#will in 104: refuses to let connor buy him food and then just doesn't eat lunch

[gregorygerwitz]

Will Halstead + disordered eating

“Hey, Will, you sure you’re good?” “Yeah, I brought something from home.” “...You brought something from home? I’ve seen your fridge. What’d you bring, expired yogurt and baking soda?”

They hadn’t always been bad habits.

When he was living in a dorm and spending all of his time studying or working, Will learned to adapt. He learned to keep a few dollars in cash on him because eating a bag of chips between classes was faster and cheaper than trying to fight for a seat in the dining hall. He learned to drink black coffee because the instant powder saved him time in the long café line every morning. He learned that off brand ramen noodles and cereal really didn’t taste that different and lasted longer anyway.

After he finished school, the habits that he’d formed followed him into his work life - skipping a meal here and there to help patients during busy shifts, grabbing chips or a candy bar from a vending machine, getting a large coffee for just a couple cents more because then his stomach would have just enough in it to stop growling for an extra hour or two. But he was fine. It wasn’t like he was starving himself or sometimes going an entire day without food on purpose. Things just got a little hectic, sometimes, and his body had been trained to handle that. It was a good thing that he could handle any situation, emergency medicine demanded it.

But emergency medicine demanded a lot of him.

There were days off where he never got out of bed, napping for hours at a time with the excuse of catching up on missed sleep, skipping lunch because the idea of food made him feel nauseous, surviving on whatever unexpired milk and snacks he had lingering on the shelves of the refrigerator. On those days, he was lucky if he found crackers and cheese, let alone managed a full meal unless he had company or a reason to put on a show of being a proper adult. And then he would end up right back at work the next day, smile made of false sunshine back on his face, doing everything he could for the sake of his patients.

If Will’s body was running on chocolate and cheese and caffeine fumes, no one noticed, or at least didn’t question it. And, really, everyone had shifts like that, where the stress of constant life or death decisions left no time for self care. It was just the life of a medical professional.

He was fine.