Chapter 4: How Is He?
SANDY
Sandy looked out her kitchen window at the muted gray morning sky, wondering how Nathan was doing and worrying about him.
Despite his family situation, despite all the obstacles, everyone on his treatment team felt comfortable saying he was a success story. He had finally learned to not only follow the recovery plan laid out for him, but he had also learned to believe in it and believe in what it meant for him. They had not had a patient like him. He was only the second male eating disordered patient she had worked with, the first lasting only a few days before signing himself out, and the first she had ever been primary nurse to. He simply—finally—wanted to get better and move on.
At least the team agreed to transition him to the day hospitalization program, but she worried about the weekend gap between his discharge and the start of his treatment. Dr. Panzer and Dr. Jamitrack both felt he could handle it, but she couldn’t shake the feeling it was too much freedom too soon. He had no one to officially check in on him until Monday, and he was staying at the Andover Inn downtown because the family they had lined up for him to live with after his discharge backed out at the last minute.
It felt rushed to Sandy. It felt dangerous for Nathan.
She reached for her keys and drove downtown with thinking, propelled by her concern for Nathan. She parked in the Andover Inn’s lot downtown, hoping to see a sign of him. She saw him leave a little after eleven. She gave a little start, like she had been shocked by a static charge. She slumped down in her car a bit, but she didn’t need to; she wore one of her daughter’s baseball caps and had her Oakley sunglasses on, plus Nathan had never seen her Malibu before. There was no way he would have recognized her.
He looked good to her. He looked healthy. On the thin side, but healthy. Funny, on 8-D, he seemed bigger somehow. Outside the hospital, he looked like a normal guy his age. No one watching him would ever guess where he’d been these last months.
But she knew.
She shouldn’t be here watching out for him. But lunchtime wasn’t too far off. He left the hotel, which meant he was probably out scouting for a place to eat. He was all right, at least for now, at least for today. “You can do this, Nathan,” she said softly, as if someone might hear her and discover what she was doing.
She hoped he didn’t try to eat somewhere scary just to face his fears, like the burger bar or the pizza place. If he did, she hoped he had his thought restructures with him. She didn’t think he had one specifically for those places, but he may have written some new ones since his release. If he didn’t have one written down, she hoped he could make one up on the spot in his head and be all right. He was a smart kid. He’d know he didn’t have to have it written down to use the process.
She watched him turn left onto the sidewalk, jam his hands into his pockets, hunch his shoulders a bit, and disappear. She leaned back in her seat, exhaling, surprised she’d been holding her breath. She repressed an urge to follow him and instead went home to her daughter, who needed her mother more than Nathan needed his former nurse.
