Chapter Text
Once, when May was a teenager herself, she’d had to get operated on.
“You'll be asleep,” the doctors had said, smiling reassuringly. And, “it’s a routine operation, everything will go well.”.
Everything had gone well — no weird side-effects, no complications, no… nothing. The operation had gone as expected, just the way her doctors had said it would.
But nobody had told her that waking up from anesthesia after being operated on, even after something as benign as getting her appendicitis removed, was nothing at all like waking up from sleeping.
That’s sort of what May feels like now — the fuzzy brain, that metallic taste in her (very, very dry) mouth, the way her limbs don’t quite seem to want to cooperate yet — except with more pain.
For a singular moment, May floats in confusion, wondering how she ended up in what can only be a hospital room — she doesn’t remember being admitted this time, only…
Only…
Memories flash in her head suddenly — Peter, and the sky falling, and being suddenly so exhausted her legs had folded beneath her, and Peter — and May shoots her in bed, her heart monitor screeching.
"Peter!" she shouts, looking around. Where is he?! she wants to add, but her mouth is too dry and she ends up coughing around the words instead, which sends her entire abdomen into so much pain her vision goes white-hot for a moment.
She resurfaces to hands gently but firmly pinning her shoulders to the bed, and a steady voice telling her to breathe in, slowly.
May’s vision clears as she gasps out a shaking breath, and the hands let go.
Her nurse is… kind of handsome, honestly, with dark blond hair and a kind of rugged look, and any other day May would be thinking about it, but right now, all she can think about is Peter.
Someone hands her a glass of water and May sips it as quickly as she dares, before turning her focus back on her nurse.
“Peter,” she croaks out.
He frowns. “Ah, no, ma’am, my name is Daniel.”
May attempts to roll her eyes, which unfortunately only sparks another bright bolt of pain in her brain and almost makes her drop the glass she’d somehow still be holding.
“No, Peter,” she repeats, before licking her too-dry lips. “Where… Where is he?”
The newly-named Daniel frowns again. “Ah, I’m sorry, but you were alone when you were brought in? Although there were a few other injuries in the… accident you were in, maybe one of them is the person you’re thinking of?”
May’s heart jolts in her chest before she remembers that of course Peter wouldn’t have been with her — that he had to go deal with the mess they’d made.
Daniel seems to be halfway through figuring out how to turn over half the hospital looking for May’s mystery Peter, which she appreciates even though it does feel sort of, well, weird. It would (probably) be useless, though, so May clears her throat again.
Her tongue still sticks in her mouth a little, unwieldy in that way it’s really only ever been when she’d drunk too much — something she doesn’t really do anymore, and definitely hasn’t done recently — and she shakes her head.
“No,” she repeats. “P-Peter P-Parker. Nephew.” She does her best to shake her hand at him in a way that conveys the proper urgency of her request, but she probably fails, as her hand mostly flops back on the blanket weakly.
Luckily, Daniel is apparently a good enough nurse that he understands anyway.
“Oh, of course,” he says, perking up. “Is he your emergency contact? He should have been informed already, but I can go check on your file now and try calling him again. Now that you’re awake, I’m sure he’d like to come to visit you too.”
May blinks and nods. “Thank you,” her mouth replies for her before she can really register Daniel’s words.
He smiles at her again, checks on the multitude of instruments May seems to be hooked up to, and says he’ll just be a moment.
“Gonna check on that Peter for you,” he says with a wink. “Why don’t you rest a little more in the meantime?”
He’s gone before May can really open her mouth to protest, which…
Maybe she shouldn’t really do.
She is tired. Before, when Daniel was there and her mind was racing as she remembered, she didn’t really feel it, but now that he’s gone and May is probably about to be able to at least talk to her nephew and learn what’s happened, it’s like a weight’s been taken off her shoulders, and she feels exhausted.
Sore everywhere, too.
Resting her eyes for a moment while Daniel goes through her files should be fine, shouldn’t it?
It’s just for a short while, and it’s not like May can do anything or go anywhere for the moment. The more she rests the sooner she’ll be able to leave, too — and the better she looks, the less Peter will worry about her.
May closes her eyes and tries to relax.
For a moment, it works. She can feel her exhaustion pulling at her, that sweet oblivion calling her name again, but…
Worry pulls at her gut too. It’s like a pit of snakes squirming inside her stomach, and the more May tries to ignore it, the stronger it gets.
What if Peter got hurt? He’d been hurt, the last she’d seen him, but what if he got more hurt — the kind of hurt May got, or god forbid, the kind Ben got.
The kind of hurt you don’t come back from.
The snakes freeze in her stomach, and May tastes bile.
But no. Peter’s stronger than that, smarter than that — he’s got his powers too, and presumably, that wizard guy will return at some point. Maybe. If not, Ned and MJ have the magic box, and May fully trusts her nephew’s friends to use it if they need to — even if that means they can’t help everyone they’d sworn to.
May hopes it doesn’t come to that, though. She has faith in Peter, who may doubt himself sometimes, but who ultimately always does the right thing.
So, Peter’s probably fine. But that doesn’t mean those stupid government goons aren’t trying to lock him up somewhere again, or, or that he isn’t in some other kind of trouble May can’t think of right now.
He needs her — which is why when nurse Daniel comes back, his footsteps loud and clear against the linoleum, May’s eyes spring open with relief.
“Oh, I thought I told you to rest,” Daniel says, sounding surprised to see her awake.
“I wasn’t tired,” May lies. “Did you get in touch with Peter?” Where is he? Is he okay? Is he coming? Did he—
Daniel’s face twists into a grimace, and May’s heart stops.
(Well, the heart monitor very clearly says that it doesn’t, but it certainly feels like it.)
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Parker, but we don’t have any ‘Peter’ listed in your file? Although if you have a number or address, we can try those.”
“I… What?” May’s mouth falls open. “Are you sure?”
Daniel nods. “It might be some kind of clerical error, of course — maybe your file didn’t protest properly? If you give us a number, we can try calling now.” He takes a cellphone out of his pocket and wiggles it in the air.
For some reason, the next words that fall out of May’s mouth aren’t Peter’s number, but, “Can you really do that?”
Daniel winks. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“Alright.” Luckily, May’s old-fashioned enough that she actually remembers Peter’s number by heart. She has no idea where her phone ended up — probably broken and buried under half a ton of Happy’s apartment building, unfortunately — and that’s pretty much the only place she’s stored Peter’s number.
(Caller ID is great and all, but sometimes May misses the good old days of seeing the number you were calling as you called — it made it easier to remember those.)
May’s lungs quiver in her chest as the phone rings. Each second nobody answers adds to the snakes pitted in her stomach, and May’s hands start shaking.
“Please pick up, please pick up, please pick up,” she starts chanting to herself.
When the call finally connects, it feels like a revelation — a sob slips past her lips.
“Peter?” she calls out.
A moment of silence, and then a voice.
“H-Hello?”
May’s blood instantly freezes. “You’re not Peter.”
“Ah, no, sorry lady, I think you’ve got a wrong number?”
The guy hangs up before May can tell him that’s not possible. She knows Peter’s number by heart, there’s no way she’s made a mistake.
Still, she calls again, carefully retyping every number.
Same answer, only this time the guy sounds a little more exasperated.
“Sorry,” May says, pasting on a grin despite the way she feels like her insides are trying to claw their way out of her. “He must have changed number — did you get yours recently?”
“Sure,” the guy scoffs, and then hangs up, leaving May to stare down at the phone screen.
“If you have another number we could try…” Daniel starts. “Or maybe an email?”
The email doesn’t go through. Peter isn’t on any of the social media she knows he has an account on — on a whim, May goes on the internet and types in his name. The media’s been stalking them for months now, they might as well be useful for once and tell her what she wants to know.
Only…
Only there is nothing.
Not a single of the many, many articles that have plagued Peter’s existence since Mysterio revealed his identity to the world.
Typing in Spider-Man into the search engine doesn’t actually get much better results — although the articles do exist, they’re unfortunately mostly of the Daily Buggle.Net variety, decrying the existence of the ‘spider menace’ and what-not.
“I don’t suppose you know who Spider-Man is, do you?” May finds herself asking, her hands falling back on her lap.
Daniel takes back his phone, frowning at the last article she’d pulled up — Spider-Man takes down Statue of Liberty: is any national landmark safe?
(At least that told her Peter had made it out of his last confrontation, if not in which state.)
“Do you?”
May stays silent — she may not have Peter’s ‘spider-sense’ (or whatever he’s calling it), but she can still tell when something’s wrong. And this? The way she can’t seem to reach Peter, and how his secret identity somehow got… erased from the internet (and possibly nurse Daniel’s mind too)?
Well, that screams ‘something’s wrong’.
…
Hadn’t Peter said something about that Dr. Strange using his magic to do just that, though? The spell had failed then, but maybe… Maybe they cast it again.
May’s not sure what that has to do with her being unable to reach Peter, but if the world’s actually forgotten that he’s Spider-Man, that’s probably a good thing. He’s tried not to show it in front of her, but May’s seen the toll it’s taken on him.
“Mrs. Parker?”
She startles, and, realizing Daniel’s probably still waiting for an answer, shakes her head. “Oh, no,” she lies, faking a laugh. “I was just… wondering. Thinking out loud.”
Daniel nods. He doesn’t look entirely convinced, but his suspicion seems to be more of the ‘my patient is probably in pain and still confused’ variety rather than the ‘this person is concealing a very dangerous secret and I should call the police’ variety, so May’s probably good.
“Of course. I hear he was seen at the site of your incident.”
May’s heart skips a beat. “Ah. Yes. Maybe. I don’t really… remember.” May gives another fake laugh, even though it kind of hurts her ribs.
Daniel hums. “Well, you really should rest. It might come back to you. I’ll try to see if I can get someone to take another look at your file — maybe find another way to get in touch with your nephew.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course.”
Daniel leaves again, and May’s alone with her racing thoughts.
This…
May isn’t crazy. There really is something wrong. She groans — of all the times to be stuck in a hospital bed!
Unfortunately, there isn’t much of anything she can do just yet — but as soon as she can walk, and stay awake for longer than… an hour, May’s going to be looking into it.
And hey, with any luck, the next time she wakes, Peter will be at her bedside.
That’s probably all it is — bad luck, that they’ve missed each other so far.
Just bad luck.
No sinister plot — May can hope, right?
She can.
She will.