Chapter Nine
Edward walked through the house quietly as not to alarm anyone. He used all of his stealth training he had received from spending one month with Izumi Curtis as his teacher to get through the house undetected to indulge himself.
It didn't take long before Ed reached the cabinets of food in the Hughes household. Of course he felt guilty. Of course. There wasn't a way he couldn't feel guilty while he uncontrollably ate the majority of Mrs. Hughes food and vomited it into a toilet.
Despite how many times Edward did this, he still refused to admit he had a problem.
He was halfway through the leftovers of Quiche from dinner when Alphonse wrapped his armor arms around him.
"Brother, please stop," Alphonse said as gently as he could, not wanting to wake the others as well. He wanted to be the one who got his brother to stop doing this to himself. He wanted to be the one to protect Edward from himself. "Please…"
"Let me go, Al," Ed said. His stomach was aching and he felt like he was about to burst. He had to get rid of the food. He had to get rid of all of it.
"No, brother," Alphonse said sternly. "I won't let you throw it up and hurt yourself even more." It had been the first time that Al had actually witnessed his older brother gorging himself so uncontrollably like this. Sure, Alphonse had seen Edward eat large amounts of food, but never like this. Edward had been sitting on the floor eating Quiche with his hands like an animal.
"Stop it," Ed said, more desperately this time. "My stomach hurts, Al!" This brought attention to Hughes, who jumped out of bed at the sound of the brothers fighting. He had at first expected an intruder with his military training. Placing his gun back inside his night table, the man walked downstairs to find out what the boys were fighting about.
"What's going on here?" Hughes asked when he walked downstairs, even though the question was unneeded. It was obvious of what had happened. What Edward had done and how Alphonse had tried to stop him.
"Let me go!" Ed shouted. Alphonse finally released his brother. Edward moved to run past Hughes to the bathroom, only to be stopped by the man. "Get out of my way."
"I can call the hospital if you'd like," Hughes said. "I know that you want to throw up, but I'm not letting you do it."
"You guys can't stop me from doing this!" Ed exclaimed. "This is my life; it's my body, and I'll do what I want with it!"
"You're going to wake up Elysia and Gracia if you haven't already," Hughes warned. "Yes, it's your body, but this is not just your life, Edward. Your brother needs you. You've become like a son to me; is this really how you want to end it all? You know that if you die so many lives will be disrupted from it."
Edward hesitated. "Let me go." He pushed past Hughes and walked to the bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind him.
It wasn't long before the sound of vomiting filled the room.
"Mr. Hughes?" Alphonse asked when he saw the man clench his fists.
"I'll be calling the hospital in the morning," Hughes said. "I thought that Ed needed a chance to get better at home where he has a support system, but if he needs to be in the hospital, I won't stop him from getting better."
"…All right, Mr. Hughes."
"Thank you for entrusting Edward into our care, Mr. Hughes and Colonel Mustang; we will take very good care of him while he's here," Doctor Warren said as she finished up signing bits of the clipboard to sign on as Ed's residential doctor. "You can visit every Friday from seven to eight at night. Edward will be very well taken care of with us."
"Just make sure he gets better," Hughes said. "I want to take him home soon."
"Well, you can sign him out at any time after signing an AMA release form, but we do recommend a three month stay," Doctor Warren explained.
"I know what you recommend," Hughes said. "I just want Ed to get better. If he gets better before the three months is over, I'm taking him home. If he takes longer to get better…I guess he'll stay."
"Thank you," Doctor Warren said. "I'll have my nurse show you out and go visit Edward." The nurse showed the two men out of the hospital as Doctor Warren walked into the residential bedroom where Edward was kept. "I'm so glad you've decided to stay with us, Edward."
"It's Ed," the teen argued. "And I didn't decide anything. They just threw me in here."
"Is that how you feel about it?" Doctor Warren asked. "I would have thought you had at least some desire to recover."
"I'm telling you there's nothing wrong with me," Edward said.
"Is that so? Well, we have a video tape that proves otherwise and Mr. Hughes saw you on your way to purge. You were fighting with you brother," Doctor Warren explained. "Why is that?"
"I was fighting with him because I had to go to the bathroom and he wasn't letting me for some reason," Ed said. It wasn't totally a lie.
"You were going to the bathroom to purge," Doctor Warren said.
"No! I was going to the bathroom to piss!" Edward exclaimed.
"Now you're getting defensive," Doctor Warren said. "Look, we're having group therapy with everyone with Bulimia in half an hour. You'll be able to hear what everyone else says."
"How is he doing?" Hughes asked through the phone to the hospital, trying to get more information about Edward. He knew that the teenager couldn't get better in a day, but he still wanted to know if the kid had any sort of panicked reaction to being left there the way he was.
"Mister Hughes, Edward is doing fine for the time being," Doctor Warren said. "He's just finished through group therapy with the others diagnosed with his disease and is currently in the rec room playing poker with himself." Hughes didn't find this odd; whenever Alphonse refused to play poker with his brother, Ed always seemed to find a way to play by himself.
"Has he admitted he has a problem yet?" Hughes asked. He was worried about Edward's continued denial of the problem. If Ed didn't admit there was something wrong, he couldn't get better.
"Unfortunately, he's still denying doing anything wrong," Doctor Warren answered. "He claims he's just trying to go to the bathroom. We're going to keep an eye on his eating and have him under observation after meal times. After he goes so long without purging, we're going to put him through therapy."
"What do you mean after?" Hughes asked. "Shouldn't he be going through some sort of therapy to help him cope with not being able to…do what he does?" The man couldn't bring himself to say purge.
"You have to understand, Mister Hughes; this disease is physical, but it's also mental. His malnourished brain doesn't want to get better, so we need to help him get to a nourished point and then put him through therapy," Doctor Warren explained. "If you'd like, you can come back in and we'll go over this further."
"No, I think I got it," Hughes said with a sigh. "Call the colonel and I if there are any changes."
"Of course," Doctor Warren said before their call ended.
So short chapter, I had to get it over with so that I could post something after forever. College is rough, everyone, but I love it.
