Work Text:
It’s not just a granola bar.
It’s hunger. It’s thirst. It’s the constant stress of the change in her levels that start to drive Clementine up the wall. Ever since the discovery of the hidden autoimmune disease, it’s a steady schedule of insulin shots and a game of guessing. Of course, it’s not just a granola bar.
It’s a steady game of numbers that Clementine can’t make sense of. A first grade education followed by an apocalypse doesn’t net you much experience in math. It doesn’t net you any experience in calculating an insulin dosage. Or reading the nutritional facts on the back of a granola bar package. Or anything to do with nutrition of course.
Over the past four weeks, her sleep has been interrupted about every other night by hunger, thirst, or an urge to relieve herself. Over the past four weeks, Luke, Carlos, and Mike have gone out to look for more insulin to treat the highs and have only come back with one vial. One vial to add to the half a vial’s worth that they already have.
She’s come to terms with it. Kind of. If you define it as ‘refusing to take her medicine and having to be held down, but overall understanding why it has to be taken’, then sure – she’s come to terms with it. After the first time Carlos threatened to have Luke hold her down, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to try it again – but the conflicted feelings had, previously, come up again. So far, she’s been held down, kicking and screaming, twice.
The emotional turmoil was like the same little Devil telling her – almost egging her on – to refuse. To say no and try everyone’s patience. Blood glucose is a tricky thing; it effects everything in her body. Her mood. Her state of being. Her skin. Organs. Eyes.
Speaking to Kenny again is something that Clementine has the most trouble with socially – his face shows nothing but pity, maybe even remorse, when he looks at her. He always brushes his hands against her shoulder when she passes him; she wants to pay him no mind.
The guilt is the worst part. Looking at Kenny alone is enough to bring the heaviest feeling into her chest; thinking of Sarita is one of the worst things in her head. Thinking of Kenny’s screaming and the reactions – and, of course, his reaction towards Clementine.
Just because you’re gonna die soon don’t mean everyone else has to suffer the same way.
The words might as well be etched into her brain. Every glance in Kenny’s direction brings them back up to her current thoughts. She doesn’t want to die. She knows that despite his words, he must be thinking it. She knows he’s justified in thinking it.
Raking her fingers against the lancet pen isn’t a habit Clementine has been able to break yet. She just can’t. It’s an addictive tic and the one way to focus every bit of emotional pain into one, single area of her body. Her hands are always in her pockets, anyway – there’s no reason not to. It isn’t like they’re going to get infected.
“You need to be careful.” Carlos admonished the other day as he watched Clementine pierce her pointer finger. A perfect dot of blood formed on the pad, which immediately went to the test strip. “Any cuts you get aren’t going to heal as fast as they used to. You’re a lot more susceptible to infection now.”
None of the adults allow her on runs. Clementine wanted to do more originally – but even now, she’s getting to the point where she can’t find a point. Part of her knows they have her best interest in heart; she’s had seizures before, she’s passed out before… and none of those have happened since the original diagnosis. A liability is the one thing she never wants to be.
You were a liability before you were a diabetic, says the small voice in the back of her head. Bowing her head so that she makes eye contact with the floor, Clementine rakes her broken and bitten down nails against her skin. You’ll only make it worse.
The thick glucose monitor hasn’t given out yet. Despite testing her blood glucose every few hours, there’s still a drum of test strips left. The monitor is still going strong.
Clementine wanted to jump up and scream when it finally showed a normal reading of 108. The number 833 is still ingrained in her mind – and the new number was the only good thing that happened that day.
They’ve spiked in the middle of the night, which was the opposite of what Carlos was previously worried about; he was more worried about her having a seizure and dying in her sleep.
It wasn’t that he said that specifically – and Clementine isn’t amazing at reading between the lines – but she knows for sure that that must be what he was worrying about.
She would just like to not wake up in the middle of the night vomiting or with the constant urge to urinate.
Of course, she won’t deny that the statement about hypoglycemia isn’t worrying. Hypoglycemia is a word that evokes fear. Clementine knows it can kill her. And she doesn’t want to die – but God, it’s an overwhelming feeling; it’s as if she can’t even breathe anymore in this world without something wanting to kill her. She knows existing is risking her life, especially with that condition.
Of course, it’s never just a granola bar.
Good sleep is a distant daydream. Clementine doesn’t sleep for more than two hours at a time; sometimes she wakes up for no reason, others to get up and relieve herself. Only once, embarrassingly enough, has her blood sugar spiked badly enough to make her wet the bed again – but it’s been only once. And she isn’t keen on letting that secret out. It hasn’t happened again, but that doesn’t make sleep any easier. As her levels have gone down, she’s noticed this has improved.
Well, of course it would improve, she remembers Carlos saying, Your body can’t process anything without insulin. It’s trying to get rid of the excess sugar in your blood.
Sometimes, Clementine hates her internal organs. It’s as if her pancreas and her bladder and stomach and kidneys are all trying to kill, harm, or inconvenience her all at once.
Tonight, it’s raining. Hard.
Their shelter is a house out in the middle of nowhere; three bedrooms and two bathrooms. In some of the rooms, they’ve doubled or even tripled up. Rebecca, Sarah, and Carlos took one room – along with the baby, of course – while Bonnie and Clementine took another.
There was a bit of an argument between Kenny, Luke, and Mike about who would get the last room. In the end, Kenny gave up and took the couch, though his glares towards the other two men haven’t stopped yet.
When she tries to sleep, Clementine lays on her side, staring out of the slightly opened curtains on the window. It’s dark outside; it gets darker earlier and earlier now, as the New Year approaches. She thinks it might be late December – maybe even January, at the latest. As she holds her blanket closer to her chest, she’s more and more thankful for the shelter.
Bonnie is facing the other side of the bed, curled up with her arms around her knees and no blanket. Clementine thinks for a moment that maybe she should give Bonnie the blanket – but the more logical side of her brain tells her that this is probably a bust. Bonnie would probably just get up in the middle of the night for a smoke and throw the blanket on Clementine or something like that.
Sleep isn’t easy to fall into. The sound of heavy sleet against the windows is loud, much loader than the soft pitter-patter of snow covering the ground. The bed isn’t any more comfortable than the average old couch, either, which contributes more and more to her uneasy rest as the night goes on.
Somehow, Clementine falls asleep.
And unsurprisingly, she wakes up several hours later. She’s panting, her body shakes, and in her head, it still feels like part of a dream. It’s almost like the physical sensations she had coming out of the seizures she had all that time ago.
Something’s wrong.
Not like a seizure, but she knows that something is wrong.
The glucose monitor is nowhere in sight, but she feels cold sweat on her face and Clementine is sure that something’s wrong. The physical weakness is worse than she’s felt in a very long time. Her stomach begs for food harder than it ever has, while her heart thumps so fast that she may as well be facing a walker with no weapon instead of simply waking up in the middle of the night.
Clementine reaches out, expecting to feel Bonnie next to her, but instead, all she feels is air and the sheets. The sheets aren’t warm. Bonnie hasn’t been on top of them for a long time. She couldn’t have been.
Getting off of the bed without being able to grip the side of the mattress is difficult. Her hands won’t stop shaking long enough to even curl correctly – and Clementine is barely able to take a breath without difficultly. Her heart hammers faster and faster until tears come to her eyes from the sheer force in her chest.
“B-Bonnie?”
Nothing.
“Bonnie!”
Still nothing.
Clementine falls hard on the carpeted floor with a dull thud and a shout. She lets out a small growl, clawing around the ground, sinking her trembling nails into the carpet. Pushing herself up, she grips the bedsheets with one hand and the bedside table with the other. Carefully, Clementine forces herself up on two legs, leaning against the wall for extra support.
She wonders where the glucose monitor is – she can’t remember what she did with it before she went to sleep. Is it with the rest of the medical supplies, or sitting on the kitchen table? Is it lost?
Clenching her fist, Clementine calls out again in a trembling voice.
“Luke!”
There’s no answer in Luke’s voice. Instead, the only noise she can hear is Bonnie and Mike.
From the bathroom in the hallway.
And they don’t sound casual.
“I gotta say – fuck, I’m outta practice…”
“Keep… your voice down… Oh! Mike, we’re gonna wake someone up.”
An even more sick feeling rises up in Clementine as she stumbles past the hallway bathroom into the sitting room. Bonnie and Mike are… okay, she doesn’t even want to think about what Mike and Bonnie are doing. She just tells herself they’re making out. Yes, they’re kissing. They’re doing kissing stuff.
Seizing is a feeling Clementine remembers, and the feeling like she’s losing feeling in her body is something she remembers as well. The feeling rises up and so do tears in her eyes because the only other “emotion” is hunger. It’s the worst hunger she’s felt since the midst of her hyperglycemia and if there’s anything she remembers any of the group saying about type one diabetes, it’s that… that one thing.
What was that one thing?
Hypo, aka low. Hypoglycemia – low blood glucose. Right?
And hypo – that’s caused by insulin?
Luke’s words echo in her mind. How much insulin had she been given? All Clementine can remember is the syringe, and the prick from the needle and how much she absolutely despised the three injections the day before – but not the amount she was given.
Of course she wouldn’t. No, that would make her situation too easy.
Once you do get to a normal level, you may end up experiencing it at times. It’ll be a good idea to keep something on you – crackers or a granola bar, maybe.
She needs to eat something. That’s what Clementine remembers. Nothing but agonizing hunger races through her body, joining the cravings for everything from a granola bar to every little bit of sugar filled food she can find. Apples are somewhere in there as well.
That can kill faster, can’t it?
There’s the slap in the face Clementine remembers. Her gait falters as she crumbles to the carpeted floor and lets out a low moan. Any bit of energy she previously had is gone, and now all she can manage is pulling herself up by the wall, which doesn’t do much.
She crawls, her hollow stomach rubbing the floor as Clementine tries her best to make her way to the couch in the living room. That’s where Kenny is, and now she can’t even bother to care about the fighting she and Kenny did.
That can kill faster, can’t it?
Staying alive is more important to Clementine right now. The last thing she wants is death in the hallway, even if she is risking her life just by moving – existing – or a seizure, in the best case scenario; grand mal seizures aren’t the best seizures for staying clean, after all, something Clementine resents.
“Kenny!”
Kenny jerks on the couch as Clementine pulls herself up to the front. Without thinking, she smacks his exposed hand and shouts again, tears clouding her vision even further as her heart rate escalates. Twisting around, Kenny opens his eye and lets out a loud grunt.
“What the fu – Clementine!” His voice is hoarse, and the sudden shouting is what makes Clementine lose any bit of sense that she already mustered. And any bit of bravery.
The tears spill as she shouts back, “Wh-where’s the… where’s the glucose monitor? K-Kenny, I’m s-sorry –”
“Clem, hey, what’s the matter with you?” Kenny sits up, his hands flying to Clementine’s shoulders as she tries her best to keep herself from falling over. “I don’t – fuck, I don’t know where the glucose monitor is – what’s the matter?”
Clementine doesn’t answer for several seconds, unable to articulate the need for food or sugar or anything else. And for that matter, she feels sick to her stomach, like she may vomit at any moment. She tries to avoid crying; she wants to hand this without making it into anything major.
It doesn’t work.
“Is, uh – shit, what’s it called? Uh – your blood sugar… yeah, Clem, is it… low? High? Fuck, I need you to talk to me, Clementine!”
“I don’t know!”
Shaking, Clementine lowers her gaze and inadvertently finds herself letting out a strangled cry that she previously held back. She increases her grip on the couch as Kenny scrambles around her, trying to stand up and fully wake up. The panic inside of her only builds up further and further until she buries her face into the fabric of the couch.
Kenny leaves the room, saying something she can’t make out, and then shouts from the hallway. Clementine makes out the slamming of a door, combined with Bonnie’s and Mike’s voices – and Kenny’s continued tirade against them.
There’s the sounds of other doors opening, and Luke’s sleepy droning joins as he tries to figure out what exactly is going on.
“Mike and Bonnie are havin’ the fuckin’ time of their lives in the bathroom and I don’t even know what the hell’s wrong with Clementine - !”
Kenny seems to cut himself off, as if he’s suddenly remembered that Clementine is in the middle of trying to keep herself from dying on the floor.
Clementine shuts her eyes tightly as she hears the sound of shoes on the tiles in the kitchen squeaking and running back and forth. Then the sound of cellophane and the sound of Luke asking about the glucose monitor.
“Clem – darlin’, here –”
Before she can protest, Kenny shoves a granola bar into her hands, and before she can even think to look at the nutritional facts, she rips open the wrapper and stuffs it in her mouth. The hunger is worst that Clementine has felt in a long time. Worse than the hyperglycemia. Worse than the seizures.
Worse than thirst, and worse than polyuria.
And when she’s finally stuffed it all down her throat, Clementine listens intently as the other doors bang open, as Kenny shouts and argues with Mike and Bonnie, and as Alvin Jr.’s screaming starts up. The house is up and active now, and it’s most likely only one or two in the morning.
When she can finally focus for longer than a second, Clementine’s tears don’t stop as she tries to piece together the torn shreds of the granola bar wrapper; the not-so-silent reminder of her limitations.
So no, it’s not just a granola bar.