A Wise Decision?

After what seemed like an eter­nity, the door to the state­room sud­denly burst open. In walked an older offi­cer, whom I had never seen before. A hefty though fleshy gen­tle­man, he intro­duced him­self as the ship’s Chaplain.

“What’s your name, son?“ he asked reassuringly.

“Drury, Sir,“ I responded as I won­dered what tack he’d take.

“Mr. Drury, I under­stand from the Exec­u­tive Offi­cer, LCDR Mer­win, that you refuse to eat. Is that cor­rect?“ he asked.

“Yes Sir, it is,“ I replied in a some­what more relaxed, though slightly guarded manner.

As I shifted the weight of my body in the chair, he con­tin­ued, “I’m sure you have a very good rea­son for not want­ing to eat, but that’s not why I’ve come to talk with you. I’ve come as a man of the cloth who is very con­cerned about the wel­fare of a par­tic­u­lar sea­man onboard this ship. You see, Mr. Drury, you don’t real­ize the phys­i­cal harm you are inflict­ing upon your­self as you con­tinue to deny your body the nutri­ents it needs to func­tion properly.“

“When was the last time you had any­thing to eat?“ he asked.

“About three weeks ago,“ I answered.

“Have you been drink­ing plenty of flu­ids?“ he inquired further.

“Yes Sir,“ I replied. “I’ve been drink­ing a glass of fruit juice at meal times and lots of water in between.“

“And it’s been three weeks, you say, since you last ate solid food of any kind?“ he asked again.

“Yes Sir,“ I replied.

As the expres­sion on his face filled with alarm, I was again over­come with fear.

“You know, Mr. Drury,“ he went on to say, “the body can sur­vive for awhile with­out food, as it feeds off the reserves it has stored up for leaner times. If this depri­va­tion per­sists, the body will even­tu­ally deplete these reserves. When that hap­pens, it’ll begin to feed on its own mus­cle tis­sue and organs, caus­ing irre­versible dam­age. As your body lit­er­ally eats itself up, you will suf­fer an ago­niz­ingly slow and painful death.

“I offer you this per­spec­tive,“ he con­cluded, “with the hope that you may real­ize, before it’s too late, the great harm you’ll be inflict­ing upon your body, should you decide to con­tinue with your fast.“

As he fell silent, I grew fear­ful of what harm I might already have caused myself. I felt con­fused. When I began this fast, I cer­tainly never had any inten­tion of harm­ing my body or caus­ing my own death. Thus did I take the sud­den appear­ance of the symp­toms of my fast as a sign that maybe I was push­ing this whole thing a bit too far.

As I stewed over the mat­ter, I won­dered what’d hap­pen to me if I caved in ’n’ broke my fast. Would I be dis­charged any­way? Regard­less of whether I was or not, I cer­tainly couldn’t con­tinue on with­out eat­ing. Besides, I could never bear the thought that I had caused my body to suf­fer irrepara­ble dam­age, just because I’d wanted out of the Navy. At least, I felt my actions had let them know I was hav­ing an extremely dif­fi­cult time adjust­ing to the Navy. Or had I sim­ply con­vinced them I was only half-​​crazy? As my feel­ings came to a head, I real­ized that I must eat, no mat­ter what they thought.

“I’ll eat,“ I finally said with some reluctance.

“Good!“ he exclaimed. “I think you’ve made a wise deci­sion.“