Free Faerie by Eisha Marjara

Three.”
    Suddenly, a burly patient threw himself over the nursing station counter, jerking a peace sign with his yellow fingers. He was due for his cigarette. Nurses collected around him, then an orderly and a nurse’s aide arrived and escorted him away.
    â€œLila? Are you there?”
    I missed what my father had said. Nurse Personality tapped her watch and spread her hand, signalling five. Mother took the phone back from Dad and crammed in as much as she could as we counted down to zero minutes.
    Four: “Do you need any clothes from home? Are you warm enough?”
    Three: “Are you getting enough sleep?”
    Two: “I’m sure that the worst part is over, Lila. You will get better now. We’ll have you home in no time.”
    One: “Yes, yes,” I replied dutifully, soaking up the sensation of her soothing voice.
    Zero: “Come home soon.” My ten minutes were up.

13 . Hard Lessons
    My weight gain stalled around the seventy-five-pound mark. The subject of my weight became a great concern to staff who knew nothing of my secret hoarding schemes. Surely I should be packing on the pounds on a 3,000-calorie-a-day diet. I was either up to no good, or my body had defied science.
    No one confronted me, but I received more frequent inspections and got the feeling that they were plotting a set of tougher rules and regulations, perhaps an increase in calories and a decrease in freedom. To prevent this, I wanted my weight to nudge up a tenth of a pound at least.
    During the changing of the guard, when the staff convened for reports, there was a delicious window of opportunity when I could safely do a rigorous workout and burn up to 200 calories. My senses were hyper-vigilant while I continued my secretive regimen, which had become stressfully elaborate. I’d been waking up at two a.m. and jogging in place. I would then do 300 jumping jacks followed by 500 sit-ups. This had been my routine for weeks now, along with hiding and hoarding food. I was burning roughly the calories that I imagined a healthy, vivacious girl my age would on a Canada Food Guide diet.
    But unexpectedly, my weight dropped to 69.6 pounds. The staff was alarmed. I had tempted fate and taken things too far. Dr Messer retaliated by putting me on a diet of more solid food.My darling clear juices, destined for the bedpan, were replaced with fruits and yogurt. I had to eat more carbs and more protein. But he didn’t suspect that I had anything to do with this weight loss. How on earth could a girl stripped of everything and confined to a room and bed lose weight?
    Special physicians came and went who poked, prodded, and palpated (but did not poke under my mattress). They took a CT scan, robbed my blood and urine, and came back with a report: No cancerous cells, no tumours, no disease (other than madness). No plague to report back to my poor dear mother.
    Then there was silence. I didn’t hear a word from the staff for days. No more specialists came to visit the expert anorexic. In the meantime, the effect of the solid food diet began producing the most stinky gas and unbearable throbbing cramps in my intestines. I hadn’t been to the bathroom for four days, and with each day that passed, the discomfort grew. I was given Colace, a stool softener, and prune juice (containing ninety-two unwanted calories), and then Metamucil, which bloated me further. By the fifth day, my stomach was rock-hard and grotesquely inflated. My body was unaccustomed to real food after my steadfast regime of diluted variations and substitutes empty of calories and nutrients, all of which glided through my indifferent intestines. On the seventh day, I was in agony. I sat on my bedpan in the shameful dark, and for over an hour I pushed and forced and struggled with a hardened little nugget in my anus that jabbed against my skin until I bled. I cried and then gave up.
    For the remainder of the afternoon, I sobbed silently, curled up in bed.