All through school they’d taunted her. They called her names because she wasn’t thin like the popular girls.
It had hurt her terribly at the time. She came home crying. She’d even started harming herself. They had made her loathe her appearance. Every bump and curve.
Her mother had supported her through those difficult years and then she had met the love of her life. In his eyes, she wasn’t overweight, she was the perfect size. It was everyone else who was too thin.
He taught her to love herself. It was ironic that once she began to appreciate herself, she lost weight. She’d never be skinny, but she became more toned as she no longer felt the need to seek comfort from her eating. She felt loved and felt good about herself.
Her wedding day remained one of the happiest of her life. She felt great and looked great and she was surrounded by people who loved her.
Not long after her honeymoon she was just starting a night-shift at the hospital when she came face to face with a demon from her past.
She had been assigned to the ward for severe eating disorders. On the rounds she saw one of those girls who had tormented her back at school, Lucinda Jessop. She had been one of the ring leaders. She had been tall and slim with beautiful long flowing hair, she had wanted to be a ballerina. Lucinda lay there, the same eyes, but sunken into a face that looked like all the flesh had been boiled away. It was amazing how much a person could change in ten years and yet she still recognised her.
Lucinda recognised her too, as she entered the room and lifted her wrist to take her pulse, the patient looked up at her.
“I know you don’t I?” She said in a quiet breathy voice. “You’re Brenda Weston aren’t you?”
“Yes, Brenda Kaufman now. Please just rest, I am taking your pulse.”
“I envied you, you know. I was so flat chested and you had large breasts. I wanted to be like you. You also had a loving family. Mine didn’t give a damn about me. I wanted so hard to please them. They never loved me.”
Her pulse was rapid and getting faster. She called for the Doctor.
Doctor Phillips came in and took over treating the woman.
In the early hours of the morning, in the rest area, she saw Doctor Phillips again and walked over to her.
“Doctor, how’s the patient? I need to declare I was at school with her. Perhaps I should be reassigned to a different ward.”
Doctor Phillips pushed her hand through her short brown hair and took a deep breath before speaking.
“There’s no need to do that Nurse. You knew her did you? Well, I’m sorry to tell you, but she died just a couple of hours ago. We have been treating her for several weeks now, trying to get nutrients back into her body. The damage had already been done to her organs, I’m afraid. You know, in all this time, no one’s been in to visit her. It’s very sad. She was just too thin.”
Copyright: Kristian Fogarty 16/May/2018
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/thin/
via Daily Prompt: Thin
Tales from the mind of Kristian 
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