants. This wasn't supposed to happen, but now she has no choice because the bile is rising in her esophagus and her eyes are watering and she doesn't need to stick her toothbrush down her throat, not this time.
She grips the edge of the toilet seat, feeling dizzy, and retches into it once, twice, three times before she feels even marginally better, though her eyes and nose are running and she still feels shaky and anxious and where is Jo? She's supposed to be getting help, why isn't she back yet?
The moment she thinks it the bathroom door is flung wide open again and Jo rushes back in with Logan at her heels. Camille is still kneeling over the toilet when they find her, trying to fight down another wave of nausea. Logan stoops down beside her, pulling her hair away from her face and rubbing her back, trying to soothe her, while Jo gets a damp washcloth for her face and flushes the toilet, looking terribly sad for Camille.
"I didn't want to," Camille cries, feeling the need to justify herself. "I mean, I did, at first, but I wasn't going to—it was an accident—" Even as she says it, she realizes the toothbrush is lying inches away from her and they'll have no reason to believe her, which makes her shake even harder. "I was just thinking about it and I panicked—couldn't breathe—" She babbles on, hoping that she's making some sense.
"Shh, it's okay, it's fine. Just breathe for me, okay? You're all right. You're safe." Logan keeps a steady stream of soothing words until Camille is able to calm down.
"What happened?" Jo looks pale and frightened. "Did you feel sick?"
"Panic attack," Camille murmurs. "I just came in here—I was going to—but then I tried talking myself out of it—and I couldn't breathe or see—got dizzy."
"Full sentences, Cam," Logan says gently. "Start from the beginning, okay?"
Camille laughs internally. When was the beginning? When she started panicking? When she got out of bed and crept into the bathroom with the intent to purge her meal? Or when she finished that last bite of dinner?
"I felt too full," she starts quietly. "I didn't want to get weighed with all that inside me… It was too much, I'm too heavy."
"Camille…" A hundred expressions are etched into Jo's face, from worried to sad to exhausted and even frustrated.
"I wanted to throw it up, and I wanted to not want to do it," the brunette continues on as if she hasn't heard the blonde girl in the corner. "I was thinking about weighing too much tomorrow and about disappointing everyone if I haven't gained enough and I just… froze up. I couldn't breathe, and I got dizzy, and I ended up throwing up anyway. I tried to stop it; I just couldn't, it was too late. I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize," Logan says, still rubbing her back while they sit on the floor of the bathroom. "It's not your fault. Look at me! It's not your fault."
"What's wrong with me?" Camille asks. "Why can't I just be done with this?"
"This is normal," he tells her. "It's not a smooth road, okay? You just have to keep in mind that there are good days in all the bad."
"I'm just tired of having bad days." It comes out as a whisper but both Logan and Jo hear her clearly through the silence of the late night.
"Come on," Logan says. "You should get some sleep. I bet all the adrenaline has rushed out of you."
Camille nods tiredly and allows the boy to pull her to feet and guide her back to bed. He leans over and brushes her hair off her forehead before pressing a soft kiss to her temple, smiling at her when she closes her eyes.
Jo steps out into the hallway with him. "Thanks for coming. I didn't know what to do… She was freaking out and she didn't want me to get a nurse. She just wanted you."
"Don't worry about it. I just wish there was something else I could do."
"You've done a lot," Jo assures him. "You don't want to know how bad it was before you got here. She didn't have panic attacks, but she was always either starving or in a binge and purge cycle. And I was too preoccupied with myself to bother trying to help."
"You feel guilty about that?"
"I didn't know how to deal with myself… so I just didn't. And that meant that I didn't deal with anyone else either. No one else's problems mattered to me. Nothing mattered. I wanted to just be numb… Anyway, thanks again."
"No problem. 'Night, Jo."
"Good night."
Jo gives Logan a quick hug before ducking back into her room with Camille, who is already breathing deeply, looking much more peaceful in her sleep than she did just minutes ago, when she was kneeling on the floor, shaking and practically sobbing. As she climbs into bed, Jo wonders if she did the right thing by going to Logan instead of getting an adult. Logan did help, she reminds herself. But still. If Camille is hiding her breakdowns from the staff, how is she ever supposed to really get better?
Camille sits nervously on an uncomfortable chair while a doctor goes over her records. She wrings her hands together out of sheer anxiety, wanting to get this over with and not knowing what to expect when she steps on the scale. There are three other girls waiting with her, and they all sit in glum silence as they await their fate.
"You can come with me now, Camille," says a nurse.
The exhausted girl gets to her feet and follows the nurse down a long hallway to where she knows the scale stands ominously, and she knows that no matter what the number is, it won't be the right one.
If it's too low, she's a failure.
If it's too high, well, that's also a failure, though she's not supposed to see it that way.
"Step up here, now."
Camille does as she's told, watching as the nurse moves the dial until it's balanced to the proper weight. She looks in agony at the number before her. Feelings of simultaneous relief and horror fill her as the nurse says what she already knows.
"You seem to have lost two pounds since your last weigh in, Camille."
She steps down from the scale, disappointed that she hasn't met her goal, and yet glad for the very same reason, and then disappointed all over again because this isn't supposed to make her happy.
Camille says nothing to the nurse, who marks down Camille's weight in her file before leaving her to wait for the doctor, who joins her momentarily. She's an older woman, with slightly graying hair and a patient disposition.
"We've had a minor setback," says Dr. Chang gently, watching as Camille stares at the floor.
"I'm sorry."
"You don't have to apologize. But I can't say I'm not concerned about you, dear. Even if you're not gaining weight, we would hope that at the very least, you wouldn't have lost any. Would you like to talk about anything?"
"Like what?"
"Anything at all. How do you feel?"
"Like a failure," Camille whispers. "Like I can't do anything right."
"You are not a failure," Dr. Chang says firmly. "Not by any means. But you can't change yourself if you don't want to, Camille. We can sit here and I can lecture you about your health until I'm blue in the face—about the strain your body is under, your anemia, heart rate, blood pressure, the fact that you haven't had a period in fourteen months. But I know as well as you do that all of it will go in one ear and out the other as long as you continue to believe that you don't deserve to recover from this disorder."
Camille lets the words wash over her, not saying anything more, dreading that Dr. Chang will be forced to put her in in-patient treatment.
As if reading her mind, the woman continues. "I'm not going to drag you into more intensive treatment, Camille."
"You're not?"
"No. Because despite this setback, and despite the fact that I know you still have some rough days, from the notes I've gathered from your therapist and your group instructor, I believe you're headed for a breakthrough. And I would like to see you reach it on your own, not under the microscope of in-patient therapy."
"You really think I can?" Camille asks in disbelief.
"I do," Dr. Chang replies. "With the support of your friends and family, yes. I believe you'll be able to find it within yourself. All you need to do is find the reason why recovery would be worth it. Find that reason, and never lose sight of it."
Camille nods, murmuring to herself. "Find the reason…"
Wow. I suck, I know. It's been awhile. I promise promise promise I'm not giving up/abandoning this story, and I made another promise to myself not to work on anymore drabbles or one-shots until I work through this. No more distractions!
I'm still laying out the rest of the chapters so that I can hopefully expedite the process of getting this thing completed. I know where I want to end, and I have certain things that need to happen; it's just a matter of executing.
So I'm super sorry that I've been MIA for like 6 weeks, but I love you all and hope that you will still drop me a review, even if it's to yell at me for being a terrible updater.
And I officially moved my blog to a new URL so if you're on tumblr, follow me at xo-wintershine and I'll follow you back! Thanks everyone! Please let me know what you thought, what's missing, what you want to see happen, etc! I love hearing from y'all.
