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I looked up from my plate and saw Emily with her feeding tube staring at me, wondering if I was going to eat. She probably wondered if I’d been eating the entire time she was gone.
I picked up my fork with my right hand, forgetting the burn. “Ow,” I said. My palm immediately started to throb again. I just wanted this over with, so I could leave. I moved the fork to my left hand and started eating. After I finished, I left one tiny bite on my plate to let ED know I had tried not to eat it all.
“There’s still food left on your plate,” Dr. Larsen said.
“It’s normal not to finish every bite,” I said.
“Not when ED is telling you not to finish it,” she responded.
“I’m full and listening to my hunger cues. Ever thought of that?” I asked.
“But it isn’t that,” she dug in.
“It’s one fucking bite!” I shouted.
“If I were an oncologist, I wouldn’t let one bite of cancer remain,” she said, sounding more like she was trying to convince herself why she needed to follow through with me. It was an unenviable, arduous task to be a shock absorber for all of ED’s venom.
A civil war was brewing inside of me. If I didn’t eat the last bite, I’d be forced to share a room with a staffer, which would be hell. If I ate it, ED would never let me live it down.
I looked up from the plate and stared out the large bay window behind Dr. Larsen. The sun was setting behind the Santa Monica mountains, turning the vast skies orange and pink.
I looked back down at the last tiny bite of food on my plate. The open skies lied. My world had slowly and all at once shrunk into a crumb. I quickly shoved it into my mouth and got up from the table.
Later that night, Emily and I were in our beds as Kyle sat stationed at our door. She turned to me. “So you’re back on food?”
It was another dig to let me know I was lesser than her because she was still fiercely committed to only getting food through a feeding tube.
“I have to eat one meal a day, or they threatened to make me share a room with a staffer,” I explained.
“Oh,” she said, considering what this might mean for her. She quickly changed the subject. “It went well at the hospital. I know I lost weight because I heard the doctor and nurses talking about it.”
I ignored her, turning away, lifting the thin bed sheet over my body, wishing I had a comforter I could hide underneath, not to exercise, but just to get away from her.
“Well?” she pressed.
I sat up and faced her. “What do you want?” I asked. “A prize?
She didn’t respond.
I turned away from her again, facing the window next to my bed, hoping she’d finally leave me alone.
“You don’t have to be such a bitch,” she said.
Those were her last words to me.
They were her last words at all.
The following morning, she didn’t wake up.
First the nurse tried to resuscitate her, then various staff members and an EMT. When the police finally arrived at the scene, they called in a 10-45D code—the patient was deceased.
As I watched the officers lift her lifeless body onto a gurney, I was in shock. Despite her deteriorated physical condition and Dr. Larsen’s warning, I hadn’t thought she’d really die.
As they covered her body with a white sheet, I thought about my mom. All the times I had imagined her dead body being lifted off the concrete after the car hit her, desperately wishing I had been there to say one final goodbye.
I started to cry.
Dr. Larsen and the nurse were standing nearby with tears in their eyes. They tried to comfort me but had to turn their attention to the officers. Instructions were given about getting Emily’s body downstairs so it could be transported to the local coroner’s office for an autopsy and who would call Emily’s parents to deliver the devastating news.
