Themes: Medical Malpractice, Injury, Medicine-induced weight gain, body image issues
Words: 6814
Part: Completed 1/1
Note: This story is about weight gain, but the MC is not a gainer nor a feedee
"Fuck..." Ethan clenched his teeth so hard his maulers made a scraping sound. He got tangled with the crutches and suddenly something as simple as getting out of the car seemed impossible.
"Wait, I will get the chair" Terry said, shooting out of the car and opening the trunk.
Ethan closed his eyes, trying, and failing, to count to ten as he listened to Terry unfold the wheelchair.
They were on the way to his first psychiatric appointment after being released from the hospital. Ethan and Terry were FBI agents and life partners. Both Ethan and Terry were injured in the line of duty before, but this was the most serious injury either of them had sustained. Ethan had his knee cap blown out by a gunshot and despite having extensive surgery there was no chance of him coming back to active duty. However, Ethan, being the stubborn asshole he was, refused to quit as Terry begged him to do, deciding rather to become a true pain in the ass of the other pencil pushers at the FBI headquarters.
However, before he could do that, Ethan had to take a lengthy leave of absence to recover from surgery. If he'd quit that'd have been that, but since he wanted to stay at the bureau he was required to submit himself to psychiatric care all throughout his recovery.
And so that's where they were now.
*
"Any difficulty sleeping?" The doctor asked, barely looking up at Ethan throughout the whole conversation. He'd already spent twenty minutes in the doctor's office, answering question after question without any sign of being heard or even just listened to. He would imagine that a psychiatrist would be at least somewhat compassionate, but this man just seemed utterly uninterested in anything Ethan had to say or what we had gone through. Ethan wondered if it was because the man simply didn't care at all and was only here for the paycheck, or if it was Ethan in particular that he didn't like. It wasn't uncommon for people to be cold or annoyed while dealing with FBI agents.
"Yeah, I'm in pain, so obviously..." He grumbled, wondering how well the doctor would be sleeping if he had his kneecap shattered.
"I will write a recommendation to your primary care physician to put you on corticosteroids for the pain."
"Okay, sure, if that will help..."
"I'm also going to put you on antidepressants."
"I'm not depressed."
"You've been through something traumatic, you're clearly struggling. Loss of appetite, decrease in physical activity, trouble sleeping..."
"That's because... I was injured? I'm still injured? It has nothing to do with depression, I literally can't be active!"
He gestured at his wheelchair and the elaborate knee brace spanning the entire length of his leg.
"I assure you, Mr. Bailes, this will help you get back on track."
Ethan wanted to object again, but he promised Terry he would at least listen to the doctor. So he shut his mouth and listened. For Terry.
*
The cocktail of meds he'd been put on was the worst thing he'd ever experienced, and that was coming from someone who just had his kneecap shattered.
He was always bone tired, sluggish and to make matters worse, constipated. But that wasn't the worst of it. The meds seemed to mess with his metabolism so severely that even if he was eating half of what he would eat before his injury, he was blowing up. Ethan felt like he was basically gaining weight simply by breathing, like every day he woke up heavier and larger. He was sure that if he wasn't already using the medical-grade body lotion for his perpetually dry skin, he'd be covered head to toe in stretchmarks.
