When my father and I walked into the lobby of the clinic, the first thing I noticed was the smell. The smell was so poignant that I wanted to run out of the building and get the first flight home, but my father had a tight grip on me. It wasn't a terrible smell, but it was just so clean. It smelled like a hospital. I never liked hospitals, I didn't even like being in the hospital when Rose had her baby. It was this silent fear of mine that I had been avoiding for the past few years.
"You must be Taylor," a man said, walking from behind a desk that sat in the corner of the lobby. "I'm Rich, I'm part of the staff here. You'll be seeing a lot of me these next six weeks." I nodded. For the first time, I was actually shy around someone else. I'm so used to being the instigator, the one who talks to everyone. I guess that comes with being the front man of the band, but then again the reason I'm here is because I'm the front man of the band. "Another shy one, huh?"
"Taylor's hardly shy," my father said.
"I just don't want to be here," I explained. Rich nodded.
"Well they never do. I'll show you to your room, get you settled in. Dad is welcome to come along," Rich said, looking back at my father. He nodded and we walked toward the inner part of the clinic. "The first thing we'll do is get you into some comfortable clothes. It's going to be weird at first but everyone here will look just like you."
He led us around, explaining what every room was. I didn't see anyone else, which made me rather uneasy. I wanted to get over meeting these people as quickly as possible. I was almost positive every one of them know me, it was hard not to, but I just hoped they didn't judge me. I knew there were girls here...what if one of them is a fan? I couldn't just avoid anybody; I was going to be living here for the next six weeks.
After walking through a whole bunch of rooms, in the process getting me lost and confused, Rich stopped in front of a room. "This will be your room. This hall is the boys' dormitory. The girls' dormitory is at the other end of the clinic. Girls aren't allowed in this hall as you are not allowed in their hall. You'll be sharing a room with someone, okay?" I nodded, not really caring. "All right then." He opened the door and the three of us stepped inside. There was another boy sitting on the bed, his nose in a book. He looked up. "Andy, meet your new roommate. Taylor, this is Andy."
"Hi," I said. His right eyebrow went up at the sight of me. "Dammit," I added under my breath. He recognized me. The only thing left a mystery was if he thought I was the spawn of Satan or gay or something of the like. He stood up and held out his hand.
"Hi." We shook hands. "Nice to meet you." I looked at his feeding tube. Rich mentioned some of the kids who weren't improving were connected to feeding tubes for part of the day. Andy seemed comfortable with it. He had on pajamas and he was slightly bigger than me but from the looks of my hand connected with his, it wasn't by much. He looked horrible. Was that what I looked like? I finally understood what Zac was talking about.
"I'll go get you some clothes, Taylor. Dad, if you'll come with me, I'd like to speak with you about some things," Rich said.
"Sure," my father said. The both of them left, leaving Andy and me alone. I heard the door close behind me but Andy and I continued to stare at each other, kind of checking the other out. I was still clueless on how he felt about me, and there was a sense of confusion in his eyes. Neither of us said anything for quite a while, standing in the middle of the room staring at each other. I'd never done this with anyone before. Usually when I met someone new we talked to get to know each other instead of staring each other down.
"You're Taylor Hanson, aren't you?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"So that means you're probably going to be playing your music around here a lot, huh?" he asked, noticing the guitar my father had laid down on what looked to be my bed.
"Yeah, probably."
"Well I don't like your music but if you throw some punk rock in there every once in a while I'll be okay with it." I smiled.
"Sure."
"You in here for the twelve-week program?" he asked. I shook my head. "Oh, then the six week?" I nodded. "Whenever someone new comes along, and they're always coming and going, always ask if they're in for the twelve week program first. If they're in for twelve and you ask if it's six, they'll get really down on themselves and we don't want any more of that here."
"Okay."
"Once I'm allowed out of this thing, I'll introduce you to everyone else. There are some really nice people around here. The first few days are always rough; you'll probably throw up a lot but they'll keep feeding you until you stop, but once you get over that it really becomes home."
"Wonderful," I said, sitting down on my bed.
"Hey, don't get all down on me. No one wants to be here but you can't leave until you're back to a substantial weight. I've been here two weeks and I've got ten more to go. They'll keep you entertained. The days go by pretty fast and there are some pretty girls here. If you look past the feeding tubes and how skinny they all are, you'll find some pretty chicks." He paused, smiling. "Assuming you like chicks."
"Funny," I said. "But you better be careful, I might make a pass at you while you're asleep."
"Do and die, sweetheart." I smiled. This kid was all right.
Rich came back in the room with my father, holding a pair of hospital pajamas much like the ones Andy had on. I changed into them and surprisingly felt a lot better. When Andy caught me eyeing his feeding tube, he reassured me that the tube was just for those not gaining weight quickly enough, and if I ever needed it, I'd get used to it quickly.
"Well, Dad, it's about time you shove off," Rich said, as politely as he could. My father nodded. He turned to me, looking rather expectantly at me.
"I'll see you in a bit, okay Dad?" I said, looking up at him. "Okay." We awkwardly embraced and he left. Rich turned to me, smiling.
"Well, you're set." His watched beeped and he looked down at it. "Noon! You came just in time for lunch. I have to get everybody to the dining room, Andy why don't I remove your tube and you can take Taylor there?" Andy nodded. Rich turned to me. "When lunch is over and you've kept everything down we'll give you the tour."
"Can I, Rich?" Andy asked.
"Sure, just tell me where you're going." Rich removed Andy's tube before leaving the room.
"All right, kid, let's go." We walked out of the room, closing the door behind us. "Okay, this first meal is going to be pretty rough. Although this clinic is for both anorexic and bulimic patients, most everybody throws up the first meal. It can be pretty brutal, especially if you've been used to throwing up automatically. If you throw up they'll just give you another plate and make you eat it all until it all stays down. It can take all day but you're going to eat it all." My stomach lurched at the sound of food. The past couple of days I'd been eating meals with the family and they watched me, but out of habit everything came back up. They knew I didn't do it on purpose after I told them I had a problem, but they didn't quite know how to react to it when it openly happened.
The dining room was a very large cafeteria. A loud chatter of kids was placed around, all wearing the hospital pajamas. There were a few boys so I didn't feel completely out of place, but most of the room was girls. I could hear their giggling and chatter about nothing, but I didn't really register what anyone was saying. A few people looked up to see who the new kid was, but otherwise no one acknowledged me. Luckily none of the girls had a freak out and I sat down peacefully.
The table Andy sat me down at sat six people. There were two empty seats, while two girls occupied the seats across from Andy and me. They looked over at me and stopped their conversation to say hello. "Hi, you're the new kid, aren't you?" one of the girls asked. I nodded. "I'm Carol. This is Melissa. What's your name?" Andy and I shared a smile.
"Taylor."
"Hi Taylor," Carol said again. "Welcome home." I smiled and the counselors came around with the plates of food. I looked down at my plate and shook my head. It was a hell of a lot of food.
Lunch was not fun. The other three people at the table didn't look at me once I was finishing the extraordinarily large plate of food, knowing what was going to happen. Not long after I finished the meal it all came up again. Once I was done they handed me another plate of food. I couldn't even begin to explain how much food was on those plates. I didn't even eat that much when I was binging. It was good food too, granted it wasn't Mom's home cooking, but it was definitely in second place. It took about three plates before I kept my food down.
Everyone had left already when I was done. Rich and one of the other counselors sat in front of me, watching me. They said they were going to keep me in there for a little bit longer, just to make sure that nothing happened, then they'd ship me off to Andy. I couldn't be alone for the rest of the day. Once I kept all my meals down for a week and show some kind of weight gain, they'd let me be but until then I was stuck. They kept me in there for ten minutes before Rich took me to the recreation room where Andy sat. Andy looked up at from his card game with another girl that I didn't know, and gestured for me to come over.
"Hey kid, come join us." I walked over and sat down across from Andy, near the girl. "That didn't take very long. You're already getting better. How many times did it take?"
"Three," I said. Andy dealt me into the game. I noticed the large amount of cards in the deck and how many he was giving me. "What are we playing?"
"Canasta," he said. "Do you know how to play?" I shook my head. "You will. It's one of the few things we can do here. We do have a basketball court but exercise is limited and has to be supervised because, obviously, most of us tend to go overboard with our workouts. There's some cool stuff here, but mostly it can be boring. We'll have some group activities and daily discussions about stuff later, but most of the time we're on our own. I think of it kind of like camp but indoors and with better food."
"Well it seems okay so far," I said, looking over the cards in my hands. "I don't know if I'll be able to handle six weeks of that much food, but I'm sure I'll get used to it."
"Of course you will, kid." He scooted next to me and looked at my cards, beginning to explain to me what was going on. We played a hand just to get me acquainted with the game, not putting any points down, then Andy went back across from me and the girl (who I still didn't know) and we played an actual hand. "So I heard we're getting another new kid," he said.
"How often are you getting new people?" I asked.
"It depends. People are constantly coming and going, because people start the program at different times so they leave at the end of their six or twelve weeks. We have tons of open space so we can get anybody at any time, you just so happened to come when someone else left so we had a space for you with a roommate. If you look around, there are people in all different levels. You've got the newbies, like yourself, who are so skinny and sickly, and then you've got people like Annabelle here, who are leaving in a few days. She looks downright normal," Andy teased, looking at the girl, who blushed and tired to hide behind her cards.
"Well I'm glad you're better, Annabelle," I said.
"Thank you," she said, avoiding eye contact with me. It was cute. I wasn't used to shy girls, considering that all the ones I'd ever been around have been extremely outgoing. My sister is very loud and very extra personal, and the rest of the girls I knew were screaming fans who did courageous things to try to meet me.
"I'm Taylor, by the way."
"Hi Taylor." I smiled. At least I'd gotten her to talk.
The day Annabelle left, another girl came in. I found out that it happened that way a lot, when someone left someone new came to take his or her place. I'd grown accustomed to my new environment, enough to know my way around without having Andy by my side to tell me "you're going the wrong way, you dolt!" I was able to keep my food down but it was still too early for them to leave me alone, so I still had people following me around wherever I went. It was sort of disheartening, but years of fame allowed me to be used to not having any privacy.
I didn't know anything about the new kid besides her name: Mimi. I was apprehensive about her arrival. She could be a fan. She very well could not be a fan, but there was always that fear that she was going to start stalking me and I wouldn't have anywhere to go. I was sure if she were a crazed fan, the management would separate the two of us, put me in hiding and never let us interact. For all I knew she could care less about me or Hanson. I was almost positive she didn't care. If she was in the clinic she had bigger issues to be worrying about.
I felt so conceited. I was preparing myself, thinking that just because the new kid was a girl, she was going to be madly in love with me. There were a hundred girls in the clinic and none of them are obsessed over me. One girl was a fan but was too set on getting better to really notice my presence.
Mimi was supposed to arrive in time for dinner, so when dinner came around Andy and I walked into the dining room looking for her. She was actually sitting at our table with Carol and Melissa. Carol looked up and beckoned us over. The new girl, sitting across from Carol, turned around to look at us. Her eyes connected with mine and widened immediately. She recognized me. She put a smile on her face and avoided looking at me. She obviously didn't know how to act. I purposely sat down next to her.
"Hi, I'm Taylor," I said. She looked at me again and shifted uncomfortably in her chair. I found it amusing. She shook her hair out of her face and I finally got a good look at her since I was closer to her. She was breathtaking. I couldn't see it clearly because she was so skinny, her cheeks sunken and the skin around her eyes black, but I saw it in there. Her actual eyes were so bright and beautiful; I couldn't look away from them. She had an expression of happiness, something I noticed the rest of the kids didn't have. I didn't have it. She seemed genuinely happy, for whatever reason, and I knew I had to get close to this girl.
"I'm Mimi."
"Welcome home."
The food came by and I saw Mimi look down at it. She glanced at her utensils and then back to her food, an eyebrow raised. "Start with the carrots and make you way clockwise, it's the only way you'll be able to eat it all in one sitting." She looked back over at me. I smiled at her.
"Thank you."
"Hey, it's the least I could do." I felt a light kick to my shin. I looked across the table at Andy. "What?" He only gave me a look and shook his head. I looked at Carol and Melissa and they were both the same way. I was doing something they don't care for. I turned back to Mimi and she was poking at her food, not exactly eating it. "They're going to make you eat it all, so you might as well try to stuff some down before they do it for you."
"How long have you been here?" she asked, looking back at me.
"Three days. I don't know much more than you." She nodded, taking a bite of her food. I knew how hard that first bite could be. I heard she was anorexic, so this was even harder for her. I still ate these past couple of months, it just turned out that I threw it up afterwards. She didn't eat. For some reason I felt a sense of warmth knowing she was eating. I didn't even know her and I was happy she was getting better. Maybe that happiness that she was emitting would rub off on me.
"How's your brother?" she asked. I paused.
"Which one?"
"Zac." She knew about Zac. Zac's condition was hidden very well from the media. None of the fans knew about the suicide attempt and we never said anything about him being the hospital. The only people who knew anything were the people who read the article in the Tulsa newspaper, and we made them make a retraction, even though the article was completely true. There was no way she could have known. "When I talked to him he seemed rather out of sorts."
"When do you talk to my brother?" I asked, turning to her.
"Oh, it was a while ago, before one of your shows. I was out running and I don't know how it happened but I met up with him and we started talking. He told me everything...I was just wondering how he was doing now."
"That was you?" I asked. "He told me about you! Mimi, thank you so much for talking to him. I owe you the world. You are the reason he actually went to see a psychiatrist. You are the reason he didn't kill himself." A smile spread over her face and she blushed.
"Really?"
"Yeah!" She looked back at her food. "He's doing really great, by the way." She took another bite of her food.
"Beautiful."
"Okay, I'm going to wait in the car. You go up there, say goodbye, get your file, and leave. If you are not back in ten minutes, I am coming after you," my mother warned me as we sat parked outside of Joy's office building. I was shaking. I was so nervous but my mother was too mad at me to notice. I'd just blown another appointment with a new psychiatrist. I blamed it on the fact that I never got to say goodbye to Joy, so my mother compromised and planned a ten-minute meeting with her before my visit to my new doctor.
"I'm going to take as long as I want," I told her. "All right?"
"You have an appointment in a half an hour."
"Then I'll be late," I said, and got out of the car. I walked into the office building, ignoring any further comments from my mother, and went straight to the elevator. I was more nervous than anything else. Joy was such a close friend of mine and I hated for her to see me since I reverted to worse than what I was when I met her.
I walked into the empty office. Joy was on her lunch hour and agreed to see me if I didn't mind her eating while I spoke with her. Linda, her secretary, was sitting at her desk in the waiting area. "Hi Zac," she said warmly. "Go on in, she's expecting you."
"Thank you," I said before walking into Joy's office. She was sitting on her couch, a pair of chopsticks digging in a carton of Chinese food as she gazed peacefully out her large window. She looked up as I entered. "Hi." She beckoned me over.
"Sit down." I walked over and realized the only place to sit was with her on the couch. It felt weird to be so close to her, but I sat down next to her. "Before I forget, your file is right there on the table. I don't know why this new guy didn't just ask me to fax it over. It would have saved you a trip."
"I wanted to," I told her. "I never got a chance to thank you or say goodbye or anything like that. I want you to know how much you really helped me."
"Don't worry about it, Zac," she said, giving me a genuine smile. It made me smile. I hadn't smiled since before my mother told me I was never to see Joy again. "It's what I'm here to do. I don't agree with your mother's decision but it's her decision to make. The hospital believed you were well enough not to legally need psychiatric help and you're a minor, so there was nothing I could do. Your mother doesn't want you to see me anymore, but at least she's trying to get you to see someone else."
"I don't want to see anybody else," I told her. "They don't know what they're talking about."
"Yes they do," she said. "The last guy you went to, Dr. Phelps, he was one of my professors in grad school. The man knows more about psychiatry than I ever will. He is old and he does smell kind of funny, but he was a smart guy. I really wished that one would last, but now you're seeing this other guy who I know nothing about."
"It won't last," I said.
"Zachary, you can't get better unless you want to get better. Even if you're not seeing me, it's for your own good. Things are really hairy right now but they don't always have to be. As trite as it is, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You can get better. You were better in our last session. You were well on your way to being amazing again. Now you walk into my office and it's gone. Everything I tried to tell you is all gone, not because your mother told you to stop seeing me, not because you don't like the other shrinks, but because you don't want to accept anybody who isn't me. I am not the world, Zac, and I hope you see that."
I stopped looking at her when she started saying the truth. She sighed and returned to her food. "I should go," I said. "I have another appointment." I stood and took my file from her table. As I walked towards the door she spoke again.
"Zac?" I turned around and looked at her. She set her carton down on the table and walked over to me. "I know I don't have any say in what you do with the rest of your life, but I need you to promise me one thing." I nodded. "No matter how hard it gets, no matter how deep of a hole you've crawled into, please promise me, as a friend, that you will not kill yourself."
"Joy, I--"
"I don't care what you do with your life," she continued, "I don't care if you run away and join the circus, or take all of the family money and move to Russia, or even if you never leave your room again, just promise me you will not kill yourself." I bit my lip, hiding back tears. She wasn't asking for my promise, she was demanding it, because she believed that I was better than suicide. She was indeed asking as a friend because I could see the tears she had in her own eyes. I nodded.
"Okay," I said. "I promise."
"Thank you, Zac." She gave me a hug before she let me leave the room.