THINNER
by
Antigone
Chapter 40
The Chapters
“How’re you holding up?”
Joe shrugged and shivered. He and Frank were sitting outside the
nurses’ station at Bayport General, back on the eating disorder ward.
The Hardy parents had awakened to find their sons dressed, Joe’s bag
packed, awaiting transport to the hospital where Joe would allow himself
to be signed in as a relapse patient.
“I’m cold,” the younger Hardy mumbled. Frank slid his arm off his
brother’s shoulders and took off his own black jacket, wrapping it
tenderly around Joe before replacing his arm.
“Shouldn’t be too much longer.”
Joe nodded, sighed, looked up to the floor beyond. Several girls were
looking at him, inevitably whispering about the appearance of a male on
the floor.
“Joe?” A voice said, and the younger Hardy turned to see Vanessa,
the nurse from earlier, standing in the doorway with a clipboard in her
hand. “Why don’t you come back and we’ll do weights and
measures.”
Joe hesitated, but Frank patted him on the back and he nodded,
reluctantly handing his older brother’s jacket back before following
the nurse into the back room.
“Put this on,” she said, handing him a paper gown and setting the
scale down to zero, placing a new plastic on the instant thermometer.
“Anyone I’d know still here?” he asked as he took his shirt off.
“A couple who were on bed rest. You probably wouldn’t remember
them.”
Joe stepped out of his pants and slid the gown on over his boxers,
trembling from the constant cold his body forced him to endure as
punishment for refusing meals.
“Do you remember the other boy? Jamie?”
The nurse hesitated, turned and raised her eyebrows at him.
“You knew Jamie?”
“Sure. He talked to me a few times.” Joe sighed and looked away.
“Told me not to relapse.”
Vanessa nodded and pulled the stethoscope off of her neck, crossing the
room to press the cold metal against his skin.
“Breathe in,” she murmured, touching his bony shoulder.
He obeyed, watching her frown, then turn and make a note.
“Have you had an EKG yet?”
“No.”
“Your heart rate is much slower than it should be. I’ll set one up
for you this afternoon. And bloodwork.”
Joe nodded, but something about her aloofness troubled him.
“Hop on the scale,” she murmured. “Backwards. Relapse patients
can’t look.”
The younger Hardy felt heat creep into his face, wanted to curse the
woman off and look anyway, but then he realized with dismay that no
matter what the number was, it wouldn’t be small enough.
Vanessa adjusted the height instrument to the top of Joe’s head, made
a note on the clipboard, then slid the metal along the scale.
“Jamie died,” she said softly.
Joe started, felt himself pale.
“What? How?”
She balanced the scale and sighed, then turned to make a note. “Step
down.”
“Vanessa!”
“I know, honey. We’d seen him so many times before, we were used to
him. It was a shock for us too.”
“How?”
“Heart attack. In his sleep. He didn’t suffer.”
Joe felt dizzy. “Heart attack? How? He was…well, not healthy, but I
didn’t know…”
Vanessa guided Joe over to the examining table and ordered him to sit.
He hadn’t realized he’d been swaying.
“When a severe anorectic begins to recover,” she explained, “the
body gains weight at an enormous speed. The metabolism and the heart have
slowed down to adjust to this smaller body, and the rapid change is a
shock on the entire system. Sometimes it’s too much, and the heart
can’t take the strain. Like with Jamie. He’d been so ill, so severely
emaciated for so long that his body simply couldn’t take the gain.
And so his heart…rebelled.”
Joe bit his lip, felt sick.
Don’t
repeat my mistake, the boy had said.
And here he had.
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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.