"How're you holding up?"
Joe shrugged and shivered. He and Frank were sitting outside the nurses' station at Bayport General, back on the eating disorder ward. The Hardy parents had awakened to find their sons dressed, Joe's bag packed, awaiting transport to the hospital where Joe would allow himself to be signed in as a relapse patient.
"I'm cold," the younger Hardy mumbled. Frank slid his arm off his brother's shoulders and took off his own black jacket, wrapping it tenderly around Joe before replacing his arm.
"Shouldn't be too much longer."
Joe nodded, sighed, looked up to the floor beyond. Several girls were looking at him, inevitably whispering about the appearance of a male on the floor.
"Joe?" A voice said, and the younger Hardy turned to see Vanessa, the nurse from earlier, standing in the doorway with a clipboard in her hand. "Why don't you come back and we'll do weights and measures."
Joe hesitated, but Frank patted him on the back and he nodded, reluctantly handing his older brother's jacket back before following the nurse into the back room.
"Put this on," she said, handing him a paper gown and setting the scale down to zero, placing a new plastic on the instant thermometer.
"Anyone I'd know still here?" he asked as he took his shirt off.
"A couple who were on bed rest. You probably wouldn't remember them."
Joe stepped out of his pants and slid the gown on over his boxers, trembling from the constant cold his body forced him to endure as punishment for refusing meals.
"Do you remember the other boy? Jamie?"
The nurse hesitated, turned and raised her eyebrows at him.
"You knew Jamie?"
"Sure. He talked to me a few times." Joe sighed and looked away. "Told me not to relapse."
Vanessa nodded and pulled the stethoscope off of her neck, crossing the room to press the cold metal against his skin.
"Breathe in," she murmured, touching his bony shoulder.
He obeyed, watching her frown, then turn and make a note.
"Have you had an EKG yet?"
"No."
"Your heart rate is much slower than it should be. I'll set one up for you this afternoon. And bloodwork."
Joe nodded, but something about her aloofness troubled him.
"Hop on the scale," she murmured. "Backwards. Relapse patients can't look."
The younger Hardy felt heat creep into his face, wanted to curse the woman off and look anyway, but then he realized with dismay that no matter what the number was, it wouldn't be small enough.
Vanessa adjusted the height instrument to the top of Joe's head, made a note on the clipboard, then slid the metal along the scale.
"Jamie died," she said softly.
Joe started, felt himself pale.
"What? How?"
She balanced the scale and sighed, then turned to make a note. "Step down."
"Vanessa!"
"I know, honey. We'd seen him so many times before, we were used to him. It was a shock for us too."
"How?"
"Heart attack. In his sleep. He didn't suffer."
Joe felt dizzy. "Heart attack? How? He was…well, not healthy, but I didn't know…"
Vanessa guided Joe over to the examining table and ordered him to sit. He hadn't realized he'd been swaying.
"When a severe anorectic begins to recover," she explained, "the body gains weight at an enormous speed. The metabolism and the heart have slowed down to adjust to this smaller body, and the rapid change is a shock on the entire system. Sometimes it's too much, and the heart can't take the strain. Like with Jamie. He'd been so ill, so severely emaciated for so long that his body simply couldn't take the gain. And so his heart…rebelled."
Joe bit his lip, felt sick.
Don't repeat my mistake, the boy had said.
And here he had.