SARAH

Sarah looked out through the reinforced glass of the 8-D lounge, eight stories above all the life and activity down below. All the life on the streets, in the cars, on the sidewalks, on the bikes, in the shoes. All the life that Nathan now was a part of, all of the life she wasn’t. Not yet.

She hugged her thin arms across her chest and rested her cheek against the glass. Even though it was springtime, it still felt cool like February. The clouds a dull gray, the sunlight trapped behind the clouds, turning what should be its happy warm rays into cold and dank dishwater. Maybe it was warmish outside, or maybe it was chilly. It was hard to tell. It was hard to tell anything, being locked on the adolescent eating disorders unit and not yet being at the level where she could walk outside under nurse supervision. She could leave the unit with a nurse to go to the atrium, or the chapel, or walk around the hospital, but not go outside yet.

And there Nathan was, out there, able to move around and go wherever he wanted, alone and unsupervised.

She envied him.

She had five more pounds to go before she could take walks on the hospital grounds with a nurse, and maybe even a bit around the city close to the hospital. Those last five pounds were a killer; she just couldn’t gain an ounce and Ellie, the nutritionist, had upped her calories to 3000 a day to jumpstart the process and meet her metabolism head on.

That felt scary. She knew Nathan had been above 5000 calories a day at one point because he had plateaued, and he started gaining after that. If Nathan could handle 5000 calories without falling apart, she could handle 3000.

It didn’t help that Brandy was her usual nasty self. “You are so going to pork out on 3000 calories, Sarah,” she smirked over her chicken and cheese enchiladas at lunch. “Your mom will need to buy you the next size up.”

She held Brandy’s stare as Holly snickered and said, “Totally. You’ll be up to a size four soon.”  She ignored Holly completely, but continued to stare Brandy down.

Brandy didn’t blink or budge. “What? You have something to say, Sarah?”

A direct challenge, straight from the undisputed eating disorder champion of 8-D.

“Not to you, no,” Sarah said, eyes never wavering from Brandy’s smirking, smug face.

“You’ll be just like Nathan,” Brandy said, not relenting her gaze. “He was up to 5000 calories, and you know how fat he got. He was huge when he left here yesterday.”

“I’d rather be like Nathan than be like you,” Sarah said, taking a bite of her enchiladas and not taking her eyes off Brandy.

A look of surprise, small and bright, flicked across Brandy’s eyes. “Whatever, heifer,” she muttered, finally taking her eyes off Sarah and looking down at her plate. “You’ll be mooing in no time, just like him.”

Sarah shook her head as Holly snickered yet again, like some stupid sidekick who thinks her hero is the most brilliant thing on the planet. She shot Holly a look saying, “Screw off” before tucking back into her enchiladas.

She was not going to let Brandy and Holly throw her off track. They represented what she didn’t want to be anymore: A slave to her eating disorders. She didn’t want to be held hostage by the obsession and the pain anymore. The aching muscles, the cramps, the cracked fingernails, the yellow skin, the dried frizzy hair that hurt her scalp when she brushed it, the throbbing of her bones. She didn’t want to feel terrorized by food or a scale or a skirt or a shirt or a clothing size. She didn’t want to hate herself anymore. She didn’t want to hurt her parents anymore. She didn’t want to be victim anymore. She was tired of fighting her anorexia and losing. She wanted to fight and win, just like Nathan.

Maybe it was different for him being a boy. Maybe recovery is easier for a boy because they don’t have to deal with the same kind of baggage women do. They don’t have the same kind of pressures to look a certain way, to be skinny, to know that being skinny gets you compliments, and the more compliments you get, the skinnier you want to be, and the more things are wrong in your life, the more those compliments mean, so your parents’s marriage can completely collapse but you’re okay because you’re skinny and people tell you that you look great.

Maybe Nathan didn’t have to deal with any of that. Things were bad with his parents, that much she knew. Each one of them had problems with their parents, could blame their parents somehow for where they ended up. But he’d had to “divorce” his parents, become an emancipated minor and go on welfare, so he could have insurance to finish his treatment and go to the day hospitalization program. Sarah didn’t see that as an option; her parents were coming around in family therapy. She could see light at the end of her tunnel.

Maybe it wasn’t too different at all. Nathan still had to eat and gain weight and deal with his feelings and learn to be a different, better, non-eating disordered person. He still had to learn to cope and deal, and not starve and puke.

He didn’t realize it, but he was her inspiration. She wanted to be like him. She wanted to get things in gear and work hard, like he did. She would eat those 3000 calories and not freak out. She would gain those five pounds so she could move up to the next level, and hopefully find herself discharged in a month or so, maybe even get admitted into the day program so she could see him again and tell him what he meant to her.

As she looked out over the city that lived on without her, without knowing or caring about her, the city she didn’t know if she could ever feel normal in again, she thought, I miss you, Nathan. I hope you’re all right. I’ll pray for you.

She sighed. She had a feeling he might need it.