"The medical evaluation deemed his potassium levels depleted. His electrolyte count was an astonishing low. Since the age of fourteen, at seventy-one inches, his bone structure has shrunken down to sixty-eight. His heart is the condition of a man sixty years his senior. His natural reflex is jarred. Your son is suffering from severe, if not fatal cases of anorexia and bulimia. This cannot continue on for more than a few weeks.. He is so close to death. Immediate admission to the Program is recommended, ma'am.

..Ma'am..? Do I need to get you some water?"

They ruled his short nap by the stove an attempted suicide. A battery of questions fired themselves at him inside the polished office, reverberating against the triangle of the Doctor, and, his mother. Was he sick? Had he become depressed? Was it anxiety? No, he'd answered patiently, jiggling his foot as he sat in the Admission's Office with his (highly irritated) mother. The only reason she had taken him was because insurance paid for this 'emergency case'. She told him that he did not have a problem. She told him she was just pulling another faggot phase. She told him that she thought he was an idiot, and that he didn't even look that skinny, maybe, ten more pounds would do the trick.

On the fourteenth day of hospitalization, they referred his case to Pine Ridge. Their appointment dawned on the sixteenth morning since Michelle's departure. The office was neat, polished credentials staring emptily back at Blaine's blank face. Slits of sunlight lathered the walls, creeping through the slits of verticle blinds. A thin file with his name on it sat complacent atop the desk, and at the manila surface, stared the man that sealed Blaine's immediate future.

The boy began to tap his fingers (the tips of which were blue), his toes, pump his legs. The jeans he wore were countered with a heavily clothed torso. An undershirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a T-shirt atop the previous layer, a collared shirt atop that, its sleeves ending above the elbows, and then a thick sweatshirt which zipped to the top. A belt slung up jeans that were obviously ill-fitted. He wore two pairs of socks. His lips were a pallid blue hue, the delicate veins webbed upon his eyelids vibrant against his greying skin. His hair, though arranged neatly, seemed thin and brittle, usually lustrous browns dulled. His eyes lacked any source of existance. His cheeks were sucked in, a parody of a real live, human boy.

The gnaw in his stomach, muffled by a cough, an audible shuffle, the zipping of his sweatshirt. Desperation clawed at his starved innards. The thought of being Admitted To The Institution terrified him. So close, so close, you're so close, so close, you're so close.. Some small source of success streamed through him as he continued his tapping. The man frowned at him, his brows knitting together as the study of the dying boy in front of him took deeper turns. Blaine's acknowledgement of the scrutiny was miniscule. A stare was directed blankly, and then, he continued, orchestrating his limbs through a cacophony of brittle bones.