Puking Up Life; Chapter two

It was hard to dial the phone through all the retching and vomiting, but somehow Cassie managed. She’d never dialed 9-1-1 on herself before, and she didn’t know what to expect. Her heart was dancing a wild number inside her chest as the emergency dispatcher picked up.

“Please state the nature of the emergency.” The woman’s voice was calm and crisp, what a contrast to the way Cassie felt.

“I’m by myself and I’m throwing up blood.” Cassie managed to choke out through her nerves and the puke. ‘”I think I need an ambulance.”

“Okay, what’s your name and address?”

Cassie hacked up her name and address.

“All right, I have an ambulance on it’s way. It should be there in five minutes.” Promised the faceless woman.

Cassie thanked the woman and slid her cell phone back into her pocket. By now the blood had virtually stopped pouring out of her and Cassie used all the energy she had left to slide herself away from the toilet. The entire bathroom was splattered in her blood.

Cassie desperately wanted to clean up the bathroom before the paramedics got there and found it in this state, but she couldn’t even muster up the energy to get to her feet. Thanking god that she’d left the front door unlocked, she slumped against the bathroom wall and waited for her dirty secrets to be aired in front of complete strangers.

The sirens were loud and pierced through the late afternoon quiet on Cassie’s street. Cassie couldn’t help but flinch when she heard them.

They’re here to help you, idiot.

She snapped at herself.

Help she needed. It used to be so easy to pretend that her eating disorder wasn’t a big problem, but now that she’d been hospitalized at least twelve or thirteen times for it, now it wasn’t so easy to fool herself. Those web sites that Cassie loved proclaimed that eating disorders were life choices, Cassie knew better, she wasn’t the one in control of her food intake and output anymore. The eating disorder was the one in the driver’s seat lately.

“You need to make the choice to really want to get better.” Lila, her therapist, was always telling her. “You’re hurting your own body, nobody else, you need to decide to treat your body with the respect it deserves. No one else can make the choice for you.”

Cassie heard and understood everything Lila told her. She heard and understood all the damage she was doing to her body too, but just couldn’t bring herself to start taking care of her body. All she could think about was losing weight and getting thinner and thinner. Now look where she was. Half conscious, and covered in blood, on the floor of her bathroom.