I don't have an eating disorder!
5 weeks later
Beca groaned as she rolled over in her bed-cocoon, scrambling to reach for her phone as it ‘ping’ed aggressively at her. Swiping to silence her alarm she flopped back onto her mattress, lying on her back and contemplating the ceiling.
I’m tired, she thought to herself.
How many times a day do I think that? she wondered.
How long have I been thinking that, how many times a day?
I’m too tired, she concluded, and sighed.
Hauling herself out of bed, into her harem pants and her comfiest t-shirt and hoodie (sometimes that was the only way to get out of bed these days, out of the duvet, straight into the comfiest clothes she owned.) She looked at her phone: 14:45. No way she was gonna be late for Bella’s practice again, nap or not nap. She rubbed her calf absent mindedly as she contemplated getting something to eat before she went. It had been bothering her recently, it was swollen but you couldn’t see that under the harem pants she now habitually wore. Brushing off the thought, and deciding against having anything to eat, (somehow, despite skipping breakfast and sleeping through lunch, Beca still wasn’t hungry. She knew she’d eat later with Chloe anyways.), Beca grabbed her keys from her chest of drawer, slipped her phone in her pocket, and dragged herself out the front door and up the hill to the student union.
“Alright girls, let’s run that one more time from the top, with both the singing, and the choreography!” Chloe called, clapping her hands to get the Bella’s attention from where they had dispersed to their bags to get drinks.
Once again, Beca’s stomach dropped. She was exhausted. She had drunk all the water in her bottle and yet somehow she still felt completely drained, and her leg was starting to ache. But she was a captain, and these were here Bella’s, and she had to make a good example.
“Come one, aca-nerds!” she called to the reluctant girls, empathising with their collective desire to be done with practice and head home to Netflix and beds. It would only take them 5 minutes to run through the short set from the start to finish. She could be a good role model for 5 more minutes, right?
“5 and 6 and 7 and 8!” Chloe yelled, and they began.
4 minutes and 37 seconds later, as she tried to get up from the floor during a particularly energetic dance move, a stabbing pain went through Beca’s calf. Silvery spots blurred her vision, the Bella’s sounded like they were far away and their chatter was being replaced with a high-pitched whine, and then -
“What happened?”
“She fainted!”
“She’s gone completely white!”
“Is she OK?!”
“Move back and give her some space, she’s opening her eyes!”
A jumble of voices filtered into Beca’s brain as she tried to work out where she was. Lying on the floor. Cold floor. Bella’s. Practicing. Fainting. She sat up suddenly, spots clouding her vision again, only to feel a firm hand on her back pushing her head between her bent knees.
“Stay there, Becs,” Chloe’s soothing voice told her as she gently rubbed circles on the smaller girls back.
“You’re ok, you just fainted, you’re ok,” Chloe said, keeping up the soothing patter between asking the girls for water, or anything to eat. A cereal bar was shoved in Beca’s eye line but her head was still blurry and fuzzy and the thought of eating something so flimsy and dry was not appealing to her, so she pushed it away. Next, an open banana was put in her left hand, and the idea of something reassuring solid and sweet seemed more manageable. Nibbling the end of the banana, she registered the water bottle being handed her from her other side, and took it, taking a gentle sip. She could faintly hear Chloe murmuring in the background and Aubrey (who had been observing the Bella’s practice to give “constructive criticism” but really to ogle Stacie) shooing the girls away, but for now she concentrated on eating her banana and drinking her water and waiting for her vision to clear and to be able to hear people properly again.
After a few minutes, Beca felt like she was present again and lifted her head to see Chloe sitting on the floor next to her. Looking around she could see that Aubrey seemed to have managed to corral the girls into putting away the chairs scattered around the practise room, although most were shooting Beca worried looks in between times.
“Hey,” she said to Chloe, smiling softly.
“Hi,” Chloe replied, a worried smile on her face, her eyes gentle at her still pale friend in front of her.
“Sorry about that. Guess I should have lunch next time, huh? Thanks for the banana,” Beca smirked, leaning forward to gentle push Chloe on the shoulder.
But Chloe didn’t smile back. Instead she carried on looking at Beca, a crease between her eyebrows, her mouth twisted, biting her lip in apprehension.
“I know you haven’t been eating, Becs,” she said eventually, after a long pause in which Beca squirmed and tried to look anywhere but those blue eyes filled to the brim with concern.
“What? Yes, I have! You see me eat dinner every night, Chlo! You make me dinner every night!” Beca protested, although she could feel her neck flushing and her arms tingling in anxiety as she realised that Chloe was right. It had been a while since the evening meal they ate together hadn’t been the only meal she’d eaten all day. And Chloe knew it too.
“But that’s it, Beca! That’s all you eat! I know you haven’t done food shopping for weeks so you haven’t been making lunch, and I know you haven’t been having breakfast because my box of Cheerio’s lasted me a whole week without you ‘borrowing’ them every day! I know you’re losing weight because you’ve started wearing belts and I know that you would never just donate blood willingly!”. Chloe’s voice was raised by the end of this outburst, pulling a few more concerned looks from the Bella’s as they faltered in their tidying up, and her next sentence was almost whispered,
“If you need help, Bec’s, I’ll come with you. I’ll come with you to the doctors, you know they have a really good eating disorders clinic at the Student Health service, you know I know about this, you just have to let me help you!”.
Chloe’s words were something of a punch in the gut for Beca. For a moment the tingling from her arms spread to her chest and her lungs tightened and she was floating as the ground beneath her fell away, until she crashed back to earth again, albeit with her stomach in her throat and tears in her eyes.
“Not here, Chlo. Please. I’ll tell you about it. But not here,” she said between shallow breaths, reaching out for Chloe, grabbing her arm, imploring her to let the conversation drop until they reached the relative comfort and familiarity of Home.Even if Home was a a drafty student house with single glazing and thin walls.
“Ok,” Chloe said, softly, resignedly. She stood up, reaching a hand down to grab Beca’s, pulling the smaller girl up, putting a hand on her elbow to steady her as she wobbled, pulling it away when she was steady again. Together, and without touching, without speaking, they pushed through the double doors, down the stairs and out of the union, leaving Aubrey to deal with the gaggle of Bella’s they’d left behind.
Neither of them said anything as they walked home. Although they walked side by side, no part of their bodies was touching, and although part of Beca ached to reach out to Chloe, to sling her hand through Chloe’s crooked elbow, to link them together in some tangible way, she couldn’t. Not when she knew what she knew, and what she couldn’t tell Chloe.
As they approached their house, Beca fished her keys out her pocket, slipped them into the lock and opened the front door, not checking behind her to see that Chloe was following, but hearing the door slam shut.
“Beca, I know this is hard to talk about, but you know that I of all people would understand!” Chloe yelled as soon as the door was shut, Beca still facing away from her, standing stock still in the hall way. Beca closed her eyes, and turned around.
“I don’t have an eating disorder, Chloe,” she replied, eyes still closed, trying to keep her breathing calm, her voice steady.
“You think I can’t see what’s happening here, Beca? Of course you’re gonna say you don’t have an eating disorder but look at you! You’ve lost weight, you’re not eating, you’re tired all the time, you had a blood test, probably because you were tired all the time and you were hoping there was another reason other than the fact that you won’t eat!” Chloe replied, getting more and more worked up, more and more frightened at the thought that Beca couldn’t see, couldn’t see what was happening, couldn’t see the path she was beginning to fall down.
“Chloe, I don’t have an eating disorder!” Beca replied, suddenly shouting, all hopes at remaining calm gone as she watched her friend fall apart in front of her, watched the tears falling down Chloe’s face at the idea that Beca might be suffering how Chloe had suffered.
“Beca, PLEASE, just listen to me!” Chloe yelled, shouting over Beca, begging her, imploring her to understand.
“Chloe, I don’t have an eating disorder, I have cancer!” The second the word was out of Beca’s mouth she gasped, clapped a hand to her mouth, as if she wouldn’t believe it had betrayed her secret so easily.
“I have cancer,” she repeated, softly this time, hand still over her mouth as she turned her back to the wall and slowly slid down it.
“I have cancer,” she almost whispered, sitting now, back against the wall, knees bent up, and her head cradled in her hands. “I have cancer.”
And now it was Chloe’s turn to feel the ground to fall out from under her, her stomach swooping with it, for the blood to rush to her head, to feel hot and tingly and like she couldn’t breathe. For ten seconds, she stood stock still, and didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, before she took two steps towards Beca, slid down the wall next to her, pulled the girl into her side and stroked Beca’s hair as the girl in her arms wept.