en español by Deiv17
em português by trsdley
in italiano by psychosan
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Maybe he should've been more careful - if that were possible.
It would've prevented his parents from overreacting and calling an ambulance for him. They'd already packed a bag for Brad, but didn't bother telling him he's being hospitalised until he didn't have the chance to interject.
"Your friends are worried about you, too," his mum explained after his dad dropped the news. Brad tried to slowly breathe in and out as he stood across from his parents, anger already boiling deep inside of him. They were a little army of two, and Brad was too small to defend for himself. "Even one of your teachers have come to me about your weight, Bradley. It's making everyone really upset."
Traitors, Brad angrily thinks as he lies in the ambulance. They're all traitors.
The ambulance pulls into a parking lot, surrounded by a field of bright green. It looks like a golf course. He eyes a large, black marble sign with 'Lynch Medical Center' printed on it in capital letters as the vehicle slows down. A weight tightens around his chest. He doesn't want to be here. How will he exercise in here? He doesn't want to let his body go again. He's finally strong. What will happen to that now?
His mum sympathetically places a hand on his arm like she can feel the panic rising inside of him. Brad shakes her hand off and gets out the ambulance. She looks pained causing the sixteen-year-old boy to feel a little bad, but he takes in the small, old-fashioned building in the center of the cut grass and his anger quickly eats the feeling away. If she really cared about him she wouldn't have sent him here.
A tall woman wearing a bright dress meets him at the door. She smiles when Brad approaches her alongside his mum whose pace he's struggling to keep up with. "This is the central medical center," she greets. "Here's where you get clearance."
The next minutes pass in a blur as Brad's guided to Admissions. Fortunately, his mum shortens her strides on the way and he finally has a chance to catch up with her. He eyes the old-fashioned furniture the room is decorated with: fancy carpeting, a grandfather clock. Everything is like a small spin on minimalistic, even the lights are dimmed. But even though the room is supposed to give off relaxed vibes, Brad feels like his brain is on fire.
After they take a blood sample, his mum gives him a long, uncomfortable hug. Brad stiffly stands in her embrace with his arms limply hanging by his side.
"Be good," she tells him, handing him his bag. He's not sure whether that's supposed to be humourous or not, but he doesn't reply. He doesn't have anything to say to her, anyway. "Love you."
Brad doesn't say anything again and she finally leaves the center. Now that he's really on his own, he looks around, nervously before deciding to fix his eyes on the square pattern decorating the carpeted floors as a nurse approaches him and introduces herself.
"I'm going to take you to your room," she tells him. "It's going to be where you'll stay for as long as you're here."
Duh, Brad thinks. He silently follows behind her, hands buried deep in his pockets.
They enter a small, singular room with bright blue walls and a bed. A sigh pushes pass Brad's lips as he drops his bag onto the bed and sadly unzips it. The nurse stands there, watching him unpack his clothes, pajamas, and some of his hygiene products. It becomes harder to breathe with each item he unpacks. Each thing is just another reminder he's going to be staying here. It's unreal. This kind of place used to be only what Brad saw when he's riding in a car and only what Brad hears about when he's watching talk shows about celebrities or overhearing someone gossiping about some girl in his school. Now that he's a part of one it feels surreal. He can't even breathe normally. Or maybe that's just a side effect of having bradycardia, which Brad still doesn't believe he has. His heart rate feels just as normal as anyone else's.
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.
"Don't worry," one of the boys tell him. He sounds Scottish. He looks younger than the other one. He has brown-ish/blond-ish feathery hair and nice blue eyes. "It's not as bad here as you think it is right now."
"Really," Brad quietly speaks. Instead of taking a sip from his Ensure, he takes a gulp. He looks down at the bottle, not knowing how he's going to be able to drink all of it.
"Yeah," he replies. "I've only been here for four days, but I've adapted to it pretty well."
"I haven't," the other one states. He has blue eyes, too, and brown hair messily styled upwards. "But I've only been here for three, and I guess it isn't as bad here as I thought it was either."
Brad doesn't believe them, but he gives them a small smile, anyway, for trying to help him feel comfortable, and takes another gulp. "Thanks."
"I'm Connor," the younger looking boy says.
"And I'm James."
He gives the two another small smile. "Brad."
"This is Tristan," James tells him. Brad quizzically turns his head to the blond he forgot was sitting at the table with them. Tristan looks at them and then back at the bottle he doesn't look like he's planning on taking a sip from anytime soon. "He's more talkative on good days."
"Oh, okay," Brad replies. James and Connor quickly move on to a conversation about musicians, favourite colours, and siblings. Normal people conversations. Brad engages in it only a little bit and before he knows it, it's time to leave the cafeteria.
Brad finds himself glancing over to the blond beside him who didn't drink any Ensure at all. The nurses don't get on him about it. Brad thinks maybe he should refuse to drink it, too if there really aren't any consequences.
James and Connor tell him goodbye before breaking off from each other and leaving with their own nurse. Brad looks to his side and realises he's alone with Tristan as he prepares to leave the cafeteria.
"They were right, you know," the blond surprisingly speaks.
"Right about what?" Brad asks.
"It's not as bad here as you think it is," he tells him. "Because it's much worse."
Brad lets out a chuckle. Tristan gives him a smug smile like he's pleased to make someone laugh and then walks away alongside his nurse without saying goodbye. The curly-haired boy pulls his eyes away from him and faces his nurse.
"Am I going back to my room?" Brad asks, hopeful.
"I'm taking you to the rec room," she replies. Brad lets out a small sigh and follows after her. He doesn't know what a rec room is yet, but he's too exhausted to find out and just wants to fall asleep for years.
The rec room is medium sized and Brad is the only boy inside of it at the moment. It's furnished with a couch and a bright coloured, circular table. Two girls sit at it. One is writing on a sheet of notebook paper and the other is drawing a picture. Some girls are sculpting clay or talking on the sofa. Brad feels like he has walked into the childrens' waiting room he sometimes passes when he goes to doctor appointments. Minus the clay.
His eyes scan the rec room. Everyone seems like they've claimed their own designated place, which makes being in here with people even more frustrating. He feels like he's in secondary school again, figuring out where he fits in the lunch room.
Brad finds a spot for himself. It's in a corner where no one else is. He drags a chair over to it and sits, the next minutes passing with him blankly staring at the wall and wishing he were anywhere else but here.
. . .
It takes until night time for Brad to digest the day, and it washes over him like a tsunami.
He lies on his side, eyeing the moon outside his window with his legs pulled to his chest. He wasn't given the chance to take in anything that morning. His parents didn't even give him a heads up they were admitting him to a medical center until five minutes before the ambulance rolled into the driveway, which was still a little too much in Brad's opinion.
I hate everyone, Brad thinks, especially them.
He wishes he could jog, do a push up, sit up, anything to make him feel better. But a nurse stands outside his door, making sure he doesn't. Basically, Brad's every move is monitored and he hates that his life has come to this stupid place with their stupid rules.
The same weight from this morning presses down on Brad's chest and a lump forms in his throat as tears fill his brown eyes. He blinks them away and hopes when he wakes up, he won't feel so home sick anymore. He wants to go home so bad, but at the same time he doesn't think he'll be able to face anyone outside of here. He'd be too angry, and a little embarrassed. But mostly angry.
A tear travels down his cheek, but he quickly wipes it away and closes his eyes. Everything is going to be okay, Brad tells himself. If you prove to them you're well enough, you can get out of here in four weeks.
. . .
The nurse unlocks the bathroom door and allows Brad inside. Instead of walking away, she just stands there. Not like he's as surprised as he would've been yesterday. Privacy is an obvious foreign word to anyone in here, even though the nurses try to make the patients believe they have some type of privacy left. They even woke Brad up that morning by knocking on his door like there wasn't another nurse standing outside of it opened the whole entire night.
Brad lets out an exasperated sigh at what his life has come to and cups his hand under the sink faucet before throwing a handful of cold water on his face. He runs a hand through his curls and reluctantly joins the nurse to escort him to the cafeteria for breakfast.
He buries his hands in his pockets as they walk before quietly asking, "do I really have to eat six meals a day?"
"Yes," she answers automatically without even looking at him.
"What if I don't want to?" Brad asks.
The nurse furrows her brows at his question. "What do you mean?"
"What if I refuse to drink the Ensure?" he explains.
"You'd be put on an IV," she nonchalantly replies like it's no big deal. Brad widens his eyes and pulls his hands out his pocket to nervously shake up his hair. "And you"ll be in here way longer than four weeks," she adds.
Okay, then, Brad thinks, quickly letting his plan go. He guesses all that's left to do is just listen, even if it kills him.
"Good morning," James happily greets when Brad nears the table. Everyone looks as sleepy as Brad feels. The boy waves in response and plops down in the same seat from the day before. Because from the looks of it, wherever a person sits first, that's where they stay.
When he's given his Ensure, he takes a long sip, even though he knows how quick he drinks doesn't affect the four weeks he's forced to stay here. As he drinks, James lets out a yawn and asks, "how was your night?"
Memories of last night flash through his mind. Most of it consisted of him watching the moon from outside the window, imagining himself running around the school's track field at night when everyone else has already left to go home, like he did before he was admitted here. It's only been one day and he already misses the air filling his lungs as he pushes himself to run faster.
"Brad?"
He blinks, remembering James asked him something, but he doesn't exactly remember the question. "What?"
"How was your night?" he repeats.
Right, Brad thinks. "Well," he starts, "the moon looked nice."
Tristan lets out a laugh from beside him. Brad looks over, expecting him to add onto the small talk, but he doesn't say anything, already slipping back into his own little world. Brad wonders what his problem is. Well, besides the eating disorder obviously. Sometimes there's something deeper. But he knows it's none of his business, anyway, and he doesn't plan on making it his business anytime soon.
"It gets better," Connor sleepily informs him.
Brad gives him a small smile. "I've heard."
Breakfast passes in silence with only a few small talk, hence they're too exhausted for any long conversations. It's Brad's first time finishing the whole entire bottle. Yesterday he had only a few drops left, but now that the bottle is empty he feels sick. The liquid weirdly sits in Brad's stomach and he feels like he's on the verge of throwing up. But he mentally gives himself a motivational speech to pull through it. He has to get out of here.
"Good job, Brad," the nurse compliments referring to him finishing the whole bottle. Brad forces a smile on his face and quickly drops it when she turns away.
"Suck up," James quietly jokes from beside him so the nurse won't hear. Brad glances at him, letting out a small laugh.
"See you in exercise class," Connor says, pushing in his chair.
"Exercise class?" Brad repeats, suddenly feeling some surge of hope. Maybe he doesn't have to let go of his body after all, but he is a little surprised a place like this would still allow the patients to exercise.
He lets out a small sigh, not sure if it's a really happy one or not, and follows his nurse out of the cafeteria to see what else is a part of his new routine.