Puking Up Life: Chapter Three

The sirens stopped wailing and there was a pause, then a knock at the door.

Once again Cassie struggled to try and get to her feet, but the ground kept rushing at her, and the room kept tilting and spinning. At one point she made it all the way to her feet, but seconds later her body crumpled and hit the floor again. Cassie was vaguley aware of a loud thwack as her head collided with the sink. The pain didn’t register at all.

“Cassie McGullens?” A hand, covered in a blue latex free glove, was brushing strand of blood soaked hair out of her face.

“Can you hear me?” An unidentifiable woman’s voice asked.

Cassie’s thoughts were coming in rather foggy at first. It took her a few moments to reorient herself with reality. Bits of what was going on came back to her in wisps and she had to piece them back together like you would a puzzle.

The vomiting. The blood. Calling 9-1-1-. Trying to get up to answer the door. Falling.

I must have passed out for a while.

Cassie realized with horror. Her whole body was trembling slightly and she couldn’t control it. She tried to pick her head up and look around to figure out who was there and what was happening, but the gloved hand gently but firmly held it in place.

“You need to stay perfectly still,” the woman explained. “I think you may have passed out and we want to make sure that your spinal cord wasn’t injured at all. My partner is getting a backboard from the ambulance so that we can stabilize your spine and make sure you don’t get hurt any worse then you already have been.”

“It’s okay,” protested Cassie. Her voice came out slightly slurred. “I pass out a lot.”

“Well, we need to take standard precautions anyway. We have specific guidelines we have to follow when someone falls and hits their head.”

“My head?”

“Your head is bleeding a bit. I think you must have hit it when you passed out.” The woman, who by now Cassie had identified as a paramedic, explained.

Cassie wondered how they could tell which blood was coming from where, but didn’t ask.

There were people in the doorway that Cassie figured must have been police officers that had come along with the ambulance. She couldn’t see them, but could here their voices.

Just then the other paramedic came in and introduced himself as Jake. The woman then remembered to let Cassie know that her name was Dahlia. The group of people slid Cassie on to a backboard and strapped her down. Normally Cassie would have argued more about being strapped down to a hard board, but she was too frightened, dizzy, and weak to even protest the slightest bit.

As the group lifted the board up to put her on the stretcher Cassie began to instantly worry that her eighty-two-pound frame would be too heavy and that they would think she was fat. As soon as the thought came in her head, she almost laughed at herself for being so ridiculous and thinking about her weight at such a time.

Once she was in the ambulance Dahlia climbed in and began taking her pulse and blood pressure. Dahlia slipped an oxygen monitor on Cassie’s finger and started an IV in the crook of Cassie’s arm.

“What’s your date of birth?” The paramedic asked the young girl.

Cassie told her and then told her about what had happened. For once she was glad that she couldn’t move her head, so that she wouldn’t have to see the woman’s face as she divulged the intimate details of her eating disorder.

At the hospital they decided her spinal cord was intact and took her off the backboard, depositing her on a gurney. The sheets smelled like a mix of rubbing alcohol, medicines, and institutional brand detergent. Cassie was so used to the smell she barely noticed it after the first few whiffs.

A doctor came in and asked her some questions as a nurse fastened an ID bracelet around Cassie’s skeletal wrist.

Foggy feelings had enveloped the teenager and she could barely hear what the doctor was asking. A few words made there way through the haze, here and there, but over all Cassie was only aware of bright lights, lots of movement, and too loud voices everywhere.

“Mom, I want mom.” She managed to call out through a thin weak voice.

She remembered vaguely that her mom wasn’t there, but where was she?

There was the feeling of more needles piercing through Cassie’s almost translucent skin and then coldness on her chest as heart monitor pads were applied.

Then there was a long period of feeling as though she were cruising on a crazy roller coaster ride through black darkness.