When An Accident Prone No One Marries A Celebrity There Will Be Chaos...

Chapter 16

A/N: Wait? What's this? An update not months apart? SUPRISE! I have finally got my act together and started writing again. HUZZAH! Unless I get hit by writer's block updates should be a lot more frequent now. I just have one last exam tomorrow (wish me luck because I need it.) and then I might actually have the gift of free time! And once again thank you for your patience. I still can't believe the support I have got for this story!

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The last time I was in hospital I was eleven years old and it seems like it was an eternity ago. Yet the memories seem just as fresh as if they had happened yesterday. I can remember very clearly being bundled into the car by my Mum and Dad to visit Gran. Georgie and I were too young to really understand the severity of the problem. We had no idea that less than two weeks later we would be attending the funeral of our Gran. We didn’t even know she was that ill. So we bickered and argued the entire way to the hospital like every other car journey we undertook that age, unaware that my Mum was silently sobbing in the front and that Dad was too distraught to discipline us for acting up. Looking back I am ashamed I didn’t notice what was going on. But I was only eleven and no one wanted to tell me what was really going on so I was kept in the dark. I had no idea what was coming. The black cloud approaching was hidden beneath euphemisms and lies.

Within moments of stepping foot in hospital I decided I hated it. Too clean. Too characterless. Too strict. It was the last place on earth I belonged. I wanted to turn around immediately and go back home instead of being stuck in the entrapping, blinding white, winding corridors of the hospital. But of course I didn’t get my way.

Before we went into Gran’s ward Dad had a private word with us about how we needed to behave, letting Mum walk on. Gran wasn’t feeling very well at all. We needed to be on our best behaviour because she needed to see us on our best behaviour. No running, no arguing and no screaming. Just be good. Of course Georgie and I still didn’t understand so we let the little warning go straight over our heads. As far as I was concerned Gran had a bad cold and that was all she most certainly didn’t have cancer. But my Dad had sounded serious so I obeyed his requests and walked in very subdued for the hyperactive child I was. We walked passed the rows of other people’s grandparents but my Gran wasn’t as ill as them. My Gran was fine. She would be sat at the back of the ward laughing her sweet little giggle and complaining how she was missing the village fair the next day. But as we neared her bed there were no giggles and no conversation. Just silence and the sound of Mum’s muffled tears. I wish someone had told me now. Dad had the perfect opportunity to tell me that my Gran was dying as he held us back for the conversation on our behaviour. But he didn’t. So I was left to find out for myself.

It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life when Gran eventually came into view. Far from the laughing, smiling and light-hearted image of her I was expecting she was completely helpless. She was barely even awake. Her eye lids fluttered as if to acknowledge she had visitors but she didn’t have the energy to open them. The animated woman I had once known had disappeared leaving a frail, delicate shell of a person who looked as if she would snap in half if shaken lightly. The only way I could accurately describe her was helpless, completely and utterly helpless. It was the shock of suddenly seeing her for how she was not the idea I had created in my mind that got me. I can remember taking one look at her and bursting into tears in despair. I was looking at a stranger. This frail victim wasn’t my Gran and I wanted her back. It is one of the worst memories of my childhood and I will never forget the horror of that first glance at her.

I had hoped that I would never have to experience anything as horrific as that ever again in my life. But I wasn’t so lucky. Now as I look at my reflection in the mirror I finally see the severity of my problem. I see the cancer I had disguised as a cold. I have been starving myself. My hair, once wild and out of control, lays limp around my face so exhausted it can barely bring itself to curl. A desperate hunger haunts my expression and even as I smile at myself I can’t remove the miserable gloom surrounding me. I’ve become the frail shell. I have become the stranger and just as I had cried on seeing my Gran all those years ago, I cried at seeing the stranger in my reflection. I looked at her pale, papery skin and the way her hip bones jutted out obscurely and hated her. I hated the way she had made me think, I hated the way she had taken over my life and I hated everything she represented. For the first time I see what everyone else had been seeing. I looked disgusting. I was sickly and skinny and ugly. In that moment I was fixed. I wanted myself back. I wanted back the wild hair I could never tame, I wanted back the perpetual smile and sunny disposition, I wanted the healthy glow back and most importantly I wanted back my body. It was insanity. Pure insanity. For a person who prides herself on intelligence I haven’t the slightest clue how I possibly let this happen to me. How could I have been so stupid? How did I let a snotty brat like Melody Bloom destroy me?