54

 

In the weeks that followed I put so much shit inside me that it was no wonder my body decided to turn itself inside out. I woke in the night, fighting to make myself small, ball up around the fire in my stomach, and yet my body riled against my efforts, stretching itself, attempting to empty itself of anything and everything within me. I crawled from the bed and out into the draft of the hallway, the filth of the bathroom, retching, gagging, vomiting into the toilet bowl with such aggression that it splashed back out, streaking my face and neck with acid. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, although it was the most violent. I’d been throwing up for close on three weeks, sending me into a state of panic that had made me sicker still, staggering down the road to the chemist and peeing on a stick in the public toilets near the Methodist church. I’d celebrated with a line of speed and half a bottle of flat cava left over from a wedding at the hotel when the test came back negative.

I begged the lads at the bedsits to call me an ambulance but none of them would, said it wouldn’t be a good idea to have them sniffing around. A good idea for who? I’d tried to ask, but all that came out was a croak.

There was a new bloke staying there; he was from Wales, I think. He made me lie down on my side in case I choked, drink small sips of water through a straw, left a bowl by the bed for when it started happening again. Which it did, over and over. When the morning came, he borrowed someone’s car to drive me to the clinic near Mary’s house. It felt strange being up that way, passing buildings and faces and bends in the road that had once been a part of my every day.

The doctor said it was an ulcer, that the lining of my stomach was so inflamed there wasn’t enough room for food to pass through. Lots of reasons why it can happen, he said, peering over the top of his glasses at me. Although you’re a bit young.

What sort of reasons? I asked, bent double with the pain.

He leaned back in his chair, eyeing me warily. Stress, he said. Over-consumption of alcohol. Excessive use of aspirin. Recreational drugs. He set his eyes squarely on me then. Would any of these apply to you, Jennifer?

Yeah— I started, but then caught myself. Yeah. I get a lot of headaches. Too much aspirin, probably, I’d say.

The doctor looked at me hard, then nodded, unconvinced. I see, he grimaced. Well, I can certainly write you a prescription. Although it obviously won’t do you any good, if your lifestyle is…incompatible.

In the car on the way back to the hotel I’d laughed at his choice of words. Lifestyle. Lifestyle. Lifestyle. He made it sound so fancy. The lad from Wales didn’t get the joke, told me to stop acting so fucking weird.

The medication stopped me throwing up, but it didn’t fix me. Something had burrowed inside me, made my insides its nest: dread in the form of a creature that festered in the darkest part of me. Still now, when I wake up each morning, I feel it, niggling and scratching and biting. That’s why I do all the things I do, the blocking out, the counting, anything to fill up my head. I want to quash it, to suffocate it. And it works, for the most part. Nothing can grow if you don’t let it breathe.