fic: Spoonfuls (1/4)
In loving memory of
Kamenashi Kazuya
(23.2.1986-9.4.2009)
Saturday, March 8th, 2003
It’s now his fourth time here on this particular clinic. Walking between his grave-faced mother and father, he counts the steps leading to the building isolated by yards and yards from the city of Tokyo he remembers spending his livelier days at. Far away from proper civilization with their heads straight.
The last time he remembers stepping through the very same doors as now was far back at the end of summer 2001 when his mother had become too tired of all of his quirks, his bony heels digging deep in the sand on the beach, a near case of drowning due to exhaustion caused the things he had lost control over. His father, outraged by the awful example he had been (and was still, he regrettably reminded himself) to his younger brother had only shaken his head in disappointment. And here is where they have come, yet again.
Third time’s charm is gone. All of his futile tries are irrelevant now as he’s guided to his room and told to take all the while he needs to unpack his belongings. The papers state that he has to stay for a month here after all, and only sick people fighting and resisting the change don’t.
For the following month, this place will be his home. The plain white walls and ceiling, shared toilets and shower stalls, patients one sicker than another and the comfort of only one too thin (how ironic) pillow. Whoever it is that has thought that the sound of a clinic like this sounds legit has probably a long line of bony fists queuing to feel at least a little spark of relief from the payback for all the bitterness they carry.
“Jin?” his mother asks gently as she enters the windowless room and lays her tired eyes on the sickly thin frame of his eldest son, a pile of warm long-sleeved shirts in his hands as he messily stuffs them in the wardrobe. Jin isn’t able to bring himself to show her any sign of acknowledging her presence.
He’s probably the saddest curse anyone is able to grant to two loving parents. The nightmare is cyclic and the hope of something better is dripping through even his own fingers like liquid water. Perhaps he is too far gone already, damned to go through the same mortifying and fatiguing fears and complexes over and over again.
“Come here, Jin,” his mother calls out for him again as she sits on the bedside. Jin bites his lip anxiously as he sits on the floor before the wardrobe and turns, keeping his distance. His mother pats the free space on the bed next to her and he finally obliges, gets on his feet and walks over.
He inhales the womanly scent of her perfume as they wrap their arms around each other awkwardly. Sharp edges pressing against soft flesh, he feels sickened with himself. With everyone and everything.
She looks like she’s close to tears as always when the time for a month-lasting farewell comes. It’s all his fault, every single time.
“Take care of yourself,” she prods motherly with a quiet voice, running her fingers through his thinned hair. Jin nods, his gaze averting.
“Is dad coming?” he manages to ask. His mother pulls him closer and rubs his back soothingly and Jin knows the answer. Maybe he shouldn’t have even expected so. It is the fourth time after all. He remembers very well his father’s words from the last time.
He had tried. He really had. Sadly though, it is never about how hard he has tried or for how long he has managed to keep himself on track. It is always about the cases of his failures.
“I’ll see you in a month,” he tries to act briskly, even if the tone of his voice isn’t able to fight away the dullness. Still, it does rise a couple of octaves. “It’s just a month and it really will help. It’s okay. I’ll get better. Watch me.”
Words even his mother has stopped believing in after all this time, no matter how sincerely he says them. He wishes he’d be able to repay for all the pain, gossiping whispers and faulting of bad parenting she has to go though because of him. And his father too. If only he had a way to.
His mother holds his hands for a short while before getting on her feet. Jin remains seated. He can’t find the strength to rise back on his feet, not yet. The growing anxiety is numbing and prickling his weary limbs, a sign of depression he has come to be able to pick up on.
“We’ll be picking you up in a month,” she encourages him with an obviously fake smile she probably feels she needs to put on. “Behave.”
Never a mention about making friends or having a good time. He isn’t here to get to know other kids who can possibly only worsen his state or reinforce relapses. The never-spoken words always speak of it.
“Yes, mum,” he bows his head slightly.
Without any more words found to be exchanged, she walks away. Jin lets himself fall to lie down on his bed, eyes staring blankly at the blinding light of his ceiling lamp.
He jerks so that the headboard of his bed hits the wall and smiles tiredly as the lamp shakes and starts rocking ever so slightly.
He has to find his happiness somewhere, and it certainly isn’t coming from the lack of warmth his baggy cashmere sweater refuses to grant his malfunctioning peripheral blood flow ridden body.
--
Jin feels the need to purge before even touching the food placed before him. He grimaces disbelievingly to the nurse and eyes around for other patients’ plates, sickened by the amount of food his plate has.
The rule is to eat everything. He feels like a disobedient child, someone whose brain functioning is highly limited as the rules are repeated to him for the hundredth time. Leaving the table before everything has gone down the throat is prohibited and if the patient is unable to force everything down before having it come up… time for tube feeding, a practice Jin couldn’t stand. Being force-fed with a tube to his stomach was just disgusting.
He covers his face and listens to the clinging of the cutlery as the other patients start emptying their plates like through a well-learned routine. He’s here to heal, though, and what he really wants sometimes is to just heal already and he knows that if he doesn’t take the necessary steps then it isn’t ever going to happen.
Letting go is always the most difficult phase, especially when the patient’s been on and off sick since the age of 13, something he isn’t able to say he’s very proud of. The sickening feeling that clutches his stomach every time someone looks up for him for a thing like that haunts him to the point where he rarely mentions it when not asked.
“Can you eat it?” a nurse stills behind him and looks at him eyes filled with pity. Jin nods strongly and tries to act as calm and collected as he can as he picks up the fork and the knife, detaches himself from the situation and starts slowly and in small bites chewing whatever it is that is fed to him, striving to get everything as dissolved as possible already in his mouth to boost up his metabolism.
It’s easier to look at others and converse when eating, but the table is mostly silent so he isn’t able to find it in himself to open his mouth and just pick up a conversation with one of the fellow stranger patients. Still, he studies their expressions as they preoccupy their minds with chewing, some at more ease than others and some, like him, seeming like their thoughts are far, far away from the food entering their mouths.
He doesn’t really want to eat, the mere thought of eating makes his hands shake and the urge to stand up and just walk away arise but he still does, afraid of all kinds of disgusting tubes. It doesn’t take more than five small forkfuls of well-chewed food before his stomach starts resisting, signalling him of being full. He knows it’s going to be a long lunch and wonders anxiously if he’ll be able to finish before dinner in four hours.
It takes fifteen minutes for the first patient to finish, a girl around the age of seventeen. She actually manages to smile and appear calm and at more ease as she’s finished and as Jin studies her slightly healthier and fleshier form he concludes that her month is probably already up.
Every intake of calorie is carefully counted in here. The goal isn’t to fully fix their problem - a mere month in a clinic with connections to the outside world cut wouldn’t be able to do that anyway. The point is to eat. Gain weight to reach the normal weight scale for one’s height and body type.
Jin covers his mouth again, closes his eyes and tries to inhale deeply, cursing at his shrunken stomach. It’s ridiculous, yet he still has many times the amount of food he has already eaten to go.
He gathers all the determination he has in himself, having learned through the years that due to his stubbornness there was a lot and hoping to god it would once again get him through the clinic days. Avoiding everyone else’s gazes he fills his fork and forces food down his throat to the point of nausea. Then he stops to take a break, cursing silently at how half of the table has already left the table.
It’s frustratingly clear who’s the newcomer around the dinner table, and the only hint isn’t the way his bones seem to stick through even his baggy shirt.
In the end, he is the only one to sit around the table, a nurse sitting next to him and making sure he isn’t using any tricks to hide the food anywhere. She’s okay, though - chats with him as they take small pauses before continuing the task of eating.
After two hours he finishes up and gets guided to the general area of the building where six other patients (all girls), ages ranging now probably from around ages 15 to 19 (it’s the teenagers’ unit) sit and converse, some playing card games.
He feels the need for socialising arising and joins the card game with Yoko, Haruka, Aoi and Nanako who invite him rather openly. He isn’t sure if he likes them quite yet but they sure seem to be fond of him and he isn’t quite sure if he’s able to survive the long month without anyone to converse and fool around with.
The girls stick around playing with him for his whole monitored two hours after eating (so that he wouldn’t go and throw up what he had gotten down) all the way to snack time and from then on too. He wins only twice, but it’s alright. He knows his brains aren’t really able to function properly yet, thoughts jammed and hazy and concentration failing him more often than not.
When he hits the bed after day number one, he feels his stomach painfully stretching in its engorged state. He bites back the feelings of disgust and swears to god it’s all for the better and this is what he wants as he fights to keep still without getting up with any excuse to burn any of the calories he’s maxed on.
Everything would be a lot easier and he’d be a lot more accepted if he would be alright, after all.
Friday, March 21st, 2003
Aoi has left the clinic four days prior to the day a new patient arrives, a skeleton pulling his wheeled trunk behind him with dangerously thin and muscle-less arms. He arrives before breakfast at only around seven a.m. but Jin hasn’t been able to sleep for the latest two hours anyway so when he hears the quiet talking and steps nearing his room, he opens his door and peeks out curiously.
“Ah, this is Akanishi-kun, another boy in care,” the nurse politely introduces them and Jin stares at the probably barely-living creature before his eyes and swears to god he hasn’t had the worst on him.
“Kamenashi,” the boy introduces himself and offers a bony hand that Jin lightly squeezes, too afraid to press more in case the boy has osteoporosis or something just as scary and dangerous he really could have in the state he is. Kamenashi smiles at him weakly and grimaces in apology as the nurse huddles him with his trunk to his own room and demands him to go back to bed to at least try to sleep for an hour more before breakfast.
It’s an odd occurrence, the fact that two male patients have managed to get in the facility at the same time, knowing the statistical difference between females and males suffering from eating disorders and Jin finds himself somewhat relieved knowing he isn’t the only oddball in Japan carrying the weight of his illness on his shoulders.
He sits on his bed and curls up under his covers, trying to fight the cold creeping its way all the way to his bones. Sometimes he worriedly wonders how permanent the damage he has foolishly inflicted on his body actually is, but isn’t able to find the answer. To see he should first probably get better for a fair amount of time, hopefully for good.
He’s tired of the limitations, the panic attacks and obsessive 24/7 thinking centring around food, calories and exercise but still reaching as far as to his difficulties with lowered self-esteem and social abilities.
He remembers hazily somewhere where it started for the first time, remembers his awkward body that hadn’t even hit puberty yet and hears a group of his friends laughing at how fat he was, how he really, really needed to lose some weight and lose the ugly cosies his mother had knitted for him to keep him warm during the winter if he ever wanted to get a girlfriend.
He never did, though. Not with a skeletal body he somehow ended up acquiring and the endless anxiety he carried with him. Not when he started becoming even dumber compared to everyone else on the class, not only because of the limitations of his functioning that his illness put on him but also because of the time he had to spend away with countless doctors and psychologists. Who would’ve fallen for a sickly and ugly freak?
He closes his eyes and listens to the sound of wardrobe shelves being pulled open and pushed closed in the room opposite to his.
--
The breakfast isn’t quite as quiet as he remembers it being on the first day but that could possibly be because now everyone had spent more time together and knew each other better. He sits on the place reserved for him and chats about dogs with everyone.
Kamenashi’s eyes flash something between relief and sudden urge to run as he thanks the nurse placing his plate before him. Jin feels pity as he studies the amount of food on the younger man’s plate, remembering his own awful first days and trying to imagine what they had to be like for someone like Kamenashi who didn’t even look like he would’ve been able to have more than perhaps a single spoonful of the porridge inside his dangerously skinny body.
Still, he licks dry his lips nervously and gathers a big spoonful he puts in his mouth. Jin isn’t sure if he should develop respect towards the other boy or look down on him for the act he was putting up.
Perhaps he was just another one of those cases who were forced there and didn’t want the help but wanted to just get away as fast as possible in order to be able to fall back to their ill routine of avoidance again.
By the end of breakfast after everyone had gathered on the couches and floor of the supervised lounge Kamenashi joined the circle slightly hesitantly but still with a smile that was usually rare among newcomers.
As the conversation turns to their conditions and Nanako and Izumi leaving on the following Monday and Wednesday, Jin feels his blood reluctantly boiling when Kamenashi smiles and talks about his ideals of being healthy and everyone being able to go through everything with support.
It sounds like pure shit is leaving his blue-ish lips but everyone else seems enchanted by his apparently ‘sincere’ words. Jin scoffs, crosses his arms and buries himself deeper in the couch, letting the others converse freely and feels a slight sting to his stomach as no one seems to notice his silence, too occupied with talking about healing with Kame.
The faker could take his million watt smile somewhere far away from him. No one with a body like his could be sincere with the speech that gushed out of his mouth.
Monday, March 24th, 2003
“BMI 15.8,” the doctor announces aloud to him as she writes the number down in her notes and sighs. Jin shivers, only dressed in his boxers as he stands on the scale and stares down at the rising number of his weight, feeling suddenly horribly sick.
“We’re getting there,” the woman says contently, sympathy lacing her voice, and motions Jin to dress up again. He tears his eyes away from the scale and shuffles back to the clothes he has previously stripped down to the floor like a fucking whore of the scale.
It’s always quiet in the daily doctor’s appointments. The sounds from the rest of the house are barely audible to his ears behind the closed doors and almost sound-proof walls. Nobody usually talks much within the walls and for a while after leaving the room. He isn’t an exception, pulling his jeans and polo neck shirt on and trying to detach himself from the awful explosion that he feels charging slowly and threateningly inside of him.
“Alright, keep your socks off,” the woman instructs even though he’s already used to the routine and has his socks in his hands as he sits down on the chair reserved for him. She kneels down before him and examines his ankles, foot and toes with her warm palms and fingers.
“Slightly swollen,” she notes and Jin lets his tongue travel and push against his cheek tensely. “Still cold, but that’s normal. If you keep this development up your blood circulation should return to normal.”
“Mm,” Jin mumbles in agreement as she examines his hands.
“Could you remove your shirt?”
Jin obeys and shivers as the cool air comes to contact with his skin again. The doctor feels her way up his arms, seemingly concerned.
“They’re still cold all the way up to the shoulder joint,” he sniffs from the cold and takes a tissue from the table with his free hand.
“Well, it should be expected, considering your background. You can put your shirt back on,” she tells as she returns behind her desk to write the observations down on her formerly blank sheet of paper again.
“Pull your sleeve up,” she asks and gets the sphygmomanometer from a shelf. Jin offers his arm obediently as she positions it. “Alright, just relax now.”
He closed his eyes and tried to relax his muscles and mind, taking himself somewhere far away in the darkness from the plain white walls and almost painful pressure on his upper arm. After the beep the woman opened the tape and he slid his arm back to freedom, pulling his sleeve back down as she wrote the numbers up.
“And then if you could please lie down there and maybe just lift your shirt a bit so I can examine your stomach?”
He really, really hates being sick.
He nervously stares at the plain white ceiling and as the steps come closer he turns his eyes to the blinding lamp that starts forming a headache but distracts him well enough as her hands softly examine the swelling of his stomach.
“Metabolism still cranky?” she asks him sympathetically and he nods, sucking in his lips uneasily. “Are you in pain?”
“Yeah,” he manages to admit, blinking furiously as his body resists the urge to let the contents of his body come up. “Pretty much.” The stretch marks on his sides weren’t his favourite thing either.
“I’ll ask them to change your diet a bit,” the doctor offers helpfully as she offers him a hand to help him sit up straight again. Jin blows his runny nose and flicks the tissue to a nearby bin, draws his shirt back down and pulls his socks on.
He fears the upcoming week will be filled with soups and mush.
It’s still probably easier to eat than having the constant fear of choking in bits of solid food he hasn’t properly chewed. The days of swallowing bigger pieces as whole during the childhood are gone.
The doctor has returned back to her seat and types furiously on her computer, eyes shuffling back and forth between the sheet of paper and the screen. Jin awkwardly sits on the examination bed and silently waits for his dismissal.
“Alright,” she smiles at him and Jin tries to smirk back, not quite sure how well he’s succeeding, feeling like he’s trying to contain some sort of thundering rage inside of him. “I don’t think we need the electrocardiogram today. You can go now. Keep up the good work.”
“Mm,” Jin finds himself agreeing absent-mindedly, walking towards the door in a crazy need to get away. “I will. Have a good day.”
He heads straight back to the others, afraid of being alone with the slippery feeling he has, the one that is usually followed by relapse in a different environment. He doesn’t want to be scared right now, not more than he already is.
As everyone converses and keeps looking at him warily, he merely sits quietly with his knees drawn against his chest on the couch. As Aoi briskly walks to the doctor’s office, Kame takes her place beside him on the couch.
--
Jin feels nauseous after dinner and takes over the entire couch, ignoring the complaints of the other teens. He lies with his eyes barely open and keeps his hand on his pained stomach, feeling his pulse even with all the swelling. The nurses’ eyes are on him, and someone has brought him a bucket to throw up in just in case.
He knows what’s going to happen if he does, though, so he resists the pressing need by lying still and trying to live through the others rather than jumping all over the place and being told to calm down.
Kame has a girl named Ayako sitting on his lap, wrapped gently in his bony arms. He can’t possibly be very pleasant to sit embraced by, Jin feels like scoffing, not with all the sharp edges. Still, she’s been down lately and the treatment has really gotten to her to the point where she cried in the dinner table so he assumes it’s alright. If it makes her feel better.
He listens to the fake tone of the useless chatter around him and studies their weary expressions and how everyone keeps constantly shifting. It’s a bad day.
Kame, however, doesn’t seem to think so, insisting on the treatment’s efficiency and how grateful he is for having the opportunity to receive it because he isn’t sure if he’d be able to do it alone. In his opinion, as long as everyone is spirited for the fight, miracles can happen.
Jin wishes he’d still believe in miracles and life’s eventual fairness.
--
It’s that night he explodes, everyone else already probably fast asleep. He feels his frail form trembling and convulsing furiously on his sheets as he lies on top of everything in his college pyjamas, tears refusing to stop running.
The sound of the doorknob is barely audible and he decides to ignore it, trying to remain quiet in order to let the others have their sleep, the only peaceful moment they really had in the world.
The bed shifts slightly as a light form sits on his bedside and eventually lies down next to him, shuffling closer. Jin tries to push the person’s existence from his mind as even frailer, bony arms wrap soothingly around him, pulling him gently against the person’s flat chest.
Kame doesn’t say anything nor does he turn him over as Jin panics about his swollen reddened face, his hideous face and pathetic crying. He simply is, lying beside him with his arms around him and maybe, Jin thinks, he finally actually understands what the alright kind of support actually is.
Jin doesn’t know for how long they lay there, bodies cold even though the heating system is functioning properly. When he finally hasn’t been sniffing in over fifteen minutes or wiping his face, Kame turns him over and Jin returns the gesture of wrapped arms around his form.
“You look good,” Kame tells him soothingly, thin fingers massaging his painfully tense shoulder blades helpfully. “Once you get out, you’ll look even better. You’ll be stronger than an awful lot of people out there and prove them how amazing of a person you are. It’s almost your turn. Just hold onto it, you have a lot to give.”
“Like hell,” Jin scoffs, tears starting to swell in his eyes in the darkness again. “…I’m not that amazing.”
“You have a radiating smile at least,” Kame objects and pinches his cheek. “That should be well enough.”
They shuffle under the sheets and to Jin’s surprise, Kame doesn’t leave. He stays till the morning, talking with him about his fears and delusions, the dark world he finds himself wrapped up in and the smiles he isn’t able to reach.
“We’ll heal, surely,” Kame whispers to him in the early hours of the dawn, dark circles around his eyes screaming an even greater exhaustion than any previous day. “As long as we believe in it.”
When Kame sneaks out of the room back to his own right across the corridor, Jin finds himself for the first time really, truly wanting to heal, never mind any of the fears associated with healing. For himself.
Maybe he just never really knew what it felt like.
PART 2