Louis' Point of View 

It's hard for me to remember what happened during my first day in the  hospital -- the first week even. I've tried so hard to repress it from my memory, but bits and pieces from that day still linger, still hurt.

I vividly remember entering the hospital. I was wearing black joggers and a black T-shirt and hoodie, hoping that maybe if I bundled up enough, I wouldn't appear as sick as I was. Not that I could fool them. The nurses would quickly force me to strip down and hop on the scale, recording my starting weight, that dreadful number that indicated how gravely ill I was for my height and age. 

I hugged Lottie and Fizzy goodbye, our faces dripping with tears as we huddle together into a weeping mess. It sort of felt like I was going away to war or something like that. And in a way, I was. I was going to war with myself -- I was going to war against these awful thoughts which dragged me down and kept me so sick and starved, even when all I wanted to do was eat and get better. 

Eventually, a nurse came and got me, breaking up the hug and directing me inside. I waved to my sisters through the glass windowpane of the hospital door, hoping the next time I saw them I wouldn't look like this anymore. 

The first thing they told me to do was take off my clothes and put on a medical gown. When I was done, they strapped a medical bracelet on my arm with my name and prognosis. Tomlinson, Louis. Anorexia nervosa. 

The very first stripping of my freedom. It would be one many. 

Next came tests -- all kinds. Height, weight, blood pressure, heart rate, bloodwork. I was poked and prodded so many times I started to feel faint. I might have passed out. I did a few times during my stay in the treatment center. The combination of my fear of needles and my low blood sugar were enough to knock out me out. 

So much fun. 

I don't know how that day quite went. Maybe I went to therapy first and then ate, maybe I ate and then went to therapy. Maybe I didn't go to therapy at all and just did meditation or a craft that day. It didn't matter. It was always the same. Slow, monotonous. Lifeless. 

Just like me.

One of my sharpest memories are those of the other patients. They were almost all female, with the exception of a boy named Thomas, who was about 17 and did a brief stint towards the end of my stay. He used to be a track athlete but took overtraining too far. By the end of it, he was so sick he needed a wheelchair. I tried not to interact with him. I didn't want to be rude, but it was too painful to look into his pale, withering face. Part of me wished I could be that sick. 

The other patients were women, aged anywhere from 16 to 31. Kassie was my favorite and we became friends for a while. She had bulimia, something  which I could hardly understand. Sure, I did the purging part every now and then when I was feeling gross. But bingeing was something I could never allow myself to do -- even when I was truly starving. 

Kassie and I used to have this deal where she would eat my food if I could stall the bathroom attendant for her so she could purge. It was so toxic, looking back, we were just feeding each other's bad behaviors. But desperate times call for desperate measures. 

Speaking of desperation, I don't think I've ever felt more hopeless than I did during meal time. I can't stress enough how torturous it was for me to eat those meals in the state I was in. I wasn't even sure it was humane for them to make me eat that much right away. I'm pretty certain they were supposed to slowly up my calorie count over time. 

But they didn't. 

The rule at the facility was that every patient needed to eat 3000-3500 calories per day. They called in Minnie Maude, some sort of refeeding schedule. Keep in mind, 3000 calories is a lot of food for anyone -- most people eat 2000 calories a day. But for me, who was just barely keeping down two meals a day, most times less, it was an absolutely gigantic portion. 

My first meal there had been during lunch hour, and I had hardly been able to make a dent in it. It was fish and chips of all things. Two large fried fish fillets with half a plate of crisps. There was also a salad on the side and some sort of creamy soup -- for "dairy" as they told me. 

As if the sheer calorie density of the meal wasn't enough to put me over the edge, the food was fried in oil, which just about had my stomach crawling. I wanted to vomit on the spot. 

During meals, all the patients sat at this long, rectangular table, with two or three nurses stationed around the table watching as we ate. I remember seeing all these girls, pale and skeletal and bundled in hoodies, staring at the food just like me. The difference was, they eventually ate it. Slowly, but they finished it. 

I just stared and stared and kept staring, wondering when the nightmare would end and they would take the plate away and give me something else -- or preferable, excuse me from the meal. But they didn't.

"Louis, you're gonna have to eat, please," a nurse said sternly after a while. 

"I just... I want to. But it's my first day. This is really a bit much for me to stomach..." I stammered, trying as best as I could to get out of it. 

"All the patients have to finish their meals. If you don't, you get the feeding tube. Did you read our rules and regulations?" she replied, raising an eyebrow. She placed a pamphlet next to me on the table and pointed to the regulations section. 

In the case that a patient is in a life-threatening state and refuses food, we have the authority to administer a feeding tube at our own discretion. 

I snorted, pushing the pamphlet away quickly. 

"I checked your numbers. You are in a life threatening state," the nurse said. She pushed the plate closer to me, causing my stomach to churn. 

Cringing, I picked up a fry and began to eat it, visualizing the catastrophic feeding tube experience that I had gone through the last time I was in the hospital. This food was disgusting, but the feeding tube was worse -- an entire loss of control. I wasn't going to allow that to happen again. 

It took nearly an hour for me to finish the fish and chips. If I was being honest, chips tasted so good after not having had them in a year. But they were so dense and oily that I began to feel extremely full after just a few bites. With no other choice but to keep going, I forced the rest of them into my mouth, nearly gagging as they travelled down my throat and into my stomach.

The fish was even worse. At this point I was so full I thought I might vomit. 

"I really feel ill," I said to the nurse, my voice squeaking. She nodded. "You can take a break," she said, handing me a glass of water. I sipped on it, though all it really did was fill me up further. 

Then, I just sat there for a half hour, with this awful, uncomfortable, bubbling feeling in the pit of my stomach. They confiscated my phone upon arrival, so I had nothing to do but sit and think about how much I had just consumed. It was lovely. 

Eventually, my break was up and I had to finish the fish. My spirit was broken, and I was just shoveling the food down hastily as this point, praying that it would all be over soon. I breezed through the salad -- thank God it was just lettuce with mixed vegetables and no dressing. 

Sighing, I moved onto the soup, swiftly scooping up each spoonful so I could just fucking be done. 

When I finally finished, all the other patients were gone, and I was alone with the nurse, staring, disgusted, at my empty dishes. I couldn't believe I had just done that. It had to be at least 1000 calories in one sitting....

Of course my initial thought when I got back to my room was to purge. But that was abruptly sabotaged when the same nurse came in to "monitor" me. "

"You're new, and this isn't my first time in the rodeo. I can tell when someone's about to purge," the nurse said, taking a seat in the chair next to my bed. I grimaced and began to wonder if this would be a regular thing. I thought that at least my room was going to be private. 

"Have to use the bathroom," I said, wincing in pain over the sharp pains now shooting through my stomach. The nurse nodded, getting up to escort me. I shook my head. "I can go alone," I said, giving her a dirty look. 

"Have to monitor you. No one goes to the bathroom unattended," she explained, using the same stern voice. I rolled my eyes, not caring anymore about manners, and followed her out, nearly doubling over in pain as I made my way towards the bathroom. 

The bathroom was a single-person one, so the nurse followed me in and stood in the corner as I lifted up my gown and aimed into the toilet. I didn't really have to go to the bathroom -- what I wanted to do was lean over the toilet and vomit until I saw nothing but clear. But that wasn't an option right now -- or ever again, apparently. 

When I finished, we exited the bathroom, and I started to fall forward, clutching my stomach in pain. "Are you alright?" the nurse asked, grabbing my arm to steady me before I hit the ground. "I feel really ill," I said through gritted teeth. 

"Pain is normal the first week or so. Your body will adapt," she said robotically. How empathetic. 

"Well I feel like about a thousand knives are stabbing me in the gut," I said, slowly following her back to my room. 

"Yes, that happens with all our patients. It's just gas and bloating. You need to re-adapt to digesting foods," she explained, taking her seat at her chair. My face fell as she said that and I looked down to find my stomach swollen to the size of a fucking beach ball.

Oh. My. God. 

I had about a million thoughts going through my mind in that moment -- how fucking fat I was, how much pain I was in, how gross I felt, and most importantly, how badly I had to vomit -- not even out of desire, but out of necessity. Grimacing, I laid down on my bed and put my knees up to my chest, trying to resist the urge to sob profusely.

I'm going to fucking kill this nurse, I thought to myself. Fucking kill her....