Hardy Detective Agency featuring Hardy Boys Fan Fiction

Laura Hardy was dizzy. The lights felt too bright, the smells of sterility made breathing difficult. How did they get here? They’d been trying, they had been, they’d been making their younger son eat and stopped him from exercising. How could he have been doing this, throwing up, disintegrating behind their backs? Why didn’t they think to check, when he disappeared so quickly from meals, when he was still losing weight?

“I’m sorry.”

Frank’s voice jolted her out of her shock, and she turned to her elder son, slumped and weary with his head in his hands, his voice muffled but still escaping from between them.

“It’s my fault. I should have checked on him. I should have talked to him more.”

“Frank, this is not your fault,” Fenton jumped in, making his way over to his son from the wall he’d been leaning against. He was clutching a psychology book in his hand, The Anatomy of Anorexia, marked up with post-it notes. They’d bought it only hours before, sitting together, pouring over notes, discussing their son’s symptoms realizing that they’d been avoiding the word “anorexia” because it just hadn’t seemed possible that this illness could be inflicting their son. But reading more and more they knew that this is what Joe was facing—and that there was much going on beneath Joe’s bright, handsome surface that none of them had been aware of.

“We are just as responsible,” Laura said firmly.

“That’s right,” Fenton affirmed. “Your mother and I could have done more, been more observant…who knows. No one’s to blame.”

“I wouldn’t even have gone upstairs,” Frank whispered. “He would have been lying up there and I wouldn’t even have gone to check—“ the boy’s voice broke and Laura saw his hands start to tremble.

“Oh, honey,” she murmured, putting an arm around him and stroking his hair back. She knew how difficult this was, for her older son to sit back and watch his brother hurting himself and be helpless to stop it, he who had always looked out for his younger brother, defending and protecting him from the dark, the monsters in the closet, bullies at school, their enemies on cases—but Joe’s own mind? Frank could try, was trying, had always been trying, but when it came down to it he was powerless. No one but his elder brother had ever been able to force the youngest Hardy into doing anything he didn’t want to, and even Frank had confided in his mother on more than one occasion when he’d been unable to sway his brother’s decisions.

“Mr. and Mrs. Hardy?”

The three looked up as a woman in a business suit approached them.

“That’s us,” Laura said, sitting straighter, bracing herself for news.

“Hi, I’m Dr. Barbara Ziv, I’m a counselor here. May I have a seat?”

“Of course. Do you have any information on our son?”

The doctor took a seat and crossed her legs, then opened a file she’d been carrying with her. Laura liked the look of her; she was confident and held herself well, but there was sympathy in her expression and youthful look about her, not at all the old stereotypical men she’d imagined.

“Your son is in a room at the moment. As far as I understand he’s doing just fine. Dr. Roth should be along in a bit to explain farther, but in the meantime he’s asked if you would allow me to evaluate your son’s mental health.”

Laura felt her heart leap at the world ‘mental health,’ picturing psyche wards, leather couches, emaciated women with cigarettes, straight jackets…not her smiling, bright, handsome younger son.

Please not her son.

“Are you all familiar with anorexia and bulimia?” Dr. Ziv asked.

The words jolted all three; too official. It couldn’t be official.

“Yes,” Fenton spoke finally. “And we’re aware that Joe is suffering from them.”

Frank drew a deep breath and sat back, clenching his hands in to fists. But looking at him, Laura would swear he was calm. He was certainly trying to be; as always. Frank, the strong one, the organized one, the model older child, never allowing his emotions to get the better of him, always patient and relaxed and ready for anything.

No one, Laura thought sadly, ever really knew what went on beneath that solid exterior but Joe. Whether this was because Frank chose to confide in his brother or Joe simply knew how to push secret buttons no one else could find Laura had never known; but it had been clear, since they were toddlers, that her elder son adored his younger brother. It had been Joe who had drawn the shyer, quieter Frank into groups of other children, Joe who had been quick to stand up to bullies, Joe who knew when Frank needed to be touched or hugged or comforted, Joe who was never denied entrance into his brother’s room, into the darker and more turbulent parts of himself.

And Frank had returned all this by being the steady, calming presence the more emotional Joe so often needed, the older brother who had defended him from the unfairness of the bigger world he walked in to first, the older brother who never went too far ahead but lulled behind to wait for his younger sibling, the pair so intertwined that she knew would not, could not, ever be the same without the other.

Why am I thinking that? How could I think that? Joe’s here, he’s getting help, we all know what we’re facing now, we’ll help him, we’ll get him through this.

“I’ll be frank,” Dr. Ziv said, bringing Laura back from her musings. “From what I understand, your son is about twenty pounds below a normal, healthy body weight for someone of his age and height. That, combined with the use of Ipecac, his admission of throwing up his food, and his firm denial about there being a problem pretty much requires the hospital to give him a psychiatric evaluation.”

“What will you do?” Frank asked.

“Just talk to him. Ask him questions about his body, how he feels about it. Watch his responses. See if his behavior points toward an eating disorder and depression. The two go hand in hand.”

“And…” Laura asked, amazed at the calmness of her voice, “if he does?”

“Then we’ll see about admitting him for a few weeks, to do intensive therapy and have his meals monitored. With your permission, of course. All this needs to be done through you.”

Laura looked at Fenton over her older son’s head. The two held each other’s gaze for a moment; Fenton slowly nodded, and Laura turned back to the doctor.

“Do what you have to,” she finally said.

Frank rose suddenly and disappeared out from the waiting room door and down the hall; Fenton handed her the book he’d been clutching harder than he’d realized and quickly followed his elder son.

Oh Joe, Laura thought, shaking the doctor’s hand and thanking her, don’t you realize by killing yourself, you’re starving Frank of you?

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Disclaimer

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The Hardy Boys Fan Fiction authors of the Hardy Detective Agency have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.