Chapter Text
Growing up, Dennis Whitaker learned that being ill is a greater detriment to others than it is to himself.
As the youngest of 4, he was already doomed to be the butt of every joke. He was supposed to be like the rest of his brothers, working on the farm and supporting his family and parents, whether he liked it or not.
If he got sick, it affected his family. Fewer hands on the farm meant more work for everybody else. Which, in turn, gave his brothers all the more reason to tease and bully him. He understood, though, that they always saw him as the runt. He learned from a young age that if he didn't attempt to work or pull his weight, he was a burden on the rest of his family.
He was easy to pick on, and over time, he had learned it wasn’t worth it to try to fight back. He remembers it so vividly, the first time his brother called him a faggot, ending in a brawl of nails and teeth and yelling and screaming and…
Most lessons were learned the hard way.
He went to bed without dinner that whole week, and after that, decided it wasn't worth it to take up for himself.
He was already weaker than his brothers, shorter, scrawnier. It always felt as though he were just taking up space, another mouth to feed. He couldn't work as fast or as long. He needed both hands to count how many times he had passed out from the intense heat of Nebraska summers while trying to pull his weight on the farm.
The symptoms were textbook: thirst, exhaustion, and weight loss. But in Broken Bow, Nebraska, sickness was a sign from God that you had done something terribly, horribly wrong, and had to repent or else you would be sentenced for eternal damnation.
Even when he was young, Dennis knew he was different from his brothers, from everyone else in his town. He didn't look at the girls in his class like his papa looked at his mama, how his older brother John looked at his girlfriend. Denniss looked that way at the brown-haired boy in his class, with the rosy cheeks, curly hair, and gap-toothed smile. He felt the heaviness in his heart and the longing to be friends with the boy and understood his sin intimately.
He would pray every night to be cleansed of this sin, to be rid of this darkness within him that made him different. He would wake up gasping for air after having nightmares of cruel treatment from his father and brothers if they were to find out, and would pray for God to just make him love a girl.
So it wasn’t a shock to him when one day, 11-year-old Dennis got up out of bed and stumbled down the stairs on the way to make breakfast for his family, when suddenly he felt as though the strings holding him up were cut and he collapsed at the bottom. His oldest brother, Isaac, found him lying there, smelling the fruit on his breath, and reluctantly went to tell their parents what he had discovered.
He woke up two days later, hearing words like DKA and glucose and insulin through the haze as the doctor explained his penance to his parents. Deep down, he knew it was a punishment, a testament to the wrongness of his existence and being. This was his mark, his God given illness letting him know that it wasn't something he did, but that he himself, Dennis Whitaker, was terribly, horribly wrong.
He remembers the looks on his parents' faces, the look of understanding and disdain. They knew he was sinful, sickness was sinfulness. He remembers long nights of his mother trying to pray it out of him, while his father became more tight lipped, his brothers saw him as weaker. Just another thing to worry about.
The shots and the monitor and the juice kept around the house were a constant reminder of his sins, of his inability to be normal, that he was the weak link. It was already hard enough on his family, having to provide for 4 children. It was even worse when they started having to put money aside to keep their son alive.
The guilt ate him alive. The knowing that his existence in and of itself was doing more harm than good. He heard his parents at night, discussing their finances. His brothers argued with each other. He knew he was a burden.
“I’ll put in extra hours,” John muttered. “Dennis was complaining yesterday that he was low…”
“God you're so useless, the rest of us put everything we have into this farm, and you can barely do your part.”
“We have to cut the grocery budget otherwise we can’t afford Dennis’ insulin for this month.”
So he did what he could. Working on the farm until he was shaking and could barely form a thought, helping his mom around the house until he was sticky and thirsty and full of anger. Waiting till the last minute before correcting a high or a low to preserve food and insulin. Dennis stopped rushing to correct the lows he got during the day working on the farm. Juice costs money, and the farm needed that money more than he did. He was skinny, and constantly exhausted, but the feeling of it coursing through him, the haziness of a low and the stickiness of a high, they fueled him. Because the fact that he could feel himself getting worse and running himself into the ground was a sign to him that he was doing as much as he could to help his family, to repent, to show he was sorry for his sins.
He never did like a girl, and he was never freed of his illness despite his repentance and prayer, despite the nights he woke up screaming and cold and shaking and gold felt the pain of the holy spirit upon him, but it did not matter. Dennis learned that not taking care of himself was better for others. That it didn't matter what happened to him because to him he was repenting. He was baring his soul to God.
The guilt never escapes him.
It still plagues him long after he leaves, hundreds of miles away from his family.
But he knows better, knows better than to get close enough to anyone to even become a burden in the first place. He’s lonely, but that's ok, it's safer than being someone's burden. It doesn't matter, because it means the people around him can move along with their lives, without him in the way.