The room was quiet in the way only hospitals could manage—quiet, but never truly silent.
There was always something.
The steady beep… beep… beep of the heart monitor.
The faint hiss of oxygen moving through plastic tubing.
The soft drip… drip… drip of clear fluid sliding down an IV line and into his arm.
That drip was his lifeline.
It always had been.
The boy lay motionless on the narrow hospital bed, thin blanket pulled up to his chest. His body looked fragile, almost unfinished, as if life had stopped halfway through building him and simply… moved on. His arms were slender, veins faintly visible beneath pale skin. His black hair fell messily across his forehead, uncut for weeks. His eyes—dark, sharp, far too aware—were fixed on the small television mounted high on the wall.
On the screen, fire leapt.
Oil sizzled. A knife flashed.
"—and now we finish with a touch of butter," the chef said smoothly, his voice confident, warm, alive.
The boy swallowed.
Or tried to.
Nothing happened.
His name no longer mattered much. In the hospital records, he was a room number. A diagnosis. A prognosis measured in days. But inside his head, he was still seventeen. Still thinking. Still watching.
Still hungry.
The screen showed a close-up of the dish: perfectly seared meat, juices glistening under the lights, steam rising like a promise. The audience applauded. Judges leaned forward, eyes shining with anticipation.
The boy's fingers twitched against the thin sheets.
What does it taste like?
Is it salty? Sweet? Bitter?
Does it hurt… or does it feel warm?
He wouldn't know.
He had never known.
A soft knock came at the door, followed by the muted footsteps of shoes on linoleum. The boy didn't turn his head. He didn't need to. He already knew who it was.
Two doctors. White coats. Tired eyes.
They stood at the foot of the bed, hands clasped, posture careful—like people preparing to deliver something fragile that had already shattered.
"His vitals are stable," one of them said quietly. "For now."
The other nodded, eyes moving to the IV drip, then to the monitor. "But there's no improvement. There never has been."
They spoke as if he couldn't hear them.
He could hear everything.
"Seventeen years," the first doctor continued. "And no digestive response. No adaptation. His condition… it's unprecedented."
The word was familiar. He'd heard it his whole life.
Rare. Unprecedented. Incurable.
The second doctor sighed. "His digestive system never developed. From birth, his body rejected nutrition. We kept him alive with intravenous feeding, supplements, experimental treatments—but…"
"But he never ate," the first finished.
The boy's eyes flickered.
Never ate.
Not once.
"No solid food. No liquids by mouth. No oral intake at all," the doctor said. "His body simply… never learned how."
They fell silent.
The heart monitor continued its steady rhythm, uncaring.
"How long?" the first doctor asked, though both of them already knew the answer.
The second doctor hesitated. "A few days. At most."
A few days.
The words landed without drama. Without shock. They slid into place like the final piece of a puzzle the boy had been assembling his entire life.
So this was it.
Seventeen years.
That was all he got.
The doctors exchanged one last look, then turned toward the door.
"We'll keep him comfortable," one said. "That's all we can do now."
The door closed softly behind them.
The room returned to its quiet.
The boy let out a slow breath through his nose.
Comfortable.
It was a strange word.
He turned his head slightly, eyes returning to the screen. The cooking show had moved on to judging. The chef—him—stood calmly before the panel, hands clasped behind his back, posture relaxed.
The world's greatest chef.
Everyone called him that.
The boy had watched his rise from the very beginning—back when the chef was unknown, rough around the edges, still finding his style. Episode after episode. Year after year.
While his own body stayed exactly the same.
When he was five, nurses would prop up a tablet beside his bed and play cartoons. He'd watched them politely, then asked for something else.
"Cooking shows," he'd said.
The nurses laughed at first. Thought it was cute.
But it never changed.
At seven, he memorized recipes he could never cook.
At ten, he understood techniques better than some professionals.
At thirteen, he could predict judges' reactions before they spoke.
At fifteen, he stopped dreaming of eating.
And started dreaming of cooking.
The chef on the screen smiled as the judges reacted.
"This dish…," one judge said slowly, "reminds me why I fell in love with food."
Applause erupted.
The boy's chest tightened.
Food is life, he thought.
And I've never touched it.
He had been born in this hospital.
Literally.
The nurses used to tell the story like a strange miracle—how he came into the world already surrounded by machines, already fighting. His parents had been there in the beginning. He remembered them vaguely. A woman with tired eyes and shaking hands. A man who stood stiffly by the bed, jaw clenched, saying nothing.
They stayed for two years.
Two years of doctors shaking their heads. Two years of hope shrinking day by day. Two years of watching their child grow without growing at all.
Then one day… they stopped coming.
No dramatic goodbye. No final argument.
Just absence.
At first, the boy waited.
Then he stopped.
He didn't hate them.
He understood.
It hurt too much to love something that was already dying.
The screen cut to a montage of the chef's career—past competitions, earlier dishes, failures turned into triumphs. The boy watched every second like scripture.
He eats.
He tastes.
He lives.
The drip in his arm clicked softly as the bag neared empty.
That drip had raised him.
That drip had kept him alive.
That drip was the closest thing he had ever had to food.
"I wonder," he murmured softly, voice hoarse from disuse, "what it feels like… to be full."
The words vanished into the room.
No one answered.
His gaze drifted to the ceiling, eyes unfocused. Images floated through his mind—plates he had never touched, flavors he had only imagined. Sweetness like warmth. Salt like the ocean. Bitterness like honesty.
He didn't fear death.
Not really.
What scared him was how little he had lived.
Seventeen years… and no memories of taste. No shared meals. No family dinners. No birthday cake. No street food. No warmth passed from hand to hand across a table.
Only screens.
Only observation.
Only longing.
The cooking show ended. The credits rolled. The television automatically queued another episode.
He let it play.
"If I could've lived differently," he thought quietly, "I would've chosen food."
His fingers curled weakly against the sheets.
"I would've chosen the kitchen. The heat. The cuts. The burns. Even the pain."
The heart monitor beeped steadily, as if listening.
He turned his head back toward the screen just as the chef appeared again—older now, more confident, standing beneath bright lights as cameras flashed.
"Food," the chef said into the microphone, "is how we connect. To others. To ourselves. To life."
The boy smiled faintly.
"Yeah," he whispered. "It really is."
Outside, somewhere far beyond the hospital walls, people were eating. Laughing. Living.
Inside Room 417, a boy who had never tasted anything closed his eyes and imagined flavor one last time.
And in the quiet hum of machines, something unseen listened.
Something waited.