Midnight. Thursday morning at midnight.
The diarrhea began.
The vomiting followed shortly after. Lucy could not remember the last time she had vomited. Could not remember the last time she was sick. Yet, here she was, bent over the vomit covered floor right next to her bed. God, the smell was horrible. It was as if the stench itself reached down her throat to yank out the contents of her stomach.
It burned. She felt it burn as the vomit shot it's way up like a rocket. The first vomiting episode took her by surprise and she only had time to aim her head toward the floor. Three waves came one after the other just like that. It shot up so forcefully that it came out of her nose and she could not breathe as she puked all over the floor. A ripple of panic surged through her. She felt like she was going to die because she was actually not able to breathe as the vomit kept coming out of her. After the third time, she took a deep inhale, only to vomit once again.
She pulled about eight paper towels just to get the damn mess off of her floor and even sanitized it. The smell, while less horrible, refused to leave completely. It smelled like oily tuna and death. She would never forget that smell for the rest of her life.
God, the pain. Her stomach hurt so badly. When she re-showered at one in the morning, she collapsed again on her bed, willing her stomach to stop hurting. She put a finger in her nose and pulled out a chunk of something she ate for supper. Beyond grossed out, she flicked it off her finger and opened her windows to get the smell out.
Three hours later, she was back in the bathroom, but was better prepared this time. She felt the pulsing between her breasts and she had gone over to the sink and braced her hands on the edge. The force was so strong that the vomit splashed in the sink and hit her back in the face. Was this how she was going to die? She didn't know if her unable to breathe was worse than feeling the diarrhea wanting it's time in the spotlight, while she was still puking her guts out.
When she got up a few times after that, she began to see black spots in the peripherals of her vision and sprinted back to her bed so she wouldn't hurt herself if she passed out. Everything hurt. Her room smelled like death and the smell clung to everything.
She asked Keisha to buy her a bottle of Gatorade. She did not trust her body not to blackout in the middle of the street. For the entire day, she slept, ate brown sugar, slept, pooped, drank salt water, slept, messaged her sister and brother. It must have started to affect Lucy's brain because it had the audacity to fantasize about Adam taking care of her. About him lying in the bed next to her and rubbing her belly in soothing circles. Him buying stuff for her and fussing over her. But the reality was that if Keisha had not bought the Gatorade for her, she could not have been able to ask anyone else. Including Adam.
She did not know why she even thought of him. In fact, since this time seemed ideal for reflection, she began to remember the times that she herself had ignored Adam. She had seen him in the ER, seen him see her and completely ignored him. She had seen him in that store and realized she had not even really wanted to say "Hi" to him. She had seen him walk off twice before that and simply not care if he said hi to her or not. She had not cared at all.
Lucy began to wonder if she had ever really wanted Adam after all. Maybe before, she did. But now? All signs were saying otherwise. Maybe she had just wanted to be wanted.
She had about eight episodes of diarrhea on Friday and was just weak on the Saturday. Where she had to wash all her clothes by hand to get the smell off of them. She had not told her parents because she did not want them to worry. But she wanted to confide in her brother, so she did. And she told her sister who she asked for advise. Since even just the smell of food made her nauseous, she did not eat anything from the start of the vomiting.
So from Thursday at midnight, throughout Friday and part of Saturday, she had no food. Fifty-hours and a half. That's how long she spent fasting. She broke it with a bag of chips and a few sips of Gatorade. Then fasted twenty-four hours later before breaking it with a lentil sandwich. Twenty-four hours after that she had macaroni with lentils and black beans. The following twenty-four hours, she drank a finger millet drink that left her feeling immensely better and later, when she felt like she was about to collapse, she made sautéed soy chunks with cabbage and macaroni.
As she walked about her room, she felt like part of her was trying to float in and out of her body. Nothing like feeling nauseous. She knew what that was. But this felt like there were two of her and one was trying to leave her body. She felt something flowing in her blood. It felt like a force. Some sort of power flowing through her. The weaker her physical body felt, the more she felt it flow through her.
Last night, she dreamt that she saw Dr. Evans walking past her. Lucy huffed and swore under her breath. Then she looked ahead of her, saw a vehicle and just knew that Dr. Evans was Adam's girlfriend now and he was in the vehicle. She knew he saw the look of hate on Lucy's face. She was immediately mortified. Then she saw a past classmate that had did her wrong in the dream and instead of ignoring or attacking her, she put an arm around her shoulder and laughed. It felt so unnatural to do at first, but Lucy felt immensely better afterwards. Maybe it was a reminder for Lucy to be kind, no matter the circumstances.
People went through so many things that others did not know about and sometimes being kind can make a world of difference to someone in ways you could not imagine. Lucy was wondering if she had any regrets in her life. She had plenty, she realized with no small amount of horror. Every single regret was when she responded to something with a negative word or emotion. When she felt anger or disdain and acted on it. Those were where her regrets lay. Maybe that was something her dream was warning her about as well. To not react negatively towards anything despite what you feel...because you will essentially be the one with regrets.
