it only feels like being tortured

It only feels like being tortured

I ate the rest of my breakfast without moving or feeling and Emmet let me be while I did it knowing that there was something wrong inside of my head that would have made acting even half normal an impossibility. I ate quickly for me thinking that if I just did it and didn’t think I couldn’t worry about what it was doing to me or what it was doing to Pollyanna somewhere in a different room. It didn’t help that Pollyanna was yelling loud enough so the whole unit could hear her and it didn’t help that there were four empty seats at the table where the rest of the staff had had to drop there breakfast and go running as the wrist alarms burst into life signalling that they were rather urgently needed elsewhere. I had been partly responsible for that.

“Right, dishes in the dish  washer please.  I am running a relaxation group at 10 am for anyone that is interested. Other than that make yourself busy distract your self’s if needed and seek out staff to talk if you need to. Have a good day.” I hated the kitchen rush after breakfast so Emmet grabbed my plate and took it to the kitchen while I waited for him struggling not to make my own bolt for the door and away from him. It would have been so easy to make myself sick after that breakfast. My tummy already felt like a washing machine after what I had done in breakfast but I fort it. I also noticed Lauren loitering at the door with her eyes on me. Emmet had passed guard dog duty over before he had left the room.

“Good work Mi,” Emmet said to me after he slipped back into the room and came to my side. “I know that that was a real struggle for you this morning and you did very well.” I let him take my hand as he talked to me. It masked the fact the my head was screaming in equal measure to either slap him across the face and run before I could get wrestled to the ground or place both my arms around his waist and squeeze him until I could get the thoughts of Bella and an Ensure covered Pollyanna to leave my thoughts. I sucked my tummy in until it hurt, my top suddenly feeling too tight on me and it was a bit, I wasn’t really a size 8 anymore. I hadn’t been for a long time.

“Can we go and talk?” I asked Emmet going on my tip toes so I could whisper it somewhere vaguely close to his ear. 

“Sure thing, Do you want to go to your bedroom? or I can try and commandeer a room if you want me to.”

“My rooms fine,” I said as I began to walk towards it and Emmet followed, watching my feet as they took the two flights of stairs to my bedroom. Once there cuddled up on the top end of my bed wrapping a white fleas blanket with pink flowers on it around my legs to try and stave of the cold, yet another reason why the name sunshine for my bedroom was obsolete. Now it was winter it was always bloody freezing in the bedrooms even with the heating on constantly.

“So what can I help you with?” Emmet asked sitting on the opposite end of my bed from me

“Is Pollyanna OK?”

“I don’t really know honey; I have been with you since wake up so I can’t tell. I can tell you that she is being looked after though if that helps.” It should have. It would have made most people from the outside feel better. I had heard Emmet say the same thing to concerned parents as I floated past their conversations on the thread bear blues sofas in the hallway. They looked at me with cautiousness concern and fear etched onto their faces as they tried to judge whether I was likely to cause them harm.

“Not really,” I admitted. “I know what being “looked after” means Emmet. I have been “looked after” by some people in here and it can feel a lot like being tortured to death.”

“I can’t guarantee that she won’t be feeling that however I can guarantee we are not doing that. We will only be doing what is in her best interests because at the moment Pollyanna is too sick to know what is best for her.”

I smiled at Emmet thanking him for trying to make me feel better but I couldn’t help hide the grimace that came after it. Bella always said that I was too easily hypnotized by the staff, even more so when the staff in question where Emmet and Esmee but Bella never trusted anyone properly. She lived her whole life with walls and fences around her only believing one lie that she was fat and had to be thinner. She was dead, just a picture in my sketch book made from memories and she still wasn’t thin enough. That was what was sad. She died at war with herself still. And I hated it.

“Bella would be so angry at me,” I moaned eventually not managing to sugar coat even for myself how betrayed she would be feeling.

“Who’s Bella?” Emmet asked propping himself up to one side on my bed so he could look at me properly the slats groaned in there annoyance of the giants repositioning.

“I know you are a nurse and look after a lot of people but I was hoping even you wouldn’t forget the dead that quick.”

“Hay there is no need to snap at me. I am very aware of what Bella you are on about now I was just wondering if maybe Sophie had found herself a fried to play with which was worrying me slightly. Anyway why would Bella be mad at you? You meant a lot to her.”

“I told.” I said wondering how two simple worlds could make me feel cold inside. “I told on Pollyanna when she ran off. Bella never told. She found me so many times puking or cutting and she never told. To her it was the worst thing… I let her down; she would never forgive me” I stuttered.”

“Yeah you’re right she would be really angry at you and I am sure that somewhere she is yelling or sulking but she’s wrong and I would tell her that to her face if I could and you know it too somewhere inside you which is very positive. You loved her and that is brilliant what makes it brilliant was the fact that you loved her in spite of her flaws. Bella was here for a reason. She was poorly like you and everyone else here. She just spent a lot of time fighting that. If she was well and she found you or anyone else hurting themselves she would have come and told one of us so we could help, but she wasn’t well. I need to believe me that you did the right thing letting me know that Pollyanna had run away because you knew she was in danger or she was going to hurt herself and that wasn’t OK. It was a good thing and I hope that you can see that and stand up for that no matter what Bella would say because you are in the right. No matter what it feels like to her and I would make a guess at pretty bad you helped Pollyanna this morning more then what Bella did when she covered up for you.

number nineteen's snitch (mi's side)

right im out of the psyc ward again and feeling as good as i can be considering. I hope that this chapter is ok. Anything you really hate or love please let me know. vikki.

Number nineteen’s snitch

I went to breckfast. I had no more of an argument for him. Sophie couldn’t beat that even though she tried. She shouted and she screamed until it felt like the whole unit would fall down around me but I would have still moved unblinking though the corridors to get to the dining room. I would eat for him; At least for now.

The table was set up for nineteen to sit at but only two of the bowls where full of the food that was non-negotiable. I hated that it was so hard. I hated the fact that seventeen other people could sit at the table and chose there toast and exactly what they wanted on it. I hated that number eighteen was so swamped by a storm she had to eat though, and there were no words for number nineteen. Nineteen was… perfect…almost dead

.

Nineteen arrived from behind me shaking; weather it was because she still felt the extreme cold under all the layers or because she was terrified was hard to tell but I felt for her in a way; Her war was worse than mine. If I had one girl in my head having a temper tantrum she had twenty thousand babies screaming inside hers. The trouble is there was one main problem that she couldn’t see. She didn’t know it or understand it but the babies were crying in her head because they were hungry.

“Can I sit over there?” I asked Emmet, Pointing to the other side of the table that was blocked in by walls and chairs. I had no real desire to be there.  I wanted the chair that was closest to the door more than anything else in the world at that moment but nineteen needed it more than me. She really did.

Emmet agreed my request and swapped the bowls over. My portion was a lot smaller than it used to be. I could see that now as I looked into the hell that was the other bowl. I couldn’t have done it not even for Emmet or Esmee. Not to day.

I started eating my food with the squeeze of Emmet’s hand on my leg and Jean handed Pollyanna her spoon as her prompt. She looked at it like she had just been given the controls of the TARDIS and told to fly it. It would have probably been less alien to her then a spoon and a bowl of over 600 calories. It wasn’t going to happen. She wanted it to, she was starving, but it wasn’t.

Her breath began to come in shortened pants again as she delicately pushed the side of the spoon against the china and brought the measly amount of corn flakes to her mouth and started to chew. I had already got three much larger bites down into my stomach. Emmet had eaten nearly half his bowl and was looking for more.

It was agony to watch as the  repeated the action from bowl to mouth. I could see why people would be frustrated with her. For anyone who saw exactly how thin she was or who could see the size of her ankles as they bounced under the tables it was a living hell. You wanted to yell at her, scream at her that she was so small, but I had been her. I had nearly thrown up in my pasta. I chocked on my spoonful remembering and heaved once into my hand.

“Wow, all right, it’s all right. Something’s just gone down the wrong way, here Emmet said handing me a cup of water from the table which I took in both my hands and sipped at until the coughing had subsided.

I took another spoonful of my cereal and went back to my breakfast before allowing my eyes to drift back over to Pollyanna. Big fat tears trickled down over her nose and cheeks as she crunched on a tiny mouthful of cornflakes. I begged someone to end her pain. It seemed almost cruel that Jean sat beside her watching out the corner of her eyes as she at her own breakfast with ease. I knew the theory behind it. I knew that it was meant to help but theory’s had to be adjusted to the person. We needed to share in her pain and celebrate that fact that she had managed about 75 calories more of cereal in the morning that she had managed in a long time by herself, but 75 calories wouldn’t keep her alive. The whole damn bowl alone wouldn’t keep her alive. It seemed impossible that she still was yet I had heard them say the same thing about me on the first few weeks I had walked theses halls and sat at the table. They had said that I was just waiting. That they where a stop gap before the inevitable death that would follow. Well all of them apart from Esmee. She had always seen a future for me and in the end she had been the one to make it happen too. I was more grateful to her and to Emmet then they could ever know.

There was a clatter as Pollyanna pushed her plate away from her with force and the milk splashed down onto the table. She looked like she was about to scream along with the voice in her head or vomit onto the floor.

“Come on pork chop, you are doing really well just keep going,” Jean said reacting to the defiant gesture with her own defiance at the obvious defeat but Pollyanna would not be persuaded by the words of mere mortals like Jean. She had a power in her head that would not be matched.

“I cannot eat anymore.” Pollyanna’s words where strict they oozed a power that she still thought that she had when it came to what went inside her mouth. They wouldn’t have told her about the Ensure yet or eventually the tube they forced up your nose after you had been sectioned into the mental health act. I would not be the one to tell her though. I would not brake there silence or the lies. That pain would be to devastating to see.

“Your food is one of those non- negotiable that we mentioned to you Pollyanna. Emmet said his voice not soft like normal but firm and cold. Even I felt the want to shuffle away from him on the chair and eat alone somewhere dark. I didn’t like his compassionless form. “What is given to you, you must eat and there isn’t any room for discussion. Now you made a good start but I would like you to finish of the plate please. It is the same rule for everyone like you.” I felt the unnatural and unwelcome spotlight come and land on my head as I shovelled in another large spoonful of my own cornflakes and chewed. I wanted to hiss at Emmet like a cat would if it felt trapped. He shouldn’t have made an example from me; I was just as scared and confused as she was in different ways.

Pollyanna gave me a brief look of disgust as I chocked down my mouthful before crossing her arms and looking up at the ceiling closing off the rest of the argument. I smashed my spoon against the side of my plate and tried to control the tears that where welling up inside my eyes before continuing the horrific meal which was only about to get worse as i heard Harry and Elizabeth bashing about telling others that It was time to join us for their breakfast.

With the arrival of the others spilling into the dining room and choosing their seats Pollyanna changed again every one of her muscles coiling ready to make her spring.  I tried to work out what way she was going to dart. The normal assumption would be that she would chose the door but that was where the new people where coming from and what that staff where expecting. I wouldn’t have been that clever to choose the other way but Pollyanna seemed it.

Pollyanna’s reactions where so fast it seemed almost impossible and even though they were made out of fear there were timed to perfection. Jean was looking away and Emmet had turned his attention to Hev who had sat opposite him and was moaning about the rights of night owls with her hands leaving her escape unmonitored by all staff. I watched with envy at her escape wondering how I had not managed in the moths of occupying that chair at breakfast to make such a faultless escape before doing something that made me cringe and made Bella roll somewhere in her grave and grabbed Emmets leg pointing to her empty chair and allowing him to shout at Jean so she could get off of her chair and go after her before she made it all the way to a place where she could shove her fingers down her throat.

Bella would have gone crazy if she saw what I had done. She had watched me at breakfast so many times as I smeared dressings and jams into my hair or scattered handfuls onto the floor to avoid the calories. She had helped me not get caught in the toilets as I throw up blood into the procaine and shared tips on the best times to water load and not once had she showed me to the staff to put up with their back lash. I wanted to vomit but I went back to eating. The eyes of a disapproving dead girl fixed somewhere into my soul.