To be loved

by Laura Paddick

  I burst into tears and Mrs Ledford took me in her arms.

  “Oh dear, honey… I’m sorry… I thought you already knew… She’s been dealing with this problem for a while now.”

  Her little brother stood next to the car, looking down at the concrete, not knowing what to do with himself. He was only eight years old.

  “How… did she end up in… hospital?”

  My question was hardly audible for Mrs Ledford because of my endless sniffling and weeping.

  “She called me last night and felt weak. She was unable to eat. I came over straight away and I found her unconscious on the floor,” she explained, crying a little bit with me.

  “How… long will she… be in hospital… for?”

  “The time it takes for her to regain strength and eat properly again. She will soon begin therapy to help her get through all this.”

  Mrs Ledford handed me a tissue and asked if I wanted to help them with the move.

  “She’s… moving?”

  “Of course. When she’s out of hospital, she will come back home, so that we can keep an eye on her appetite.”

  Olivia’s life was suddenly changing and it scared me.

  “Only to begin with, honey,” added Mrs Ledford.

  I nodded and followed them into her studio. Her home only consisted of one room and a little bathroom, similar to those you would find in the cabins on-board ferries. Some boxes were already prepared and all the furniture was stacked together in one corner.

  “Maybe you could sort out the fridge?” suggested Olivia’s mother.

  I nodded again, incapable of saying a single word. I got on my knees but soon discovered it was hardly worth it. When I opened the little fridge, there was only one bottle of orange juice lying on the middle shelf. Nothing else. I pulled open the mini freezer’s door and a packet of frozen green beans fell onto the floor. Three other packets were sitting amongst the ice. That was it. All she ate were green beans. My weeping began again and I couldn’t stop. I sat sobbing in front of the fridge, thinking about how I had let my friend down in a time of need. I felt guilty. While I was too busy fighting with Chris, Olivia was battling anorexia and I didn’t notice a thing. In shock, I struggled to get up off my knees.

  “Are you alright there, Amanda?” asked Mrs Ledford.

  “I…I’ll be okay…” I said, trying to calm down.

  I grabbed the green beans and the single bottle of orange juice, stood up with difficulty, dropped the food into a big cool bag and wiped my eyes.

  “Is that it?” her little brother asked.

  He was filling boxes with Olivia’s ornaments.

  “Green beans?”

  “…Yes…” I answered, saddened to see the terrified look on her brother’s face.

  As for Mrs Ledford, she was taking down photos off one of the walls. Olivia had stuck souvenirs of us at Disneyland on it with Blu Tack. She really did enjoy wearing those Mickey Mouse ears…

  “I… I think I need to go home…” I told Mrs Ledford.

  The news came so unexpectedly that my body didn’t know how to react. My head felt like it might drown in a million tears, my heart was racing with fear of the challenge that lay ahead of her, and my legs wanted to run away.

  “Do you want us to drop you off?” she offered.

  “No… No, I’ll walk. Thank you, Mrs Ledford.”

  “Okay, take care now.”

  She came over and hugged me.

  “Come and see Olivia when you want to.”

  Just the thought of her on a hospital bed broke my heart. I quickly waved at Olivia’s little brother and left the studio as fast as I could. I rushed home, hoping Hannah and Michael would be there so that I wouldn’t end up alone in an empty apartment. Unfortunately my roommates were still at university when I got back. I had to face my remorse, my heartache and my worries on my own.

  Chapter 26

  Olivia was still asleep, so I got rid of my compulsory smile and looked at her lying on the hospital bed as I entered room 206. Her sheets covered her feet and legs, but her arms were resting on a soft white quilt. They were incredibly thin. My twenty-year-old friend seemed so fragile and vulnerable; it was frightening to see. I finally understood why she never wore anything else but a jumper. She wanted to hide. Her body had obviously been changing over the past months and she knew it would draw attention. I stood at the bottom of her bed and gazed at her face. She was pale and her long hair was brittle. I wished she would wake up so that I could see her lovely blue eyes. Maybe she wouldn’t look so bad with them open. I put my hand on her foot and started to cry. I needed to talk to her.

  “You must be Amanda,” said a doctor, walking in unexpectedly.

  I jumped and immediately took my hand off Olivia’s foot.

  “Mrs Ledford said you would probably pop round,” he explained.

  I wiped my face and put on my forced smile again.

  “I’m afraid she sleeps most of the morning. You might get to talk to her during the afternoon visiting hours.”

  I nodded and began to leave the room.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” the doctor apologised.

  “I have class in thirty minutes,” I reassured him. “I have to get going.”

  I glanced at Olivia once more.

  “How bad is it?”

  “Miss Ledford is dehydrated, refuses to eat and has had no menstrual cycle since last winter. She has to regain her strength,” he said openly.

  “Do you know how she ended up in this situation?”

  “We tried to ask her a couple of questions on the matter, but she wouldn’t talk about it. Mrs Ledford informed us that exams were coming up, that could be a possible reason. Have you noticed any particular pressure that she’s been under or has she been stressed during her studies lately?”

  “No… I haven’t. The ones coming up are the final exams to get our degree, but she hasn’t handled them any differently than the ones before.”

  I paused as I looked at the shape of her legs under the covers. They looked so skinny, even with a big quilt over them. I only then realised how drained she was, and I felt so blind to have ignored it.

  “Will she be able to take her exams?” I asked, hoping for a positive answer from the doctor.

  “At the moment, she needs to take care of herself. It may help if you come round regularly to keep her up to speed as much as possible.”

  I thanked him and stepped out of her room.

  “Amanda?” the doctor called out, catching up with me at the doorway. “She asked for you. Miss Ledford wants to see you. It would help if you came back to see her later on.”

  “I will,” I said, overjoyed to hear that Olivia had asked for me.

  “…And although it seems obvious now that she is ill, it is not always discernible when you are not aware of the problem.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  It was as if he had read my mind. Or he had already seen the situation so many times that he knew exactly how it feels to discover a close friend’s anorexia...

  Ignorant and guilty.

  Chapter 27

  Jessica was still drooling all over Chris during class. How could she still want him after all he had done? Why are us women always attracted to bad boys? Maybe I would get round to solving that mystery once the exams were over and Olivia was back on her feet. There was too much for me to think about before looking up Women’s Psychology books! I spent the entire day focusing on the lessons and working for my tests. Kelly joined in for a little while. All eyes were on her ever since Chris had revealed everything about her and Jim. Jim, on the other hand, had joked about it with his friends. Kelly remained quiet and was trying to put it all behind her.

  The day went by quickly; five o’clock soon came around and I was on my way back to the hospital. It was only a fifteen minute walk from the university. The dark-windowed building gave me the creeps. However, the inside was welcoming, with many children's drawi
ngs on the walls of the waiting room and behind the reception desk. When I got to room 206, I was glad to see that Olivia was awake. She was still pale but I told her to blame it on her white nightgown which didn’t match her complexion. She giggled. I sat next to her.

  “I’ve copied today’s lessons for you and I’ve created some charts to sum up the fundamentals,” I told her as I held out a big bunch of papers.

  She pushed them away.

  “Keep them,” she said, “we both know I won’t be fit enough by the time the exams begin.”

  “Don’t say that, Olivia, you’ll be fine. You just need to eat and gain a bit of strength back.”

  “That’s the problem. I just need to eat… but I can’t. I’m stuck, Mandy. I’m not hungry anymore.”

  “Of course you are! Your tummy is rumbling all the time!” I observed.

  “My tummy is, my head isn’t. Food makes me anxious.”

  “Why?” I asked, deeply concerned by her revelations.

  “It can make me fat!”

  “That only depends on how and what you eat.”

  “I’m still on a diet.”

  “How can you still be on a diet? You are as light as a feather, Olivia!”

  She looked down and stopped talking for a moment.

  “Why didn’t you come to me when all of this started?” I said. “I would have invited you over more often, cooked for you and eaten with you. That would have helped, wouldn’t it?”

  Still no comment on her part.

  “Why did you put yourself on a diet? You didn’t need it in the first place.”

  “Yes I did,” she replied. “The doctor said I was a little overweight for my height.”

  “He said a little overweight, not a lot! That was a long time ago… You had that check-up at the beginning of the school year, didn’t you? Last September? October? Are you telling me you’ve been on a diet since then?”

  She nodded, ashamed of herself. I couldn’t believe it. My eyes couldn’t hide my state of shock.

  “I couldn’t talk to you about it Mandy, because you would have said just like my mum and brother: you don’t need to go on a diet.”

  “You don’t!” I urged.

  “That’s not the point, Mandy.”

  “Yes, it is!”

  “No! The point is that I thought I did and I still think I do, even though I am lying on this hospital bed! No matter what you, my mum, my brother, or anybody says to me, I can’t change this thought! It has been with me since the doctor’s visit and it still hasn’t left me. It popped up into my head like a flashing light saying OVERWEIGHT, OVERWEIGHT, OVERWEIGHT! And when I see food, I see the sign light up again and constantly blink OVERWEIGHT until I give up eating!”

  I was appalled by what was happening to my best friend. I tried not to cry, since I didn’t want her to see how distressed I was by her story, but holding back my tears was hard.

  “Nobody could understand what I was going through,” she continued, “because unlike what people think, it is not a problem with food or diet, it’s a problem with an obsession. My mum came over regularly to bring me some home-made dishes that I love: lasagnas, apple pies, bourguignon… It smelt wonderful in my studio, but as soon as it was on the plate in front of me, I could barely eat a quarter of the dish because that flashing light stopped me from digging in. So, you see, cooking and eating with you would have been exactly the same, maybe even worse.”

  An image came to my mind as soon as she said the word worse.

  “Have… have you made yourself sick… sometimes, after a meal?” I asked, afraid of her answer.

  Olivia nodded as she stared at her stomach. My eyes were stinging because of my repressed tears. There was a troubling silence. While she was distraught, I was in shock. We sat next to each other without any idea how to reassure one another. Anorexia was the last problem on earth I thought one of us would be subject to. It had always been a fictitious concept. I knew it existed, but I would have never guessed it would happen to someone close to me. As much as I adored Olivia, it suddenly felt like a part of her had remained a stranger to me. We were fourteen years old when we met and we were both a bit chubby at the time, and we liked it! We both lost weight as we grew up and got taller, but we still liked ourselves the way we were. Where did this obsession about her weight come from? Was it really just because of the doctor’s random comment?

  “I’m sorry Mandy,” said Olivia, breaking my train of thought.

  “For what?” I asked, confused.

  “For giving you a hard time about Chris. I believe you. I don’t know why I thought you liked Chris, when it is obvious you don’t. Maybe I thought the contrary because all the other girls at Uni do, including me… I was jealous and I’m really sorry. I think my physical state didn’t help; I hadn’t eaten very much on the day we had our argument.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I comforted her.

  I was dying to tell her everything that had been going on at Uni – and especially with Chris – but it didn’t seem right at that very moment. Now was the time to focus on her health, not on that manipulative prick. I packed up all my papers, but didn’t intend on giving up helping Olivia with the upcoming exams. We had to celebrate getting our degree together, there was no question about it and I wasn’t going to accept things otherwise. For today, I sat with her and tried to keep her spirits up as much as possible. To do so, I got my laptop out of my bag and we shopped online for some more cosy jumpers.

  Chapter 28

  There was no way I was going to spend more than thirty minutes on Mr Hutchins’ assignment in the library with Chris. I had better things to do on a Friday night than write a dissertation about tea drinkers with a trained cheater. I didn’t even bother waiting for him at the main entrance. I walked straight to the Economics section on second floor and searched for some helpful references Mr Hutchins’ gave us in class. I plonked my bag on a small table and glanced at the hundreds of books on the first shelf next to me. Already, I was bored. The titles could have sent me to sleep on the spot: Capitalism and Freedom, Peddling Prosperity, The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life… How despairing to work on Economics a Friday night! I couldn’t help yawning and checking the time every ten seconds. Chris was late, but that was to be expected.

  As I grabbed A Natural History of Markets, I spotted Jessica through the gap I had created after taking the book off the shelf. She was hiding – unsuccessfully – in the corner of the Economics room, and kissing the infamous Chris who was pressing her up against the wall and caressing her thighs and breasts. I started to blush as I watched them kiss and touch each other inappropriately in the public space. I hated myself for being unable to take my eyes off Chris in that moment; he desired his girlfriend so passionately and knew exactly how to get her excited and ask for more. He lifted Jessica’s t-shirt, revealing her red bra and her big breasts. My heart started to beat faster as he caressed her eagerly. She started to undo his belt and I began to panic. Are they really going to have sex? Right now? Right here? I questioned, getting both excited and uncomfortable at the same time.

  The main door suddenly slammed and drew my attention away from them. I turned around and noticed Mr Hutchins walk into the room with loads of books under his arm. I peeked through the gap on the shelf and was terror-stricken to see that the two lovers hadn’t heard a thing, and Chris’ jeans were down to his ankles! Mr Hutchins stepped closer and closer to the erotic scene, slowly searching for the references he had listed on a post-it. Silently but swiftly, I ran over to Jessica and Chris. They were too busy kissing to hear me arrive. I whacked Chris over the head with A Natural History of Markets and whispered forcefully:

  “GET DRESSED!”

  Jessica jumped at the sight of me standing right beside them whilst they were about to have sex.

  “Mr Hutchins is just a couple of rows away!” I told them, shaking with fear of getting caught.

  They covered themselves in haste and
sat at the closest table. I returned to my own and pretended to be in the middle of my reading. Mr Hutchins passed by, grabbed a couple of books from the shelf, then visited Jessica and Chris’ area, picked up a few more works, and finally walked out of the room. As I got up to put A Natural History of Markets back at its place, Jessica and Chris were nowhere to be found. They had disappeared.

  “I guess I will be working on this assignment on my own after all…” I mumbled to myself.

  “No you won’t,” said a man’s voice.

  I turned around and Chris was standing next to my table. His blond hair was a mess, his belt was still hanging undone and his flies were open.

  “Wh– Where’s Jessica?” I asked.

  “She’s getting the bus.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “The assignment…”

  “Oh right!” I said, utterly flushed.

  My mind was too busy picturing him pressing Jessica up against the wall. I placed the book on the shelf and returned to my chair.

  “Would you mind doing your trousers up!” I pointed out before he sat down in front of me.

  He executed my demand without showing the slightest sign of embarrassment. I laid out half a dozen graphics on the table to help us analyse the tea market.

  “Where did you find all these?” Chris asked.

  “I did some research. Unlike others, I prepare myself for a group assignment,” I said with spite.

  “Sorry, I’ve been busy this week,” he apologised, poorly.

  “Just like you were five minutes ago, is that right?”

  “More or less,” he smiled.