sharp secrets (Mi's side)

Sharp secrets

Mi

I felt numb inside as I wondered back into my room and closed the door on the rest of the world. I wanted to go to sleep. I wanted to pretend that I had never gone looking behind other peoples doors and let someone else find her. The staff would have got to her eventually and then it could have been there mess. The trouble was, I was lying to myself as well. For as much as I wanted to be sleeping I wanted to be back in Hev’s room doing something useful. Esmee though kind and most certainly capable of dealing with self-harm lacked the ability to talk to her and there was so much in my head that should have been said. Hev was meant to be fine. We had all come to expect that of her over time. She was scared when she first came but after that she just fitted in with no problems. She didn’t cut herself or run the staff in circles even Crystal found it hard to hate her because she never demanded any attention from her. It wasn’t right that it changed and I wanted to put it right somehow. I wanted to swap my legs with hers and make her feel better. It seemed wrong that she would be the one going to bed with sore legs wrapped in bandages but she would be and I felt her pain.

“Hello sweet heart. How are you doing?” Esmee asked coming into my room after I stared at the ceiling from my bed for what must have been over an hour. Everyone else had been sent to bed by staff ten minutes ago and the corridors where cast in the thick forced quietness that come with the evenings with just the very distant sound of the night stations TV floating up the stairs. It was impossible to tell what was on.  “Are you going to put you pyjamas on and get ready for bed? Do you want a sleeping pill?”

I shook my head and sat up on the bed though my body didn’t want to. It felt like I could have stayed there not moving and not feeling for days if I had had the choice. Things where unfair. Good people got hurt and I was done with it.

“Is she ok?”

“Someone’s watching her. She’s going to be fine Mi.”

“You really think its fine. You think its fine that someone like Hev has somehow managed to land up on red observations. It’s not fine Esmee,” I stopped the feelings burning at my voice. “It’s not fine”

“I know that things don’t feel ok and this is a really hard one to get around but what I was trying to say Is Hev is being looked after now so this won’t happen again,” Esmee said coming over to the bed and sitting next to me placing her hand on my back

“I mean how the hell did it happen. It isn’t like you hand blades out or make it easy. What did she use?”

“Come on Mi you of all people know that where there’s a will there’s a way. There’s no need to play dumb with me. I don’t know how she managed to get hold of a pencil sharpener blade.

My insides froze and my body shivered as Esmee’s words dug somewhere uncomfortable into my soul. They may not have known where the blade come from but I did. I thought that it was only me that had found the little pot of treasures that shone at me from Doctor Jordan’s desk. I thought that I was the only one that new there was a chance to get out when things got to tough, but other people had seen it too and it was hurting them and people like Hev where to beautiful to hurt.

“I know,” I stuttered not knowing what had come over me or why my mouth was betraying the bit of me that demanded I kept the whereabouts of the blades top secret “I know where she got the blade from.”  

Has it helped. (Esmee side)

Has it helped

Esmee

“OK, Ok. I’m coming let’s see what’s happening. Is she awake and breathing?” I asked pulling the office door closed behind me with a snick.

“Yes, she seemed OK when I left her to come and get you. The cuts aren’t bad exactly. Just … Well just there and that seems bad enough.”

“Ok honey I can take it from here. Why don’t you go and spend some time with the others before it is time for bed. I promise I will come and see you before you are sleeping ok.” Mi stopped walking so suddenly it felt like I Had to stop with her. My suggestion seemed to offend her somehow but I wasn’t sure what she was expecting. It was more than my jobs worth to let her get involved in the situation and she knew that. That didn’t mean it would stop her protesting.

“How are you going to talk to her without me?” She had a point. There was going to be a language barrier that I couldn’t get over and there was going to be something very patronising about just smiling at her as I prodded at her wounds. It wasn’t like a kid who had fallen over and scrapped their knee, you couldn’t just smile and them and tell them that you would rub it better. It was bigger, even bigger than words but at least you could try if you had them.

“We will get around it. You know I can’t let you help Mi. It’s already bad enough that you found her. I will come and let you know that she is ok after I have done with her ok. I promise I would leave you in the lurch.” Mi nodded before taking a step back and letting me progress along the corridor alone towards the flight of stairs that lead to the top floor.

I knocked out of habit when I reached twilight before letting myself into the room. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find as I had no prior knowledge of how Hev dealt with such things. We all new that she had a history of self-harm so we all knew that there was a chance of her hurting herself but so far she had been the beacon of courage and strength while in our care to the point when none of us really had an idea as to why she was still in a secure unit and not out living her life with everyone else. It was going to be sad having to write in her book that things had changed.

Hev’s eyes greeted me as I hovered by the door and then walked to over to her bed. She was scared of what I was planning to do to her to where she half-heartedly tried to hide the wounds on her legs.

“It’s ok Hev, you’re not in trouble.” I said as clearly as I could hoping that she could lip read if I was clear enough. “Can I have a look and see what you have done to yourself?” She nodded slowly as she uncovered her leg again and moved it so I could see the pits and gashes that leaked ruby red blood from her legs. I was going to need to stitch the worse ones if she would let me and cover the others. There where over twenty cuts that followed no pattern or reason just pain and they were made to make another bigger pain go away.

“Are you feeling better? Has this helped? Hev looked at me suspiciously caught off guard by the somewhat strange question. It was a valid one though people were trying to achieve something by their self-harm they didn’t always get what they wanted from it. In fact a lot of the time it was a desperate act but it could work in some way. It once had worked for everyone who had tried it. That was the reason why we kept chasing it down to the very ends of the world because when it worked it felt so god damn good.

“I know it sounds like a silly question but you did this to try and achieve something. Has it helped?”

“Does it ever?” Hev asked stiffly her word slurring into each other showing how much she hated to communicate in this way.  

“Well you do it for a reason don’t you?” Hev smiled a looked away tears glittering somewhere inside her eyes she didn’t need to answer the question for me to know the answer.

A cuts Language

A cuts language

Something drew me closer to her. I had planned to run and get help. I had planned to run so fast that I could have rewound what she had done but her sad eyes and her laboured breathing drew me to her bed because I wanted to help and I seemed like the best person for the job even though I was in a place filled with nurses that had better training.

“It’s OK.” I signed as I sat

 down next to Hev on the blood soaked sheets and allowed myself to look at the wounds. It was meant to be a glance I was meant to make assessment on weather I had to go running but as soon as I saw the wounds my eyes got stuck. It was a mess. The cuts where deep and blood pushed at their surfaces and it was terrible but something about them meant so much more to me than they did to another person looking. I was looking at stories not wounds. I was looking at a language not a cut and they shouted their words at the top of the voice but they were private sentences at the same time. There secrets belonged to Hev and not even myself with such knowledge could understand them just that they were strong. 

I am not sure how long it took but in the end I looked away and laid a towel over the wounds. It was hard in a way I wanted to see them on display as much as she was reluctant to see them go. People where always so eager to clean up the feelings when you wanted them to spread on for ever. When there was a bit of you that wanted to strip off and walk proud threw a hundred people asking what wounds they were on about when they asked because they didn’t hurt at all compared to what was on the inside. It was impossible to get deep enough to actually remove what really hurt and with the plasters and sticky tape holding them together they stopped screaming out your pain far sooner than the internal screaming had ceased but they had to go away sooner than you would like for everyone’s sanity. Even I felt uncomfortable in the presence of such raw pain.

I searched my head for words to say but nothing would have made a difference to what had happened and nothing could have made her pain go away. I had known she was upset even the staff had known she was upset but none of us new how truly tortured she was. I hadn’t even known that Hev was a self-harmer her arms where clear of all scars and if she was in real pain she never showed it. Her personality had always been clear of visual blips. She never cried. She never even looked sad. Even now any tears that she was to shed where dried up along with her blood.

“Hev, it’s going to be OK,” I said gently shaking her shoulder to get her eyes to focus on me. “You will get looked after here, they won’t be angry at you.

“Like I care what they think of me Mi. They have no idea what this means to me, or how this feels I couldn’t give a damn if they want to shout at me or not. I don’t cut for them or anyone else.”

It was bull shit. It was a cutters shield that made her hands move in hostile ways. We all cut for someone.  She would have only ever had shit thrown at her about self-harm and to get on with it she made out that she couldn’t feel what other people thought of her but only her mother and fathers words really had the power to knock Hev so far on her ass. She cut for them because they were the ones that made her feel far too much

.

“Leave me alone Mi,” Hev said defeated as she turned to her legs  and started to mop the blood off of her legs with the sheet revealing the holes that now littered her legs like she couldn’t even feel coming from them.

I did what was asked of me without saying another word and left Hev alone in her room. A part of me wanted to just wonder back into my bedroom and put my sheets over my head and let  a member of staff find her as they eventually would but she needed looking after and even though I couldn’t be the one to do it I could do my bit.

I eventually found Esmee in the office doing paperwork about five minutes after I left Hev on her own. She smiled at me though the panel in the door as I knocked and she got to her feet to come and see what I wanted. I wished I could have smiled back at her, that one day I could just be getting her attention because I wanted to tell her that I loved her and not that there was something wrong.

“Hello, Sweet, what can I do for you?” Esmee asked.

“It’s Hev. She needs help.” I said noticing the blood that was dried onto my hands and across my knuckles. “I found her in her room. She’s cut herself.”   

behind twilight

Behind twilight

Emmet landed up calling someone else to cover for me after I sunk back behind my bedroom wall but it was hardly needed as that evening just before the night shift came on the found a doctor that wasn’t so scared of me to allow Emmet to reduce my observations right down to twenty minute checks. It wasn’t what I had been on beforehand and I would have preferred the two hourly observations but it was better than having an unwelcome shadow.

I had not been able to see Hev for the rest of the day though I was anxious to know whether she was OK after what had happened. The problem with Hev even though she was deaf she seemed to have no reason to be in the unit at all. I know she had a story I knew from the first time I saw her distressed state in the corridor that hev wasn’t happy all of the time but she had no physical scars. Her arms where pure untouched peaches and cream and she wasn’t like Pollyanna who was so painfully thin most people found it hard to look at her. She did not talk to the voices in her head or address hallucinations. She was perfectly in contact with reality and if you had the ability to communicate with her in her chosen language she was usually funny ad upbeat. her continued stay in the walls of an acute unit where a mystery to most even to her but she told me she had nowhere else to go apart from her posh boarding school that was refusing to take her back after finding her semi coherent with a belly full of pills.

As soon as I was let off of my observations I went and knocked on twilight which was the room Hev was now in after being moved up from the main floor a few days ago. It was not an easy task. I had tried to avoid the room since Bella had died like I tried to avoid lingering too much in front of Courage I didn’t even like walking past them let alone going in them because since she died nothing about them was right. She had given the rooms life she had breathed something into them and without her they were voids of nothing that tried to suck something out of me every time I was too close to them. It hurt every time I thought of her. Even when I was ok and doing normal things she would just pop into my head and it would feel like I was going to sink though the floor. Most people told you that time made it easier but Emmet had contradicted that when he had caught me one of the times I had fallen. He told me that the feelings stayed as intense and as devastating you just learnt to cope better with them when they hit. And he was right that was how it was like yet I had a long way to go with both Bella and Arabella they both had me on my knees. The trouble was I liked Hev and no matter how much I wanted to run away screaming as I pushed the door open to twilight to see if she was all right and wanted to come and play a game with myself and Esmee if I could grab her after handover.

Nothing could really prepare me for what I saw when I pushed open that door with a wave of my hands and before I could stop myself I let out a little yelp and grabbed the wall to steady myself as I looked at the scene from a horror movie. There first thing to see was the bright red blood that covered Hev’s legs and the blankets that where rolled up around her but more devastating was her. Fun and care free Hev had gone somewhere far away as her dead eyes stared like a zombies into the gashes on her legs before put down the tiny silver blade to the side of her and singed the words I’m sorry as her chest heaved up and down with heavy adrenalin filled breathes. 

On shaking ground

This isn't so good. Please bare in mind this is just a first draft 

I smiled sadly as I allowed Emmets words to comfort me. I suppose I had known it somewhere inside of since the first time Bella found me in the bathroom all those months ago. I had seen it as strength on her part when in fact it had been her illness that made her try and cover the part of me that was so anorexic. She liked anorexia she was letting it control her life and was happy when she found a friend. She fought it and she meant me no harm by not telling she thought she was doing a good thing. There wasn’t a bad bone inside of Bella’s body that would even consider doing anything other but if she had told that day no matter how much it killed me inside she would have been finding me the help that my withering body needed.

“You’re doing really well…” Emmet’s words where cut of midsentence from a smashing noise and a shrill throaty snarl of distress from outside in the corridor that felt like it made the walls shake

“I was going to say that you are doing really well today but that sounds like something that needs checking out.” Emmet smiled as he jumped off of my bed and went to my door followed my myself to see Hev screaming at her smashed up mobile phone on the floor and kicking angrily at the all ready scuffed paint work on the walls.

“What the hell has happened my love?” Emmet asked with his hands after he managed to get her attention at the same time as I asked her what was wrong with mine. Hev’s hands exploded into s flurry of action in return. Most of the words where shouted in with a bunch of expletives but nothing really made any sense and when she was done Emmet looked down at me to see if I had managed to pick up the conversation which I hadn’t.

“Errr… Something about glue sniffing up start penis monkeys…” I said aloud my heart going out to Hev as she started to sob and fall down the wall.

“Yeah that is about as much as I got too” He said before signing to Hev to slow it down what she was saying. She couldn’t slow it down. She was too sad to make her hands form the proper words and her shoulders shook from her tears. I had never seen Hev like she was then. She had never presented anything other than her bubbly self. She had had times of low mood when she wasn’t so eager to get in with things but this was different from that. What was in front of me was devastation and disaster and it made my body hurt to watch

“Come on my love, It’s all right, it’s OK.” Emmet signed gently going over to her and wrapping his arm around her shoulders. I stayed back by the door of my bedroom trying to give them as much space as I could without fully disappearing out of Emmets sight which would have meant he would have to come and get me.

“It’s my parents, I hate them.” I heard Hev say aloud barley eligible through h her tears. I had never heard her actually chose to talk aloud before and even though to me there was something actually beautiful in how she tried to form words even though she couldn’t hear them I could understand why her speech was enough to render her mute rather than try. If there was one thing anyone learnt about being alive in the world it was the fact that people where cruel about things that were different.

“What have your parents done to upset you like this. I take it that they just text you?”

“There extending their trip over Christmas.” Hev singed with her heavy hands even though after the initial outburst of anger they now just looked sluggish and heavy in the way she used then. “They were meant to come back and get me for Christmas so I could get out of here but now there not coming and I’m not even sure where I am going to go. They always do this to me. I am never important enough for them.”

I hated Hev’s parents. It was extreme reaction seems I had never met them before to say that I hated them but that in a way was the point.  Hev loved her mother and her farther, she pretended that they didn’t rule her whole life and she didn’t care what she said but it was lies. She wanted to be their perfect child. She wanted to be everything that they wanted from her and she would cross deserts and swim oceans to do it but they treated her like shit. She was not good enough for their miserable little world. It didn’t mean that she wasn’t good enough, she was, for Emmet for me we saw her beauty but in a way she cared little about us. She had swallowed a packet of pills to try and show her parents she was miserable and she wanted them and they had yet to even see her or make any real contact and now even over Christmas where families where pushed together, even pretend ones like the one I was going to be a part of they decided not to include there daughter in there fun but leave her stranded in a hospital. It was unforgivable, Hev was their gift not their inconvenience.

“I am sorry that has happened Hev. Did they tell you why they had to stay away longer? As for where you will go you will stay here in the hospital with staff for Christmas day with one or two of the other patients and there will be some fun stuff going on I can find out who is working if you want. I know Ava and Alice are on in the morning when you get up.”

Hev didn’t respond instead stayed looking down at her legs her head bowed low over them. Emmet could give her no comfort and in a way he knew it too he could make up words that flowed out from his hands but there was a bit that felt for her like anyone would. There were no words to describe the feelings that went with the fear that the Bears would do it to me and she had just had it crashed upon her. I sulked away behind the bedroom door trying to catch my breath. Things where never as solid as they seemed.

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.