In the spotlight

26

Sofia Christensen

Click-clack.

I snapped my head toward the ticking sound. A huge clock looked down on me, hanging on the cream-colored wall of the office. The rythmic clicking sounds indicated the passage of time, feeling as if it were slower than usual.

I turned my head away, letting out a heavy sigh. The room around me was completely empty, filled with nothing but furniture and the clicking sound of the clock. I was sitting in front of a dark brown mahogany desk, next to a same-colored but tall and standing cabinet, partially covered with glass.

Behind the glass, there were lots of different medical items scattered around on the shelves. Stethoscopes and medical needles were the closest to me, but farther away I could see multiple boxes of medicine and plastic representations of skeletons, nerve systems, and even a human heart.

The doctor's office always gave me the ick. The smell of sterile disinfectant, the anatomy statues, and the lots of medicine on display unsettled me deeply. Especially in my current mental state.

If the decision had depended on me, I would have missed this quarterly checkup again. The doctor's office was the last place I wanted to be as of right now, but sometimes life gets in the way of things you have already planned.

I convinced myself to attend a Valentino photoshoot yesterday. There was nothing else I wanted more than to get better both mentally and physically, and thinking that the first step towards that goal is leaving my house more often, I accepted the invitation at once.

Unfortunately for me, I forgot to eat beforehand. Well, "eating" is a harsh overexaggeration of me trying to force food down my throat, but let's just stick with the human word for it. After leaving my apartment running on some water and a few spoons of yogurt I had eaten the day before, I felt normal.

By normal, I mean that the headache was mild, and the other aches in my body were kind of moderate. At this point, I was so used to the symptoms that it seemed as if they hadn't existed at all. Unfortunately, my brain can be tricked very easily, but my body will continue feeling the weakness, and this is exactly what happened during the photoshoot.

I stood in front of the huge white screen, under the familiar ring lights that felt like home. The photographer eyed me suspiciously as usual; even when I was fully clothed, my face showed the signs of my very obvious eating disorder, evoking the old time at age 16 when I went through this for the first time.

I successfully managed to stop the photographer from asking me questions and just do his job so I could go home as early as I could. This was the plan; however, at my level of weakness, I couldn't hold on until getting out of the shoot.

I didn't even remember fainting. One second, I was facing the camera, listening to the instructions of the man behind it. The next moment, everybody gathered around me in shock, and I was lying on the floor. Somebody was fanning me with their hands while another unknown person dialed my manager.

According to the witnesses, I collapsed like a ragdoll when you stopped holding it above the ground. Without showing any signs of an illness, panic almost erupted. Some people thought my heart just stopped suddenly, and to be fair, even for me, the blackout has felt like that.

Jamie came rushing to the scene, helping me out, and pointed at his car with a very serious look at his face. I haven't even tried to resist or argue anymore; I was too weak for even that. His facial expression reminded me of my dad's when I was regularly playing football with the other kids in Oslo and came home all bruised and sometimes bloody. I knew he was trying to look angry, but deep down he was worried about me.