Status: FYI: two chapters posted March 20; COMPLETED

Do Not Resuscitate

Chapter 19

I’m a blimp.

I’m a useless, bloated sack of skin, a lump on the couch, a pus-filled zit on the planet, bulbous, expanding, gross. Cottage cheese thighs, flabby arms, muffin top, pregnant stomach pressing against the stretchy band of my sweats. I can pinch an inch. The moment on my lips is forever on my hips. I am what I eat. I feel fat.

I am skin and bones. I haven’t eaten a solid meal in days. I’ve lost who knows how much weight. I’m deteriorating, my body feeding on muscle, shaking so hard people would assume I have a seizure disorder despite the billions of blankets tucked around me, growing fine fur where I shouldn’t be, always lightheaded and off-balance and in pain.

And I feel fat.

The egg in a basket, the four pieces of the bottom left square of the bottom left square, are heavy in my stomach. Cold mush in the bottom of my belly. It’s rotting inside of me. I want it out, gone, disposed of in the toilet through laxative overdose or a wonderful, finger-induced purge.

It’s Monday.

No one told me it was Monday.

No one bothered trying to bring me to school. No one bothered mentioning school. No one bothered pushing me to eat faster, more, so they could shove me in the car to get to school on time. Because I can’t handle the most basic human actions.

Eating.

Moving.

Living.

I’m a failure, but Dad’s still walking around the house with the biggest smile on his face and pride in his eyes and telling me how happy he is that I ate a bite of food and rewarding me with a place on the couch and Brooklyn’s presence.

She’s drawing and watching Dora the Explorer.

Every time I close my eyes, in languid blink or attempted sleep, I hope they never open again. But Dora’s image is etched into my eyelids, and she’s constantly prompting me with repetitive questions, yelling too energetically at me to be considered normal for a child lost in the woods, wilderness, whatever. “Where are we going?!” and “Do you see the river?!” and “Can you say map?!”

“No, Swiper,” Brooklyn yelps at the TV, and then she’s yelling with Dora, so frantically I’m convinced she believes interacting with the show makes a difference, “Swiper no swiping. Swiper no swiping. Swiper no swiping.”

Damn, foiled for the twentieth time today, Swiper. Better luck next time.

This show never ends.

It’s the perfect frame for my self-pitying, pathetic thoughts. Really. An overly rambunctious child running rampant on dangerous adventures without her parents to give a shit about her safety and relying on talking things and an omnipotent viewer to help her through life, the creators must know me or something.

“Where are we going?” Dora sings.

To down a bottle of Tylenol because we’re too dumb to know acetaminophen will only kill us if it can damage our livers and even then it will take a while?

“The little blue tree,” Brooklyn yells.

Ah, yes, the little blue tree. You’re still too young to be taking the bottle of Tylenol on a whim and convincing yourself that you’re relieved when you wake up the next day, aren’t you, Dora? Hold onto that childish hope. Maybe you’ll survive.

Can someone please shut this show off? I’m annoying myself.

My head hurts.

My everything hurts.

I’d like more medication, more pain dullers to help me stomach to the end, because this hurts. It hurts a lot. More than I thought it would, and no one’s letting me sleep long enough to escape. They hover, they keep me around a three-year-old, they come in to ask how I’m doing or to offer me more eggs in baskets.

Which is the pain medication’s fault to begin with. That gross pill made me feel good. My judgment was clouded. I forgot what I was doing. I ate. I thought I was happy over Dad’s smile. What am I? A neglected dog desperate for its owner’s attention? I’ll jump for a stupid fucking smile? I was caught in a moment of drug-induced weakness. The drugs raised me up just to drop me into a monstrous, crashing realization of how big of a mistake I made.

Reality sucks.

Dying hurts.

Dying. I’m dying. Dying. Dying. Dying. The word leaves a weird taste in my mouth. It doesn’t sound real. It doesn’t feel solid. I can’t wrap my head around it, around the concept, around the word. I am dying. How surreal. The word’s just sitting there, in the forefront of my brain, fermenting, growing. I’m actually dying. I don’t know what to do with this. I’m going to be gone. Soon. Forever. Unless reincarnation’s a thing, and then, I’m seriously gunning for squirrel. But I’m dying. Slowly on this couch.

Holy shit.

“We did it! We did it! We did it!” Dora sings.

Almost, Dora, almost. A few more days, weeks maybe. Wait for my organs to fail. The ICD is going to recharge me every time my heart tries to stop or skips beats, but it can’t jumpstart my organs. That’s what nutrient heavy food is for, keeping me alive, keeping my body barely functioning. I won’t eat. I hurt, my stomach is devouring itself, I can’t move or sleep, but I won’t eat. I won’t make another mistake prompted by drug-induced happiness.

Brooklyn’s abandoned her drawing to dance around to the Dora theme song. Another episode is starting. Another round of map calling and asking us where her destination is when it’s right behind her and making friends with strange creatures and telling the weasel-ferret-fox to stop his shit and singing. All the singing. The same thing over and over, and Brooklyn’s dancing with excitement.

It’s cute, watching her bounce and clap her hands, her devotion strong enough to compel her to wear a pink shirt and orange shorts, her brown ponytail hopping and whipping around when she turns to tell me about the episodes she remembers.

I didn’t know she liked Dora the Explorer.

I don’t know anything about her. I don’t remember the day she was born. I don’t remember her first word. I don’t remember when she learned to crawl or walk or talk or become a miniature person. I don’t think I was there for any of the milestones in her life. I missed out.

I’m still missing out. To be a fat lump on the couch.

“What do you want from me?” Dad snaps.

He’s in the hallway, pacing, agitated, on the phone with someone who’s clearly pushing his buttons. Someone who pushed his buttons the minute he looked at the caller ID in the middle of Dora and Brooklyn singing for The Map last episode. Someone who’s pulled him from his hovering duties. He’s going to combust.

“I’m trying.”

Stop yelling, Dad, Dora can’t hear Brooklyn tell her where to go.

“Well, shit, Katharine, if you think it’s that easy…”

Mom?

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Mom called?

“She’s my daughter, too.”

And his muffled footsteps become sharp staccato taps on hardwood. Away. Into the dining room. Where I can’t eavesdrop on his end of the argument. About me.

Come back. Please. Dora’s too loud. I can’t hear. Why did Mom call? What are you saying? Are you telling her how much of a brat I’ve been? Did you tell her how you haven’t slept and you have dark circles starting to show under your eyes and you can barely keep yourself upright because you’ve been so busy with me and all you’ve managed to do is put an ICD and a bite of toast in me? Are you begging her to take me off your hands? I can’t make out the words, just the angry rise and fall of Dad’s voice.

Stop fighting. All you two do is fight.

I try to push myself up, try to escape the confines of the couch, try to get somewhere else. My arms shake. I’m too heavy. But I need to get up. I can’t stay here. I’m useless on the couch in the living room under every blanket in the house sans the nest in my room. I can stop the argument. I can take myself out of the equation, lock myself in my room so no one has to see me, sleep until they realize I’m not around, jump out the window and break my neck, sneak my heart medication so I can overdose. Then they’d have nothing to argue about. I shift, swing my legs over the couch, prep to heft myself up, and—

Pain.

I drop, fall on the couch cushions, and my hand presses against the stiches. I think they broke. I tore them. I didn’t mean to. I’m being ripped open. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.

Brooklyn’s little face appears. Concern pulls her brows together, worry swims in her hazel eyes, and her mouth is twisted in a pout.

“You ‘kay?”

No.

I’m huge. I broke my stitches. I can’t get off the couch. I made Mom and Dad fight. I’m stupid. I got Dad’s hopes up. I ate. I’m a giant failure. I wish I could erase myself. I’m getting salty tears on the blankets

No, I’m not okay.

She places her hand on my forehead. Palm down. Warm. Sticky from whatever she was eating. Grapey scent fills my nose. Jelly. There is a jelly-covered, three-year-old’s hand on my head.

Can pores suck in calories? Does that make sense? I don’t know anymore.

Make the pain stop.

Her face scrunches up. She flips her hand, keeps the back pressed to my forehead for a second, then flips to her palm again.

“I don’t know… what I’m doin’.”

Thank you, Nurse Toddler.

“I get Daddy.” And she barrels out of the room, yelling, “Daddy” at the top of her lungs.

I can’t make a grab for her or dart after her to stop her or say the magic words—Brooklyn, no brooking?—that will make her stop in her tracks. I lay on the couch. I’m pushing too hard on my stitches. Stabbing pain radiates in every direction, up my collar bone, through my arm, across my ribcage. I should ease the pressure, but I’m holding my skin together. The stiches are going to unravel in a bloody mess.

“Danny?” Dad’s in my face, Brooklyn standing on her tiptoes next to him to get equally in my face. “What’s wrong?”

I broke the strings holding my body together and I’m going to get blood and mechanical parts on the couch and you’re going to have to clean it up and I’m sorry.

“Let me see.”

He gently moves my hand, pulls the loose sweater neck down, and peers at the mess I’ve made. The pain subsides. It’s achy. No longer sharp. I may have over exaggerated. He lets the sweater cover the stiches again.

“You’re okay,” he says.

He sounds exhausted, overworked, done with this.

“Do you think you need medicine?”

He looks exhausted, ready to collapse, over my shit.

“What time…” He grabs his phone from the coffee table. “I can give you half a pill.”

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I thought I did the thing.

“You have to promise to eat with it, okay?”

I’m going to be sick.

He brings his phone to his ear. Mom? Is he still talking to her? Did they pause their argument for me instead of telling me to get over it and go play with my toys?

“Do you want to talk to her?”

He pauses. I can almost hear what Mom’s saying but not quite, his phone is that loud. Her voice is high, sharp, fast. Their argument never reached a conclusion. She won’t let it go. Or maybe she doesn’t want to talk to me and he’s put her in the awkward situation of having to tell him she doesn’t want to deal with me, I’m not her problem anymore, it’s his turn to handle the nonsense that is their daughter, and why would you even suggest that, Matthew?

Dad sighs. “Katharine, please don’t…” Another pause. Mom cut him off. “Hold on.” He presses the phone to his chest, his worn-out eyes on me, his voice scratchy and tired of being used. “Mom wants to talk to you.”

Don’t lie to me.

He waits to see if I’ll respond. I won’t. He knows I won’t, but he keeps trying anyway, and that only disappoints him. Story of my life.

Brooklyn pops up. “I help.”

She snatches Dad’s phone and taps the screen. Too quick for even Dad to stop her, let alone comprehend what she’s doing. Impressive.

Smiling, puffed up like a proud pigeon or Bella when she gets a new collar, Brooklyn holds the phone between us, and chirps, “Hi, Sissy’s mom. Sissy’s here.”

Silence and then a crackly, cautious “Dannilynn?” from the speakers.

It’s Mom. Instead of one of her ten billion assistants checking in to make sure I’m alive, it’s Mom. She sent me to live with Dad, she gave me up, and she wants to talk to me. Tension coils in my chest and holds my lungs in a vice grip. She’s going to yell at me.

“I’ll get your medicine,” Dad whispers and leaves me with Mom.

With Brooklyn holding a phone on speaker that Mom is talking out of.

“She can’t talk,” Brooklyn says, “She gots an ouchie. Daddy went ta get her med’cine.”

“I saw.”

Mom’s voice is… weird… kind of peppy but not really… the way it sounded when she announced her application for the assistant position way back when I was child… hopeful and nervous.

Wait, she saw?

“How are you, Danny? Does it hurt? Of course, it hurts, what am I saying? Is it any better? It looked… awful in the hospital.”

When was she at the hospital?

“Is Dad making sure it’s clean? Or Val? Val probably is. She keeps on top of things. Make sure to ask Dad for medicine when you need it.”

Mom’s rambling halts. Awkward silence follows. Brooklyn doesn’t say anything to fill it. She just watches me staring at the phone, and I’m incapable of comprehending anything.

Mom showed up at the hospital. While I was half dead. And I missed it. Because I was half dead. She dropped her work, suffered through Dad’s presence, was there. Even though I was half dead.

I don’t know what to think.

Mom clears her throat. “Dad says you ate. A bite of toast and egg?”

Don’t remind me.

“That’s good. I’m glad.”

Why does she sound like she’s going to cry?

I don’t understand.

“Have you tried eating anything else?”

She goes quiet. I don’t answer. Neither does Brooklyn. But we don’t have to. Dad’s probably told her already, briefed her on the situation in the middle of fighting in an effort to prove he’s doing what he can. She only asking in her ridiculously delicate, teary voice that I don’t recognize because—

She sniffled.

I heard it.

Is she crying?

“I know this is hard, but you need to eat a little more, honey.”

She’s not crying. She can’t be. Mom never cries. Except the day Dad left, but she thought her world was falling apart, and she didn’t know I could hear her. She didn’t know I had been sitting outside her bedroom door, clutching my ratty teddy bear, crying because I thought, knew, it was my fault. If I had been a better daughter, they wouldn’t have fought constantly, he wouldn’t have left us, we would have been a happy family.

Another sniffle. She is crying, and it’s my fault. Again.

“Some soup. Broth, at least. It’s better than nothing.”

My nails are digging into my stomach.

“The doctors… I’m worried, Danny.”

The admission takes the breath out of her. I can see her sagging in her plush, leather chair, elbows rested on her glass desk, head in her hands.

I can’t pry my nails out of my stomach.

“I see this happen all the time. Models, they come in here, they audition, and they’re so thin. I know they’re not healthy. I know what they’re doing. I don’t say anything. I’m not supposed to.” She takes a deep breath, attempting to inflate herself. Popped balloons can’t re-inflate though. Not without duct tape. “But I didn’t expect you to do the same thing.” She pauses to sniff back the grossness that comes with crying. “Putting your health in danger isn’t worth being thin.”

Is that what you think I’m doing? Trying to lose weight? Trying to look like a model or a starved celebrity to make you and Dad happy? As genius as that idea is, I hadn’t thought of it.

I’m dying. I’m killing myself. This isn’t some sad side effect of anorexia. I want to die. Didn’t Dad tell you that? Did that not get through his thick skull?

I think my stomach is bleeding.

“It’s not all about the weight, I know that. There’s something deeper, and when you go see the psychiatrist, psychologist, whatever tomorrow, don’t be afraid to open up.”

Go see the what tomorrow?

“Tell her anything. We won’t be angry no matter what you say. I promise.”

I’m not talking to Dad’s magical teen angst healer. I don’t have to talk to anyone.

I’m dying.

He’s wasting his money, his time, his effort. I wish he’d stop. I wish he’d leave me alone and let me do this. He’s too blinded by the fear of death or the need to prove Mom wrong to realize… I deserve this.

“We want you to get better.”

And you and Dad think I want to be this way. You think I’m happy being the royally fucked up piece of shit I am. You think I haven’t tried. I have. I gave up. You should commit to giving up, and Dad needs to butt the fuck out.

“I—” Her office door opens, and someone, one of her assistants, mumbles a string of unintelligible words. “Now? Can’t they wait?” Mumbling. Mom sighs, but instead of sounding the annoyed CEO she is, she sounds sad, upset, tired. “Okay, fine. Give me a minute.”

Mumbling. The door closes. Duty calls.

“Danny?” Mom asks, as if she’s not sure I’m here. “I have to go. There’s a meeting with a big account…” She trails off. Unsure. Hesitant. “I love you, Danny. I love you so much, and I’m so proud of you.”

You people keep throwing those words around, but you don’t seem to understand what they mean.

“I’ll talk to you later, honey.”

She hangs up.

I stare at the black screen. There’s this hot mess mixture bubbling inside me, making me uncomfortable, forcing my nails across my stomach in repetitive scratches. Anger clashes with pain butts heads with the bone deep sadness swirls together with some sickening feeling that hollows out a pit in my stomach.

What is that feeling?

“Sissy?”

I jerk, gasp, clutch at my heart too close to my sore stiches because I’m pretty sure the muscle is about to leap out of the opening.

Fuck, I forgot Brooklyn was here.

Oh.

That look.

Big eyes. Saucers on her little face. More green than hazel today. A color that stands out on the eerie pallor of her skin. She’s blanched in fear she doesn’t understand, haunted by the sound of intense sadness in an adult’s voice, working the words and repercussions out and only getting that something is wrong. And she’s scared.

She will understand. One day. When she searches through old photos or Dad and Val tell her or she sees Grandma’s blanket, chewed up by Shadow that time she let him in the house, she’ll recall vague memories of her early childhood: the skin and bones, bizarre, hazy figure on the couch under every blanket in the house, talking for it, convincing it to eat, communicating even though it never communicated back, and it won’t be a creepy imaginary friend.

It’ll be me. Her half-sister. Dying in front of her day by day.

This is what she’ll remember. These moments are all she has of me. I can’t give her anything better, anything that will make her smile despite how awful I am, anything that she can hold on to at night to keep herself warm.

I’m going to scar her for life.

I feel fat.