teach me gently on how to breathe || tradley/brad

خائن

A new nurse cheerfully comes into the room with a doctor's scale, her smile is so wide her face looks like its on the verge of splitting into two. "Hello," she greets him, "aren't you just adorable?"

Brad find himself blushing and she laughs before explaining she wants to weigh him. He reluctantly pulls off his boots and goes to step on the scale, but she stops him. "Backwards," she tells him.

He doesn't understand what's the relevance of being weighed backwards, but he turns around anyway and steps onto the scale so only she can see his weight. She takes note of the number on the scale and tells him to step off before she pulls up a height rod and measures him.

"Five seven," she reads, smiling at him. Everything she says has an exclamation point at the end. "And a half."

Brad furrows his eyebrows. That can't be right, he thinks. The last doctor appointment he had had he was five eight. And people don't just shrink.

As another nurse steps inside the room, the inaccurate, happy nurse waves goodbye to Brad and leaves. The new nurse doesn't loudly approach Brad, and she doesn't smile so hard her face looks like its going to break. "We're going to head to the cafeteria," she informs him.

"Do I have to?" Brad questions, following her out of his temporary room. He doesn't know where he's heading with this question since he can already tell what her answer is going to be.

The nurse locks the door behind them. "Yes," she says. She jiggles the door knob, making sure it's locked before motioning for Brad to follow her. "You have to eat six meals a day."

Brad wishes there was water in his mouth to spit out like the sitcoms his sister watches. Six meals a day is unreal. It isn't normal. He wishes the nurse will laugh and tell him she's joking, but she didn't seem like she is. And they've already reached the cafeteria.

She opens the door and motions for him to go first. He enters, expecting to see a dull room with rectangular wooden tables, and a lunch lady, like he's used to in his school's cafeteria. Except the room is colourful and there are small circular tables accompanied by cushioned wooden chairs. Brad can feel himself on the verge of panicking at the thought of sitting at one of them, being forced to eat.

He doesn't want to sit at the tables, he doesn't want to eat, he doesn't want to be here at all.

"You start on the liquid diet," the nurse explains. She starts walking again and Brad has no other choice but to walk with her. "You're going to be seated with the other patients who are on the liquid diet, too."

Brad nervously fidgets with his fingers, following her to one of the small wooden tables. Three boys are seated, holding large bottles. Two boys are holding a conversation and laughing while the other one, who's blond, quietly sits there, blankly looking down at his bottle. The two chatty boys don't look like they belong here. They're not that skinny. The third one is the only one who looks thin.

He reluctantly sits in one of the cushioned seats and a nurse brings him a large bottle of his own. The boy takes it in his hand and reads the label: Ensure. He has never heard of it, which makes his desire to drink it decrease even more.

His brown eyes travel over to the nurse that walked him over. She's watching him so hard Brad's surprised she hasn't burned holes into him. He lets out a sigh and looks back down at the bottle. Only because I want to get out of here, Brad thinks to himself before taking a small sip from his Ensure bottle. It tastes like strawberry milk.

"This is your first day, isn't it?" Brad's a little surprised someone is talking to him. He looks up and nods in response to the two boys across from him before looking back down at his stupid bottle and taking another sip.