Eat or Be Eaten

“Hungry!” her stomach screams. “You haven’t eaten in twelve hours.”

She doesn’t listen and keeps stirring enormous pots in the hospital’s communal kitchen. Feeding 260 patients every day is no small task.

“And an outright hell if you’re not allowed to eat,” she thinks. “Every day I’m surrounded by tens of kilos of food. The smell of stew pushes into my nostrils like a beautifully scented disturbance. My mouth waters.” She wipes the sweat from her face with a dirty dishcloth and works on feverishly. “But I have to hold on. This is the only way.”

Her stomach acid burns, her head aches, she feels dizzy.

“Don’t eat,” she forces herself. “Only a small bite if it really becomes unbearable.”

The head chef studies her carefully. “You don’t look well, Karin. You should take a look in the mirror sometime. The skin around your eyes is hollow and dark, your ashen cheeks are sunken. When was the last time you ate? I never see you eat here.”

He grabs a soup bowl from the counter and fills it with chicken soup. “Sit down and eat.” When Toon worries about the well-being of his staff, he always speaks in imperatives.

Karin obediently sits down at the table and hopes the head chef won’t check later whether she finishes it all. He means well, but he doesn’t understand that not eating is a choice. She exhales in relief when Toon is called away to a trainee who has burned himself on the oven.

She tries to be invisible as she walks to the sink and pours the delicious soup down the drain, regretfully.

That evening at home she allows herself one cracker. No topping. Bone-dry. And a cup of tea. That’s enough for today.

The next day it’s clear that Toon is keeping a closer eye on her. She can’t blame him. In his place, she would do exactly the same.

When she has a half-hour break, Toon walks outside with her uninvited. He sits down next to her on the bench.

“Karin, we’ve known each other a long time, and I see you deteriorating almost daily. You don’t eat — at least not here. You’ve lost kilos. You know you can come to me if something’s bothering you. Because this, as it stands, is not going well.”

Karin presses her lips together, arms crossed. “It’s nothing. I just haven’t had much of an appetite lately.”

“When you say lately, you mean the past eight months?” Toon can’t suppress a trace of sarcasm. Karin stares straight ahead and says nothing. The silence hangs between them like a light mist. Both feel desperate, but neither can find the right words.

That afternoon it’s crunch time in the kitchen. The main meals have to be ready. Karin struggles to concentrate and lets the fried potatoes burn. “Goddamn…”

Out of the corner of her eye she sees some foolish girl ruining a crème brûlée. “You idiot. Look what you’re doing. So now the whole hospital doesn’t get dessert?”

In the background she hears two kitchen assistants whispering. “I think she has anorexia. She looks like a walking skeleton.”

Furious, she storms toward the young men. “I do not have anorexia! I’m alarmingly thin, but I do not have anorexia.” Red-faced, they return to their tasks.

For Toon, this is alarm phase three. Karin is normally clear-headed, focused, with nerves of steel. Now she snaps at everyone and makes mistakes herself.

He walks up to her and gently takes her hand. “Come on, Karin, let’s take a walk.” She resists briefly, mutters something unintelligible, then lets herself be pulled along by Toon like a whining child.

After a silent walk, he stops and turns toward her.

“This can’t go on. What happened in the kitchen just now is unacceptable. But what I find even worse is that the life seems to be slowly draining out of you.”

She stares stubbornly at the ground. He lifts her chin with a finger and forces her to look at him.

“We heard in the kitchen that you don’t have anorexia. That’s one worry less. But it doesn’t solve anything. You’re going to tell me now why you no longer eat.”

The young woman breaks down in sobs. She can’t stop it.

“I went with, with, hhhh, with my niece to the park. I always looked after her when she—”

Toon fears he already knows how the sentence will end, but he stays silent.

“We were waiting at a crosswalk to cross. The first truck stopped, but in the second lane the car didn’t. That car couldn’t possibly brake in time. Instinctively, I stepped back two paces, but my niece didn’t follow quickly enough. She was hit at full speed and died in the ambulance.”

Karin is out of breath after the account. Tears stream down her cheeks. “Everyone keeps saying it’s not my fault. That the car was driving too fast and should have paid better attention.”

“Everyone. My family, my niece’s family, my friends.”

“Have you sought professional help?”

“I wasn’t done with the list,” Karin says almost without emotion, as if she has simply swallowed it.

“I mean everyone. The doctors, the psychologist, the psychiatrist, the social worker, the people in the support group. Everyone tries to convince me it wasn’t my fault.”

“But it was my fault. She was under my supervision. I was responsible for her safety.”

“It was my fault,” Karin emphasizes again.

“The only penance is not eating anymore. I don’t deserve that.”

“I hear and understand your grief and the guilt you’re carrying,” Toon says. “What I’m about to say is hypothetical and unkind, but I’ll say it anyway: if it really were your fault — who are you actually punishing? And who around you benefits from that? Your niece doesn’t come back because of it.”

Karin thinks. Who is she punishing? She feeds others, but barely eats herself.

“When I’m hungry, it confirms my guilt. I only feel right when I’m empty.”

“If I gave in to my growling stomach, it would feel like betraying my niece.”

After her last sentence, silence falls.

Toon says nothing. He stands up, walks away, and returns with a sandwich.

No soup. No plate. No ceremony.

He places the sandwich between them on the bench.

Not demanding. Not pleading.

Karin looks at it. For a long time.

She breaks off a small piece.

Eats it. Chews. Swallows.

Nothing happens.

No relief. No forgiveness.

Only that her stomach grows quiet for a moment.