Chapter 13: The Doctor

The kitchen binge settled into Violet’s body like a permanent weather system. Weeks passed, and the initial shock of that solitary feast faded into a new, constant baseline of illness. It wasn’t the sharp, acute pain of overeating anymore. This was something deeper, a systemic failure that colored every hour.

Her skin lost whatever healthy tone it had left, taking on a pale, waxy quality that seemed to glow unpleasantly under the fluorescent lights of the sorority house. It was constantly clammy, cool to the touch even when she felt feverish inside. A fine sheen of sweat coated her forehead and the back of her neck almost perpetually, making her hair stick to her skin in damp strings.

Breathing became an active chore. At rest, propped against a mountain of pillows in her bed, her breaths were shallow, rapid things that hitched in her chest. Each inhalation sounded wet, a soft rattle deep in her lungs that didn’t clear with coughing. Just sitting up to reach for the water glass Hannah always left on her nightstand made her winded, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird trying to escape a cage of fat and bone.

Moving was out of the question.

The simple act of getting from her bed to the attached bathroom, a distance of maybe twelve feet, transformed into a complex logistical operation requiring two people.

“Okay, Vi, on three,” Hannah would say, her voice calm and practiced. She’d position herself at Violet’s right side, one arm hooked under Violet’s armpit. Susan took the left, her bubbly chatter subdued to focused murmurs. “One, two, three.”

They would heave together, leveraging their own body weight to roll Violet’s mass upright onto the edge of the bed. The process alone left Violet dizzy, black spots swimming in her vision as her body protested the change in elevation. Then came the standing part.

Planting her feet was easy enough. Actually transferring her weight onto them and straightening her knees was the impossible part. Her legs, swollen and weak from disuse, trembled violently under the load. Hannah and Susan would bear the brunt of it, their faces tightening with strain as they lifted, their bodies bracing against hers to keep her from buckling.

Once vertical—or as vertical as her hunched posture allowed—the journey began. It wasn’t walking. It was a pained, agonizing shuffle. Violet would slide one foot forward a few inches, dragging the other to meet it, her entire weight supported by the sisters flanking her. Each shuffle sent jolts of pain through her lower back and hips, joints grinding under pressure they were never meant to sustain. The twelve feet felt like a marathon, measured in gasped breaths and hissed winces.

The bathroom doorframe was another obstacle, its width barely accommodating the three of them moving as a single unit. They’d turn sideways, an awkward crab-like maneuver, to squeeze through.

They did this multiple times a day. For the toilet. For the shower stool they’d installed, where Susan would wash her with a detached efficiency. For transfers to the armchair by the window for “sunlight,” which usually just meant Violet sitting in a different place while struggling to breathe.

Hannah watched these performances with a changing expression. Her initial triumph at the kitchen conquest had curdled into something more clinical. She started timing the bathroom trips with the stopwatch on her phone. She noted the increasing wetness of Violet’s cough in a small notebook she carried. The motherly concern was still there, but it was being edged out by the sharp focus of a project manager seeing a critical asset degrade.

One afternoon, after a particularly difficult transfer back to bed left Violet gray-faced and panting for a full five minutes, Hannah lingered while Susan went downstairs.

“Your lips are blue,” Hannah stated quietly, not as an accusation but as a data point.

Violet just blinked slowly, trying to pull enough air into her lungs to respond. Talking used air she didn’t have.

Hannah sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under her slight weight. She reached out and pressed the back of her hand to Violet’s damp forehead, then her cheek. “You’re burning up and freezing at the same time. How is that even possible?”

Violet managed a weak shrug that made her breath hitch again.

“This isn’t sustainable,” Hannah murmured, more to herself than to Violet. She looked around the room, at the medical-grade wipes on the nightstand, the box of adult diapers tucked discreetly in the corner for nights when the journey was too much, the ever-present insulated cup of high-calorie shake. “If you get pneumonia… if your heart just gives out…”

She trailed off, but the unspoken words hung in the stale air between them. Before graduation.

The thought seemed to crystallize something for Hannah. Her soft features hardened into resolve. She stood up abruptly.

“We’re taking you to the doctor,” she announced, her voice leaving no room for debate.

Violet’s foggy brain processed this with a dull throb of anxiety. A doctor meant scrutiny. It meant numbers on scales and questions she couldn’t answer. It meant someone outside the house looking at what they had done to her.

“No,” she rasped, the word scraping out of her raw throat.

“Yes,” Hannah said firmly, already pulling out her phone. “This isn’t about willpower anymore, Violet. This is about basic physiology. We need a professional assessment.” She began typing rapidly. “The campus clinic has experience with… our situation. They understand the competition parameters.”

Our situation. Parameters. Hannah made it sound like they were optimizing an athlete’s training regimen, not discussing whether Violet’s body was actively shutting down.

Susan returned then, carrying a tray with a bowl of oatmeal so thick it was practically cement. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going to the health center,” Hannah said without looking up from her phone. “Help me get her ready.”

Susan’s eyes widened slightly, but she set the tray down without argument. “Okay. Should I call Jecka?”

“No,” Hannah said sharply, then softened her tone. “Not yet. Let’s see what the doctor says first.”

Getting Violet “ready” was another production. They dressed her in the largest pair of stretchy leggings and a tent-like t-shirt they could find—clothes that were supposed to be comfortable but just felt like restrictive tubes against her swollen skin. Putting on socks was an ordeal that required Violet to lift her leg, which she couldn’t do, so Susan had to kneel and wrestle them onto feet that were puffy and discolored.

The mobility scooter was parked in the foyer downstairs. The journey from her bedroom to the front door was a slow-motion nightmare of shuffles, strained breaths, and near-collapses on the staircase. They took it one step at a time, with Hannah going backwards below her to act as a brake and Susan pushing from above, their combined efforts barely enough to lower Violet’s mass from one step to the next without tumbling.

By the time they reached the scooter parked by the front door, all three of them were sweating and breathing heavily. Violet slumped into the wide seat, which groaned ominously under her weight but held. The simple act of sitting in a different chair felt like a monumental achievement.

Hannah handed her a travel mug. “Drink. You need your energy.”

Violet took it automatically. The liquid inside was one of Jecka’s special shakes—chalky, thick, and laced with whatever kept the hunger humming. She sipped it, the familiar taste doing nothing to settle her nerves.

“Okay,” Hannah said, taking a position behind the scooter. She placed her hands on the back of the seat, not to steer—the scooter had handlebars—but to push if needed on inclines. Susan walked alongside, carrying a large tote bag stuffed with water, snacks, and what looked like a medical file.

Hannah hit the power switch on the scooter’s console. A soft electric whir filled the foyer.

“Let’s go.”

They moved out into the late morning sunlight.

The journey to the campus health center was less than half a mile across the quad, a distance Violet used to walk in under ten minutes. On the scooter, with Hannah walking behind and Susan beside her, it felt like an expedition into hostile territory.

The scooter’s motor strained under its load, emitting a low-pitched whine on even the slightest upward slope. Hannah had to push on the back to help it along, leaning into it with quiet grunts of effort. Every bump in the sidewalk—every crack, every tree root—transmitted a jarring shock up through the seat into Violet’s spine. She gripped the handlebars with white-knuckled hands, her body tense against the constant vibration.

And there were the stares.

Students crisscrossed the quad on their way to late-morning classes or early lunches. Their eyes snagged on the procession: the massive girl on the groaning scooter, flanked by two normal-sized sorority sisters in matching Chi Omega sweaters acting like a pit crew for a broken-down vehicle.

Some looks were openly curious. Some were pitying quick glances followed by an even quicker look away. A few frat boys by the library steps actually stopped talking to watch them pass, one of them nudging his friend and saying something that made them both laugh silently.

Violet kept her eyes fixed on the path ahead, on a crack in the concrete that seemed to stretch forever. She focused on breathing through the shame and the physical discomfort, in and out, each breath still that wet, labored rattle. The shake in her travel mug sloshed with every jolt.

Susan tried to chat brightly about an upcoming mixer, but her words bounced off Violet’s haze of misery. Hannah was silent behind her except for occasional directions—“Easy here,” or “Little hill coming up”—spoken in that same focused tone.

They passed the bell tower. They passed the student union. Each landmark was a milepost in this slow, humiliating parade. Violet felt utterly exposed, a specimen being transported for examination. The scooter, once a symbol of enforced laziness, now felt like a mobile display case for her own decay. The whirring motor announced her presence, the strained squeak of its suspension underscored her mass, and the two beautiful girls attending her framed exactly what she was: a project, a patient, a problem being taken in for professional evaluation. The quad, with its green grass and laughing students, felt like an alien planet she was traversing in a failing lander, desperately hoping to reach base before life support gave out completely

The health center was a low, modern brick building that tried too hard to look welcoming. Automatic doors hissed open, swallowing them into an air-conditioned lobby that smelled of antiseptic and floor wax. The reception area was quiet, just a few students sniffling in chairs, their ailments minor and temporary.

Hannah parked the scooter by the reception desk. The whirring motor cut off, leaving a ringing silence in Violet’s ears. The receptionist, a middle-aged woman with kind eyes that didn’t quite reach her smile, glanced at the scooter, then at Violet, then at Hannah standing behind her like a handler.

“Chi Omega,” Hannah said smoothly, stepping forward. “We have an eleven-thirty with Dr. Evans for Violet Sorren.”

The woman’s smile became fixed. She nodded, her fingers clicking efficiently on her keyboard. “Of course. He’s expecting you. Room four, down the hall to the left.” She handed Hannah a clipboard with a form. “Just need to update her file.”

Hannah took the clipboard and began filling it out without consulting Violet, her pen moving in quick, sure strokes. Weight: 540 (estimate). Height: 5’5”. Reason for visit: follow-up for chronic condition management. Violet watched the numbers get written down, feeling dissociated from them. They were just metrics on a page, like the specs for a piece of machinery.

Room four was larger than a standard exam room, clearly designed for bariatric patients. The exam table was wider and lower to the ground, with sturdy steps leading up to it. A heavy-duty digital scale sat in one corner. There was no cheerful poster about nutrition or exercise on the walls, just a bland diagram of the human circulatory system.

“Alright, let’s get you situated,” Hannah said, her voice taking on that practical, no-nonsense tone she used for logistics.

Getting Violet off the scooter and onto the exam table was a repeat of the bedroom transfer, but in a more confined space. Susan braced the scooter while Hannah guided Violet through the painful pivot from seat to table edge. The vinyl-covered step groaned under her foot. Then came the laborious process of turning around and backing up until the backs of her knees hit the table, followed by the controlled collapse onto the surface. The table shuddered but held.

Violet sat there, her legs dangling over the side, breathing heavily from the effort. The paper covering the table crinkled loudly under her weight. Hannah and Susan took seats in the two plastic chairs against the wall, looking for all the world like concerned family members in a waiting room drama.

A few minutes later, the door opened and Dr. Evans walked in.

He was younger than Violet expected, maybe in his late thirties, with thinning brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He wore a white coat over chinos and a button-down shirt. He didn’t look at Violet immediately, instead glancing at the tablet in his hand, then at Hannah and Susan with a brief, professional nod.

“Miss Sorren,” he said finally, turning his attention to her. His eyes did a quick, assessing sweep from her face down to her feet and back up. There was no surprise in his gaze, no judgment. Just a calm, clinical inventory. “Hannah filled me in on some basics. Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on?”

His voice was neutral, pleasant even. It was the voice of someone who heard confessions of illness all day and was professionally unmoved by them.

Violet opened her mouth. Her throat felt tight. She had rehearsed nothing because she hadn’t known what to expect. The words came out in a flat, dull monotone, stripped of emotion because feeling any of it would have been too much.

“My heart beats really fast sometimes. It feels like it’s going to jump out of my chest. It happens when I’m just sitting.”

Dr. Evans nodded, tapping on his tablet.

“My stomach hurts all the time. Not like cramps, but… a deep ache. Like it’s too full even when it’s empty. Things don’t… move right.” She couldn’t bring herself to be more graphic about the constipation that had become a weeks-long siege, punctuated by sudden, violent emergencies.

Another tap.

“My back hurts. My knees hurt. My hips. Everything aches when I move. It’s hard to breathe.”

She stopped there. The list felt pathetic, a catalog of obvious failures. Of course her body hurt. It was carrying over five hundred pounds. Of course she couldn’t breathe. Her lungs were compressed under a slab of fat and her heart was drowning in demand.

Dr. Evans finished typing and looked up. He didn’t offer sympathy. He didn’t frown with concern.

“Palpitations are common at your stage,” he said matter-of-factly. “The heart is working harder to perfuse a larger mass of tissue. It’s a matter of efficiency.” He set the tablet down on a counter and approached her. “May I?”

He didn’t wait for an answer before pulling a stethoscope from his pocket. The metal disc was cold through her thin shirt as he listened to her heart, then her lungs at the back while she leaned forward as much as she could. His expression remained impassive throughout.

“Some fluid down there,” he commented to himself, then straightened up. “The joint and back pain is straightforward biomechanical stress. The gut issues…” He paused, looking at her again. “Your diet is primarily high-calorie shakes and dense solids?”

Hannah answered from the chair. “We follow the competition nutrition plan. Maximizing caloric density with optimal macronutrient ratios.”

Dr. Evans nodded as if this made perfect sense. “Right. That can be rough on the digestive tract. A lot of work breaking down complex fats and proteins.” He walked back to his tablet, scrolling through something. “The goal is to reduce systemic strain while maintaining… progress.”

He said the last word without irony.

“First,” he began, turning back to face them all, “we need to improve cardiovascular efficiency. That means further reducing unnecessary physical strain.” He looked directly at Violet. “The scooter is good for transport, but even getting on and off it is a stressor. We should aim for near-total sedentary conservation outside of essential hygiene.”

Violet stared at him. He was prescribing more stillness. More imprisonment in whatever chair or bed she occupied.

“For the gastrointestinal discomfort,” he continued, “we’ll shift your nutritional intake toward softer, more easily digestible forms.” He started listing them off on his fingers, his tone suggesting he was recommending a delightful menu. “Puddings, custards, mashed potatoes—real potatoes with plenty of butter and cream, not instant—blended soups, ice cream, protein-infused gelatins. The idea is to give your gut a break from mechanical digestion while maintaining or increasing your caloric baseline.”

Hannah was nodding along, already taking notes on her phone.

“Medication will help manage symptoms,” Dr. Evans said, turning to his computer terminal in the corner of the room. His fingers flew over the keyboard. “I’m prescribing a diuretic to help with the fluid retention you’re hearing in her lungs and likely experiencing in her extremities.” Click-clack. “A mild opioid for the chronic pain—we’ll start with a low dose, see how she tolerates it.” Click-clack. “And given the situational stress and reported anxiety, a benzodiazepine to take as needed for… let’s call it restfulness.”

He printed out three separate prescription slips with a quiet whirr from a nearby printer.

He handed them not to Violet, but to Hannah, who took them with solemn responsibility.

“The diuretic once daily with breakfast,” he instructed Hannah directly. “The painkiller every six to eight hours as required for discomfort—don’t let her tough it out, unmanaged pain is its own stressor. The sedative at bedtime, or during the day if she seems overly agitated.”

Hannah nodded along, committing it all to memory.

Dr. Evans finally looked back at Violet, offering her a thin smile that was probably meant to be reassuring.

“The key is managing your body’s resources wisely, Violet,” he said. “Think of it as streamlining the process. We minimize energy output—movement, digestion difficulty—to maximize energy allocation toward your… goals.” He gestured vaguely toward her body with his pen. “This should ease the sharpest pains and help you feel more comfortable.”

Comfortable. The word echoed hollowly in Violet’s mind. He wasn’t talking about curing her. He wasn’t suggesting weight loss or physical therapy or any intervention that would reverse the damage. He was offering palliative care for a condition everyone in the room, including him, was actively invested in worsening. His entire diagnosis was engineered around helping her body better tolerate its own destruction. The palpitations weren’t a warning sign; they were an engineering problem to be managed with drugs and further immobility. The gut pain wasn’t a plea from a overwhelmed system; it was a logistical issue solvable by switching to softer calories. He was a mechanic tuning an engine that was being deliberately redlined, not to prevent it from blowing, but to squeeze out a few more horsepower before it inevitably seized.

“Any questions?” Dr. Evans asked brightly.

Violet looked from his blandly professional face to Hannah’s focused one, to Susan’s slightly worried but accepting expression. She had a thousand questions, but they were all trapped behind a wall of understanding that made them pointless. Why are you doing this? Don’t you see what this is? Aren’t you supposed to help people get better?

She shook her head slowly, the motion making her neck ache.

“Excellent,” Dr. Evans said. He tapped his tablet one final time. “I’ll send these notes to your file. Hannah, you know the clinic pharmacy will have these ready within the hour. Follow up if the symptoms worsen, but this regimen should stabilize things nicely.” He gave another curt nod, a man who had successfully solved a technical problem, and left the room, the door clicking shut softly behind him.

The silence he left behind was different from before. It was charged now with purpose. Hannah looked down at the prescriptions in her hand as if they were sacred texts.

“See?” she said, her voice warm with relief. “It’s manageable. We just needed the right tools.” She stood up, tucking the slips carefully into her wallet. “Soft foods. That actually makes the feeding schedule easier. We can use the industrial blender more.” She was already planning, optimizing, her earlier worry completely replaced by this new, doctor-sanctioned game plan.

Susan stood up too, offering Violet a small, sympathetic smile. “Pudding sounds nice, right? We can get those fancy chocolate ones from the gourmet market.”

Violet didn’t answer. She just sat on the edge of the exam table, the crinkling paper loud in the quiet room, staring at the closed door where Dr. Evans had exited. The clinical smell of antiseptic filled her nostrils. The prescribed future unfolded in her mind: a blur of sweet, soft foods shoveled into her mouth, a chemical haze of painkillers and sedatives smoothing the sharp edges off reality, her world shrinking even further to the dimensions of whatever piece of furniture could support her. The doctor hadn’t seen a sick girl. He’d seen a pig girl. And he had treated her exactly according to spec

The new regimen began that same afternoon. The campus pharmacy filled the prescriptions without a second glance. Hannah returned to the house with a paper bag containing orange plastic bottles that rattled with promise.

The soft food era commenced. Out went the dense steaks, the chewy breads, the fibrous vegetables that required actual digestion. In came a relentless procession of smooth, sweet, fatty sludge.

Hannah took command of the industrial blender in the chapter kitchen, its powerful motor whirring for hours each day. Whole pints of premium ice cream were melted and blended with heavy cream and protein powder, creating a drinkable frosty shake that contained over a thousand calories per serving. Pots of russet potatoes boiled until they fell apart, then were mashed with sticks of butter, pools of olive oil, and generous handfuls of shredded cheese, resulting in a savory, glue-like paste. Chocolate pudding was made not with milk, but with canned coconut cream, turning it into a rich, congealing brick of fat and sugar.

They fed it to her around the clock. The schedule became more medical, less social. Hannah or Susan would appear with a bowl or a large cup and a wide straw at precise intervals: upon waking, mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon, evening, and before bed. The act of eating lost even the pretense of being a shared meal or a party trick. It was an infusion.

Violet took her pills with her first shake of the day. The diuretic did its work subtly, increasing trips to the bathroom—which were now even more difficult as her legs grew weaker from even less movement. The painkiller was more noticeable. It didn’t erase the deep, bone-deep ache in her joints or the constant pressure in her gut, but it wrapped those sensations in a layer of soft, fuzzy cotton. The pain was still there, but it was happening to someone else, somewhere far away. The sedative, which Hannah insisted on giving her every night “to ensure quality rest,” plunged her into a thick, dreamless sleep from which she woke feeling groggy and unrefreshed, but without the anxiety that used to claw at her in the dark.

The chemical cocktail, combined with the effortless calories, had an effect.

Over the following weeks, the sharpest pains did recede. The stabbing heart palpitations that made her gasp became less frequent, muted by the diuretic’s reduction of fluid and the sheer sedation of her entire system. The severe gut cramps that doubled her over softened into a constant, dull fullness. The fiery ache in her knees and back settled into a heavy, pervasive soreness.

She felt better. Objectively. If “better” was defined as not being in active, screaming distress.

She wasn’t gray-faced and panting after a shuffle to the bathroom anymore. She could sit propped in her armchair for longer periods without feeling like she was drowning in her own body. The wet rattle in her lungs grew quieter.

But she felt nothing like she had before any of this started. That person—the girl who could walk across campus, who could sit through a lecture without her back screaming, who could take a deep, clean breath—was a museum exhibit from a life she could barely remember. This “better” was simply a less horrific version of hell. It was the difference between being actively stabbed and having a deep, throbbing bruise. The damage was still total. The trajectory was unchanged. She was just more chemically numb to it.

Her world shrank to the dimensions of her bedroom and the attached bathroom. Her classes were all online now—Hannah had handled the paperwork, citing “chronic medical needs”—so there was no reason to leave. The scooter gathered dust in the foyer. She became a fixture in her room, a piece of living furniture that was periodically cleaned, turned, and refueled.

She was watching some mindless streaming show one afternoon, the plot sliding off her medicated brain without leaving a trace, when her phone buzzed on the nightstand. It was a text from Heidi.

You alive?

Violet stared at the words. It was the same check-in Heidi had sent after the party weeks ago. A competitor’s status update.

She typed slowly, her fingers clumsy. Barely.

The response came quickly. Want to see something? I can come get you.

Violet frowned at the screen. Get her? How? Can’t really go anywhere.

I have a car service, Heidi texted back. Accessible van. They’ll bring a ramp. Say the word.

A strange longing stirred in Violet’s chest, cutting through the pharmaceutical fog. To leave this room. To see something other than these four walls and Hannah’s professionally concerned face. Even if it was just Heidi.

Where? she typed.

Phi Kappa house. Heidi’s next message followed instantly. To see Carmen. I think you should see this.

Carmen. The butter-project partner. The girl who was already housebound, according to Heidi’s gossip at the party. A cold curiosity, sharper than any hunger pang, gripped Violet.

Okay, she sent.

Getting Hannah’s permission required strategy. Violet waited until Hannah brought her afternoon “snack”—a bowl of vanilla custard sprinkled with crushed cookies—and broached the subject with a flat affect, making it sound like a medical necessity.

“Heidi wants to visit. With Carmen. At their house.”

Hannah paused, spoon hovering over the bowl. “Phi Kappa? Why?”

“I don’t know,” Violet mumbled truthfully. “But… it’s another Pig Girl. Maybe it’s… strategic.” She used their language deliberately.

Hannah’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Intelligence gathering was always valuable. And with Violet stabilized on her new regimen, perhaps a controlled outing wasn’t too risky. Seeing the competition up close could be motivating—or cautionary.

“Alright,” Hannah said after a moment. “But Susan goes with you. And you’re back by dinner for your shake.”

An hour later, an accessible van with a hydraulic ramp did indeed pull up in front of the Chi Omega house. The driver and an attendant efficiently deployed the ramp right to the front steps. With Susan and Hannah’s help—and an embarrassing amount of grunting and maneuvering—Violet was rolled in her desk chair to the door, then helped to stand and shuffle the three steps onto the ramp. The chair wouldn’t fit; she had to make it to the van’s special lockdown seat on her own strength. It was a brutal twenty seconds of agony and near-collapse before she slumped into the padded seat, sweating and trembling as the attendant secured the heavy-duty belts across her chest and lap.

Heidi was already inside, looking effortlessly chic in a silk blouse and tailored trousers that accommodated her own curves without straining. She gave Violet a slow once-over as she caught her breath.

“The clinic special,” Heidi remarked, not unkindly. “I recognize the glaze.”

Susan climbed in beside Violet, looking nervous about the whole expedition.

The van ride was short and silent. The Phi Kappa house was an older Tudor-style building at the edge of Greek Row. The ramp extended again, and another humiliating shuffle-transition took place from van to the paved walkway.

The inside of the Phi Kappa house was dim and unusually quiet for a Saturday afternoon. The air smelled different—not of perfume and cleaning products, but of something medicinal underneath the usual sorority scent of candles and fabric softener. A few sisters glanced up from the common room as they entered, their expressions not hostile, but watchful, guarded.

Heidi led them not to a common area or a bedroom upstairs, but to a ground-floor room at the back of the house that had likely once been a sunroom or a study. The door was wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair or a walker.

Heidi pushed it open.

The room had been converted into a medical suite masquerading as a bedroom.

The centerpiece was an enormous, reinforced hospital bed with adjustable rails. It was surrounded by equipment: a standalone oxygen concentrator humming softly, its clear tubing snaking across the floor; a digital monitor on a wheeled stand displaying glowing green lines of heartbeat and oxygen saturation; an IV pole holding an empty bag.

And in the bed lay Carmen.

Violet’s breath hitched. Carmen had been big during their butter project—immense, soft, and struggling. Now she was something else entirely. Her body seemed to have expanded to fill every inch of the wide bed, spilling over the edges in great, pale mounds. Her face, once round and pretty, was nearly lost in folds of flesh, her eyes small and bright above swollen cheeks. The nasal cannula for oxygen was tucked under her nose. One arm rested on top of the comforter, the skin shiny and tight, an IV port taped to the back of her hand. She was propped up at an angle, but even that slight elevation seemed like an effort. Her breathing was audible from the doorway—a slow, wheezing inhale, followed by a wet, prolonged exhale.

“Hey, Carmen,” Heidi said, her voice softer than Violet had ever heard it. “Brought a visitor.”

Carmen’s eyes shifted slowly toward the door. It took them a second to focus on Violet. Recognition flickered there, followed by something like weary amusement. “Violet,” she whispered. Her voice was thin, air-starved, each word requiring its own breath. “Look at you. All… official.”

Violet shuffled further into the room, Susan hovering behind her like a nurse’s aide. She didn’t know what to say. “Hi, Carmen.”

“Heidi said you were… under the weather,” Carmen managed, the sentence broken by two wheezing breaths. “Join… the club.”

Heidi pulled over two sturdy chairs, nodding for Violet and Susan to sit. Violet lowered herself down carefully, the chair protesting under her weight but holding. She couldn’t stop staring. This wasn’t just being fat. This was being sick. Institutionalized. The monitors, the oxygen, the bed— it was a horrifying preview of a future she was on a direct path toward.

“How are you?” Violet asked lamely.

Carmen gave a tiny shrug that made the monitor beep softly. “I’ve been… better.” She took another laborious breath. “Actually… that’s not true. This is probably… the best I’ve felt… in months.” She gestured weakly with her IV-free hand toward the equipment. “The O2 helps. The meds… they finally got my heart… to calm down a little.”

There was a long silence filled only by the hum of machinery and Carmen’s difficult breathing.

“My parents are here,” Carmen said suddenly, her gaze drifting toward the window covered with heavy curtains.

Violet blinked. “Here? At school?”

“In town,” Carmen clarified with another wheeze. “At a hotel.” She looked back at Violet, her small eyes holding a clarity that cut through the physical ruin. “They’re pulling me out. Next week.”

The words landed in the quiet room with finality.

“Transferring?” Susan asked from behind Violet, her voice hushed.

Carmen shook her head minutely against the pillow. “Dropping out.” She let out a sound that might have been meant as a laugh but came out as a pained cough. “Health concerns. Obviously.” She looked at Heidi, then back at Violet. “They saw me last month for parents’ weekend. My mom… she screamed when she walked in here. Actually screamed.”

Violet tried to imagine her own mother screaming at the sight of her. She couldn’t. Her mother would probably just ask if she needed another shake.

“So that’s it?” Heidi asked quietly.

“That’s it,” Carmen confirmed. Her voice grew even fainter, forcing them all to lean in slightly to hear. “No tassel. No honorifics. Just… going home to get bigger in my childhood bedroom until…” She trailed off, not needing to finish the sentence.

Until what? Violet thought with a cold dread that even her sedatives couldn’t touch. Until she needed a hospital bed there too? Until she died?

“I’m sorry,” Violet whispered, because it was all she could think to say.

Carmen’s eyes found hers again. “Don’t be.” She took another rattling breath. “You win some… you lose some.” A faint, bitter smile touched her lips. “Literally.”

They talked for a few more minutes—strained, superficial chatter about nothing—but Carmen tired quickly, her words becoming more slurred and spaced out until she just closed her eyes, not asleep but retreated.

Heidi stood up first, signaling it was time to go.

Violet struggled to push herself up from the chair. As she did, Carmen opened her eyes again.

“Come here,” Carmen whispered.

Violet shuffled closer to the bedside, leaning heavily on its metal rail for support.

“Hug,” Carmen breathed out.

It was an impossible request given their sizes and Carmen’s tethers to machines, but Violet understood it wasn’t about physical contact so much as ritual. A farewell between soldiers in a war neither had chosen but were both losing.

Awkwardly, painfully, Violet leaned over as far as she could without falling onto the bed or dislodging any tubes. She draped one heavy arm over Carmen’s massive shoulder where it rose from the sheets. Carmen lifted her own IV-punctured arm an inch off the mattress in response, letting it rest against Violet’s side for just a second.

It wasn’t really an embrace—more like two landmasses brushing against each other—but it carried an electric current of shared understanding: of pain masked by drugs, of futures stolen by tradition, of bodies turned into prisons by other people’s pride.

Then Violet straightened up with effort, breaking contact.

Carmen gave one last slow blink that felt like goodbye.

Heidi led them out of the room without another word, closing the door softly on that tableau of mechanized confinement.

The journey back to Chi Omega house in the van was utterly silent. Susan looked pale and shaken. Heidi stared out the window, her expression unreadable. Violet sat strapped into her lockdown seat, feeling every bump in the road transmit through her aching frame. But she barely noticed those physical pains now. All she could see behind her eyelids was that room: the green glow of monitors tracking a faltering heart, the clear plastic tubing feeding oxygen into failing lungs, the massive body sinking into its reinforced bed as if into quicksand. Carmen wasn’t just dropping out. She was being decommissioned. Her usefulness had ended when she transitioned from an asset to be displayed into a liability to be managed off-campus. And Dr. Evans’s prescriptions, the soft foods, the pills— they weren’t about making Violet better. They were about keeping her functional enough, compliant enough, to avoid that same fate before graduation day. They were about fine-tuning her decline so she could cross the finish line before collapsing completely. The image burned behind her eyes: not just Carmen’s probable future, but her own inevitable one, delayed only by better chemistry and more dedicated handlers. She saw herself in that bed, listening to machines breathe for her, her own voice reduced to a thin wheeze announcing someone else’s decision to finally take her home. The van pulled up to Chi Omega house, and as Susan fumbled with her seatbelt to help her out, Violet knew with absolute certainty that getting “better” was just another name for getting worse more slowly, and that every soft spoonful of pudding Hannah would feed her that night was another shovelful of dirt on top of whatever remained of the girl who had once walked onto this campus hoping for anything but this