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Overthinking
If you were to ask me what started the thoughts, I wouldn’t know.
It could have been how I’m surrounded by traditionally good-looking people (Thor, Natasha, T’Challa, Bucky) and then realizing my old school bullies may be a bit correct.
Maybe it was the media, maybe my own self worth telling me that I wasn’t good enough and it transformed into this being the reason.
But whatever the reason, suddenly it’s all I can think about.
My weight, my body, how I look in the mirror, how I look to other people.
It’s on a constant loop in my mind and I can’t seem to shake it no matter how much I tell myself it’s dumb.
Until it suddenly becomes less dumb and I start wondering if it might be true.
Maybe I should change something?
Steve has been acting off for the past week.
Natasha, Sam, and I have all recognized it, but we aren’t exactly sure what’s causing it.
Or what it even is.
Tony says he’s likely stressed from his classes, which would make sense.
College has been a bit rough since the semester really started, and Steve’s classes aren’t exactly easy.
Hopefully it will pass soon.
Cutting Out Food
Starting and keeping to a plan was a bit difficult, but I managed.
I didn’t have snacks during the day and if I was hungry outside of breakfast, lunch, or dinner I would have fruits or crackers.
I also took less than normal at meal times and stopped having dessert.
Buck thought it was weird, but I passed it off as not feeling very well or being stressed, hopefully I can convince him until I look better.
Whenever that will be.
The hunger pains aren’t as hard to deal with after two weeks, in fact it’s easy to even stop having snacks all together and only having three fourths or one half of what I would normally eat at meals.
Besides it’s not that big of a deal; I’m okay, not like those teen girls you hear about in the news, I’m completely in control.
It’s only snacks anyways, I’m still eating a healthy amount.
I think.
Maybe Stevie is more stressed than we originally thought?
He’s been eating less, but he promises he’s just not feeling great.
Those were pretty common when he was younger, but I had hoped they would improve as he got older.
Maybe they are returning? I’ll have to see if I can ask Steve about visiting a doctor to make sure he’s okay.
Skipping Meals
Since cutting down how much I ate worked out so well, I decided after about three months to cut out a meal.
Breakfast and lunch on Tuesday and Thursday are the easiest to hide so that’s where I began.
Bucky has early classes everyday so it’s rare he’s home when I would normally eat breakfast, and I eat lunch alone on Tuesday and Thursdays since everyone has classes during the first hour I typically eat lunch.
It’s a bit harder to ignore the hunger pains, and I give in a few times, but eventually I become stronger and better at ignoring them.
They are just getting in the way of my goals after all.
One morning Bucky’s class is canceled so he takes me for breakfast at a nearby diner.
It’s nice, I love spending time with him.
I ignore the weird look he gives me when I just order oatmeal and tea.
Soon I’ll be perfect, and then he’ll like me even more.
The weird feeling I’ve been getting gets worse one day out of nowhere.
It’s the unopened, untouched breakfast items that point to something being wrong.
I had assumed Stevie was eating breakfast and I hadn’t had any suspicions to think otherwise, but the untouched food and the fact Stevie never has any leftover lunch when my Tuesday and Thursday classes end, and I join him for a few minutes gives me a weird feeling that I’m missing something.
Maybe I do need to push him to make the appointment, just to be sure he’s healthy.
Lying About Food
Bucky asked me about what I’d been eating for breakfast one day, since nothing had been touched other than what he eats, and I kick myself for being so stupid as to forget.
I tell him I’d been buying breakfast most mornings, and he seems to believe me since he lets the situation go.
I get smarter, taking a granola bar or something each morning before throwing it out in a campus trashcan.
Bucky doesn’t ask again, I feel like I won something.
One night, three weeks in, Bucky texts me saying practice is going to run late and he won’t be home for dinner.
That night I don’t eat, instead making a pot of pasta and putting all but a small bowl in the fridge as leftovers.
No matter how much the thought of wasting food hurts, I throw my bowl of pasta away under some other trash to hide it.
Anything to achieve my goal.
Bucky gets home late and thanks me for cooking, making himself a bowl before joining me on the couch to watch tv.
I don’t like hiding things from Bucky, but I have to be beautiful.
This is the only way.
I find the pasta in the trash two days after Stevie makes it.
I don’t confront him, I already know he won’t tell the truth, but this is the proof I need that something is seriously wrong.
To others it probably doesn’t look good, the way I start watching Steve closely as he eats.
Natasha and Sam agree that this is a serious situation, and promise to keep a close eye on Steve’s eating habits.
God, I hope I’m not too late.
I don’t know what I’d do if I was too late to help him.
Excessive Exercise
Bucky is onto me, so are Natasha and Sam it seems.
I can tell, they watch me way closer than normal whenever I’m eating.
I don’t know what I did but whatever it is I need to change tactics.
I return to eating less and not skipping lunch, no matter how much the fact of me going back to the awful way I was before hurts.
But I have to get their suspicions away.
Instead of skipping more meals I go for runs before and after my classes.
I join Bucky, Natasha, Sam, and Clint when they go to the gym on Saturdays and slowly the suspicions fade away.
But this is good.
Exercising helps my weight a lot, and I don’t feel completely disgusting anymore, so I make my runs longer and extend my gym time to a few hours on Sunday as well.
I get to spend more time with my friends and boyfriend on Saturday and everything is great.
Everything is great.
I’m fine.
Promise.
Stevie has gone back to normal it seems.
He’s been eating a healthy amount and is smiling more than he had been.
Maybe we caught it just in time?
I hope so.
I’m happy Stevie has joined us at the gym, it gives us more time together to have fun and joke around with our friends.
It’s nice.
I’m glad he’s feeling better.
At least…I think he is.
Fatigue
Fatigue was something I was pretty used to.
Being chronically ill meant tons of fatigue, but I knew this was different.
Chronically ill fatigue had been getting better and better over the years with help from medication and other treatments, so the day I woke up feeling like the world was crushing me under its weight was familiar but something I hadn’t really felt for a few months.
Bucky was worried and asked me again if I wanted to make an appointment, but I said no.
I’d figure this out myself, the last thing I want is for a doctor to find out about what I’m doing and try to stop me.
Or tell Bucky.
Bucky cannot know.
Until then I’ll deal with the crushing weight of the fatigue.
It will all be over soon.
Soon I’ll be perfect.
I thought Steve was getting better but now I’m not sure.
It’s been months since his last flare, his current medication mix had been working perfectly!
He refuses a doctor’s appointment, like the punk he is, but I still think he needs to see someone to make sure nothing is progressing or there’s not a new issue that needs to be taken care of.
It’s been two weeks now of consistent fatigue, and with that came even less eating.
Everyone is worried that something is seriously wrong with his health, we all thought he was improving but maybe not.
I just don’t know what to do to help.
Weight Loss
A month into the constant fatigue and only eating one meal a day (as much as I hate using the ‘chronic illness’ excuse, I have to do this, it will only be until I look perfect and then I won’t have to use the excuse ever again), I finally can look at myself in the mirror.
I'm smaller, I can tell, and I smile at this.
I look good, slim, beautiful.
When I step onto our scale my smile dims.
It’s lower than before, but it’s still not good enough.
I’ve done so much but it’s not fucking enough!
At this rate I’ll never be perfect, I’ll always be disgusting compared to my friends.
Maybe I need to do more?
I’ve narrowed it down to one meal…but maybe I can make it so a few days I don’t eat any meals? Just small, low calorie snacks?
Yeah…yeah that could work.
Then this will go faster, and I can stop lying to Bucky so much!
But first I have to be good enough.
And this weight isn’t good enough.
Stevie is smaller.
He’s always been smaller, but this is…this is not normal.
This is almost how he looked when he was 12 and in the hospital.
Natasha thinks that, compared to before this started, he’s lost enough pounds in the last few months that this points to Stevie going to more extreme measures than just a normal diet he didn’t tell us about.
It’s not healthy or good, no matter how you look at it, especially not for Stevie.
I just feel so helpless…like nothing I do will help.
Watching him basically waste away…going from a barely healthy weight due to his health issues to noticeably underweight...it's crushing.
I can’t even imagine how Steve is feeling if I feel crushed.
Eating Safe Foods
If Bucky is curious about the sudden increase of celery, eggs, carrots, and thin tomato soup in our kitchen, he doesn’t ask me about it.
He doesn’t question it and I don’t bring it up.
As the weeks go on Bucky stops buying the gross food I used to eat and starts buying me healthier, low calorie items.
He looks sad but I’m happy!
Maybe he finally realized what I’m doing is a good thing and is supporting me in my mission to become better!
I hope so, I don’t want to be hurting Bucky.
But I’m doing this to be better, I’m glad Bucky is finally seeing that as well.
Trading Stevie’s old orders to the new ones I know he will actually eat hurts.
It’s something Wanda recommended from when she had an eating disorder similar to Stevie.
That she would eat options she deemed ‘safe’ and was more convinced to eat if someone else bought it for her because, in her eyes, that meant they agreed what she was doing was good.
And if others believed it was good, that meant what they bought to them to eat was safe.
I hate it.
The thought that Stevie thinks I want him to be doing this.
Starving himself in some weird, misguided attempt to be ‘better’.
Wanda says it doesn’t always make sense to those who don’t know what it’s like.
I wish it made sense.
I just want Stevie to be safe and healthy again.
I just want to see him smile more.
Avoiding Social Situations
Client’s archery competition is today.
They asked if Bucky and I wanted to get food afterwards to celebrate.
Food at a place we always go to after our friends’ competitions.
A place with zero good food.
Food that will just make everything worse and food that my friends will be sad if I don’t eat.
And what happens when I give in?
I become a failure like always.
I’m doing great right now.
I’m down to barely a couple hundred calories a day and I’m not ruining that now.
Everyone looks sad when I decline and tell them I don’t feel good enough.
But I can’t fail now.
I’m so close to being good enough.
Just a little longer.
The second the plan is said, I watch Steve freeze.
It’s the food part that makes him pause and my heart breaks.
I know Natasha and Sam caught it too because they both make eye contact with me.
He declines and I immediately decline as well so I can at least get something in him tonight, even if it’s just his fucking thin tomato soup.
He’s wasting away, I know it, Natasha and Sam know it, hell even Tony and Loki know it.
I think the only one who doesn’t is Steve himself.
I don’t understand why he can’t see it.
Why is this happening to us?
What did I do wrong?
Unrealistic Beliefs About Body Size
Avoiding the mirror can be hard, but it’s worth it to never have to see how disgusting I look.
I think you can be beautiful at any size, no matter what you look like…but the body that looks back at me…that’s the exception.
The person in the mirror looks even worse than he did in the beginning.
I thought I was doing good, but every time I look, I just see my failures.
I see the food I still eat and digest.
The food that goes through my body and just adds even more disgusting stuff that makes me look worse every time I see myself.
Everything about me looks awful.
At this rate I will never look good enough to date Bucky or be friends with Natasha or Sam.
At this rate I won’t ever look good enough to date or be friends with anyone.
So I avoid the mirrors.
But every once in awhile I force myself to look.
To look and see what a failure I am.
He’s getting worse.
Natasha won’t even tell me an estimate, that’s how bad it is.
At this rate it looks like a little too much strength and I could break him.
Like one gust of wind could knock him down.
He used to fit perfectly in my arms but now he’s all bone.
It’s weird, to have the person you love go from fitting perfectly in your arms to not even knowing how to hold him.
I don’t even think he knows.
Anytime I see him looking in the mirror he looks so sad.
But we aren’t seeing the same person.
I don’t know what he’s seeing when he looks at himself, but it’s not the same type of sad.
His is failure, like he wishes he was even smaller than he already is.
Mine is guilt.
That I didn’t do anything sooner.
That I don’t know what to do now.
That I wasn’t good enough for him.
That I can’t do anything but wait.
And wait.
And hope.
Vomiting
The first time I induce myself to vomit is after Tony convinced me to try a slice of cake while we were all hanging out.
The guilt hits me so hard that ten minutes later I rush to the upstairs bathroom in Tony and Loki’s house and force myself to vomit the undigested cake into the toilet.
I hate it at first.
The gross feeling in my mouth, the dizziness.
But then there’s relief.
Pride.
An idea.
I can eat, therefore getting everyone off my back, and then just…force myself to throw it up.
It’s perfect!
I’ll have to be careful, but I think I can manage.
Now I can get rid of anything I do actually eat.
No failure, only success now.
I’m so close to being happy with how I look.
So close.
I’d been tricked into thinking he was getting better before.
But this time I thought maybe it was actually real.
I was blind to think that.
Oh yeah Stevie is eating a close enough to healthy amount now, especially compared to before, and I was happy for about two weeks.
That was, until I hear it one day after Stevie thinks I’m asleep at least.
The unmistakable sound of vomiting makes me freeze in bed.
I pray Stevie will come get me like he used to whenever he was sick from gastrointestinal issues or nausea from one of his illnesses, that he would at least ask me to get him water or honey.
That the vomiting wasn’t caused by what I think it was caused by.
But it was, and we both know it.
He just flushes the toilet and I hear the sink running for a few minutes before it stops and it steps into out bedroom, coming to lay next to me silently.
I don’t let him know I’m actually awake, but I do hold him tighter than normal that night.
I hold the tears in until I know for a fact Stevie is asleep, then they fall.
As I cry, I can’t help but ask why it had to come to this?
How long has this been happening?
Why is this happening?
Please, God, someone help us.
Religiously Checking Weight
I check the scale practically every second I can.
At first, I feared the scale because knowing my weight would only make what the mirror showed more real.
But now it’s how I live.
When I wake up, before and after my run, after my shower, after any time I eat or drink something, after class, before class, before my second run, after my second run, and before I go to bed then repeat.
I watch my progress.
I started checking the scale daily eight months ago and watching the numbers go down is the best part of my day.
The numbers going down is what matters.
Soon they will be low enough.
I promise they will be.
Every time I hear Steve step on that fucking scale, I want to break it more and more.
I want to throw it out the window and watch a truck repeatedly run it over until it can’t be used to hurt him anymore.
But I can’t.
Natasha thinks if I take the scale away it will only send Steve into a breakdown and he’ll become more desperate.
She says there isn’t much we can do.
It’s been a year and a half and there isn’t shit we can do. S
am says the best thing to do is make sure Stevie gets something in his stomach every day, no matter what it is, and to keep him hydrated as much as possible.
Everything is falling apart beneath us.
I wish I never bought that fucking scale.
Always Cold
Wearing a heavy coat in winter isn’t weird, especially not in New York, but at one point I started to realize I was wearing the coat inside the apartment as well.
Sam, Natasha, and Bucky started carrying around blankets with them because even with my coat, I was always shivering violently.
Like my body couldn’t keep any heat in.
It was during one of these days, where I’m still freezing on the couch despite the heater being on and being under a pile of blankets with Bucky’s hoodie that the first feeling of ‘maybe this isn’t a good thing’ hits.
Bucky walks in from class in the early evening.
He looks exhausted, like he’s about to collapse any second now.
He closes the door behind him and takes off his coat before his eyes finally land on me.
I notice the tears forming before they finally fall at the same time Bucky falls to his knees, sobbing almost violently.
Standing up cautiously, I ignore the light headedness for a moment before I too collapse a few feet from Bucky, making him let out an even louder sob, before crawling the rest of the way.
I wrap my arms around him softly and he returns the hug, holding me tightly but with an air of fear.
‘Like he’s afraid he’ll break me.’
But the guilt, the regret, is smashed down quickly.
‘It’s not my fault Bucky is sad, if he would just realize this is what I have to do then he wouldn’t be sad anymore. It’s not my fault.’
This isn’t my fault.
The day had been long and draining.
Wanda had given Sam, Natasha, and I more advice on ways to help Steve but I just felt worse knowing I couldn’t really help him.
I knew what Stevie would look like when I got home, it was the same image that’s been haunting my mind for weeks, but the sudden reality of the situation brought everything crashing down.
He’s just so small.
Hidden under multiple blankets, swamped in my hoodie, unnaturally pale with sunken, exhausted eyes.
I don’t realize I’m crying until I’m on the floor sobbing uncontrollably.
I hear him stand, and only a second later I hear his knees hit the floor from him stumbling due to the lightheadedness I know he’s been experiencing getting worse and worse over the months.
My sobs grow louder as his arms, too small, wrap around me.
I return the hug as tight as I dare, knowing one wrong move, too much strength, could break him.
This is my fault.
Calluses on the Knuckles
I knew they were there, I see them daily after all, I guess I just didn’t realize other people cared enough to also see them.
But the first time Natasha notices the little cut on my knuckles, I watch as her eyes narrow violently and she turns the glare to me.
She asked me where it came from and I answered it was during art, accidently nicked myself while sculpting.
She doesn’t believe me, I know that.
She tells me to at least tell Bucky next time, so no cuts get infected, but I shake my head.
Natasha has always read me like an open book, read anyone like an open book really, but I wasn’t prepared for her next comment.
“So you know this hurts him, yet you still do it, why?”
It’s not a question, it’s a demand, and I rip my hand from hers, glaring back with as much emotion as I can gather.
“I’m not doing anything wrong.”
She’s good at masking emotions, but I still see the pain in her eyes before I turn and walk off.
If Natasha notices that I start wearing gloves after the encounter (and I know she does), she doesn’t ask questions.
Good.
Natasha told me about the encounter and the multiple scars on Steve’s knuckles.
I knew about them, of course I did, but nothing I did could stop it.
I’ve tried locking the bathroom but apparently Stevie learned to lockpick because the next thing I know the I’ll hear the bathroom door open anyways.
I’ve tried to distract him in any way I can short of physical restraint, but nothing can distract him from fucking forcing himself to vomit after eating or, hell, drinking anything I can convince, force, him to ingest.
At this point I don’t even hide how much it hurts to see him like this, but he doesn’t acknowledge it directly.
He’ll let me hold him and cry into his shoulder or chest, but anytime I try to talk to him about it he refuses to respond.
Natasha says he doesn’t think he's doing anything wrong.
I wish he would talk to me.
Dry Skin
When I asked Natasha for lotion one day, a week after college had started up again, she frowned and gave me her water bottle instead.
She told me I was to drink half the bottle and then I could have the lotion.
I know that she knows.
Nothing gets by Natasha.
But I just handed the water back and said I’d figure it out myself.
Later, when I’m washing my hands, I will ignore the way the skin on my hands crack and start to bleed a bit.
Bucky will watch as I brush dead, dried skin from my arms and he’ll suggest painting after dinner, but I’ll decline and go to the bathroom instead to vomit.
Sam will try to talk to me when he notices the amount of lotion I use, but I’ll brush him off as I always do and continue on my way.
Wanda will help rub lotion on my back and she’ll tell me that everyone is worried about me, I’ll tell her that they shouldn’t be.
I ignore my bleeding hands, I ignore the skin that flakes off more and more.
I ignore I ignore I ignore.
I notice the blood.
The skin.
The constant smell of lotion.
I notice how Stevie barely talks and doesn’t smile.
I notice his rough hands and arms that were once so soft.
I notice he brushes everyone off and rarely leaves the house unless it’s for his single class.
I notice I notice I notice.
Hair Growing on Body
My body is softer one day, compared to the rough skin that I normally feel, it now feels like fuzz.
Looking closer I realize it’s hair.
And it’s everywhere.
I knew that there was a chance this could happen, that the constantly feeling of freezing would catch up to me, but for a few days I walk around in shock.
Bucky notices it too and that night he makes sure I’m piled in blankets and as warm as possible.
He convinces me too drink some orange juice and chicken broth, but my stomach turns, and my body forces me to vomit everything on the floor.
For once I’m not the one to cause it.
He looks so sad, so tired, but he refuses to let me clean it and does it himself.
Sam and Natasha come over and the four of us sit in silence together, me laying in Bucky’s arms and wrapped in nearly a dozen blankets.
I feel that he’s sweating, but he doesn’t say anything.
“You’re starving, Steve.”
Natasha says it and it’s the first thing to break the silence.
But she doesn’t need to say it.
We already know.
Steve falls asleep eventually.
I rub my thumb along his thigh, feeling the little hairs growing there and trying to remember anything and everything Wanda told us about the hair growth and what it means.
But Natasha summed it up best.
Steve is starving, and has been for a long time.
“He even has the hair on his ears.”
Sam mentions, and I look, it’s one of the only places that isn’t covered by the blankets, and he’s right.
Along his ears is the same hair that’s growing on his arms, legs, back, and neck.
“What do we do?”
I don’t know how to answer him, neither I or Natasha know, and so we don’t respond to the question we’ve never known how to answer but wish we could.
All we can do is hope Stevie see’s what we do.
And soon.
Thinning Hair
The day I’m washing my hair and a clump falls out is the first day in months that I cry.
I’ve tried crying before, but there’s barely anything to cry.
That’s where Bucky finds me, sobbing on the shower floor, a clump of thin, lifeless blond hair in my hands and even more laying around me.
No one questions me wearing a beanie after that day, neither Bucky or I bring up the hair we find in it at night.
Or the hair on the furniture.
In the bed.
On the floor.
Everywhere.
Until at one point I’m sure there’s more of my hair around the house than on my head.
Bucky stops running his fingers through the lifeless hair because at this point even a small brush can and will pull out dozens of strands.
I stop washing it, brushing it, touching it in any way I can.
I never wanted to lose my hair.
But this is the price I’m forced to pay.
The vacuum stays in our living room now, used daily to get rid of all the hair we can.
I don’t know which makes Steve sadder, seeing the hair or getting rid of it.
He doesn’t take off the beanie anymore, not even in front of me or to sleep.
I’m not allowed to touch his hair in any form, we learned the hard way one night when I ran my fingers through the once bright and feather like hair that had so much life in it before, and a clump comes out with my fingers.
Wanda sends me articles and websites, including one about wigs with the message to at least suggest it to Stevie, but I never do.
I don’t think it would do anything good.
Fainting
I can’t remember what caused it, what the trigger was.
All I know is suddenly I’m locking the bathroom door and vomiting anything and everything I’m able to into the toilet.
It’s not even food, it’s not water or juice or anything I’ve ingested because I haven’t ingested anything.
All that’s coming up is stomach acid at this point.
It hurts, I can feel my throat burning and at some point, blood from tears in my throat join the acid in the toilet.
I want to cry, I feel like I should be crying.
But there’s no water in my body that I can cry.
Eventually I can’t continue, anything hurts too bad and my vision sways violently as I lean against the wall, the darkness on the edge of my vision closing in as I groan in pain.
Then it takes over.
When Sam called me in the middle of class, my heart stopped as I hurried to tell my professor I had a family emergency.
When I answered he explained that he and Natasha had arrived at Stevie and I’s apartment and despite calling for him Stevie never answered. He then told me he and Natasha found Steve passed out on the bathroom floor after Natasha picked the lock.
He said Stevie was fine and awake now, but that Sam instructed him he wasn’t allowed to leave the bed and that Stevie was threatened into eating something and drinking water, or being forced to the hospital.
Stevie choose the food and water.
I told Sam I was on my way and would be there in a few minutes before hanging up.
It’s hard to drive when you’re crying, but the idea of Stevie, the bathroom, and passed out is too much.
A part of me knows that soon it will be too late.
If it hasn’t already reached that point at least.
Seizures
It’s our third movie night after we restarted the tradition from a few years ago.
The theme today is Disney, and we were in the middle of Tangled when I get up to use the bathroom.
Bucky doesn’t trust me to go alone so he follows, Sam pauses the movie as we leave.
I lean on Bucky due to a sudden feeling of dizziness and he holds me up to make sure I don’t fall.
Walking back to the living room I get a bolt of fear down my spine as a headache forms suddenly and I grow sick to my stomach.
My vision sways as I turn to Bucky, not knowing what was happening.
“Buck I-“
Then I’m gone.
Stevie starts to sway a bit and I turn to ask if he’s okay, but the words are caught in my throat.
He looks unfocused as he turns to me, not really seeing me.
“Buck I-“
My heart stops as he freezes, his eyes widening before he completely collapses onto the floor.
I’ve never seen a seizure in my life, but I know that’s exactly what’s happening as his locked body starts convulsing uncontrollably.
I want to scream, panic, cry, anything, but now is not the time.
‘I need to do something.’
Natasha and Sam must hear because they run to the hallway in panic.
“Fuck!”
Natasha screams, dropping next to Steve and turning him to his side, placing one of her hands under his head and the other on his arm.
“Sam you need to call an ambulance, Bucky start timing it.”
She turns to us, looking the most serious I’ve ever seen her.
“This ends today.”
Sam and I nod as I take out my phone as quickly as I can, Sam running to grab his own.
“It’s been a minute.”
Natasha curses, I try not to focus on the fact she’s crying.
“Ambulance is on the way.”
She nods.
“Pack him and Bucky a bag with whatever they should need for a hospital stay, this is ending today and if Steve is going to get help he’ll probably be there awhile and he’ll need you Bucky,” she looks at me intensely as Sam runs to our room, “he is going to fight, but if we don’t do this now he will die,” Natasha winces, “and grab a pair of pants for Steve for right now!” She calls.
I notice the growing stain before the smell, trying not to cry more at the realization.
The seizure ends only a moment before the paramedics arrive, Sam is tasked with opening the door and letting them in.
They tell us only family can ride, and I tell them that I’m Steve’s fiancé, Natasha and Sam promise they will be right behind us.
I give the paramedics any information they need.
“His name is Steven Grant Rogers; 22 years old; anorexia, started around two and a half years ago; he has chronic medical conditions as well yes.”
They wheel him into the hospital, and everything crashes down.
I fall to my knees, sobbing violently in the middle of the hospital.
I feel Sam and Natasha come behind me, and the three of us huddle together, crying on the floor of the ER waiting room.
Wondering where this all went so, so wrong.
Visible Bones
Everything is dark.
Everything is quiet.
…where am I?
A nurse explained to me that Steve woke up a few minutes after the arrival to the hospital, confused and scared.
He told me that Steve was quickly sedated once he realized where he was and began to fight the nurses and doctors.
That was last night.
He’s still out, but the sedation has worn off and its purely exhaustion keeping him asleep now.
I know what he looks like, I see him daily for hours at a time, but seeing him lying, completely passed out in a hospital bed with a thin robe that doesn’t hide how tiny he’s gotten, makes everything worse.
He’s nothing but skin and bone at this point.
Doctors say he has practically no body fat left, barely any muscle.
It’s honestly terrifying, haunting.
But I don’t take my eyes off of him.
Natasha and Sam were forced to leave around 11 last night, and 30 minutes after I was directed to Stevie’s room.
The main nurse in charge of Stevie’s care brought me a blanket and some water once she saw I was there, just sitting by his bedside and desperately holding Stevie’s hand, trying to ignore the fact his hand was nearly completely bone.
Other than the nurses and messages from our friends, the room was quiet.
For a few hours the sounds of the mechanical ventilation filled some of the silence, but it was removed two hours ago, the gastric feeding tube being replaced by a nasal one.
The doctor explained that the feeding tubes should get nutrition back into Stevie and the IV would give him fluids, but he still looks as…(dead, thin, fragile, breakable)…he still looks as he did before.
One of the nurses got blood work around 1 am but I haven’t heard anything about it yet.
It’s 5:47, the sun barely rising, when he finally stirs a bit.
“Bu…Bucky…?”
I smile, sad and bittersweet, as his eyes open.
“Hey doll.”
He looks around slowly, looking like he’s barely awake.
“Am I in the hospital?”
I nod.
“What happened?”
Nurses told me that there was a chance his memory would be foggy, but I don’t want to have to relive the last few hours.
I do it anyways.
“You had a seizure last night, a pretty bad one too, doctors said you were too dehydrated.”
He still looks a little out of it, but seems more aware as I explain.
“Oh.”
I run my fingers through his hair, ignoring the strands that come out with it.
“I’m sorry.”
I laugh a bit, beginning to cry.
“I know, doll, but everything is going to be okay, you just…you just need to work with us to help you.”
Stevie looks sad, but he nods.
That single nod made the future look a little better.
Healing
Today’s the day.
It’s been nearly six months of inpatient treatment and I’m finally leaving.
Arnie, one of the other patients who I became friends with, hugs me goodbye and wishes me luck before one of the nurses escorts me out to the front.
Bucky is waiting for me, and I can’t but smile and run at him, dropping my bags as he catches me, hugging and spinning me around as we laugh.
I would see him once a week during visitation, but it never felt like enough.
Now I can see him every day.
Like it should be.
I sign myself out and Bucky helps me with my bags.
Natasha and Sam are both in the car, and the two of them rush out to hug me once we exit the hospital.
I hug them back tightly, so happy to finally be able to see them once again.
“Come on, everyone is waiting for us.”
I nod, getting into the passenger’s seat and grabbing Bucky’s hand tightly.
I smile when he doesn’t hesitate to squeeze it back just as tightly.
The looks everyone gives Stevie once we enter the restaurant can be described as simply relief.
Tony is the first to break the semi awkward looks with a solid punch to Stevie’s shoulder and a smirk on his face as he looks Stevie up and down.
“Looking good Cap, ready to celebrate, old man?”
Stevie punches him back with a laugh I smile at.
“Damn right I’m ready, Stark.”
And that’s all it takes.
The table is loud, but we ignore the other restaurant goers.
We’re happy, others aren’t going to shame us for that.
No one mentions the beanie Stevie is wearing or the fact it’s obvious the last of his hair had been shaved off.
We’re hoping it grows back, but until then Stevie has mentioned maybe a wig would be nice.
Natasha looks proud when Stevie orders spaghetti and Sam lights up when he eats all of it.
Stevie hesitates at the idea of cake as Tony and Loki bring out the cake they “made themselves” (aka ordered), but I tell him he can just have a few bites of my slice and he looks relieved, agreeing with that plan.
But that’s okay.
Healing is a process, one we’re going to do together.