These Demons

Chapter Forty-eight

Cold sweat covers my forehead when my hands grasp the sheets underneath me to provide my shaking body with the least of stability as I attempt to sit up in the bunk, but I fail and my shoulder blades painfully hit the thin mattress again, a sigh erupting from my throat as I blink against the light shining through the closed curtains and try to figure out what's happening to me. 

I'm glad what just occurred was nothing but a nightmare, but there are still four questions left unanswered: Why would I dream something like this, why would Zoe tell me something like this and, most importantly, where am I and how did I get here? 

Distressed by the holes in my memory and the pictures in my mind of the girl I tried so hard to forget, I make another attempt at leaving this bed and succeed when I do it slowly and carefully. 

Instead of focusing on the trembling in my muscles that makes every step difficult, I try to focus on taking my usual pills I've been storing in a backpack of mine next to my bed wherever I am because nobody I know would ever dare to touch that and it's always near me. 

I swallow a few laxatives that I know won't help me lose weight and just water, but I've actually been needing them for their original purpose because the long-term starvation has completely wrecked my digestion and painfully stopped my natural bowel movements, and after getting those down with a few gulps of water from a bottle I keep next to them, I add a handful of vitamins, magnesium, calcium and drugstore diet pills because I feel safer knowing I have taken those.
Never having attended one of the scheduled counseling sessions, I was never given the opportunity to take any prescription pills either, but knowing some of those list weight gain and sleepiness as side effects, I'm rather certain I would never swallow them anyway.

This bus is visibly a double decker to be able to transport the whole crew and not just the band and even though I don't remember coming here, I know the exact location of everything in here because all the band buses I've ever seen had the exact same structure. 
I'm in the back of the upper floor because that's where the bunks always are, and once I've passed by those and shoved away the clothes on the floor with my boots I quickly slipped into and left untied, I decide to pass by the bathroom because I can't handle looking at my reflection right now, and then I have to choose between staying in the front where the kitchen with the food is and heading downstairs where the living room section with couches, a TV and possibly several other human beings is. 
As gross it is to be surrounded by food, I still prefer it to people, and besides, I can at least drink something and sit down on a chair. 
Relieved to see I'm alone and in silence, I decide to brew some coffee while checking the schedules someone somehow always remembers to stick to the fridge. It's fascinating how buses filled with grown men are always filthy after less than an hour they're on the road, but no matter how dirty, there is always someone who does not forget to put the schedules in the exact same place. It's never been established who's supposed to do that, but the messy system seems to work and is a true lifesaver.

I knew we're on our US tour, but what these sheets also tell me is that we're in Buffalo now- which means that we must have been driving for at least six hours to get here and I don't remember a minute of that.
What happened?
What is happening to me in general? My stomach ties in knots when I think about it, but I can't do anything about it anyway and have enough on my plate, so I try to focus on what's happening today instead.
Freaking out will only cause me to pass out and possibly miss or forget (or both) even more.
I'll deal with those holes later, but now it's 1 PM and I have to deal with today. 

Below the venue's name, it says we'll access it at 2 PM which is when the load-in, set-up and the soundchecks will happen one after another, neatly scheduled to prevent chaos, so I believe I have an hour until the hustle starts, but then I look at the sticky notes below today's plan with all the stuff we have to remember and regard, and those inform me that there will be another quick interview at 1:30 and an extra note says it's one 'Andy only' and I'm not entirely sure how to feel about that, but cancelling thirty minutes before the appointment isn't an option, so I finish going through the schedule, check my unsurprisingly disappointing reflection in my phone screen and head downstairs with my coffee.
I've been wearing these clothes since last night after our show, but I only wear colorless baggy shirts and loose jeans, so nobody will notice anyway and a little deodorant will fix the smell. 
Zoe's agonizing cries continue to echo in the back of my mind, but I try my hardest to convince my conscience that the words were just a product of my nightmare and she's no longer a part of my life.
This crap is my life and I have to handle it. 

"Look who has risen from his short coma," Ashley comments with a sarcastically sounding chuckle and the sickness in my stomach grows.
All of my bandmates are gathered around the circle of black couches in the TV corner next to the front door, and when I enter the room, all the eyes shoot up from their snacks, phones and books (Jinxx is the only one who actually reads here) to eye me up and down which, as always, makes me deeply uncomfortable because I'm terrified of the way they are certainly judging me at this very second. 

"Short coma?" I repeat, my voice shaking, and consider leaving right away, but I really can't do that and don't feel capable of walking far anyway, so I just sit down on a free spot and hold onto the hot mug as if my life depended on it.
"We only spent the night at the hotel so you'd get better, but you obviously weren't. As soon as we left the hotel and got onto the bus, you headed straight to bed and passed out like a zombie," Jake casually notes, but Ashley shakes his head.
"Zombies don't sleep."
"Vampires sleep during the day," CC throws in and the other two nod as if this was a really serious conversation, and I almost scoff, but keep my mouth shut because I'm glad fictional figures are the topic instead of me.
"You slept like a vampire without a daylight ring or a sparkle then," Jake corrects himself, but earns rolled eyes from the other two.
"Vampire Diaries?" Ash raises a condescending eyebrow at him, but CC shakes his head.
"The real problem is Twilight," he states, and CC goes all defensive. "Hey! You can't deny how hot Rosalie and Katherine are!"
"I know neither of them and I don't care either," Jake responds and takes another bite from his organic protein granola bar thingy. 
"They're really fucking-"

"Shut up. All of you," Jinxx sharply interrupts and slams his book to make it even more dramatic and eccentric, and it actually works. 
"Andy, are you feeling better?" he finally asks me, and my answer is clear before I think about it.
"A bit, yeah," I dishonestly reply with an appropriately dishonest smile.
"You still haven't taken the medicine I got you this morning," he notes, his brows furrowed, and I sigh.
"Yeah, I must have forgotten about that."
More like I purposely didn't take that stuff because I actually don't have a cold, but this pretended sickness is the only excuse available at the moment, so I'll have to play along with it. 
"You can take the meds before you go to the interview," he suggests and I nod to make things easier.
"Sure."

Jake and Ashley keep joking about my comatose sleeping habits in the back, causing CC to laugh occasionally, and Jinxx just rolls his eyes, but as hard as I try to ignore all of it and focus on my appointment, I can't shake the worries my blackouts are causing me. I've had them for weeks or even longer now, but they've never been this bad and they've certainly never caused memory loss or nightmares.
And now this happens twice?
I woke up this morning and couldn't remember how I'd gotten to the hotel, and now I just woke up in my bunk and the same thing had happened?
What the hell?

Something is wrong with me.
Is this because of my starvation?
But it never did anything like this to me.
Why would this happen now when I've been doing so well for so long? I've been depressed and hurting, sure, and the dizziness and trembling are familiar now, but none of this ever seriously concerned me. 

But this? This does.

I completely lost myself when I went out before our show in NYC yesterday, then I couldn't remember the night after that and to make things worse, I passed out during the middle of the day and forgot about it.
That's not normal. Not even for me. I'm losing myself- for real this time. This is serious and even though I can't speak up about it, I'm afraid of it.
But if I'm being honest, what's probably even worse is that I won't stop doing what I'm doing with or to my body.
No matter what it will do to me.
No matter how much worse this may get.
A part of me wishes I could talk to someone.
But I can't.
And an even tinier part wishes I could stop, but that's absolutely impossible.
I have to keep going and pay the price.

----

Bowling For Soup - 1985