Status: FYI: two chapters posted March 20; COMPLETED

Do Not Resuscitate

Chapter 21

I’m numb.

Distorted words trill through one ear, swerve around my starved brain, and out the other ear. I can’t make sense of who’s speaking and what they’re saying and the people moving around me. Dr. Psychologist Barbie. Then Dr. Psychologist Barbie and Dad. Then Dr. Psychologist Barbie and Dad and some woman with a handful of pamphlets. Then Dr. Psychologist Barbie and Dad. Then Dad and a Diet Coke pressed to my hands and me taking sips on autopilot.

I’d like to get you on the wait list for an inpatient program.

The world moves. Blurred colors and shapes and faces. In Dad’s arms. A waiting room full of anxious, sad, happy, scared, angry, hopeful faces. In the car. Down grey strips of road. Buildings indistinguishable. Pamphlets in my lap. Glossy. Brightly colored. Making promises through stock photos of well-adjusted girls.

Wait list for an inpatient program.

I am a doll. I am weightless. I am hefted and moved around and blank. I am left on the couch. I am hidden under blankets. I am discarded. I am forgotten to real problems. To a child crying over a skinned knee. To dirty dogs streaking across carpet. To phones ringing and emails being sent and messages to post. To noise. I can’t be the well-adjusted stock girls. I don’t have it in me.

Inpatient program.

I drank a Diet Coke. A few sips. Maybe more. I don’t remember the taste, but the carbonation bubbles in my stomach and the caffeine makes me jittery. My epileptic shakes increase tenfold. The chattering will make my damaged teeth fall out. Blankets aren’t helping. I’m bloating. It’s the carbonation.

Inpatient.

I’m waitlisted. I will be. Once Dad picks the pamphlet with the happiest-looking, average-sized stock girls on the front. Visual promises of what they can do to me are better than their written statistics, but anorexia is in this season. The programs are long, beds won’t be open, waiting will give me time no one should give me. I’ll die. The problem will be solved. They’ll be able to take me off the list and give the held bed to a living patient who has the state of mind to eventually appreciate it.

Unless they tube me. Shove the calories right into my stomach. No chewing required. Plump me up with thick nutrient-packed liquids. Watch me balloon. Go ahead. Treat the symptom, not the problem. That’s fine. I’ll handle the problem better.

Inpatient.

I can’t get those pamphlets covered in pseudo happy stock girls and outrageous claims out of my head. They decorate the coffee table. Their stares are blocked by the glare of the lights. They frame the parade of plates Dad brings in and dare me to eat.

Inpatient program.

Gross.

Wait list for an inpatient program.

It’s official. I am a lunatic.

I’d like to get you on the wait list for an inpatient program.

I feel nothing except panic caught in a cycle of gnawing at my chest, subsiding to nothingness, and starting again. My senses are turned off and suspended. To conserve energy for my internal functions, for thoughts rotating on a common factor.

I. Am. Fucked

I’d like to get you on the wait list for an inpatient program.

The piece of apple in my pocket, snatched from an earlier attraction in the parade of plates, is seeping juice through my sweats. My piece of apple. Small, skinless, square. I like it. I’m keeping it and the Tootsie Roll Pop cuddled up in my other pocket. Forever. To look at. To display. To touch. I can. I will.

Everything will be okay.

Wait list for an inpatient program.

They can’t really be happy. Those girls on the pamphlets. Those girls in the programs. Those girls in recovery. Those patients. I don’t believe them, but they keep looking at me, demanding I trust their smiling faces and forced camaraderie, even though I’m not one of them. I don’t belong in their programs. I don’t have an eating disorder.

Inpatient program.

I don’t want to be a patient.

Inpatient.

No.

I lurch forward, heavy, bulbous, and grab for the spread out pamphlets. Frantic. Uncontrolled. Off by fractions of an inch because my coordination, movements, ability to judge distance, motor skills are impaired. Papers flutter to the floor. I can’t catch them. I smack the table. The glass of milk tips, clatters, a cascade of white spreading over the table and dripping on the carpet. I hook a set of pamphlets from the far end, knock the plate of all natural peanut butter and crackers to the floor. It lands face down.

Accident. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to ruin the carpet.

Tears make the world blurry. Mucus fills my nose. Heat sears my skin. I’m sniffling and scrubbing my eyes and struggling to rip my stack of pamphlets and choking and rocking. I’m a mess.

“Danny? What—Hey! No, calm down.”

The cushions sag under additional weight. Hands grip mine, grip my arms, grip my shoulders. I push. I shove. I hit walls of muscle. I rip papers. I scrub at my face. I claw my cheek. Hard. Accident. Accident. That was an accident.

“Danny, stop.”

Big arms circle me and pull me against a hard chest. Too many muscles. Restraining me. Surrounding me. I need out. I try to wiggle, to kick, to punch, to loosen the hold, but the more I move, the more my energy drains. I can’t. I’m tired. Moving. No more. I can’t. I collapse against the wall, huffing and puffing and crying.

The wall shudders with a shaky breath.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” the wall, Dad, mumbles.

What’s wrong with me?

Dad shifts, loosens his hold enough to give himself the ability to move, and cranes his head. He’s staring at me, inspecting my face for another budding burst of massive freak out or at least some indicator of what caused the first one. He won’t find anything. I am blank. I am zoned out. I am dead inside.

“C’mon. Let’s get you to bed.”

Get you on the wait list for an inpatient program.

Don’t make me go. Don’t let them lock me away. Dad, please. I can’t go. I’ll be good. I promise. I’ll keep my crying behind the closed doors of my room. I won’t throw food on the carpet. I can pretend to eat, cut things up and move them around. It’ll look just like I ate. You’ll see. Don’t make me go. Please.

I’m floating. Through the air, across the living room, up the stairs, down the hall, to my room. In Dad’s arms. Curled up. Infantile. Incapable of walking on my own. Regressing. He has no trouble holding me up and walking a normal stride and opening my door. I weigh nothing.

I am nothing.

He moves the sheets and blankets out of the way, cradles me with one arm and preps my nest with the other hand. The heating pad. He has to turn on the heating pad. I like the heating pad. It’s toasty and warm and I can cuddle up under the blankets and forget I’m alive. Pretend living doesn’t hurt quite so much.

But Dad pauses, hesitates, leans forward, and when he puts me down, he places me on the far edge of the bed, away from the center, his view of the bloodstains on the heating pad and hidden in the blankets he sifts through unobstructed.

I’d like to get you on the wait list for an inpatient program.

He touches them, scratches them, finds more of them the more he looks. The stains are old. A couple days, I think, I can’t remember, the days have merged into one giant day of sluggish hunger and pain. Blood’s dried into the sheets and heating pad, and it won’t come out, and I’ll only add a matching set to the pillowcases when I press my tingling cheek against them.

I’m sorry.

He straightens, attempts to comprehend the blood dried on everything. Where did it come from? Was it there before Danny got here? It wasn’t, was it? How did I miss it? What did I miss? And his eyes meet mine. He knows. I can tell. He’s not happy, though he’s trying to maintain the stern yet understanding face he’s mastered. I’m a giant pain in the ass. I’ve pulled one over on him. I’ve ruined his perfect “diligent rock star Daddy” costume.

“Where are the razors?”

He’s going to send me away.

Wait list for an inpatient program.

“Dannilynn, where are they?”

Inpatient program.

He presses his palms against the bed, props his body up, gives me an expression that borders on impatient, angry, barely controlled frustration. He’s cracking.

“Show me where you hid them.”

Inpatient.

“Shit.”

He pushes off the bed. His eyes dance around the barren room. The razors are somewhere, not in plain sight, he can’t see them, but there around here, and his eyes are on my bed, at the pillows, at the pile of blankets, on my bedside table, under my bed, and Danny had to hide them where she could reach them without hefting her heavy ass out of bed. He runs a hand over his hair. His arms fling wide, and he slaps his thighs.

“What do you want from me?” Dad’s voice is raised, and as he talks, it gets louder and louder and louder. “What do you want me to do? What do you need? Because I don’t know.”

You’re yelling.

“I’m tired, Danny. I can’t keep doing this.”

You’re hurting my ears.

“You’re hurting me. You’re hurting Mom. You’re hurting Val. And Brooklyn…”

He’s angry. He’s furious. His never-ending supply of understanding has run out.

I’d like to get you on the wait list for an inpatient program.

“Do you know what this is going to do to her? Do you know what you’re doing to your sister? She’s fucking three, Danny. She looks up to you whether you like it or not.”

Wait list for an inpatient program.

“Is this what you want her to do? Starve herself? Cut up her body? Mimic you?”

Inpatient program.

“You can’t even walk. This isn’t okay, Danny. Fuck, just eat something—”

“No.”

He stops. The scratchy, gurgled word stops his vented frustration in its tracks. So simple. So short. So insignificant. And he stops in wide-eyed shock.

I spoke.

“What?”

“No.”

It sounds like a cat coughing up a hairball. It destroys my throat. It’s the stupidest thing I could possibly say. I can’t stop it.

Inpatient.

His mouth opens and closes and opens and closes. Rosy color spreads up his neck, into his cheeks and nose. He’s an angry Santa Claus. His eyes glisten. He blinks, repeatedly, rapidly.

“I—” he chokes on his sentence.

He shakes his head and shrugs heavily. Deflates under the weight of his exhaustion and anger. His eyes are everywhere but on me. He’s done, and when he finally decides he can look at me, there’s disbelief, confusion, exasperation in his eyes. He opens his mouth, slams it shut, shakes his head again.

Turns and leaves on a mumbled curse.

I’d like to get you on the wait list for an inpatient program.

I don’t care.