The View from the Eating Disorders Unit

The majority of the windows faced the parking garage.  The garage where my pretty blue car lay in wait.  Part of me wanted to claim it.  To secure my keys and run, fast as a hummingbird flicks its wings, down one flight of steps, down the hallway, through the open lobby, and up four flights of stairs to where my car waited for me.  My fingers curled on the ledge in front of one window.  I could leave anytime I wanted.  Scrawl my name on yet another dotted line and wait the requisite time, the ward quiet enough to hear the main room’s clock tick the seconds away.  I could be free.  If I wanted it enough. A heaviness settled on my shoulders. I could leave.  But I was so tired.  I had been so tired for so long.

Behind me I could hear the shuffled steps of someone wearing the special non-skid socks - yellow as a warning light - accompanied by muffled moans.  When she smiled her cheekbones pressed against thin skin and no light reached her eyes, the color of sea foam.  I never saw her smile again after the day I arrived.  Once again she was pacing, her fingers tugging at the last line of crochet she had completed.  Always that row.  Always crocheting and unraveling that same section of yarn.  It was as if it was meant to be impermanent.  As if there was nothing for it to hold onto, as if the previous lines of work, though strong and steady, were not enough to anchor this tentative new line to the world.

Guiltily, I often tried to avoid Angie.  The pacing, the muffled sobs, her fingers constantly working the yarn, it overwhelmed me.  Plus, a wide gulf stood between us.  I could leave any time I wanted; she could not.  Her body was struggling despite her tenacious spirit.  Our privileges differed despite our commonalities.  A tough pill to swallow.

The more I gazed out the window the tighter the white plastic bracelet printed with my name, birthdate, and individualized barcode felt.  No one wore one on the outside.  I slid two fingers under it and pushed.  It wouldn’t give.  I glanced over my shoulder and saw one of the social workers come in to get ready for group.  Her heels clicked neatly on the linoleum as she busied herself around the table, laying out boxes of crayons and colored pencils.  She smiled at me. I couldn’t imagine how long it would take to put on that much makeup.  Magazines joined the colored pencils and crayons.  Before I arrived, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you the last time I touched a crayon.  Somehow it had now become a daily occurence.  

“Body Image Group” was written across the dry-erase board in careful bubble letters - the kind I had never been able to master.  Three exclamation points followed the words.  I grabbed a seat across from the single doorway, putting the window behind me.  I had made the mistake of facing the window during a group when I first got there.  Dreams of what could be outside these walls would have to wait.

“Alright ladies and gentleman,” Mia, the social worker, said brightly from the doorway.  “Time for Body Image Group!”  She clapped her hands and the smile seemed to spread even wider on her face.  Alex shuffled in first, dressed in his usual plaid pajama bottoms and school spirit hoodie.  He rarely spoke during groups, said he preferred to save his opinions for times it was less likely staff was eavesdropping.  Angie came in next, doing her requisite three laps around the table before selecting a seat near Alex, at the opposite end of the table from Mia.  Mia watched Angie with clouded eyes and pursed lips.  Caitlin bounced in next, all but ricocheting off the walls.  She paused to look Mia up and down before continuing her grand entrance.

“I was tryin’ to nap before but - you guys!  There’s so much I want to do.  I think I managed about 30 minutes tops.  Like, at all.  Like, for the last three days.  But you guys, I’m just so psyched about finally leaving and doing something.  If you look out the window in Kerri’s room and basically have your face on the glass you can see like three new flowers-” Caitlin caught the way Mia was looking at her and dropped into a seat like the floor was lava.  Mia glanced at her crystal-encrusted watch and then back at the doorway.

Krissy shuffled in last, as she often did.  Another bored-looking woman in blue scrubs was following her.  Krissy had been put on one-to-one supervision again.  I wondered what her crime was this time.  As our youngest comrade, she stood out.

Mia stood at the head of the table with her fingers splayed out in front of her.  Her nails were painted red, her manicure looked fresh.  There was a chip of color missing from her right pinky nail.  As if she knew I’d seen, she moved her hands together, covering the offending nail.

“For this week’s Body Image Group I thought it would be fun to do a little activity.  So often we’re bombarded by the media trying to sell  us an image.  But what sort of image is this?  So what we’re going to do today is look for body positive words and images.  Cut those out and glue them onto your piece of construction paper, to make a new sort of advertisement.”  She picked up a magazine with “Strong, Not Just Skinny” emblazoned on the cover in large, white block letters.  “Just like this!”  She chirped as she cut the words out and with a dramatic flourish glued them to the center of a sheet of pink construction paper.  “See?”  she said enthusiastically, hold up her paper for all to see just like a proud preschooler.  “Strong, not just skinny.  Now isn’t that a more positive message?”  Ellen, a middle aged mother of three, just stared at her.  Caitlin burst out laughing.  

There was a small line by the garbage can once Mia had packed up her things and left.  Nine pieces of construction paper dropped unceremoniously into the small can.  

“I can’t believe they let HER run the body image group!”  Caitlin practically cackled as she walked down the hallway to her room.  One of the nurses who was behind the counter preparing evening meds frowned at her and put a finger to her lips.

After each group everyone dispersed back to their own rooms, choosing a smaller space within an already small space.  I usually lingered by a window.  I did that day as well.  Those magazines had triggered something in me and I feared the bedroom I shared with Lena was too small to contain it.  I didn’t find many “body positive” words or images, but I did find a few articles of interest.  Ones titled “How my Fiance and I Make Long Distance Work” and “How I Landed my First Publishing Job.”  Articles accompanied by glossy photos of smartly dressed young women, the captions of which detailing other accomplishments and, of course, the women’s ages.  As one of the writer’s put it:  “Can you believe all this girl has accomplished by 24?  How many of us could say the same?”  My 25th birthday was quickly approaching and here I was, a temporary resident of a ward where I had to seek special permission to check my email and allow someone to peek in the toilet bowl before I flushed.  Talk about bitter pills.

A voice called my name.  Reluctantly, I went to the counter.

“You’re standing a lot today,” the nurse Maggie said.  Her gray hair was pulled back into a French braid with the tail pinned up.  “Are you okay?”

“Standing too much will give you varicose veins you know,” the other nurse, Susan, chimed in.  I nodded and retreated back to my room where Lena was taking another nap.

I opened the composition notebook I had been given upon admittance.  Pages of black script stared up at me.  Some pages were immaculate, with steady, even script and not a single crossout.  Other pages appeared chaotic.  I turned to a fresh page and scrawled the date.  I held the tip of my pen over the next line, poised and ready for words that didn’t come.  I closed the notebook.  A modicum of dim light came in through the window.  The quiet of the late afternoon on the ward was periodically punctuated by loudspeaker announcements, “Code purple, ER,” “Code gray, pediatrics,” “Myocardial infarction, OR.”  The soundtrack of my life for the last week and a half.

I could see the parking deck and hospital entrance from this window too.  Mothers pushing strollers out to the circle where cars were waiting for them, elderly couples where one person sat in a wheelchair while the other pushed, nurses in blue scrubs presumably on a break.  Without warning, he came to mind.  Everything I had felt on our last and final date came flooding back.  It had been a while.  I last saw him on a warm summer’s evening.  An evening that left me shivering after one refrigerated drink.  I sat with my hands clenched together between my thighs.  If he noticed the shivers that made me feel I was vibrating he never said.  He smiled, spoke fairly animatedly, occasionally gesturing with his hands.  When the waitress came to take out order he asked her for recommendations and selected one sight unseen.  I felt foolish for saying I was ready to order when truthfully I did not want to make a decision.  The waitress stood, pencil hovering over notepad, with feigned patience.  I said my order quietly, with my head down.  The waitress had to ask me to repeat it.

The pictures he had painted floated before my eyes like ghosts and mingled with my own.  Shadows of hikes taken together on crisp fall days, afternoons spent giggling over bottles of white wine and cheese platters at wineries, time spent with family and friends.  The shadows lingered and then faded before my eyes.  Taunting me.  If I reached out with my fingertips, maybe I could make them stay.  It never worked.  They always faded away and left me with the view with which I had started, the stone parking deck and the sliding glass doors of the hospital entrance.  It would do no good to hold onto the pale ghosts of what could’ve been.  

From off in the distance I could hear a nurse calling me to the medicine window where maybe I would find something to help me put the shadows to rest for good.