Puking Up Life

She knew there was a problem even before she withdrew the vomit covered toothbrush from her mouth. The puke was coming out too fast and it was blood red with stuff that looked like old coffee grinds at the bottom of the toilet bowl.

Cassie usually found a couple silent tears on her face when she was done purging; that was normal. It was never because she was actually crying, it was usually just because of the force it took to rid herself of the food she wished she’d never eaten in the first place. Today there was more then just three stray tears. Today there were rivers of tears streaming down her face and it was from more then just the force of vomiting. There was pain today. Her belly was cramped up and burning like it was on fire.

Out of instinct, Cassie had been fighting to keep the retching silent. If her parents found out that she’d been making herself throw up again, they’d be so disappointed, and that was the worst. It was only after a moan of agony escaped Cassie’s mouth, that Cassie remembered neither of her parents was home. It was only then that Cassie allowed herself to vocalize the intense pain she was in.

With horror Cassie realized that there was more blood pouring into the toilet long after all her lunch had been evacuated.

“Oh shit.” Cassie tried to exclaim to herself, but it came out as more of a gurgle of blood sloshing around in her mouth.

Thinking back to all the times her doctors and therapists had lectured her, she remembered them saying something about ulcers and bleeding.

I must have a bleeding ulcer.

As soon as Cassie thought it, she knew she’d figured out the problem.

Oh god, I’m going to die. I’m going to bleed out and die right here in the bathroom, soaked in vomit and blood.

Cassie choked out another cry that was muffled by the blood still coming out of her mouth. It wasn’t the first time she’d thrown up blood. At sixteen, Cassie had been suffering from an eating disorder for eight years, and had been forcing herself to throw up for five of those years. She’d seen dribbles of blood in her vomit plenty of times before. Her pediatrician, who was also an eating disorder specialist, had told her that it was most likely from scraping the back of her throat.

“If you had a bleeding ulcer, you’d be puking up buckets of blood, not just a few spots here and there.” Dr. Weiss had reassured her.

Cassie looked in the toilet she was crunched over. Did what was in there, and pouring down the front of her shirt constitute as buckets? Cassie knew the answer. It definitely did. By now the blood had sloshed over the sides and was in her hair and everything.

The blood was slowing down but a feeling of complete exhaustion was starting to creep up on the girl. The room started to feel as if it were moving back and forth. The lights seemed to bright and looked almost like they were dancing. An invisible force was trying to push Cassie forward into the toilet. Cassie knew that if she didn’t fight these feelings she would fall face first into the bloody toilet water and either drown or die of blood loss, whichever came first.

Fishing a blood spattered hand around in her right pocket of her shorts, Cassie felt for her cell phone. More then anything else the young girl hated hospitals. In her short life she’d been admitted to them more then most eighty-year-olds, but Cassie didn’t want to die like this.