Fragile

by Nikki Grahame

  ‘No,’ I snapped. ‘I won’t. You can go home if you want me to sit down.’

  Having him there meant nothing more to me than an excuse to be out of sight of a nurse and to be walking up and down using up calories.

  I’d rather stand up and walk around than have a visit from him, I thought. I don’t want to see him that much.

  I knew Mum and Dad weren’t going to take me out of there – I’d been told I wouldn’t go home until I was at least 18. If they’re not coming to take me back with them, I’d think, what’s the point of their coming at all? I was angry at them for leaving me there and felt very alone.

  It was during one of Dad’s visits a couple of months earlier that I had slipped a bottle of paracetamol into my pocket one afternoon when he’d taken me to Sainsbury’s to buy toiletries. I’d kept them in my bedside drawer as a kind of security measure in case things ever got really bad. And now they really were bad.

  One night I climbed into bed with the bottle and sat staring at it. I knew exactly what I was going to do. I just can’t be bothered with any of this any more, I thought. I can’t face the food. I’m going to be stuck in here – or somewhere pretty similar – for years and I hate Mum and Dad for letting me go through it.

  The first time I’d taken a paracetamol overdose, at Great Ormond Street, was to show everyone how angry I was they hadn’t let me home for Christmas. That was a ‘this’ll teach them’ protest. But this time, this was it – I wanted to die. I’d run out of steam, I’d run out of energy for fighting and I wasn’t winning any more. They’d beaten me with their tubes and their drugs and their power. They were going to feed me whatever, so what was the point of carrying on?

  I wasn’t scared or worried or tearful. It just seemed the logical thing to do. There really wasn’t anything worth living for. I just wanted the whole nightmare to be over.

  My bedroom door was wide open as I wasn’t allowed to close it any more in case I was exercising, but I was still able to swallow the pills without anyone noticing. I got out of bed and went nearer the door so I could hear if anyone was coming. The first pill tasted sour in my mouth as I jerked my head back and swallowed it down. The second was easier and by the third I was used to the metallic flavour on my tongue.

  I didn’t have any water, so it became harder and harder to swallow each pill as the moisture in my mouth dried up. But nothing was going to stop me and I kept on swallowing them, sometimes ramming two down at the same time, sometimes gagging as a pill stuck to the back of my throat. Then I started to retch with the effort of getting them down. A couple of times one came straight back up again but even that didn’t stop me. I just swallowed it again.

  I didn’t give Mum and Dad a single thought. I didn’t give a shit about them.

  Pill followed pill followed pill. And I felt glad. Just another couple of hours and this would all be over. No more calories, no more screaming, no more injections, no more hospitals.

  I remember getting to 25 and thinking that was probably enough.

  Then I climbed back into bed and closed my eyes. This is it then, I thought. This is the end of it. I’ve finally got what I want. I can go to sleep and I’ll never have to eat again. I’ll never have to put on any more weight.

  Then I slipped into unconsciousness.

  But it wasn’t to be that simple. Two hours later I came round, feeling more sick than I’d ever felt before. I managed to swing my legs off the bed and staggered down the corridor to the toilet, where I was violently sick. I was roaring sick over and over again until I was bringing up acid-green stomach juices. I lay on the floor of the toilet for hours, too weak to move.

  Eventually a nurse came in and found me and asked what was the matter. I couldn’t even answer and they assumed it was an extreme tummy bug and took me back to bed.

  I lay there totally gutted that I had failed. I was crying, desperate and furious. The pills had been my last resort and they hadn’t worked.

  The next day they said there was no point in giving me any food because I was still being sick, so I stayed in bed all morning, sipping Diet Coke because I felt so thirsty.

  When they called Mum she guessed immediately that I had overdosed. She rushed to the hospital and, without questioning me first, went straight to the nurses and told them what she feared.

  ‘It’s impossible – she can’t have done,’ said the charge nurse, Pauline. ‘She has been on close supervision, so there’s no way she could have got hold of any tablets.’

  But Mum knew me better than anyone. And she knew the look of utter hopelessness in my eyes. She came and sat with me but I couldn’t speak to her or even look at her. I was just so traumatised that I’d failed.

  What I didn’t realise, though, was that I was still in grave danger of dying from liver failure, which can happen up to two days after an overdose. A paracetamol overdose is particularly dangerous in anorexic cases because of the effect that continual starvation has already had on the liver.

  After sitting with me for a while, stroking my head and holding my hand, Mum went back downstairs to the nurse. ‘I’m telling you my daughter has overdosed,’ she said firmly. ‘And if you don’t help her and anything happens to her I will be blaming you.’

  Still nothing happened – and I didn’t admit a thing – until Mum finally made the doctors give me a blood test a couple of days later. The results immediately showed a high dosage of paracetamol in my system. All of a sudden it turned into panic stations and I was immediately wheeled into an ambulance and taken to A&E at nearby Wexham Park Hospital.

  There I waited an hour and a half to be assessed. Mum was terrified I could be dying in front of her eyes and still no one was doing anything to help.

  ‘Please, please, will you get her on a ward?’ Mum begged one of the nurses.

  The unit was heaving with people and the nurse just looked at Mum with irritation and said brusquely, ‘I’m sorry, but your daughter has put herself here. She can wait. We’ve got sick patients who haven’t chosen to be here and they are our priority.’

  We waited some more and finally I was put on a ward, assessed and placed on a drip.

  By then I was feeling a bit better. I hadn’t had to eat a thing for three days, so that alone had made me happier. But I was still angry I hadn’t succeeded with the overdose.

  After a couple of days’ observation I was free to return to Huntercombe. But first I asked to speak to my specialist, Dr Lask, on the phone as he was still overseeing my treatment.

  ‘I just can’t do it, Dr Lask,’ I said. ‘I just can’t face all that food you are giving me.’ I really liked and respected Dr Lask. I felt he listened to what I was saying.

  ‘I can only come back to Huntercombe if I can go back to 1,000 calories a day.’

  He agreed.

  So one week after the overdose I was back in Huntercombe, my weight down to 28.3 kilos (4 stone 6 lb) as I hadn’t been eating at Wexham Park.

  I was put on 1,000 calories a day and I got away with murder with the nurses. They were all terrified that if they confronted me about anything I’d try to top myself again. It was all cool by me.

  I was also allowed to negotiate my diet sheet with Yvonne, the dietician. She was lovely but she could be a bit of a soft touch and let me get away with a lot. On my sheet it said I had to have two digestives as my bedtime snack but I came up with a far better idea. ‘Yvonne, I really want to try and have chocolate again,’ I said one day. ‘So maybe I could have one Jaffa Cake at night instead of the digestives.’

  And she agreed! So, instead of two 78-calorie digestives, I was having one 45-calorie Jaffa Cake. Result!

  Within days all the anorexics had suddenly developed a passion for Jaffa Cakes. And I had a great trick of holding one next to my hot night-time drink so that all the chocolate melted off on to the side of the mug.

  I was constantly wiping chocolate, grease, cream or anything else I didn’t want on to cups, plates, clothes or even my hair. My tops were always stained and d
irty – but I didn’t care, so long as I’d avoided some calories.

  Back in Huntercombe my condition only deteriorated, though, as I again refused to eat.

  My fragile mental state was even more precarious. I was having more and more temper fits. If the nurses tried to make me eat or I felt anything was getting out of control, I would start shouting, screaming and hyperventilating. I would flail around until my body became rigid and my back arched right back. It’s a condition called opisthotonos, which I’ve since learned can be caused by a depressed brain function or is in some cases a side effect of a large amount of medication.

  They injected me with a sedative a couple of times at Huntercombe but it wasn’t as common as at Great Ormond Street.

  The only person who could calm me down when I was having a fit was Carly. The nurses would shout at me, ‘Come on, snap out of this! Get out of this, Nikki.’ But Carly would wrap her arms tight around me and keep cuddling me and soothing me as I sobbed and screamed.

  I’d still be trying to smash my head and my body against walls and the floor but she would hold me and protect my head. I really didn’t care if I knocked myself unconscious or even killed myself – ever since the last overdose I’d had no fear of dying.

  But whatever I did, Carly never let go of me. She would stroke my hair until eventually exhaustion overwhelmed me and I calmed down. I guess all I really wanted was to feel cuddled and loved, and that is what she did.

  Other days I would go out into the grounds to the ‘screaming tree’, which was where kids could go to get their anger out. I’d stand there for hours screaming into the wind, trying to force out of my body this ball of fury which was dominating my life.

  Sometimes I’d feel as though I was going to explode with the poison that was swilling around inside me. Most of the time I felt anxious, agitated and fat. Sleep gave some relief but often I would toss and turn for hours, locked in my misery.

  I’d become too sick to even consider getting better. I could hardly think about the next five minutes, let alone the future and what I wanted from it. I couldn’t imagine any other existence than the one I was living at that moment. Maybe I’d become institutionalised within my own anorexia. Certainly I’d known nothing else and thought of little else for the past seven years.

  In my head I was just stuck where I was and nothing could shift me.

  At that point I was on all sorts of drugs, including Prozac. After a while I was put on a different anti-depressant, Seroxat, as Prozac was making me twitch. Then there were the sedative pills at night to keep me calm and help me sleep – but also to prevent me getting out of bed and exercising.

  One evening we all had a Chinese takeaway for dinner. Supposedly it was a treat but for me it was horrific. It was stir-fried vegetables, wallowing in grease – which was, and still is, my worst food fear. As I looked at the greasy pool of food on my plate I thought, Just eat it and then you can run away. You can exercise off the fat and then you’ll never have to eat anything like this again. That thought was the only thing that got me through that awful meal.

  Afterwards I waited until the front-desk receptionist went home at nine o’clock, then slipped out of the main doors. Huntercombe isn’t a locked unit and it was so easy. We were allowed lunchtime strolls, so I knew exactly where I was going. I ran down the lane that led to the main road, then jogged straight to Taplow railway station.

  It was pitch-dark but quite a warm night. I waited for 20 minutes on the platform, then jumped on a train to Paddington. There I changed on to the tube, all the time dodging ticket collectors and any commuters staring at my emaciated frame in concern. I jumped off the train at Northwood Hills and ran all the way home. It felt so good to be back.

  I banged on our front door and waited breathlessly. I thought Mum would be shocked to see me, but surely she’d be glad too – she’d throw her arms around me then we’d snuggle up on the sofa in front of the telly. Wouldn’t we?

  When Mum opened the door she didn’t look at all shocked – just angry. Huntercombe had already called her to say I was missing.

  ‘You’re not staying, Nikki,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to go straight back.’

  ‘But I want to come home!’ I yelled. ‘I’m not going back.’

  Ten minutes later, though, Mum had started the car and was bundling me into the back with Tony’s help. It took both of them to haul me in there and slam the door shut on my kicking and screaming.

  And then back we went. I hadn’t even seen my bedroom. Hadn’t even had a night snuggled under my own Forever Friends duvet. Instead it was hell once again for me.

  I’d probably only been gone about three hours when Mum guided me back into the massive entrance hall at Huntercombe, the ceiling murals gazing down on me as I stood there beaten and exhausted. At least I’ve missed evening snack, I thought dismally. That’s some calories avoided.

  Soon afterwards, in January 1998, Mum and Dad were called to Huntercombe for another big meeting about my future.

  My weight was at 32.4 kilos (5 stone 1 lb), which meant that in the eight months I had been there, I had put on just 4.7 kilos (10½ lb). Dr Lask had reached the point where he had to accept Huntercombe wasn’t working for me. I sat in the dining room and waited to be called down to join everyone in the main office. Although I had no idea what they were discussing, I knew instinctively it wasn’t going to be good news for me.

  Finally one of the nurses called me into the meeting. She suggested Carly go with me – they must have known I was likely to have a major fit and Carly would be the only one able to calm me down.

  Carly and I walked into the grand, wood-panelled office with huge sash windows looking over neatly mowed lawns. Mum, Dad, Dr Lask, a man from the Social Services’ funding department and Dr Mark Tattersall and Dr Lakintosch from Huntercombe were all sitting round in a large circle.

  Carly shot me a reassuring smile as we sat down and Dr Tattersall began talking.

  ‘Now, Nikki,’ he said. ‘We’ve spent a very long time discussing the best way to help you get better and we’ve come to the conclusion that you could really benefit from some time at Rhodes Farm. It’s an excellent place with all the facilities to really help you.’

  Well, I think he said that last bit, but I didn’t really hear much after the words ‘Rhodes Farm’. The two words pulsated in my head – it was every anorexic’s nightmare come true.

  I didn’t need any explanation of what Rhodes Farm was like – everyone on the anorexic circuit knew all about it. It was the stuff of horror stories told in hushed voices late at night: deep-fried fish in batter, cheese sandwiches, cream with everything and mayonnaise shoved up your nose through a tube if you didn’t comply.

  Nina and Debbie had both been at Rhodes Farm and their stories of plate after plate of huge-calorie meals had left girls in terror of the place. And there was no healthy-eating regime at there at all. You would get one apple a day and everything else was microwaved meals already engorged with calories and then laden with extra cheese. Just mentioning the name sent a shudder of fear through the girls at Huntercombe.

  ‘No,’ I said quite simply. ‘No, I’m not going. Not me. I’m doing OK here, I don’t need to move.’

  Rhodes Farm was for other girls, for losers who’d get beaten by the system. It wasn’t for me – I was too good at getting away with stuff, with winning. Going to Rhodes Farm meant no chance of winning any more. My battle would be over. And that was terrifying.

  ‘I’m afraid there is no choice, Nikki. You have to go,’ said Dr Tattersall.

  ‘But I’m not going there – I’m really not,’ I kept repeating, aware of the terror in my voice as it became clear their minds were made up. I could feel, too, that familiar sense of anger building up inside me and I knew I was going to flip.

  I sprang out of the chair and darted for the door but Mum jumped up and stood in my way. I lashed out at her with my arms, then spun around and made for the partly open window. No one was quick enough to stop me as
I flung myself through the gap and jumped four feet down to the garden. Then I ran until my legs buckled and I went sprawling.

  In moments Carly was with me, holding me as I cried, and then I threw myself back, slamming my head into the ground and clawing wildly at myself.

  ‘No, no, no. I’m not going!’ I kept screaming.

  I went totally mental and this time there was nothing even Carly could say to help me.

  They were going to send me to Rhodes Farm. After all those years of fighting, they had beaten me.

  CHAPTER 17

  RHODES FARM

  ‘Right, Nikki, listen and I’ll explain. Monday it’s a four-finger KitKat, Tuesday is a Toffee Crisp and Wednesday is a Lion Bar.’

  It was my last night at Huntercombe and Debbie was talking me through the feeding regime I would face on my arrival at Rhodes Farm the following morning. ‘Thursday is a Picnic and Friday it’s a Caramel,’ she continued. ‘You have to eat a chocolate bar every single day.’

  I was lying on cushions between Debbie and Carly’s beds. As a special treat before leaving I’d been allowed a sleepover in their room. Although I’d never been particularly good friends with Debbie I needed her that night, and she and I lay awake for hours as I pumped her for information about life at Rhodes Farm.

  Poor old Carly, my best mate, who for months had held me when I cried and been the only person who could make me laugh when everything seemed so bleak. That night she didn’t get a look-in. In the end she fell asleep, leaving me and Debbie dissecting every detail of the Rhodes Farm regime. Debbie had spent several months there and, like all its other patients, she had piled weight on during her stay. It was only afterwards that she had lost it again and had to be admitted to Huntercombe.

  ‘But there must be some way I can beat the system, Debbie,’ I said for the hundredth time.

  ‘I’ve told you, Nikki,’ she replied. ‘There isn’t.’

  When Debbie finally fell asleep I cried into my pillow, terrified of what was going to happen. My only hope was that I wasn’t just any other silly anorexic off the street, but I was the best anorexic out there and if anyone could beat Rhodes Farm I could.