Une Fleure Fanée

Catchup (YES IT'S A CHAPTER THAT ADDS MAJOR PLOT POINTS)

     Dear Diary,

     I wanted to recap you on what's been going on here. On the Tuesday after I went into cardiac arrest, I was transferred to UPMC Mercy just ten minutes away from the apartment complex. The staff here is really nice, and I've gotten back to eating three very small meals a day.

     I know I've gained weight, which I'm not too happy about, but Mom's proud of me. She visits me every day and tells me how proud she is of me. She says that my heart is healthy enough that I'll be released on Monday, and maybe I'll get to dance at Nationals.

     Speaking of dancing, I got a phone call from Ms. Abby the Friday after I got admitted. She called me and told me that the whole body-shaming thing was all a ruse by the producers. They had created the one about bulimia too!

     When I heard that, I was shocked. I thought the foundation of my eating disorder had stemmed from Ms. Abby, when in reality, it was from all the producers that I loved. The worst part was they knew that something was up and didn't tell the parents. They could have saved me.

     Back to the hospital. The doctors upped my prescriptions and have put me on some new meds. I'm off of Cymbalta and now I'm taking ten milligrams of Citalopram, another antidepressant. I only have to take that every two days, aka Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I need to wait four more weeks for it to start working.

     I also got my Fluoxetine prescription upped to twenty milligrams, which is double what I used to take. And I only have to take it on Sundays and Wednesdays now. Last, I have Fluvoxamine, an SSRI. I have to take 25 milligrams daily. I still get my emergency Venlafaxine too, plus my daily iron pill. Mom's gotten me a pill organizer to manage this.

     The staff here is really nice too. Especially Nurse Mark Wedel. I just call him Mark. Even though Caden and Dad have visited once, he's like a father figure to me here. I also have my roommate, Stella. She's recovering from BED. She's such a sweetheart.

     Every day, we have 30 minutes of free time in our rooms, so to keep up with dancing secretly, I've been learning old solos. I've done Chloe's "Born to Sing," Maddie's "Vertigo," my old "Step by Step" solo, Alysa's, "Fever Rising," and even Kalani's "Swan Solstice." Currently, I'm working on Nia's "Cookie" solo.

     Pressley, Brady, Hannah, and Gia have all visited. Paris and Berkleigh, who have both stayed due to my absence, haven't felt comfortable visiting me, and Sarah lives an hour and a half away, so I feel bad making her come visit.

     They've told me all the stories. They got first place in The Frug, this Bob Fosse dance. Ms. Abby has said that I'll be getting a solo if I make it back, Pressley and Brady are competing. Pressley gets a second chance!

     Apparently, for drama, Ms. Abby said I was faking it for attention and Hannah went off. Came completely out of her shell and yelled at Ms. Abby. They told me word for word.

     "Ms. Abby is saying something that isn't true! She refused to eat more than 500 calories a day for weeks and she ate nothing for nine days straight, all so you would stop pinching her stomach fat every time you wheeled by! We watched her, day by day, wither away until you could see her ribs and spine through her shirts! She had mental breakdowns and she slit her wrists and arms because 'she wasn't pretty or skinny enough to be an Abby dancer.' She has scars that she'll have to live with for the rest of her life all over her arms because of this. You knew she had already had bulimia, which didn't start when she was nine; it started when she was seven dancing for you! And yet, you kept shaming her for her body! That is not starving for attention! She was starving so you would like her more!" Hannah screams in the audio recording, clearly crying at the same time.