Kristy's not Okay
Chapter Five
"Mister and misses Elric?" a doctor called when he walked out to the waiting room. Ed and Winry immediately stood and walked over to the doctor who held a grim expression and a clipboard.
"That's us," Winry said. "Is she all right?"
"Did you two know that your daughter was depressed?" the doctor asked.
"We didn't know she would try to commit suicide," Edward answered. He felt as though the doctor was accusing them for not keeping a better eye on her. "She was diagnosed with Anorexia and it accidentally got out to some of our friends and family." Ed didn't want to say how it accidentally got out. He would discuss it with Winry later.
"Well, your daughter did quite a number on herself," the doctor explained. He gestured for them to follow him as he began to walk through two white doors that would lead them to Kristy's room. "We'd like to admit Kristina to our closed psychiatric ward, though we would need your permission to do so."
"Absolutely not," Edward said sternly.
"Your daughter is very ill, mister Elric," the doctor warned. "If you're not careful, she could end up here again."
"She's not going to be admitted to this hospital," Ed said. "If she needs to be admitted somewhere, she will be admitted to the hospital of our choosing."
"Very well," the doctor said. "We've given her stitches to close the wound and she's currently under sedatives to make sure she doesn't try and harm herself while we're not in the room. She needs to heal, but we've done everything we can do here without admitting her for her eating disorder and suicidal thoughts."
"So we can go when she wakes up?" Winry asked.
"We'd like to keep her overnight just to make sure the stitches hold up," the doctor answered. "When you discharge her, the nurse will give you a prescription I've already signed for. It's pain medication for the stitches. You'll also need to make an appointment with me to have the stitches removed, but if you'd also like to do that with another doctor, just let me know and I'll give you a referral."
"We're going to Doctor Warren," Edward answered. "She runs a hospital specialized for eating disorders on the other side of town."
"How do you know if she's qualified to remove stitches?" the doctor asked.
"Because she removed mine," Ed said. "Can I go see my damn daughter now?"
"Of course," the doctor said. He opened the door to the room where Kristy was admitted. Winry gave a sigh of relief when she could see her daughter. Kristy was pale and her wrist was completely wrapped in bandages. She also had IVs in her other arm and hand.
"My baby…" Winry trailed off. She sat beside the bed quickly, a hand reaching up to stroke Kristy's golden locks. "Oh my god…Ed…how could we have let her get this way?"
"We've been doing all we can," Ed said.
"But I told everyone what was going on with her…" Winry held onto Kristy's hand as tightly as she could without disrupting the IVs. "What kind of mother would tell everyone their daughter is Anorexic?"
"You didn't know it would be a bad thing, Winry," Edward said gently. He knelt down beside his wife and kissed her hair softly. "You didn't know. You just didn't know."
"But we decided that it would be best if no one knew…She didn't want anyone else to know…" Winry said. "She didn't want anyone to know."
"Don't worry about that now," Ed said. "We'll talk to her about it later. Right now, let's enjoy the fact that our daughter is alive."
It was in the middle of the night when Kristy had woken. Edward had been there, but Winry had left to go home. Someone needed to tell the boys that everything was okay, and only one of them could stay anyway. Winry had wanted to stay, and Ed was willing to let her do so, but she eventually decided that she would go home. While she ached to be near her daughter, she had been the one to tell everyone what had happened, and she wanted Kristy to relax instead of be angry with her.
"Kristy?" Ed asked when he saw his daughter's eyes open. He thought she would have been on sedatives all through the night, but they must have been wearing off. "Kristy, are you all right?"
"Daddy?" Kristy asked, calling Edward 'daddy' for the first time in years with tears in her eyes. She hadn't thought she would live. She was supposed to die so her family wouldn't have to go through the embarrassment of having to tell people that she was their daughter, and that she was a freak.
"Hey, baby." Edward reached a hand out and stroked his daughter's hair gently, the way that Winry always did. He knew Kristy liked it. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm sorry..." Kristy trailed off.
"What are you sorry for?" Ed asked.
"I'm sorry that you have to deal with me," Kristy said. "I'm sorry that your daughter is so messed up that she starves herself and does stuff like this. I'm sorry I couldn't have been someone else."
"Well, it's karma, I guess," Ed said, trying to lighten the situation.
"Karma?" Kristy asked.
"Honey, I'm the one who's sorry," Edward said. "Maybe if I had told you this, you wouldn't have developed Anorexia because you would have been more educated on the subject."
"What are you talking about?" Kristy pressed a button on the side of her hospital bed that moved the bed into a sitting position. She could speak easier this way.
"I'm talking about when I was a kid. Kristy, I didn't go to Doctor Warren because I was a State Alchemist and got hurt. I went to her because I had Bulimia."
"What?" Kristy's eyes widened. She didn't even know boys could have something like that.
"I was just a kid when it started," Ed explained. "It started when I was young, and it continued until I was an adult. It was always a problem, but it became serious when I was a teenager. I wasn't eating, and when I was, I was eating so much that I would have to throw up afterward."
"You had Bulimia?" Kristy was still in shock from the new information about her father that she never knew. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I was embarrassed, Kristy," Ed said. "I was embarrassed because I put everyone through hell as a teenager and even when I turned eighteen. I was still hiding it, I had begun cutting myself, and I was depressed. It was actually my father who had told everyone I was still hiding my Bulimia when I was eighteen."
"Your father?" Kristy asked. "You never really talk about him…"
"That's because I didn't grow up with him," Edward answered. "I didn't really know the guy, except that I knew he left my mom when I was a kid. He had no idea I had Bulimia, he just happened to notice me hiding stuff when no one else did. It was…It was actually your mom who was the first one who caught me throwing up."
"Really?" Ed nodded.
"She didn't understand what I was doing. We were just kids; I was eleven or twelve years old. I was so embarrassed that she had caught me…" Ed sighed. "I wish I had told you and the boys earlier. If I had told you the truth…"
"It wouldn't have changed anything," Kristy interrupted. "It wouldn't have changed that I am the way I am. This is just how it is."
"You're right," Ed said. "But maybe you would have understood that I knew what you were going through from the very beginning."
The boys came to the hospital with Winry when she came back in the morning. Edward hadn't been expecting it so soon, but he should have figured they would work their way in to coming along. Ethan and Anthony had been very close with Kristy when they lived in the house and they were just worried about their baby sister. Ed remembered he would barely leave the hospital when Al was there after he got his body back.
"Hey, kid," Ethan said as he sat on the hospital bed beside Kristy's feet.
"Hey," Kristy greeted with a small smile. Her voice was still a bit rough in the way that happened in the hospital. Ed remembered he always had a scratchy voice in the hospital.
"You scared us," Anthony said, though he stayed beside the door with Winry. "I thought you were gonna die."
"I thought so too…" Kristy trailed off.
"Oh, baby, I'm so sorry," Winry apologized, walking over to Kristy's bedside and stroking her hair softly. "I shouldn't have said anything. I'm so sorry that I put you in that situation."
"You don't have to be sorry," Kristy said. "I'm the one who should be sorry. I ruined your party by being so…freaky…"
"Kristy, I told you that you're not freaky," Edward said with a slight sigh. "Kristy woke up last night and we had a heart-to-heart."
"Did you tell her about…?" Winry trailed off, allowing Ed to fill in the rest of the sentence. He nodded. "Did you want to tell the boys?" Another nod.
"Boys, because Kristy's secret about her Anorexia was blown, I'll let you know a little something about me. I guess it's only fair," Ed began. "As a teenager, I was Bulimic."
"That's the thing with throwing up, right?" Ethan asked. Edward nodded.
"Teenager?" Winry asked with a raised eyebrow. "You were eighteen years old when you finally went into treatment and allowed them to treat you."
"Hey, that's still a teenager," Ed said. "I figured it wasn't fair for only Kristy to know. Even if she is special."
"Hey!" Anthony frowned.
"She's my only daughter, Ant." Ed and Winry laughed together. "I've got two of you boys."
"We got a little lucky on the first try, I guess," Winry said. The family's laughter was interrupted when the doctor walked into the room.
"Hello, everyone," the doctor greeted. "Are you two related to the patient?" the doctor asked Ethan and Anthony.
"We're the older brothers," Ethan answered.
"Mister and Misses Elric, if you'd like for your sons to leave the room for the news I have for you, now would be the time to ask them to leave," the doctor announced.
"We're not going anywhere,' Anthony said.
"Boys…" Ed trailed off. "I think it would be a good idea. I don't know if this is going to be very good news. We'll tell you everything that goes on."
"But, dad…" Anthony began.
"Listen to your father, boys," Winry interrupted. The twins frowned, walking out of the room and staying directly outside the door in hopes of hearing whatever the doctor had to say.
"What's up, doc?" Ed asked.
"When Kristina was administered to our facility, we ran some tests on her in order to rule out anything that may have gone wrong," the doctor explained. "Before we allowed you to see her, we noticed that she was suffering from effects of Anorexia, so we tested her for that and just received the results."
"Well, we already told you that she was diagnosed as Anorexic," Ed said. "I thought we put it on her form when we were given paperwork."
"It might have slipped our minds," Winry said. "I mean, it's a new diagnosis, and we were under a lot of stress."
"I guess…" Edward trailed off.
"That's beside the point; she might be suffering from a complication from the Anorexia," the doctor said.
"Complication?" Winry asked with wide eyes. She held tightly onto Kristy's hand.
"Her heart may be suffering from the stress," the doctor answered. "Anorexia is a complicated disease and when your daughter continues to starve herself, her body is eating away at her muscle in order to survive. The heart happens to be a muscle that if effected by this disease could cause your daughter to go into cardiac arrest," the doctor explained.
"Oh my god." Winry brought a hand to her mouth as she looked down to her daughter. "How do we fix it?"
"Honestly, we still need to do more testing to find out if there even is a problem with the heart," the doctor answered. "Kristina will need to wear a heart monitor at all times until we can better understand her condition."
"If you don't mind, just discharge her," Edward said. "I'll take her to the doctor who specializes in this. She'll know what to do. She can fix anything."
"Edward…" Winry trailed off. "What if Doctor Warren can't fix anything? What if…What if Kristy is seriously hurt because of this?"
"Doctor Warren can fix anything, Winry," Ed said sternly.
Next Update: Nov. 28th, 2015
Happy Early Thanksgiving! What are you doing?