New Beginnings (undergoing editing)

Chapter (22) Movie Night

Recap: James POV

"Hey Sam, so I wanted to talk with you about last night... I need you to be totally honest with me when I say this. I'm not going to mad and neither will Toby, but do you have an eating disorder?"  She nods her head. Holy crap....

Currently: James POV:

Before I even can comprehend what I'm doing, I bring Sam closer to me and hug her. I hear her apologize over and over into the fabric of my shirt. So I shush her saying, "Its okay. It's not your fault."

She eventually stops crying, and then I pick her up and take her to the upstairs bathroom. I sit her down on the bathroom countertop and pour some cold water on to a cloth.

I gently dab it around her eyes to make the redness from her crying go away. The last thing that she needs right now is someone questioning why her eyes are all red and sometimes people are too nosy.

After the redness goes away in her eyes, I carry her back downstairs on my back, jumping every other couple of steps which makes her giggle and gives her the hiccups.

We get to the bottom of the stairs and I put her down on the couch in the living room with Lewis, Mark and Liza. She starts to laugh at something that someone said on the tv and then I know that she's somewhat comfortable and I leave the room.

I go into the kitchen to find Toby cutting fruit and his fingers in the process, "sweetheart your chopping more finger than fruit." I say chuckling into his ear. He smiles and turns around, so I snake my arms around his hips.

"Sam has an eating disorder... did you know?" I ask him the million-dollar question while putting my head into the crook of his neck. We haven't exactly had the time to catch up on everything that's happened the past couple of days. So there's been no check ins to figure out what we both know about her.

"Okay so, I had my suspicions about the eating disorder thing. I weighed her when we were upstairs yesterday, and she weighs barely nothing. And I read the file that the orphanage lady gave us... it's not the greatest. It's hard to read and somethings in it are just plain awful. Other things don't have a bad enough word to do it justice." He says.

"She's had a rough past, so I think that you should read the binder slash file thing. It's under our bed, in the loose floorboard. I didn't want anyone to accidentally come across it if we didn't want them too." He explains vaguely out to me.

I nod in understanding and go upstairs quietly that way there Sam won't hear me and get suspicious and think that we are up to something.

I reach our room and crawl under the bed and move the floorboard to reveal the binder that is pretty thick for a teenager that hasn't been in the foster care system for a couple years. Damn it I hate reading. Especially all that small reading. I think I need glasses.

I sit down on the bed and open the file slowly like if I did it to fast then it would explode and kill me. The first page of her file is her picture that must've been at least two years old. She looks sad, depressed and not healthy at all. Other than her picture it has all of her basic information.

Sticky-noted to the front of the first page of Sam's case is in someone's neat and cursive writing, Sam has refused to eat for almost four days now. Please make her eat.
   -Mrs. Rose

She knew that we wanted to adopt her right from the beginning. I take the sticky-note off and put it on the cover of her record.

Age: 13
Birthday: April 21st
Record: -Juvie 3 times, fighting (1), and drug running (2), history of being sexually, verbally, and physical abused. She was also, neglected, starved, and has violent tendencies.
Mental health disorders: OCD, Depression, severe anxiety, social anxiety, PTSD.
Parents: She was abused until she was ten by her parents. Who are now deceased. Killed in a car crash in front of her.