Nothing to Lose

Chapter One

 

When my mother told me I’d be picked up from school early to attend a doctor’s appointment, I wasn’t particularly worried. It seemed to me that I was in the clear- my parents hadn’t really done much to prevent me from not eating, other than the occasional, “I wish you’d eat more…” followed by a pained look that didn’t particularly hurt me nor cause me to disarm the metaphorical loaded gun I held to my head at the time. And besides, I’d been to the doctor a few weeks before, and was sent off with nothing more than the news that I’d lost twenty percent of my body weight in a matter of a few weeks and that I was a medical anomaly considering my bloodwork seemed to resemble that of a human being who was not, in fact, choosing to starve themselves.

You can imagine my surprise when I quickly learned that Dr. Knight was having none of that shit. Dr. Knight was a woman who, to me, resembled a sturdy brick house. Her face seemed to always say, “Oh, really, now?” with one eyebrow perpetually lifted in a look that was a mix of mild discontent and disbelief. Her lips pursed together when you spoke to her as though she was holding back from calling bullshit on everything you said. But if there’s one thing I have to hand to that woman, she managed to make me (who I’d previously considered the most stubborn person in the universe) look like a pushover.

“I recommend hospitalization.” She said, looking over a clipboard that I assumed was covered in the data collected from the barrage of tests I’d undergone in the past hour, “You don’t have to believe me, but you meet eight out of the eight criteria for acute anorexia nervosa, and you only need to meet three for me to be required to admit you.”

It was at this point that a firm silence gripped the room. No one must have spoken for a solid five minutes as this troubling piece of information sunk into the brains of my mother and I. I assume it’s similar to a local anesthetic. You can inject it, but you’re not going to feel the effects until it’s had to assimilate into your bloodstream. Only instead of sweet, painkiller relief, all I got was a dizzying wave of “oh hell no” (the official, scientific term for the chemical that is produced in your ventromedial prefrontal cortex, otherwise known as “disbelief”).

“No.” I said firmly after my mom started attempting to cry quietly, “I’m not going. I don’t have to.”

“It’s not really your choice.” Dr. Knight replied in way of ending the conversation, and with that, she got up and left the room for no reason apparent to me at the time.

I turned to my mother, who was several feet below me, as I was sitting atop an awkwardly high medical examination table (not that the sensation of looking down on my mother was new to me in any sense; she’s only four foot ten, and I’m a startlingly average five foot three), and informed her that I would not, in fact, be going to the hospital and that I would much prefer that she take me back to school at that time. She only replied with more “subtle” sobbing and some blubbering about how she had to call my dad. My mother is a good woman, but she is not one who operates well in stressful situations, nor is she one who is good at hiding her emotions.

Dr. Knight returned with a venn diagram that explained to me that if one circle represented the criteria for hospitalization, and the other represented the criteria I met, you would really only see one circle, because I met all of them. The whole presentation of the information seemed like an incredibly snarky way to put it, but at the time I only made brief note of the fact that I really did not enjoy Dr. Knight’s attitude, and focused all my energy on denying the fact that I required any further medical care.

“I’m not going.” I declared, which ended up being nearly the only thing I’d say for the next few hours.

“Steve,” My mother said into the phone, “We’re at the doctor’s and...yeah….Steve, they want to hospitalize her. At Stanford. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I’ll meet you at home. Pull down the suitcase.”

“It’s not that bad at the CCP there. You don’t have to wear gowns, you can wear your own clothes.” Dr. Knight said gloatingly (my interpretation of the tone of her voice is more than likely attributable to the circumstances more than any malicious joy Dr. Knight gets out of sending malnourished children into medical lockdown).

I left her office sobbing about how I didn’t want to go and they couldn’t make me go and I did not need to go to the hospital. All this whisper-yelling and tearful choking noises probably scared the little kids I passed who were waiting for their checkups, but frankly, I couldn’t have cared less. They weren’t being forced to spend the end of the school year in a hospital. They weren’t going to be told what to eat. They weren’t going to be made to forcibly gain weight like the women of Mauritania, a West African country that idolizes obesity. No. These kids were probably going to get a pat on the head and a lollipop to suck on while they skipped all the way home.

Not that I wanted a sucker, anyway.