naso-gastric consequences

My smile was taken long ago, if I can change I hope I never know. 

There's a hand on the back of my head, making sure I can't move away and a hand on my chin to stop me wriggling out. All down my nose and throat there is a trail of fire and pain and I clutch my vomit bucket with all my might. My stomach is heaving and my eyes are squeezing out tears at an alarming rate. 

"Swallow, swallow, swallow, swallow, swallow..." and I obey because the cold water is at least attempting to quell the flames. Then I vomit up all the water I have just swallowed but the voice keeps going, "swallow, swallow, swallow..." and I can feel the naso-gastric tube advancing further down my oesophagus. 

All that comes up in the aspirate is a tiny amount of coffee, enough to confirm the tube is in my stomach. People seem surprised that there wasn't more, but I didn't have any breakfast or lunch and the coffee was my only intake. The pain of NG tube insertion subsides, but the burning irritation remains. 

I gag some more as I pull it out and sip on cold water to calm myself. The things I do for my love of the art. Try a NG tube, they said, know what your patients go through, they said. 

His face flashes through my head the entire time. I wipe away at my watering eyes, disguising the fact that I'm crying a bit, almost glad that NG insertion makes everyone's eyes water. Somehow, sitting in the procedural skills room in the hospital, I'm transported to somewhere completely different. 

I can almost feel the fabric restraints on my wrists and ankles, the hand on my chin and the back of my head and that same awful tube advancing down my nose and into my stomach. I can feel the tears, the retching, the burning pain. I can see him standing at the door, afraid to enter the room but unable to look away. I can't turn away from him when everything is done because the restraints have been left in place so I close my eyes. 

I'm ashamed of myself, I don't know how things got this bad, how did I get this sick. But at the same time I feel a pulsating resistance within me. With every beat of my heart, for so many years, all I've craved is to be thin and I would do anything to stop people taking that away from me. Eyes still closed, I start to wonder if he's left but then I feel him wiping the cold sweat from my face. I ignore him. 

I don't ever want a NG tube again. And I'm scared of it now. But it brings another issue to light. Somehow I've come to rely on the professor. I'm projecting like mad. Just because he's nice to me, that doesn't mean he will transform into the father that I crave. It doesn't mean that he will be there for me on all the occasions that I imagine him to be. It doesn't mean anything except that he is a nice person. I think I need to work on extracting myself from anything to do with him. 

And see how all that goes. Lose weight. Lose weight. No food. Work out. No professor. Just study. And be thin, finally thin.