EAT.

TWELVE

Trigger warning: Eating disorders, mention of death, weight

"Good afternoon, Andrew."

Andy lifts his head to the unfamiliar man, who's wearing a black suit and holding a notebook and a pen. He knows who the man is - his nurse told him yesterday that they're bringing in a psychiatrist to talk to him - so he isn't exactly thrilled to see him. He doesn't say anything.

"I'm Dr Rhodes. It's nice to meet you. I understand you've been having trouble with eating recently."

"What's it to you?" Andy asks rudely. He's sat up in the hospital bed with a book in his lap and an annoying itch where the feeding tube is taped to his cheek, and he turns the page of the book as to dismiss Dr Rhodes. Earlier, CC and Lonny came to see him with a few things to attempt to cheer him up, one of them being the book in his lap.

"How are you feeling, Andrew?"

"What's it to you?"

"I understand this is difficult for you, however in order to work out the correct recovery plan, it's important you co-operate."

"Yeah yeah, whatever," Andy mutters. He rubs at the area around the tape on his face.

"This won't take long, Andrew."

"It would take even less time if you left."

"I know you're avoiding talking about it and that's okay, but we can't begin recovery if you don't open up about how you're feeling."

"Oh, shut up. There is no 'we'. You're not trapped in here being involuntarily fed through a fucking tube, are you? No, so piss off, thank you." He turns another page even though he's no longer reading it. "I don't need to sit here 'talking about it' to some jumped up bloody shrink who's idea of 'recovery' is to 'just eat more', alright? If I could eat more, I fucking well would, but that's what got me here to begin with, and maybe if you used your brain, you'd have worked that one out for yourself!"

"Andrew-"

"If you say that one more time I'm going to tear this tube out and strangle you with it."

The therapist frowns. "Look, I get that you're scared of letting anyone in on your thoughts and that's completely okay, but you're not going to feel better about this until you open up about it."

Andy closes the book. "What is there to open up about, anyway? It's all pretty obvious, I'd have thought. I stopped eating, it made me sad, I was crying, they found out, I collapsed, and now here we are. There literally is nothing else to say."

"What about your emotional state throughout?"

"I told you. I was sad. That's why I was crying and that's why they found out."

"Why did you stop eating in the first place?"

"Because I'm a fucking idiot, alright! I'm not talking about this with you or anyone, please just go." He plays with his fingers. "I don't want to talk about it, okay. I just want to go home and rehearse with my band, but I can't do that, so please do me the small favour of not rubbing it in my face."

* * *

CC visits alone in the early evening. When he arrives, Andy looks to be asleep, but at the sound of the door he opens his eyes. CC realises he's been crying. "Hey," he greets. "You okay?"

Andy, rubbing again at the tape, shrugs. "Having the time of my life," he mumbles. "It's just what I dreamed of as a kid, to be dying of starvation that I caused."

"Andy, you're not dying."

"They said I could die and I know you know that because they told you before they told me. Don't try and make me feel better." He looks now at his hands. "Do you know how many calories they're forcing into me? No? Me neither. They're gonna make me fucking fat again, you know. All this effort to lose weight and they're putting it all back in me."

"You weren't fat to begin with," CC says. "And even if you were, there'd be nothing wrong with that. They're feeding you because you need food to survive, Andy, not because they have a personal vendetta against you."

Dropping his hands beside him, the elder turns his head to look at CC. He sighs. "You don't get it. You don't know what it's like." His voice is small. He sighs again. "I put all I had into this and now it's ruined, CC, ruined. I counted every calorie and fought myself every day over whether or not to eat something and now it's all for nothing. It can't all be for nothing."

"If you carried on doing that, you would have died."

"I might die anyway, so what's the point? At least that way I could have died for a reason."

"A reason? Andy, starving yourself isn't a 'reason' to die. It's a horrible way to die."

"Better than dying after they fatten me up."

"They're not making you fat, Andy, they're literally keeping you alive."

"By making me fat!" He shouts suddenly, then covering his face with his hands. "You don't get it. It's easy for you to sit there and say this shit to me when you aren't freaking out about how much they're force feeding you. All I've thought about for months, CC, months, is how much I'm eating. All I've cared about is that I eat less than the day before, don't you see? It's like...it's like I've put all this time and effort into it, and now I have to lie here while they laugh in my face with their feeding tubes and 'recovery plans' and fucking psychiatrists, unable to do anything about it! It's horrible! I'm literally watching all my hard work go down the drain!" He pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I liked being hungry. I liked how it felt. Now I can't feel it anymore and I don't know how to deal with it. I want to rip this out my nose and go back to being hungry." As he finishes talking, he begins crying again, keeping his face covered in a weak attempt to hide it.