Lost in Me

by Lexi Ryan

  ***

  My phone buzzes from the pocket of my apron. I wipe my hands on a towel and pull it out.

  Appointment with Doc Perkins.

  I frown at the calendar reminder. Do I know a Dr. Perkins?

  I move to the sink and turn the water on with the back of my hand. Once it’s hot, I wash my hands with soap and water, dry them, and grab my phone again.

  I have no idea how I managed to lose so much weight while doing this job. A single morning in my bakery and I’m jacked up on dozens of taste tests. A little bite of this treat, a sample of that frosting. I practically have a stomach ache. Thank God for my compulsive organization. It was relatively easy to find all my recipes. I was preparing gum-paste calla lilies for this weekend’s wedding cake when my phone buzzed, but I can finish up later.

  The reminder doesn’t have a phone number or an address, so I pull up the browser on my phone and do a quick search. “Dr. Perkins New Hope” doesn’t get me any hits, so I try “Dr. Perkins Indianapolis.”

  Dr. Perkins, MD, Psychiatry

  A psychiatrist?

  I scroll through my calendar, moving back through the past three months, but I only see one appointment with the doctor listed and it was a week ago. Was I going to start regular appointments? Why? For pointers on keeping brides calm? Or maybe the doctor is the silent partner Liz told me about?

  Right. The relationship is a business one and you just happen to have a script for antidepressant in your apartment.

  This doctor must have some answers to the endless questions that have taken up residence in my brain. I highlight the address in my browser and send it to my phone’s navigation system.

  I’ve already grabbed my keys when I pause. I’m not supposed to drive. But I’m not sure I want anyone to know I’m seeing a psychiatrist, and how can I have someone drive me without spilling the beans?

  “Liz,” I call to the front, pocketing my keys, “I need to leave for a few hours.”

  I wait for her to ask where I’m going, but she just shrugs. Her disinterest is another reminder of the distance between us. I’m not used to this, but I don’t have time to think about it much. I’m too busy planning to break doctor’s orders and drive to Indianapolis.

  By the time I get to Dr. Perkins’s office, I’m fifteen minutes late to my appointment. The receptionist’s eyes go big when he sees my face. “What happened to you?”

  “I got in a fight with a flight of stairs. I lost.”

  “Yikes.” He stands and ushers me through a heavy walnut door.

  On the other side, a woman is sitting behind a desk, tapping at her computer. Her face lights up then shrinks in rapid succession when she sees me. “Hanna! What happened?”

  “I’ll leave you,” the receptionist says.

  As the heavy door closes, the doctor motions to an overstuffed chair and steeples her fingers as I sit. “Tell me what’s going on, Hanna.”

  “You’re Dr. Perkins?”

  Her tiny face draws into a tight frown. “Of course I am.”

  “And I’m…one of your patients?”

  Her frown turns to skepticism.

  “I took a fall.” I motion to my face. I explain as briefly as I can about my amnesia, telling her I’m here because of the reminder on my phone.

  “Oh, dear. I wish I would have known. I would have come to the hospital and consulted with your doctor.”

  I’m glad she didn’t. I don’t think I want my friends and family to know I’ve sought out therapy. “I don’t understand.” I don’t want to offend this woman. She seems very nice. “It shows in my calendar that I’ve been here before, and I found a prescription for antidepressants in my apartment, but…” I’m not sure how to say it.

  “Go on,” she prods.

  “My life seems perfect. I have my own business that seems to be going great, and I’m engaged to marry an amazing man. I feel okay about my body for the first time in my life. Why would I need to see a psychiatrist? Why would I need antidepressants?” Why would I cheat on my loving fiancé?

  She folds her arms and studies me, her face a series of hard and soft lines I can neither read nor recognize. “Do you think only people who have something ‘wrong’ with their lives need to seek help for their mental health?”

  “Of course not. I just—” I cut myself off at her raised eyebrows. Apparently she’s a no-nonsense woman. “I wouldn’t put it that way. I thought that if I was seeing you and you’d prescribed antidepressants, there had to be a reason.”

  She’s silent for a long moment that catapults me back in time to just after my father’s death. I was a teenager, and Daddy was my world. Back then, I never measured up with Mom. She was always trying to fix me—shrink me, tone me, dress me, make me an acceptable representation of her family. Something she wouldn’t find so shameful. But Daddy was happy to let me be. Then he died, and after the funeral, the school therapist called us down one at a time. “Why do you think you’re here?” he asked me, his voice sounding more bored than empathetic, and he let the silence grow bigger and stranger between us until I answered.

  But I’m not that girl anymore. I’m not the fat teenager languishing in her gorgeous sisters’ shadows. I’m not the ignored child striving for perfection in all things to make up for her appearance.

  Sure, I’m overweight, but look at my grades!

  Sure, I can’t fit into the pants in your average store, but I’m always happy.

  Sure, I can’t get a date to save my life, but I’m the best friend a girl could ever have.

  I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

  But she isn’t like the school counselor and she doesn’t let the silence go on forever. “You came to me because you were battling depression and an eating disorder.”

  I feel myself wilt. I don’t want to hear these things. I don’t want her tainting my perfect world. I shouldn’t have come. I should have ignored the reminder and carried on.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” Dr. Perkins says.

  I remember Nix’s request for me to see her in her office about diet concerns brought on by my blood work. “An eating disorder? Depression?”

  Something flicks across her features. Regret? Sadness? “There’s no shame in getting help. Are you eating? Since your accident?”

  I pause and turn back to her. “I am.”

  She smiles. “That’s good.”

  “I wasn’t before, was I? That’s how I lost all this weight? I was starving myself?” Panic claws at me the moment the words leave my mouth because I know they’re true. “This means I’m going to gain the weight back, doesn’t it?”

  “You came to me because you recognized something in your own habits that you knew wasn’t healthy. You recognized there were parts of your life more important than numbers on the scale and you wanted me to help.”

  I swallow, but this information is a bitter pill that goes down rough and painfully. “Did I talk to you about…other things?”

  “Like what?”

  “This is confidential?” I whisper.

  “Of course.”

  “Was I cheating on my fiancé?” I shake my head. “He’s my fiancé now, but I guess he would have been my boyfriend last time I was here.”

  She crosses her arms over her chest. “You didn’t share that with me if it was true, but you didn’t mention a boyfriend either.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I guess this was just about the food.”

  “Eating disorders are never just about the food, Hanna. They’re about more than your body and about more than losing weight. They’re about control. And you’ve spent the last three months starving yourself so you would feel like you had control over your life again.”