Elena Vanishing by Elena Dunkle Page A

voice in my head.
He’ll get you fattened up.
    Mom glances at my bruised forehead. “Yes, I can see that your protocol is different,” she snaps. “With all due respect, I’m reluctant to let doctors continue to experiment on my daughter. I want quantifiable evidence that this is the right treatment and that it’s working. Your facility didn’t even want to take her at first. Her weight was too high, you said. And she’s got these other health problems going on—heart problems, thyroid problems. At least tell me this: does she even have anorexia?”
    â€œWell, we really can’t be sure yet,” the psychiatrist says.
    They keep talking, but that’s all I hear. Oh, my God! I knew it. I
knew
it!
    It’s true!
shrieks the voice in my head.
It’s true! You’re a fat, flabby mess. You don’t deserve to be here!
    The room whirls. My stomach upends, and I feel myself choke on acid. They didn’t want to take me. My weight was too high. Whatever my number is, it’s too high!
    You’re a failure!
wails the voice in my head.
You can’t even do self-destruction right! You think they care about getting you healthy? You’re not even sick enough for them to care!
    The psychiatrist and Mom are standing up now. The meeting is over. But I can’t go back out there. I can’t face the real anorexics, the ones who know what I am.
    They’re rolling their eyes behind your back! They can’t believe you’re in here. The staff get together and whisper about you: “Did you hear about her weight? Can you believe it?!”
    â€œI just don’t know what to do,” Mom says after the psychiatrist leaves. “I keep waiting for a doctor to sit down and talk to us like he’s got a grasp on the facts. This is all so touchy-feely, this whole ‘maybe, maybe not’ stuff. I swear, it wasn’t this bad when I had cancer!”
    â€œPlease get me out of here,” I beg her, close to tears. “I don’t belong here, I know I don’t!”
    â€œI tell you what,” Mom says, “I’ll go back to the hotel and call Dr. Harris—you remember, the psychiatrist who saw Valerie in Texas. He’s the only psychiatrist who’s ever given me a straight answer, and I know he specializes in eating disorders.”
    Mom leaves, and a tech takes me back to the main hallway where the nurses’ station is. Patients are everywhere. I retreat into a corner, sit on the floor, and pull up my knees to make myself as small as possible.
    Please don’t look at me. Please stop looking at me!
    Group sessions are over for the morning. There’s nothing for the patients to do right now, and they don’t have a lot of options for places to go, so they’re drifting around the wide hallway like restless souls in hell. I study them out of the corner of my eye, the anorexics—what I thought I might be, but I’m not.
    They look like children, no matter what their age. They look like refugees.
    Several of the girls are standing in a clump right in the middle of the hall. They look attenuated, taller than they should be, with their coarse hair pulled back in clips and their faces gaunt and solemn. They turn their heads to and fro as they talk, like meerkats on a mound.
    The only man is thin and lively. He looks like Pinocchio. He’s laughing and gesturing with his stick-thin arms, entertaining several of the others. Any second, I expect to see him leap into the air and crow, “I’m a real boy!”
    One woman catches my eye, but I look away quickly and rest my sore forehead on my knees. Mom needs to call to tell them I’m leaving. I need to get out of here!
    The room is starting to go gray around the edges. I can feel my breath, cold, rushing in and out of my chest. My heart hurts—my damaged heart. My heart is thin, even if I’m not.
    â€œHey,” says a low voice in my ear.
    It’s