Page 135 of Call the Shots
“Arealone?”
“Where I was—” I dropped my voice. “—hospitalized for it.”
“June.” She motioned to the bed. “You’reinthe hospital.”
“Not for?—”
“No, don't mischaracterize this, you were that inebriatedbecauseyou haven’t been eating.” Dr. Vakil reached for a clipboard. “Bear voiced his concerns to Dr. Samuels and the bloodwork confirmed it. Your levels aren’t enough to be considered an immediate threat to yourself—Dr. Samuels will have that conversation with you—but we need to talk about your tests. This is a long-standing issue we’re looking at. I don’t know the exact time frame, but you’ve beenbrutalon your body?—”
“No—no, I’m in recovery. It’s not that bad?—”
“Some people say recovery is a road.” Dr. Vakil folded her hands. “I think that road changes as much as we do. Sometimes it’s a trail that’s difficult to hike through, sometimes it’s a tight rope across a vat of lava, sometimes it’s a field of flowers. The thing is, recovery isn’t the road itself. Recovery is the decision to keep going.”
“I’m two sizes bigger than I was in January?—”
“That doesn’t matter. You can be a hundred or a thousand pounds and if you have a problem giving your body the nutrients it needs, youstillhave an eating disorder.”
“But—”
“You’re twenty-one, June. Your body’s changing and developing because you’re getting older. You won’t always look like how you did at eighteen, or even twenty-one for that matter. That’s not a realistic expectation.”
My lower lip wobbled. “It’s not supposed to be like this.”
She had a cool, calm exterior when she spoke, like she’d had this conversation a thousand times before—and she probably had—but sympathy flashed across her eyes and that hurt worse than anything she said.
“My clinic’s in Austin but we have a sister branch in Houston,” she said, digging a card from her pocket. “When you get to the ocean, you can hear it, right? The water? The seagulls?”
Slowly, I nodded.
“At our clinic, we say that having an eating disorder is like avoiding the ocean. You don’t want to get in the water because once you do, you can’t get out. At this moment, this is the warning before you step to the sand. The seagulls are here, June. You can hear them. You can still stop before you touch the water.”
I hadto talk with Dr. Samuels and fill out paperwork before I was allowed to leave. I spotted Miles and Cleo in the waiting room first, both with coffees in hand.
“Oh my god,” Cleo breathed out and hurried to me, enveloping me in a tight hug.
“Hi,” I croaked. “I’m sorry?—”
“Do you remember what bars you went to?” she demanded while Miles hugged me too. “We can sue for alcohol poisoning. Did you pay with cash or card? I have the Marrs lawyers on speed dial.”
“Alcohol…?” I trailed off, catching sight of Bear.
Miles and Cleo must’ve run to grab a shower but there was no way Bear left the hospital. His clothes were disheveled, his hair was stuck up in places, his eyes were bloodshot. He looked awful.
Slowly, he shook his head and tipped his chin to Cleo.
Bear didn’t tell them.
A whirlwind of emotions hit me because that meant Bearknew.I’d been hiding my condition for so long that the idea of anyone finding out petrified me. But the longer I gazed at Bear, the longer the fear settled into something else. I was still scared but if someone had to find out, I was weirdly relieved it was Bear. Not for any tactical reasons, like we had secrets to hold over each other, but because…
I had no idea why I was so grateful it was him.
“We’re just glad you’re okay,” Miles said.
“I said you had a family emergency,” Cleo said. “Do you want to rest at the hotel? Or we can take you to the place we’re renting?”
My eyes met Bear’s. “Are you going to Houston?”
He nodded. “We can pick up your suitcase on the way.”
