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It was late that next evening that you got word. It had already been late - the three of you hadn’t known where Mae went, but Mae never failed. Mae never got hurt - no matter what she did, Mae was always fine in the end; so none of you had thought much of it. She had wandered off on her own and you would find her later, and she would be fine, you told yourself; you had said it, in quiet words, reassuring Angus and Gregg. She would be fine, and tomorrow you’d find her.
And tomorrow you did. But the next time, when you found her, she wasn’t awake. She wasn’t - she was Mae-shaped, but she wasn’t Mae. She was where Mae should be. And you hate hospitals - you hate them so fucking much. But that’s…
Well, maybe Mae isn’t your best friend. Maybe she’s not, anymore, but she once was, and she’s your friend now, and so - your mother’s death weighs on you, but it’s been two years, and it’s not like hospitals are always inevitable. So you go.
You don’t want to, and selfishly it’s kind of ‘I don’t want to be here,’ rather than ‘I don’t want Mae to be in a coma,’ even though it’s both, but you go. She’s there, somewhere, and you remember what the doctor told you when your mother stopped waking up: they can hear you.
So there you are, at Mae’s bedside. It’s echoes of your mother’s death, a still body you don’t remember being still, that instinct tells you should be full of motion and laughter and sound. You sit there, looking at her still ears, not twitching, and you don’t think about the weight in your chest, and what that means. You don’t think about how your fingers twitch for a cigarette. You don’t think about anything at all, except that Mae is in front of you, and still, and lifeless.
So you look at her, and maybe you reach out one of your clawed hands to curl around her little paw, and you think about the cigarette you can’t have. Your lungs feel… hollow. Empty, not curling with the smoke and nicotine that keeps you going most days, these days. You can’t smoke here, and maybe Mae’s worth it. She’s still, though; she’s so still - and you don’t know what to do.
There’s no one here. It’s quiet.
The silence echoes more profoundly than Mae talking about whatever dumbass shit she’s always doing, frankly, and you hate it. You wish, more than anything, she was telling you some dumbass shit you hardly fucking care about, but she’s not - she’s silent - and it’s up to you to fill the silence.
You’ve never been good at that.
But Mae’s worth it, so you tell her - you found some Witchdagger shit, at the, like, store, or whatever, and you had it aside for her, and you pause, because it makes sense to, and Mae doesn’t answer.
Because she can’t.
And you realize that, really realize that for the first time, when you pause for Mae to interject some incredibly hyperactive babbling about a band you don’t really know jack shit about, and only silence presses down on your shoulders.
“I told you - I told you to be careful, ” you spit, at her still body, and you’re stemming tears. You don’t cry. Beatrice Santello doesn’t cry - hasn’t cried since her mother’s death, and no one even saw the tears there, because you only shed them in your room, and for those few seconds you knelt at her coffin.
And - you think, though this isn’t a happy thought - no one’s here to see them now. They fall, silently, landing on Mae’s little arm, thin and still, darkening the already dark fur. You make no noise - you think you might have forgotten how.
“I told you to be careful, and you said you would, Mae! So why -” you quiet yourself, make yourself lower your voice to something more reasonable. “So why are we here? Why are you here? It shouldn’t -”
It’s ugly. The words burn your tongue like acid, but you know you have to say them anyway, because she can maybe hear you.
“It shouldn’t be you in the bed. You were - everything right, you were doing. Wasn’t it, like… me? Shouldn’t I…”
Quieter. You’ve got the opposite problem, now; your voice is so quiet, too quiet to hear, probably. “Shouldn’t I have been the one here? Looking out for you? Isn’t that… what I do? What I’m supposed to do? Your mom looks at me like I should’ve stopped it.”
You let go of her paw, carefully put it back at your side, and look at your claws.
“Shouldn’t I have?”
But the anger can only sustain you for so long. Eventually, once it’s depleted, and you’re tired, and just sad, and the tears are gone - you forget, again, how to cry, how to show how upset you are, and you collapse back into the chair at Mae’s side. You just sit there, quiet, afraid, sad, quiet - let the silence overwhelm you, deafen you. The steady beeps of the machines are all that exist, and it soothes you, almost, into a trance.
Yes, this is familiar. Yes, it’s easy - you don’t have to care, or think about it; you just have to let it happen. Let it happen. Let it happen. Let yourself feel nothing, be nothing - let these things just happen to you. You are fine, you tell yourself. You are just fine. It is a hospital room, and your (best) friend is in a coma, and you feel like you’re looking at your mother’s body but you’re looking at a far smaller, far furrier one, and you have to let the two images overlay, because it’s the dispassion you learned in the wake of your mother’s death that lets you continue here.
Quietly, you take out your laptop, from your bag. Careful clicks with careful claws - pulling up site after site, looking for it.
You find it, eventually, and clear your throat as you sit there. Without realizing to, without intending to, your hand comes out and rests on her arm; you run your claws over and through the fur, feeling the peculiarities of the skin and fur, the subtle changes in texture, and you start reading.
“The Phantoms played that night, uh, the one we went out? We were too busy, right, to watch it, but, like… I figured you’d want to know about it, right? You love them, don’t you?”
And you aren’t… really sure. She had mentioned it, to your dad - heard them fight over it, even if just a little, heard your dad say, something about men ‘prancing’ on ice skates - and you think that means she likes it.
This isn’t the time to realize you don’t know much about Margaret Borowski.
It’s really not the time to realize how much you want to know about her.
“Anyway - so, like… It was a pretty late game, and I didn’t see it either, and I don’t know shit about hockey anyway, so I wouldn’t have known what was happening. Uh, that’s not the important part. So, the Phantoms won. 5 to 2? Which I guess, from what I’m reading, is like, pretty good. The other team, I don’t… know who. It doesn’t say - oh, never mind. There it is, uh, the Crunch..es? Uh, the other team, though, had a couple of injuries. Like, one dude has a concussion and another dude’s shoulder got… separated?
“That happens? Holy shit.” Your hand still clicking on your laptop pulls away to touch your own shoulder, in sympathy.
“That sounds awful.”
You don’t know anything about hockey - you know less than nothing - but it’s for Mae. She can hear you. And maybe you won’t bring her back, maybe you aren’t good enough, but hearing about the sport she loves might help, right? It certainly - it couldn’t hurt. She can’t be any more in a coma than she already is. Maybe she won’t be bored.
You hope she isn’t bored.
She can hear you. She can hear you. No matter how futile this visit is - and it must be very, because why would your voice wake her up, but when Candy Borowski mentioned where Mae was, you know she wanted you to visit. That, she remembered, once upon a time you were friends, and probably knows that you are again.
So you’re here, and it’s too late. You don’t want Mae to think you gave up on her; you want Mae to know you want her awake as much as you want anything. So you wrack your brain.
“Mae - you remember, uh, when I first moved to Possum Springs? And I joined the Scouts, right. And I didn’t know anything, and I was an even worse shithead than I was now? You never, like, mention it, but I don’t know how you’d really forget. Anyway, uh, so…
“So, like, you were cool… and older, even if it was only two months, and I kept getting into shit, because I was shy, and like, lonely, and the older kids knew I wouldn’t say anything if they pushed me around, or whatever. And you came onto the scene, so you, like, you know, told them to fuck off - except, you know, not saying that. And I remember…”
You laugh. It’s not the happiest noise, but it isn’t so fake either.
“I remember being, like, amazed. That someone would do that for me? That anyone would do that for me. And you were, uh, tiny, yeah, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell for all the way you stood up straight and told them if they wanted to fuck with me, they’d go through you.”
You look down at her. She isn’t moving - her ears still don’t twitch; you know that’s not how comas work, but you still wish she’d just… wake up. Give some sign she’s hearing you.
You don’t tell her the rest of the story. You don’t tell her the way you hung on her every word like a puppy-dog. You don’t tell her the way you followed her around, latched onto her, how you wanted to be her for a very specific reason.
Maybe, when she wakes up, you’ll tell her that.
But not now. Not here.
You aren’t good at talking. You do it at the shop, but only the way you have to. Yes, we’ll take that job. No, we don’t do that. It’ll be so much per half hour and gas. Tell her you did the job and she has to pay you.
Not like this; not something that matters. So it isn’t long before your throat hurts, protesting its overuse, even though you haven’t talked more than most people do in a day, and you fall quiet. The inexperience in actually holding a useful conversation means that you also don’t know what to talk about for too much longer; it’s Mae who can hold a conversation by herself, Mae who can keep even the most deadend conversations lively by merit of simply being herself.
You aren’t Mae. You’re Bea.
And that’s worse. Mae would - well, she wouldn’t know what to say. She’d stick her foot in her mouth about fifteen times, trying to talk to you, situation reversed, but at least she’d be talking.
After you tell Mae the third story of your childhood, all the little ways you started to like her until she dashed it all by abandoning you (and you don’t talk about that; you don’t need to talk about that. She left you, but she’s back now, and maybe that means something, and maybe you shouldn’t carry so many grudges, because life is so fucking short, isn’t it? What better way to see that than this?), you’ve run out of things to say. You sit there, instead, silent, sitting in the chair next to her bed, and you put your head down next to her arm. If she were awake, you think she’d run her hands over the scales of your head, try to soothe you.
If Mae were awake, there’d be a lot of things. But she isn’t. No, she isn’t.
And you’ve been here before - you still see echoes of your mother’s thin, pale, wasted body in a bed when you look at Mae, still see a second body, shadowed and quiet and pale over Mae’s body - and you know what you know, which means you know that she won’t wake up.
The doctors say it looks good, actually; they say they think she will, and Pastor K says she will if you all just believe in God and Their way, if you all just keep faith, and you’re trying. You are. You’re trying, you’re trying, you’re trying, but you’re Beatrice Santello, twenty years old, not Superwoman. Not a superhero. Just a woman - just a girl, and you’re tired, and your best friend is in this bed, and you don’t know what to do when you think about the possibility that she damn well might never get out of it. That she might be here forever, until they unplug her.
So it is that twice in one day, Mae gets you to do something you don’t do; you start crying, again, face tucked into the sheet that covers her, shoulders shaking silently. You keep thinking: you don’t know, you don’t know, you don’t know. If she doesn’t wake up, you know everything will fall apart, you know it will be your fault, you know everything will never be the same. And you don’t know what to do.
No - that’s a lie. You do know what to do, but it’s not an option.
You won’t be your father.
You won’t shut down, won’t tune the world out, won’t be useless, a waste on a couch, unmoving, unreactive to the world, basically in a coma your damn self.
You won’t be your father.
Not here, not now, not ever.
So you wrack your brain. There must be something. There has to be something - something to say. You go on a walk, get a drink of water, and the idea occurs to you. There’s something you do know about, and maybe it’s boring, but it’s all you have. You two had gone to the library, after all, seen everything there, looked through the microfiche, so maybe it’s not so bad, right?
Getting your laptop back out, you sit down in front of her bed, again, claws going - again - to touch her arm, scratching gently and carefully, as if she was precious and tender, and isn’t she? Isn’t she?
Either way, you keep touching her arm, keep looking with your free hand, and you find it. Possum Springs - you pull up a history, a fictional biography from god knows when found god knows where, and you start reading. It’s got intrigue, even if it’s a far more boring version of that shitty play Mae helped you put on at Harfest.
“Thanks for that, by the way,” you say, and there’s not the bitterness in your tone that you held until she’d DM’d you to make sure you’d be safe and cautious that night. “The play, I mean - sorry, I’m mixing up what I’m saying and what I’m just thinking. Thanks for helping me out. Even if you, like, fucked it a little. I mean - I’m sure you did it on purpose, to be funny, and you kind of were. You definitely were. But, uh, still. you know. It was - thank you. You didn’t have to. I said that, that night, but I still just need you to know. I mean it - thank you, Mae. Everything kind of went to shit, and I think I forgot to, like, have manners. And all.”
There’s something else, you think, she’d like to know. Something else she’d ask about, if she was awake, what she’s been annoying you about every day.
“So - that, like, group? I don’t know. I felt like I recognized some of their voices, you know? Like… if I heard them again, I’d know who they are. But I can’t quite put my finger on it. And I don’t want to talk about it, with Angus, and I really don’t want to talk about it with Gregg, because I sort of feel like he’s just barely holding it together, you know? Like, he’s sort of just, going kind of off the rocker, with you here, and like, nearly shot in the arm. So I don’t want to talk about any of this shit. I just want them to, you know, act normal, or whatever, even though none of this is normal.”
And you somehow get back to this topic. You stop, sit up, make yourself adjust.
“I don’t know what they are, Mae, but shit’s, like, really fucked. And we haven’t told anyone - we don’t really, like, know how to, and Gregg’s bad at that anyway and probably shouldn’t be anywhere near any cop, even Molly - and it feels like you should be there, because you’re the only one who can make sense of this, Mae. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I’m not - I’m not any good at this, or, like, anything, you know? And I’m sorry I’m making you listen to all of this when you’re not even, you know, conscious or anything, and you deserve better, but there’s no one else to say it to.
“You’ve only been back, like, two weeks, but if you don’t wake up… you have to wake up. I don’t know how we’ll keep going, if you don’t. You have to. Please. I don’t want to be alone again, Mae. I don’t think I can - I think I’ll die, too. Please, please...”
But the world’s not fair, Beatrice Santello, is it? It’s never been; it never will be. You had learned that in high school, and you’re learning it again now. You look at Mae’s body, so small in the bed, so battered; you look at her, and you wonder, where’d you go wrong? What’d you do that you could’ve done differently? There had to be something - there had to be some way to save her, to make it so this hadn’t happened.
It’s your fault.
The realization weighs heavy on your shoulders, and you shake your head and look away. It’s not - none of this is fair. None of this is fair, and you’ll spend the rest of your life aware that you caused this to happen.
“... Mae, I’m gonna - I’m gonna go. Um, I’ll… I’ll visit you on my day off, alright? So, like, don’t get… too lonely, I guess. I’ll - I’ll come back. As long as you’re here, I won’t, uh, let you be alone, or whatever.”
You pause, tapping your foot in your boot, touching the Anhk on your shirt - the symbol of life, and you wish you could leave it with her - wish you could trust that’d wake you up.
“It’s not - uh. What - um, you and me? It’s not just… proximity, Mae. So, wake up, okay? So I can tell you.
“... Nah, I’m not gonna - uh.”
You’re talking to yourself, there, Bea, and you know it; you make yourself bite it back.
“I really care about you, Mae. And there’s something I’d like to, like, say when you’re awake. So wake up soon, alright?”
The door sounds so final, as it closes behind you. You can't help but feel... feel that you won't ever hear Mae laugh again. You don't know what to do about that. You put it out of your mind.
When Angus asks what you did all day, you tell him you just had a few jobs.