Problems

|| Chapter 24 ||

Welcome back to my TedTalk

TW: hospitals, disordered eating, thoughts on disordered eating, therapy, razors

X

Lafayette knocked on the door gently. Alex should have been in his room, he didn't usually leave after classes unless John made him go somewhere.

He finally took out his key and turned the knob, opened the door. It was quiet, unsettlingly so. And empty. Dark.

The bathroom light was on, casting a buttery glow across the hardwood floor. Laf took leaned into the room, stepping over the threshold. "Alex?"

He took another step, then another. It was obvious that Alex wasn't there, but a voice in the back of his mind told him that something was wrong. Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

Alex wouldn't have left the bathroom light on. He was a stickler for that sort of thing, all about conserving energy and saving fossil fuels.

Lafayette strode over to the bathroom. The door was halfway shut, spilling light onto his feet. Laf tried to push it open, but it caught on something, bouncing back in his face.

He peeked in, still focused trying to push the door open, when his eyes landed on a still figure lying on the floor.

"Oh, mon Dieu."

Dried blood crusted the corners of Alexander's mouth, stark against his deathly pale skin. He was sprawled across the floor, and a small part of Laf realized that Alex's foot had been the object blocking the door.

His eyes took in the bathroom: the toilet, lid up, with what looked like blood and vomit mixed in the bowl. The way Alex's shoulder blades jutted from his body, like the wings of a baby bird. The fact that Laf could count the knobs on Alex's spine through his thin T-shirt.

He was already punching 911 into his phone before his knees hit the bath mat next to Alexander's prone form.

X

The first thing Alex was aware of the was the sound.

A mechanical beeping, pushing its way into his brain, searing his ears and cracking his skull open.

Next was the whiteness as he slowly opened his eyes and immediately shut them. It was so, so white, so blindingly bright that when combined with the beeping split his head apart.

All he wanted to do was sleep, he hadn't done that in ages. And it felt so good...he wanted to go back to where he had been before, back to the comforting blackness and the beautiful silence.

But damn, his chest hurt, God, what the hell had happened to his chest to make it hurt that bad?

His forced his eyes open, hoping to find out what was making his chest ache, when he realized something.

He wasn't in his own bed.

The sheets were scratchy, thin. The bed was harder, seemed to be thinner.

Everything suddenly rushed to him-the tubes leading from his face and arms, the wires connected to his chest, the heart monitor clipped to his finger.

Which only meant one thing.

He was in a hospital.

Memories hit him all at once-the purge, the exploding feeling in his chest, the blackness swooping in to catch him.

"Oh shit."

The words left his mouth hoarsely, coming out as a groan, and he heard movement from his left side.