The mood of the night

The mood of the night.

We heard the newcomer before we saw her. In fact I was convinced that every hospital in the country could hear the newcomer as her crying and swearing erupted outside the unit. I had got a team of four ready to welcome her as I was not sure what I was to be expecting, according to the very brief report by the psychiatrist that had been sent over by e-mail she had been experiencing extreme mood swings that changed by the hour. One minute she could be an intellectual normal well believed teenager and then next minute she could be swearing at nurses, crying in the corner or trying to slit her wrists making her an extra hard patient to care for. The admission to the ward could have gone a thousand ways depending on how her mood had flipped but as with the night so far she had seemed to be delivering in the worse possible state. Part of me wanted to crawl under the table and refuse to come out and deal with what was expected of me but that wasn’t what I did. I was going to be strong team leader Esmee if it killed me that was the bit about me that I liked to feel. I didn’t like the little girl I could change into at the drop of a hat that had emotional outburst. I had to be who I was fighting for because I had lost her far too much lately. I had to prove just for one night that I could be superman again. I had to be the nurse the others had begun to expect. It was just what I did and it should have looked easy. My stitches pulled against the bandage on my arm as I used it to roll off of my seat in the office, mocking my confidence.

“Right I need people to remember that she is scared and that is the reason for her being so angry with everyone,” I announced to A very sleepy looking Ava that had rolled out of bed to fill in as an emergency, a NA called Olivia that Ingrid had so elegantly pouched from the Oaks and a far to alert Edward who had also abandoned his night of sleep to come to the unit in the place of Jacob who Ingrid had pretty much called continually for the hour to show our displeasure. “For that reason I would like a “to the floor” restraint to be used as a last possible resort. I would also like to remind people that she has a BMI of 13 so she will be fragile with brittle bones, any touch might be very physically painful for her as well so light hands as much as possible.”

“I told you that I don’t want to go the loony bin! I am not insane and I am not anorexic I don’t fucking belong here! I don’t want to go. Let me fucking well go!” The girl between two police officers yelled as I opened the front door of the unit and took a step out into the coldness of the night. I grimaced as I saw her two tiny wrists trapped in biting metal handcuffs and the way their arms where locked so tightly around hers at the same time as the other spare arm pressed down on her back so she had to hunch over slightly. I could easily feel the physical pain that she much have been in pull at my joints. The handcuffs where what offended me the most though and it wasn’t just the fact that having them on such thin wrists where going to leave her with horrible injuries. It was about what they represented to the west of the world as well. They were so indisputably linked with crime that even three year olds drew them in their pictures to depict the bad guy.  She wasn’t bad no matter how much she shouted or swore, that was due to fear and pain which was not being helped by the way she was being physically manipulated.

“Hello Pollyanna. I’m Esmee; I am one of the staff nurses here OK. Let’s get you inside and then we can take off those hand cuffs.”

“We are more than willing to take her all the way to seclusion if you want lovely,” the smarmy sounding thirty something police officer said lightly as he pulled harder on Pollyanna’s arm like he was trying to use his brute power to impress me somehow.

“We don’t have seclusion,” I snapped far from being impressed.”  We aren’t a prison; there are no criminals inside these walls. I also have no plans to put her in intensive care either,” I stated firmly as I pulled my body up to its full height and puffed out my chest before I realised I looked more like a cockerel than a taller version of myself.

I could see Pollyanna’s eyes looking up at me from under her hair that had fallen over her face and for a moment she was still her screaming quietened until she was forced over the freehold and her mood changed instantly like someone had flipped a switch. Something about the inside of the hall way weather it was the generic sofas of the board of notices on how to get an advocate or how to make a complaint made her howl in a pain. I could only just remember that feeling somewhere in the back of my head. I swallowed a lump inside my throat.

“Pollyanna, do you want to come over and sit on the sofas with me. Maybe I could get you something to drink.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry for everything. Please please don’t make me stay. I don’t want to stay here, I’m sorry, please just let go of me,” She begged, twisting her hands hard so more blood socked into the bandages that where covering both her lower arms. I winched wondering how much more the stitches would stand being beaten up before she poped one open and we were faced with an arterial bleed.

“I want the hand cuffs off of her,” I ordered to one of the police officers emotion making more appearance in my voice then I would have liked.

“I can’t do that, not until she is in a secure room, she might become violent with us.” I could feel the anger build inside my chest. This guy wasn’t a police officer he was a bully on a power trip, thank god this wasn’t a normal trend, most members of the force where lenient and professional. I saw Ava write down five numbers on her hand in biro that matched the one’s on the police man’s uniform and I gave her a smile of thanks. I obviously wasn’t the only back he had got up.

“Now she is inside this hospital officer…”

“Cain”

“… her duty of care is with me. Now you may have feared that this underweight five foot four child was a threat to your safety but I don’t think she is to mine and I am sure the rest of my nursing team agrees. I would also like to point out the injuries to her wrists. I am assuming that she wasn’t bleeding like that when she left the general ward.”

“It’s your funeral love,” He grumbled as he opened the cuffs from her hands and they backed off out of the door  pulling it closed just in time for Pollyanna to smear herself against in it In a last attempt to get back into the real world. She sobbed harder when she realised it wasn’t going to budge. There was no violence in her just pain and fear. It appeared even I had grossly overestimated the amount of man power I was going to need and with a nod I sent them off to do other things.

“Do you understand why you where sectioned under the mental health act honey? Did the psychiatrist give you his reasons as to why he thought this is was needed and are you aware of what section you’re on and what it means.”

She did not respond to me and instead slid down the wall like a budgie that had flown into a glass door before commencing to bash her head against the door with all the force that she could manage as she rocked back and forth sobbing, her skeletal blood stained arms blocking her face from view.

The first reaction was to try and talk her down, to calm the frenzy that was inside her head but to her at the moment I wasn’t someone that she could trust to protect her when she felt so out of control so my words would have made her worse. My silence would be better until the body took over from the emotion and made her calm, but at the same time I had to keep her safe so gently I reached out my hand and placed it over the back of her head to stop her from damaging it. It was in theory a stupid thing to do and an action that was frowned against, but I had learnt on the job where as some people would bash your hand against the wall as well as their head most people would stop because they refused to hurt another person and as expected Pollyanna was one of these people. She tried to wiggle away from my hand to find the concrete walls but I was as fast as her and managed to maintain a defence for her even if it made her shriek.

“Are you managing?” Ava asked as Pollyanna gave up on her head and turned to trying to rip the bandages off of her arms so she could get to the stitches that hid underneath. I felt my own stitches pull as I grabbed her hands and a ball of nausea exploded inside my tummy. Twenty four hours ago Pollyanna and I wouldn’t have looked all that different. I had lost control like this and yet I somehow had keys to the door she was so desperate to get out of when she wasn’t allowed them. I felt breathless and my guard dropped allowing Pollyanna to attack the wall with her skull again making the walls shake so much Olivia bounded out of the office door.

“Ava, come and grab her hands for me, and Olivia can you go down the clinic room and grab some of the click activated ice packs and some vomit dishes please.” Crying like Pollyanna was felt terrible to a physical body as well as it did emotionally. The ice packs would help with the head ach that was guaranteed to be pulsating so forcefully insider her it would feel like someone was trying to rip her face off and they would keep her cool. The vomit bowls where for what was the inevitable in my eyes. Her sobbing would turn to coughing when her lugs had enough and the coughing would turn to heaving when her gag reflex protested at the coughing.

“I can’t stop,” Pollyanna sobbed as Ava took her hands and I went back to protecting her head. “I want to die; I didn’t want to be saved.”  I broke my own rule as her words echoed around the hallway and i looped my arm around her shoulder loosely allowing her room to pull away if it hurt her or she didn’t want the comfort from a total stranger but surprising she acted in the exact opposite way and fell into me, her head resting on my chest. It was an act of defeat, an act of breaking down but she had no other choice.

“I’m scared,” Pollyanna whimpered, her mood turning from an all-consuming depression to terror of something unknown in the space of seconds. “I’m so scared; I don’t want to be hurt anymore. I can’t stand being hurt.”

“Your safe now,” I somewhat foolishly promised in my hast to try and make her feel better, “you are safe here.” 

Esmee POV... there may be trouble ahead

There may be trouble ahead

There may be trouble ahead,
But while there's moonlight and music and love and romance,
Let's face the music and dance. 

Soon, we'll be without the moon, 
Humming a different tune, 
And then, there may be tear drops to shed. 
So while there's moonlight and music and love and romance, 
Let's face the music and dance. 
Let's face the music and dance, 

Let’s face the music, and dance

Written by Irving Berlin sang by Nat king Cole

It was never a good sign when the office phone went off on the middle of the night. During the day everyone was used to it ringing off the hock but at night it normally always spelt trouble.

“There may be trouble ahead, but while there’s…”  I cracked a smile as Ingrid sang what we were all thinking before picking up a thank you bear that was sat on the desk in front of me and lobbing it over the room towards her. I seemed to turn into a teenager when I was on shift with the very girly Ingrid.

“Hello Apple gate house Children’s ward Esmee speaking how can I help you?”

“Oh hello yes, I was hoping to speak with the nurse in charge please.”

“Yes that’s me. Can I ask whose calling?”

  “Yes of course yes. I am a doctor Ryder and I am currently over at the general hospital. I am in desperate need of a bed for a young lady that I had just seen who is in crisis and needs hospital admission. I was hoping that Apple gate could provide me with one.” I dreaded dealing with calls like this one. It was never easy to deal with the disgruntled psychiatrist in the middle of the night and the truth was most units would have had to give him bad news on the bed front but in a way that would have been easier that what I was going to have to try and explain without sounding rude.

 

“Physically yes, I have two spare beds at the moment but one of them is on the second floor so really unpractical for a new admission so I would have to juggle patient rooms and of course all my kids are now sleeping. The other is an observation bed for new admits but I haven’t got the nurse power to observe it right now. I am a nurse down and barely legal with my ratios as it is. Can’t she be admitted to Skylight ward until the morning? I can arrange a nurse to come over and induct her in there. It would be so much nicer for her. I mean what are we looking at?” I asked replacing the receiver on the stand and turning on the loud speaker so I could get Ingrid’s back up if it was needed. In fairness there was two main ways that this could go now, the psychiatrist could and usually would back down and ask me to look for staff then get back to him or alternatively he could assume I was super woman and magic more nurses out of thin air as he bark on about the physical bed and ignore everything else I had to say. I prayed for the first option. It wasn’t that I was incapable of my job or I wouldn’t have been at work but the bad shifts drained anyone even if they were the most stable in their life. I had to admit that I was feeling wobbly and that was why I switched to the night shift.

“So there is a bed. I can send her over.” Great, just bloody perfect.

“We are short staffed as it is Ingrid said to me under her breath. If one of the others wakes up in trouble we won’t have enough as it is to get everything done.” I nodded to Ingrid silently and did a Crystal eye roll. Getting through to Doctor Ryder was obviously going to be as easy as addressing one of the many walls in the unit.  

“Physically there is a bed but I don’t have the nurses. I can try and find some but it will take some time, as you can understand people are not always that happy about being woken up in the middle of the night. I can get one of my NA’s on the phone now…” I mouthed sorry to Ingrid as I used the term and made it sound like she was somehow unimportant. The truth was without the nursing assistance the staff nurses wouldn’t be able to function at all… “But I will need a few hours at least, more if she has been detained because I will need to make sure I get someone who is confident with C&R. I am assuming that she is under a section five or four.”

“Yes, yes of course. She tried to leave the general hospital about two hours ago after making it clear to a nurse that she was going to take her own life. I was called down and deemed it necessary for her to stay. I believe that it will be transferred to a section three as soon as it can be. The plan was for her to stay on the ward for a few more days with a view to voluntarily admitting her to your unit at the end of her stay after we got some calories into her.  She has a BMI of 13.3 and she is extremely malnourished but is still coherent. She was admitted to the Emergency department with deep six inch vertical cuts to both wrists which severed the vain and acute Paracetamol poisoning. She was treated with pervolex for the poisoning and a surgeon repaired her wrist in theatre, there has been no damage to tendons. There is also a history of chronic self-harm. I have told her that she has been sectioned under the mental health act and she has to stay in the hospital but she keeps trying to abscond and of course it is very easy for her as Skylight isn’t a locked ward.”

I glanced over at Ingrid who was already on the other phone to the agency relating like a pro exactly what I was going to need for such a complicated admission. We had obviously both agreed simultaneously without even speaking to each other that we were not going to just need one more nurse to replace Jacob we were going to need two.  

“OK. You’re going to have to give me to at least an hour and a half get the room set up and enough staff to make this admission safe. You understand what I mean. You cannot send her over here until 2 30 at the earliest or I will turn the ambulance away,” I said firmly down the phone to the very softly spoken doctor.

“but you have the bed…”

“2:30 am the bed becomes free. Send her then good bye Doctor Ryder. 

Night ringer (Esmee POV)

Night ringer

Esmee

Night shifts where usually non eventful things, that involved sitting on a chair reading, trying unsuccessfully to open doors and shine a torch into someone’s face so you could check on them without waking them up, writing notes and spending a few hours in a hot room of monitors so you could keep a constant eye on anyone in the high dependency rooms. For this reason alone Emmet and I had swapped the shifts to give me an easy time after my slip up however sometimes the unit just had it in for you. Or the world was in for someone else and you had to share their Burden. 

The night had not started well.  I wasn’t sure whether it was excitement of nerves that made me take the grainy picture of my 12 week scan into show Mi. I had none of course that it was going to affect her strongly. I knew her pain. I had felt it before. I had watched teary eyed and angry as the people from my school grew bumps over the weeks and then pushed expensive prams up the street with the most beautiful baby inside. It ripped you apart from the inside out to look down and see an empty place where something had once grown but had let go too soon. What was worse was Mi was heavily pregnant.  The baby was a week away from potentially viable and notes said he had been born breathing in a puddle of blood on the floor. My pregnancy was going to hit her hard – harder then I could have imagined and I knew the words that would be going around her head that she hated but felt so strongly when she was greeted with the news because I had felt then so intently as well – It’s not fair, it should have been me.

I had broken her and said some stupid thing about importance when she was mentioning her baby. In my desperation I broke unit rules and took an exercise addict running to try and calm her down and almost lost her altogether. It was only my semi melt down that turned it around. She had discovered that cut on my arm from where I had lost control and it broke me. It was never nice to feel so much like a client in a place like Apple gate even if you where the staff.

It was 12am when Mi went to sleep exhausted and she was the last one out of all the clients meaning the rest of the night should have been a case of sitting in the nurses’ station and checking on people. Rainy and Conner where on ambers and Mi was still on red so I had a few hours where I had to sit in the doorway of their rooms and watch them sleep and AJ, Summer, and Mark where on green intermittent checks and I had an hour another two hours that where going to be up and down a lot so I could get to them every five to ten minutes. There was no one in the ECA’s so CCTV didn’t need manning unless there was a crisis which was good because Jacob hadn’t turned up to work and he hand not phoned in sick to give an explanation so we were a member of  staff down. It was going to be fairly normal if a not less busy and time for less nose in book but it was easy work really and I had it under control.

Then at 1am the office phone rang.

You brought me to life

You brought me to life

Esmee flipped to her feet and took two steps back away from me cradling her arm to her chest while stroking her fingers down the length of the line of thorns. It looked like she wanted to run away, that nothing in the entire world would give her greater pleasure to run into the night and never see me again. She was scared, so scared I could even feel it through me.

I wished she wasn’t scared. It was strange to witness her with such intense fear. I had seen her sad before and it had broken me to witness her tears but in a way this felt worse. She was like a trapped teenager caught for the first time and bullied into explaining herself. In the blink of an she was one  of us again, the 15 foot metal fences as much as I cage for her as it was for me. She looked like she was barely in control of herself, a split second away from melting like I had done barley half an hour before.

I heard her whimper as her eyes caught mine for a split second when I got to my feet before she looked over her shoulder staring longingly at the gate. Her legs twitched in her effort to keep them still. I didn’t know what to do for the best. I could ignore the secret that I found or play dumb it but neither of them would help, it would be patronizing to us both, yet I had no words to give her of comfort. How did you comfort the person that had always been the one to sew you up before?

Slowly I walked over to her trying to keep my feet slow and in time with the beet in my head so I didn’t scare her anymore but she still flinched and made her muscles go solid as I touched the arm that she cradled like a baby to her chest. I had just wanted to hold her, to kiss the top of the bandage that like Arabella had done to mine but I didn’t want to force it away from her. Her prize had turned sour now. At the time the cut would have been a gift now she wished that she had been just a little bit stronger, a little bit wiser.

“I am scared,” Esmee whispered still not looking at me “I’m terrified of what is happening to me. I have a child, I’m pregnant and I can’t stop cutting myself. How am I meant to look after them – you, everyone else here when I can’t even stop harming myself?”

Without think about what I was going or how it would affect her I felt my body move forward and my arms wrap around her shoulders before kissing her on the cheek. I had wanted to do it since I had found out we were somehow connected by more than just nurse and patient. Arabella used to do it every night before she went to her room, she used to say it was protection against the nightmares that I had. At first I believed it wold actually stop Joe or Brain making there night time visits to my bedroom, I soon learned that in the end it just made the pain of their visits easier to live with.

“I’m sorry,” Esmee whispered.

“Don’t be, please don’t be. A few more scars on your arms won’t change who you are. You have looked after me for seven months. You brought me back to life.”

“That was luck honey. Technically, you should have survived.” I could feel the stiffness take Esmee’s body in my arms as she remembered the day she pulled me out of the bath. It was one of my biggest regrets of all. I had plotted and twisted my lies around her all day and made her believe them and then I had tried to take my life with only a passing thought if how it would get inside her head, of the scars it would leave on her soul. I couldn’t bring myself to regret the suicide attempt but I did regret doing it when I knew she was the one that was going to find me however, that wasn’t what I actually meant.

“I didn’t mean physically bring me back to life. I meant you started my heart beating again. I’m not a zombie anymore. You taught me how to cry and you taught me that crying was OK. You have made me laugh. You have made me so angry and you have made me feel like I was going to die when you stopped me from hurting myself. You got me eating, don’t get me wrong I don’t always like that but you did. You showed me that Love can conquer the world if you believe in it. You made me understand that I was abused and I have been raped and that it isn’t my fault. Don’t ever be ashamed of your cuts and scars or fear who you are because there is nothing about you I would change, and I will love you no matter what you grow into.” 

More story soon. Taking a short brake

To any people who are out there, i just want to let you know i have had to take a short brake from writing. my MH has been playing up and i have been admitted to the hospital for the time being. They think i will be discharged next week but can never be sure. wish we luck and see you soon love Vikki

Fabric, thorns and secrets.

Fabric, thorns and secrets

It was the instinctive part of me that reacted first and I growled before the sound erupted into a primal aggressive shout with bared teeth and I ripped out of Esmee’s hold as easily as the incredible hulk ripped out of his clothing. I wanted to hit her. My whole body pushed at the very edges of my control to lash out at her so she could feel pain because the bad bit of me. The bit that gained control far too easily blamed her for every tiny bit of my currant pain and anxiety and she had to be punished… or I did.

I stumbled away from Esmee whimpering as my whole body fought some kind of battle. There were more feelings inside me that could be counted and they all mashed up in some sort of strangling grip that ripped my head apart until I was convinced that in seconds I would implode. I wanted to implode. At least if I was blown into a million different pieces my head would have stopped torturing me. I would have stopped hurting.

“I hate you! I hate you!” I sobbed towards Esmee as all of the mussels in my body strained in opposite directions until I ended up on the floor riving in my own brains simulated agony.

 “You don’t hate me. You hate that way that you’re feeling and because I happen to be closest that makes you think that you hate me.”  

I hated her logic. I hated her ambivalence to the best insult that I had for someone like Esmee. I hated the way she could explain exactly the way I felt even better than I could but most of all I hated the fact that she was exactly right. I didn’t hate her. I loved her. I loved her more then I loved another human being in the entire universe and that was almost the problem. Love like that was always insane. It made you mental. No sane person would throw them self’s into traffic or in front of a bullet in their right mind and I would have for her, or for Emmet. I wouldn’t even think about it, not even when I was convinced that I hated them.

My body convulsed with shaking and my back arched against the ground as I tried to regain something of my sanity and my dignity. I tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter how fast I ran. That that wasn’t important but I couldn’t convince myself and what I hated more… what made me loath every living cell of my body was the fact I could forgive her more easily for telling me my son wasn’t important than what I could for her outrunning  me. That was just fucked up… I could sell my sons soul for a perfect body.

 Slowly Esmee got down on the floor with me as I started to chock on my own tears. She seemed a little clumsier then she used to be as she lowered herself into a lying position on her right hand side so she could be face to face with me. She may have been clumsier complete with her little bump but her face was the same as it always was, comforting and strong… understanding of everything I was battling…  I wanted to scratch at her with my broken nails… I wanted to roll over into her arms and let her hold me until the pain was gone.

“It’s OK. I know it feels bad, and I have said and done some really dumb things tonight which have made it worse. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about that. It’s going to be OK though, I’m right here.” Esmee’s words where so gentile, so kind and alluring it would have been impossible not to melt with them and her actions spoke a million more of the same kind words. She was the only person in the unit, probably in the world – with the exception of Emmet – that would lie down on the cold soaking wet floor with me just so I would know I wasn’t alone in the world… with my pain.

“It doesn’t work anymore,” I chocked, coughing so hard on my tears that it felt like my lugs would burst open against my ribs “The running…” I coughed again harder.

“Shhhh, try and calm down before you talk to me, I want to hear what you’re saying and I know that it is important but you need to try and calm your breath and control the sobbing. You can do it, take my hand.” Esmee leant her arm out across the floor to me with her palm facing upwards. She was so confident that she could pull me through, and for some reason so was I.

Without thinking I reached out to touch her. I slowly let my fingers slide in-between hers and then over her palm. Her comfort and her heat calmed me almost instantly, like she had a magic hormone seeping through her skin into mine. It was a better drug then even running was. It just felt right. I gently started to trace my fingers over the creases in her hands and with my sensitive fingertips trying to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I found very old scars against her fragile palms and two harder ridged shaped pieces of scar tissue on the back of her knuckles. I had the same ones as her. Bella would have had them too, and Echo, and anyone else that found their solace from inducing sickness. Almost subconsciously I began to slow my breath to match hers as I brushed my fingers gently over the three diamonds in her engagement ring, then the smooth white gold of her wedding ring. I then moved up her hand slower heading toward the cuff of her sleeve. I wanted to feel her pulse. I didn’t really know why but I knew it would be strong and it time against all the madness, just like she was. I very gently edged my fingers in under the cuff of her blouse trying find the spot where her very life flowed around her but my fingers hit more fabric that had tiny little nylon thorns sticking through it just before Esmee yelped and dragger her arm away cradling it to her side. At first I was confused what it was - as to why there was something that felt so alien against her skin so reluctantly I let my eyes drift to look at her face. It became obvious as soon as I saw her features as to what I had just discovered. It was her biggest secret and it hurt my soul to think that she had it. Apparently Esmee was in more trouble than I could have known.

When running ran out

When running ran out

The night air was freezing against my skin as I stepped out of the unit after Esmee. It was also dark apart from the few flood lights that lit up different patches around the grounds. It wasn’t these bits that concerned me but I wasn’t sure of what lurked in the black bits. Apple gate house seemed to be a place where ghost would be hiding.

“I can’t let you leave the grounds,” Esmee shivered crossing her arms over her chest rubbing her shoulders. “You’re on red obs so it really isn’t an option but we could do a few laps around the building.”

I honestly didn’t care where I ran to. I would have settled for a treadmill if that was what was on offer. I could stay in one place yet travel a thousand miles inside my head when I was running. Sophie would make the experience a punishment but I enjoyed the bits when I was allowed to be me. I was sure that even without the anorexic bit of my mind I would have still loved the way it felt to run.

Without even telling Esmee that around the outside of the building was fine for me my legs took off in clockwise direction around the hospital. I just couldn’t keep them still any longer. It was like I had caught the scent of my pray and I had to follow it no matter how far it went.

I didn’t run properly, I did not pace myself so I could keep going longer I just went as fast as I could even if my legs didn’t like it but there was a problem with that too. My fastest wasn’t nearly fast enough for what I wanted. I wanted to be a chaeta or a gazelle. I wanted to cover miles in the blink of a second because maybe then the pain would have been enough that it covered the other pain. I wanted to feel the wind zip faster through my hair and for my feet to smack header against the ground until they dug their way into it but I wasn’t getting there. I was humanly slow. Not extraordinary like I used to be.   I was slower then I was before I entered into the unit. The extra weight was pulling me back like I was running on elastic. It simply didn’t feel right. They had managed to flaw something that had been as exhilarating as running. It wasn’t serving me right anymore and that was terrifying.

I only managed four laps of the building before my distraught mind made me stop. I couldn’t breathe or think or see straight but none if it was due to the physical strain of the running. It was the sheer panic that festered in my head at the downfall of what used to be a survival mechanism. What if they all stopped working? What if even braking bones and cutting skin granted me no release. There was no way I could live with the feelings. There was no way I could live with Oscar inside my head without being able to drive his image away.

I chocked on nausea as I doubled over in pain. It was not a physical pain in my tummy that made me do it but something worse than that, something that I couldn’t fight beyond or even except or understand. Running had always made me feel good without exception. Even when I could physically feel the pain of bones rubbing on each other the pros had outweighed the pain of it but now there was nothing and I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t know how to cope with it. It had been stolen from me, like so many other things. Brain and Joe may have raped my body and left it broken but apple gate had raped my ability to run and the consequences where the same. I could feel the ripping inside of me as I became detached.

“Mi… Mi… Mia!” Esmee shouted from the other end of the building as she realized I was no longer with her. The whole time she had been running one pace in front of me. I think she was just trying to make sure that I didn’t get away from her but it was another reason why I felt so bad but could never admit it. I had always been the very best at running. I won all the races at school. I crossed the finished lines of every cross country race a whole five minutes in front of the others but Esmee was better than me. Even carrying a 12 week foetus and a bag of amniotic fluid she could have easily outran me and Sophie didn’t like to lose… I didn’t like to lose.  My large 115lbs frame couldn’t outrun a pregnant woman.

“Mi… Ok it’s all right, it’s Ok I’ve got you,  I’ve got you,” Esmee comforted in a frantic voice after she had run back over to me and locked her arms around my waist, “have you hurt yourself? Where is the pain too? I didn’t mean to run on I hadn’t noticed that you stopped?

My anger raged with the pain as she spoke and as always it was anger at the wrong person but she was the only one there,  and the insane part of me, The borderline personality part, the anorexic Sophie part needed something to blame – someone to blame –  for my disillusionment that running could concur all. It could have been anyone, but Esmee was there.