Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Three months.

That’s how long it had been. Three months since Lucas had felt Max’s life go out of her while she trembled and choked in his arms. Three months since he heard her bones snap. Three months since she died. Three months since she came back to life.

It felt both shorter and longer than that. The time had passed in the blink of an eye, sure. But Lucas spent most of his waking hours here, in this dingy little hospital room. Next to her.

It was better than being out there. In this bizarre, Upside Down version of Hawkins they now lived in. The only reason Lucas' parents even allowed him to leave the house was because they knew he'd just come here. School wasn't happening right now. Not with everything going on. Many of Hawkins' residents had evacuated the town. Those who had remained were destitute. Trapped in the gym at Hawkins High. That was the other reason why they weren't in school. It was being used as a shelter. It was where Robin and Steve spent most of their time now. Since the vast majority of Family Video’s customers had evacuated the town, the business had closed its doors for the time being. Robin had felt particularly strongly about wanting to help at the de facto shelter in Hawkins High, and so Steve accompanied her. 

Hopper had since returned to his shack, and was currently attempting to make it livable again. El was still living with Joyce, Will, and Jonathan, who had taken up residence in their old home. It had since been renovated and then abandoned as Hawkins residents had flooded out of the town. College was, understandably, on hold for both Jonathan and Nancy. At the least, they seemed to be around each other frequently, as when they came to visit Max it was usually together. Mike and Dustin’s families had remained in their homes. His family had too. Lucas knew they would have to have a sit-down with their parents at some point and explain all of this. He had hoped that Joyce and Hopper would shoulder most of that since they were the adults involved. In any case, Lucas felt they would be taken more seriously now that the Upside Down was unfolding before their very eyes.

Lucas knew that Max might not know he was there, much less know that Hawkins and the Upside Down had officially converged. Not that she needed to worry about any of it right now, with the state she was in. All Lucas hoped for was that Max could sense his presence. Somehow.

He read to her often. They’d gotten through The Talisman and were about to finish Salem’s Lot. Both Stephen King, obviously. He knew she would love that. If she knew it was happening.

And of course, the little doodle she’d drawn him was still on the wall above her bed. Her acceptance of their movie date. The shy little smile she’d given him as she had shown him her work. And the understanding that had passed between them: there was hope yet for them as a couple. How optimistic they’d been that they would make it out of their encounter with Vecna in one piece. They’d survived, at least. But at what cost?

She probably didn’t know how many people had come to see her, either. Her mother, of course. Jonathan and Nancy were here just about every week; sometimes separately, sometimes together, sometimes with Robin. Steve and Dustin, too. Mike and Will, even more. And El…El visited at least three times a week, visibly hoping she’d be able to find Max’s consciousness somewhere in her mind.

He knew how Eleven felt. That look of despair when he told her she hadn’t awoken yet. And that the doctors didn’t know when that would be. If that would be.

It wasn’t like El hadn’t tried. In the first month, she all but burst into the room nearly every night, eager to travel into Max’s mind. To see if she could be found in there. He’d watched her face go from hopeful to haggard as she’d open her tear-filled eyes and shake her head. And often, Lucas wept with her. In the second month, El became increasingly desperate, even suggesting that they try alternative methods – piggybacking, implanting memories, even suggesting transferring some of her powers to Max. If that were even possible. But none of these were possible without Max being in there. And right now, she wasn’t.

By the third month, El had stopped trying. She would still show up to hold Max’s limp hand and talk to her. But her eyes were blank. Lucas understood. It was too painful to keep up hope that she would soon wake up.

But she must wake up, Lucas thought. She has to. They had just started to reconnect. It wasn’t that he had ever stopped loving her. They’d just lost their way for a while. It’s not your fault, she’d told him. I disappeared. Lucas had shaken his head. No. You didn’t. I just didn’t look hard enough. He couldn’t put into words how much he regretted that now. He should have always been looking for her. And now Max might never find her way back.

Lucas checked his watch. 8:30 pm. He had to get home in an hour or so. It had been a long day. They’d hooked her to another bag of fluid, and they’d changed the bag for her feeding tube. Another clear tube ran under her nose, connected to an oxygen tank. Helping her breathe. Her flesh tone neck brace had more color in it than Max’s actual skin, which was still sickly pale. She was gaunt. Sunken. And Lucas was sure she was thinner underneath the thick white casts on her arms and legs. Max looked so small, so sick, just lying there motionless on the bed. A shell of herself.

Lucas could feel his eyes filling with tears. It was familiar. He often cried when he was alone with her. It was so cruel to think that a few months ago he had only wanted to fill his gaze with her. And she might have let him. And now filling his eyes with this pale, broken version of her was more uniquely painful each day.

Would it have been better for her to stay dead? Lucas felt terrible for letting the thought enter his mind. No, of course not. He would always remember the horrible, gutting feeling of the life draining from her, the quieting of her struggle for breath. He would never forget it, no matter how desperately he wanted to. But this life? Was this better?

A flutter.

Lucas’ heart stopped dead, his eyes glued to Max’s face. It could have been a trick of the light, his rational mind warned him. He’d been fooled before. So eager for her to wake that his mind kept trying to make it real.

Another one. A flutter.

Now he was sure he was imagining things. The first flutter of her eyelashes was something he’d conjured up out of hope, and this tricked his mind into seeing it again. Even knowing this, Lucas was at her bedside at once, hanging on to any sign of movement. Please, Max. Please. Please.

There was no mistaking it this time. Very slowly, Max’s eyelids began to open. He watched her pale lips part ever so slightly, and a shaky breath left her mouth.

Lucas grabbed at her limp fingers.

“Max?”

He watched in desperation as, finally, Max’s eyes opened.

Amid his joy, Lucas also felt an immediate sinking feeling. Her eyes were no longer the vibrant blue that he knew and loved. Immediately Lucas was transported back to that night as he saw those same milky white eyes, wide and terrified as she lay broken in his arms, gasping for breath, trembling with pain.

Lucas was brought back to present day by Max, whose breath began to quicken as she too seemed to realize she couldn’t see. The heart monitor near the bed began to beep in more rapid succession.

“Max? Max, can you hear me?”

She whimpered, the most pitiful sound he’d ever heard. Lucas watched her fingers clench and unclench desperately in her casts, her breath coming in short little gasps, the heart monitor alerting them that her heart rate was increasing to near-dangerous levels.

Lucas lowered his voice. “Max, it’s okay. Calm down.”

He could see that she was attempting to thrash about, but her casts were preventing this. Her cloudy eyes swiveled to and fro in her head, wide, frightened.

Lucas leaned down toward her.

“Max. Shh. Shh. It’s Lucas. I’m here.”

He gently took her fingers and entwined them in his own.

Max’s eyes grew even wider, and he saw tears start to glitter at their corners. She weakly squeezed his hand.

“Good,” he said, tears starting to swim in his own eyes. “Good, Max. That’s good. Just breathe.”

Max’s lips parted once more, and then closed.

“It’s okay. Don’t try to talk.”

Slowly, gently, Lucas placed his hands on her pale cheeks. She flinched, and he immediately felt remorseful. She had no warning for him doing that as she could not have seen it. He swore not to forget this next time.

“You’re in a hospital,” he said, his voice cracking a little. “You got hurt, Max. Bad.”

Max’s face crumpled, letting out a strangled noise that he thought might be a sob. Her sightless eyes were staring desperately in his direction, wet and brimming with tears.

“I’m right here, Max,” he murmured. “You’re okay. I’m right here.”

Max’s tears slid right into his palms. Her fragile body trembled with the sorrow and the fright and the utter grief of it. He could only imagine how scary it was to only see darkness after taking so much residence there. I’ll run toward the light, she’d told him all those months ago. And now…how could she run toward the light if she couldn’t see it?

“Ah – ah – ” Max was trying to talk again. Lucas knew she desperately wanted to. Her mouth open and closed, trying to make the words come out. He felt panicked. Why couldn’t she talk?

“Sir?”

Lucas whirled around to see a nurse standing in the doorway, looking bewildered.

“She’s awake,” he said, and then, insanely, he laughed. “She’s awake!”

Chapter Text

Three weeks.

That was how long it had been since Max opened her eyes.

The nurse had barely hung up the phone with Max’s mother Susan when she arrived at the hospital in what seemed like mere minutes. Lucas would never forget her bursting through the door of Max’s room, sitting down on the bed and putting her arms around Max, sobbing “my baby, my baby.” It only seemed to take Max a second or two to realize who was hugging her, and Lucas watched her desperately try to speak to her mother, her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. It was a wonderful and horrible sight – Max’s mother hugging her as she struggled to talk.

Their entire party had all but swarmed the room once Lucas had notified them that Max was awake. They quickly discovered that this was more distressing and disorienting for Max than anything, and two-thirds of them promptly left the room so she could calm down. The first to sit with her were Nancy and Jonathan. Nancy seemed particularly affected by the fact that Max had finally awoken, and, like Lucas, looked stricken at how much of Max had been stripped away in Vecna’s wake. She left in somewhat of a hurry, but not before leaning down and whispering “I’m glad you’re still here.” Jonathan said next to nothing, and generally arrived and left when Nancy did, but Lucas knew he was concerned like the rest of them.

Robin and Steve managed to squeeze their way in next. Robin too appeared sorrowful at how timid Max had become in her current state, though she seemed determined not to let Max know this. She babbled on about the good work she and Steve were doing at the shelter, and how she would be sure to lay some extra clothes aside for Max so she could stop wearing hospital gowns that “smelled like old people.” It was endlessly entertaining to watch Steve’s facial expressions during Robin’s many ramblings. He wouldn’t say much while they were visiting, though he would occasionally crack a stupid joke or complain about Dustin, as he usually did. Regardless, his concern for Max was evident.

Dustin, Mike, and Will were more familiar to her, and she seemed comforted by their presence. Eleven, they explained, had been summoned to speak with Owens in secret about their current situation, but they reassured Max that El would be back soon to see her. Mike and Dustin defaulted to telling Max jokes, though her responses to these were minimal. She couldn’t do much more than make sounds. When it became increasingly awkward for Mike or Dustin to tell a joke and get little response from Max, they elected to telling her about what was going on in the most recent comics: X-Men and Wonder Woman, since they knew she liked them. It seemed silly to recount these for her considering the Upside Down was literally outside and seeping through Hawkins, but there was a strange comfort in discussing the mundane. It made everything feel normal again, even just for a moment or two.

Will seemed to have taken it upon himself to bring Max music. “I’m not sure if she’ll like everything I have,” he said hesitantly, as he handed Lucas a stack of tapes. Lucas examined them. The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry, coupled with The Blood. Talking Heads’ This Must Be the Place, coupled with Burning Down the House. David Bowie’s Let’s Dance and China Girl. R.E.M.’s Fall on Me and Superman.

“I picked up these too,” said Will, handing him a couple more. Tears for Fears’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World and Head Over Heels. Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf, Rio, and Save a Prayer. Fleetwood Mac’s Gypsy, Love in Store, and Oh Diane.

Lucas looked up at Will. “No Kate Bush?”

A shadow crossed Will’s face.

“After Vecna…I don’t know, I just didn’t want to remind her of that night.”

Lucas hadn’t thought of this. But Will was probably right. And it might be better not to take that chance given that Max was in a delicate enough state already. Lucas was more inclined to trust Will’s judgment on the matter than anyone else’s.

“I’m sure she’ll let us know which ones she likes,” said Lucas, and a grin hitched onto his face before he could stop it. “She can still make faces.”

It was true. Earlier that week, one of her more well-meaning nurses had told her that they would find her a lovely pink barrette to wear in her hair when her mother came to visit. Max’s nose had promptly wrinkled in disgust. Lucas had had to stop himself from laughing outright at the clear repulsion on her face.

Their party’s spirits seemed to have been momentarily lifted now that Max was awake. At least, part of her had awoken. There were other things that still needed to come back, and likely would, according to her doctors. Her speech, eventually. Her ability to walk, slowly.

Without their party there, Max just seemed lost and frightened. And without the ability to communicate, Lucas felt completely useless sitting next to her, watching her struggle to comprehend what was going on within and around her. But it seemed Max was able to identify when he was in the room, as her vocal exclamations became louder and more urgent when he made his presence known. She couldn’t say his name, not yet, but she would start saying “luh” when she knew he was there.

Lucas found himself walking into the hospital the following morning with a little more spring in his step. Yes, Max was still healing, still broken, still lost. But she was awake, which was more than he had dared to expect. Now Lucas could finish reading Salem’s Lot to her, he realized. Finish? No, she probably hadn’t heard the first half of it. He might want to start it over. She’d read it already, he knew, but it was silly to start in the middle of the book. For that matter, should he read her The Talisman again?

He was jerked out of his thoughts by the sight of Max’s mother Susan, who was standing outside Max’s door. Standing with her was an older man with peppered gray hair and round glasses. Judging by the white coat, he was presumably one of Max’s many doctors. He was speaking to Susan in a low voice. Susan was crying, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.

They fell quiet when he approached.

“Is…Max okay?”

The doctor’s eyebrows raised sightly.

“And who are you?”

“Lucas,” he said, straightening up a little. He knew exactly what had just gone through the doctor’s head. They’re just letting anyone in here, aren’t they?

“I was just telling Mrs. Hargrove about her daughter’s condition.”

Lucas felt his own eyebrows start to rise. “And…?”

“Well, I hardly think that’s any of your concern.”

Lucas opened his mouth indignantly, but Susan spoke up first.

“It is his concern. He’s here with her every day. Now, you can tell him, or I will.”

The doctor hurriedly rearranged his facial expression into one that he clearly thought was kind and fatherly.

“She’ll have a brain scan in a week or two and that will tell us more about her speech, as well as any other areas that have been damaged. Her bones are healing well. Casts should come off soon, given her motor skills have not been too severely impacted. But, as I was explaining to Mrs. Hargrove…we are doubtful about her sight coming back. Her blindness may be permanent.”

Susan sniffled from next to him, wiping her eyes. Lucas was quiet.

“What do we tell her?” He said finally.

“Nothing, for now,” said the doctor. “We don’t know for sure. Her brain scan may point us toward the solution for her blindness. But, at this moment in time, our hopes are not high.”

Susan nodded at the doctor.

“Thank you for telling us. If you please, I’m going to visit my daughter now.”

“Certainly, ma’am. And, young man, do you need help finding the exit?”

“He’s coming with me,” Susan said pointedly. Before the doctor had formulated a response, she grabbed Lucas by the arm and pulled him into Max’s room behind her.

“Prick,” she hissed under her breath as the door slammed shut behind them.

Lucas couldn’t think of a response to this, though it made sense. Max had never cared that he was black. Based on what had just transpired, her mother didn’t seem to care much either. If Billy and Max’s stepdad were still alive…well, it would have been much different, he imagined. Neither of them were around anymore to openly treat him like shit. He wasn’t exactly glad they were dead, but at least there wouldn’t be any name-calling, or accusations, or those hard glances that he was so familiar with.

He sat quietly on the side of the bed closer to the door so Susan could sit in his usual chair. Max was asleep, breathing peacefully, her chest rising and falling. Susan slowly sat down, her blue eyes glistening with tears once more.

They really did look alike, Lucas noticed as Susan leaned over her daughter, adjusting her blankets. Same red hair, same pale skin, same freckled face. Susan’s red hair had streaks of silver in it and was slightly unkempt. She looked just like he felt – sleep-deprived and wrought with worry.

Max had previously hinted that her mother drank, but now that Lucas was sitting nearby, it was evident. He knew she’d been crying recently, which might excuse the bleariness in her eyes, but the smell of alcohol permeating around her was harder to explain away. She must be what people called a “functioning alcoholic.” Able to get through the day almost normally, as long as there was a drink in her.

Susan brushed some hair away from her daughter’s face.

“My baby,” she murmured.

Lucas didn’t say anything. He couldn’t imagine what this must be like as a parent, though if he felt helpless, he was sure she felt it tenfold. No wonder Susan had been drinking. He can’t say he wouldn’t want to do the same if he had to watch his child lay lifeless in the hospital day after day, with seemingly no end in sight.

He heard Susan inhale sharply, and he looked up to see Max stirring from her sleep, her eyes blinking open slowly.

“Max?” Susan leaned forward, caressing Max’s face. “Max, honey? It’s Mom.”

Max’s milky eyes swiveled in her mother’s direction, visibly emotional. Since Max had woken up, she and her mother had barely made it through an interaction without one of them bursting into tears. It made sense. They had lost so much. And had been on the verge of losing each other.

“Mmm –” said Max, and Lucas felt a twinge of sorrow. She had been trying so hard to talk to her mother. Her speech just wasn’t back enough yet. “Mmm –"

“I know, sweetie,” said Susan, shaking her head as she squeezed Max’s casted hand. “I know. Mom’s here."

She reached down into the bag she’d brought and unearthed a dark green fleece blanket, dotted with small white flowers.

“I brought one of your blankets from home. And I brought your new Walkman back with some fresh batteries.” Susan took this out too. “I think the Kate Bush tape is still in there for you.”

Lucas cringed inwardly as he saw Max’s facial expression tense somewhat. Will had been right. Of course, her mother couldn’t have known that her Kate Bush tape was now tinged with the memories of that night. Lucas silently reminded himself to switch the tapes after Susan left.

He started a little when Susan addressed him.

“You’ll help her find the buttons?”

He nodded, giving her a wan smile.

“Yeah, of course.”

Susan gave a brisk little nod, glancing at her watch.

“I have to get to work,” she said to Max, whose head was still slightly turned in her mother’s direction, listening to her. “I promise I’ll be back soon. I love you.”

Susan planted a soft kiss on her daughter’s forehead. As she walked around the end of the bed, she approached Lucas, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“You are always welcome to come see her, you hear me?”

Lucas nodded.

“I’m serious, Lucas. If anyone gives you trouble, let me know about it. So long as my daughter is in this hospital, you are permitted to come visit her. Don’t let anyone – and I mean anyone – tell you anything different. If they do, they’ll have to deal with me.”

“Y-Yes, ma’am,” he said nervously.

Susan gave him a kind smile, patting his shoulder, before withdrawing. As she was shutting the door behind her, Max started clenching her fingers in her cast. She did this when she wanted to hold his hand.

Lucas took her hand at once, and her face relaxed.

“Luh,” she said, squeezing his fingers.

“I’m here,” he said, the same mantra that had become a promise. His promise. To her.

One that he would never break.

Chapter Text

Her casts could come off in a few weeks.

That’s what the doctors and nurses kept telling them. Just a few more weeks, they said, as long as Max’s bones continued to heal well. The neck brace could come off soon, too. Over the next month, they were going to ease her back into solid foods, and eventually remove the feeding tube. She still needed the oxygen, they said, and the bags of fluid to keep her hydrated. But they were confident they could transition her off both in due time.

The nurses had adjusted her in bed a bit today, so that she was sitting up, supported by a mountain of pillows. Lucas was sure they could sense that Max was becoming increasingly restless. He knew she was undoubtedly tired of lying so still, unable to do anything or go anywhere.

It turned out that Will bringing her music was incredibly helpful for this. He could tell she didn’t like all the songs, but she seemed to appreciate the gesture more than anything else. Lucas had placed the tapes such that each one was in a specific place on her wheeled tray table, so when he put her headphones over her ears, he was able to wheel the tray over and let her pick which one she wanted. And if she couldn't remember, he would call out the name of the artist as she placed her finger on each one. It was an art, always, trying to help her do things that required sight. But they were figuring it out.

A few of the tapes were modest hits. She listened to the David Bowie and Tears for Fears tapes fairly often. The Talking Heads, occasionally. Duran Duran, sometimes. R.E.M. and The Cure were not as successful. Both of those had been out of Will’s personal collection, and Lucas sensed they were much more Will’s style than Max’s.

The Fleetwood Mac tape seemed to be coming through as the clear favorite, particularly the song Gypsy. That was the one she rewound over and over. It was a thing of wonder to watch Max’s facial expression as she listened to it, tears running silently down her cheeks. Lucas made a mental note to swipe her Walkman later to hear the song. He wanted to know what magic permeated her soul while it played.

When she was sick of music, surprised as he was that this was even possible, Lucas resumed reading to her. He’d decided to start Salem’s Lot over again, and this proved to be ideal now that Max was awake and clearly wanting to keep herself occupied. He knew that much about her. She didn’t like being idle. It gave her too much time to think.

Today, though, she seemed more restless than usual. He wasn’t sure how cloudy her brain still was after her coma, but as she gave a desperate little sob from next to him, clenching her fingers in her cast, he knew she was in there enough to hate this.

“Max?” He murmured.

Max’s bottom lip trembled.

“El,” she managed.

“I’m sure she’ll come back soon,” he told her, though honestly he had no idea when Eleven was supposed to get back. He hoped it was soon. El hadn’t yet seen Max awake, and they hadn't been able to update her since she was with Owens and could not risk contact. But he knew that Max was desperate for her to visit.

As if on cue, they were both startled by the door slamming open behind them. Lucas jumped to his feet, whipping around to see Eleven herself burst through the doorway toward Max’s bed, her short hair tousled, her eyes wild, as if she’d run all the way there.

Max’s whole body had stiffened at the noise, her milky eyes swiveling anxiously in her head.

Eleven embraced Lucas at once. "I'm here."

“El, Jesus,” Lucas said, who had been nearly unseated by the sudden intrusion. She held onto him for another moment before immediately going to Max’s side.

“Max, it’s me. It’s El.”

Max turned her head ever so slightly in El’s direction, her expression going from scared to hopeful.

“El?” She murmured, and El gave a watery chuckle, tears falling freely down her face.

“I’m here,” she said.

Max’s arms pressed against the inside of her casts, and Lucas realized she was trying to lift her arms, to touch El, to confirm to herself El’s presence. But she was too weak, and her casts were too heavy. Max gave a whine of frustration, her fingers clenching in her casts.

“El – El -”

El took her hands, which calmed Max immediately. Lucas smiled sadly as Max squeezed El’s fingers with what he was sure was all her strength.

Eleven looked at him, joy and sorrow mingling in her brown eyes. “How is she?”

“When she woke, she couldn’t talk. She still can’t.”

“She can’t talk?”

Lucas shrugged.

“Not much, besides “El” and “luh,” which is me. She makes sounds, El. I know she’s trying. They told me a speech therapist is supposed to come talk to her, but I don’t know when. Otherwise…they’re going to keep her on the oxygen, the feeding tube, and the IV for fluid. Her casts can come off in a few weeks.”

“And…her eyes?”

Lucas’ veins ran cold. He had wondered when this would come up. He couldn’t tell them how doubtful the doctors were about her vision coming back. Max couldn’t find out like that. And he didn’t want to cause El the same anguish that he had felt upon hearing this news.

El was watching him anxiously. Max seemed to be listening intently for his response as well, her eyes focused on a spot over his shoulder by the window.

“They aren’t sure yet,” was all he said.

Something in Eleven’s look told him that she had caught his momentary lapse, but she did not refute what he had said. She leaned down toward Max, guiding her friend’s hands to her face. Max’s eyes widened, glistening the moment she touched El’s skin, as if she was seeing Eleven for the first time.

“You are brave,” said Eleven earnestly, her face now soaked with tears as she pressed Max’s hands to her cheeks. “Keep fighting. Okay? I’m here now.”

Max blinked once, emphatically.

El looked confused, and glanced back at him for clarification.

“It’s how she says yes and no,” Lucas explained. “She can’t move her head that much, so her nurses taught her to blink. One blink, yes. Two blinks, no. Just until she can talk more.”

This seemed to assuage Eleven’s curiosity. She nodded, then sat back and looked at Max, guiding her friend’s hands back into her own.

"The others have been to visit?" She asked.

Lucas nodded. El fixed him with a gravely serious look.

“I want to see if I can find her,” said El.

Lucas had anticipated this. “Well…she has to be in there now, right?” he said hopefully. “Since she’s awake?”

Eleven did not look sure of this. “I hope so.”

She turned back toward Max and closed her eyes. Lucas lowered his head, focusing his stare on the dingy floor, waiting. Was he praying? Maybe. He wasn’t religious. But he would take whatever higher power was available to help them. Max sat there, listening, mumbling “El” every so often. Possibly to convince herself El was actually there next to her.

After several agonizing minutes, he heard Eleven exhale, and he felt brave enough to look up. For once, Eleven did not look devastated, though she wasn’t joyful. She was frowning, a pensive expression on her face as she surveyed Max.

“I heard her,” she said finally, in a thoughtful voice.

“You…what do you mean?”

“I still can’t see her,” said El. “But…I heard an echo. Her voice.”

“Did she say anything?”

El gave a sad little smile.

“Your name,” she said. “Then mine. Then nothing.”

Lucas wasn’t sure if he wanted to cry or kiss Max. His name. Love for her filled him up so that his eyes flooded with tears. Even from wherever she was in the void, she hadn’t forgotten him.

Eleven did not look so overwhelmed. She continued to stare at Max, the pensive frown returning to her face.

“It’s just strange.”

“What is?” Lucas wiped his eyes hurriedly.

“She is awake, but…it’s still empty in there.”

Lucas looked at Max, who merely stared at the ceiling.

“How is that possible?”

“Vecna could have her.”

Lucas shook his head. “But he can’t have her. Because…when she died, she was in there.” He knew that for a fact.

El shrugged. “She could be trapped somewhere else.”

“Where else would she be trapped? The Upside Down? But wouldn't her body be there if that were the case? Like Will?”

“I don’t know,” said El, shaking her head in confusion. "It doesn't make sense."

She straightened up, her eyes on Max.

“I will try again later,” she said resolutely. “Maybe I can follow her voice.”

Lucas thought this was plausible. It still didn’t make sense, though. How could Max be awake if she wasn’t in there? And wherever she was, did she know what was happening to her body in the real world? Was Max’s mind fractured so that part of her was here and part of her was there? He shook his head to clear it. There was still so much about the Upside Down, the void, the worlds inside people’s minds, that he didn’t understand.

“Do you think…wherever she is…that she’s safe?”

El gave him a grim look.

“None of us are safe.”

Lucas knew it had been a naïve question. Not that he himself truly believed she was enveloped in a safe place. He just hated to think she was alone somewhere, lost, confused, in danger. Not much different from where she was in the real world, honestly, except there she might not have anyone around her.

“But,” Eleven continued. “Maybe she’s not trapped. Maybe…hiding. Somewhere Vecna can’t find her.”

Max made an indiscernible noise between them, and they both looked at her. She was clenching and unclenching her fingers, opening and closing her mouth, trying to tell them something.

“Max?”

“Ah – ah –”

Her mouth gaped open and closed aggravatedly. It never got easier to watch her try to communicate and still not be able to. Lucas could see the frustration and the anger and the sorrow of it every single time.

“It’s okay,” said Eleven, taking Max’s hand and squeezing it.

Max’s eyes filled with tears.

“El,” she said urgently.

“It’s okay,” El said again, leaning down so Max could hear her better. “Wherever you are, I will find you. I promise.”

Chapter Text

Max had started having nightmares.

The nurses told Lucas that morning that she hadn’t slept well. She had cried out several times during the night. And when Lucas walked into her room, he noticed Max looked haggard. Even more so than usual.

Lucas attempted to read her the next chapter of Salem’s Lot. But as the chapter progressed, Lucas recognized that it wasn’t a good day for it.

“…but until now she had not believed that some fears were larger than comprehension, apocalyptic and nearly paralyzing. This equation was insoluble. The act of moving forward at all became heroism – Max?”

She blinked awake mid-snore, her cloudy eyes bleary.

Lucas closed the book.

“We don’t have to read anymore right now,” he told her bracingly. “I can let you sleep for a while.”

She blinked once in his direction. Yes.

Lucas stood up, putting the book down on the bedside table.

“I’ll be back to see you later?” he asked her, starting to walk away.

“Luh,” she said suddenly, opening and closing her hands.

He stopped next to her.

“Are you okay?”

Max was stretching her fingers as far as they would go in the direction of his hand. He reached down and took hers. As they sat there in silence with each other, Max lightly squeezed his hand, the beginnings of a smile twitching in the corners of her mouth. As if she was assuring him she was all right. Imagine that. Max trying to reassure him. She was so strong. Stronger than he could ever hope to be.

Lucas sat on the bed next to her, keeping his hand in hers as her eyelids fluttered closed. She was asleep in moments, her hand slacking in his, and soon the only sounds in the room were the beeping of her heart monitor and the quiet hiss of her oxygen tank.

He started as he heard the door open, and he turned to see Eleven quietly appear in the doorway. He immediately put a finger to his lips, warning her against making noise. He gestured toward the door to Max’s hospital room, standing up and following Eleven out into the hallway.

El’s hope for finding Max in the void had clearly been reignited, Lucas thought, as he was the only one who visited every single day. He couldn’t blame her. Any shimmer of hope they could glean from the situation was a beacon of light cutting through the darkness of the last few months.

“I can sit with her for a while,” said El, as Lucas closed the door behind them.

He nodded. “Just to give me some time to go home, shower, and eat.”

They sat down in the hard plastic and metal chairs outside of Max’s room. They were decidedly less comfortable than the ones next to Max’s bed. It brought the all-too-familiar exhaustion into much sharper relief as Lucas felt it settle into his bones. God, he was so tired.

“Lucas?”

Eleven’s voice came out small. She seemed anxious.

“Yeah?”

“I need to tell you something.”

Her tone of voice made him uneasy. As if she was about to admit something terrible.

“Okay,” he said, fighting to keep his voice level.

Eleven paused, then started again.

“The night Max’s bones were broken,” she said vaguely. “The night…she died.”

Lucas nodded.

“What do you remember? After Vecna was gone?”

Lucas took a shaky breath, steeling himself.

He sat there, numb, as Max’s body lay stiff in his arms.

Life was an empty, dark pit now. Lucas could not conceive of life without her. The girl of his life, his North Star. Gone. Gone away from him, far enough where he couldn’t reach her. Where he couldn’t tell her he was sorry, that he’d be better, that he truly saw her. Where he couldn’t tell her he loved her. From the moment he met her, and forever more.

Lucas pulled her into his arms and rocked her, sobs racking him so hard he could barely breathe, hearing himself scream as if from far away. He wasn’t here, this wasn’t happening. She wasn’t dead, she couldn’t be dead, she couldn’t be fucking dead –

Max suddenly shuddered in his arms, letting out a heaving gasp from over his shoulder. Hardly daring to believe it, he faced her, and sure enough, she was…there. Still alive. Somehow.

It all hit him at once: the confusion, the relief, the pure terror -

“Max? Max! Oh my god. Oh my god.”

She couldn’t breathe, and the rattle in her chest scared the shit out of him. When was the ambulance going to get there? They needed to hurry, she couldn’t fucking breathe!

“Oh my god, Max, oh my god, oh my god. I’ve got you, I’m right here, don’t go. Breathe. Just breathe.”

He heard the front door of the Creel house crash open downstairs and he gave a sob of relief as the footsteps of the EMTs thundered up the stairs. They burst through the door and Lucas was promptly pushed aside while they examined her.

“She needs oxygen, hurry, let’s get her in the ambulance -”

They swept her onto a stretcher and rushed her from the room, urgently yelling things into their walkie-talkies. Lucas followed them, taking the steps two at a time, nearly running into Erica, who was standing wide-eyed in the doorway.

He grabbed her arm.

“They’re taking her to the hospital and you can’t stay here, come on!”

The two of them dashed up to the back of the ambulance, where they were getting ready to close the doors.

“I need to go with her!” he screamed, at the top of his voice.

“Sir, it’s better that you get a ride separately – ”

“No, here’s what’s gonna happen,” said Erica, jumping on the back and grabbing the side of the door before they could shut it. “She’s family. So you’re going to let me and my brother on this ambulance or we’re gonna stand in front of it. Up to you.”

“I’ll take one of you. Not both.”

Erica hopped down and pushed Lucas forward.

“Go! I’ll contact Nancy. Just go!”

The EMT ushered Lucas in with a scowl.

“Get in the way and I’m throwing you out,” she said through clenched teeth.

Lucas scrambled onto the ambulance and promptly tried to squeeze himself into the furthest corner where the EMTs were not. There was already a flurry of activity from the three EMTS on board. Two of them were grabbing tubes and machines while the other was attending to Max, yelling things that barely made sense to Lucas.

“O₂ is ninety-four and dropping – ”

“BP eighty over fifty, heart rate one-twenty – ”

Max’s broken body shuddered with the effort of breath, the dried blood in red lines under her eyes standing out in even sharper relief against her white face. One of the EMTs grabbed an oxygen mask and pressed it to Max’s mouth and nose.

“Breathe, honey,” she said.

Lucas started to cry as he watched Max struggle for air, trembling all over from the pain he was sure she was feeling. Her bent limbs quivered grotesquely against the stretcher. The monitors they had her hooked up to were all beeping rapidly, a nightmarish symphony of klaxon alarms.

“Her eyes are obstructed, noted that patient may be blind,” one of the EMTs said into his walkie-talkie.

Max gave a thin wail, muffled by the thick oxygen mask.

“Hey, you,” the EMT with the oxygen mask addressed him. “What’s her name?”

“Max Mayfield.”

“Miss Mayfield?” the EMT said in a raised voice, speaking close to Max’s ear. “You’re here in the ambulance and we’re taking you to the hospital. I just need you to try to breathe for me.”

Terrified, Lucas watched as Max’s eyes rolled back into her head, the monitor klaxon piercing the air in alarm.

“She’s going into shock. Get her a blanket, elevate her legs -”

It was all Lucas could do to keep from sobbing outright, as he knew this would only distract the EMTs from working to save her life. It broke him completely to see her in such a state, but his whole body was screaming for her to fight. To live.

Come on. Max. Come on. Breathe.

By the time they had made it to the hospital, she was unconscious. No sooner had the ambulance doors opened than the EMTs had wheeled her in. He had been promptly banished out to the lobby, where he’d remained until a nurse had come to update him.

“…And she just…stayed unconscious. They told me she had slipped into a coma. And…now we're here."

Eleven’s eyes were filled with tears.

“Lucas,” she choked.

“I know.” He felt terrible for describing such an experience to her. It had been difficult enough to go through it. “It was awful.”

“I…I was there.”

“You…what do you mean?”

“When she died. I was there. In the void.”

It took Lucas a moment to work out what she was telling him.

 “You saw her die?”

Tears ran freely down her cheeks, and suddenly Lucas could see that night reflected in her eyes – the terror, the utter helplessness of watching someone she loved fading out of her reach.

“Oh my god,” he said quietly. The miracle the doctors had talked about. That gasp as Max had awoken in his arms. Realization washed over him.

“It was you.”

“I had to bring her back,” El cried. “I had to. I didn’t want her to go. She couldn’t go.”

She sobbed, covering her mouth with her hands.

“I’m so sorry, Lucas.”

“What? You’re sorry? What are you sorry about?” He was dumbfounded by her apology.

“I couldn’t save her enough,” Eleven wept, and the ache in his chest he’d come to know so well resurfaced inside him as he realized her pain. They had done everything they could to save her. But what of her had El managed to salvage? Was this life any better?

Her stricken look made much more sense to Lucas now. Both of them together – no, their entire party – all of their love for her kept them going, kept them showing up, kept them fighting to defeat Vecna. But it hadn’t been enough.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t save her eyes, or her body, or her mind - ”

She stopped abruptly as Lucas pulled her into a tight hug. Every single time he had called El a freak, a mental patient, a monster – every utterance of his from when they were younger came forward in his mind. Never, in his wildest dreams, had he thought that this same person he had disliked back then, even hated, would be the same one who would save them all, over and over again. The same person who had become one of his closest friends. The same person who had rescued the girl of his life, because she loved Max too.

“Thank you,” he said, feeling his own sobs start to well up in his chest. “Thank you.”

"I didn't do enough," she sobbed.

"You did more than enough. You did so much. Without you, she wouldn't be alive right now."

He pulled back, his hands on her shoulders.

“El. You know what the doctors said about her coming back to life? That it was a miracle?”

El nodded, sniffling.

“That was you. You’re a miracle. Do you hear me?”

Lucas embraced her once again, patting Eleven’s back as she wept for Max.

“You’re her miracle,” he said. He meant it. “And you’re mine too.”

Chapter Text

The neck brace came off a week later.

Now all the tubes that Max was attached to stood out in sharper relief against her pale skin, but at least she could move her head. This seemed to help her better gauge her immediate surroundings. Now when Lucas entered her hospital room and announced himself, her head would turn sharply toward him, and she would get a concentrated, focused look on her face, as if she was listening with all her might.

After another x-ray, they were told that her casts could finally come off too.

Both of them waited in nervous anticipation that entire morning, Lucas bouncing his foot, Max tapping her finger against her cast.

The doctor finally arrived around ten. A nurse and an assistant were with him, carrying what Lucas assumed was a cast saw, along with some Vaseline in a small tub.

“Good morning, Miss Mayfield!” the doctor said jovially. Max’s head jerked in his direction. “Your last x-ray showed that your bones are all fully healed, so let’s get these casts off, hmm?”

She nodded vigorously.

“Your nurses have told me you are very eager for these casts to come off,” the doctor said to her kindly. “Today is that day, my dear! If you’ll just hold very still, we can go ahead and start.”

Her hand started scrabbling around on the bed, searching for his. Lucas took her fingers and squeezed.

“I’m here,” he said, and she squeezed his hand back, to let him know she understood.

The assistant drew up next to her, rolling a tray with a thick board toward her. 

“Miss Mayfield, I’m going to put your arm on this board, all right?”

She was able to lift it slightly for him. The assistant took her arm and let it rest on the black board. He then spoke toward the side of her head.

“You’re going to hear the cast saw come on, and then I’m going to start, okay?”

Max blinked once. Yes.

Even though they had been warned, Lucas and Max still jumped as the cast saw buzzed to life, filling their ears with the drone of the spinning blade. A flurry of plaster flakes flew into the air around them as the assistant pressed the handsaw to her right arm cast. It didn’t look to be too dangerous, Lucas thought as he felt himself relax. The blade looked short and dull. No risk of it tearing through her skin.

Lucas could feel the vibration of the saw near his own hand and he knew she most certainly felt it in hers. Max’s hand jerked in his, alarmed.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “It won’t touch your skin.”

Max’s face relaxed slightly, though she kept a strong grip on his hand.

For a moment, Max had to let go of Lucas’ hand so they could pull the now broken cast apart and off her arm. Her skin was dry and flaky underneath, covered in plaster dust. The nurse screwed open the lid of the Vaseline tub and dug out a small glob with her finger.

“I’m going to put some Vaseline on your arm, all right?” she said, brushing loose plaster dust flakes off of Max’s skin with the back of her hand. “Just to help with the dryness. If I don’t put some on now, your arm will be very itchy.”

Max held her arm out in the nurse’s direction expectantly. The nurse held Max’s arm in her gloved hand, rubbing the Vaseline across Max’s skin. The assistant with the cast saw gravitated to her other side, dragging the wheeled tray with the now plaster-covered board around with him.

“Are you ready for me to cut your other arm cast off?” He asked her.

Max nodded. She didn’t jump at the sound of the saw this time as the assistant moved it up and down the cast, more bits of plaster flying out and continuing to coat the thick board that her other arm now rested on. The remaining halves of the cast cracked as the assistant pulled them apart, and her other arm was officially free.

Lucas had become so accustomed to her casts that it was strange to see her two pale, thin arms underneath. They looked naked. They were certainly whiter, and bonier, looking even smaller in the nurse’s gloved hand as Vaseline was applied to her other arm. This nurse could fit her entire hand around Max’s wrist.

“Before we continue,” said the doctor. “The nurse is going to help you do some movements to loosen up those muscles and make sure you still have range of motion. Your muscles have atrophied, so we need to get them moving again. All right?”

The nurse put the Vaseline tub down on the bedside table and held her own hands out in front of her, as if to demonstrate. She then seemed to remember that Max couldn’t see, and raised her voice slightly.

“First thing I want you to do is hold both your hands out in front of you, palms facing out. Okay?”

Lucas watched as Max followed suit, shakily lifting her arms and opening her hands. The simple act of doing this seemed both easier and more difficult for her, as now she did not have the weight of the casts but her arm muscles were still undoubtedly very weak. The nurse instructed Max to do a few exercises. Flexing her fingers. Making a fist and holding it, first with her right hand, then with her left. Bending her elbows. Rotating her arms in their sockets. 

Max was able to do most of it, albeit slowly and stiffly, a sheen of sweat starting to bead on her upper lip. Once these exercises were done, and the nurse confirmed that her range of motion was still intact, Max let her arms relax to her sides, her breathing slightly labored. 

The leg casts took a bit longer to get off, but they came off nonetheless. The skin on her legs was just as flaky and dry as it was on her arms, but otherwise her legs looked to have healed well. They too were white and pasty, and the loss of her muscle mass was evident.

“I’m going to rub Vaseline on your legs, all the way up where your casts were, all right? I see you’re a little raw right there so I’ll be gentle. And I’m not touching anything else down there, I promise.”

Lucas blushed and turned away as the nurse lifted Max’s hospital gown to rub Vaseline on her thighs where the casts had been. No, Max wouldn’t see him looking. It didn’t matter. He would know that he had. She seemed nondescript about this and didn’t make any motion to indicate her feelings in either direction. But as she reached for his hand once more, it occurred to Lucas that she must trust him so deeply, so intrinsically, that perhaps she wasn’t afraid for him to sneak a look. Because she knew he would never take advantage of her like that.

He was honored to have that level of trust from her. He wouldn’t waste it.

The nurse had Max do similar range of motion exercises after both her legs were un-casted and properly moisturized: bending her knee, rolling her ankle, flexing her toes. All of these seemed doable for her too, as long as she didn’t have to do them quickly.

“Don’t worry,” the doctor told her kindly, as the nurse and the assistant wordlessly cleaned up. “It might be hard to move your arms and legs for a little while, but your strength will come back. We’re going to add some vitamins to your medicines, to help you regain that muscle. And a nurse will be here in a few days to help you walk a little bit, okay?”

Max blinked hard in his direction, to show she had understood.

The doctor and his team cleared out of the room not long after this.

Lucas watched the last bit of Max’s energy drain from her as she sank into her pillows, shivering a little. He could see the goosebumps on her pallid skin.

“Are you cold?” He murmured. She nodded. Lucas pulled her blankets over her, tucking them securely around her thin frame.

Max popped her hand out from under the blanket, tapping her ear with her finger. She wanted to fall asleep to music.

Lucas wheeled the tray over to her, though he did this a little too eagerly and the tapes slid around on the wood surface. Max pulled her hand back, hesitating. She must have heard the tapes become unseated.

“Whoops, sorry. Got a little excited there,” he said, re-organizing the cassette tapes in their correct order. Max ran her hand over each one. She paused on the R.E.M. tape, her brow furrowing in his direction.

“That’s R.E.M,” he said.

Max shook her head. No. She continued to feel each cassette tape, touching the Duran Duran tape and looking up questioningly.

“Duran Duran,” he said.

No again.

“You want the Fleetwood Mac one, right?” He said.

She nodded. Lucas reached out and guided her hand toward the Fleetwood Mac tape, and she picked it up. Lucas then grabbed her Walkman from the bedside table, pressing it into her hands. She slipped the tape in easily and clicked the cassette door closed, as easily as she had done it before losing her eyesight. Lucas watched her hand trace the wire of her headphones so she could lift them to her ears. As she settled back against her pillows, clicking the play button on the Walkman, she closed her eyes.

They were finding a rhythm. Slowly but surely.

“All right, Miss Mayfield, today’s the day! Let’s take a step or two, hmm?”

This nurse was way too cheerful for how early it was, Lucas thought. Max seemed to think so too, and Lucas swore he saw her roll her eyes at the nurse’s bright, cheery tone.

The nurse entered the room, rolling a metal walker up to the side of the bed.

“I’m Nurse Cynthia, and I’ll be helping you today. Okay?”

Max blinked once. Yes.

Nurse Cynthia extended her hand to Lucas. “And you are?”

“Lucas. Lucas Sinclair.”

“Well, I’m sure we both appreciate your help,” she said kindly. “All right. Miss Mayfield, we’re going to sit up together, very slowly. Mr. Sinclair, support her on her other side for me.”

Lucas nodded, ready. Together, he and the nurse placed hands on Max’s back.

“We’re going slowly, all right? One, two, three…”

Lucas felt Max’s diminished back muscles stiffen as she began to move forward slightly.

“Not too fast, we don’t want you to get dizzy. That’s it…”

Slowly, they were able to get Max to sit upright, though she needed support. She kept a strong grip on both their shoulders, swaying a little as she attempted to steady herself. Nurse Cynthia checked Max's oxygen tube, feeding tube, and IV, seemingly to make sure nothing got tangled or yanked out of place.  

“Very good,” the nurse said kindly. “When you feel ready, give my hand a squeeze, and we’ll get you on your feet.”

“I’ve got you,” Lucas said close to her ear, making sure she could hear the encouragement in his voice.

Max gave a brief jerk of her head, to show she understood. Lucas watched as she squeezed the nurse’s hand.

“All right, dear,” said Nurse Cynthia, pulling back Max’s blankets. “If you can, let’s go ahead and swing your legs over the bed. We’re not standing yet, let’s just make sure we can sit up well, okay?”

Slowly and stiffly, Max moved her right leg until she was able to let it dangle from the edge of the bed. As her left leg followed, Lucas could see a sheen of sweat start to bead on her upper lip. It was so strange to think that at one point this was the same girl who could skateboard circles around every boy in Hawkins. Lucas felt a little clench of pain at the thought. Even if she re-learned to walk well enough, and by some miracle her vision came back, would she ever be able to skateboard like she used to? Was that something else she had to face losing?

Lucas noticed that she was wearing a pair of thin gray socks. Nurse Cynthia seemed to notice this too and pulled a pair of thin slippers from her scrub pocket.

“I’m going to put some slippers on your feet so we don’t fall, all right?”

Max nodded in her direction, then gripped Lucas’ hand. She was ready to stand up.

“Here we go,” said the nurse. “Now you’ve got this walker in front of you to help you keep your balance, okay? Why don’t you get a feel for it?”

Together, Lucas and the nurse guided Max’s hands to the handles of the walker. She ran her hands over them, feeling the metal bars, the grips where her hands would go.

Max turned toward Lucas, her milky eyes concentrated on a spot just below his chin. Her look was uncertain, questioning.

“You can,” he said. “You can do it.”

Her mouth twitched in what he thought could be a smile. I can, she was trying to tell him.

“He’s absolutely right, Miss Mayfield,” Nurse Cynthia chimed in. “You can. It’s going to be a little harder than you think because you’ve lost some muscle mass. But just give yourself some patience, all right? You can do it. And Mr. Sinclair and I are right here with you in case you need help.”

Max’s hands closed around the handles of the walker. With both of their support, she carefully raised herself to a standing position. Almost immediately Lucas saw her muscles start to tremble with the effort, what little color she had in her face rapidly draining away.

“Good,” the nurse was saying gently. “Good. Nice and easy.”

Max took a very slow, shaky step forward, her knuckles white against the walker’s handles, her pale face starting to gleam with perspiration.

“Wonderful. You are so brave,” said Nurse Cynthia. “If you feel like you can take another step, go ahead and do that. Don’t rush it. We’re not in a hurry.”

Max took a deep breath, steeling herself, and, after several minutes, was able to take another small, slow, shaky step. She seemed to reach her limit beyond this, as her muscles began to tremble even harder.

“Easy,” said the nurse, as she and Lucas each instinctively drew near to her. “Easy, easy. Are you tired? We can stop.”

Max reached out in Lucas’ direction. He slung her arm over his shoulder.

“Let go, I’ve got you,” he told her. Max released the walker and leaned heavily against him and Nurse Cynthia as they shuffled her back to the bed. They held Max up under her arms and lowered her back onto the bed, Nurse Cynthia picking up her legs and swinging them over so that Max was laying supine. Together, they adjusted Max’s pillows and blankets, getting her back into a comfortable position.

Lucas ran to the sink in the corner of the room and wet a washcloth. He hastened back over to Max, who was now propped up against her usual mountain of pillows.

“Do you need this to wipe your face?” he asked her, pressing the wet cloth into her hand. She lifted it to her face at once, wiping the sweat from it.

Nurse Cynthia clasped Max’s other hand in both of hers.

“Good job. Later this week, we’ll see if we can get you to take another step or two, okay?”

Max nodded, squeezing her nurse’s hand.

Nurse Cynthia did a once-over of Max’s many tubes before withdrawing, saying she would come back with Max’s medicines.

Max was breathing heavily. Lucas lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss against the back of it. Her head jerked toward him.

“You’re amazing,” he murmured. “You did so good.”

Her mouth did that funny twitch again, like she was going to smile.

"Luh," she said, and he felt his heart lift at the hope in her voice.

Chapter Text

Susan hadn’t been there in days.

A fine time for her to drop off the face of the earth, Lucas thought darkly as he sat in his usual chair by Max’s bedside. A part of him wondered if something had happened to her. But if it had, they would have heard about it, right? Joyce was still bringing her dinners, as far as he knew. Wouldn’t she or Hopper have let them know immediately if they couldn’t find her? He didn’t want to assume anything, but in their current climate, just about anything was likely.

He’d call her later. Max hadn’t been herself today. She’d been vomiting all morning, and had gotten it all over herself, so much so that her four nurses promptly whisked her off to the shower. They had tried to walk her there, but her legs wouldn’t hold her up, and the nurses, combined with Lucas, caught her mere seconds before she hit the floor. A nurse brought in a wheelchair, and Lucas had watched as the nurses picked her up easily and put her in it, rolling her into the bathroom without much fuss. One of the nurses had produced a plastic and metal chair that, as she explained, was designed especially for those who needed to shower but couldn’t stand. That way, Max could still do most of her shower herself. As she prefers, the nurse had said with a good-natured smile, and Lucas had chuckled with her. Max was nothing if not stubborn. And though he couldn’t ever see Max in the shower, based on the things her nurses had said, it was reasonable to assume that she resisted them doing everything for her.

“Miss Mayfield, I’m going to put the shampoo in your hair – we’re just trying to help you, dear. You want to do it yourself? All right, I’m going to squeeze some into your hand.”

Lucas could just see it in his mind’s eye: Max, sitting on the shower chair, surrounded by nurses, pushing their hands away and pointedly holding her hand out for a glob of shampoo or a bar of soap. And she would have that indignant frown that he knew so well, that look where her chin would jut out and her face would harden. She did not like to be babied. Lucas knew this for a fact.

Today, though, she didn’t seem to have much fight in her. As Lucas stood outside of the bathroom door with his usual stack of towels and washcloths for them, there was only the sound of the nurses moving around and the hiss of the running water. He heard her vomit twice more in the shower, and the nurses seemed to decide to get her back to bed so they could get some medicine in her.

Max and her team of nurses emerged from the bathroom. Max was wrapped in a new hospital gown and a towel, sitting despondently in the wheelchair as they rolled her across the room. Lucas could see she was disappointed. Defeated by her own weak body. She looked even more deathly pale than she usually did, and her wet hair hung in tendrils around her face as the nurses helped her back into bed. Whatever hope they’d had for her taking a bite of food today had likely gone out the window.

As they got her back into bed, Lucas reached out to touch her shoulder. “Max.”

She shrugged feebly away from him, pulling the blanket tightly around her.

Lucas wasn’t hurt by it. Sometimes she had days like this. People recovering from comas often had mood changes, nausea, vomiting, and other symptoms. Nurse Cynthia had explained all this to him after one of Max’s semi-weekly walking sessions with her walker. It’s not permanent, necessarily, she reassured him, but Max would undoubtedly have rough days sometimes. It’s all part of the healing process.

After injecting a medicine into her IV to calm her stomach, as well as attaching her to a second bag of fluid, the nurses got her situated and left the room. Max fell asleep shortly thereafter.

Lucas looked at his watch. Four o’clock. Dustin, Steve, and Will weren’t supposed to get there for another hour. Will was bringing her more tapes, that’s what he’d said on the phone, and Dustin was bringing her comics that he would try to read to her. He wasn’t sure if Steve planned to bring her anything, but he knew Max would appreciate his presence nonetheless. Although today they would be lucky if she acknowledged them much at all. She might be asleep throughout the visit.

“Sir?”

Lucas started as yet another doctor in Max’s sea of doctors poked his head through the doorway.

“I’m looking for Miss Mayfield’s mother. Is she around?”

He swallowed the urge to say something bitter.

“She isn’t here,” was all he said.

The doctor walked fully into the room, closing the door slightly behind him.

“I’m Dr. Sutherland,” he said kindly, extending his hand.

Lucas hesitated for only a moment before responding in kind. This was the first of Max’s doctors to even take time to introduce himself to any of them, much less him. Dr. Sutherland was young, maybe only a few years older than Nancy. He had a Hopper-like beard, though it was darker and less peppery. He wore the white doctor’s coat over a blue linen collared shirt and khaki pants, held up by a dark belt, with brown Oxford shoes and woolen socks. Anyone else dressed like him was usually stuck-up or arrogant, but Dr. Sutherland spoke in a kind, comforting voice, and didn’t look at him with thinly veiled disgust or wariness like many of the other doctors did.

“You’re here with her a lot, I notice. What’s your name?”

“Lucas,” he said. “She’s my…”

He didn’t feel right saying girlfriend. They hadn’t officially re-established that to be the case. Titles like that were so miniscule and stupid now, anyway. Friend? Best friend? Girl of my life?

Dr. Sutherland seemed to understand his hesitation.

“Whatever she is to you,” he said, a little too knowingly. “It’s clear that you care for her very much.”

Lucas could, at least, confirm this to be true. He nodded.

Dr. Sutherland reached into the pocket of his linen collared shirt and pulled out a pair of rectangular, brown glasses, putting them on his face as he looked at his clipboard.

“I have an update on Miss Mayfield’s condition,” he said. “Since her mother’s not here, I’m happy to tell you. Would you be able to pull yourself away for a moment to look at her brain scan?”

“Yeah, of course.” He stood up at once, taking a last glance at her still, sleeping form before exiting the room.

They left her room and traipsed down the hallway, which was lightly buzzing with afternoon activity. Nurses and doctors walked by them, carrying clipboards. Attendants wheeled patients past them, in gurneys, connected to tubes and wires, some bandaged, some bloody, some sickly pale. Lucas felt nausea start to rise in his stomach. He had been so consumed with Max and only Max that he sometimes forgot there were other patients in this hospital, some in far worse shape than she was. And the smell…that was what got him. The smell of disease. Of death.

Mercifully, Dr. Sutherland beckoned him into a dark room with three glowy x-ray screens on the wall.

“This is what I wanted you to see,” he said as they walked up to them, and he pulled a dark sheet from his clipboard, placing it on the screen. To Lucas, it looked like a huge gray blob with lots of squiggly lines in and around it.

“This is her most recent brain scan,” Dr. Sutherland explained. “As you can see here…” He motioned around the middle section. “…her brain is swollen. We are giving her medicines, and they appear to be helping. But the process is slow. It will take time for the swelling to go down completely. She was vomiting this morning, correct? That’s to be expected. Along with mood changes, confusion…”

He turned toward Lucas, a serious expression on his face.

“I must be honest. Medically, she should not have survived…whatever this was. Try as we might, Lucas, we cannot seem to figure out what caused this.”

Lucas didn’t have to guess. He knew what had caused it. There was no way he could explain it to this doctor and not immediately be committed to the psychiatric section of the hospital, however, so he decided not to press the issue.

Dr. Sutherland turned back toward the scans, a look of wonder on his face.

“The swelling in her brain…it’s so strange. It’s as if some great force pressed back against her brain, hard enough to cause significant damage. But pressure of that magnitude – her brain should have hemorrhaged. She shouldn’t be able to talk, or move at all, for that matter.”

“She can’t talk,” Lucas interjected. “Not much, anyway.”

“But she responds. That’s the other thing we can’t figure out. She shouldn’t be able to respond to pain, to sensation…you can speak to her, right? And she responds to you?”

Lucas nodded. This seemed to baffle Dr. Sutherland even more.

“Exactly. It shouldn’t be possible. And she can speak a little, from what I’ve heard. Minimally, but enough that they are sending a speech therapist to work with her. It’s nothing short of miraculous. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Lucas was quiet. His gratitude to Eleven had just increased tenfold. He couldn’t help thinking that if Max had been under Vecna’s hold even a second longer, there would have been no bringing her back. Not even by Eleven.

“What about her eyes?”

Lucas heard himself say the question without considering if he wanted to know the answer. Dr. Sutherland adjusted his glasses, his expression unreadable.

“In her brain scan, we were also looking for the reason why her eyes are obstructed. We also had our optometrist examine her eyes. The damage to her optic nerves closely resembles glaucoma. Except she isn’t diabetic, or above the age range for glaucoma to even occur. Glaucoma can occur in children and teenagers, but it’s incredibly rare…”

He shook his head, looking mystified.

“Another anomaly that we don’t have the answers for.”

“I’m sorry. What’s glaucoma?”

“Apologies. I get carried away. It’s a condition that can be caused by pressure in the eye. If the pressure becomes great enough, it damages the optic nerves. Which, as I was explaining before, seems to be what caused all this. Whatever was pressing against her brain was almost…sucking her eyes back into her skull with it.”

Lucas felt ill reliving it as he watched blood stream down Max’s face in his mind’s eye. Dr. Sutherland seemed to notice the look on his face and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Take a seat,” he said, gesturing toward a nearby chair.

Lucas did so, and Dr; Sutherland followed suit. Lucas didn’t like the grave expression on his face.

“As I’ve said, the nerve damage in Max’s eyes is rather like glaucoma. And if that’s the case, then the damage to her optic nerves is irreversible. Unless another miracle happens, Lucas…her vision will never return.”

Lucas felt the news sink into him like a lead weight, his stomach dropping to the soles of his feet. Somehow, deep down, he’d known. But there had still been that tiny part of him, that tiny part that had seen so many miracles, so many unbelievable things happen. And that, wherever those anomalies came from, yet another miracle could spring forth, to bring her eyes back. But he would be doing her a disservice to keep holding out hope for a miracle now.

Max’s eyes, those fierce, beautiful blue eyes…they would never gaze into his again. Not like they did before. The thought echoed into the horrible pit of despair inside him. And what did this mean for her? When they grew up, went to college, got married – of course he wanted to marry her eventually, he was hers forever if she wanted him – she wouldn’t be able to see the look on his face as she walked down the aisle. If they had kids – she would never lay eyes upon their faces.

Tears blinded him, and he put his head in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Sutherland said gently from next to him. “You are very brave for wanting to know.”

Lucas looked up, not even bothering to tame his sobs.

“I’m not brave,” he choked. “I’m worthless. I don’t know how to help her if she can’t see.”

“I feel confident in assuming that you’re already helping a lot. I saw that tray table with the cassette tapes. You helped organize them so she could find them, didn’t you?”

Lucas nodded, another sob wrenching its way out of him.

“Lucas,” Dr. Sutherland said quietly. “This is a critical time for those who love her to show up for her. She will need support now more than ever. Not just from you. From her mom. From all of your friends that come to see her.”

Even through his sobs, Lucas was listening. Dr. Sutherland was right. Max needed them, all of them, now more than she ever did. Despite her best efforts. A more cognizant Max might resist relying on anyone, as she always did. Right now, she didn’t get a choice.

“I promise,” he said. “We’ll be there for her.”

Dr. Sutherland smiled sadly.

“Of course you will,” he said.

Lucas wiped his eyes, standing up.

“Is there anything else I need to know?”

Dr. Sutherland shook his head.

“Nothing except we’re going to continue doing everything we can. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Lucas. It’s going to be a long road for her. But I have a feeling that she is going to have all the support she needs.”

Lucas allowed himself a small smile.

“And then some.”

Dr. Sutherland helped Lucas find Max’s room again before dismissing himself, saying he had to get to other patients, but that he would be back when she had her next brain scan. As Lucas opened the heavy door, he saw that Will, Dustin, and Steve were all sitting around Max’s bed. Lucas felt a small weight lift from his shoulders as he saw that Max was still sleeping peacefully. The medicine they had given her for her stomach must have helped.

“Hey,” said Will, standing up as Lucas approached them.

Lucas put his arms around his friend immediately, willing himself not to break down. He felt Dustin’s arms come to surround them both, and tears threatened to slip from his eyes at the gesture.

They all broke apart. Will, ever the noticer, immediately frowned in concern at the look on Lucas’ face.

“What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”

Lucas felt the words stick in his throat. Christ, he couldn’t tell them now. Not before Max knew. And what if she heard them? Her hearing had gotten remarkably better since her eyes no longer worked, and Lucas was terrified to say the horrible truth aloud for fear of her waking up and hearing it.

“I’m fine,” he managed to choke. He saw both their eyebrows raise skeptically, and he hurriedly pressed on. “I think I’m just tired. I’m gonna go home. If she wakes up and needs me, don’t be afraid to call.”

“Lucas, come on,” said Dustin bracingly. “Nothing’s going to happen if you’re gone for a few hours. Go home, shower, eat, and sleep, for God’s sake. Your girlfriend will be fine.”

“She isn’t my girlfriend.”

Will and Dustin exchanged a look.

“If you say so,” said Dustin, his knowing look reminiscent of the one Dr. Sutherland had given him earlier. “If she wakes up while we’re here, we brought stuff for her. Will brought her some more tapes.”

Will held up a new stack of tapes hopefully. Lucas scanned them. Queen’s Hammer to Fall and Radio Gaga. A Flock of Seagulls’ I Ran (So Far Away) and Space Age Love Song. The Smiths’ How Soon is Now? and Shakespeare’s Sister. Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over and Now We’re Getting Somewhere. Siouxsie Sioux & the Banshees’ Dear Prudence.

“There’s one or two that are mine. The others are ones I picked up,” he said, shrugging as if it was a throwaway act. Lucas shook his head, putting his hand on Will’s shoulder.

“The music helps her. It really does. Thank you.”

Will smiled bashfully, looking down at the floor.

 “And I have Wonder Woman #271 for me and Steve to act out.” Dustin held up the colorful cover with a flourish. “Steve has agreed to be The Cheetah.”

“I’m sorry, I agreed to be the what?” said Steve from the other side of Max’s bed, his eyebrows raising.

“Act out?” said Lucas, before Steve could continue.

“Yeah, it was Suzie’s idea. Even if Max can’t see the comics, we can act out what happens in them. Suzie said that might be a better way to bring the story to her.”

Suzie really was a genius, Lucas thought.  

“Okay, I did not agree to be The Cheetah,” said Steve indignantly. “Make Will be the Cheetah.”

“Why me?”

“Uh, no, the Cheetah is rich and totally insane. The role was made for you. The only difference is that she’s actually smart.”

“Henderson, I swear to God –”

“Keep it down,” said Lucas, glancing at Max. The group fell quiet as she stirred. Lucas watched her lips part and her clearly mutter “El,” before sinking back into a deep sleep.

Lucas watched Will’s, Dustin’s, and Steve’s facial expressions soften at this. Dustin clapped a hand on Lucas’ shoulder.

“Lucas, I’m serious, go home and rest, or I’m going to call the nurses in here and say you’ve been removing Max’s oxygen tube so you can make out with her.”

“Very funny, Dusty-bun,” said Lucas, sticking up his middle finger and grinning as he walked out through the hospital room door.

Chapter Text

“Can she say any words yet?”

It was the same question Lucas had been asked by everyone since Max woke up. Can Max talk again? When will she talk again? Will her speech come back? He swallowed his annoyance at Eleven’s question as he gripped the old telephone in his hand, leaning against the hallway wall. He didn’t know today any more than he had yesterday. Eleven was asking about Max’s speech because the speech doctor had finally come to see her earlier that morning. El was coming to visit today with Mike and Will, and he knew that they, like him, were desperate to hear her voice again, to talk and laugh with her like before. But even he didn’t know everything about the trajectory of her recovery, as much as he kept a tab on it. So he just kept repeating what the doctors had told him. Lucas didn’t mind being the point of contact for all things Max since he was here with her the most. It made him feel like he was helping take care of her. And he knew Eleven just wanted Max to feel better. They all did.

“Besides our names, I don’t know,” was all he said. It was the nicest answer he could think of. He was irritable today, he’d noticed. Since Dr. Sutherland had told him Max’s vision loss was likely permanent, he’d been sinking under the weight of that secret. It festered within him like an untreated wound, hurting him with every word that one of his friends uttered, becoming more gangrenous every time he looked at Max.

She didn’t know, and he couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t bring himself to break her. Not until Dr. Sutherland had come to talk to her first. And he couldn’t tell any of their friends before she knew. He would not disrespect her like that. So he was stuck. Stuck in this awful purgatory until a doctor came along to break the news to her and everyone else. As horrible as it would be for Max to hear it, and as much as he was dreading her reaction to it, he hoped to God that the other shoe would drop soon. He couldn’t carry the secret by himself for much longer.

Lucas knew Max was positively writhing at the chance to talk even remotely close to how she used to. It killed him to walk in and see her, her face hopeful as she sat propped against her usual mountain of pillows, the head of the bed raised slightly. Her hair had been brushed and pulled back into a long braid, which hung over her shoulder. She looked more like herself than she had in a long time. She would almost look normal if it weren’t for the many tubes still running in and out of her. The IV and feeding tube would remain for a few weeks yet while they transitioned her back to regular food. The oxygen could likely come off in a day or two. None of this seemed to bother her today, though. Lucas had never felt such a confusing mixture of warmth and utter despair as she said “Luh,” when he’d announced himself, reaching for his hand and clasping it in both of hers.

In any case, the speech doctor seemed reasonably optimistic about Max regaining her speech. She sat down on the bed across from Max, and they had practiced making sounds. Vowel sounds, like “ooh,” and “ahh,” and then the other letters of the alphabet. She then instructed Max to practice these sounds when she could, as it would make saying regular words easier for her to transition back into.

“The fact that you can make these sounds is a good sign, Miss Mayfield,” the speech doctor said encouragingly. “We’ll start with some simple words; see how well you do with that. I may also try to help you learn some hand signals, so you can tell us if you are in pain or need something. Because of your sight, I’m not sure I can teach you sign language. But once we start working together, we can figure it out. Okay?”

Max nodded, giving Lucas’ hand a squeeze in anticipation.

“Since your mother isn’t here, Miss Mayfield, may I borrow your friend for a moment?”

She nodded again, relinquishing her grip on his hand.

“I’ll be right back,” he said close to her ear, and she gave a jerk of her head in assent.

The speech doctor closed the door behind them. She was older, likely close to Joyce’s age. Her hair was tied into a loose bun, and he could see streaks of silver nestled within the warm brown. She peered at him over her glasses.

“I assume you are her…”

“Friend,” said Lucas. “I’m Lucas Sinclair.”

“I’m Dr. Cobb. Thank you for being here. Where is her mother?”

“We’re trying to figure that out,” said Lucas. Through Eleven, he had dispatched Hopper and Joyce to go out to Max’s trailer to see why Susan had not been showing up. He had not yet heard anything.

Dr. Cobb glanced at Max’s door, then back at him.

“I must tell you, Mr. Sinclair, that I’m not exactly sure what her capacity is for re-learning everything. There may be certain things that are permanently out of reach for her. Her neurologist tells me that the swelling in her brain her going down, slowly but surely, so we’ll see what she is able to do. She’ll have another brain scan in a few weeks, and that will tell me a lot too.”

Lucas nodded. He felt dazed. There were still so many what-ifs, so many unknowns. They could teach her how to talk again if she was able to learn. She might regain her ability to walk normally if everything continues to heal properly. If, if, if.

“It’s overwhelming, I know,” said Dr. Cobb, seemingly reading the look on his face. “But your devotion to her speaks volumes to us. And I’m sure it does to her too.”

“So, that’s what Dr. Cobb said. She thinks that Max has a good chance of talking normally again, but it might take a while.”

El was silent on the other line.

“Maybe…maybe I could help,” she said uncertainly.

“How?”

“I had to learn too.”

“Yeah, but…it’s different for you. You could say the words you learned. I don’t know if she can.”

Eleven sounded determined.

“I want to try.”

“If you want to try, I won’t stop you,” said Lucas. “I know she wants to talk again.”

They let this sentiment sit with them for a moment. Then El’s tone of voice changed suddenly.

“We found Max’s mother,” she said.

Lucas frowned.

“What do you mean, you found her?”

“She is fine. Not hurt. Hopper and Joyce found her asleep at home.”

“Just asleep?”

“Asleep…with lots of beer cans on the floor. Hopper called it ‘alcoholic.’”

Lucas was hardly surprised. Since Susan had last shown up, smelling heavily of beer, there had been no indication that her alcoholism had improved at all since then. Her absence proved that.

Eleven continued, supposedly mis-reading his silence. “Joyce says that sometimes when people are upset, they drink beer. Max’s mother drinks too much beer, so she falls asleep and forgets things.”

Things like coming to see her daughter in the hospital. Lucas knew it wasn’t right to feel angry. Susan was clearly battling her own demons. She and Max had already been struggling financially, and it occurred to Lucas that Max’s medical care probably wasn’t cheap. Perhaps the current state of Hawkins, the stress of Max being in the hospital, and the financial strain had caused Susan to go off the deep end. But Max needed her mom now more than ever, and Susan was letting her down yet again. It was hard not to feel irritated by this at the very least.

“Did they say anything about getting her help?” he said, trying his utmost not to sound upset.

“Joyce talked about ‘Alcoholics Anonymous.’ Hopper says she needs to go to a place to get better. He called it ‘rehab.’ But he doesn’t know if she will go.”

Lucas couldn’t think of anything to say to this. Eleven didn’t seem to think of anything either, and prattled on over the uncomfortable silence.

“We are coming to visit today,” she said, a little more hopefully. “Me, Mike, and Will.”

“She’ll be glad you’re here,” he said.

Lucas spent the rest of the morning reading to Max. A departure from their usual routine, he sat in bed with her, holding Salem’s Lot open in front of him with one hand, his other hand resting on her arm as she lay curled under her blankets next to him, her head on his chest, her red hair falling in waves over her shoulder.

“When you come from the city to the town,” he read, “You lie wakeful in the absence of noise at first. You wait for something to break it: the cough of shattering glass, the squeal of tires blistering against the pavement, perhaps a scream. But there is nothing but the unearthly hum of the telephone wires and so you wait and wait and then sleep badly. But when the town gets you, you sleep like –”

He was interrupted by Max, who suddenly patted his chest, sitting up and turning her head toward the closed door. Mere moments later, Eleven pushed open the door and walked into the room, Mike and Will in tow.

Her hearing must be getting better, Lucas thought, detaching himself from Max so he could stand up to embrace them. Dr. Sutherland had said this would probably happen. When one sense is damaged, he had explained, other senses become stronger to compensate.

“Max,” said Eleven from over his shoulder, and Max reached out hopefully at the sound of her voice. “I am here with Mike and Will.”

As El sat down on the bed, she guided Max’s outstretched hands to her face. Max moved her hands across El’s skin, studying her. Lucas supposed it helped her to picture her friends’ faces. Max then reached out over El’s shoulder, and Lucas realized she wanted to see Mike and Will too, in the only way she could now. Will seemed to know what Max wanted, and he leaned down until her palms met his cheeks. They watched her brow furrow as she tried to figure out who it was.

“It’s Will,” he said quietly.

Max nodded in recognition as her hand reached up to touch Will’s hairline, and Lucas knew she must be placing him in her mind by his bowl cut. She gave his cheek a friendly pat. Mike shuffled over next, and Will guided her hands toward Mike’s face. She didn’t need nearly as much time to identify him, and she suddenly pulled her hand back from Mike’s face to jab her finger into his cheek. Mike startled backward.

“Max! What the hell?”

No one in the room, not even Mike, could resist a childish smirk and a chuckle at this. Lucas even saw the corners of Max’s mouth twitch with the shadow of a mischievous grin.

El took Max’s hands in her own. Max turned her head in Eleven’s direction, her cloudy eyes focused on a point above El’s head.

“Max,” said Eleven uncertainly. “Can you speak?”

Lucas cringed inwardly at the baldness of the question, and, unsurprising to him, Max’s face fell at this. She squeezed El’s hands, opening and closing her mouth, desperately trying to make words come out. Her eyes started filling with tears and it killed Lucas. He knew she wanted to speak again so badly. This morning had given her so much hope for it. And once again, she was defeated by her own body, her own brain. He could see every word she wanted to say trapped behind those glassy, unseeing eyes.

Eleven shook her head, wiping her friend’s tears.

“Don’t cry,” she murmured. “I want to help.”

Max’s eyebrows raised hopefully.

“Ah – ” She squeaked.

El nodded. “We can try it, Max. Say…‘mom.’”

“Mmm,” Max said determinedly. It was as if she knew the word but couldn’t get her mouth to form the sounds around it. “Mmmm.”

“That’s good,” said El, although Lucas saw the hope in her eyes falter somewhat.

“Mom,” she said to Max slowly. “Mmaahhmm.”

Lucas could see that Max was concentrating with everything in her, and he was half-expecting a vein to burst in her head from focusing so intensely. “Mmm,” she said. “Ahhhh.”

“You’re doing good, Max,” said Mike bracingly. He and Will were watching intently. Lucas knew they were both eager to hear her say a word, any word, to sound even a little like her old self again. He understood. He was too.

She gave a little smile, clearly encouraged. Lucas sat down next to her and she jumped, her hand flailing out toward him. He was still getting used to that.

“Sorry. It’s Lucas,” he said. Max released her tight grip on his arm and grabbed El’s hand once again.

“Mom,” said Eleven again. “Mm. Ah. Mm. Mom.”

“Ahh,” Max repeated desperately. “Ahhmmm.”

“She was really close that time,” said Will helpfully.

“Ahh,” said Max again, and Lucas could start to feel the frustration coming off her as her voice became harder and more intense. “Ahhhmmm.”

El’s eyes began to swim with tears.

“It’s okay, Max,” she said, clearly not wanting to cause Max any more stress, but Max squeezed El’s hands even harder, her look concentrated, her jaw set.

“Ahhmmm,” she said pointedly. “Ahhmmm.”

“Say the ‘mmm’ sound first, then that.”

“Mmm…ahhmmm,” Max said finally.

Her face brightened, seemingly hearing the three boys’ exhale in relief and joy at her success. El gave a watery laugh, gripping Max’s hands.

“Mom. Yes.”

“Mmmahhhhmmm,” said Max, as if she were savoring the word. Hearing herself say it seemed to cause her a sudden burst of excitement, and Max’s face broke out into the most genuine smile Lucas had seen from her in months.

“Good job,” smiled Eleven, cupping Max’s face in her hands and pressing her forehead against her friend’s. Max gave a little laugh, covering El’s hands with her own, and Lucas saw a gleam of hope in her cloudy eyes.

The following morning was gray and wet, a fog settling over Hawkins as if to further solidify that they now lived in a creepy hellscape for a town. Lucas pulled his jacket over his shoulders more tightly as Steve pulled his car up to the hospital, screeching to a stop outside the sliding double doors.

“I’ll be back with the others soon,” he said. “I think everyone’s coming today.”

It had been their little secret that Steve was the one driving him to the hospital every day. Lucas didn’t know why he hadn’t been forthcoming about it. He secretly thought Steve was still trying to wriggle out of his babysitter role, a feat which he was unlikely to accomplish, and that was why neither of them had made it known that it was him who had been willing to wake up early every morning to drive Lucas to Hawkins Memorial Hospital. Lucas also knew that, on some level, this was Steve’s way of showing how much he cared for Max.

“Sinclair!” Steve called as Lucas was walking toward the entrance. “Tell her we’ll all be there soon, okay?”

Lucas held up his hand without turning around, to show he had heard.

He checked in with the grumpy morning nurse, who made some comment under her breath about how he was there yet again and made a beeline for Max’s room.

His hand had just closed around the handle of the door –

“Lucas.”

He turned to see Dr. Sutherland walking toward him, holding his clipboard in his hand. Lucas felt his insides start to sink as the doctor got closer, his expression becoming increasingly grave. All at once he remembered. Max’s vision.

Lucas swallowed.

“You’re here to tell her, aren’t you?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Lucas closed his eyes. He had never so urgently needed something to happen while also not wanting that same thing to happen at all. And here they were, on the precipice, about to take a dive off a cliff that had no place for them to land.

“Let me go in there first,” he said. “I want her to know I’m there before you tell her. I don’t want her to be alone.”

Dr. Sutherland nodded. “I’ll give you a few moments, then I’ll knock and come in.”

Lucas nodded. He took a shaky breath. He could already feel the tears rising, could already feel himself trembling. He didn’t want to do this. And he desperately needed the weight of this secret taken from him.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Lucas opened the door to Max’s room, half-praying she was asleep. His heart clenched as he saw that she was indeed awake, and her head was turned toward him, her hand outstretched in his direction, waiting for him to get close enough for her to feel his face. He felt as if anchors were tied to his ankles as he walked toward her.

“Luh,” she said hopefully.

It was so wonderful and so awful for her pale hands to meet his face, and for her expression to light up as soon as it did.

“It’s me,” he said, fighting to keep his voice level.

A little grin tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“Luh,” she said, sounding pleased.

Lucas couldn’t stand it anymore, and he threw his arms around her. She shuddered a little from surprise, but then immediately reciprocated, wrapping her thin arms around his neck.

He heard the door open behind him and he held her even tighter, burying his face in her bony shoulder, the tears trapped behind his eyelids threatening to slip out.

I’m sorry, Max. I’m so sorry.

“Max Mayfield?”

Max stiffened a little at the unfamiliar voice, her grip around him tightening.

“My name is Dr. Sutherland. I’m here to talk to you about your brain scan. Would that be all right?”

Max slowly pulled away from him, dipping her head at the doctor. Lucas was grateful Dr. Sutherland was here to do the talking as he took Max’s hand in his. He couldn’t talk or he’d break down.

“Miss Mayfield.” Dr. Sutherland sat down in Lucas’ usual chair by the bed. “Can you hear me well enough?”

Max nodded again.

“I wanted to tell you about your brain scan,” Dr. Sutherland said, in what Lucas assumed was a carefully neutral voice. “Your brain is swollen, and that’s why you’re having some trouble with certain things. But the swelling is slowly going down. It should be easier to talk and walk as time goes on. And any sad or angry feelings that you’re having should get easier too. Does all that make sense?”

Max’s cloudy eyes were uncertain.

“Do you have any questions so far, Max?” Lucas cringed inwardly as he watched Max ponder this. The doctor was being so gentle that it was killing him.

After a few moments, Max reached her other hand up to the corner of her eye, touching her eyelid with one finger.

“Your eyes?” said the doctor, and she nodded. The tears started to fall into Lucas’ lap.

“We looked at your eyes, and…your vision loss may be permanent. As it stands right now…you’re blind.”

She sat there in silence next to him as Lucas felt the silent sobs start to shake him. He could hardly stand to watch her pale face slowly crumble at the news. She yanked her hand out of his and began frantically touching and pointing at her eyes, as if demanding a solution that wasn’t there, as if begging the doctor to provide a fix that didn’t exist.

“I understand this is hard to hear,” said Dr. Sutherland gently. “I’m sorry, Max.”

Big fat tears started rolling down her sunken cheeks. Lucas watched her face fill with grief at the realization, a grief that consumed her so that she put her arms around herself, rocking back and forth, her body starting to shake with sobs.

Dr. Sutherland seemed to realize that his presence might now be more harmful than helpful, and he stood up.

“Lucas, you know who to ask for if you need me. I’m going to send her nurse by to check on her in a few minutes.”

He nodded numbly.

Dr. Sutherland opened the door to her room, and Lucas suddenly heard the voices of their friends. What unfortunate timing they had for all of them to show up today.

Dr. Sutherland closed the door behind him, and Lucas heard him begin talking quietly. He knew Dr. Sutherland was breaking the news to the rest of their group there in the hallway. By the silence that soon fell, Lucas knew that they had all been told the truth now too.

Lucas hardly paid them any mind right now. Max was his priority. Especially in her current state. Waves of grief seemed to crash over Max, one by one, in rapid succession. She let out a disparaging wail, her arms still around herself as if she were afraid she’d fall apart if she let go. Eventually she was so overcome that she lay in the middle of her bed, curled into herself, the grief seeming to course through her like poison through a vein. She let out a scream of rage, her hands curling into fists as she pressed them against her temples, as hard as she could. Her body jerked with sobs that weren’t just sad. They were angry. They were indignant. Life wasn’t fair. Nothing was ever fair.

Lucas lay down behind her, his arms surrounding her, feeling her shake with grief. He barely heard the door open behind them as the rest of their friends filed into the room, one by one. No one spoke. He felt several pairs of arms envelop them both, and he leaned into them, closing his eyes as Max wailed in between them.

Chapter Text

It pained Lucas to see their faces.

Only when Max had finally calmed down enough to find her pillows and fall asleep, curled into herself, had the party all moved away from her, shuffling quietly out of her hospital room to let her rest.

The moment she got out into the hallway, Nancy’s hands covered her mouth, stifling her sobs. Jonathan put his arm around her at once, his own expression troubled. Dustin sat in one of the chairs outside of the room, his face in his hands. Erica sat down next to him, saying nothing, her face miserable. Will was crying unabashedly, and Lucas watched his shoulders shake as he leaned against the wall. Mike and El moved toward him at once and embraced him, letting him weep in their arms. Steve wasn’t crying; he just looked shocked, almost dazed, as he patted Robin’s shoulder, Robin’s freckled cheeks wet with tears.

The party took a few moments in silence there in the dingy hospital corridor, only broken by sniffling, quiet sobs, phlegmy breath.

Nancy was the first to speak.

“Does her mom know?”

They all looked at Lucas, including Eleven, Mike, and Will, whose expressions were knowingly sad.

“She hasn’t been showing up lately,” he said. “So probably not.”

“Her mom should know,” said Nancy, looking deeply concerned at this. “Where is she?”

Lucas shrugged grimly.

“As far as I know, she’s either in rehab or passed out drunk at their trailer,” he said.

He watched as this truth settled into his friends. Max had mentioned rather flippantly that her mother drank, but only he’d come to know just how much. Susan usually only stayed at the hospital for a short time and left just as quickly, so it was rare that any of the rest of the party saw her, even in passing. They certainly didn’t see her enough to know that she had a drink in her more often than she didn’t.

“Go home and rest, Lucas,” said Robin abruptly, surveying him with an unreadable expression.

Lucas shook his head.

“She needs me right now.”

“She needs all of us,” said Robin, a rare hardness to her voice as she walked toward him. “I’ll sit with her. Just go home and eat something, and try to get some sleep, okay?”

Even the acknowledgment that Lucas was running on empty, and had been for several days, seemed to cue his body to feel even more exhausted than usual. He felt his muscles slack as Robin put a hand on his shoulder.

“You’ve been carrying this by yourself. And you shouldn’t have to. Let us carry it for a bit.”

It was the murmured assent from the rest of the party that sapped the last bit of his resolve, and he nodded.

Steve jingled his keys.

“Let’s go, Sinclair.”

As it turned out, Lucas going home was exactly what he’d needed. He’d hit his pillow so hard that he woke up the next morning in a daze, not entirely sure what year it was. He dragged himself to the shower.

After his shower, he felt renewed. His skin felt fresh, new, like he’d shed a cocoon of disease and death and exhaustion that so often permeated the hospital atmosphere.

Lucas threw on a change of clothes, something else that was much needed, and walked into the hallway. He could smell breakfast in the dining room and it occurred to him he hadn’t eaten yesterday. His stomach growled hungrily at the smells, and he walked into the dining room.

His father was already at work, he knew. Even though Hawkins was in literal hell, bills still needed to be paid, he guessed. His mother was over by the stove and looked up when he entered the room.

“Lucas – ” She walked briskly toward him, and in a rare display of affection, embraced him. He found himself hugging her tightly back. It was nice to see her.

She faced him. He couldn’t place her facial expression – sad? Touched? Fearful? Perhaps a mix of all three.

“I know you’re about to go run off and sit with Max in the hospital. And I know I can’t do anything to stop you. So before you do that, can I get you to eat some breakfast?”

Lucas nodded.

“Thanks, mom,” he said.

She smiled a little. Erica rolled her eyes as he sat down at the table, tucking into his plate of eggs, bacon, and pancakes.

“I didn’t know you still knew how to eat,” she remarked. Her tone was less acerbic than it usually was. Sometimes they had moments like this, where she was almost nice. Lucas was reminded in these moments that she had been the one to run and call the ambulance as Max’s life had drained out of her. Surely she remembered that.

Lucas inhaled his breakfast. As good as it had felt to rest and get some time away from the hospital, the thought of Max was tugging him back. Especially after this most recent development. Plate clean, he stood up from the table.

“Thanks for breakfast,” he threw over his shoulder.

“Please be careful,” his mother said.

“I will, I promise,” he brushed through the kitchen, kissing her cheek. He went back to his room, grabbing his bag, and went out to the living room to call Steve on the phone.

“Lucas.”

Erica emerged from the hallway behind him.

“Hang on. Don’t go yet.”

She turned and walked back into the hallway, and he heard the door to her room open. When she returned, she was holding one of the blankets from her own bed, an ugly yellow quilted one, and another book – Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce.

“I’m sure she’s getting tired of hearing you read stories about dumbass boy heroes,” she said, tossing both in his direction. “Read her a new one. And give her the blanket.”

It was so strange for Lucas to return to the hospital, knowing that life still resumed as usual. Max had a busy day ahead of her. She had walking and speech therapy sessions today. He knew they were also getting ready to try solid foods and water with her. According to Steve, he and Robin had sat with her last night. She’d mostly slept, though Steve told him that she often mumbled in her sleep. Mumbled what, they weren’t sure. It mostly seemed unintelligible. Occasionally, “luh” or “El,” but nothing clear besides that.

She wouldn’t want for him today, Lucas thought, practically itching to get into her hospital room to see her. He all but yanked the car door open before Steve had even come to a full stop.

“Hey,” said Steve, as Lucas got out of his car. “Don’t forget to take a break once in a while, okay, Sinclair?”

Lucas jerked his head in response and bustled through the sliding doors. He couldn’t believe he’d been convinced to leave early yesterday. His place was next to her. What more was there to discuss?

He’d just entered Max’s hallway when he was startled by a sudden exclamation a few feet away.

“Y-you!”

A woman ran headlong into him, nearly knocking them both to the ground. He registered the tangled red hair and realized that it was Susan Hargrove.

She looked awful. Her red hair looked even more tousled and unkempt than usual. Gunky black makeup was smeared under her bloodshot, watery blue eyes, her cheeks abnormally pink, her pale skin shining with sweat. Her clothing was clearly slept-in, her checkered shirt hanging off her shoulder, revealing an old baggy shirt underneath. The smell of alcohol was overwhelming, and he silently willed himself not to vomit as she grabbed at his arms, unsteady on her feet, her gaze unfocused.

“Where’s Max…? My Maxine…”

“Did you drive here?” Lucas inquired urgently, holding her arms in a tight grip to keep her from falling over.

“Nnnnooo,” Susan said, giggling. “I took a taxi.”

Lucas didn’t have the time nor the emotional capacity to figure out whether she was telling the truth. He could feel the stares of the hospital staff throughout the hallway boring into him as Susan swayed on the spot, gripping his arms for support.

“Let’s go in here,” he said, ushering her into Max’s room.

Lucas felt his insides sink as Max’s hospital bed entered his view. She was asleep, lying supine underneath her blankets, her head slightly elevated by her pillows. Her eyes were puffy, and he wondered at what point in the night she’d woken up to cry.

Susan hollered at the sight of Max, who jerked awake at her exclamation, her cloudy eyes swiveling wildly in the direction of the noise.

“My baby…my Maxie…” Susan slurred, stumbling toward her daughter. Max looked terrified as Susan all but fell onto her in a clumsy hug. Lucas stayed rooted to the spot, totally lost. His first instinct had been to spring forward, to pull Susan off Max, to shield Max from all this. But how could he pull her own mother away from her? He knew Max had been pining for her. He’d noticed her face fall slightly every time someone entered her room and wasn’t Susan. If it was one of their friends, her disappointment was usually gone as soon as it had come, but Lucas always noticed how she swallowed her dismay, compartmentalized it, put it away with all the rest of the times she’d been let down.

“Mmm so sorry I haven’t been here, baby,” Susan simpered drunkenly, petting her. Max’s face filled with a mixture of recognition and anguish. Though her mother was hugging and nuzzling her, Max’s arms remained at her sides. She seemed stiff with alarm, and Lucas realized how disorienting it must be for her for Susan to smother her like this with no warning and no way for Max to see her coming. After mere seconds of this, however, Lucas watched Max’s expression glaze over with what seemed like a well-practiced resignation. He got the feeling that this was not the first exchange they’d had of this nature.

“Maxine…” Susan said in that same singsong voice, caressing Max’s pale face. “Talk to me...”

Lucas took a step forward, opening his mouth to tell her that Max still couldn’t talk, that whatever Susan wanted her to say, she couldn’t yet say it.

“Mmmahhhhmmm,” Max croaked unexpectedly.

Lucas felt whatever he was going to say die in his throat, felt his chest cave in as Susan gave a little giggle, tears dripping off her nose.

“That’ssssso good, baby,” she wheedled, hiccupping.

I have to do something, Lucas thought. But he couldn’t get his feet to move.

All three of them were startled as the room door slammed open behind him, and he turned to see a beefy security guard walk in, flanked by two nurses.

“Ma’am, please step away from the patient.”

The security guard’s voice was deep and gruff, but not aggressive. Susan looked up at them blearily, her expression almost puzzled.

“It’sssss okay,” she said gaily, after only a moment’s hesitation. “That’sssss my daughter…my Maxie…”

“You can’t be here while intoxicated, ma’am. I’m going to need you to come with me.”

Susan clung to Max even more tightly, shaking her head like a child being told it was bedtime.

The security guard stepped forward briskly, putting his hands on Susan’s arms. She jerked away clumsily, and the three of them grabbed her, pulling her away from Max.

The guard was being firm, not forceful. The way Susan was reacting, however, one would have thought they had put her in handcuffs and slammed her against the wall. She was struggling, crying as they dragged her away.

“My baby,” she lamented. “My Mmmaxine. Don’tnnn take her away…”

Max looked to be on the verge of tears as Susan was escorted out of her hospital room. They could still hear her wailing from down the hallway, eventually trailing away into silence as they removed her from the building.

Lucas was at Max’s side at once.

“Max?” he murmured, trying to be gentle.

She half-sobbed when he said her name, reaching her arms out for him. He got into bed with her, slipping his arms around her and hugging her close. He could still smell the alcohol residual from her mother’s hair as she clung to him tightly, her arms around his neck, her breath coming in short little gasps. Her heart monitor had quickened, which only seemed to get her more worked up.

“Deep breaths,” he said, rubbing her back. “Deep breaths, Max. Everything’s okay.”

Everything was decidedly not okay. But he didn’t know what else to say to make it better.

“Deep breaths,” he murmured again. “Slow. In and out.”

Her body was tense against his. He took a deep breath himself, not least because he too desperately needed it. Max’s shuddering breaths began to ease as she inhaled slowly, shakily, exhaling just as unsteadily.

“Focus on me,” he said, his hand moving up and down her back. “Focus on my voice. I’m right here. I’m right here with you.”

She nodded jerkily.

“Easy,” he murmured, feeling the tension in her muscles start to ease. “Easy. You’re okay.”

Even as her breathing returned to normal, Max did not let go of him.

Nurse Cynthia came by later that afternoon for a walking session. Max had been able to sit up on her own for a while now, though not too quickly. Her legs were a different story. The walking helped her, and she was getting better at it, but Lucas knew she was often irritated by how slow the process was going.

She was more subdued today. Even though she could now make it halfway across the room without getting tired and without much support, it didn’t seem like it was for lack of energy that her steps were slow. She just seemed sad. Nurse Cynthia seemed to notice this, and it was to her eternal credit that she didn’t try to be endlessly cheery as a solution.

“You’re making great progress, Max,” she said kindly as she lingered behind, rolling the pole with Max's IV and feeding machine in one hand, pulling her oxygen tank with the other. “Just let me know when you’re ready to stop. You’ve already passed our goal for today.”

Max trudged on, her shoulders sagging. She really looked drained, Lucas thought. From anyone else’s perspective, it might have seemed silly that she was so depleted since she did little more than lie in her hospital bed all day. Lucas knew better. Because of her lack of activity over the last several months, he knew any iota of movement was exhausting for her.

Once her walker lightly tapped the wall, Max seemed to realize she’d reached the other side of the room. She let out a tired huff, slung over the bars of the walker, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. Nurse Cynthia was at her side at once, Lucas following behind.

“Okay, easy. Let’s get you back to bed.”

Max shoved Cynthia’s hands away from her, her arms braced against the walker, her teeth gritted. Lucas realized she wanted to walk back to the bed herself. Instantly he felt anxious. She hadn’t managed that distance all on her own yet. He didn’t want to tell her she couldn’t do it, but he didn’t want her to fall either.

Max’s legs were trembling, and he could tell she was having trouble, but she wouldn’t let them touch her.

“Max,” he tried, but she ignored him, her knees starting to knock together as she trudged back toward the bed. It was different than determination. She seemed angry. Frustrated with her own shortcomings. Cynthia seemed to be trying to give her space, but he could see the anxiety flicker across her eyes.

Max made it about halfway to the bed before her legs finally gave out from under her. Cynthia and Lucas were both there to grab her before she hit the floor. She weakly tried to push them away again, but she didn’t have enough physical wherewithal to do so. Lucas knew she wasn’t happy that they had to practically carry her back to bed, but he was strong enough to withstand her protests. Physically, anyway.

They helped Max back to her bed just in time for Dr. Cobb to show up, her brown hair with silver streaks up in her usual bun, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Max was breathing heavily, still recovering from her walking session.

“Ah, Cynthia,” Dr. Cobb said in a friendly voice, entering the room. “Perfect timing. Max, it’s Dr. Cobb. It’s time for a speech session.”

Max looked highly irritable at this.

“Nnnn… no,” she said.

“Ah, much clearer than last time,” said Dr. Cobb, seemingly unperturbed by this outburst, her eyes not leaving her clipboard as she approached the bed. Max recoiled away as Dr. Cobb sat down on the mattress.

“Nnn-no,” Max said again, more stubbornly.

“I know you can't wait to tell me off,” acknowledged Dr. Cobb, a hint of humor in her tone. “And I promise you’ll get your opportunity. But you’re only going to be able to do that if we can keep practicing.”

This doctor really knew how to talk to her, Lucas thought.  

“What do you say?” said Dr. Cobb kindly. “Can I get you to practice some more words with me?”

Max pursed her lips, clearly not wanting to give in, but Lucas could see her resolve weakening. After a minute or two, she leaned back against her pillows, her arms at her sides, her expression stony. Lucas decided that his presence would only irritate her further.

“I’m going to go call Mike,” he said toward the side of her head. “Will you be okay?”

She waved her hand, dismissing him as if annoyed by his presence.

Lucas tried not to take it personally.

Thankfully, Mike picked up on the first ring.

“Hey, Lucas.”

“Hey,” he said, thankful the hospital hallway was reasonably quiet.

“How’s Max?”

He couldn’t keep a heavy sigh from escaping him.

“She’s…okay.”

“You sure?”

Lucas hesitated.

“I think she’s just in a bad mood today,” he said. “She had another walking session, and she’s having speech therapy now.”

Mike sounded curious. “Can she say any more words?”

Lucas chuckled, in spite of himself.

“She can say ’no,’” he said.

He heard Mike laugh quietly too. “She’s always been good at saying that.”

Normally he was awkward and didn’t always know what to say in intense situations. Today, Mike seemed more relaxed, more understanding. Lucas was glad to talk to him. It made things feel more like they used to. 

“I know she’s upset about her eyes,” Lucas said, cringing as he knew he’d immediately brought the mood back down from its previous levity.

“It makes sense,” said Mike, and Lucas could almost hear him shrug.

“But she can’t tell me that she is, you know? And I can’t do anything.”

Lucas bit his lip.

“I don’t know. It makes me feel like I’m letting her down.”

Mike paused for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was hard.

“You can’t possibly believe you’re letting her down.”

“Not exactly, but – ”

“You’ve literally spent your life there for the last few months. The only way we ever get to see you is when we come visit. And no one’s upset about it. Because we all know that you’re there. And it makes everyone feel better, knowing you’re there with her.”

Lucas couldn’t think of what to say. Mike continued, clearly having given this a lot of thought.

“Maybe she doesn’t need you to fix everything. Maybe she just needs to you to be there. Am I any help to El? She might say yes, but a lot of the time I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, or if anything I’m doing is even remotely helpful. All I can do is be there. I don’t know if it’s good enough. But El will always know I’m there. In her corner. If she ever needs me.”

Lucas found his voice at last.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Worry curled into his stomach once more.

“But…what if she’s…broken? Permanently? And I can’t help her?”

“So don’t try to fix it, Lucas. Just be there.”

Lucas was able to grab himself a sandwich from the hospital cafeteria before they closed for the night. He shouldn’t forget to eat today. Upon his return to her room, he found her sitting up in bed, her nurses trying to get her to eat some solid food, maybe drink some water. They weren’t having much success with either one, and after several minutes, the nurses seemed to decide it wasn’t the right day, and soon they all withdrew.

Lucas walked toward her as the room cleared.

“They’re all gone now,” he said. “Just me.”

Max turned her head toward him.

“Food is still hard, huh?” He said, sitting down in front of her on the bed.

“Y-Yes,” she said, almost uncertainly, as if she were testing out the word.

“Hey, you’re getting better at that. Did Dr. Cobb teach you any other words today?”

Max exhaled in a heavy sigh, as if she were begrudging telling him her progress.

“Foooood,” she said slowly. “W-waaater. Yes. N-no. Baaaath. Roommm. Me. You.”

“What about names? Can you say anyone’s names?”

“Luh,” she said, like before. “El.”

So they were still working on that.

Max hesitated.

“Mom,” she said, somewhat clearly.

Lucas immediately felt sad. He didn’t really know what he could say to her about her mom, or about what had transpired earlier that morning.

“That word’s getting better too,” he said, trying not to acknowledge the solemnity that had just passed between them. “See? You’ll be talking again in no time. Then you can go back to telling me how much of a dork I am.”

This coaxed a little grin out of her.

“Luh,” she said again, reaching her hands out toward him.

As Max’s hands met his skin, she pressed her fingers to his cheek and began to move them slowly over his face. She would do this occasionally like she did with any of their other friends who came to see her. So she could see him. Slowly Max’s fingers traced his hairline. His cheekbones. His jaw. She touched his eyebrows, the bridge of his nose. She paused on his lips briefly, before placing both hands on his face once more.

Max’s cloudy eyes stared determinedly at a spot right above the bridge of his nose. Lucas knew she was trying, so desperately, to see him. With her eyes. The way she used to.

When she clumsily leaned forward, he caught her lips with his. God, it felt so good to kiss her. Max hungrily deepened the kiss, her arms coming up to wrap around his neck. Lucas tangled his fingers in her soft hair. She smelled so good. It was taking everything in him not to slip his hands underneath her hospital gown, feel her perfect skin beneath his rough hands, feel her shiver in his embrace. It wasn’t the right time for that. She’d just had a distressing visit with her mother and had gotten life-altering news the previous day. He wouldn’t take advantage of her vulnerability, like so many others in her life often had. But Lucas promised her one thing with every kiss, every touch, every tender sigh: she was safe with him. He just hoped that she knew it.

He was so lost, so drunk for her, that he barely noticed the wetness on her cheeks until he felt it smear onto his own.

He opened his eyes. She was crying, silently, bitterly, as she kissed him, and it occurred to Lucas that it must be hard to feel so close, so connected, and yet separated by her inability to see him. Her tears were out of frustration. Out of grief. Out of loss.

Max’s kisses became more urgent, as did her weeping, and he knew they would soon have to resist what would come next. Neither of them had ever done that before, and, as he reminded himself once again, it was hardly the right time for it to be their first. Not that Lucas didn’t feel the heat stirring in his belly, feel the burning on his skin as her mouth moved against his. But as her chest started to heave with sobs, he knew she was opening up to him in a way that didn’t require or call for the removal of clothing.

Lucas broke out of the kiss and embraced her. Her arms wrapped limply around him as she buried her face in his shoulder.

“I know,” he murmured, rocking her, stroking her hair. “I know.”

Lucas felt a horrible, gnawing ache in his stomach as she continued to weep, her thin body shuddering with the effort. When he’d begged the powers that be to give him another chance to be there for her, be present for her, he’d certainly gotten his wish. But he wasn’t enjoying it. Hearing her strangled sobs and feeling the grief shiver through her was awful, much more difficult than he had imagined.

Lucas guided her to where they were lying down, her head nestled below his chin, his arm encircling her. Pulling the blankets over her, he kissed her forehead.

“I’m here,” he said. “No matter what, Max. I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

He felt her tears wetting his shirt as she buried her face in it, a handful of the fabric in her fist. Lucas was determined to let her know that she was safe to be vulnerable, safe to mourn the unfairness of it all. There was nothing, nothing at all, that would keep him from wanting to be there for her; to show up, and to keep showing up.

Max’s sobs eventually quieted into sniffles, with the occasional whimper, and this soon devolved into slow, quiet breathing. She’d worn herself out so that she’d fallen asleep in his arms, her eyes puffy and swollen, a large wet spot on his shirt underneath her head.

He wanted to flip the light off on the wall behind him and spend the night there with her. Sleep next to her, and then wake up next to her the following morning, to run his fingers through her slightly tousled hair and to touch her perfect skin. As if from a future he didn’t know they would ever get to have.

Lucas couldn’t, though. He knew the nurses would be by to kick him out soon. It was getting late.

Someday, he thought to himself, as he looked down at her sleeping. Maybe. If she would have him.

Lucas leaned down and placed a very gentle kiss in her hair.

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

He gently moved her off him and onto her pillows. She stirred slightly, mumbling something unintelligible, her hand tightening around the handful of his shirt. As if she didn’t want him to leave.

Lucas pried her hand loose, tucking her blankets around her, making sure none of her wires or tubes were tangled. He paused, then leaned down close to her ear.

“I love you,” he whispered, kissing her cheek.

He hoped, somewhere, on some plane, she had heard him.

The following morning dawned sunny and brisk. At least, the non-Upside Down parts of the morning were. Steve shook his head as Lucas launched out of his car once again.

“You’re going to kill yourself trying to do this every day,” he called out of the passenger window.

“You’re the one driving me here,” Lucas quipped back.

“Hey, watch it, Sinclair. I’m not a goddamn taxi service.”

“Fine, I’ll just have Dustin drive me in your car instead.”

“Absolutely not,” Steve’s voice and eyebrows both rose rapidly. “Dustin can’t drive, much less drive my car. He doesn’t have keys.”

“That you know of,” Lucas threw over his shoulder as he walked toward the sliding doors.

“That I know of? What do you mean, ‘that I know of?’ Does he have a key to my car? Sinclair? Sinclair!”

Lucas knew Steve wanted to pretend he was above all of this. He also knew that Steve was waking up early for absolutely no reason to bring him to Max. If he wanted to act removed from all of this, he wasn’t at all convincing.

Lucas stopped. He saw that Max’s door was closed, with two of her nurses standing outside. He recognized the first as Cynthia. She was standing next to what he recognized as the pole for her feeding tube. The bag with food matter was almost empty.

That wasn’t right. They’d changed the bag just the other day. It shouldn’t already be empty.

That was weird, for sure. Possibilities flooded his mind. Maybe they were trying her on solid foods again today, a voice inside him suggested nervously. Or maybe they were cleaning out her feeding tube. It probably got clogged sometimes, right? Yeah, that must be it.

“Excuse me,” he said, approaching Cynthia and the other nurse. “What’s going on? Is Max okay?”

The second nurse put her hands on her hips at once.

“Excuse me, but who are you?”

Lucas was not in the mood for this today, and he raised his voice.

“I’m Lucas. That’s Max in there, my girlfriend, and I want to know what the hell’s going on.”

“Mr. Sinclair,” said Cynthia, cutting across the other nurse as she opened her mouth indignantly. “Why don’t you come with me and we can talk about what’s going on. Suzanne, are you all right here on your own for a moment?”

“I suppose,” said Suzanne, folding her arms.

As badly as Lucas wanted to give her a witty retort, he followed Cynthia to a separate corridor, one with less people. Cynthia glanced around them, then addressed him.

“I’m sorry about her,” she said. “Her bedside manner is…shall I say…nonexistent?”

“Yeah, no shit.” He realized he was trembling with anger. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get upset.”

Cynthia shook her head. “It was her fault.”

“What’s happening with Max?” He demanded.

Nurse Cynthia raised her hands, seemingly to try to calm him down. He realized he might be frightening her, and doubled back.

“Sorry. I’m sorry. Is Max okay?”

“She’s all right. As much as she can be.”

It was as if she was speaking a foreign language. He shook his head in confusion.

“Huh?”

“The night nurse found her on the floor last night.”

“Oh.” He relaxed a little. “She fell out of bed?”

“Yes,” said Cynthia, though her tone was more uneasy than he would have liked. “She did fall out of bed. We noticed the tube from her feeding bag was yanked out. The floor was covered in the formula, so they’re cleaning it and her up now.”

“How did the tube even come out? Did she pull it?” He inquired, still bewildered at this turn of events.

“When the night nurse went to see what might have caused the tube to come out, she noticed…”

Cynthia glanced around, then lowered her voice.

“The tube was tied around her neck.”

It took a moment to figure out what Nurse Cynthia was trying to tell him. Dread, ice cold and painful, flooded into his veins.

“She…she tried to…”

He couldn’t even say it aloud. Cynthia seemed to know what he meant. He noticed that her normally cheery brown eyes were sad.

“We don’t know why, exactly. Only that these things can sometimes happen when someone has suffered brain damage. Mood changes…depression, anger, sadness. Her judgement is no doubt impacted…”

Lucas wasn’t really listening anymore.

She’d tried to…

The thought wouldn’t even permit itself to form in his mind, it was so horrid.

He’d have thought he’d feel fear. Certainly there was fear there, a bit. What he was unprepared for was the anger that started to lick at his insides, burning him up from the inside out, causing his skin to hurt, his throat to close. He was dreaming. He must be.

Not dreaming. Having a nightmare.

“Can I see her?” he said after several moments.

“Soon,” said Cynthia, looking mildly relieved his reaction had been less external than she was clearly expecting. “The psychiatrist is in there talking to her now. I must warn you – it’s likely they will put her in restraints for twenty-four hours.”

“Restraints?” It seemed barbaric.

“Just an added precaution,” said Cynthia. “If we believe a patient is at risk for harming themselves, the restraints are just to make sure they can’t.”

She put her hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s see if they’re ready for you, hmm?”

Lucas followed Cynthia back to Max’s room, in a daze. As if he were watching himself walk down the colorless hallways, stopping short at the door, which was still closed. The few minutes they had to wait felt like they were from another lifetime, another plane of existence that he was just barely tuned into. Nurse Suzanne didn’t say anything to him, and he was grateful for it, because he might have said something very unkind.

After a few more minutes, a doctor that he assumed was the psychiatrist, a gray, unsmiling woman with hard lines in her face, re-emerged from the room. After speaking briefly with the nurses, words that Lucas barely understood, she walked briskly down the hall.

He felt Cynthia’s hand on his arm.

“You can go in now,” she said quietly. “Be gentle with her.”

The sight of Max pained him. Somehow she looked even smaller and more vulnerable in restraints, these padded cuffs that were tied to the hospital bed by what looked like narrow belts, binding her arms and legs. A prisoner.

As Lucas trudged toward her bed, he saw that her hair had been washed, and it lay in damp, wavy rivers over her new hospital gown. Her arms and legs were bruised. No doubt from crashing to the floor. She was cold, he could tell – her skin was goosepimply, and she shivered occasionally. They had taken her blankets from her. As if she were being punished. Good, he thought darkly. She needed to know the seriousness of what she had tried to do.

 Her head didn’t turn toward him as he pulled up his chair.

“It’s me,” he said, his voice cracking.         

She didn’t try to say anything to him. He would have thought she’d cry, but she just looked blank. Like she’d given up. It made his blood boil.      

“Why, Max?” he said, his voice low. He knew full well she couldn’t answer.

Max seemed to be reminded of this too as she started to struggle against the restraints, pulling weakly against the straps, the belt buckles clinging against the metal bars of her hospital bed. Her lips parted and her mouth opened and closed as it did when she was trying so hard to talk but couldn’t.

“Never mind,” he said bitterly, trying to ignore his sorrow at her efforts. “I don’t want to know. That was a selfish, stupid thing to do.”

She paused, her eyebrows shooting up, and he almost saw that old indignant expression he used to know so well. This doubled his resolve.

“I’m going home, Max. If you want to be alone, then be alone.”

Max’s eyes widened, and she started saying “Luh! Luh! ” She didn’t want him to leave. He didn’t care. He might put a hole through the wall if he stayed much longer. Lucas stormed out, tears in his eyes, but the slam of the clunky metal door didn’t drown out Max wailing for him. 

Chapter Text

It was the first time in a long time he’d woken up angry.

Not that Lucas had slept particularly well. The only reason he knew that the previous day hadn’t been a horrible nightmare was because he woke up with a pit of scorching, seething anger in his stomach. Some part of his brain seemed to still think it was a nightmare. At the least, it felt like yesterday had happened two weeks ago.

It was the question that floated to the surface in his mind, the only question taking residence – how could she do that to him? To them? After everything they were all going through to keep her alive, to bring her back, to show how much her sacrifice had meant to all of them.

But as he sat in his room, doing nothing but laying in his bed and staring at the wall, he realized that the thing tearing him apart the most, the thing that he hadn’t told anyone – was the guilt. The horrible fucking guilt that was eating him alive.

He’d been the one to bring her into the party. He’d been the one to tell her everything about when Will went missing. Lucas had told her every bit of that highly dangerous information and had brought her into the fold because…why? Because he’d thought she was pretty? Because of the electricity, as Dustin had called it? Disgust at himself coiled deep in his stomach.

You did this, a small voice leered in the back of his mind. It hadn’t just been making her a part of their group. Lucas had made her a promise that day in the RV. The second you start to lift, I’m calling in Kate Bush. And then Jason had arrived and fucked up absolutely everything, as he had been wont to do.

Tears were threatening to spill from behind his eyelids. He let them slide down the bridge of his nose as the dark snake of anger and revulsion at himself continued to curl inside of him. Had Max’s last thoughts been swimming with the question of why he hadn’t used Kate Bush for her in time? And maybe she was clinging to him now because she didn’t remember that he had failed her so completely. Just like all the other times.

I don’t want to die, I’m not ready, he could still hear her crying. I don’t wanna go, I’m not ready. Lucas, I’m scared. I’m so scared. I’m so scared.

He’d promised her he’d use Kate Bush for her. He had failed. He promised her she would be okay, that she wasn’t going to die. He had failed on that front too. Another empty promise in her life that had been so full of them.

Lucas was startled out of his thoughts by Erica, who yelled from the living room.

“Lucas, phone! It’s your stupid nerd friends.”

He managed to drag himself out of bed and down the hall, taking the phone from Erica as he entered the living room, begrudgingly lifting the receiver to his mouth.

“Hello,” he said, his tone nondescript.

“Lucas? Are you there?” It was Mike.

“I’m here,” he said dully.

“Where are you?”

“Where are you? ”

“We’re outside of Max’s room,” said Mike. “Everyone’s here today. Even Steve, and Nancy, Jonathan, Robin – everyone. They won’t let us in yet so we’re waiting outside. When are you getting here?”

“I’m not coming today,” said Lucas.

“What do you mean you’re not coming?”

“Just what I said,” Lucas said darkly. “I’m not coming.”

He heard the background conversations die down, then he heard a few overlapping voices.

“He’s not coming? Why?”

“But everyone’s here! He should be here too –”

“Don’t be stupid, Sinclair, we’re waiting for you to get here –”

“How can you say you’re not coming?” Mike asked incredulously, and a fiery lick of anger burned through Lucas.

“Do you not know what she did the other day?” He demanded.

“What did she do? It can’t have been that bad.”

Lucas laughed derisively. If Mike only knew.

“Right. Well, when you do see her, you might not be able to hold her hand today. Not while she’s still in restraints.”

“Restraints?” Mike sounded alarmed.

Lucas heard the background conversations go quiet.

“What is he talking about, restraints?” He heard Dustin say, sounding concerned.

“Lucas, what the hell is going on?” Mike demanded, sounding both angry and worried.

Lucas took a shallow breath, steeling himself.

“Mike. Max tried to – ”

The words choked in his throat.

“She – she tried to – not be here anymore. Check out early.”

“Huh?”

“She tried to kill herself!”

Lucas hadn’t meant to scream it. Only in the split second after he’d done so did he remember that they were all there listening.

The silence following this was deafening, and it was as if Lucas could feel the awful truth sinking into the rest of the party. He could imagine their faces; Dustin, his mouth agape – Nancy, her expression stricken – El, her eyes filled with tears…

It felt like an eternity before Mike spoke again, his voice very low.

“When did this happen?”

“Two days ago. And it’s my fault anyway. So I’m not coming back for a while. Maybe never again.”

Mike was very quiet. He seemed shocked more than anything else. Lucas heard some background noise, some quiet murmuring. After several minutes, the sound crackled and rustled, and a new voice sounded from the receiver.

“Lucas?”

It was Dustin.

“Dustin? Where’s Mike?”

“He’s still here. He just…didn’t know what to say.”

Lucas didn’t say anything in reply. Dustin started again in a calm voice.

“Listen. I know you’re upset.”

“Upset?” His voice rose. “No. I’m way past upset. I’m so pissed off I can’t see straight.”

“I know, Lucas. I’m pissed off, too. I am. But right now we have to think about Max.”

“Oh, now you’re going to sit here and tell me I’m not thinking enough about Max?!”

Suddenly, Lucas heard the familiar clunky metal door open in the background. He could hear one of Max’s nurses start to talk softly to the party, though Lucas couldn’t hear them.

“Okay. Thank you, we’re coming,” said Dustin, half into the receiver, though he was clearly talking to the nurse. “Lucas? You still there?”

“Yeah,” Lucas said dully.

“We’re about to go in. Please, just come see her. You say the word and I’ll send Steve over there to pick you up…”

Lucas could barely hear Dustin anymore over the raging thunder in his ears. He knew he couldn’t go. He wouldn’t be any help to anyone in the state he was in.

“I can’t,” he said flatly.

“Why can’t you come be here for her, Lucas? Why?”

He bit his lip, trying his damndest not to think about Max and thinking of nothing but.

“Because I just can’t, okay? I can’t.”

Lucas slammed the receiver back onto the base unit of the telephone, so hard that he thought he was going to break the phone off the wall, and stomped back into his room, shutting the door behind him.

The morning phased into the afternoon, and Lucas remained in his room. He lay in his bed, doing nothing, staring out of his window. He became acutely aware of every sound, every sensation that surrounded him. The ticking of the clock on his wall. The oak tree branches scraping against the windowpane. The grainy feel of the plaid blanket on his unmade bed. The faint rumbling from far away that still signaled the Upside Down’s current residence in Hawkins. Until all of these noises amalgamated into the drone of being, fading into the background until Lucas could barely hear his own thoughts over the deafening silence.

Soon the quiet was unbearable, and he twirled the dial on his radio that sat on his bedside table.

“And now, by special request from Mr. Daniel McAllister from central Indianapolis, this is Colour My World by Chicago! Mr. McAllister would like to dedicate this song to his wife Marlena.”

A piano started, going up and down the scale in a swaying fashion. After a few minutes of the lilting piano and the quiet bass strumming in the background, a man’s voice sounded in the midst of it, the tinny cymbals accentuating the words.

As time goes on

I realize

Just what you mean

To me

And now

Now that you're near

Promise your love

That I've waited to share

And dreams

Of our moments together

Colour my world with hope

Of loving you.

After the lyrics ended, a flute began, singing the same dulcet tones as the singer himself. The song kneaded his heart with its fists, crushing every ventricle in its palms. The weight of sorrow was heavy in in his stomach, in his bones, and he lay there, listening to this song that this stranger had requested for his wife. Sobs racked him, as they so often did nowadays.

Lucas didn’t care. He was too tired to fight it. Fuck being strong. He was weak right now.

Afternoon dragged into evening. Lucas heard his mother knock. Later, Erica. Asking if he was going back to the hospital today before it got too late. He didn’t answer them. He heard his door open quietly more than once, presumably to ensure that he was still alive in here, and when he didn’t turn over and address whichever of them it was, they would quietly leave the room again.

Nighttime brought him no relief. He had hoped, prayed he’d feel tired, anything to end this horrible fucking day already, but all he could see when he closed his eyes was Max, tracing her feeding tube with her thin fingers, sitting up, wrapping it around her neck, letting herself fall from the bed like a pale rag doll –

He barely got to the bathroom in time before he vomited. It wasn’t much more than water. He hadn’t eaten much today.

Lucas crawled back into his room, stripping down to his underclothes and getting back into bed.

Please, he thought. That was it. His mind couldn’t form legible thoughts anymore. Please. Just let me sleep.

The new day dawned sunny and bright. As if it were mocking him. The light striped across his vision and Lucas rolled over, putting the pillow over his head to block the sun coming in from the dusty blinds.

He could hear the phone start to ring in the living room. He heard his mother answer, then she yelled “Lucas! It’s for you.”

He groaned.

“Tell them to leave a message!” He hollered back.

“Lucas, just come get the phone!”

Lucas snarled as he flung the covers off. If it was Mike or Dustin, they were about to get an earful. As he trudged into the hall, he brushed past Erica. He saw a flash of concern pass over her face before settling back into her sassy default.

He got to the living room, and his mother handed him the phone wordlessly before going back into the kitchen.

“Hello?”

“Lucas?”

It was Robin. Lucas was so surprised he forgot to be angry. Of all the people he thought would be on the other end of the phone, Robin had been fairly low on the list.

“Yeah,” he said dully.

“Hey.” Robin’s voice was bracing. “Are you okay?”

“No, Robin, I’m not. Did you need something?”

“Oh,” said Robin, and she immediately sounded anxious. “Well…I wanted to tell you how she was doing. Max, I mean.”

Lucas did want to know, angry as he was. This was the longest he’d been away. Robin seemed to take his silence as permission, and prattled on.

“She was in a bad way this morning. I’ve never seen her like that. She ripped out her IV and blood spurted out everywhere. Then she took off the oxygen and tried to run, I think tried to escape, but of course she can’t because her legs are still weak, so she fell. We tried to help her up, me and Steve, but she pushed us away and crawled to the corner of the room. The nurses had to hold her down and sedate her. Like an animal. They got her back in bed and the whole time before she fell asleep she’s just saying ‘luh, luh,’ which I’ve come to realize is your name, I think. And she sounded…desperate. Just…calling out for you.”

Lucas’ insides clenched as he saw Max in his mind’s eye, fighting sedation as she cried out for him. He had never wanted so badly to run and scoop her up, never let her go, while also wanting to shake her, scream at her.

“I’m worried about her, Lucas. She’s not well.”

“Yeah, no shit.” This came out harsher than even he had intended. In any case, Robin seemed to know that it wasn’t her he was angry with.

“That’s why we need you to come back. And I know that Max wants to see – I mean –” Her voice trembled at her mistake. “She’ll want to know that you’re here with all of us.”

The unwelcome reminder that Max was now blind brought the pain into much sharper relief inside him.

“Robin, I don’t think you understand. She tried to hang herself with her feeding tube.”

Robin sighed and was silent for a moment before speaking.

“I can’t say I’ve ever tried the same thing, but…I know what it’s like to want to. I can’t say I wouldn’t want to do the same thing if I were her. And neither can you.”

Lucas felt angry tears swim in his eyes.

“But I’m doing everything I can to save her.”

“We all are. But when you start thinking like that…you can’t see it. Your brain starts tricking you, makes you think there’s no way out, that you’re a burden on everyone you love. Obviously, I can’t read her mind, but maybe she feels like that. Like she’s a burden. Even more so now because she can’t see. And we have to do what we can, to prove to her that she isn’t. That we’re here for the long haul. That we’ll help her carry it, as much as we can.”

“But I’ve been helping her carry it, Robin. I’ve given every last bit of myself to her. And then she tries to… check out early,” He couldn’t say it aloud. Not again. “As if nothing I’ve done is worth a shit to her. That’s why I’m pissed off.”

Robin’s voice became gentler.

“Please, Lucas. You have the right to be angry. But she needs you. We all do.”

The silence sat between them for only a few moments, then Robin heaved another sigh.

“If you need to talk, I’m here. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, and hung up the phone.

Lucas made a beeline back to his room, the anguish within him rising up like a poison. His room was the only place in his life at the moment that didn’t set his skin on fire, and as he closed his door behind him, he lay down fully clothed on his unmade bed. He stared out at the autumn leaves dwindling down from the oak trees outside his window.

He could only lay still. Is this how depression had felt like for Max? This horrible pit in your stomach? Your bones feeling like they were made of lead? The anger? The despair? The heaviness?

His mind suddenly filled with that night, before Max had willingly, bravely offered herself up as bait for Vecna. To protect them all.

I just want you to take me away, she’d said, and he’d watched the tears roll down her cheeks in the blue light. I want you to make me disappear.

Lucas had never stopped to consider the truthfulness of these words. Another screw-up for him, he thought. Not just as a boyfriend. As a friend. As a central person in her life. She’s the girl of my life. That had never changed. He felt stupid claiming it right now. How attentive was he really being to her if she felt awful enough to do… that?

The real tragedy, the thing that drove the stake into his heart even deeper, was that Max had no way to tell him how she felt. And suddenly that facial expression she sometimes had made so much more sense. The one where she was mouthing, trying to form words, and then her sightless eyes would fill with the utter frustration and helplessness of it. A prisoner in her own body. Trapped.

Lucas choked out a sob. Max had spent so much of her life feeling trapped. Trapped by her ever-changing, unpredictable, unstable life. Trapped by her family and all their bullshit. Trapped by her own demons. He wondered if by attempting to do what she had done, she was just trying to be free of it. And perhaps, free them from it too. It was the kind of thing she would do. Lucas wanted to believe that an action like this was totally out of left field for Max. But the more he thought about it, he realized that this had been impending for some time.

He was just relieved that it hadn’t worked.

Afternoon moved gently into evening, bringing with it some gray clouds and light rain. and Lucas found that the chasm of despair in him was only growing by the hour. Moving didn’t help. Laying here didn’t help. Nothing helped. His skin hurt.

It was too hot in this room now. He’d been laying on his blankets and pillows long enough that they were uncomfortably warm. But there was no escaping it. Emotion overwhelmed him so that all he could do was lay here and stare out of the window. It was too heavy for him to carry, and he didn’t know how to ease the burden of it. So he was stuck.

A knock sounded on the door.

“Lucas?” It was Erica.

“Go away,” he said.

He heard the door open somewhat forcefully.

“Here to talk some sense into me?” he quipped derisively.

“Yeah. Only I’m not gonna be nice,” His blanket was yanked off him in a whoosh.

“Jesus, Erica.”

“Jesus is right. You’re gonna need Him if you don’t get up and go back to Max right now.”

He did not roll over to look at her, not least because he refused to let her see that his eyes were welling with tears.

“If she even wants to see me.”

He couldn’t see Erica, but he swore he could hear her put her hands on her hips, getting that look on her face that he knew so well. The look that suggested the mere sound of his breathing was an annoyance.

“Get up and quit feeling sorry for yourself. Of course she wants to see you. If Max didn’t want you there, she would have kicked you out a long time ago.”

While this was true, it didn’t make Lucas feel any better. He laid there silently, hoping with enough time Erica might just go away.

He was a fool to think this. After five minutes of their stalemate, Erica spoke up, her tone barbed.

“I hope you know I’m charging your ass by the minute. If we have to sit here much longer, you’re gonna owe me another game to go with that Nintendo you’re supposed to buy me. This time, I want Metroid.”

Lucas finally rolled toward her, sitting up in his bed.

“I’m not buying you shit,” he said, permitting a small grin.

Erica pursed her lips, but didn’t retaliate.

Lucas heaved a sigh, letting his head fall back against the wall as he leaned against it.

“It’s my fault all this happened to her.”

Saying it aloud only made the guilt and the nausea rise in his throat. “I’m the one who told her everything about El, about the Upside Down…all of it.”

Erica moved toward his bed, sitting down next to him on the mattress as he continued.

“When she came to Hawkins, she was Mad Max. The person with the highest score in Dig Dug, a score that not even Dustin could beat. We assumed it was a guy - Mike, Will, Dustin and me. Then, when Mr. Clarke introduced her in class, we knew it was her.”

Lucas’ heart ached as he remembered watching her through the chain link fence, skateboarding across the pavement, her pretty red hair flowing in the wind, with that pensive frown on her face. The one so weathered from disappointment and life-weariness. That freckled scowl, that stony glare in her eyes.

“And I just…felt it. That electricity. I don’t know how else to describe it. But I wanted to be around her. I wanted to know her. But I couldn’t know her – we couldn’t know her – without telling her about Eleven, the Upside Down, and everything else.”

The awful guilt had taken residence in the middle of his chest, right under his sternum, and it was choking him, burning him up from the inside out.

“And when you told her, what did Max say?”

“I told her it was dangerous for her to know. I said she had to accept the risk before I told her. And she accepted.”

Erica gave an exasperated sigh.

“You really are stupid. She accepted the risk. She did.”

“She didn’t know what she was getting herself into.”

“You tried to tell her, right?”

“She didn’t believe me.”

“She got there eventually. Who made the decision to offer herself as bait to Vecna? Lucas, you tried to stop her. I heard you. But she made the choice. And you know damn well that when Max makes a choice, that’s it. So how is any of this your fault?”

“Because…I should have seen it coming.”

“How could you have seen this coming?” said Erica incredulously.

“When she sacrificed herself to Vecna. It wasn’t just for us. She was…trying to die.”

It hadn’t been clear to him at the time, but the more he had thought about it, Lucas was certain that this was the case. He knew Max that well. In her mind, she must have considered it a win-win. Not only was she protecting those she loved, but maybe she could finally stop the pain. The thought gutted him.

Erica tried, and failed, not to look troubled by this truth as he watched it settle into her too. She hastily rearranged her expression back into her barbed default.

“When she died,” said Erica baldly. “What did she say to you?”

It shook him to remember it.

“She just kept telling me she didn’t want to die,” he said, his voice wavering. “She didn’t want to die, she wasn’t ready.”

Anger reared within him again unexpectedly. “And then she goes and does this.”

“Haven’t you been listening to the doctors? Her brain’s damaged and she can’t see anymore. She’ll never see your stupid face again, and while I envy not having to look at you, Max actually likes your stupid face. Her eyes go all gooey soft when she looks at you. It makes me want to throw up, sure, but not her. And now she can’t do that.”

This sobering truth seared through Lucas. It was a truth he had already known, sure, but he’d only paused to consider his own feelings about it. He could only imagine the level of grief she felt. He could feel the fury within him starting to ebb, to be replaced with a deep, indelible sorrow.

Lucas sighed heavily, his head in his hands.

“I’m angry with her,” he said, though there was not as much bite in his voice now.

“Yeah. She was stupid for trying to…do what she did. Especially because you’ve been there almost every day. So be angry. But still be there.”

His voice came out very quiet. “I just…I just want to know why.”

“I don’t know. I can’t read her mind. All I know is that her dumb ass is still in love with your dumb ass. And if there was ever a time she needed you, it’s now.”

What could he say? She was right. He refused to admit this aloud, but he could tell by the look on Erica’s face that she was getting through to him.

He suddenly frowned at her.

“What’s in this for you?”

“Huh?”

“Why do you want me to go back so badly? Erica doesn’t do anything unless there’s something in it for Erica.”

She smirked.

“When you’re there, then you’re not here, and I have to see your face a lot less. So it’s a win-win for both of us.”

“Uh-huh.” He rolled his eyes, checking his watch. “It’s too late for me to go today. But…I think I can try for tomorrow.”

“No, you will go back and be with her tomorrow. Or that’s another game you’re gonna owe me.”

He allowed himself a chuckle.

“Okay. Fine.”

Erica stood up, brushing out her skirt before walking briskly toward his door. She stopped in the doorframe, turning to address him.

“No one’s asking you to do this by yourself,” she said. “And even though you’re a stupid, nerdy fartface, you’re still my brother.”

She turned to walk back through the door, but not before she said “Just the facts.”

Darkness.

It was the only thing she knew now.

She was floating. Maybe. Her body felt light, weightless.

This wasn’t the first time she’d come here. She just didn’t know where here was. She was somewhere, and nowhere. She was a mere whisp in the vast, silent blackness, a puff of air in a cyclone, a single drop in an obsidian ocean.

Voices murmured through the darkness from far away, but they were muted, and she couldn’t understand them.

“Hello?” she called. Her eyesight was warped and blurry, her hearing submerged in a thick layer of cotton. Her own voice sounded muffled as it echoed distantly into the dark, endless chasm.

So that hadn’t changed, she thought in relief. She could still talk in this world. At least she could hear herself this time, even slightly. She wanted to soon forget the feeling of her own lungs almost tearing out from her scream that she couldn’t hear.

She squinted. Up ahead, far away, she could see swatches of color. Vague blobs, moving and shifting.

She wanted to run toward it, but she didn’t know if she could move this time. Perhaps whoever or whatever it was could help her figure out why she kept waking up here. But for whatever reason, the part of her brain that signaled her legs to walk seemed to have a bad connection.       

Move, she thought, willing her limbs to budge, even a little. They were so light, and yet so heavy and stiff.

Her vision was clearing a bit, thankfully. She could see her own feet, pale and veiny and narrow, standing in…water? It rippled like water did. But it wasn’t cold, or wet.

Staring determinedly at her feet, she willed her muscles to move, even one step, in the direction of the blotches of color up ahead. She watched her own foot lift and break the surface of the black water, ripples spreading out around her.

She was glad she could move, albeit slowly. With each step, it became a little easier. Her limbs still felt so cumbersome, so rigid, as if she hadn’t moved in months.

It came into clearer view as she moved closer. It looked like a bed. Not a normal bed, though. This one had bars, bent upward with the head of the bed, which was inclined slightly. There was a heap of blankets, all in disarray across the mattress. Most of them were tan and white and ugly, but she could just barely make out a yellow blanket, curled around a body underneath the layers of cotton and fleece and polyester, rolled over away from her.

As she walked around to the other side of the bed, she noticed that the person underneath the blankets had red hair. Pale skin. Sunken cheeks.

She stopped dead as the person’s face came into full view.

It was her.

Max was staring at herself.

Chapter Text

Max remembered how it felt to die.

It only came back to her in bits. The feeling of her lungs closing. The tingling numbness of her arms and legs. Her ribs flinching with sharp pain as she gasped for breath. That terrifying, endless darkness, not unlike the one she was trapped in at this moment. And the expanse of her life shrinking to a pinhole as she felt herself fading.

Someone had been holding her hand. She remembered that too. It couldn’t have been Lucas. One of his hands had been firmly on her shoulder, the other caressing her face. She flexed her fingers, remembering the feeling. Could it have been Erica? He’d screamed to Erica for help at one point. But that implied she was far away. Besides Erica, it had just been her and Lucas, alone in hell together.

Lucas. She closed her eyes, bringing him forward in her mind. Those deep, introspective brown eyes that always seemed to see right through her. That dumb grin on his face that only happened when he was around her (that dumb grin she got around him). Could she make him materialize in this space? After several seconds of thinking of him, of his face, nothing of the sort seemed to happen, and Max opened her eyes again, disappointed.

More than anything, she remembered him during her final moments. Max put her arms around herself as she remembered him shuddering with sobs against her, his strong arms encircling her.

I’m here. I’m here.

Lucas had been there, holding her as she died. She ached at the memory of his arms around her. Ached at the want to have his arms around her again. Remembering how safe she always felt enfolded in them.

Max stared out into the void, almost defiantly. She was going to find a way to get out of here. She was going to figure this out. Somehow. She was still connected to her body, she supposed, but…she wasn’t. She couldn’t make her physical body move from out here. At least, not yet. Maybe there was a way. There had been moments where she could have sworn she’d made her own still face twitch. Max wished she had a chance to try it while her physical body was awake. She only came here when she was asleep.

“Maxine?”

She started as a muffled voice permeated into the void. Max whirled around to see the familiar swatches of color some distance away.

She stumbled hopefully, urgently, toward them. Only one person called her Maxine.

As she drew closer, Max saw a flash of red hair and a strangled cry tore out of her before she could stop it. Her mother’s face materialized, and she was there, leaning over Max’s bed. Max couldn’t remember a time she’d been more glad to see her mother.

“Mom!” She yelled, but it echoed uselessly into the void.

Behind her mother, Max could see Joyce and Hopper standing nearby, with an air of waiting for something.

Her mother looked drained, Max observed. She usually looked unkempt and that hadn’t really changed, but Max could tell she’d been drinking more. If she had been able to smell the room, she was sure she’d smell Coors Light and mustiness and exhaustion. A familiar smell, true, but a disheartening one too.

“Max,” her mother started, and her voice trembled. “They just told me everything about…what’s going on lately. How you’re feeling.”

Max frowned. What was she talking about? What had been going on with her in the real world?

“I just want you to know it’s gonna be okay. I know I have a problem, baby, and…I’m going to go get some help. Officer Hopper and Mrs. Byers have offered to take me to rehab, in Indianapolis. I’m going to go for you. I’m gonna get better for you. And then I’ll come back, and we’ll start over. Okay? I’ll be better. I promise.”

Max’s insides crumbled as she watched her mother kiss her forehead softly. She wanted to reach for her mother, to call out for her again, to let her know she was all right. Well, relatively.

“Susan?” Max heard Joyce murmur softly. “Are you ready to go?”

Susan’s bottom lip trembled, but she nodded, and stood up from her chair, and as she walked away, Max felt her heart pulling in her mother’s direction.

“Wait. Wait, come back!” she said, as they left the room. She wanted to scream in frustration as she watched her own face twitch slightly but otherwise remain still. Max concentrated hard, moving her arms up and down, stomping her feet, yelling. It didn’t seem to do much. She watched herself frown slightly, but her physical body remained asleep.

Max found herself running across the blackness toward her mother, trying to reach out and grab her. As Max’s hand finally made contact with her shoulder, her mother, along with Joyce and Hopper, evaporated into dust, swirling away into the void.

“Mom!” She yelled, grasping at thin air. “Mom!”

Max was scared now. What had her mother been talking about? And where were her friends? Had something happened to them?

Panicked, Max tried to think. Just because she hadn’t seen them in here yet didn’t mean they weren’t all right. But she didn’t know that for a fact. She hadn’t been conscious enough to absorb anything after she had died and then come back. Max was still figuring that out. She didn’t know why she had ended up here after death, or why she could see what was happening in the real world. Her body was still alive, she could tell that much by the nasal cannula she saw under her nose, the bags of fluid she was clearly attached to. Her body had a feeding tube before, but it wasn’t there any longer. Did that mean she was eating normally again? For some reason, a deep foreboding filled her when she wondered about the feeding tube. She couldn’t place why.

Is this hell? The thought terrified her. Was she trapped in here? And why was she trapped in here, if so?

Her mind traveled back to that day, in the RV, Lucas sitting with her. He had wanted someone else to be the bait for Vecna. Even now she recalled the palpable fear in his eyes. Perhaps Lucas had sensed something terrible was going to happen. But Max hadn’t wanted to subject a stranger to that level of risk. She knew Lucas wasn’t heartless in that right. He’d just been scared for her.

The second you start to lift, I’m calling in Kate Bush.

Lucas hadn’t done that. At least, not in time. But he wouldn’t have left her to chance without a good reason. With what her mother had said, Max felt the anxiety start to quiver in her belly. What if Vecna had gotten to him? Or to any of them?

She couldn’t move that well in the real world, she knew that much to be true. She was starting to get a taste of what her real-world body must feel like. Suspended in this black, neverending limbo.

The frustration hit her in an unexpectedly powerful wave, enough that she gasped. As if it were going to cause her insides to combust. Overcome, Max sat down in the water that wasn’t wet, pulling her knees up to her chest and curling into a ball, staring down at the dark ripples as they billowed around her.

She had to find a way out of here.

It was strange, coming back into the hospital that Lucas had come to know so well. It was as if his senses had consigned to oblivion how the place sank its teeth into him. The fluorescent lights were too bright and greenish. The smell…he’d forgotten about the smell. That faint tinge of blood and urine and bile, with an overpowering smell of bleach attempting to disguise the decay that the building truly held. It smelled both too clean and not enough. The patchy janitor skulking in the corner near the entrance would have his work cut out for him, Lucas thought.

His stomach did a little flop as he turned the corner to enter Max’s hallway. He was surprised to see Mike, El, and Robin sitting in each of the chairs outside. El was in Mike’s lap, her head on his shoulder, his arms around her. Robin was staring at the floor, biting her lip, her foot tapping nervously next to the tattered brown knapsack by her chair. It was the afternoon, Lucas thought, wondering if he should be concerned. Why had they not been allowed in?

“Hey.”

They all looked up hopefully, standing from their chairs as he approached. It was Robin that got to him first, squeezing him in an unexpectedly tight hug. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. He embraced her, wanting her to know he appreciated her. When they broke apart, he saw her eyes were wet.

“Lucas,” said Mike in relief from behind her, moving forward to hug him next.

He embraced Mike too, glad to see him. “I’m here now.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mike unexpectedly as they broke apart, the words spilling out in a rush. “I’m sorry I totally ditched you on the phone the other day. I didn’t know what to say, but I should have just said that and not passed the buck to Dustin. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking – ”

“It’s okay, Mike.”

“No, it isn’t,” Mike shook his head, putting his hands on Lucas’ shoulders. “You deserved an apology a long time ago. Your basketball shit…I should have been more supportive, I should have talked to Eddie – ” His voice shook at Eddie’s name. “…all of it, Lucas. I’m sorry. I know I haven’t been the best friend, and I care about Max, I don’t want to see her hurt -”

“Mike.” Lucas held his hands up. “It’s okay. Really.”

He gripped Mike’s shoulder in his hand.

“Thank you. But it’s okay. I think there are bigger things to worry about.”

Mike gave a warm smile, and hugged Lucas again. After they pulled away, El threw her arms around him.

“I’m going to look for her again,” she said quietly. “Max.”

“I don’t know if it’s a good day for that, El,” said Robin gently, and they both turned to look at her.

“Why not?” Lucas frowned.

“That’s kind of the reason we’re waiting out here instead of sitting in there with her,” Robin explained. “I sat with her since early this morning. She refused breakfast and they’re currently trying to feed her lunch, so they kicked me out. Mike and El showed up shortly after that.”

“Feed her lunch?” Lucas questioned. “So they took her feeding tube out?”

“I guess after her…incident, they probably didn’t want her to still have that around, so maybe they thought they could go ahead and start with soft foods. They haven’t told me that, I’m just guessing. But I don’t think it’s going very well.”

Lucas faced the door, taking a deep breath. His feet felt heavy all of a sudden, as if they’d grown roots on the spot and were currently snaking downward, tethering him to the floor. He felt a pair of hands come to rest on his shoulders, and two smaller pairs of hands touch his back.

“Don’t forget we’re here,” Robin murmured.

Lucas nodded bravely, and he grasped the handle of the door in his hands, slowly pulling it open.

The first thing he saw was two nurses, sitting on either side of the bed. Lucas felt a surge of emotion as he saw Max, lying on her side, blankets pulled up to her chin, her sightless eyes staring blankly past the nurse closest to her. The nurse was holding a cup of what looked like applesauce in her gloved hand, hovering a spoon of it near Max’s face.

“Miss Mayfield,” she was saying, her tone indicating that her patience was wearing thin. “If we can’t get you to eat something, we’ll have to talk to the doctor about putting the feeding tube back in.”

Max’s eyes traveled in the nurse's direction, and he could see that familiar glare in her eyes. There was stubbornness, sure, but…a sort of angry sorrow, too. The kind that made Lucas’ insides cave in.

“You have to eat, Max.”

His voice came out low, but firm. Both the nurses turned in his direction.

“Sir, it might be best if you waited outside – ” The nurse on her other side began.

“Luh!” cried Max, and his chest clenched as she struggled to sit up. “Luh!”

The nurses glanced at Max, then at each other, then at him.

“Do you want to give it a try?” The one closest to Max said, raising the spoon in his direction.

Lucas nodded slowly. “I can do it.”

The nurses stood up and shuffled toward him, handing him the applesauce and the spoon.

“We’ll just be here to observe, all right?”

Lucas nodded again, then slowly walked toward Max, whose eyes were swiveling desperately in his direction. He sat down in the chair facing her. Though he wasn’t quite as angry with her as he had been, he wasn’t in a big hurry to hug her, either. As she reached her hand out toward him, he gently took her arm and lowered it.

“Come on. You heard them. You have to eat a little, or they’ll put the feeding tube back in.”

Lucas watched Max’s face fall. She let him lower her arm and did not try to reach for him again. Instead, she leaned back against her pillows and folded her arms, her expression miserable.

“No,” she said softly.

“Max…” Lucas sighed through his teeth, his irritation starting to grind at him.

“No.”

“Max!” He said sharply. “I know you’re in pain, I know you hate this, I know nothing in life is fucking fair but right now I need you to eat the goddamn applesauce, okay?”

She looked slightly startled that he’d raised his voice. He hadn’t meant to yell at her, but the knots in his stomach were growing tighter by the second.

Max blinked at him, and after a moment or two, she let her jaw drop. Giving him permission.

Lucas slowly brought the spoon of applesauce to her mouth, letting the spoon touch her bottom lip so she would know it was there. She closed her lips around it hesitantly.

“Good. Now swallow.”

Max did so, though she winced. It was clear she hadn’t swallowed anything in some time.

“You’re doing good,” he said, his voice softening. “I’m going to give you another one. Okay?”

She held her hand up, her fingers brushing at her throat. It must have hurt going down.

“Just tell me when.”

After a few more seconds, Max nodded, opening her mouth once more.

Lucas spooned another bit of applesauce into her mouth, watching her move it around on her tongue, delaying the swallowing. It must really feel rough. He didn’t care. He needed her to eat.

“Swallow it, Max,” he said.

She followed suit, wincing again and coughing hoarsely.

Lucas turned to look at the nurses, who both seemed relieved Max was eating something.

“Is that enough, or does she need to do more?”

“If we can get her to eat the whole cup, I think we can call it a victory,” said the second nurse.

Max looked anxious about this.

“I – ” she stammered, and he could see the gears working in her head as she tried to think of the words. “I – ”

“Miss Mayfield,” said the first nurse quietly from behind him. “It’s normal for your throat to hurt if you haven’t used it in a while. If you can get through this cup of applesauce, we’ll let you rest. I promise.”

Max begrudgingly opened her mouth again, her eyes filling with tears. Lucas spooned the applesauce in once more, and she managed to scrape it down, coughing after she did so.

They managed to get through three-fourths of the cup before she refused any more, her hand on her throat, clearly in pain.

“Miss Mayfield, we’re going to let the doctor know how you did, all right? You did very well.”

The second nurse left the room while the first wandered over to her bedside. Lucas watched her as she examined Max’s IV and her oxygen, adjusted her pillows, respread her blankets. She took a small bottle filled with clear liquid from her pocket, along with a syringe.

“Miss Mayfield? I’m going to give you something for your throat, okay? It’ll probably be swollen, and we don’t want it to swell up so that you can’t breathe. We’re close to getting your oxygen off. Let’s keep going that way, hmm?”

Max barely seemed bothered by this as she lifelessly lifted her arm in the nurse’s direction, letting the nurse inject whatever medicine it was into the IV in her arm. Lucas saw an ugly gray bruise clouding around where the needle pierced her skin. That must have been from when she ripped her last IV out. He’d almost be glad to have that Max back. Anything but this pale shadow of her.

“Mike, El, and Robin are here,” Lucas told her, attempting to knock a reaction loose.

Max gave a slight shrug of her shoulders.

“I’m going to go get them,” he said, standing up and walking toward the door without waiting for a more concise response. He swung the door open and poked his head out into the hallway.

“Max is up if you guys want to come see her.”

Mike, El, and Robin all stood up, and Lucas beckoned to them as he pulled open the door once again. The group filed in ahead of him, with Lucas being the last to go inside.

Max seemed nondescript about having visitors today. She looked listless and blank as they all grabbed chairs from the other side of the room and sat down around the bed. Mike and Eleven were both staring sadly at Max, and Lucas knew they were seeing the same thing he did: the guarded, sarcastic Max they used to know had been replaced with this sullen, defeated one, and the grief of it sat heavy on their shoulders. Robin attempted to fill the silence by pulling out some clothes that she had brought for Max from the shelter, babbling about what each of them looked like. But when Max barely responded to Robin laying folded shirts and pants in her lap, Robin quietly started re-collecting them, her eyes sparkling with tears.

“When you want to wear some of them, just let us know, okay?”

Lucas heard a sniffle, and he looked over to see Eleven crying softly at the foot of Max’s bed. Before Mike could put his arm around her, she stood up from her chair and left the room, her hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking. Mike and Lucas exchanged a look, and they both stood up too.

“We’ll be back in a moment,” said Lucas to no one in particular. “Robin, can you sit here with her?”

Robin nodded. Max didn’t do anything but continue to look sad, her sightless eyes staring blankly down into her lap.

Lucas followed Mike out into the hallway, where Eleven sat on one of the hallway chairs, her face in her hands. Mike immediately sat down next to her, putting an arm around her. Lucas sat on her other side, touching her arm.

“El,” said Mike quietly, planting a soft kiss on her head. “It’s hard, I know. It is for me too.”

El looked at him, then turned to Lucas, her eyes leaking tears.

“She tried to leave us.”

Lucas could see exactly what he had felt laid bare on her stricken face.

“I know,” he said, his own voice wavering.

“But I brought her back,” said El, and the guilt in her voice killed him. “I brought her back, and she tried to leave.”

“I know. It feels awful. I get it.”

Lucas put his hand on her shoulder.

“One of the nurses told me that it happened because of her brain being swollen. It can change how someone acts.”

Eleven shook her head.

“She wanted to leave before this,” she said. “You remember. You saw. Her speech to Vecna.”

Mike frowned at them both, and it occurred to Lucas that he might not have known about this.

“But Max didn’t just do it for that,” said Lucas, trying to keep talking over that wound tearing fresh open within him. “She did it so we could kill him. She did it to save us.”

Eleven’s shoulders shook. Mike pulled her closer, his own eyes starting to look a little misty.

“I…I need to go,” she said, standing up. Mike and Lucas stood with her.

“Are you sure?” said Mike.

Eleven’s breathing was shallow, and she seemed to be vacillating between anxiety and sorrow, her wet eyes bulging, her hands wringing. Mike looked deeply concerned.

“It’s okay,” said Lucas, and they both looked at him. “I’m going to be here with her. And Robin is still in there.”

El walked forward and hugged him. Lucas hugged her tightly. He knew how heavy the guilt was, and he wished he could make it easier. But she might have to do what he had done and get some space from it.

Mike hugged him too. He wasn’t crying, but he certainly looked troubled.

“I’m going with her,” he said.

Lucas bobbed his head, patting his back as he let go. He watched them walk away, Mike’s arm tightly around Eleven, El’s head leaning against his shoulder as she wept. That wound in him still throbbed, but he could withstand it now. His friends were going through similar grief, and he had a chance to be strong for them.

Lucas walked back into the room. Robin was still sitting in her chair, but as he drew closer, he noticed that her hand was wrapped around Max’s. Max lay on her side, her eyes closed. Robin saw him and put a finger to her lips. Lucas dipped his head and sat down next to Robin. They watched Max’s mouth twitch, watched her face frown slightly as she drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Robin’s thumb rubbed the back of Max’s hand, and Lucas saw an undeniable tenderness in her expression.

“I didn’t want her to fall asleep feeling alone,” she murmured.

Lucas nodded.

“She’s having a hard time,” he said quietly.

Robin gave him a sad smile.

“I guess you would know more than anyone. You’re here everyday.”

“You’re here more and more,” he observed.

She shrugged.

“I have some idea of how she feels,” said Robin. “Not about the blind thing, obviously. But feeling like there’s something wrong with you that you can’t fix.”

Lucas had no idea what Robin could be talking about. He frowned as he looked at her. Had she been feeling like Max had? Had she been wanting to do…that?

She shook her head, smiling at the concerned look on his face.

“Don’t worry. I’m fine. I just know how she feels, is all. At least, I think I do.”

Lucas decided not to press the issue.

“I know she appreciates you being here,” he said, trying at least to help Robin feel valued. “Not just because you’re in our party. She’s always liked you.”

Robin looked touched by this.

“I’ve always liked her too,” she said. “She’s plucky.”

Plucky. That was a good word to describe Max. He chuckled in spite of himself.

“If she appreciates me, I’m sure you’re practically her lifeline at this point,” Robin continued.

Lucas shrugged.

“She might be mad at me after earlier,” he said. “I had to make her eat. She wasn’t happy about it.”

“Maybe. But you have to know how much you mean to her. Even before this.”

“I’ve just been here the most,” he countered.

“Oh, please. Everyone notices how her eyes go all doughy soft when she looks at you.”

The comment washed over them both like an inhale of breath over a tooth cavity. Momentarily forgotten until the sudden, sharp pain. Robin seemed to realize her misstep, and her face filled with immediate regret and anguish.

“I’m…I’m sorry –” She looked flustered. “Sometimes I say - I shouldn’t have -”

“Robin. It’s okay. I’m still getting used to it too.”

They glanced at Max, who was mumbling unintelligibly in her sleep. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it, but it never ceased to be bizarre. This was the same girl who had recently re-learned how to say “water” and yet in her sleep she was clearly communicating rather well for whomever she was speaking to.

“What do you think she’s saying?” Robin all but whispered, looking both fascinated and uneasy at this.

Lucas gazed at Max, trying hard to catch any legible words that fell from her lips. This turned out to be a fool’s errand, and after a few minutes, he shook his head. “I don’t know.”

He hoped that, wherever she was in her dreams, she knew they were there.

Evening fell, and once again Lucas found himself alone with Max. Robin had left shortly after Max had fallen asleep, not wanting to disturb her, but assured him that one of their friends would be there with her tomorrow morning so he wouldn’t have to be alone.

“We’re not leaving her by herself right now. Maybe ever again,” she said seriously as he walked her out into the hallway. She put her hands on his face.

“We’re not leaving you either, Lucas. We’re going to be better.”

“You were doing enough before,” he started, but she shook her head.

“No. We weren’t. But we will. I promise.”

She squeezed him in a tight hug before swinging her knapsack over her shoulder and sauntering away.

Lucas opened the door to trudge back into the room, and all at once he heard whimpering coming from Max’s bed.

He was across the room in three strides, seated in his usual chair, reaching for her hand.

“Max?”

Sweat beaded on her forehead as her face trembled and twitched. She looked scared, almost desperate. Her hand clenched in his, her overgrown nails digging into his skin, her bony fingers curled around his palm.

“It’s okay,” he murmured, holding her tense hand in both of his. “Shh, Max. Everything’s okay.”

It felt disingenuous to say this, as it usually did, but even if everything wasn’t okay, at least she should know she didn’t have to suffer by herself.

Max gasped and twitched, her quivering lips parting.

“Luh,” she whimpered.

“I’m here,” he said. He caressed her pale face. “I’m here. I’m always here.”

“Lucas!”

Max was on her knees, tearing her throat out with her scream.

“Lucas! Lucas, I’m here! Lucas!”

Her eyes filled with tears as she watched him caress her face so gently, so lovingly that it broke her heart completely.

“You’re just having a nightmare, Max. I’m here.”

“I’m not!” She yelled. “I’m here! LUCAS!”

She watched herself whimper, grip his hand tightly in hers.

Wake up. Wake up!

Max had reached her limit, and she slammed her hands into the dry water, her forehead pressing to the rippling floor, feeling her red waves of hair tickle her cheeks. She let out a whine of frustration. This was perhaps the worst time for him to be so goddamn dense. But it wasn’t just him, her rational mind reasoned. She was fighting so hard to break through, to reconnect with her real body, to live again. She just couldn’t hack it yet.

“There, Max. That’s it. Shh.”

Her head jerked up to see Lucas press his lips to her white knuckles, leaning his forehead against their clasped hands. Max felt guilt burn on the back of her neck as she noticed how exhausted he looked. Everyone who came to see her seemed to hold the same level of exhaustion, she noticed.

Shame and self-reproach smoldered within her as she lay down, curling herself into a ball, seeing the swell of the dark ripples from her peripheral vision.

She knew it. She was a huge burden on everyone. She could never repay the amount of energy everyone was putting into keeping her physical body’s heart beating.

Max folded into herself even tighter, closing her eyes.

Maybe it was better for everyone that she was here.

Max didn’t remember falling asleep.

It was dark when she awoke. But…it wasn’t the void. She blinked once, twice. Nothing. She couldn’t see. She took in her physical senses. A thin tube ran under her nose, two tinier tubes poking into her nostrils. Max could feel a faint hiss of air coming through them. This was her oxygen tube. Her cheek pressed against a crinkly pillow. She was warm, almost too warm. She could feel the weight of what must be blankets on her, and as she reached her hand out toward them, she realized they were of varying fabrics. Some soft, some velvety, some patchy – clearly on a quilt or something – and some that strange stringy mesh that those grainy hospital blankets were made of. She held one of the other blankets - this one fleece - in her fist, and she brought it closer to her face. Her fingers bumped against a disruption in the fabric, and she clasped it in her fingers.

Max felt tears fill her eyes. Immediately she knew which blanket this was. It was from home. Mom must have brought it. That dark evergreen fleece with the scratchy white flowers sewn in. She pressed the blanket to her face and inhaled deeply. The tears spilled down her cheeks as the smell of her mother, of home, filled her nostrils. Yeah, it was the smell of the shitty trailer, but it was also the smell of warmth. Of comfort. Like being nestled in her mother’s arms. She’d spent many nights wrapped in this blanket, waiting for Neil to stop yelling, for the sound of Neil’s hand hitting her mother’s face to end. Max remembered sheltering in her emerald cocoon even further back, when she was smaller, listening to the rustle of the Californian palm trees outside of her window as she prayed for sleep that wouldn’t come.

She startled as a metal door creaked open some distance away. Max turned her head slightly, angling her ear so she could hear better. There were footsteps, drawing closer to the bed.

“Good morning, Max,” a kind female voice broke into the silence.

Cynthia. Max felt the tension in her body ease a little as she felt Cynthia draw close.

“Can you lay on your back for me, so I can get a good look at you?”

Max rolled to her back, all at once feeling anxious. As if she was facing an empty, unfamiliar void above her bed.

Cynthia spoke very gently from next to her. “I’m going to take a look at your IV, okay?”

Max nodded. People warning her when she was about to be touched made it much easier to handle. Cynthia was always very good at that.

“That nasty bruise is looking a little better," Cynthia observed as she lifted Max’s arm in what felt like a gloved hand. "They told me you were able to eat a little yesterday. That’s good. We’re going to try again today, okay?”

Max lifted her hand to her throat, swallowing a little and wincing. Her throat still felt swollen.

“I know. It feels uncomfortable at first. But we have to keep trying, or they’ll put the feeding tube back in. You’ll get used to it again, I promise.”

Max wondered when that was going to come up again. She knew why the feeding tube was no longer there. Not just because they were trying to get her to eat normally again. They were trying to avoid a repeat of…that night.

She had not permitted herself to think much about it. Max wasn’t sure if she still wanted to live, but at the least she didn’t feel gripped to try anything like that again. Max remembered the moment she was falling, the tube around her neck, when all of her loved ones’ faces had suddenly flashed through her mind.

She did remember the feeling of her body crashing against the cold linoleum floor, feeling grainy, yeast-smelling liquid cascade over her, feeling horrible pain in her nose and throat as she had vomited from the yanking of the tube.

What Max remembered most, however, was the feeling of immediate relief as soon as she felt the tube pull away from the bag. She’d heard the night nurse bustle in, and that wave of relief had hit her so powerfully that it had rendered her largely immobile. The night nurse had said something hurried about getting someone and Max had heard her footsteps quickly leave the room. In the meantime she had been struck dumb by the cascade of intense emotions that washed over her. Sorrow at how low she’d sunk. Relief that it hadn’t worked. Regret that she had tried it.

Max heard the door to her room creak open slightly, and as she turned her head toward the noise, her heart started to race. Was it Lucas? Her mother?

“Max?”

Oh. She hadn’t expected that. It was Will.

“It’s Will. My mom and I are here to see you,” he said kindly, and she heard his footsteps draw closer as he approached.

“Wuh,” she said, then his real name bubbled up. “Will.”

“Good job, Max,” he encouraged, and she heard him settle into one of the chairs next to her bed.

“Wonderful,” said Cynthia. “Max, I’m going to let your friends visit with you, and I’ll be back a little later with your morning medicines. Okay?”

“Yes,” said Max. She had to keep practicing the words she could say, she thought. That was what Dr. Cobb had told her to do.

She heard two different sets of footsteps, one set getting further away – Cynthia’s – and the other drawing closer to her. That must be Joyce, she thought. They hadn’t interacted much even before this, but it did comfort Max to imagine her face. Will’s too.

“Max?” Joyce’s voice had an air of uncertainty. “It’s Joyce, honey.”

She heard Joyce sit in one of the other chairs. She sounded close to Will, so Max deduced they must be sitting next to each other. It made sense. They had always seemed close.

“Joy,” said Max, testing the name. “Joy…ssss.”

“I’m sure I don’t need to say it by now, but yes, feel free to call me Joyce,” she said. “Don’t call me Mrs. Byers. It makes me sound old. Ugh.”

Max felt a little grin tug at the corners of her mouth.

“Joy,” she said.

“You’re free to call me that too.”

Will chimed in.

“I brought some new tapes for you,” he said, and she heard the cassette cases clacking against each other. “First one is Fleetwood Mac. Lucas told me you liked them. The songs are Dreams, Don’t Stop, and You Make Loving Fun.”

Max listened to him, eager to know what new musical treasures he’d brought for her.

“This next one is Bruce Springsteen. I didn’t know if you’d like him or not, but we had the tape at home and I thought you might like to try something new. The songs are I’m On Fire, Glory Days, and I’m Goin’ Down. Then I have Rush, which I found at the store. The songs are Tom Sawyer, Limelight, and Witch Hunt. Then there’s a Genesis tape, and the songs are Throwing It All Away, Invisible Touch, and In Too Deep. The last one I have is a band called Chicago. This tape only has two songs: Beginnings, and Colour My World.”

Max was continually moved by the genuine thoughtfulness of this gesture. Music made it so much easier for her to lie here day after day.

“Thanks,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

“Max,” said Joyce. “I’m here because I want to tell you about your mom.”

Max turned in the direction of her voice, frowning.

“My…mom?”

“She told us she’d been drinking a lot. But after what you…tried to do, she said she wanted to get help. So she can be a better mom to you. So Hop and I drove her to Indianapolis yesterday. For treatment.”

Max felt a mixture of relief, anxiety, and a healthy dash of skepticism. At least her mother would get help and hopefully stop drinking, though she was sad that she likely wouldn’t see her for a while. She was more concerned about her mother being far away while the world was crumbling in Hawkins. Max had often heard the faint rumbling in the distance, like permanent thunder. But perhaps, her rational mind reasoned, at least her mother would be somewhere relatively safe.

Max reached her hand out in Joyce’s direction, and she immediately felt Joyce’s small hand take her own.

“Thank…you,” she said. Thanks felt disingenuous, and she needed to practice phrases with multiple words. She felt Joyce squeeze her hand briefly before letting go.

“When I was at your house, I brought something from your room.” Max heard a rustle of fabric. Another blanket, perhaps? But it sounded too light to be a blanket.

Max reached her hands out, and her palms met a cushiony surface. It was a pillow. Her pillow, from her bed at home. She could see it so clearly in her mind’s eye.

“Pink?” She questioned hopefully.

“Yeah, it’s the pillow with the pink pillowcase from your bed.”

Max pulled the pillow to her face immediately, inhaling the scent of her room.

“Would you like me to help you adjust your pillows, so you can use it?”

Max bobbed her head up and down eagerly, holding the pillow out. She felt Joyce take it from her, then Joyce’s small hand touched her shoulder.

“I’m going to help you sit up a little, all right?”

“I c-can,” said Max, reaching out until her hands met the bars of the hospital bed, pulling herself upward into a sitting position. She felt Joyce draw close to her, and the pillow being placed behind her back.

“There we go,” murmured Joyce. “Better?”

Max nodded. Her hand scrabbled around next to her, looking for her dark green blanket. Once her hand touched it, she pulled it up and around her, inhaling the scent as it permeated around her.

“Is that another blanket from home?” said Will.

“Yes,” she said. “Mom.”

“Your mom brought it, huh?”

Max jerked her head in a nod, pulling it tighter around her shoulders. She clasped one of the white flowers between her thumb and forefinger, anchoring herself.

Will paused, then said “Hey, Lucas is coming by in a bit. He would have been here earlier but his mom needed help with something in the house, so he’s going to do that first.”

Lucas.

All at once Max was consumed with dread. In her mind’s eye, random fragments of images swirled around. Dark ripples. Water that wasn’t wet. Her screaming his name. Lucas.

“Will,” she said urgently, reaching out for him. His hand met hers, and she gripped it.

“What’s wrong, Max?”

Max searched for the words.

“W-Wat…er,” she said.

“You’re thirsty? I can get some water for you.”

“No.” She squeezed his hand tighter. “Dark. Cold.”

Will sounded sad when he spoke again.

“I know things are dark, Max. And I guess it is a little chilly in here, I can go find the nurse – ”

“No,” she said urgently. “V-Void. Water. In…in th-the dark.”

 She felt Will’s other hand come to cover hers.

“They said you’d been having nightmares. Was that one of them?”

Max shook her head.

“No. Real,” she insisted.

Will was quiet for a moment. Max wondered if he had actually caught on to what she was trying to tell him, or he was trying to think of a polite way to tell her he didn’t understand.

Joyce spoke.

“Max, honey, I’m not sure we’re following.”

Max gritted her teeth in frustration, letting go of Will’s hands and sinking back against her pillows, folding her arms. Goddamn it.

“Wait, Max…” She suddenly heard Will rummage through what she imagined was a bag, maybe Joyce’s purse. “Mom, do you have a pen?”

“There should be one in there.”

“Never mind, I found it. Max, say those words again.”

“W-Water,” she said. “C-Cold. Dark. Void. Ri-Ripples.”

Max heard the scratching of the pen against paper.

“Water,” he repeated. “Cold. Dark. Void. Ripples. Okay.”

Max felt a hand on her arm.

“I don’t know what this means yet, Max. But I promise I’ll try to figure it out. Okay?”

She covered his hand with hers. He was really a great friend.

They all were.

By the time Lucas had arrived, he could already feel the soreness of his muscles from helping his mother with the kitchen sink. It was never a convenient time for a pipe to break, but it had been especially cumbersome today, as the only thing he could think about was getting to Max.

Once Lucas had jumped out of Steve’s car and made his usual beeline for Max’s room, his mind and heart were both racing. He’d barely slept last night. The only thing he could think about was what he wanted to say to her. He was finally at a place where he could. He just hoped she was at a place where she could listen.

Lucas opened her room door and saw that Will and Joyce were sitting there next to her. She was sitting up, propped up by a pillow with a pink pillowcase, her hair down and slightly damp, a towel on her shoulders. On the table he spotted a cup of applesauce with a spoon in it, the cup half full. Will had a cassette tape in hand and was about to help her insert it into her Walkman, but he paused, looking up at the sound of the door opening.

“Max, Lucas is here,” he said, smiling.

Max’s face lit up. “Luh!”

Joyce stood up, and Will followed suit.

“We’ll get going so you two can visit,” said Joyce. She put her hand on Max’s shoulder.

“I’ll be back soon, okay?”

Joyce brushed some stray hair out of Max’s face before squeezing her hand briefly and heading for the door. She paused, addressing Lucas.

“They showered her not long ago. She’s had her meds too. And we managed to help her eat a little.”

“Thank you,” Lucas said earnestly.

She patted Lucas’ shoulder, smiling reassuringly at him.

Will hugged Max briefly, promising her more tapes, before he too walked toward the door. He embraced Lucas, not really saying anything, but giving him a knowing look before following his mother into the hallway.

Lucas slowly approached the side of Max’s bed closest to the window, sitting down on the bed. Max’s arms were outstretched, waiting for him, reaching for him. She looked like a small child who wanted to be picked up. He’d barely touched her hand when she pulled him to her in a tight hug, clinging to him like he was her last hope of heaven, nestling into his neck.

Lucas felt guilty for thinking she smelled good, like cool water and soap. He knew he was supposed to be angry with her, and on some level he still was, but it was a lot harder to be when she was so evidently pleased to see him.

“Max,” he started, but she shook her head and clung tighter to him.

“Max,” he said more seriously, breaking out of their embrace to put his hands on her shoulders. She focused her cloudy gaze on a spot just above the bridge of his nose.

Lucas took a breath, then took another. The emotion surged within him, rising higher and sinking deeper every second that passed.

“I’m sorry.”

Her brows knit in confusion.

“I know why you tried to do what you did.”

Max shook her head a little, putting a hand on his chest as if to stop him from saying it, but he pressed on.

“No, I need to say it. I know. And I know why you gave yourself up to Vecna as bait. It wasn’t just to save us. You wanted to die.”

She looked stricken. He knew he was right. Max’s mouth gaped open and closed like it often did when she wanted desperately to say something but couldn’t form the words.

“I know, just let me finish,” he said, his grip on her shoulders tightening a little. “I hate that you tried to do that. You tried to leave us even though we’re all still fighting for you. I’m still fighting for you. I just want you to know that we still are. You trying to hurt yourself didn’t scare us away. You losing your sight didn’t scare us away. Those things didn’t scare me away. We’re always going to be here, no matter what. I’m always here. I’m right here,” he said, and he saw the memory of their conversation in the graveyard resurface in her expression. “I know losing Billy tears you up inside. I know you feel guilty for wanting him to die, but you shouldn’t. He tortured you. And yet, you’re upset that he died. Which is okay too. He was still your brother. The point is that you’re okay, Max.”

She looked both anguished and deeply affected by this.

“I mean it. You’re okay. Even now. Nothing you’ve said or done makes me want to be away from you. There has never been a time where I didn’t want to know you, want to be close to you. Losing your sight has been awful for you, I know it has, but it doesn’t make any of us not want to be here for you. Especially me. And at the end of the world, you’re the only person I want to be next to. You’re my best friend. I love you.”

Max let out a little whimper at this, closing her eyes as if the phrase pained her. He caressed her face with his hands.

“I love you,” he whispered again, thumbing away a stray tear on her cheek. “I love you. I’m going to say it until you believe it, Max Mayfield. For the rest of my life if I need to.”

He kissed her forehead, right between her eyebrows, his stomach filling with warmth as he felt her hands on his arms. “I love you. I love you. And I’m not leaving. Unless you want me to.”

Max’s milky eyes were brimming with unshed tears.

“Y-You l-left,” she said unsteadily. “Be…fore.”

“I know,” he said. “I wasn’t going to leave forever.” He’d been mad enough to, but she didn’t need to know that. “I came back. But I was so angry, Max. I was angry because I care so much. But then I realized…I’m angrier at myself than you. You’ve been saying all along, even before all this happened, that you weren’t okay. And I missed it again, somehow. How you were really feeling.”

He could barely keep getting the words out amid the guilt, which was rising in him like bile.

“I told you in the forest: I see you. And I couldn’t live up to that. I promised you I would use Kate Bush to protect you from Vecna. I couldn't do that either, because Jason showed up and smashed your Walkman. That’s why…I’ve been away. Because I love you too much to keep failing you. If it hadn’t been for me, none of this would have happened to you. I told you everything because I wanted to know you, to be close to you. I wanted you to be part of our family. And because I did that, you’re suffering.”

He choked down a sob.

“It’s my fault. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough. I love you, and I’m so sorry, Max –"

The pain overtook him, and he couldn’t bear to look her in the face any longer. He felt his body shaking as the horrible, burning guilt cascaded over and within him, crying into the back of his arm.

Lucas suddenly felt a pair of arms encircle him, and he knew by the smell of her hair that Max had embraced him. He felt her thin hand come to rest on the back of his head. As if she were trying to comfort him. He shivered a little as he felt her lips brush against his ear.

“No,” she mumbled, possibly the clearest she had ever said it, in a voice that was only for him. She clung to him tightly, shaking her head. “No.”

Max pushed back from him, grabbing both his hands and holding them over her heart, breathing harshly, eyes glittering with tears. He could feel her frantic heartbeat under his palm.

“Lucas,” she said, her lips pursing as she tried to form the words. “Y-You…s-saved…mmme.”

Her hands found his face, clumsily wiping his tears away with her thumbs. Her lips pursed again, and he could see the gears working in her head, searching for what she wanted so desperately to say.

“Love,” she managed.

She was trying to tell him what he hadn’t ever thought he’d hear from her, what he had always prayed she would one day trust him enough to tell him.

I love you too.

Max pressed her lips to his and their tears mingled together, sniffling and quivering breath breaking in between kisses. Lucas kissed her once, twice, three times before he embraced her once more, burying his face in the crook of her neck, finally letting the sobs completely overtake him. Her tears smeared against his temple as she held onto him tightly, rocking him.

And for the first time in a long time, he felt safe.

Chapter Text

“And Wonder Woman swings open the door of the plane, spotting her target below!”

Lucas couldn’t keep a smile from hitching onto his face as Dustin punched the air with a flourish, clearly invested in the story he was telling. Mike and Steve were standing on either side of him, their hands poised to add scene-setting sounds along with Dustin’s narration. Lucas knew Dustin wasn’t one to get overly emotional, at least not externally, but he caught the hopefulness in Dustin’s eyes when they flitted toward Max. Mike and Steve were even less likely to express themselves in this manner, but Lucas knew their unapologetic commitment to their storytelling was their way of showing Max they cared.

Max was sitting up, her head turned in their direction, her arms at her sides. She hadn’t reacted much to their charade, but Lucas could tell she was listening. She must miss comics, he thought. This was really the only way she could enjoy them now.

“And the faint rush of air along unseen wings is enough to warn the watcher that he is no longer alone. He responds with violence – shoom! That green guy from before, with the green helmet, matching bodysuit, and weird goggles…Wonder Woman’s jumping out of a plane and swooping down on him!”

Mike hummed and growled with the sound of a flying plane, while Steve made a whoosh sound into his hands.

“And the green guy shoots darts at her!”

“Pew! Pew!” Steve pointed his fingers as if they were guns and aimed them up at the ceiling, accentuating each “pew” with a jab upward.

“And Wonder Woman says…” Dustin gestured toward Mike.

Mike rolled his eyes – he had unsuccessfully campaigned for Wonder Woman to be played by Dustin or Steve – but raised the pitch of his voice and said, “If I can stop bullets with my bracelets, I certainly won’t be done in by a flight of razor-sharp darts!”

Dustin’s eyes were alight as he continued. “Wonder Woman punches him right in the chest with both fists and he falls over!”

He motioned to Mike, who replied, “You began this aggression, but I’ll put an end to it!”

A little snort sounded from Max’s bed. All four boys abruptly fell silent, staring at Max as she snickered behind her hand, her shoulders bobbing, her expression almost begrudgingly amused.

Dustin was having none of this. “Max, is there something urgent enough to interrupt Wonder Woman in saving the world?”

Max let her hand fall from her mouth, a little grin twitching around it.

“Stupid,” she said.

Lucas bit back the urge to laugh as he watched Dustin, Mike, and Steve’s hopeful expressions immediately turn to those of disbelief and indignance.

“Hold on a minute,” Dustin flicked his finger up. “This is when the action’s just getting started! She’s about to swoop down and fight the Kobra henchman!”

“It’s because you made me be Wonder Woman,” complained Mike. “It should have been you.”

“I’m the narrator. I’m always the narrator,” insisted Dustin. “And Steve can’t be Wonder Woman because he’s going to be Kobra.”

Steve’s hands were on his hips at once. “Is there a reason why I’m always the bad guy?”

“Um, you aren’t. The Cheetah is a bad lady.”

“I think Mike is a bad lady,” said Lucas matter-of-factly, and he was quick enough to dodge Mike’s punch to his arm.

Mike, Dustin, and Steve had now fully committed to acting out the comics they read to Max, even reading the characters in different voices and describing the action to her in detail. Either for lack of energy or in alignment with her recent emotional state, Max didn’t let on how she felt, if she felt anything, about their spirited performances. Lucas hoped, deep down, that she was at least slightly cheered up by them. At least today she’d smiled and laughed a little. Today was one of the good days, and he hoped there’d be more of them.

To their eternal credit, neither Dustin nor Steve would ever tell Max to cheer up or force her to listen to them. If they arrived and Max was lying there sadly, barely acknowledging them, both Dustin and Steve would pull up chairs wordlessly and make no attempt to disturb the atmosphere. They were good at sitting in silence with her, and letting it linger without having to disrupt it. Lucas knew that Dustin was keenly aware of the frustrations associated with having a significant medical condition, and as far as Steve…well, he’d always been protective of Max. Sitting with her in the quiet seemed to give him a new sense of vigilance over her. Shielding her from further harm with his presence.

Though Mike wasn’t as comfortable with sitting in silence, it meant a lot to Lucas that he was showing up for her too. Mike and Max had been at odds more often than they were friends, but that did not seem relevant to either one of them anymore. Lucas was glad to see that aspect of Mike had never been lost. When shit hit the fan, it was all hands on deck for him. And for Max, there was no exception to this. Max seemed to have softened toward him too, and while Lucas knew she was grateful for his support and friendship, he also knew it was because of El. Mike would accompany El almost every time she came to visit, and Lucas could see he was noticeably more comfortable now. Mike always had that initial awkwardness in new situations, where he didn’t quite know what to say or how to act, but once he got settled, he was as relaxed and pleasant as could be. And when he was with Eleven, silence was manageable for him.

Max’s next visitor showed up - Robin, toting her bag full of clothing she’d picked out from the shelter piles.

“Max, it’s Robin,” she called into the room as she entered.

Max smiled a little. “Rob,” she muttered.

The boys seemed to collectively decide that their charade was done for the day now that Robin had arrived. Dustin, Steve, and Mike all assured Max they would be back soon with the newest X-Men comic for her as soon as they could find it.

Dustin eyed Max with a very cheeky look. “Max, if you interrupt the class again during the presentation, I may have to fail you on the Wonder Woman test we’re definitely having later.”

Max put her middle finger up in his direction.

“Dumbass,” she said, and Lucas grinned. She’d had no problem with that word.

“Fuck you too, incidentally,” said Dustin, before squeezing her in a tight hug. She gripped him tightly back, and Lucas could see a little smile on her face.

Steve all but shoved Dustin away to hug Max next, rolling his eyes.

“Mr. Bedside Manner over here,” he said. “Just…rest up. You’re doing great. Okay?”

Max nodded as they broke apart. She and Steve had never been great at expressing how they cared for each other, at least not in front of the other, and the same was true here. But it was clear to everyone else.

Mike hugged her last, and Lucas was glad to see there was no longer a stiffness or an awkwardness to it. Max clung to him just as tightly. Lucas was glad they were becoming better friends. They didn’t have much to talk about, really, but right now, they didn’t need it. Mike’s presence seemed meaningful enough. And if Lucas knew Mike’s presence meant a lot to him, it must mean volumes to her.

Lucas hugged each of his friends goodbye, hoping they could sense the overwhelming gratitude and warmth he felt for each of them. No one would question that he himself wanted to be there for Max as much as possible, but he was touched by how seriously they had taken Robin’s promise to him.

We’re going to be better.

Lucas couldn’t imagine what Robin must have said to the rest of them, but their level of devotion was much more obvious now. And it helped to know, more than they realized, that he didn’t have to carry it on his own.

Mike, Dustin, and Steve gave offered brief greetings to Robin as they quietly left the room. Robin murmured responses to each of them as she drew closer to the bed, sitting down in the chair and opening her knapsack.

“I have clothes for you,” she said to Max. Max’s head turned slightly in her direction, and she nodded, straightening up a little and smoothing out the blankets on her lap. Robin placed pieces of clothing in Max’s lap, one at a time – a stormy gray t-shirt. A soft, if a little dog-eared, eggshell-colored sweatshirt with Hawkins High emblazoned on it. Some black lounge pants. Max took each article in her hands carefully, feeling the fabric’s texture, fingers tracing seams and stray pinholes.

“Gray,” Max said to Robin, holding up the t-shirt.

“You’re right, it is gray.”

Lucas always loved to see Max’s satisfied little smirk at this. It was their own little game they would play. Robin would bring her clothes, and Max liked to guess their colors based on the feel of the fabric. She didn’t always get them right, of course, but Robin never made her feel bad about it. If anything else, it was more to help Max practice her speech.

Max ran her hands over the sweatshirt, stopping on the lettering. She traced the letters with her fingers, frowning, trying to read what it said through touch.

“Hawk…ins,” she said, though she sounded unsure. “High.”

“Mmhmm,” said Robin encouragingly.

Whenever Robin had visited before Max’s attempt, she would hold Max’s hand and babble endlessly about how everyone was doing, and what sort of things had been going on at the shelter, and how she didn’t understand why so many people insisted on donating jars of peanut butter and jelly (“One of the ladies told me if they have to eat another PB&J they’re going to vomit, and honestly, I don’t blame her. Just the smell makes me sick now”).

With how Max had been recently, however, Lucas had been apprehensive that Robin’s nervous chattering would only heighten everyone else’s anxiety, including his own. However, in what he considered a remarkable feat, Robin seemed to have brought forth a sense of stillness within herself that Lucas hadn’t known existed. And that was how Lucas knew Robin was able to be calm and present when those she loved needed her to be. And she did love Max. That was obvious. Lucas was reminded of it every time Robin’s eyes twinkled when Max guessed the color of a shirt or said a few words clearly.

Though this game seemed to give Max back some of herself, her mood was still subdued more often than it was cheerful. Especially after her attempt. Max hadn’t really spoken much about it to him, or to anyone really. Not since his apology to her. They’d removed her feeding tube for good now, though. Max’s appetite seemed to be slowly improving now that she could get food down without it irritating her throat too much. So they had that going for them. There were times where water was difficult, and Lucas had since learned that hospitals possessed tasteless thickening gel to pour into water, to make it easier to swallow. She was still getting IV fluids, of course, but they were planning to wean her off. Her oxygen tube was also gone. The nurses had insisted it was because Max was able to breathe well enough on her own now, but Lucas had a sneaking suspicion that they were trying to eliminate any other risks.

The most apparent change, Lucas noticed, was in the mornings. Max was sleeping more, and did not wake up terribly early, but when he would arrive mid-morning to see her, he would find her sitting up in bed, her head turned toward the window. Anyone who didn’t know better might assume she was looking out at the gray rumbling clouds and stormy hills below. Lucas didn’t know what she was searching for in those moments, or if she was searching for anything at all.

He always hesitated to disturb her in that space. But Max didn’t seem to mind when he did.

Max’s speech therapy was helping, too. Now she could clearly say his name, albeit a little slowly. She still only managed “El,” most of the time, as “Eleven” was still a bit too much for her. Other names were possible for her now, like Mike, Will, and Robin, though for the latter it was still “Rob” sometimes. Robin didn’t seem to mind this. Nancy was “Nan” or “Nance.” Jonathan’s name was near impossible for her yet, so “Jon” was the default name. “Juh,” on the harder days. “Steve” she could manage with some effort. Dustin’s name was possible for her, though most of the time he was “Dust” or “Duh,” which they all had a good laugh at. Joyce was “Joy,” Hopper was “Hop.”

Dr. Cobb really worked well with her too. She was able to handle any resistance from Max with what was undoubtedly a great wealth of patience, and he suspected that Max had grown to like her as a result. Now when Dr. Cobb came for their sessions, she would quietly repeat the sounds that Dr. Cobb recited, and practice words. She sometimes struggled with the words she was re-learning, struggled to find the right ones to form discernable sentences. But she showed great promise.

Another pleasant change was that Joyce started showing up to visit more often. Lucas wondered if her recent involvement with Susan had moved her to take Max under her wing, as a surrogate mother of sorts. Once Max had worked her way up to soft foods, Joyce started bringing her small dishes. This evening, she walked in holding a small covered glass casserole dish by two kitchen towels.

“Max? It’s Joyce, honey.”

Lucas watched Max perk up a little as her head swiveled in Joyce’s direction. “Joy.”

“I’m sure you’re sick of hospital food,” Joyce said kindly, setting the dish down on the wooden tray table. “I thought it might feel nice to have something easy to eat that’s home-cooked. Today it’s mashed potatoes with some butter and garlic. I’m going to roll the tray table in front of you, okay? Keep your arms down and I’ll let you know when it’s in front of you.”

Max drew her arms close to her sides until Joyce had adjusted the tray table to sit right in front of Max.

“Okay, it’s there,” she confirmed, and Max let her hands rest on the tray table as Joyce continued. “I talked to your nurses and they said if we can get you to eat half of it then we’ve done pretty good. But,” her eyes twinkled as she glanced at Lucas. “I have a feeling you’re going to want to eat most of it. I make pretty damn good mashed potatoes.”

Max’s mouth quirked up in a little smile.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Of course. I put it in the casserole dish so you can eat it more easily. Don’t touch the dish just yet, honey, it’s still a little hot. Here…”

She pressed a spoon into Max’s hand, then took Max’s wrist and guided the spoon into the creamy mush.

“You think you got it from here?” Joyce inquired.

“Yes,” said Max, and she scooped up a spoonful of mashed potatoes, blowing on them before closing her lips around the spoon.

Lucas was somewhat shocked to see Max’s eyes immediately fill with tears as she tasted the potatoes and swallowed them. Maybe her throat was hurting her again, he thought.

“Max?” Joyce said uncertainly. “What’s wrong?”

Tears fell in wet lines down her cheeks.

“Warm,” she said, her bottom lip trembling. “Tastes…warm. Like home.”

Max’s shoulders shook slightly and she put her hand over her mouth, as if to capture the taste before it faded. Joyce’s gladdened expression told Lucas she clearly hadn’t expected such a reaction to something as innocuous as mashed potatoes, but was pleased all the same.

“That looks delicious, Max!”

Lucas and Joyce turned to see Cynthia in the doorway, rolling a cart full of pill bottles and vials of various liquids. Max hurriedly wiped her eyes as Cynthia approached.

“Don’t mind me, just here to give you your night medicines,” she reported, and Max nodded in her direction. Both her and Cynthia fell into their regimen smoothly, with Max holding out her arm and Cynthia snapping on a glove to inject some liquids into Max’s IV. After Cynthia had given Max her medicines, she exchanged a friendly greeting with Joyce and Lucas before withdrawing.

“Lucas,” said Max. “Music.”

“The same tape?”

“No. Dreams.”

Fleetwood Mac had certainly been a hit with her, Lucas thought. He made a mental note to let Will know this. Since her tray table was being used for the mashed potatoes, Lucas found the tape she wanted and brought her Walkman and headphones over, handing all three things to her. She slipped the tape in, closing the cassette door, and put on her headphones. Then she lay back and closed her eyes.

Lucas knew she would likely be asleep soon. This had become her nightly ritual. A way to escape this room that had been her whole world for so many months. To lose herself in a world of sound. To paint colors in her mind where she could still see them, and to hopefully keep nightmares at bay.

He sat down in his usual seat by her bed while Joyce busied herself with putting the lid back on the glass dish of mashed potatoes. After doing this, Joyce sat down quietly next to him.

“I like Stevie Nicks, too,” she whispered, watching Max listen to Dreams. “I’m sure I have some other Fleetwood Mac or Stevie Nicks tapes that we can bring to her. I’ll look through what we have and bring whatever I find.”

“I think she’d like that,” Lucas murmured quietly back. “Having music really helps her. It gives her something to hold onto.”

Joyce fixed him with a very kind look.

“I’m sure having you guys to hold onto helps too.”

Lucas couldn’t think of anything to say to this. Words seemed too derivative for the feeling that had settled over their party after Max’s attempt. It wasn’t a boisterous love, one that prompted them to give impassioned, emotional speeches like they always did in those romantic movies Max hated. The love that drove them now was quiet. Gentle. But firm. Present. There wasn’t a word to describe that, none that he knew of. But it was there.

“You’re very brave,” said Joyce, breaking into his thoughts, and he looked at her. “For being here as much as you are.”

Lucas shrugged.

“Her mom’s not around, so…”

Joyce was giving him the same all-too-knowing look that everyone seemed to give him when he tried to minimize his devotion to Max. He truthfully didn’t see it as any big thing. It was what he was supposed to do. Max was the girl of his life, and come hell or high water he was going to be here for her. It was that simple. There was nothing else so important. Nothing that even came close.

“How do you think she’s doing?” Joyce murmured, turning her gaze onto Max, who was slowly drifting into slumber, her breathing becoming slower and deeper with each passing moment.

Lucas surveyed Joyce, uncertain if he should broach the topic.

“You…you know what happened recently, right?”

Joyce gave a heavy sigh, her expression sad.

“Yes. I do.”

It was an unwelcome visitor, the reminder of Max’s attempt. How close they’d been to losing her again. But neglecting to mention it didn’t do anyone any good, least of all Max. Lucas was willing to sit in the discomfort. It was familiar to him.

“She hasn’t talked much about it,” he said. “I don’t really know what she thinks now. Or if she still wants to do something like that again.”

That was the feeling Lucas hadn’t prepared for. The now niggling fear that was gnawing at his insides, the fear that was no doubt contributing to his absolute unwillingness to leave her alone for any stretch of time. The fear that still jerked him out of sleep at night.

“I was angry when she tried to leave us. I’m still angry, in a way. But I know why she did it. After her brother died, she lost herself. And I…I didn’t try hard enough to find her. Then we lost her. And almost lost her again. I just want to help her find her way back.”

Joyce’s small hand patted his shoulder.

“I know you’re doing everything you can. It’s all you can do.”

Her gaze became distant as she looked at Max once more, who was quietly sinking into sleep next to them.

“This life can chip away at you, bit by bit. We break down. We fall apart. Then…we grow. We evolve. We’re never the same from year to year, hour to hour, even minute to minute sometimes. She won’t ever be the same again, Lucas. I think we both know that. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Life may look different for her now, sure, but the Max we all love, the Max you love, is still in there. And she’s still fighting.”

Lucas found himself reaching out and clenching Joyce’s arm, the fear suddenly gripping him.

“I can’t lose her again,” he said. “When shit finally does go down, and we go to put a stop to Vecna once and for all…he’ll come after her again. I know it. And I don’t know how to protect her.”

Joyce’s face hardened, and she squeezed his arm determinedly.

“So take that feeling, and channel it. Vecna…he hurt someone you love. He hurt people that we all love. None of us are safe, and none of the people we love are safe. But he’s taken too much from us. And we in Hawkins don’t go down without a fight.”

Joyce gripped his arm still tighter, and Lucas saw a glint of that old fire in her eyes, the one that had made her a Hawkins pariah, the one that caused everyone to think she’d lost her mind, the one that brought her into the Upside Down herself to rescue her son after everyone else had failed them.

“We’re going to kill the motherfucker.”

Max had grown to hate this place.

She hadn’t cared for it before, but that was when she thought she was going to find a way out. Max had slowly become resigned to the fact that she could no longer dream. Any dreams had been sucked into the blackness with everything else. She supposed it was almost a blessing, as she wasn’t having any nightmares either. But that void, that lack thereof – she might prefer to feel pain. Anything other than this stifling, awful stillness that never moved or changed.

To anyone else, it might even be calming in its eternity. Such perceived tranquility was slowly chipping away at her soul, until she was sure she was going to sink into its depths.

A part of her wanted to, Max realized as she sat in the rippling water, her knees pulled up to her chest. Her friends would miss her, sure, but she was tired of being a weight they had to carry. They would be freer, happier, if they didn’t have her to worry about.

Lucas, especially. She watched Joyce stand up from one of the chairs, picking up a covered dish from the tray table before saying goodbye to Lucas and exiting. After Joyce had left the room, Max watched Lucas lay his head on his arms on the bed, close to her hip, shutting his eyes as if he were going to take a nap. The fatigue that permeated every corner of his body was evident, even from here. Max was surprised Lucas hadn’t keeled over from exhaustion. There was no one here with her pale, fragile body more than he was.

She watched him sleeping, feeling a horrible ache in her chest. Max wanted to reach for him and touch him, hold him close to her, protect him from everything. Lucas was the one who made her hesitate to slip away. Because then she’d never see him again.

Her physical body and her body here were connected, Max could assume that much. But she still couldn’t retain memories from one world when she came to the other. Max wondered if this was her new reality – to forever be caught in the ether between worlds. To never be fully connected to either place.

To truly be alone.

The thought made her want to resign herself to the blackness, to allow herself to be fully submerged in its loneliness, its bottomless despair. If only she could swap places with her physical body. At least, for a few moments. The notion brushed across a memory in her mind.

If I only could, I’d make a deal with God. And get Him to swap our places.

Once again, Kate Bush’s words were able to describe a feeling that Max herself couldn’t quite access. She hadn’t tried to listen to that song, not since that night. She didn’t know when she’d be able to again. But Max could understand the feeling in it. Especially now.

She soon realized that a quiet hum of noise was starting to fill the space. Very faintly, as if from far away. Max trained her ears on it, trying to follow it, listening desperately.

It was music. Muffled, distorted, but undoubtedly music. She frowned. Did she know the song? It was too garbled to make out the lyrics, but there was a certain familiarity to the music. As if she’d heard it before. She tried to hum along to the song, to see if she could trigger the memory of it. Words, pieces of lyrics floated hazily across her brain, but she couldn’t make sense of them. Thunder. When it’s raining. Love you. They will come…they will go. The rain washes you clean.

Max strained to hear the music, to pick up any more words or notes, but it seemed that the more desperately she tried to decipher it, the quieter it was becoming, until it became one with the silent blackness again.

She had taken music for granted before, she thought miserably, trying to commit the feeling to memory before it faded from her. What Max wouldn’t give to hear music again.

She was startled by the creaking open of her hospital room door, and the night nurse plodded in. It must be late now, Max thought, as she watched the nurse shake Lucas awake and tell him visiting hours were over. He blinked blearily, telling the nurse he was leaving, but not before he reached over and gently took off the headphones on Max’s physical body’s ears.

It was a small gesture, but it was enough to pique Max’s interest. So she had heard music. It wasn’t just the imaginings of someone slowly going mad due to silence. And it must have stopped because the tape ended.

Max let out a disbelieving chuckle, shaking her head.

Somehow hope had wormed its way in again.

“…and I told Dustin he was crazy if he thinks I’m letting him practice driving on my car. My car! What a cocky little shit. Hello, Sinclair? Are you even listening to me?”

Lucas shook his head drowsily, giving his own cheek a light slap.

“You were saying about your car?”

Steve rolled his eyes.

“I told you, Lucas. You have to let us help you take care of Max. I don’t know how you’re still walking around. You’re still here all day and all night.”

“Yeah, well, I’m just trying to be there for her more, all right?” Lucas retorted. “When she was going through it before, I wasn’t there enough. And now? I have to make up for it. I won’t let her suffer alone again, no matter how she might try to.”

Steve’s sigh was very reminiscent of Lucas’ mother when she was about to lecture him.

“Look, I get it. I do. But we all want her to get better too. I know it’s different for you. You love her. But we can help, and we want to. So let us.”

Lucas was too tired to quip another acidic response. He knew Steve was right; he had to let go a little.

“Tell you what,” Steve offered, his tone a mite gentler. “Will and Robin are coming in the afternoon. When they get there, why don’t you go home, eat, shower, and get a decent night’s sleep for the first time in weeks? I’ll be waiting here to pick you up.”

Reluctantly, Lucas nodded.

“Okay,” he murmured.

“And if you keep me waiting, Sinclair, I’m going to sic Dustin on you. Don’t think I won’t.”

Lucas rolled his eyes, permitting a small grin as Steve brought the car to a stop in front of the sliding doors. Lucas opened the door and slammed it shut behind him, raising a hand toward Steve in thanks.

Lucas could not suppress his yawn as he trudged toward Max’s room, and he slapped his cheek mildly again, to wake himself up. He shouldn’t have tried to nap in her room last night. It had totally thrown him off kilter.

Lucas creaked her door open, rubbing his eyes.

“Max, it’s me,” he reported as he usually did. “Will and Robin are – ”

Lucas stopped short, suddenly much more awake as he realized Max was shaking uncontrollably in her bed.

He was at her side at once.

“Max?”

She didn’t seem distressed, that was the strangest thing. But there was no doubt that Max was trembling from head to foot, so hard that her teeth chattered. She reached out for him, but her hands were shivering too much to reach out in a straight direction. Lucas caught her hands in his, gripping them tightly.

“Lucas,” she managed, before her teeth started knocking together again.

“Are you cold?” He frowned.

“N-no,” said Max, looking anxious.

Lucas looked down at her legs, which were twitching and jerking underneath her hospital gown, and felt a bizarre urge to laugh.

“Why are you dancing?” He quirked a grin at her.

Max giggled a little, this comment seeming to calm her nerves somewhat.

“I-I d-d-don’t kn-know,” she said.

“Here, I’ll call Cynthia,” he said, and he reached up and pressed the nurse button on the wall. It lit up red, to signify it was transmitting his request. After mere minutes, Cynthia appeared in the doorway.

“Everything all right?”

“She’s shaking really bad,” said Lucas, clasping Max’s quivering hands securely in his.

Cynthia backed out into the hallway before returning with a small cart, a square box sitting on it.

“Max, I’m going to take your blood pressure, okay?” she said in a raised voice, rolling the cart up to the edge of the bed.

“Y-Yes,” Max called back in her direction.

Cynthia wrapped a blue cuff around Max’s twitching, trembling arm, fastening the velcro.

“Relax your arm. There you go. Now I’m going to put this on your finger, okay? No needle, just a cap.”

Cynthia fastened a small gray cap over one of Max’s fingers, a white wire trailing out of it and connecting to the gray box in the cart.

After a few minutes, the nurse frowned, her brown eyes pensive.

“Oxygen’s normal. She’s getting enough air. Let’s wait for her blood pressure to finish. I might also take her blood sugar too. It’s not abnormal for blood sugar to get a little unstable when we’ve weaned someone off a feeding tube.”

The blood pressure cuff let out a hiss as it deflated, and two black numbers popped up on the small screen: 120/80.

“Blood pressure’s perfect. Let’s take your blood sugar then, Max – ”

Cynthia rummaged through the top shelf of the cart, pulling out a tiny lancet and some rubbing alcohol. She removed the gray cap from Max’s finger, poured some rubbing alcohol onto a cotton ball, and wiped her finger with it. Then she held Max’s finger securely in her gloved fingers.

“Okay, Max, small poke. One, two, three – ”

Max inhaled sharply as Cynthia pierced her finger with the lancet and lifted Max’s hand over the open beige box, smearing the blood on a white strip that protruded from it. As Cynthia promptly wrapped a Band-Aid around Max’s finger, the beige machine let out a beep, and a black number appeared on the screen: 97.

“Blood sugar’s normal too,” Cynthia puzzled. “Hmm. I may ask the doctor if we need to run another brain scan. It could be neurological. But her vitals are completely fine. I trust you’ll sit here with her for a bit while I go consult with Dr. Sutherland?”

Lucas bobbed his head up and down in confirmation. Cynthia left the room without another word.

Lucas turned his attention back on Max. She couldn’t get a steady grip on his hands, and they kept slipping out of his.

“Here,” he murmured, putting the bed rail down on his side and touching her arm.

“Can I hold you?”

“N-No,” said Max, sitting up. She gestured in his direction.

“You sit,” she asserted, uncovering herself from her blankets with some difficulty. Lucas slowly sat in the chair next to her bed, frowning a little as he tried to ascertain what she wanted to do. The whole of her body still quivering, she slung her legs over the side of the bed, reaching her trembling hands out toward him.

“S-Sit,” she said. “With you.”

Lucas placed his hands under her arms, and she slowly managed to place her twitching feet on the floor. Lucas swept her into his lap, and she curled into him immediately, resting her head on his shoulder. Lucas hoped that if he could hold her shaking body closely enough, maybe he could get the tremors to stop. Max seemed to be hoping the same thing as her quivering arms looped around him.

“Better,” she stated.

Max’s tremors finally stopped after about an hour. Cynthia flitted in twice during this time, once to tell them Max would have another brain scan, and the other time to retest Max’s vitals. Everything still came back normal, to their general bewilderment. Max seemed reluctant to let go of Lucas, especially after he’d told her he was heading home after Will and Robin got there, but after a few tiny kisses peppered on her nose and some quiet reassurance that he would be back tomorrow, she was able to be coaxed back into bed.

An orderly caused a slight diversion by poking his head in.

“Lucas Sinclair? You have a call on the hallway phone.”

Lucas checked his watch. Will and Robin would be arriving at any moment, and he knew Steve was already waiting outside as it was a few minutes past the time they’d agreed on.

He bent down toward Max, whose cloudy eyes were staring in his direction.

“I’ll be back first thing tomorrow. Okay?”

She nodded. Lucas leaned down and captured her lips with his. He soon learned that this made it considerably more difficult to leave her side, not only because he wanted to keep kissing her, but because she clearly wanted the same. This realization filled his belly with warmth.

Lucas finally broke away from their kisses, murmuring a goodbye to her before exiting the room.

The orderly was holding the hallway phone, tapping his foot impatiently as Lucas approached. Once Lucas had taken the receiver from him, the orderly left in somewhat of a huff, clearly annoyed he’d had to wait. Lucas rolled his eyes, lifting the receiver to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Lucas?” It was Will.

“Oh, hey. What’s up?”

“I have a weird question. Do you have any old shirts that have soft material?”

The question was so out of left field that Lucas almost didn’t comprehend it.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“It’s for a project I’m working on. I can’t tell you what it is yet. But I want you to be a part of it somehow. So…do you have any old shirts?”

“Is this really a great time for an art project, Will?”

“It’s important, Lucas. I promise. Trust me.”

Lucas didn’t see what could possibly be so important that Will would stop everything to do an art project right now. But he’d stopped asking rational questions years ago. Nothing in his life had been rational since 1983.

“When you and Robin get here today, Steve’s coming to pick me up so I can go home and shower. I …I can put some aside for you,” he said, still thoroughly bewildered.

“Okay. Thank you. If you have multiple shirts of different materials, that’s even better. Can you also get me an empty Coke can?”

That would be very easy. Lucas drank at least one a day to keep up his energy to be here.

“Sure?”

“Thank you. You’re the best.”

Will disconnected the call without another word, and for several moments, Lucas had to seriously consider whether or not he had just hallucinated their entire exchange.

Hope wasn’t a feeling Max was familiar with.

Life had beat her down so that hope often seemed idiotic. It certainly felt like a fool’s errand in here, the void, where no hope or light was ever able to permeate. Until Max had heard the small strain of music.

She’d been humming it to herself since then, trying to retain it. She couldn’t remember the name of the song for the life of her, but if she could solidify the melody in her mind, maybe she could trigger a memory.

Max started as a voice echoed into the space.

“Hey, Robin.”

The swatches of color began to take shape in the distance. Max squinted, stepping toward them. As the familiar scene materialized, Max saw that it was Will. He was sitting down in a chair next to her bed, setting down a new stack of tapes on the side table. It was too far away for Max to see which ones they were, but she couldn’t help feeling excited regardless. Robin was already sitting in the other chair, and she smiled as he moved the chair a bit closer to her.

“You here to hang out with us?” Robin smiled at him.

“Obviously. This is the hottest spot in town,” Will grinned back.

Max felt a begrudging smile start to grow on her face. Both of her friends turned their gaze on her physical body in the bed.

“How’s she doing today?” Will murmured softly.

“Okay, I think,” said Robin. “She hasn’t seemed as sad as she normally does.”

“Wouldn’t you be sad if you were her, though? Considering?”

“Yeah. I suppose so.”

There. That was another time that one of her friends had made a comment like that. Max didn’t know what they were talking about when they said that. Were they alluding to the injuries to her person? Or something else?

Anguish, fast and fierce and awful, cut through Max, so harshly that her knees buckled. This was the second time something like this had happened. An unknown event that her friends would mention relating to her, and Max having no memory of it in here, but then a feeling, a harsh, raw emotion, would grip her so tightly she couldn’t breathe. Max had no idea what the fuck was going on with that, but it petrified her every time. She fought to return her breathing to normal as she retrained her focus on Will and Robin.

“Will Steve be joining us too?” inquired Will.

Robin shook her head. “Tomorrow. He promised he’d stay at the shelter today since I was here.”

The look Will was giving her mirrored Max’s feelings, and when he spoke, Max was grateful that he was willing to broach the subject in her stead.

“It’s clear he really cares for you.”

Max would have thought Robin would be mollified by this, but instead, she seemed uneasy. In lieu of an answer, she began fidgeting with a loose button on her jacket.

Max saw in some hesitation in Will’s expression, as if he hadn’t realized the sensitivity of the subject. Just as Will was opening his mouth, perhaps to backpedal, Robin finally spoke.

“I’m just not…interested. In Steve. I care for him, I love him with all my heart, but…not like that.”

“Does he know that?”

Max watched the brief vulnerability in Robin’s eyes withdraw, like shutters slamming shut.

“He knows. And anyway, there’s a lot bigger things to worry about than that.”

“But you never considered it?” said Will, and Max knew he was asking because he was genuinely curious, not because he was trying to antagonize Robin. Will didn’t have an antagonistic bone in his body, she didn’t think.

“I didn’t consider it,” said Robin, who was determinedly not looking at Will now, her voice barely loud enough to disturb a mouse. “Because I like…someone else.”

Will gave a little smile.

“Oh? What’s his name? Do we know him?”

Max could feel the anxiety coming off Robin as she fidgeted in her chair, her eyes still trained on the Max in the hospital bed.

“Her name is Vickie,” she said. “And no, you guys don’t really know her.”

Oh.

Oh.

Max was more astonished about her own lack of surprise at this. It made so much sense. Max herself had wondered why Robin and Steve had never gotten together, despite having such a close relationship. And Robin said Steve knew. That meant that Steve had been keeping her secret. For how long? Max felt her respect and affection for Steve deepen. The length of time didn’t matter. That Steve wouldn’t immediately out Robin said a lot about him.

Will was looking at Robin, his expression unreadable. Max could only imagine what was going through his head. If anything was. Will didn’t usually bother himself with the party’s relationship theatrics. He seemed to prefer distance from trivial things like that. Max had always liked that about Will. Though he was kind and gentle, one of the gentlest people she knew, he didn’t compromise himself.

Max could tell Robin was anxiously trying to cover for herself in the silence as she busied herself with adjusting the blankets on the bed, her cheeks going pink.

“I don’t know why I said that,” she said, her voice unusually high. “Just forget I said anything, okay?”

“Robin,” Will said suddenly, and his tone was not at all what Max had expected. “Me too.”

She frowned, clearly confused.

“You…like Vickie too?”

Will let out a hollow laugh.

“No. No, I like someone…unusual too.”

“It doesn’t have to be unusual,” said Robin, looking a little hurt at this. “It’s not wrong to – ”

“Mike,” Will interrupted her. “It’s Mike.”

Oh.

Oh my god.

It was as if Will had flipped on a light switch, one by which Max could see everything in much clearer definition. Every longing look Will had ever given Mike, his moping around when Mike and Eleven first started dating, his lack of contact with Mike since they’d moved to California, the tension that even Max had picked up on in the last year…

Max immediately looked at Robin to gauge her reaction. She watched Robin’s head slowly turn toward Will at this revelation, her expression half-disbelieving and half-hopeful, like she wanted it to be true but she was afraid she was dreaming. Max knew Will wasn’t lying. He would never play with another person’s emotions like that.

Robin’s eyebrows knit with compassion and sorrow as Will’s eyes filled with tears, and he sighed, closing his eyes and letting them escape down his cheeks. Max could hear some of the weightiness leave him. The slight ease of the burden that came with telling the truth.

“No one else knows,” he said flatly, staring into his lap. “And it doesn’t matter. I can’t tell him. He loves El. If I tell him…how I feel, he won’t want to talk to me again. And I’d rather keep him as a friend than lose him altogether.”

More tears flooded Will’s eyes as he looked at Robin.

“Just forget I said anything, okay?” He said in a quavering voice, smiling a little.

Robin’s chair clattered a little as she moved it closer to Will. Without hesitation, she embraced him in a tight hug. Will only hesitated a moment before reciprocating.

“I know,” Robin said in a watery voice from over Will’s shoulder. “I know, Will.”

Max found herself wanting to reach out and touch either one of them, to support them in this timid, quivering, vulnerable space that had opened in her room. Her chest hurt to watch Will’s expression screw up with emotion as he squeezed Robin tightly. She got the sense that Will had been carrying the weight of this for a long time. And Robin must know what it was like to bear that burden. Max almost felt guilty for not noticing before. She couldn’t believe she’d never figured it out. How long had her friends suffered in silence?

As she watched Will and Robin embracing and crying together, Max clasped her hands, bringing them to her chest, her jaw set.

She would keep their secret. And she would never make them feel bad about it.

Max found herself back in the void again before too long.

She always felt like she lost time when she came back here, since her memories from the real world were foggy and hard to make sense of.

It couldn’t have been nighttime again already, Max thought. She didn’t think she’d lost that much time. Her physical body did sleep a lot. Perhaps it was all the medicines. Or perhaps she’d been up in the night and had fallen asleep early morning. She’d done that in the real world too, at least once.

Max enfolded herself gratefully into the swatches of color as they appeared for her, eager to see which of her friends were there today. As the images settled and sharpened, Max felt some of the breath go out of her. Lucas was there, obviously. Mike. Will. And Dustin, who Max was grateful to lay eyes on.

But it was seeing El that pulled the air from her lungs. Max’s eyes filled with tears at the sight of her. El’s hair had grown out, she noticed. There was now a dark mess of curls on her head. She looked drained, sad, but always with that small speck of hope in her gaze, one that Max always struggled to find in herself. Max wanted to break into a run, wanted to touch her, to grab her, to beg El to pull her from this hell she was stuck in.

Max frowned pensively. Was that possible? Could El be the link to her real body? Would El hear her if she called her name?

“Eleven,” she tried into the void, her voice cracking a little from lack of use.

Max watched her face twitch, letting out a little moan from in between her friends. All their gazes immediately turned toward her.

“Is she all right?” El queried, looking at Lucas in some alarm.

“She’s having a nightmare,” Lucas replied, not taking his eyes off of Max’s physical body.

She wasn’t. But they couldn’t know that.

“Eleven. El!”

Still nothing.

“Lucas!” she tried in desperation, but as usual, her physical body just let out an indecipherable whine, her real-world face a mask of anxiety and sorrow as she muttered and slept restlessly.

“Please,” said Max, inwardly cursing herself for how weak she sounded. “Please. Get me out of here! El! Dustin! Will!”

Her physical body whimpered, and Max wanted to bang her head against the floor and yell.

All of a sudden, Max noticed Will’s hand travel slowly up to the back of his neck, and fear flooded her. Could he sense Vecna? Could Vecna find her in here?

“Did you guys hear that?”

The other four frowned at each other, then shook their heads at him. Max let herself relax a little as she saw that Will’s facial expression wasn’t rattled, like it usually was when Vecna was near. He was frowning in a different way. Pensive. Thoughtful. Like he was searching for something.

“Will?” Max said again, raising her voice slightly.

Though her physical body didn’t do much more than whimper, Will blinked, shaking his head, looking around.

“Are you okay?” Mike was always quick to attend to Will. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine, I just…I keep hearing something.”

Max’s stomach dropped to the soles of her feet.

“Will,” she said, hardly daring to believe it, yet finding the volume of her voice rising. “Will!”

Her friends were looking at Will, who had gone still, his eyes darting back and forth.

“You don’t hear that?”

“Will!” Max tried again, stomping her feet, waving her arms.

“Hear what?” said Dustin, looking concerned.

“That. My name. I keep hearing my name.”

Will looked down at the Max in the hospital bed, who was still whimpering from in between them, and realization seemed to dawn on him all at once.

“Oh my god.”

“What?” Lucas demanded, and Max could hear the subtle shade of fear in his voice.

Will’s hand scrambled to his back pocket, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper and smoothing it out on his leg.

“She kept saying these words to me. Dark. Cold. Water. Void. I didn’t know what they meant at the time, but…”

Max was clinging to Will’s every word as his face became a mask of dread.

“She’s not having nightmares. She’s in the void.”

Chapter Text

Hey guys.
I know some of you have been anxiously awaiting this next chapter, especially after the cliffhanger I left in the last one. And I promise you, it's coming.

I wanted to come on here and let you know I haven't forgotten you, or this fic. This story is dear to me, imbibed with so much meaning and tenderness and love, and it will be seen through to completion. That I swear to you.

You have been patient this last month and a half, and I am deeply appreciative of that. I understand you want to see this story to completion just as much as I do.

I'm just asking for some patience, and some grace. I started a new job, I'm getting my master's in social work, I'm scrambling to find an internship, and recently, I have been coping with the loss of someone very dear to me. Multiple someones, in fact, with yet another soon to fade from my life. It's a lot of movement, a lot of grief, a lot of heaviness compounded by the impending holiday season.

I am okay, for the record. I know I have previously alluded to my own struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts in this story, but I am nowhere near that level, nor will I ever give myself a chance to get there. I have a great support system and I take care of myself. Just in case any of you were concerned that this little blurb was heading in that direction. The last few years have been hard for many of us, certainly, and I have felt the weight of that. But I am okay.

I felt you deserved an explanation as to why there hasn't been an update yet. I promise, I am working on it wherever I can find the time. I don't want to give you a chapter that I'm not proud of, so I am also taking time to ensure that the material is worthy of this world, of these characters, of your time and attention.

So take heart, dear ones. This story has not left my heart. And I am honored to think it hasn't left yours either.

Stay tuned, and as always, thank you for your unending support and devotion to this story.

-rbdtw

Chapter Text

Max choked out a sob of relief.

After what had felt like months, thinking she’d have to succumb to the obsidian abyss, this certain hell…Max almost couldn’t believe she’d finally broken through. And to what better people than her friends? Will and Eleven had both been in the void, had known its emptiness, and Max no longer felt so alone. She had no idea what this meant for her real-world body, or for her body here, or what could even be done about any of it, but Max was not able to deny the first surge of true hope that she’d felt in months.

The revelation that she was half-trapped in the void didn’t seem to have quite the same impact on her friends, however. All of them but Eleven fixed Will with quizzical looks.

“How can you hear her when she’s right here not talking?” Mike said.

Will shook his head a little in confusion. “It’s weird, like…it’s distant. Echoey. But it’s her. I know her voice.”

“Will, I’m here!” Max tried again. She felt like an idiot stomping and waving her arms up and down. He couldn’t see her. But anything, anything to continue alerting them she was there, and she had never stopped thinking of them.

Will’s hand snaked back up to his neck.

“There she is again,” he said. He stared down at Max’s physical body, who whimpered and trembled.

Max clutched at her own chest in simultaneous agony and reprieve as Will murmured. “We’re all here, Max.”

“But how could she be in the void?” demanded Dustin, who still seemed skeptical. “She can’t just go there like El can.”

“It’s like me, I guess,” Will shrugged. “Part of me is here, most of me is here, but there’s always that little part of me that’s still there. And Vecna didn’t complete his killing. Not totally. Yes, her heart stopped. But then El brought her back. So maybe…she’s caught in between.”

“But wouldn’t her body be there, instead of here?” Dustin mused.

“It’s different. I got pulled through a gate into the Upside Down. Her mind was there, sure, but her physical body was still here with us.”

Lucas turned toward Eleven, and Max watched both their expressions turn suddenly grave.

“El. When you brought her back, what happened?”

“I felt her heart start again. But then…I came back. And then, when we came back to Hawkins, Dustin told us. About Max.”

Max could barely hear what was being said anymore. Her brain was only just catching up to what Will had said.

El had brought her back. Her friend. Her best friend. One of the truest people she’d ever known. She’d saved their lives countless times, and now, she had brought Max back from the claws of death. Judging by Dustin’s surprised and emotional expression, he hadn’t known this either. That it was Eleven who saved Max’s life. That was the thing about El. She never made a big noise about her abilities, or how much of a goddamn miracle she was. To think that El would expend any of that in efforts to save Max’s own insignificant life was incomprehensible, and Max didn’t know why she deserved any of it.  

“El,” she sobbed out.

From next to her hospital bed, Eleven went very still. Max’s heart jumped into her throat. Could El hear her too? Will hearing her was a victory, indeed, but he wasn’t able to step into the void to save her. Only El could do that. She stepped toward Eleven, her hopes rising despite herself.

“El,” Max tried again. “El, I’m here!”

Slowly, El turned toward her, and their eyes met across the water.

Max felt a shiver permeate through her entire body. She couldn’t explain why, or how, but Eleven could see her. Could really see her. After however long of no interaction with another human being in this space, the simple act of Eleven’s eyes meeting hers cut through the blackness she had become so used to. The look in El’s eyes was unreadable.

“Eleven,” she pleaded. “If you can see me, or hear me, I’m in here. Come find me. Please.”

Max watched all of her friends tense in alarm as her physical body’s vocal exclamations increased in volume and urgency. El’s eyes didn’t leave Max’s as they filled with tears.

“She’s calling to me.” Her voice was wavery.

“She knows we’re here,” Lucas realized aloud. “She’s trying to reach us.”

Max felt a horrible ache in her stomach as she watched them each move closer to her; placing hands on her, murmuring comfort. She watched Eleven turn around toward her physical body, reaching out and cupping her face gently in her hands.

“Max,” she said, with so much certainty and love that it made Max’s chest cave in. “I’m here. And I’m coming to find you.”

Max’s doctors were allowing Lucas to spend the night there with her.

He could hardly believe it was a notion they would entertain. They would get him an extra blanket and bring him in a cot. The night nurse would be made aware of the change. But, as Cynthia asserted to him that night, such a circumstance would be highly irregular in any other scenario.

“You’re lucky that the world’s going to hell, Lucas, because I don’t think I would have been able to get this approved in a normal situation. But, as you know, nothing’s normal anymore. So the doctor has decided to allow it. But I don’t want any fooling around.”

“I don’t – ” Lucas stammered, blushing. “I wasn’t – ”

Cynthia’s brown eyes were fierce, and the few strands of hair falling out of her reddish-brown ponytail made her look even more threatening.

“I’ve been able to get the doctor’s order because for one, her mother’s still in rehab. She also has the nightmares that send her into those fits, and she feels safe when she’s next to you, so the hope is that she won’t wake up convulsing like she has been. But you are to leave when I come in for her morning medicines. And if I or the night nurse ever come in to find any clothes not on your bodies, you’re out. Permanently. Am I clear?”

“Crystal,” Lucas promised, his cheeks still hot.

Cynthia softened a little, though she still pointed a finger threateningly in his direction.

“Don’t make me regret doing this, Mr. Sinclair.”

Cynthia had nothing to worry about, Lucas thought as she left the room, but he knew she couldn’t be sure of that. They were teenagers, after all. It wasn’t as if that hadn’t crossed his mind, but it was truly not the reason Lucas wanted to sleep next to Max. It was to keep her safe during the night. If he could.

Now they had decided Eleven was coming to find Max in the void, it felt all the more urgent to get her out. Lucas knew he couldn’t do much to protect her from out here. Only El might be able to figure out how they could break her free.

He was glad they’d decided to wait until tomorrow to try it, though. Max seemed drained after all the excitement of the day. He noted the exhausted sloping of her shoulders as she held her Walkman in her hand, her finger resting on the rewind button, waiting for Gypsy to end so she could rewind it again. Her eyes were closed, and he could see she was letting herself be awash in the feeling the song brought up for her, the freedom it clearly made her feel.

Lucas was jerked out of his trance by the sound of the door opening. Her night nurses lumbered in, one rolling a cart with medicines and machines, and the other pushing a cot. Both were placed against the wall, out of the way.

He touched her shoulder lightly, and she pulled her headphones off, her head turning toward him.

“Your night nurses are here,” he said. He could tell she was disappointed to have been interrupted, but she merely clicked the pause button on her Walkman and discarded it on the bed. Her nurses didn’t seem to hesitate at his presence, carrying on with business as usual. They must be here to give her medicines and shower her. Lucas wordlessly walked to the bathroom and grabbed a stack of towels and washcloths from the shelf.

As Lucas emerged from the bathroom, the first nurse – a slender woman with long brown hair streaked with silver – turned to address him.

“We’re going to give her a shower. If you could stand outside and hold  –”

 “Already got them ready,” he reassured her, holding up the neatly folded stack.

A small smile adorned her otherwise tired face. “Thank you.”

She and the other nurse – a heavier set blonde with dimpled cheeks – looped their arms in Max’s and were able to stand with her, the three of them walking arm in arm across the room. Lucas was glad they were practicing walking without her walker. He wondered if this was so she did not become dependent on it. Max was doing well with it too, he thought proudly, and his heart lifted to see her able to hold herself up better than before, her expression slightly encouraged as they slowly passed him and entered the bathroom.

As he heard the hiss of the shower and the clank of the shower chair, Lucas busied himself setting up the cot, opening the folded blanket and spreading it out. He supposed he would just sleep in what he was wearing. He’d remember to bring a change of clothing tomorrow.

Once Max and her nurses re-emerged from the bathroom, Lucas waited patiently as they checked her vital signs and gave her medicines. She was able to swallow some water that they gave her without requiring the thickening gel, which according to the nurses was a sign of progress.

By the time the nurses had left the room, Lucas was able to step into the bathroom and use it for himself. Though he brushed his teeth and washed his face, he would shower when he was home. He felt disrespectful showering right after Max had. It felt too private somehow.

“They brought me a cot,” he informed her as he stepped out of the bathroom, toweling off his face. “There’s a pillow and a blanket on it, so you don’t have to share yours. Do you want me to grab –”

He stopped short when he realized her gaze wasn’t focused in his direction, but out of the window at the ghostly white moon and the dark navy blanket of the sky. As Lucas drew closer to her, he saw that she looked anxious. Foreboding.

“Hey,” he hesitated, and her head jerked slightly in his direction. “Are you okay?”

Max made a noncommittal noise, shrugging her shoulders slightly.

“Void,” she muttered, clearly attempting to sound indifferent, but Lucas could see the fear encased in her every muscle. It occurred to him that she might be scared to sleep. He noticed her nails digging into the back of her other hand, so hard that he could see small, crescent-shaped indents in her skin.

“Hey, hey,” he murmured quietly, sitting down in front of her and slowly prying her hands apart, holding them securely in his. “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

Max’s bottom lip trembled a little.

“You don’t know,” she quavered.

“So tell me,” he countered.

A shadow fell across her face.

“Cold,” she murmured, her voice wobbling slightly. “Dark. Empty.”

Her milky eyes bored into his shoulder as she continued. “No dreams. No music. Just black.”

Lucas had heard Eleven and Will talk about the void, and how horrible it was, but there was something about watching Max’s expression go far away when she talked about it. He put his hands on her arms.

“You heard El, Max. We’re going to get you out of there.”

“How?”

“We’ll figure it out. All of us, Max.”

Her hands curled around his forearms. Not squeezing, not urgent. Firm. Certain.

“Kiss me,” she said.

Lucas was only too happy to oblige, though the joy and warmth that filled him almost felt dishonest. Her hands moved up his arms and onto his face as she kissed him.

Max pressed her forehead against his as they broke apart, exhaling in a shaky sigh. As he caressed her face with his hands, her cloudy eyes bored into his, and for a moment he felt the bond strengthen within their gaze like it used to.

“You’re here?” Max murmured.

She’d never asked him that before. But it didn’t feel unfamiliar. It had become their promise. I’m here. I’m right here. The promise of presence. And in that moment, she was asking him to make that promise again.

She needn’t have asked. Because he always would.

“I’m here,” he said with certainty. “I’m here.”

He pecked one more kiss on her forehead before starting to withdraw.

“I’ll be sleeping right over here, okay?”

Max pressed her hand against his chest.

“Stay,” she stated. It was a request, not an order. “Please.”

Lucas had expected to sleep in the cot, but he’d hoped against hope that Max would ask this of him. He knew he couldn’t refuse her now that she had.

It took some jostling, but they eventually got into a comfortable position; Lucas lying on his back, his head against his own pillow. Max was curled against him, her head on his chest, wrapped in her dark green, flower-dotted blanket. Lucas pulled her hair out from under the blanket, letting the red rivers fall gracefully over her back, flowing out over the dark blanket.

“Better,” she mumbled into his shirt, and he could hear the drowsiness already starting to overtake her.

“You better not drool on me.” He poked her cheek.

“Dumbass,” she replied, waving him away, but he could feel her grinning.

Whimpering, piteous and desperate, dragged Lucas out of his sleep.

He became conscious of his arms, which were still encircling Max. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he looked down and saw that Max’s mouth trembled, sweat beading her brow as her hand shook against his chest.

“Max?” He murmured, thumbing the perspiration from her forehead as he caressed her face.

“Luh,” she said in a terrified whisper, her breathing growing shallow, and it shook Lucas to hear it. She sounded more like she had several weeks ago; still unable to say his name, or communicate, or want to live.

“Max. Max!”

Max’s eyes flew open, and she bolted upright, her hands waving out wildly. She flinched away from Lucas as he tried to steady her, trying to scramble out of the bed.

“Max, it’s okay, it’s me!” Lucas grabbed her to keep her from falling. She struggled against him, hyperventilating.

“Shh, shh…” He pressed his forehead into hers, his hands on her face. Max was breathing in high-pitched, shallow gasps, her face tight with panic, her sightless eyes swiveling.

“Max, breathe. Breathe. You’re okay. You’re here with me.”

Lucas started taking slow, deep breaths, hoping Max would attempt to follow suit. After a few minutes it was clear this wasn’t working. Max still looked terrified, her breathing still quick and frightened as she seized his wrists and squeezed them with trembling hands.

“Remember before. Max? When you used the happy memory?”

She gave a small jerk of her head.

“Can you find your way back there?”

Max’s nails dug into his wrists, and she closed her eyes, clearly fighting to return her breathing to normal.

“S-Snow,” she muttered after a few moments.

“Winter time? Like Christmas? Okay, that’s good, just – ”

“No,” she gulped out. “Dance. Snow.”

“Dance?”

And then, it hit him. The memory she must be referring to. Images flashed in his mind; the blue gleamy lights against the silvery paper and foil decorations, the swell of girls in dresses and boys in tuxes, the pouf of Dustin’s coiffed hair, and Max – in that dark blue sweater and red pants, because of course she didn’t wear a dress – a braid wrapping around the side of her head with that thick barrette. He remembered finally working up the courage to say her name, and her whirling around when he addressed her, a sort of guarded hopefulness in her eyes as he fumbled out his request to dance with her.

And then they’d danced, and Lucas remembered the feeling of his hands on Max’s waist, remembered the look in her eyes as they danced, remembered her lips against his.

“The Snow Ball?” He whispered, not bothering to quell the emotion that was rising up within him.

“Snow. Ball,” Max confirmed, and he saw the memory start to permeate through her, saw her shoulders start to relax. “Dance. You and me.”

“Our dance? That’s your memory?”

Max was calming more and more as he spoke, and Lucas felt the same peace start to fill him amid the joy. They were completely connected in that moment. Within the memory that Lucas so treasured, and now was surprised and touched to learn that it was one she treasured too.

Momentarily overcome, he pressed his lips against her sweaty forehead.

“Think of us dancing,” he soothed into her skin. “Think of how much I love you.”

Max’s shaky breathing began to ease, slowly but surely, as Lucas leaned his forehead against hers once more. He breathed with her, taking in and letting out slow, deep breaths until she was able to match them.

As they lay back down in her hospital bed, Max’s arms wrapped stiffly around him, clinging for dear life as she buried her face in his chest. His hand slipped under her head as his other arm surrounded her, trying to keep her safe from the shadows that never seemed to stop pursuing her.

Shaking.

That was all Max knew as she slowly felt herself awake.

She didn’t like how it made her feel – unable to settle, unable to rest, unable to get a good read on her surroundings as she couldn’t hold her hands steady against anything. The worst part was that she wasn’t cold; if her body was shivering to bring up her temperature, then at least she had an idea of how to make it stop. With this, they just had to ride it out. Last time, it had gone on for at least an hour.

As Max attempted to gauge her current surroundings, her now-regular morning ritual, she realized that her head rested against something warm and solid, or rather someone – Lucas. She could tell by his scent, by the feel of his cotton shirt. To distract from her incessant trembling, she tried to place the colors in her mind. Which shirt was it today? Was he wearing the green one with yellow stripes on the shoulders? The dark blue one with the black neck? A different shirt entirely?

Stripes. Lucas often wore stripes. Max clung to this in her mind, trying to recall it. The summer of 1985 surfaced in her mind. He’d worn a striped shirt that sweltering day they’d hiked up that hill to let Dustin talk to Suzie. What were the colors? She couldn’t ask him, the words wouldn’t come out right, so she had to remember.  

Max suddenly felt Lucas’ lungs expand in a deep breath, felt the hum of his voice permeate from his chest.

“Max? Are you okay?”

“I – ” Max wanted to scream. It was hard enough for her to get her thoughts out without all the words amalgamating together in her mind, but now that she had legible thoughts to express, her body was shaking too hard for her to express them. She felt Lucas move his arm upward, heard the click of a button, and then his arm surrounded her once more, and Max found herself wishing they could stay like this.

When Cynthia entered the room, she conducted the same tests  – heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar. Everything was still normal, except this time –

“You’re bleeding,” Lucas said close to her ear, but it wasn’t necessary. The coppery tang of blood was filling her nostrils, and she raised her shaking hand to her nose, feeling it smear across her upper lip.

Mere moments later, Max felt Lucas’ hand gently cover hers, placing what felt like a tissue into her hand. She was jerking and twitching too badly to hold it steady to her face, and after a moment Lucas murmured quietly, “Would you like me to help you?”

Her voice would wobble too much for her to talk, so she jerked her head up and down. She felt the tissue press against her still-bleeding nose, felt his other warm hand cup her cheek.

“I was going to suggest we have your walking session for the day, but I think it’s fine for us to wait,” Cynthia assured her. “I’ll come back in a little bit with her morning medicines, and if she’s still shaking, I’ll call the doctor. She has a brain scan scheduled soon, and we’ll see what’s going on then.”

“Sounds good,” Lucas said from next to her, and Max heard Cynthia’s footsteps trail away out of the room.

Max felt Lucas wipe her nose a few times before withdrawing the tissue.

“I don’t see any more blood,” he informed her. “Do you want to try to lie back down?”

Truthfully, Max didn’t want to, but she couldn’t see any other viable option. It crossed her mind to ask Lucas to put her in a wheelchair and roll her around, but she was worried about her ability to stay seated in it. Her tremors were so bad she worried she would wriggle out.

“Fine,” she consented somewhat sadly.

“I know. All you do is lie down. When the shaking stops, I promise we’ll walk. Okay?”

Max jerked her head, agreeing, and felt Lucas’ arms surround her. She closed her eyes, praying for her limbs to calm down, for her body to settle once more.

“Lucas mentioned you were eager to walk today!”

Cynthia’s brown eyes twinkled cheerfully at a very sleepy Max, who had only recently awoken to do her walking session for the day. Lucas trailed behind, drowsy himself.

Max’s shaking had stopped enough for her to fall back asleep, but this was unfortunately short-lived. Cynthia had woken them both only an hour or two later for morning medicines and to get Max walking for the day. Lucas had campaigned for more sleep on their behalf, but Cynthia had mistaken this request as an excuse to remain in bed so they could, in her words, “canoodle.” So they were up and out of Max’s room.

Perhaps it was the unfamiliarity of the hallway. Perhaps her own lethargy. But Max seemed a bit more lost in this space. Where she could now walk so certainly across her room, she traipsed an uneven path across the linoleum, narrowly missing medicine carts and other patients who were meandering nearby. After the third time of nearly walking into a wall or a door, Cynthia put her hand on Max’s walker.

“I know this hallway is not quite what you’re used to,” she acknowledged kindly. “But Lucas and I are here to help guide you if you need it.”

“I can walk,” said Max, a little defensively.

“Of course you can. You’re getting better at it every time we practice. But it’s still okay to ask for help.”

She was stubborn today, Lucas thought, feeling a grin pull at the corners of his mouth in spite of himself. No doubt from lack of sleep. Max started walking slowly down the center of the hallway, her head held defiantly forward. Cynthia gave her a slight berth, though remained within arm’s reach. Lucas trailed behind. Cynthia had advised him to let Max have her space when she walked, so she didn’t feel crowded by them both.

Lucas watched her move in a jagged but determined line across the floor. Max had always hardened her skin, her heart, against further hurt and disappointment. The same was true even now. Max wanted to be cared for – loved, even – but she never liked to feel dependent on anyone. Not even him. But there was always that small part of her reaching, like a small child opening its hands toward its mother. That tiny part of her that wanted to be protected.

Lucas could see it. He’d always seen it. And that was why Max had pushed him away. Because Lucas had discovered her secret.

Max stopped walking abruptly as her walker bumped against the hallway wall.

“Wall,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Yep, that’s definitely a wall,” Cynthia agreed, glancing at Lucas as they drew up on either side of Max. “Are you tired, or would you like to keep going?”

“Keep going,” she replied. Lucas didn’t doubt her resolve, though he did always worry when he could see that sheen of sweat starting to glimmer on her pale skin.

“We’re still here behind you if you get tired,” he murmured.

Max’s hand reached out in his direction, her palm resting against his chest. She patted him.

“Don’t worry,” she reassured him, before allowing Cynthia to redirect her and continuing to traipse down the long hallway.

Don’t worry. It was such a simple thought. Lucas had plenty of reasons to be worried. But hearing her say it – Max, who had even more reasons to worry – was grounding somehow, and Lucas felt the knot in his stomach ease a little.

As Max continued to trudge down the hall, slightly ahead, Cynthia murmured from next to him.

“It’s getting worse out there, Lucas.”

Lucas frowned at her. Cynthia’s brown eyes were tense, and she lowered her voice even more as she watched Max.

“The sky,” she continued. “It’s…opening up. All red and black and horrible. More and more every day. Half the houses in my neighborhood are leveled, so my children and husband are at the school. People are scared. And my family…they don’t understand how I’m still coming here, still trying to help.”

“Why are you coming here?” Lucas inquired, not unkindly. “It has to be dangerous for you.”

“Because these past few months, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my patients needed me. They always need me, of course, but I have felt especially convicted ever since these storms and earthquakes started. It sounds crazy, but…I can’t help but feel like there’s something more to all this. Something we can’t even comprehend. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” said Lucas, feigning ignorance. “I know what you mean.”

Cynthia met his gaze, and there was a ring of intensity around her brown irises.

“If anything happens to me,” she said, “take care of her. Okay?”

Lucas almost stopped walking, shaking his head a little. He’d really grown to like Cynthia. She had been such a light for them in the time that Max was recovering. And Max…Cynthia had been all but her lifeline. Max was doing as well as she was because of Cynthia.

“You’ll be okay,” he countered, not willing to entertain the possibility of losing her. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you.”

Cynthia’s smile was a little too forced. “Maybe not. But if it does…I will sleep much better at night knowing that she’s taken care of. Can you promise me that?’

They both glanced at Max, who had nearly reached the end of the corridor.

“I promise,” Lucas murmured. Cynthia gave another small smile and said nothing more.

“Lucas.”

Max was turned toward him, stopped mere inches away from the wall.

He drew up on her other side at once. “I’m here.”

She reached her hand out toward him again.

“My room,” she requested. She was tired.

“Can you make it back there, or do you need help?”

Max gave a brief jerk of her head.

“I can walk,” she assured him. “Help me.”

Once Cynthia and Lucas had helped Max turn back in the direction of her room, she started to make her way back to her room. And this time, she allowed Cynthia to walk beside her, one hand around the bar of the walker as she gently guided Max back down the corridor.

Will had requested all of them come to visit a little after lunch.

Nancy was the first to arrive, giving a tentative knock as she edged into the room.

“Max,” Nancy approached uncertainly. “It’s Nancy.”

Max’s head swiveled in her direction.

“Nan – Nance,” she confirmed. She seemed pleased, her nerves tempered for the moment.

Nancy glanced at Lucas, who beckoned her forward. She seemed assuaged by this, and joined them at Max’s bedside, her pretty hand rummaging through her handbag.

“I brought my brush,” Nancy told Max, producing her wooden hairbrush with the dark bristles. “Would you like me to do your hair?”

“Yes,” Max requested, sitting up a little and running her hands through her tousled hair, letting it fall over her shoulders above her hospital gown.

Nancy reached out with the brush.

“I’m going to touch your head, okay?”

Max nodded. Lucas was reminded of that first time Nancy had forgotten to warn Max that she was going to brush her hair. They’d both had an immediate fright as soon as the brush touched Max’s head, with Max flinching away in surprise and Nancy startling so badly that the wood brush clattered to the floor. Nancy had been much more cognizant of this since then. She would always make sure to speak to Max loudly and clearly, close to her ear if needed, and inform Max if she was about to initiate physical touch.

Lucas watched Nancy start to brush out the tangles in Max’s long hair, observed her mentally deciding what sort of style to do today, her expression thoughtful. Nancy seemed less comfortable sitting with Max in silence, presumably because she felt there was no point to it. So she often busied herself with doing Max’s hair – brushing it, braiding it, putting a barrette or two in occasionally.

Nancy was kind, and she cared for Max. No one could contest that. But Lucas wondered if Nancy’s presence and subsequent hairstyling was also her attempt at damage control. Nancy had seemed unsure how to be around Max after her attempt, as if afraid she would say or do something to trigger another one. Lucas understood. None of them had really dealt with this before. The only people who had seemed to take it in stride were Robin and Will. Lucas didn’t like to think about why that might be.

Lucas knew Nancy would not readily let on that she had been deeply troubled by the incident, but it was evident. Especially today. As Nancy ran the soft bristles through Max’s river of red hair, Lucas saw her eyes glitter with unshed tears, her expression far away, and he knew she was thinking of it. He imagined it was an undercurrent for most of them now.

All three of them were startled by the door opening forcefully, clanging against the wall.

“Oh, Nance, you’re already here! Great, I was just about to call and ask –”

“Robin, you can’t barge in like that,” Nancy admonished her, throwing a glance in Max’s direction. Lucas patted Max’s hand on his arm and she slowly began to release her death grip on him and Nancy.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I just – Nancy and I were wanting to tell Max about – ”

“I think it can wait,” Nancy reasoned, starting to separate locks of Max’s hair for a braid.

Robin was teetering a little on the balls of her feet, as if whatever she had wanted to say was getting ready to burst out of her.

“Max, we’ve been researching Braille.”

Sometimes the little reminders that Max was blind were the ones that hit the hardest. Lucas swallowed as he watched Nancy’s face tighten at this. Robin’s face fell at their reactions, biting her lip and wringing her hands a little as if regretting her outburst. All three of them were staring at Max, waiting to gauge her reaction.

To Lucas’ surprise, Max’s head tilted curiously in her direction.

“B…Br…Braille?”

“Yes, Braille. You know, the language with the dots?” Robin encouraged, seemingly relieved that she hadn’t wreaked the havoc she thought she had. She pulled up a chair next to Nancy, her face alight.

“Nance and I were looking it up, and we found so much information about Braille. It’s unbelievable. I honestly didn’t know much about it until we looked it up - it’s so interesting! And it’s easy to learn too –"

“We know you like to read, Max,” Nancy chimed in kindly, as her slender fingers weaved through each piece of the long side braid she was fashioning. “They make books in Braille. I’m sure once we help you learn it we could find some Stephen King for you – ”

Lucas could see that Max was both touched and a little overwhelmed by this. Where Robin didn’t catch this, Nancy did, and her voice became gentler.

“You can take your time, Max. I know it’s a lot to think about. We’ll ask about it again later, okay?”

“And Nancy and I found books on some famous people who have lost their vision and went on to do amazing things. You ever heard of Alec Templeton? He played piano and won all these awards and he was born without his vision. Monet, the painter – he lost his sight later too! And still painted! Doc Watson, he played guitar – that guy who sings Feliz Navidad – people are amazing.”

Robin’s refusal to say the world blind in front of Max, as if it were a death sentence, hung heavy over them all.

Most of the party seemed reluctant to broach the subject in any other light than an encouraging, positive one. Lucas couldn’t tell if Max was truly coming to terms with it or not. It was hard to know what she thought about any of it. Right now, her expression was unreadable.

After a long moment, Max finally spoke.

“Thank you,” she said. She didn’t sound upset. Robin looked bashful, but said nothing more about it. Nancy continued braiding, her lips slightly pursed.

The rest of the visit passed without much consequence. Nancy finished Max’s braid, and they watched Max run her hand up and down across it. She thanked Nancy, and then turned her head in the direction of the tray table.

“Tapes,” she requested. She wanted to listen to music. Nancy and Robin exchanged a glance, and then they both looked at Lucas, who gave them an apologetic look as he wheeled Max’s tray table over to her. He knew it. Max had been overwhelmed by the talk of Braille, but didn’t want to hurt their feelings.

“We can sit over there in the corner if you need to rest, Max,” Nancy attempted as Max reached for a tape.

Max withdrew her hand at once, looking a little guilty at this.

“Sorry,” she said. “Music.”

“No, it’s okay,” Nancy reassured her warmly, walking toward Max and touching her hand, giving it a squeeze before she withdrew to one of the chairs in the corner of the room.

Robin came up on Max’s other side, touching her shoulder.

“We’ll be over on the other side of the room if you need us, okay?”

Max unexpectedly took Robin’s arm, pulling her into a tight hug. Lucas saw Robin hesitate for only a moment before returning it. Max’s eyes were squeezed shut from over Robin’s shoulder, as if she was trying to convey comfort. Lucas didn’t know what for.

Robin didn’t seem to know either, but continued to embrace Max all the same.

The rest of their friends trickled in over that next hour.

Steve, Dustin, and Erica arrived soon after Nancy and Robin had settled themselves in chairs in the corner of the room. Jonathan shuffled in next, followed by Mike. Will was the last to arrive, and as he entered Max’s now-full hospital room, Lucas saw he was carrying a large canvas, covered by a yellowing pillowcase.

Max had grown increasingly nervous, her grip around her Walkman tightening every time Lucas touched her shoulder to let her know someone else had arrived. Lucas suspected that being in a room of people she couldn’t see would be nerve-wracking for a while, even if it was people that she knew.

Once their entire party was present, Will stepped forward, placing the canvas on the bedside table. He turned to address Max, his voice raised slightly.

“Max?” She started a little, her head jerking toward him. “I asked everyone to come here today because…we wanted to give you something. Something we made for you.”

He turned toward the bedside table next to him, lifting the canvas.

“When you’re ready, I’m going to put it in your lap. But I don’t want you to touch it until I tell you to. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Max uncertainly. She sat up a little, smoothing out the blankets on her lap. Then she moved her sightless gaze in his direction.

“Ready,” she acknowledged.

Will gently placed the still-covered canvas into Max’s lap. She held her hands up so as not to accidentally touch it, though Lucas could see that her anxiety was quickly morphing into curiosity.

Will took a breath, perhaps to calm his nerves, and slowly pulled the old pillowcase from the canvas.

A barrage of bright colors immediately filled Lucas’ vision. He noticed, after a few seconds of processing what he was seeing, that it wasn't a painting like Will usually did. It was a collage. Lucas stared, transfixed at all the different items. A stripe of grip tape, black and gristly. A square of one of El's flannels. A green scrunchie. Other things that didn't have much to do with Max's interests, but might hold sensory appeal. A long, beautiful, iridescent feather, blue and black and gold. A broach with a large fake emerald in the middle. Half a Coke can, along with the tab of the can in a different spot. Squares of random materials. Felt, dotted with tiny stars. A square of silk, cut from an old shirt. Some small flowers made of crushed paper. A flurry of items made up the backdrop. Seashells. Stick-on jewels. Cotton balls. Various buttons. Other broaches - a yellow bird with outstretched wings, a red flower, a silver and black spider, a gold skull. Bits of colorful ribbon. A few artificial flowers. Pipe cleaners.

Visually, Max might not have cared for it much. The vibrant colors weren’t really her style. But, as Lucas took it in, he realized it wasn’t meant to be viewed, but felt. It was a collage of things she could touch and feel and identify. To place them in her mind’s eye before she forgot what they looked like. Lucas could not help but feel moved by the gesture. Whether from shock, or not wanting to exclude Max from the experience of viewing the collage, no one spoke. Judging by everyone's faces, Will had managed to involve everyone else in it while keeping it a total secret. Almost every eye in the room was filled with tears; even Steve and Jonathan's eyes looked a little misty.

Will reached out toward Max.

“Are you ready for me to show you?”

Max nodded, her brow furrowed in confusion, her hands still raised. Will reached out and took her hands, guiding them toward the collage in her lap and letting her palms rest on the strip of grip tape. As she traced its texture with her fingers, Lucas saw her face slowly fill with emotion and recognition.

"You - " She turned in Will's direction, her mouth gaping as she tried to remember the words. "S-Skate...board."

"Yeah," said Will encouragingly. “It’s grip tape. Don’t worry, I didn’t take it from your board. Robin managed to help me find an old one in the shelter donations and I ripped it off that. If you move your hands around, you’ll feel other things. If you want me to tell you about them, I will.”

Max moved her hands across the collage in wonder, touching the scrunchie, the halved Coke can, the spider broach, the square of silk. She seemed at a loss for words, instead totally immersed in this new world that had opened up to her.

As Lucas glanced at the rest of their group, he saw recognition flashing across each face at different points in time. Will must have done with them what he’d done with Lucas; called them up or found them and asked for materials. Not one of them knowing what the materials were going to be used for. Lucas even wondered if some of them had reacted the way he had – incredulous that Will could possibly be doing an art project during such a dire time. But this…this had been worth it.

Big fat tears started to fall onto the collage. Lucas looked at Max and saw that her face was a mask of sorrow. She looked both deeply moved and completely devastated as her shaking hands continued to touch every item on the collage she could find.

Max was eventually so overcome that she raised her trembling hands to her mouth, her back tensing with the sobs Lucas was sure she was trying to suppress.

Nancy was the first to break the silence.

“Max? What’s wrong?”

Max seemed to remember that the rest of them were there in the room, and she swallowed, wiping her eyes.

“I – ” she motioned at her chest. Lucas could almost see the gears working in her head as she tried to find the words. It was a new occurrence that Dr. Sutherland had told them was part of her brain damage. Since she’d had to re-learn to talk, she might struggle to conceptualize what she would say. And especially now, in a moment with so much emotional weight, Max seemed to have a harder time with this than ever.

She pursed her lips and started again. “I…died. Then came back.” She motioned at her chest again, more tears spilling out. “I’m…half. Not me. And now…”

Her sobs gripped her so that she curled forward a little.

“More whole…again.”

Lucas watched everyone’s eyes grow misty again, and he suppressed the urge to immediately embrace Max, to try to comfort her. Before Vecna, Max never liked to cry in front of anyone. Not even him, really. So Lucas didn’t want to make a big deal about it in front of their entire party. In Max’s current state, however, Lucas wondered if a dam had cracked open within her, and now if she was going to cry, she couldn’t control it or pull it back. He knew it must be hard for her to lay herself bare and raw every day, none of her usual defenses up. Especially now, in this moment, where her deepest vulnerability was exposed: the idea that dying had broken her inside. And that they, her friends, her family, were trying to piece her together again.

El was the first to move forward and put her arms around Max, who embraced her at once, burying her wet face into El’s shoulder. Lucas put his hand on her back, rubbing up and down. No one else moved, perhaps because they themselves were so overcome.

After she’d pulled herself together a little, Max straightened up.

“Will,” she said aimlessly into the room, seemingly unsure of his location. Will approached her and touched her hand. She grabbed at it immediately, her milky gaze focused intensely in his direction.

“Thank you.” Her eyes filled with tears again, and she squeezed his hand harder. “Thank you.”

Max never wanted to stop holding the collage.

She’d been practicing the word for hours, sounding it out slowly under her breath, waiting for Cynthia to come in and give her night medicines. Once Cynthia had bustled in cheerfully, Max repeated the word to her, requesting to hold it again. She didn’t know when she could ever let go of it. There was so much on it for her to explore. This evening, she couldn’t stop running her fingers over what felt like seashells. They were peppered throughout the collage, and she made it her mission to try to find each one. She’d found only four so far. One was rough, with many bumps and grooves that descended downward toward the apex of the shell. Two of them were smooth, almost glossy, and she liked to imagine they were iridescent, gleaming softly as the light hit them. The fourth shell, that most recent one, was very small, barely the size of her fingerprint. It too was smooth. She liked to think it was white. Or maybe a blush pink.

Max hadn’t found many others since then. She kept getting sidetracked by other things on the collage. Every time she tried to feel around for another shell, she found something else she wanted to touch, to commit to memory. Right now, it was a square of patchy fabric. Max worked hard to try to place it. What could it be? Where could it be from?

She bent down toward it, pressing her nose to the fabric and inhaling. Immediately, she knew what it was. It was a square from one of the flannels Eleven wore. What were the colors? She imagined…grey and blue plaid. Or perhaps red and yellow. She wished plaid had a texture she could feel.

Eleven would be here soon, a little voice inside her head reminded her. Lucas and Will, too. And then…she and El would take the plunge into the void together.

Max pressed her hand to the patch of flannel, trying to ground herself from the anxiety that had started to rise in her. She was scared to sleep. Even knowing Eleven would be there with her this time wasn’t as comforting as she wanted it to be. How did they know El wasn’t going to get sucked down in there with her? Or that Vecna would resurface once he sensed El’s presence in the void? The plan felt just as precarious as that fateful night in the Creel house, where they had been running devil may care toward a solution they had no proof would work.

The door creaked, and she jumped.

“Max?” El’s quiet voice sounded into the room. “Lucas and Will are with me.”

Max nodded distantly as she heard the door open wider, reaching her hand out. It was Eleven’s gentle hand that enveloped hers, Lucas’ and Will’s hands that rested on her back and shoulders.

Max’s other hand clenched around the canvas, wanting to postpone the inevitable, but she knew the combination of drugs she had been given would inevitably pull her into the abyss. Max could already feel them start to creep through her veins, could already feel her eyelids starting to grow heavier. She blinked, shaking her head a little to fight it, her hand still in a vice grip around the collage.  

She started as Lucas’ hand touched hers, gently prying her fingers loose.

“I know it’s scary,” he said, and the sound of his voice made the knots in her stomach loosen just a little. “But I also know you want to escape the void, Max. And El has to come down there with you so we can figure out how. Okay? We’re here if something happens. I promise.”

Max permitted Lucas to take the collage from her, and she sank down into her pillows, refusing to let go of Eleven’s hand. The drowsiness was setting in fast, and she pulled El’s hand closer, clinging to it with both hands.

Someone brushed some hair away from her face, and El spoke.

“Are you ready?”

As her eyelids finally started to droop closed, Max allowed her lips to part.

“Come find me,” she mumbled.

Before sleep overtook her, Max heard El’s whisper.

“I’ll be there soon.”

Chapter Text

Max felt like something was missing.

The void was only ever missing things. Its very nature was absence. No dreams, no music. No love. Just black. Emptiness. Max would have thought she’d be somewhat used to it by now. It was all her life consisted of lately.

She heard a muffled voice permeate through the atmosphere. Max raised her head immediately, to try to capture the sound before it faded.

“Hello?” She called back.

No response. Max turned slowly on the spot, trying to gauge every inch of her surroundings. Directions were difficult in this space when there was no point of reference. She skidded to a stop as a white figure in the distance caught her eye.

She squinted, frowned. It wasn’t like the swatches of color she’d become so accustomed to. This was different. More…solid. More present.

Her curiosity piqued, Max started moving toward it. Small details became more apparent as she drew closer: a mop of brown curly hair, a slight frame. Hope rose within her before she could stop it. Was this person – or apparition, whatever it was – the empty space she’d been feeling?

As Max tiptoed near, the stranger’s clothing came into focus. An old flannel, followed by too-big pants.

Max felt her steps thud to a stop. This stranger…they weren’t a stranger at all.

“Eleven?”

Max watched her stiffen, watched her immediately turn around. Max could not keep a whimper from escaping her at the sight of El’s face, nor the immense, all-encompassing relief that permeated every cell in her body. It wasn’t just El. To see any living, breathing soul at all in this dark pit that stank of death was a welcome sight. The fact that it was El was just icing on the cake.

El’s hands rose to her mouth immediately, and Max could see the tears already threatening to spill over.

And then, Max was running, pelting toward her friend, her best friend, her rescuer, her miracle. They collided with such force that the air was knocked out of her, but she hardly noticed – Max was squeezing El as hard as she could, trying to memorize the fabric of her shirt, the smell of her, the feeling of El’s gentle arms around her. Tears squeezed out from behind her tightly shut eyelids as El rocked her a little, holding onto Max like she’d never do anything else again.

After what felt like an eternity, they finally peeled apart from each other, though Max kept her hands firmly on El’s shoulders. El was sobbing, smiling, laughing. Max was crying too, and she stammered through her tears.

“What are you doing here? How…?”

Eleven’s elated expression shifted into a confused frown.

“Don’t you remember?”

Then the memory resurfaced in Max’s mind: El had seen her in here. And El had promised to come find her. Max shook her head a little. Of course. That had happened. How could she have forgotten?

“That’s right. You saw me here.”

“Yes.” El seemed slightly relieved that Max had remembered. Max shook her head.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” she said in disbelief, her eyes swimming with tears again. “I thought…I never thought I’d…” She wiped her eyes, sniffling, trying to pull herself together. “I remember that day now. When you looked at me…I knew you heard me. I knew it.”

Eleven’s warm hands came to rest on Max’s cheeks and she covered them with her own, closing her eyes as she tried to commit the feeling to memory.

“And now I’m here,” El murmured in her mild, unassuming voice.

Max pulled Eleven into her arms once more. She couldn’t believe she’d ever taken human contact for granted, and Max was afraid that if she let go, then El would disappear; the colors and shadows that formed her shape slipping through Max’s fingers like a ghost.

“You’re here,” she quavered, more for herself than Eleven. “You’re here.”

This time after they’d let go of each other, Max held on firmly to El’s hand as they sat down in the rippling, non-wet water. El stared down at it, and Max was reminded that El was familiar with the unique decay of the void. She immediately felt a small swoop of guilt that El was having to relive her own traumas associated with the void, especially on her account.

“Hey,” said Max, squeezing her hand. El looked up, and Max was shaken by the haunted look in her eyes. “Are you okay?”

Eleven gave her a grim look.

“Lots of memories here,” she murmured. Based on her tone, Max reasoned, these memories were likely unpleasant ones. Max herself had some vague, foggy recollections of sitting by while El ventured into the void, and how distraught El usually was when she came out of it. Max didn’t know what to say, really, so she gave a slight nod, to show she understood.

“Do you know how you got here?”

El’s question was lightly curious. Max shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut to search for a memory.

“No. It’s all murky. I remember bits and pieces. But nothing makes sense.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

Max continued to reach back into the foggy haze of recollection in her mind, her eyes still shut.

“I remember…pain. Everything hurting. But I can’t picture it. It’s just black. Lucas…” She could not stop her throat from choking up at his name, could not keep tears from filling her eyes. She struggled on. “Lucas was crying. Saying my name. And then I just woke up here. No more pain. I couldn’t hear him anymore. I couldn’t see, couldn’t talk, couldn’t move. I knew I died, and I thought this place was hell.”

Max wiped her eyes.

“But then…I started seeing things. Colors and shapes. I saw myself, laying in a hospital bed. I saw our friends. I saw you, eventually. I guess I woke up in Hawkins at some point. My body did, I mean. And after a while, I could move in here too. It’s weird. It’s like…half of me is here, and half of me is there. I move back and forth. When I’m asleep in Hawkins, I don’t dream. I just come here. I don’t know why.”

“So Will was right,” said El. “You weren’t having nightmares.”

“It’s when I see everyone on the other side. You. Lucas. Nancy. Robin. Even Mike, sometimes. And all the rest. I try to talk when I see you. I yell, I scream. No one ever hears me. Not until that day, when you looked at me.”

Max choked down a little sob.

“I’m trapped here, El. And I don’t know how to escape.”

El took her other hand, and as Max met her gaze, she saw tears threatening to spill from her own eyes once again. When she spoke, her voice was heavy with guilt.

“It’s my fault, Max. I didn’t save you in time.”

Max shook her head. El didn’t deserve to feel guilty. El didn’t deserve any of this.

“But you did, El. I’m still here. And my body’s still alive.”

Eleven did not seem assuaged by this, and Max felt foreboding start to creep in.

“Do you know what’s happening to your body? In Hawkins?”

Max nodded.

“Sort of. My casts are off now. But I need help walking.” She frowned. “Am I still wearing an oxygen tube?”

“Yes. And you are wearing another tube in your arm. Lucas says it is for ‘fluid.’”

Once again, Max felt that familiar ache at the mention of him.

“Is Lucas okay?”

“He is there every day,” said Eleven, smiling a little sadly. “He helps with everything. He reads you stories. He helps you put tapes in your Walkman. He holds your hand.”

Max felt warmth spread in the pit of her stomach, felt a small smile tug at the corners of her mouth. She’d known Lucas was there a lot, she saw him often, but she’d been unaware of just how much. Lucas, true to form, was still fighting for her.

“Yes,” she said, closing her eyes, reaching back for a memory. “Yes…I can remember. Lucas read me Salem’s Lot. He…helps me walk, too. Him and a nurse. I can’t remember her name, but she’s kind.”

Max opened her eyes to look at her friend. “It comes in fragments, like I said. I can only remember certain things by how they feel. The fleece blanket my mom brought from home. That old, grainy hospital gown. The thin socks they put on my feet sometimes.”

“Robin says the hospital gowns smell like old people,” Eleven smiled humorously.

“She’s right. They do.”

Max nodded, closing her eyes again.

“My mom is still in rehab,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And our friends…they visit. I think Dustin and Steve brought…X-Men comics? Robin said something about clothes. Or maybe that was Nancy.” She shook her head in confusion. “I can’t keep all the details straight. It all jumbles together.”

“There is a you that’s here,” El said slowly, as if confirming it for them both. “And there is a you that’s out there.”

“Yes.”

“So…we need to connect them. Bridge the gap.”

Max shook her head a little.

“I’ve been trying, El. Sometimes I can make my real-world body move a little from here. I know there’s a connection, I just…I don’t know how to make it any stronger.”

They both sat in the dark water, pondering this. After what felt like an eternity, El spoke again.

“What about…memories?”

Max furrowed her brow at her friend.

“Memories?”

“That night when Vecna…” El swallowed. “We were in your memory. The Snow Ball.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. That memory was what kept me in the real world. It kept me focused,” Max reasoned. “So maybe…my other memories can help me bridge the gap.” She clasped her friend’s hands, suddenly hopeful. “Maybe that’s the key, El. We just have to go through some of my memories.”

El nodded resolutely. “Do you have memories you are thinking of?”

Max felt the grin slide off her face.

“Shit. My memories are all really foggy in here. I don’t know if I can recall any of them.”

“What about the real world? Are your memories clearer in there?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

El squeezed her hands.

“We can try,” she said resolutely.

Max met her friend’s gaze, and each of them tightened the other’s grip on their hands.

“Yes. We can try.”

Watching people in the void never got easier.

Lucas found he was trembling, almost as hard as Max was, as he watched her and El in the void. Neither of them had spoken that whole time, only displayed emotions. Without the context of their conversation, their emotions seemed unpredictable. Watching tears spill down El’s cheeks or watching Max let out the occasional whimper was highly unsettling, and made Lucas wish more than ever that he was with them. Protecting Max and El from whatever nightmares were in there.

He jumped as Will’s hand touched his shoulder.

“Lucas,” he murmured, so quiet and gentle that Lucas wanted to cry. “Let’s leave them be for a moment.”

Lucas didn’t move, though he didn’t throw Will’s hand off his shoulder either.

“Max is okay for now. El’s got her. All right?”

This statement was what finally permitted Lucas to be led from the room by Will. His ears were buzzing as they sat in the plastic and metal chairs outside the room, his mind immobilized with fear for Max. And for El, too.

“Needed a break, huh?” He half-joked to Will, knowing his smile was not at all convincing.

Will made no mention of this. “We could both use some air,” he conceded.

Lucas couldn’t keep his foot from tapping against the linoleum, couldn’t keep his hands from wringing together. He had felt helpless when Max had laid comatose in her hospital bed, felt helpless when she was told her vision was gone, but this…somehow, this was worse. Lucas was totally separated from Max on a plane that he couldn’t even access. Max was completely at the mercy of that nightmare world that he’d only seen mere glimpses of. Not the one currently outside of Hawkins, no – the cold, dark one. The one that always seemed to haunt Will and El, and now haunted Max too.

“How did you survive it?” He blurted to Will, who looked slightly surprised at the question. “The void. How do you overcome something like that?”

Will looked pensive for a moment, then let out a deep sigh.

“I don’t know that I have overcome it. At least, not all the way. Like I said before, a part of me is still in there. I’m starting to think it’ll always be there. I don’t have powers like El. I can’t take down a Demogorgon on my own. But when I was laying there in darkness, thinking I would never find my way out, convinced I was going to die…I heard my mother’s voice. Calling for me. Somehow she knew I was still alive.”

Will’s eyes looked slightly misty as he continued.

“My mother never gave up. You didn’t give up. Any of you. So I knew I couldn’t either.”

He touched Lucas’ shoulder again.

“Max is still in there, yes. But she’s still fighting. She hasn’t given up. And you know why? Because she knows we’re fighting for her too.”

Lucas felt unwilling tears start to fill his eyes.

“I can’t protect her in there,” he whispered.

Will gave his shoulder a squeeze, his own eyes brimming.

“None of us can.”

Max wasn’t sure about this.

She lay supine, staring up into just as much nothingness as there was everywhere else. She could feel the tangle of confusion in her brain as it tried to establish a point of reference and found none, so her line of vision stretched on to a terrifying forever.

El’s warm hand in hers was the only thing grounding her, the only thing making her feel any modicum of safety. They were about to do something either really extraordinary or really stupid, with no guarantee of success.

She thought of Lucas. Max could already see the uncertainty in his eyes at the precariousness of their plan. He would be asking her if she had a clear idea of what they were doing. Not to condescend to her, but to make sure she would be safe. As safe as she could be, anyway.

But Lucas wouldn’t understand. They had to try. Or she would never get back to him. And Max had found herself craving his presence more and more the longer she was here. Watching him from afar was torture enough; seeing the exhaustion make his muscles like weights, seeing him clutch her hand like a lifeline, seeing his rough hands caress her face so softly, so gently. Max could not keep herself from aching for him.

Her friend’s gentle squeeze shifted her mind back to the task at hand.

“Ready?” El said quietly from next to her.

Max bit her lip, but nodded.

“Yeah.”

With that, Max squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the memory in her mind to either coagulate before them, or for the very fabric of their minds and bodies to unravel.

A rumble of sound slowly rose in volume around them. Max opened her eyes to the vast brightness of the Starcourt Mall in the early afternoon, with its summery, cheerful colors and crowds of teenagers and neon-lighted signs. Bright bulbs outlined the ceilings of the food court, and neon rings circled the thick pillars surrounding the octagonal fountain. If was as if Max had been here yesterday. She remembered it so clearly. Judging by the look on El’s face, she too recognized its familiarity.

“Come on!”

Max and El both turned at the same time to see themselves: younger, brighter, giddy. Happy. Two girls, just enjoying their time at the mall. They were skipping toward the Gap, and Max knew immediately what was about to happen. Eleven was about to experience her first outing trying on clothes she liked.

They watched Eleven flitting between clothing racks, filling her wide eyes with all the different colors, the varying patterns. They watched themselves spin around in front of the mirror, try things on, squeal with laughter and excitement as they found things they loved.

Max felt El’s hand tighten in hers. She turned to look at her friend, and was shocked to see tears in her eyes.

“El?”

Eleven gave a watery smile.

“So many colors,” she said, almost distantly. “I was smiling so much. And laughing.”

She turned toward Max.

“There’s more to life than stupid boys,” she said.

Max could not keep a quiet smile from creeping onto her own face as she turned back to watch the younger versions of themselves flounce toward the photobooth. Still hand in hand, they followed themselves into the garishly-colored building and watched as they posed in various outfits, their wide grins never leaving their youthful faces.

Max felt sad for herself, this red-headed girl who had known so much suffering and was only going to know more as time passed. Even now, Max could see how the joy she’d felt that day was a happy distraction from the deeper anger and sorrow that her everyday life was often permeated with.

She steered her mind away from this. No. Let tomorrow’s Max deal with that. For now, this version of herself was glad and happy, spending time with her new friend, and Max refused to let the sunshine of the memory be clouded by her own melancholy.

Eleven’s earnest voice broke into her thoughts.

“This is one of the happy days of my life,” she said.

Max smiled at her.

“Mine too,” she said.

Lucas wondered if Max could feel his eyes on her.

He couldn’t tear his gaze away from her pale, twitching face. His every muscle was tense with anticipation, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He had an awful, inescapable feeling about this whole thing. The last time they’d thrown caution to the wind and did something so crazy, so unabashedly stupid…well, that’s what had gotten them in this mess.

From nearby, Will spread a blanket over Eleven as she lay calm and serene on the cold hospital floor. Lucas watched Will carefully lift her head and slip a pillow underneath it. So strange to think where they had all started. Will and El had practically been strangers up until they’d moved to California. But, as Lucas reasoned, Will and El must understand each other on a level that no one else in their party could access. Except for Max.

Lucas found himself reaching out toward her, taking her hand in his and laying his head down on her bed.

Be careful, he thought as hard as he could in her direction. Don’t lose yourself in there.

The balmy sun above cast a yellowing light on the tile in the center of the mall.

Max and Eleven had reached the food court, the focal point where the most people were gathered. They watched their younger selves peer out from behind a pillar, watched the younger El make Stacey Albright’s drink explode orange foam all over her and her prissy friends. Max and Eleven approached the stairs out of the middle area, following their younger selves as they skipped gleefully toward Scoops Ahoy.

Sweat broke out onto Max’s skin, and she froze.

“Max?”

El’s voice grew fainter and harder to hear from next to her. Max stood trembling, unable to move, unable to breathe. Her eyes swung out of focus, the rumble of chatter around her becoming more muffled.

A deep voice echoed within her brain.

I think there’s some part of you, somewhere deep down, that wanted me to die that day.

Fireworks. Blue and red and orange lights. Blood and sinew smeared across the floor. Glass shattering from the ceiling. A horrible, guttural yell rumbled in Max’s bones, a yell that wasn’t hers.

At some point Max felt herself fall to the floor. She curled into a ball, her hands over her ears to make that awful noise cease, but it only got louder.

“Max? Max!”

El’s voice sounded so far away, her touch on Max’s shoulder whisper-light. All Max knew was that she couldn’t think. Her brain was filled with a blank buzzing. Her eyes couldn’t see anything but blood and dark slime and fireworks. That awful, shattering yell…it was still vibrating within her every vein. She couldn’t escape it. It played on a loop, over and over, and Max could hear her own screaming along with it, a cacophony of terror, tearing through the sunny atmosphere like a claw tearing through flesh.

“Stop!” She was howling, begging, but the nightmares were swallowing her. “Stop, stop!”

“Lucas. Lucas.”

He jerked awake blearily to feel Will shaking his shoulder.

“Lucas, wake up. It’s Max.”

Lucas launched upward off her bed, rubbing his eyes hurriedly as he tried to get a read on the situation. Max was shaking from head to toe, not unlike the other episodes she’d had after coming out of the void. But this one was different. She was crying, whimpering, clearly in distress. Her heart monitor was beeping more rapidly, her breathing was shorter and shallower by the minute. Max’s thin, pale hands were clenching handfuls of her blankets so hard that Lucas could see her knuckles turning white.

“Can we pull them out of there?” He demanded Will, who shook his head.

“I don’t know how.”

“Is it Vecna?”

“I can’t tell. I don’t know what’s going on.”

El didn’t seem to be upset; she seemed calm as ever, lying supine on the cold floor. Lucas couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Had she and Max gotten separated, somehow? Was that even possible? Lucas gritted his teeth in frustration, pressing both hands to his forehead in agitation as Max’s vocal exclamations grew louder and more desperate. He felt so fucking helpless, prostrate to the monsters he couldn’t even see.

Unable to listen any longer, Lucas put the bar down on her hospital bed.

“What are you doing?” Will whispered urgently.

“The only thing I can do,” Lucas responded, and he climbed in next to her. He slipped his arms around her quivering frame, holding onto her tightly as he closed his eyes.

“I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m here.”

“I’m here, Max.”

Max felt Eleven’s arms encircle her, felt El’s warm body press against her. She could still hear herself screaming, still trapped in the nightmare, unable to escape.

El’s heartbeat thumped against her back, steady and sure, and Max clung to it.

Warmth surrounded her. Deeper than El. It was as if other arms were encircling her, holding her close. Like being cradled in her mother’s arms after a hard day. El’s heartbeat continued to pulse, but Max could now hear another heartbeat. She didn’t know where it was coming from. It was faint; separate from El’s.

And she realized she knew whose it was. She’d know it anywhere.

Lucas. She felt her muscles start to ease, felt the knots in her stomach start to loosen. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, the whole time grasping onto the presence of the two most important people in her life, the only two who could make her world feel safe again.

Lucas heard the heart monitor start to slow.

He held on to Max, his hand behind her head, making sure her ear was pressed to his heartbeat. Will had both hands on her shoulders, rubbing slightly.

“She’s calming down,” he murmured, and Lucas glanced at the monitor behind him.

“That’s it,” he whispered to her, pressing a tiny kiss to her temple. “That’s it. You’re okay.”

The first thing Max was aware of was her hands.

She focused her attention on opening them against her head. As her fingers flexed outward, she realized she’d been clenching handfuls of her own hair. Her scalp throbbed slightly. The guttural screaming in her ears had finally stopped, her own howling no longer tearing out of her.

Slowly, the rest of her body became aware to her, she felt safe enough to open her eyes. Her arms were braced against her head. Her chest, tense against Eleven’s stomach. Her legs, scrunched up into herself as tightly as they could be. They were in the endless obsidian abyss once more, the cheerful atmosphere of the Starcourt Mall now swallowed into the blackness with everything else.

El’s arms were still securely around her, and Max felt her lungs expand with a good deep breath.

“Eleven.”

Max’s voice sounded foreign to even herself.

“I’m here, Max,” El’s voice hummed against her back.

Max felt herself start to tremble, her eyes starting to swim with tears.

“Am I okay?” She whispered.

“You are okay,” Max felt El’s gentle hand cover and squeeze her own.

Max slowly straightened herself up, wiping her eyes with a shaking hand. El sat patiently there next to her. Max was unsettled by the unease in El’s expression.

“Do you know what happened?”

Max’s eyes filled with tears once more, and she blinked, letting them drop down her cheeks.

“Screaming. I just heard screaming. And I saw…” She met El’s gaze. “Blood, and fireworks. Flesh smearing on the tiles. Glass falling from the ceiling.”

El’s expression told her that she knew what Max had seen.

“Another memory,” she said carefully. “The mall must have reminded you of…that night.”

Max clenched her teeth in her head, wringing her hands together.

“Something else happened,” she diverted, hoping El did not want to explore that memory further. She blinked confusedly. She didn’t know why her brain was still foggy.

“Was Lucas here?”

El frowned, shaking her head. Max gave her a serious look.

“I heard him.”

“His voice?”

Max felt her cheeks suddenly grow hot. “His heartbeat.”

“How do you know it was his?”

“Because I know. It was his.”

El nodded. “He and Will are in your room with us right now. They wanted to stay. To help.”

“Wait, they are? El – ” Max grabbed her arms. “Do you realize what that means? We made a connection. El, we broke through!”

Max could not stop an encouraged, perhaps foolish grin from adorning her face as she watched this realization sink into her friend’s expression.

“We…broke through?”

“We must have. How else would I have heard Lucas?”

El didn’t seem to understand what this meant to Max. Finally, a chink of light was visible amid all the darkness she’d been encased in. An end to this hell was in sight, and Max felt invigorated. She started thinking of all the things she needed to do when she rejoined the real world. She would embrace every one of her friends, her family - drink in the feeling of their arms around her, memorize the fabric of their clothing, inhale their scents. She’d even hug Mike; stupid, awkward, goodhearted Mike. Her body must be close to getting better now, right? So perhaps she’d even be able to leave the hospital soon. Her mom…she’d have to call her mom. And Lucas. Max almost wanted to cry at the thought of being in Lucas’ arms again. They had a lot to discuss. She had to tell him everything.

Max’s joy was dulled ever so slightly by Eleven’s expression, which was still uncertain.

“I don’t know, Max.”

“We have to try again, El. If we broke through that time, we could break through again. Maybe even more the next time.”

“What if you hear screaming again? I don’t want to hurt you.”

“It was just that memory,” Max said dismissively, not permitting herself to consider that other memories could be tainted with those same nightmares. “We can find a different one.”

“Do you have another one in mind?”

Max nodded. Thinking of Mike had brought another memory to mind, one that she knew for sure was innocuous.

“I’ve got just the one.”

Lucas couldn’t remember the last time he’d stayed up the entire night.

As the boxy clock on the wall showed 3:30 am, he felt his eyes grow heavier. About an hour ago he’d had to get up from holding Max in her bed for fear he would fall asleep. But sitting outside her room now was not much more energizing, and he was continuing to fight the urge to lean back and sleep against the hard plastic chair. He saw Will having similar struggles from next to him. Occasionally Lucas would see his head bob, see him jerk awake and rub his eyes vigorously.

“Excuse me.”

Both boys jumped at the sudden presence of a stocky woman with graying hair and what seemed like a permanent frown.

This must be Lori, somewhere in Lucas’ exhausted brain registered. Cynthia had mentioned her by name several times before. This was Max’s night nurse. He glanced at Will uncertainly as Lori narrowed her eyes at the sight of them. They hadn’t planned for what their cover story would be. And he didn’t know if Lori was anything like Cynthia.

“I know the doctor cleared you to be here after hours, Mr. Sinclair, but I don’t recall him allowing you to invite friends.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” He stood up, holding up his hands in apology. “I should have asked, but I – ”

“Max had a hard day today,” Will jumped in, standing too. “We just wanted to help her get to sleep.”

“Well, I imagine she’s asleep now,” said Lori, taking a step toward the door.

Both boys immediately jumped in front of it.

“You don’t want to go in there right now,” said Lucas.

Lori’s eyebrows raised.

“And why not?”

Both Will and Lucas looked at each other, lost for an explanation that didn’t sound insane.

“Max is – well, you see –”

“She needs rest,” Lucas said. “Like we said, she had a hard day.”

“Well, tough shit. She’s my patient, and I need to check on her. Now move, or I’m calling security.”

Lucas and Will grimaced at each other, moving away from the door.

Lori entered the room, and Lucas and Will scrambled in after her.

“Another person? Mr. Sinclair – ”

“Shh!” Lucas and Will both said urgently, springing forward to stand in front of their friends. Lucas was terrified of what would happen if Lori tried to arouse either one of them; Max, who was sleeping fitfully under her blankets, a sheen of sweat on her pale face, and Eleven, who was lying supine and peaceful on the floor, black blindfold covering her eyes.

Lori rounded on them, looking both suspicious and irritated.

“What is the meaning of this?” She hissed.

“It took us a while to get Max to sleep,” Will explained in a whisper, his quick glance to Lucas stating that he was about to completely fabricate whatever he said next. “We left the room because we finally got her to calm down and we wanted to give her some quiet. And our other friend here – ” He gestured to Eleven, who was still blindfolded on the floor. “ – she finds the hospital really overwhelming, so she’s been meditating for the last few minutes to stay calm. That’s it, I swear.”

Will hitched a beseeching look onto his face.

“Please, ma’am. We just want our friend to feel better, so she can come home.”

Lucas didn’t move, his eyes darting back and forth from Max to Eleven, from Eleven to Lori, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

To Lucas’ utter surprise, Lori’s face softened.

“All right, look. Tonight, I won’t say anything. I know this has been hard on you all. But I am not permitting this to happen again without permission from the doctor, okay? Period. I’m not risking my job for you.”

“Yes, ma’am, of course,” Will conceded, nodding. Lucas quickly followed suit.

Lori moved toward Max, whose expression was still distressed as she slept, her fists clenching handfuls of blanket. Lucas saw Lori’s expression soften just a little as she adjusted Max’s blankets and looked over her IV. He then knew that Lori wasn’t just another nurse either. Like Cynthia, she genuinely cared. She just seemed to express it differently.

“Heart rate’s a little elevated, but I think she’s having another nightmare,” she murmured, more to herself than them. “Everything else looks fine. But I want you boys to press the nurse button if anything goes wrong, okay?”

“We promise. We will,” Lucas confirmed.

Lori nodded her head once, then started to leave the room. She paused, then turned in the doorway.

“Don’t make me regret letting you do this.”

Max couldn’t remember the last time she’d been at Hawkins Middle.

It seemed much smaller now. The tile floors, chalky white turned to cloudy gray with endless foot traffic. The concrete walls, beige with the occasional splash of school colors. Max had never really stopped to observe the minute details. She’d always just skateboarded through the halls, numb to the blur of activity around her. It was Lucas and Dustin who’d made her stop, Lucas and Dustin who had given her a reason to pause. She wasn’t sure if she regretted that or not.

Max tugged on El’s hand, pulling her into a nearby hallway.

“This way. I think I know where to go.”

They both whipped around at the sudden crescendo of voices in the hallway, drawing nearer by the second.

“Come on, I think I saw Dart run this way!”

Max flattened El against the wall just in time for a group of kids to rush by. It was none other than their friends, though much younger versions of them – Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and Will. Once they had all disappeared, El started to step forward, but Max placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Not yet.”

Sure enough, Max herself came careening around the corner on her skateboard, hollering “wait!”

El frowned after her as her mane of red hair disappeared further into the hallway.

“I don’t remember this,” she observed.

“You weren’t here,” Max told her, tugging on her hand. “Come on, I know where they’re going.”

She pulled El into the hallway after their younger selves. Two left turns brought them to a door with a single glass pane. Without hesitation, Max turned the knob and they walked into the room.

The Hawkins Middle Gym would have been empty and lifeless upon entering, except Max and El were watching the younger versions of Mike and Max stomp through the gym, arguing loudly.

“Why do you hate me so much?” Max heard herself demand of younger Mike as they stalked toward the center of the gym.

“I don’t hate you,” Younger Mike shot back. “How can I hate you? I don’t even know you.”

“Yeah, but you don’t want me in your party!”

“Correct.”

“Why not?”

Younger Mike whirled around.

“Because you’re annoying. Also, we don’t need another party member. I'm our paladin, Will's our cleric, Dustin's our bard, Lucas is our ranger, and El is our mage.”

As they watched younger Max inquire about El, Max herself glanced at her, unsure how she was taking any of this.

“It gets better,” she muttered apologetically.

El’s expression was slowly becoming a mask of guilt.

“No, I…I remember now.”

Max frowned. “What? You weren’t here.”

El shook her head, pointing at the double doors of the gym. By now, younger Max was on her skateboard doing slow circles around Mike, who seemed to be softening toward her, albeit very begrudgingly. All of a sudden, a curly mop of hair and a solemn, unsure face appeared in one of the glass panes.

Max watched in utter astonishment as younger El’s head jerked sharply to the left, and younger Max was promptly yanked from her board, falling hard onto the wooden floor.

“That was you?” Her eyebrows rose in surprise, and El looked even more remorseful.

“I thought…Mike didn’t love me anymore. That he had found someone else. I thought you…he was with you.”

Max let out a cackle before she could stop herself.

“Mike? Oh my god. No. Never.”

El gave an uncertain smile at her laughter, and suddenly El’s first reaction to meeting her made a lot more sense. That stony gaze when Max had held out her hand – El had been jealous of her. She bit back the urge to laugh again. She could not describe how far the thought of dating Mike had been from her mind, both then and now. Especially now. As Max watched herself breathlessly tell Mike she felt something tug on her board, she felt an unwitting smile adorn her face as they watched Mike stiffen, watched him turn toward the double doors.

“See?” Max pointed out to El, whose eyes had softened sadly watching Mike. “It’s not me he loved.”

Mike bolted toward the doors, rushing out of them without another word, and then the gym was empty once more.

“We can leave now,” murmured El, squeezing Max’s hand. Max squeezed back, and shut her eyes to concentrate.

When Max opened her eyes again, they were consumed in darkness once more, and El was helping her sit up.

“See?” Max tried to be reassuring. “That memory wasn’t bad. We still had to listen to stupid Mike, but – ”

Max caught a glimpse of El’s overwhelmingly guilty facial expression and stopped short.

“El, I’m not upset. Really. You didn’t know who I was.”

“I wasn’t nice,” said El. “When we met.”

“Well, now it makes more sense why,” said Max. “Like I said, there was never any chance of me and Mike. I’ve never liked him like that, or even thought about it. Besides, he – ”

Max stopped short, horrified at herself. He’s already got someone who likes him. She’d almost spilled the beans on Will’s secret.

“He…what?” El frowned.

“ – he doesn’t like me anyway,” Max corrected hastily.

El shook her head.

“He cares for you. He visits just like all of us do.”

An unexpected warmth filled Max at this. She and Mike argued often, but it was nice to know he still cared. Perhaps their mutual love for El was what did it. He’d certainly softened toward her since then.

El broke into her thoughts. “Did we make any connection that time?”

Max shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t feel anything different. Should we try one more?”

El frowned uncertainly. “Max, are you sure?”

Max rolled her eyes. “Now you sound like Lucas. I’m fine. I want to try again.”

As Max took El’s hand and they lay back again, she allowed the memory to form in her mind, one that she knew was happy.

She thought of Lucas and Will, and was thankful they were nearby as she closed her eyes.

Lucas wasn’t sure he’d ever seen this time of the morning.

Maybe for basketball, his logical mind mused lazily. There had been some early mornings for training. But he wasn’t sure if they had ever seen five o’clock in the morning. At least, not that he could remember right now.

Lucas had hit what he believed was a second wind. His brain was still delirious from lack of sleep, but it was as if his body had been shocked with a jolt of electricity, which left him with a nervous, jittery energy. Will seemed to be experiencing the same. He’d brought along a sketchbook and was scribbling something furiously on one of the weathered pages. From next to him, El continued to lie on the floor calmly, covered by the hospital blanket. Almost as if she was sleeping.

Max didn’t look quite so peaceful. The anxiety Lucas felt was just as natural as breathing now; an additional part of living. Max’s expression looked pained, her fists still clenching handfuls of blankets. Lucas saw the occasional droplet of sweat run down from her head. She still whimpered at times, but it seemed less desperate now.

The room door creaked, and Lori appeared, wheeling a cart of medicines.

“I can’t believe neither of you are asleep,” she observed as she walked in.

“We’re just sitting up in case Max needs us,” said Will, and Lucas had to bite back a laugh at the absolutely angelic expression Will was able to produce. Everything was much funnier at five in the morning.

“Well, aren’t you a saint,” said Lori, without looking at him. She pulled a fresh bag of fluid from the cart, replacing the now empty one on Max’s IV pole. As she glanced over at Max’s heart monitor, Lucas noticed her pause with a concerned frown.

“What’s wrong? Is she okay?”

“Her heart rate is still high,” Lori murmured, and she walked briskly over to the cart, producing a blood pressure machine. “I need to take her blood pressure.”

She fastened the cuff on Max and Lucas watched it tighten, starting to feel anxious. He didn’t know what would happen if they had to pull her out of the void, but he also didn’t know what would happen if they made her stay. Neither option seemed good. Will also looked worried, glancing briefly at Eleven before looking back up toward Max.

There was a hiss as the cuff deflated, and Lori said “136 over 100. We need to wake her.”

Lucas and Will locked eyes and stood up as Lori started shaking Max.

“Max, I need you to wake up now. Max?”

A cool autumn breeze flowed through Max’s hair.

Brown and orange leaves fluttered along the pavement as countless costumed kids walked around Max and Eleven. Houses along the street were decorated, doors opening to deposit candy for trick-or-treaters.

El frowned.

“I don’t know this one either.”

Max shook her head.

“This is Halloween,” she said. “I didn’t know you yet. Dustin and Lucas asked me to trick-or-treat with them in Loch Nora.”

“You knew them already?”

“Not really. I mean, sort of.”

“Sort of?” El’s eyebrows were knitting in confusion.

“I had only just met them. I was new in school, at Hawkins Middle. Just moved from California, away from my dad…and the boys all watched me. Mike, Will, Dustin, and Lucas. They were trying to find the person who beat Dustin’s score in Dig Dug.”

“And that was you?”

“Of course. My score could run laps around Dustin’s. And that’s when they started following me around. I told them to leave me alone, that they were being creepy, and Dustin and Lucas invited me to Halloween with them.”

Max chuckled lightly.

“I almost didn’t go. They were at school in those stupid Ghostbusters costumes. They were the freaks. I always heard the whispers in the hall, saw the looks they were getting. But…I was a freak too. And they were the only people who had bothered trying to get to know me. So…I went.”

“They were trying to be your friend,” El reasoned.

“Seems like that.”

Shortly thereafter, they saw the four boys in their Ghostbusters costumes and handmade proton packs, hiking up the street with their treat bags in hand. They watched as a masked Max jumped out and scared them. El even startled backward a little. Max, amid her laughter, pulled her back upward. They then watched as the younger Max pulled off her mask, revealing herself and teasing the boys for being scared.

The younger Max then joined their group, and the five of them continued to trick-or-treat. There was a wistful sort of look in Eleven’s eyes as she watched Lucas and Dustin try to say “totally tubular” to Max, who in this context looked both amused and incredulous.

“You had fun,” Eleven said. Max didn’t miss the slight sadness in her voice. She opened her mouth to say something, perhaps assure El that she hadn’t missed much, but a different voice interrupted them.

“Did you agree to this?”

It was Mike, skulking behind with Will as Dustin, Lucas, and Max walked further ahead.

“What?”

“Her. Joining our party.”

“It’s just for Halloween,” the younger Will reasoned, shrugging.

The younger Mike shook his head a little, his jaw set. “You should have checked with me.”

“They were excited, and I guess I thought you’d be okay with it.”

“She’s ruining the best night of the year,” Mike scowled, and they watched him walk further away from Will to another driveway.

Max bit her lip, a little stung. She’d known about Mike’s resistance to her joining the party, and many times after that night she would become more and more aware of it. But that didn’t make hearing it any easier. 

El turned to Max, immediately apologetic.

“He didn’t mean that – he was just – ”

“Yes, he did,” said Max, waving a hand. “But it’s okay. I know it’s different now.”

Eleven was spared the trouble of responding by Will, who all of a sudden went stiff. They watched his eyes roll back in his head, watched him shudder and shake. A shiver ran down Max’s spine. Watching anyone go into the void was unsettling. And at the time, Max hadn’t known what was going on. But knowing what Will was seeing, what he was feeling…it cut Max much more deeply now.

Pain, sudden and splitting, sliced through her skull, so powerfully that Max stumbled. Her knees buckling, she fell onto the pavement, clutching her head.

“Max? Max!”

El’s hands were on her at once. The pain climbed terrible heights in a matter of moments, Max’s eyes squeezed shut. She felt like she was about to be sick.

“El,” she choked. “I can’t be in here anymore. We have to wake up.”

“Wake up. Max, wake up!”

Chaos swarmed around her as Max jerked awake in darkness. She could hear someone calling for her, but they were mixed in with a cacophony of other sounds – monitors beeping, staff talking, machines buzzing. She could feel blood, thick and tangy, flowing from her nose onto her upper lip. The smell made her nauseous. She pulled herself up by one of the bars on her bed and threw up over the side of the mattress. Max tried not to gag again as the putrid smell of vomit joined the many other smells in the room. Multiple hands touched her arms, her back, her shoulders. Someone was moving her hair away from her face.

“Okay, easy. You’re all right.”

“Vitals are stablizing. Looks like she had a bad nightmare.”

Max tried to talk but coughed up and spat out the last bit of slime and bile instead. Her mouth tasted awful, but at least she felt better after puking. She willed herself to take a couple deep breaths.

“El,” she finally gasped.

Blessedly, she heard El’s voice close by.

“Max, I’m here. I’m here.”

“Lucas,” Max said urgently. “Will.”

“They’re here too. They’re okay.”

“It might be best if you leave – ” Max heard a staff suggest meekly.

She cried out. “No!”

“Everyone, out. Enough. I’ve got her.”

Cynthia. Max sobbed a little in relief. Cynthia was the only staff she trusted in this hospital. If Cynthia was here, then everything would be okay. She felt Cynthia’s warm hand, heard Cynthia’s calm voice nearby.

“Don’t worry, Max. Everything’s all right. You’re okay.”

One by one, the pairs of hands released her, and she heard multiple pairs of footsteps trailing away. Other hands held her arms up now. She recognized Lucas’ rough hands, El’s gentle ones. Even Will’s uncertain hands rested against her back.

“Max,” Cynthia murmured gently. “Can I get you to lay back?”

Max shook her head. “No. El.”

El’s arms surrounded her, and she clung to her friend at once, pressing her face into her shirt, inhaling her scent. She was okay. El was okay. She was safe. Feeling El’s warm hand against her hair caused Max’s eyes to fill with tears. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling tears trickle down her face.

“It’s okay,” El whispered. “It’s okay.”

Lucas knew it would be a rough night.

Since Max had been showered that morning after her ordeal, Lucas decided to throw caution to the wind and shower himself before they went to bed. As he felt the hot water hit the back of his neck, he couldn’t get the image of her waking up out of his mind. The thick blood running from her nose, her white face, her wide unseeing eyes.

She hadn’t been right today, either, Lucas thought. Steve, Dustin, and Robin had been her guests that day while Lucas and Will went home and slept. Max had responded to them normally, as Robin had informed Lucas later. Max had carried on regular conversation, laughed at Dustin’s stupid jokes as if nothing was wrong. But when Lucas arrived that afternoon, he could see that a piece of her had been chipped away, could see the shakiness in her expression that the others couldn’t. Being in the void with El had destabilized her slightly, and Lucas had worried that this might be the case.

Lucas emerged from the shower, toweling himself off and putting on pajamas. He knew he wouldn’t get much sleep since he’d slept most of the day, but if it would help Max sleep, he would do it.

When he re-entered her room, Max was sitting cross-legged on her mattress. She was picking at a loose string on her hospital blanket, her cloudy eyes staring unseeingly down at her bed. Though blind, her eyes still seemed far away, like her mind was somewhere else. She had her headphones on, listening to Gypsy, but even Fleetwood Mac didn’t seem to be working much right now.

Max jumped as Lucas announced himself.

“Max? Do you need anything before we go to bed?”

“No,” Max muttered. Even her voice sounded different.

Lucas had known before he’d come in today that Max would have a hard day. He’d had an idea to try to help. It wouldn’t fix her problems, no, but it might provide a welcome distraction from them. And he had secretly been hoping to show up Will’s collage a bit. But mostly the first thing.

Lucas reached down into his bag and pulled out his cassette player, setting it down on the table.

“Max?”

She turned her head in his direction.

“I have an idea.”

Max blinked, nondescript. He pressed on.

“There’s a song I like. You have it on tape. I want to listen to the song with you.”

She frowned, reaching up and touching her headphones.

“Not with those. I brought my cassette player.”

Max nodded a little, giving him permission. He looked through the now numerous tapes on her tray table and found the one he was looking for. That song, that same song he’d listened to that day he was aching for her. It was the first track on the tape, and so he popped it into his cassette player and started to rewind it. Then he walked over to Max’s bed, where she was still sitting up.

“Let’s dance, Max.”

Max turned her head a little in his direction, and her amused facial expression was so reminiscent of the old Max that he felt affection and sorrow cross paths inside him.

“Stupid,” she said, though she was smiling, and she moved toward the edge of the bed.

“I want – ” Max stopped, then started again. “Stand up. With my feet.”

“Here,” he said, putting the side bar down. “Let’s do it this way. Let your legs hang over the bed.”

She did so, Lucas stood very close, enough so that his knees were almost touching hers.

“Move your feet until you feel my shoes,” he said. She followed suit, concentrating. He felt her bare feet touch the tops of his sneakers.

“I’m going to help you stand up. Okay? I won’t let you fall.”

Max looked apprehensive.

“Can’t walk,” she said, as if she were hesitating about her previous decision.

“You’re getting better at it, though. I’ve seen it. If you start to get too tired, we can figure something else out.”

Lucas took her hands, and she gripped them tightly.

“On three. One, two, three.”

On three he helped her to a standing position, her bare feet on his sneakers. She yelped, lurching forward and wrapping her arms around his neck.

“It’s okay, I got you, I got you,” he said, holding her securely.

With one hand he reached out and clicked play on the cassette player.

As the song began, that same simple piano melody he’d heard all those weeks ago, Lucas started to sway gently with Max, his arms still surrounding her.

“I got you,” he said again, as her arms tightened around his neck, seeming to be more afraid that she would fall than anything else. “I had to train for basketball, remember?”

Max nodded, though her grip on him did not loosen. The song continued, the lilting piano melody giving way to the singer, who crooned:

As time goes on,

I realize

Just what you mean

To me

Lucas closed his eyes, drinking in the feeling of her in his arms. Yes, he held her as much as he possibly could now, but this felt different. Their bodies pressed against one another, their embrace so warm and so real. Max was the only real thing in the world, and he weaved his fingers into her hair, holding her even more tightly, feeling lost in this hazy dream they were in.

He felt Max bury her face in his neck, felt the tears on her cheeks from the song.

“Don’t cry,” he murmured. “I love you.”

Max gave a little sob, and lifted her face from his neck to press her lips to his cheek.

“I love you,” she whispered against his skin.

And as they swayed to the last few words of the song, Lucas let the memory of the Snow Ball float lazily across his mind. That had been wonderful, a memory he treasured, but this? There was no comparison to this. She was his, and he was hers. And right now, that was the only thing they needed to know.

And dream

Of our moments together

Colour my world

With hope

Of loving you.

Chapter Text

Lucas couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so tired.

Eleven had called for an emergency meeting that morning, just as the sun was coming up. It hadn’t taken long for Lucas and Will to rally all of them together: Nancy, Jonathan, Robin, Steve, Dustin, Mike, and Erica.

The grimy fluorescent light fixture hanging from the roof of Max’s trailer shed a yellowish hue over their party as they gathered in the living room. If you could call it that anymore. No one had lived in it now for some time. Max never really lived in this space, Lucas conceded to himself. She just existed in it.

Lucas noticed that some of his friends seemed very comfortable in Max’s trailer and was vaguely reminded that several of them had been here more than once. Since Max’s mother had gone to rehab, the party – sometimes in small groups, sometimes individually – had been stopping by periodically. At first, it was for upkeep: throwing out any rotten food, giving the floor a sweep, straightening up. After a while, though, certain party members started proposing ideas to better Max’s living quarters. Lucas had a feeling that Robin was the mastermind behind this, especially after she’d been insistent that the party would do better to support him and Max. Steve, who often relayed the goings-on of the visits, seemed to agree.

Jonathan, who had been largely nondescript up until this point, had taken it upon himself to travel to Max’s trailer and start making it more blind-friendly. Nancy and Robin had been more than happy to contribute to his efforts, and Joyce helped wherever she could. Steve, who seemed to have developed a tight-lipped tolerance for Jonathan’s presence, came over to help as well, but only if Robin was present. Together, they and Joyce had scrounged up about twenty dollars’ worth of lamps and positioned them all over the trailer, in places where Max would likely go often. Her bedroom, the hallway, the bathroom, the living area. Steve had also told Lucas out of earshot of Max that they did a sweep of the many beer cans that had littered the trailer. It wasn’t as if Max was oblivious to her mother’s affliction, but Lucas felt that he and Steve shared a mutual understanding on the matter. No point in reminding Max about her family stress. She had enough going on as it was.

Nancy had done some additional digging into reading materials for Max and discovered that the Library of Congress provided “talking books,” in which a blind person could listen to a book being read. In addition, Robin had discovered a very old, but still functional enough, Kurzweil reading machine in the now-abandoned Hawkins Library. It would scan a page of the book, Robin explained, her eyes alight – and then read the page aloud.

“We can definitely help Max try it, if the Hawkins library makes it out in one piece!” She lamented cheerfully, a nervous giggle escaping her. To a pessimist, it might be irrelevant to consider the future of Braille in Max’s life. Especially if they were all on the verge of death anyway. But Lucas knew, in some small way, it was giving them something to look ahead to. Something to hope for.

Lucas blinked, shaking his head. He didn’t know how he was still functioning. The gray light of dawn seemed to have signaled his brain to catch what must be his third or fourth wind by now. The rest of his body, however, was starting to feel the effects of his entirely fucked up sleep schedule. He had only managed two or three hours of sleep yesterday morning after their all-night ordeal, and he had laid awake all last night. His muscles felt heavier; his vision seemed to vibrate. The lights were too bright, the sounds around him were almost muffled, as if wrapped in gauze. He glanced over at Will, who seemed to be in a similar daze. Twice now he’d started to lean slightly against his brother, eyelids drooping, and Jonathan had shaken him slightly to rouse him.

Eleven, who had been waiting for all of them to show, addressed the room at large.

“The night before last night, I went into the void. And I saw Max.”

A wave of mixed reactions went around the room – gasps, exchanged looks, muttered exclamations. Lucas supposed he ought to feel guilty that the rest of the party hadn’t been let in on this plan. But times were dire. Sometimes risks must be taken.

“You saw Max?” Nancy’s brows knit hopefully.

“Yes.”

“What did she say?” urged Robin. Dustin and Mike nodded eagerly as El continued.

“She is there, and she is okay. For now.”

Lucas felt some of the tension in his stomach ease. Max had told El she was okay. Though several of them also let out relieved sighs, Erica seemed skeptical.

“How can she tell you that in there, and not out here?” She inquired, one eyebrow raised.

“It does not make sense,” El admitted. “But Max says that part of her is here – her body in Hawkins – and part of her is there. In the void.”

Will nodded. “So it is like me.”

Eleven acknowledged him.

“Yes. Except she goes to the void when she sleeps. She doesn’t dream.”

“So…she’s stuck. Sort of,” concluded Dustin, shrugging.

“It looks like that,” El replied.

Lucas noticed that some of the party members seemed less eager to talk. Mike stood there, tight-lipped with worry, his face tense as he stared at the floor.  

“Did she say anything else?” Robin asked, in a now hushed voice.

Eleven nodded, and Lucas saw her swallow anxiously.

“Max remembers when she died. She woke up in the void and thought she was in hell. But then she saw us. Here, on the other side.”

“When she…died.” Lucas still couldn’t really say it. “Vecna didn’t kill her all the way. Not like his other victims. So we think maybe that’s why she’s sort of…in between. She’s here, but she’s also there.”

“Did she say anything about Vecna?” Nancy inquired, and Lucas could hear the slight quaver in her voice at the mention of his name.

“No. She has not seen or felt him.”

A brief silence fell at the mention of their nemesis, as if they were nervous to summon him by saying his name. The silence was only broken by Steve, whose arms were firmly folded.

“And why didn’t you tell us you were doing any of this?” He questioned, in the same tone of voice Lucas’ mother used when he was about to be grounded for something.

“I didn’t know it would work,” El admitted.

“That doesn’t matter,” Robin waved her hand in his direction.

“It does matter, Robin. It was a dangerous idea,” insisted Steve.

Robin shook her head impatiently. “She made a decision, and yes, it was a stupid decision, but now we know Max is okay somewhere in that big, dark…place that Will was in before.”

Jonathan rounded on Will, nudging him awake.

“Were you there too?”

“Lucas and I…” Will yawned widely, rubbing his eyes. “We stayed there overnight. Just to make sure everything went okay.”

“No wonder you look like the walking dead,” Jonathan mused.

“Anyway,” Nancy asserted, gesturing back to El. “There must be more. You didn’t call us all here just to tell us that.”

Eleven glanced at Lucas, and he gave her a reassuring nod. El addressed the group again, pressing on.

“Remember when she escaped Vecna? It was in her happy memory.”

Lucas felt warmth permeate through him as he was reminded of what Max’s happiest memory was, this warmth immediately replaced by an indelible sorrow. He remembered the way she looked at him that night; her blue eyes so cautiously warm, so genuinely soft and content and thankful, almost. As if she was silently letting him know her gratitude. For accepting her with an open heart. For loving her. For seeing her. And now, she’d never look at him that way again. Or at all.

Erica spoke, her tone suggesting she wasn’t altogether convinced. “What does her memory have to do with it?”

“We were trying to find a connection,” Eleven explained. “Between the Max in there, and the Max out here. So she and I walked through some other memories. Ones that are important to her.”

“Like what?” Nancy encouraged.

El’s face grew both sad and slightly nervous. “The day we went to Starcourt Mall. We tried on clothes and took pictures and got ice cream.”

Lucas cringed inwardly as he realized that this had been the memory that had caused Max so much distress during the plunge into the void. El’s gaze flickered in his direction, silently asking for guidance. Lucas supposed they shouldn’t keep secrets from the rest of the party. But he didn’t feel completely comfortable exposing Max’s inner turmoil on her behalf. So he stayed quiet, and after a moment, El pressed on.

“We also saw the day she fell off her skateboard in the gym with Mike.”

Mike frowned at her, speaking for the first time. “How did you know about that?”

El gave him an apologetic look.

“I was there, Mike. I saw you and Max argue. And I…made her fall off her skateboard.”

Lucas supposed he should be shocked, but based on his past experience with Eleven, a girl who could cause bodies to fold like paper dolls when those she loved were in danger, this seemed on par. Based on most of the others’ expressions, they also seemed less than surprised.

“That explains a lot, actually,” said Dustin.

“I thought Mike had found someone else to love,” Eleven explained, her cheeks flushing. “I was jealous. But Max told me that wasn’t true.”

“It wasn’t,” insisted Mike from next to her, looking slightly upset that she’d thought this. “I promise. It wasn’t true.”

El leaned toward him, planting a soft kiss on his cheek. “I know, Mike. It’s okay.”

The rest of the group seemed unsure about how to react. Mike seemed to be having his own realization related to this as he stared wide-eyed at the floor. Eleven seemed to decide that changing the subject was best.

“We also saw…Halloween night? She scared you and Lucas and Dustin and Will. Then came with you to get candy.”

Lucas watched Dustin and Will’s faces soften to reminiscent grins at the memory. He smiled too. How interesting that Max had preserved that memory in her mind. But it made sense. It was the first time he’d ever seen her smile.

“Were there any other memories?” Jonathan asked.

“No,” said Eleven. “Because…she started to feel bad. And then she woke up here and she was sick. Her nose was bleeding, and she threw up. The nurses told us to leave. But she is okay now. I think.”

“I knew something was going on with her,” Robin said quietly. “She wasn’t right today...er, yesterday. She looked really tired. Almost sick. Like before.”

Eleven bit her lip. Lucas felt a deepening sense of foreboding as she looked around the room.

“I do not want to hurt her more, but…I have to go back for her. Vecna is close. Closer all the time.”

Will nodded vigorously, and Lucas saw his hand snake up the back of his neck. “I’ve felt it too. That sinking feeling has been coming back.”

“I have to go back,” El stated resolutely. “Tonight.”

Lucas heard his fist slam into the end table, barely feeling the impact. The entire group turned to look at him, shock and surprise on most of their faces. He shook his head.

“You guys don’t understand. She’s fragile right now. When they were in there, her blood pressure started rising, and they thought she was going to have a seizure. It took twenty minutes to get her back to normal. We have to give her some time.”

Mike pushed back. “How much time can we possibly have, Lucas? Vecna’s closer now, Will and El can both feel him. We can’t afford to wait. If he finds her in there again, we might not get her back at all.”

“And if we push her too far, she’ll be in even worse shape than she is now, and even more susceptible to Vecna and whatever he’s planning,” Lucas countered.

“I think Mike and Will have a point,” Nancy interrupted quietly. They all turned to look at her. Her glance to Lucas was apologetic. “I hear where you’re coming from, Lucas, I do. But Vecna…he’s not going to wait. And if El and Will can sense him…we have no time to lose.”

Lucas sucked in a breath and released it exasperatedly. As much as he hated it, they were right. While Vecna hadn’t made himself known yet, he knew it would only be a matter of time. If they were going to help free Max from the void, they would have to do so as soon as they could.

He leaned forward, his head in his hands. His exhaustion was starting to set in once more, and he could feel it pulling him deeper and deeper.

Lucas felt a hand on his shoulder, and Will’s tired, cracked voice.

“Jonathan’s coming to get me so I can go home and sleep. We can drop you off at home too.”

Lucas jerked his head once, to show his assent.

The car ride passed in a blur. Lucas only knew he’d fallen asleep because Will was shaking him, murmuring “we’re at your house.” Lucas undid his seatbelt and stumbled out of the car, stepping across the pavement. Everything felt as if someone else was doing it. He was barely there.

Lucas was barely conscious enough to enter the door to his house, make a beeline for his bedroom, and collapse into bed.

He’d only hit the pillow mere seconds before sleep enveloped him completely.

Max would never get used to it.

Waking up in darkness was one of the strangest things about her new existence. She was so used to seeing light from behind her eyelids, carefully cracking them open, squinting into the sunlight. Her body’s signal that a new day was unfolding across the sky. Opening her eyes to no sunlight, no light at all, never failed to confuse her.

The only reason Max knew it was morning was because there were birds chirping outside. She could hear them singing their cheerful, inquisitive dawn songs, uncaring about the constant low rumbling outside that Max always heard now. Lucas had told her it was the Upside Down. After the gates had broken open, the Upside Down was now half-inside of Hawkins, and Hawkins was half-inside of it. Max couldn’t surmise how anything like a hospital could be functioning while that was going on. Then again, she supposed a hospital would be one of the only things open at a time like this. It figured that she was trapped inside it.

Max wished she could lift her head toward the sound, to better identify it. It was muffled from far away. But as her body had slowly awoken, she quickly realized she felt horrible. She opened and closed her mouth slightly, tasting sourness. Tasting vomit. She didn’t remember throwing up. Max tentatively dragged her hand across the sheets, toward her pillow. Her hand didn’t touch any wetness or slime. So she hadn’t puked in her sleep.

Max’s head throbbed. The vein pulsed in her temple, a screw in her brain that only grew tighter with each squeeze of pain. A little bolt of lightning shot through her skull with each blink of her eyelids. She was shaking, weak, feeling dizzy. She wanted to reach for the nurse button, but her arm was too heavy.

“Cindy,” she managed, her voice hoarse.

She didn’t know where Cynthia was, and she couldn’t get up to find her. Her hand grasped limply at the bar on the side of her bed, and she tried in vain to pull herself up. Her arm muscles quivered with the effort, but to no avail. Angered at her own weakness, she grabbed the bar with her other arm and pulled, as hard as she could. A thin whine of frustration vibrated in the back of her throat as she tried again to sit up, both arms braced against the bar, her stomach muscles clenching, her back tensing.

After a few moments, whatever little strength in her arms was finally depleted, and she let herself fall back onto the bed. Max had to take a moment to catch her breath, her arms now shakier due to the exertion. Her hand flopped out toward the bed bar and she tried once again to pull herself up. Nothing. She was weak. Just like she’d always thought.

The door creaked open, and Max gave a little sob of relief.

“Cindy,” she called hoarsely. “Help me.”

A completely different voice cut through the air.

“Max?”

It wasn’t Cynthia, but Robin. Max could hear Robin’s footsteps quickly approach her bedside.

“Max, what happened? Are you okay?”

“Help,” Max reached out into the air.

The warmth of Robin’s arms surrounded her.

“I’m just gonna help you get comfortable, okay?”

Max felt herself lift slightly off the bed, felt her chest press into Robin’s. Robin was wearing a collared shirt, with buttons. Max concentrated on the polyester fabric, the hard plastic buttons jutting into her sternum as Robin moved her up onto her pillows.

Robin’s slightly nervous voice sounded next to her ear. “We’re going back down, okay? Nice and easy.”

Max felt her head press into her familiar pillows, felt the cushions against her back. Her flowered green blanket slipped under her arms, and Max let herself sink into the mattress. As much as she hated being trapped in this bed, day after day, the effort had exhausted her.

She felt Robin take her hand.

“Better?” She asked.

“Yes,” Max all but whispered, giving Robin’s hand a light squeeze.

She couldn’t see Robin’s facial expression, but when she spoke again, Max could hear the concern in her voice.

“I can call the nurse, if you want.”

“Yes,” Max told her.

She heard the click of the nurse button above her bed, and Cynthia was there in minutes. The nurse noted that Max was pale – as if Max had been able to tell – and that she didn’t look well.

“My head,” Max told her. “It hurts.”

“A headache? Okay, I’ll make a note of that. Anything else?”

Max tried in vain to communicate how awful she felt.

“Dizzy. Feel sick. And…weak.”

She heard the scratching of a pen on paper. After a moment, Cynthia spoke again.

“Okay. Max, I’ll be right back. I’m going to adjust your bed so you can sit up, and then I’m going to get you some medicines.”

Max heard the turn of the crank on the bed, felt the head of the bed rise so that she was in a sitting position. She leaned back into the bed, her head still swimming as she heard Robin take the chair next to her bed.

“Um, Max?” She said hesitantly. “If you’re feeling up to it, I thought maybe I could show you some Braille.”

Max blinked in her direction. Braille? Had they discussed that before?

Then the memory floated hazily across her brain. Yes, Nancy and Robin had both suggested Braille for her, so she could still read books. The loss of her sight was a constant grieving process, she noticed. One thing here she could no longer do. One thing there that required sight.

“Braille,” she murmured, almost questioning. “For…read.”

“Yeah.” Robin sounded hopeful. “Yeah, so you can read again. Obviously we don’t have to master it today, that’s impossible, but I thought we could at least learn some of the letters. Then that’ll make it easier for you to learn full words, and then I can try to find some actual books for you. If the Hawkins library survives, of course, there is that to consider. And then we can – ”

Max waved her hand a little, an unwilling smile lifting the corners of her mouth. Robin never seemed to know when a thought was finished.

“Yes,” she relented.

“Okay. Yes. I brought a Braille book for you.”

Max heard frantic rummaging through what sounded like a bag or a purse, and the thunk of an evidently sizable book right in front of her. She felt Robin draw up close to her other side, heard the pages separating as Robin opened the book.

“Ah, here we go. Right here.”

Robin’s hand covered Max’s, almost hesitantly.

“Are you ready, Max? I’ll tell you which dots are which letters.”

Max nodded, still in a slight daze. She wasn’t sure if she would even retain anything right now. But she knew, could hear it in Robin’s voice, how desperately Robin wanted to help her somehow. It was kinder just to let her.

Robin guided her hand, and Max felt her index finger rest on a single raised dot.

“That’s the letter A,” Robin murmured.

“A,” Max sounded it out.

“Good. Let me know when you’re ready for B.”

“Ready,” Max told her without hesitation.

As Robin gently told her which collection of dots was which letter, Max began to feel a bit less overwhelmed. The beginning letters seemed simple enough; A, one dot. B, another dot below the first. C, the A dot with another dot beside it. D, an additional dot below the added one for C. Saying the letters was simpler now too. She allowed herself to feel a bit of pride at how her speech therapy had been paying off. Dr. Cobb had told her the other week that she was doing great. This was the first time she’d sort of believed it.

Eventually, Max heard the door open, and Nancy’s gentle voice sounded from nearby.

“Max? It’s Nancy.”

“Nance, we’ve been learning the Braille letters,” Robin informed her, and Max could hear her excitement. “We’ll have to bring her a book at some point.”

“One step at a time,” Nancy chided her, though Max could hear a smile in her voice. Her light steps drew closer to the bed.

“Max, I can do your hair today if you want.”

“Yes,” said Max. She felt Robin move back, and smelled a whiff of Nancy’s perfume, felt her sit down on the bed.

“I’m going to brush your hair now, okay?”

Max nodded. As she felt the brush bristles weave through her tangled hair, she let her mind wander elsewhere.

She was still trying to make sense of last night. As the physical symptoms started to ease a little – the shaking, the migraine, the nausea - fragments of the night had started to surface in her mind; most notably, the fabric of El’s shirt. Max didn’t know why that stuck out in her mind so much. Other things floated across her mind that didn’t make sense. Tile floor, trodden-on and yellowing. The gym at Hawkins Middle. Will’s face, only much younger, his eyes rolled back. That particular part of her memory came with a real sense of fear that Max couldn’t shake.

“Nance,” she said abruptly, and she felt the brush pause in her hair.

“Yeah?”

Max wished desperately that she could ask Nancy any one of the questions swimming inside her head. Where’s Lucas? Do you know what happened last night? Why do I only remember bits of it?

“Brush more,” she requested instead.

“You want me to keep brushing? I can do that.”

The bristles combed through her hair slowly, and Max closed her eyes a little, enjoying the feeling. She heard Robin move to her other side, felt Robin’s hesitant finger touch her hand, silently asking to hold it. Max reached for Robin’s hand and squeezed it.

“Thanks,” she said. “For reading.”

Only a moment or two passed before she felt Robin’s hand squeeze back.

“Of course, Max.”

Somehow, Lucas was more exhausted than before.

His mid-morning sleep had somehow calibrated him to the wrong frequency. He felt dazed. His head was pounding as he sat up from the bed, rubbing his eyes.

The first thing he noticed was that it was raining. The rumbling from the Upside Down and the regular thunder that accompanied a storm were almost indistinguishable from each other, and so there was a constant rumble in the air, one that occasionally crescendoed into crashes that rattled the window. Only his glance at the clock alerted him that it was early afternoon, around one. He usually went to see Max earlier than this, but he wondered if she had slept in too. They’d all had a long night.

Lucas pulled on clothing and socks as if on autopilot; before he knew it, he was dressed and grabbing his backpack, making his way into the hall. Erica’s door was closed, light peeking out from underneath her door. He knew his mother would be out on the back porch. She usually sat out there when it rained.

Lucas picked up the phone and dialed Steve’s number. On the third ring, he heard a click.

“What, Sinclair?”

“There’s no way you just knew it was me.”

He could almost hear Steve roll his eyes.

“Well, I know you’re not Robin, because I just dropped her off at home. And besides her, you’re the only one who calls me. So yeah, it didn’t take me long to narrow down.”

Lucas smirked. “Oh, so Dustin never calls you?”

“I couldn’t feel the bullshittery through the phone when I picked it up, so I knew you weren’t him either. Listen, do you want a ride or not?”

“Yes, please.”

“All right. Be there in a few.”

Lucas figured he should probably learn to drive at some point.

Steve seemed more tense than usual as Lucas sat quietly in his passenger seat, listening to the rain tap against the windows, watching the wipers swish back and forth across the windshield. The silent radio channel occasionally crackled as they drove through areas of varying signal. Steve turned the dial, seeking music, and came to find more silence, more static-filled stations. He smacked the dashboard with his hand in frustration, a scowl on his face.

“Stupid thing. Can’t even find any music stations anymore.”

“Is everything okay?” Lucas inquired uncertainly.

“Fine,” Steve said shortly. “Everything’s fine. I just…feel like shit.”

“Who doesn’t?” Lucas shrugged. “I mean, considering.”

Steve shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s Max. Everyone’s doing so much for her – Nancy’s doing her hair, Robin’s helping her with Braille, Will’s bringing her music, and you…you’re practically living there, for god’s sake. And I’m not doing shit.”

“That’s not true,” Lucas countered, astonished to hear Steve talk like this. “You’re driving us everywhere.”

“Yeah, but Max can’t see that. I mean – ” He blanched, hurriedly rephrasing. “What I meant is, I’m not helping like everyone else.”

“I mean…you could always bring her something she likes,” Lucas reasoned. “Or something from her trailer that’s hers. I’m sure whatever you did, she’d appreciate.”

Steve shrugged. “Yeah. I guess.”

In spite of himself, Lucas felt a grin sneak onto his face.

“Max does like you, you know. She just also thinks you’re an annoying shit. But that’s to be expected.”

He was pleased to see a slight smile on Steve’s face too.

The hospital hallways seemed emptier than usual.

Lucas trudged along. He was so bone tired that he could barely see straight, but he would be loath to stay away from Max. Especially right now. He knew what they were about to put her through, and he had to help her brace for the impact, the best he could. So perhaps, one day, she’d forgive him for it.

He’d barely made it to her partially-open door when –

“Max, that’s so insane.”

“It’s not,” he heard Max reply stubbornly.

Lucas cracked open the door the rest of the way to see Mike sitting on the bed, his back to the door.

“Okay, but crusts aren’t meant to be eaten,” He was insisting emphatically. “They’re crusts. You’re supposed to tear them off. The only good part is the bread and what’s in the sandwich.”

“Crusts,” Max insisted, her arms folded and jaw set.

As Lucas circled around, he saw that Mike had brought Max a sandwich in a plastic bag, and it currently rested on the tray table that he’d wheeled in front of her, along with some cutlery wrapped in plastic. Her stack of tapes had been moved, resting in three stacks on the bedside table.

“Okay, Max, you can eat the crusts like a weirdo,” said Mike, though Lucas was relieved to see a slight grin on his face. “Do you need me to cut this up?”

“Yes,” said Max, and Lucas saw a little grin quirk around her mouth too.

“Oh, hey, Lucas,” Mike acknowledged him, removing the sandwich from the bag and unwrapping the plastic knife from the silverware pack. Max’s head tilted in Lucas’ direction.

“Lunch,” she informed him.

“I see that,” Lucas replied, amused.

Mike started cutting into the sandwich. Too late Lucas realized –

“Mike, you can’t cut it diagonally. It has to be bite-sized or she can’t swallow it. Remember?”

Lucas saw a flash of horror cross Mike’s face, replaced quickly with an embarrassed indignance.

“It’s fine, I can just cut it into smaller pieces.”

“Cut squares,” said Max.

“What do you mean, squares? Sandwiches are cut diagonally. Everybody knows that.”

“Mike, it’s fine. I’ll just do it,” said Lucas, elbowing him away and taking the plastic knife from him.

Mike grabbed it back at once. “I can cut sandwiches by myself, mom.”

He set to work tearing the sandwiches into bite-sized pieces, his face reddening. Lucas opened his mouth to retort and then he saw Mike’s facial expression. Mortified. Determined. Maybe even a little guilty. It occurred to Lucas why Mike was so territorial over a stupid sandwich - he was trying to do something nice for Max, all on his own. Maybe even to make reparations for the friction between them. Even though they’d been much nicer to each other lately, Lucas wondered if Mike felt culpable. Maybe he felt he’d contributed to Max’s depression somehow by being unpleasant to her. And this was his way of making up for it.

Lucas took a step back, relenting.

“Just make sure the pieces are small enough for her to swallow,” he reminded Mike.

“I got it,” said Mike stubbornly. “There you go, Max.”

Max reached down toward the tray table, palm open, until her hand bumped one of the sandwich pieces. She picked it up with her thin fingers and brought it up to her mouth, chewing slowly. Mike busied himself with taking a few new comics out of his bag.

“I have some new comics for you,” he told Max, who turned her head toward him, her mouth still full of sandwich. “I can’t read them by myself, so we’ll read them to you next time Steve and Dustin are here. Okay?”

Max nodded at him. Lucas gazed at her, a sense of foreboding creeping in. She was different today. The head of her bed was tilted upward, and she was propped against her pillows, lying back against them. She’d been able to sit up now for some time; but right now, she looked like she had months prior, too weak to hold up her own weight. She looked slightly paler, too: her milky eyes almost blended in with her pallid face. Her red hair was tangled and slightly damp with perspiration near her neck. She wasn’t eating quite as hungrily as Lucas would have hoped, either.

Mike reached back into his bag.

“I also brought you…well…”

He unearthed a rock from his bag, a shard of obsidian that gleamed darkly under the fluorescent lights.

“It’s an obsidian rock,” he said. “Obsidian forms from volcanoes. I got it at a museum or some shit, and I guess I had it in a drawer somewhere. It’s a cool one to hold. It feels weird, like glass or hard plastic.”

Max held out her palm questioningly, and Mike placed it in her hand. Immediately, Lucas saw her brow furrow as she closed her fingers around it, trying to picture it in her mind’s eye. It was taking so much concentration that Max placed the rock on the tray table, letting both her palms rest over it, fingers tracing the edges and planes.

After a few seconds, she angled her head toward Mike.

“Color is…gray?” She inquired.

“Black,” he corrected her. “And it’s shiny.”

Max nodded, her brow furrowing again.

“Black. And shiny,” she murmured, her fingers examining it once more.

She didn’t have much to say after that. Max continued to roll the rock over in her hand, seemingly determined to memorize every corner.

“Lucas, can I talk to you for a sec?”

Mike’s question surprised him, but he nodded.

“Sure,” Lucas shrugged. He turned toward Max.

“I’ll be right back,” he reassured her.

She nodded, still preoccupied by the obsidian. Lucas followed Mike out of the room, feeling his lungs expand as they entered the hallway. That room seemed to grow smaller and stuffier every time he entered it. It was nice to exist in a part of the world that wasn’t Max’s little prison.

“She can’t keep staying here.”

Mike’s tone was almost exasperated. Lucas frowned at him in astonishment as Mike tapped his foot, his arms folded, his lips pursed.

“She’s still fragile, Mike. We can’t move her.”

“You’re not bothered by how she looks? Max has been here for months, and she doesn’t look better, she looks worse. Today she can’t even sit up.”

“Brain damage takes a long time to heal,” Lucas explained, still a little thrown by the suddenness of Mike’s confrontation. “They’ve always told me she’ll get worse before she gets better.”

“This place is what’s killing her. I mean, think about it. Shouldn’t Max be close to getting out of here? It’s been months, Lucas. Why isn’t she better by now?”

Lucas hadn’t really thought of it like that, but now that Mike mentioned it, Max had been here for quite a long time, and with almost no talk of when she could go home. Perhaps the doctors felt she didn’t have a safe home to go to since her mother was – as far as they knew – still in rehab. Lucas was certain that her presence in the void was a big part of it too. But Will and El also had bits of themselves in the void, and were able to function normally. So why was it taking Max so much longer?

“She’s made a lot of progress,” he said finally, but it sounded lame even coming out of his own mouth.

Mike shook his head. “But not enough that she’s up walking around again. I know things won’t ever be the same, after…well, after that night. But I just think it’s strange that it’s taking so long.”

Mike ran a hand through his black mop of hair, which had grown shaggier and steadily more unkempt over these last few months.

“And Vecna. Will and El said they’ve been able to feel him more. He has to know she’s here by now, right? What if she’s just a sitting duck, there in that room?”

Lucas hadn’t considered this either. Hospitals were supposed to be the pinnacle of safety and security, though Lucas felt a little silly thinking this in their current climate. Horror filled him as he realized that perhaps Max was more vulnerable than he’d allowed himself to consider. Maybe Mike was right. Vecna wasn’t fully back to health yet, but he must know where Max was. And he could be plotting his attack at this very moment. 

“I just don’t know if moving her is safe,” Lucas finally said to Mike, trying to keep his voice from quavering. “She looks bad now, I know, but without all the hospital shit she might get even worse.”

“I know, I know. There are no good answers,” Mike acknowledged, looking just as troubled. “But I just think she’s been here too long. And they aren’t helping her enough.”

He ran his hand through his hair again before giving a deep sigh, offering Lucas a curt nod.

“Just think about it.”

Lucas gave a jerk of his head in Mike’s direction, and he watched as his friend trudged away, his hands in his pockets.

Anyone who still had doubts that Mike cared about Max should be swiftly silenced, Lucas thought. He hadn’t given any thought to the idea of how Max’s current condition was impacting any of his other friends. But the more he thought on it, the more small moments resurfaced in his mind. Dustin sitting outside her room, his head in his hands. The puffy, freckly shadows that had formed under Robin’s eyes. And the persistent melancholy that El seemed to hold in every corner of her frame. Perhaps Mike was just voicing what the rest of his friends couldn’t: Max being here wasn’t just hurting her. It was hurting her friends too.

As Lucas walked back into the room, he surveyed Max, who was staring rather wistfully in the direction of the window. Lucas noticed the rain had stopped, but the sky stayed gray and rumbling. The sun was fighting to illuminate whatever parts of the sky were uninhabited by the Upside Down.

Lucas felt a certain disquiet as he watched her. Maybe Mike was right. When was the last time she inhaled real air through her lungs?

“Hey,” he spoke, and she jumped a little, her head snapping toward him.

“Sorry, it’s me. I, um…it’s not raining anymore, and the hospital here has a courtyard. Would you want to walk a little outside?”

Max seemed to ponder this for a moment, her cloudy eyes blinking slowly.

“Walk?” She inquired, almost distantly.

“Yeah. You’ve been getting better and better. In fact, Cynthia thinks you might not need the walker at all soon.”

He had totally fabricated this, but it was worth it to see her weary face light up a little.

“Yes,” she told him.

“Okay, hang on. Let me ask the nurse.”

Lucas managed to track down Cynthia after several minutes searching for her. She seemed delighted at the idea of them going outside, and told him she needed to go find something. Cynthia rejoined him in Max’s room a short while later, holding a pair of dark glasses.

“I’m so glad you’re going outside today, Max!” she chirped, and Max blinked in her direction. “Whenever you do, I need you to wear these.”

She pressed the dark glasses into Max’s hands.

“Even though you can’t see, your eyes may still respond to some light, and that might make things harder to navigate. These glasses will help so the light won’t bother you.”

Max’s fingers curled around them for a brief moment, then she let them fall from her hands onto her lap.

“Not these,” she said. “My red ones.”

“Red ones?” asked Cynthia, but Lucas knew immediately what she was talking about.

“Max, are your red ones here with you somewhere?”

“At home,” she said sadly.

Lucas looked at her nurse.

“Can she wear regular ones?”

Cynthia shrugged. “They’re about the same, so, sure.”

They all jumped when suddenly the door creaked open.

It was Steve, by himself. Lucas almost wanted to laugh at how out of place he looked: Steve Harrington, the king of Hawkins High, dressed in an old shirt and jeans full of holes. His hair even looked less voluminous as he shuffled on the spot.

“Hey,” he said, addressing all of their startled faces. “Sorry, I was just – ”

He gestured at a pint of ice cream and a spoon in his hand.

“I can come back if it’s a bad time – ”

“Max, it looks like this is another one of your friends,” Cynthia said in her direction, then she addressed Steve. “I think they were about to go outside –”

Lucas jumped to his feet.

“Actually, you have perfect timing. Stay here, okay?”

“Wha – Sinclair – ”

Lucas dipped out into the hallway, and took off down the hall. If Max wanted her red sunglasses, he was going to get her those red sunglasses if it was the last thing he did.

Max could hear the slight bewilderment in Steve’s voice as his footsteps slowly drew closer.

“Where did he go?”

“Glasses,” she told him.

“Oh. O-okay.” Max wanted to giggle at little at Steve’s confusion.

Cynthia spoke from nearby.

“I’m going to check on my other patients, Max. I’ll be back in a little while.”

Her footsteps trailed away, and soon Max knew Steve was the only other person in the room with her.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey. Um, I brought you something. Be careful though, it’s cold.”

Max reached out her hand and felt something long and cold. She gripped it. It felt like the handle of a piece of silverware. Max traced it with her thumb, felt the curvature of the metal. A spoon.

“Here,” Steve murmured, and he guided the spoon to something soft. Max moved the spoon around within the mystery substance, trying to figure out what it was.

She turned her head slightly toward Steve.

“Food?” She asked.

“It’s ice cream. Strawberry. Robin said it was your favorite.”

It was so much better than Max had dared to dream. Immediately she dug the spoon in, trying to get a sense of where it was within the small tub. It was harder to operate a spoon since she couldn’t see it, and she’d had one too many situations where she ended up flinging most of its contents all over whomever had brought her the food.

Max lifted the spoon carefully to her mouth and immediately savored the sweet, cold cream, with that slight tang from the strawberries. A smile grew on her face before she could stop it.

“Thanks,” she said in Steve’s direction.

“Hold that,” Steve said, and he guided her other hand to the rim of the cup, and Max clasped it between her thumb and forefinger as she buried the spoon in and scooped more up. She had to keep herself from shoving in mouthful after mouthful of the ice cream because it tasted just as familiar as it ever did, and it sang of summer, and it was so damn good to eat something normal for once.

After she reached the point where she was starting to feel a little sick, she placed the spoon on the tray.

“Done,” she informed Steve.

“Yeah? Okay.” Max felt the spoon and ice cream tub lift from the tray. The slight disappointment at being done with the ice cream was overpowered by the elation it had inspired in her. She was pleased enough to get up and walk a lap. In fact, she wanted to.

“Walk,” She requested.

Steve sounded unsure.

“You want to walk? Okay, um…what do we need to do for that?”

“Walker,” she informed him. “Then walk. You and me. In the hall.”

“Okay. And you can walk all that way?”

“Yes.”

Max heard him get up, heard the clunk of the walker’s wheels against the floor as he pushed it closer to the bed.

“Bar,” Max tapped it with her hand.

Steve had to fiddle with the bar a moment, but she finally felt it lower. She slowly turned, letting her feet dangle over the side of the bed.

“Do I need to help you?”

“No,” Max told him, reaching out her hands. “Walker.”

Max heard the walker’s wheels roll toward her, felt the handles hit her palms. She wrapped her hands around them and hoisted herself up.

“IV,” she said. “It rolls.”

“Oh, okay. I roll that behind you?”

“Yes.”

“And…do you know where you’re going?”

“No,” Max smirked a little cheekily. “Can’t see.”

“Yes I know that, thank you. So…what? Do I tell you where you’re going?”

“Yes.”

Max started moving, the walker moving steadily forward. She heard Steve start to roll the rickety IV pole from behind her. Max didn’t mind placing her bare feet against the cold floor. It almost felt good after being in that uncomfortably warm bed for so long. Her legs were cooperating today too, she noticed with some encouragement. Maybe Lucas was right. Maybe she’d be able to ditch the walker soon. The thought energized her, and she nearly missed Steve saying suddenly “whoa, watch the wall. Here.”

Max permitted Steve to steer her out of the doorway, but once they reached the hall, she insisted “I can walk,” and set off down the hallway.

Steve’s solitary presence wasn’t as sure and steady as Lucas’ or Cynthia’s, and Max found she felt a little less secure without them behind her. But it was the same hallway, she told herself. She’d walked it before. As Max steered her walker down the hall, she could hear overlapping voices of the staff and other patients. She tried to gauge it by ear, turning the walker according to how close voices sounded. She could hear the nervousness in Steve’s voice as he attempted to direct her.

“Not there…whoa, Max. You’re going to hit that door.”

Max jumped as she felt Steve grab the walker.

“Max, stop. Let’s go this way.”

She allowed him to help her again, annoyed as she was by his methods. Lucas would have been much gentler. Steve just seemed anxious, and it was putting her on edge. Steve turned her walker completely around and said “we can walk out in the lobby. There’s more room over there.”

Max hadn’t ventured down that part of the hallway yet. But she refused to look helpless in front of Steve.

“Okay,” she said, and started to walk. She shuffled down the familiar hallway until she felt the air change, until she felt the linoleum turn into tile. Max stopped short, allowing herself to drink in the new noises, smell the new scents. Intermittent footsteps sounded around them. There weren’t many people here, she noted. That made it seem a little less daunting. The new sensations were nervewracking, though. She took a cautious few steps forward, and her head turned sharply toward a whoosh from nearby.

Sliding doors. She wasn’t standing on the mat – the soles of her feet were still pressed against the tile – but she must be close to it. Either that, or someone must have walked through it. Max took a few more steps forward, and stopped, waiting to hear the sound again. Sure enough, after a few minutes, Max heard the door slide open once more.

This time, however, Max felt a cool breeze wash over her face. She opened her mouth, trying to taste the air before it faded away. Tears filled her eyes. She’d almost forgotten what outdoor air felt like. She was so thirsty for it, and she almost wanted to reach out and grab it, hold the feeling close to her.

“Max?”

Max jumped. She’d forgotten Steve was behind her. Without turning her head toward him, she pointed.

“Let’s go.”

“Go?” Steve sounded confused. He didn’t understand. “Go where?”

“Out,” Max demanded. “Go home.”

“You mean…leave the hospital?”

Idiot. “Yes,” she confirmed.

Max swore she could hear Steve put his hands on his hips. “We’re not doing that.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“Because you’re still healing, Max. And it’s not safe, either. You think Hawkins has just been all fine and dandy out there? It’s getting worse.”

“Friends,” Max asserted.

“Yes, we’re here,” said Steve. “But that’s not enough. Your mom’s still in Indianapolis. Are you gonna hunker down in your trailer by yourself?”

Max trudged stubbornly forward, but a seed of doubt was starting to grow roots within her. Truthfully, she hadn’t thought about what being home would mean for her now. Max had known where things were when she could see them. But now…how would she be able to find anything? Her friends had been so wonderful, but she couldn’t ask any of them to stay with her – practically live with her – to help her figure things out. Suddenly the thought of being home was much more daunting than it had been a few seconds ago.

Max shook her head.

“Home,” she insisted again, despite the now growing sense of uncertainty curling within the pit of her stomach. “I want…to go home.”

“I know, Max. I’m sorry.”

Irritated by his refusal, Max stopped short in the hallway.

“My room,” she requested.

She heard Steve sigh, but he dutifully guided her back to her room without saying much more.

Max heard Cynthia’s chipper voice the moment they walked through her doorway.

“Ah, Max! Just came by to check on you. Will Lucas be back soon, to take you outside?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then let’s get you dressed.”

Steve’s voice sounded from near the door. “Do you…I mean, can I help with anything?”

“No,” Max said a little shortly, still irked by their earlier conversation. “You can go.”

She was sure his facial expression was a little put off, and as she heard Steve’s footsteps trail away, a mixture of regret and irritation crossed paths inside her. He didn’t understand what it was like, being here day after day. She just wanted to leave.

Max reached out her hand.

“Cindy?” she inquired. “Chair. Help me.”

Cynthia’s warm hand met hers, and Max started to move her walker forward.

“Okay, stop there,” Cynthia’s voice sounded after a moment. “I’m just going to untie your gown.”

As the gown strings slithered away, Max felt the chilly air of her room hit her bare back, almost down to her ribs as the gown slid off her. She shivered. Cynthia pressed a bra into her hand, and she slipped it on, her mind elsewhere. This place had become her unwilling home, whatever it looked like. She wasn’t entirely sure it looked the way she pictured it in her head. But she knew its corners, knew its smells and the feel of the air. Her comfortable little prison, with all the tubes and wires and medicines and bullshit.

A certain bitterness simmered in the pit of her stomach at the thought. All of this was bullshit. Max knew it was all to buy time before the Upside Down swallowed Hawkins whole. That was what Steve didn’t get. Why did he feel the need to keep up the pomp and circumstance? Couldn’t he see how close they all were to death, even more than she could?

Cynthia’s arms slipped underneath her own.

“Okay, Max, I got you. Let’s sit in the chair.”

With Cynthia fully supporting her, Max sank slowly into the chair. It felt good to sit in a chair, Max thought. She gripped the handles in her hands, felt her feet against the cool floor. She almost felt normal again. Almost.

Max felt her eyes grow slightly misty again as Cynthia pulled a shirt over her head. She just wanted to be home in her shitty, musty trailer. To get one last feel of the grainy carpet, to inhale one last breath of the smelly old walls, stained with tar and cigarette ash. If they were all going to die, then she’d like one last chance to remember her home in Hawkins with her mother before leaving this world in Lucas’ arms. Surrounded by her friends. That was how she wanted to go, whenever the time came. Exactly how she went the first time.

Cynthia had her stand again, to put on some pants. Max allowed Cynthia to dress her, as much as she hated feeling dependent. It occurred to Max that this might be all Cynthia had left. She knew Cindy was smart; she had to sense that the apocalypse was near. Perhaps Max would be her last patient before the world imploded.

Once Max felt that her pants were on, Cynthia murmured “there we go. Once Lucas returns with your sunglasses, we can get you outside!”

Max allowed herself to lean back a little, letting her head drop to the back of the chair. Thank God. She couldn’t wait to breathe fresh, clean air.

Max was waiting for Lucas as he entered.

Cynthia had dressed her, he surmised, as he saw she was wearing a gray shirt and black pants. Her hair was down, flowing over her thin shoulders as she stood in the center of the room, her hands gripping her walker. Cynthia stood slightly behind her, a hand pressed against her back to steady her.

“Lucas is here,” the nurse told Max, and Lucas smiled as Max perked up. “Remember, Max, I’m going to follow behind with a wheelchair, just in case you get tired. Okay?”

“I can walk,” Max told her, not unkindly.

“Of course you can. You get better at it every day. But you had a rough night last night, so I just want to be safe. Okay?”

Max nodded curtly, then turned her head in Lucas’ direction.

“I’m ready,” she told him confidently.

“Then let’s go,” he responded, pressing her red sunglasses into her hands. Lucas remembered when she’d walked out of Starcourt Mall wearing them, clutching a strawberry ice cream cone in her hand. He remembered thinking they clashed with her red hair as they’d been perched atop her head. Even now, they still clashed. Max hadn’t cared then, and, ironically, she had even less reason to care now. In any case, she seemed pleased to have them back, and slipped them onto her face without a hitch.

They walked arm in arm out the sliding doors, and Lucas started to guide her toward the hospital grounds. Max seemed to be walking fine, even a little eagerly as she turned her head side to side, as if trying to drink in all the sounds. He wondered if the sunglasses were helping her walk better. Without the light disturbing her, she seemed to get a better sense of her surroundings. Lucas was impressed to see Max handle her walker like a seasoned pro, almost as if she still had her sight. Perhaps she’d be able to stop using it sooner than even he thought. Once Max no longer needed the walker, the doctors would give her one of those special canes to help her get around. But for now, he still needed to guide her in the right direction.

The hospital grounds at Hawkins Memorial were calm, quiet, and well-kept. Dogwood blossoms lined the borders of the courtyard near the iron fences. Wildflowers were nestled in colorful patches around the walking paths, tiny bugs buzzing in the clear air around them. Such an idyllic scene for a town half-inside the Upside Down.

Certainly it wasn’t the same experience now as it would have been before. But Lucas was determined to help Max find enjoyment in it. One of the new challenges, he found, was figuring out how to describe things to her. He wasn’t creative like Will, didn’t have a way with words like Robin. As they walked along the path through the garden, Lucas accumulated a small collection of different things - a flower, a stone, or anything else he was able to find. As they lumbered along, Lucas wracked his brain to think of descriptive words that would help her paint a picture in her mind’s eye. To give her another way to see.

Lucas looked over at Max as they paused to let her find her footing in this new space. Max inhaled deeply, and exhaled in a slow breath. Lucas was sure the air in her room became stuffy after a while, and the fresh air must be cleansing for her lungs. The sun’s glow made her pallid skin look even more pale, her veins dark underneath. Her flowing red hair and crimson sunglasses were the only things that seemed to color her cheeks a little, even though Lucas surmised it was a trick of the light. And she was so thin. Lucas had an uneasy feeling that if she was wearing a tighter-fitting shirt, he would be able to see her ribs protruding out.

Lucas cursed Vecna in his mind. He cursed the void, the Upside Down…all of this bullshit that was holding Max hostage. Even though she was walking, smiling, talking more…in this light, she looked sick. Frail and ill, like she’d been so many months ago. A deep sense of foreboding made his blood run cold. He knew she was pushing herself to walk as much as she possibly could, to stand on her own two feet. Lucas couldn’t blame her. He was sure it felt good for Max to move her legs. But she was slowing down more quickly than before. Even now, as he looked at her, he knew her walking time would be limited today.

Sure enough, Max started to slow down after about ten minutes, and Cynthia came up behind them with the wheelchair.

“Max, let’s take a break. Then let’s do the rest of it in the wheelchair. Okay? I know you don’t want to, but do your poor nurse a favor.”

Max looked too tired to resist. She allowed them to lower her onto the grass and lean her against a cherry tree. Lucas sat down next to her, and Cynthia gave them a wide berth, standing ready with the wheelchair nearby.

“Hey,” he said, and she turned her head toward him. “I found something while we were walking.”

Max blinked questioningly, then held her hand out.

“It’s a flower,” he explained, placing it delicately into her palm. “A violet. Deep purple, with yellow and black in the middle.”

Max clasped a velvety petal in between her thumb and forefinger, her brow furrowed in concentration. It was Lucas’ new favorite facial expression of hers. As if she was committing the texture and color to her mind’s eye. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen a violet before. This was just the closest she could get to seeing it now. 

After she seemed satisfied, she pocketed the violet, and reached her hand out again.

“Find more?” she inquired.

“You know I did. Here.”

He pressed his second discovery - a round stone - into her hands.

“It’s a stone. The color’s gray, like…” He searched for something to compare it to.

Max frowned. “Gray…like clouds?”

“Yes. Yeah. Like clouds.”

She nodded, closing her hand around it.

“Smooth,” she said, then quirked her head at him. “Shiny?”

“A little,” said Lucas.  

He produced more things he’d found – a twig, a few acorns, and a dandelion. He even pressed a few sassafras leaves into her palm. Max’s fingers traced the veins of each leaf, rubbed her finger against its rougher texture.

“Max,” he said. “Crush the leaves in your hands.”

She turned toward him, her expression bemused.

“Crush?”

“Trust me. Do it.”

After only another second of hesitation, Max closed her hands around the leaves, smiling a little as they crunched between her palms.

“Now smell them,” he told her.

Max frowned in amusement, but followed suit. Her expression quickly became surprised.

“The smell,” she told him. “I think…oranges.”

“I know, right? Sassafras leaves smell like oranges. It’s so weird.”

“It’s cool,” she grinned.

“So cool,” he amended quickly. “The coolest.”

Max reached out toward him until her hand met his face. She poked his cheek.

“Dork,” she said.

They both laughed. It felt so good to laugh. Lucas was encouraged that her sense of humor was still intact. 

They spent the rest of their outdoor outing sitting under the tree, Max’s head resting on Lucas’ shoulder, while his arm rested securely around her.

They didn’t talk much. They didn’t have to. The world was only theirs today, if just for a moment.

Max knew she’d be sore tomorrow.

As Cynthia and Lucas helped her out of the wheelchair, she could feel the exhaustion sinking heavy into her bones. She sank into the hospital mattress, into her pillow, and could already feel it beckoning toward sleep. Something in her mind told her it would be distressing to sleep, that something would happen, but she couldn’t remember what.

Max could hear Lucas above her, murmuring quietly, but she couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. She was fading fast.

“Lucas?” she mumbled back.

Max felt his gentle hand brush back her hair, and suddenly she felt his lips brush against her ear.

“I’ll call El. So she can be there when you sleep.”

Why did El need to be there? Nothing made much sense to Max anymore as she felt herself losing her grip on consciousness. And moments later, she sank into the abyss that was sleep.

It was better and more terrible today.

Sensations were what enveloped Max today as she sat in the endless darkness – smells, sounds, the feeling of hands on her. As tempting as sin. It felt like a sick joke – a tease from the world she was still separated from.

Whether or not Max wanted to rejoin that world, she still wasn’t sure. Sometimes she still wanted to let herself be enshrouded in the darkness that was now so familiar to her. But the real world always beckoned. Things from her physical body were connecting vaguely to her existence here. A feeling, a scent, a word…these things would seep in as she watched her physical body lay helpless in the hospital bed.

The sharp pain in her skull…that was new, and it made her anxious. It happened when a particularly strong feeling or sensation overtook her. The other thing that startled her was the smell of blood accompanying these events. It was barely a whiff, gone as quickly as it had come, but there was no mistaking it. And these episodes were happening more frequently now. She didn’t know what they meant, but they couldn’t symbolize anything good.

“Max. I am here now.”

Max whirled around as El’s voice sounded from nearby. She’d forgotten the luxury of now having El in here with her. El’s presence was a balm for Max’s weary soul. As El walked steadily toward her, arms outstretched, Max wrapped her arms tightly around her friend. She didn’t want to let her go again. The void was such a horribly lonely place, a place that she didn’t wish on anyone, ever. And El was the only person who could sit in here with her.

She clung tightly to her friend.

“I wish you didn’t have to go again,” she whispered into El’s shoulder.

El squeezed her a little tighter.

“I know,” she said, her voice breaking a little. “I am here right now.”

El pulled back from their hug, placing her hands on Max’s shoulders.

“I am here right now,” she said again. “And I am going to bring you home.”

Max could see in El’s eyes that she truly believed this, and it made her own soul perk up a little.

She took El’s hand.

“Ready?”

El nodded resolutely, and both girls closed their eyes, concentrating.

A wind gust rushed by them, and a seagull cried from far away. As soon as Max took a breath, she knew they’d come to the right place. That sandy, gritty smell of her California bedroom. Max opened her eyes to see the orange-beige wallpaper she had so hated as a child, wallpaper that was strangely welcoming now. A few posters hung unceremoniously on the walls: Blondie, Foreigner, the Endless Summer. Her poster of a teen boy halfway through a half-pipe – the black skateboard blurred in the picture – hung over her small, quilted bed. Every object had a new wave of memories attached, and Max found herself unable to speak momentarily as it all filled her vision. Her patchwork quilt, a hand-me-down from Granny. Her tiny end table, with a few photo frames sitting on it – an infant Max and her mother. Young Max on her father’s shoulders. A group photo of the three of them, smiling, sitting on a sofa.

Max was so ensconced in the bittersweetness of it all that she started a little at El’s question.

“Where are we?”

“My room in California,” Max murmured. “See the palm trees?”

The palms were brushing against the window, patchy green against the darkening sky. The wind was picking up, the clouds moving faster. Immediately, Max felt a rush of excitement before she could stop herself. It was about to storm.

She turned toward El, tugging on her sleeve.

“Here, move away from the door.”

Eleven did so, and mere seconds later, a short redhead came through the doorway. Without preamble, the young girl approached her windows, unlocking and pushing the panes open. Then, the girl climbed up on the sill and sat, her legs dangling over the outdoor side of the window.

El touched Max’s arm.

“She is you,” she said quietly.

Max nodded. She had finally figured out why she remembered this day. She’d just come in from skateboarding because a thunderstorm had been imminent. And her favorite part of a thunderstorm – besides the rain – was the crescendoing rush of wind right before lightning cracked the sky open. Sure enough, Max watched her younger self sit up eagerly as the rumble of thunder started to roll in. The palms near the window rustled louder and louder as the gray shelf of clouds descended upon them. The remaining light of the sun grew dim, the shadows of the palms dancing over younger Max’s face. Max was immediately tempted to close her own eyes as younger Max did so, inhaling the rush of rainy air into her lungs, her red hair fluttering around her face.

“You like rain,” said El.

“Yeah,” Max replied, her eyes still glued to her younger self as dark spots started appearing on her clothing from the rain. Younger Max got down from the sill and closed the windows before going and sitting on her bed, her eyes glued to the rain as it slashed against the glass.

Max heaved a deep sigh.

“Two weeks after this, Neil and my mom would sit me and Billy down and tell us that we were leaving California.”

El’s eyes swiveled onto her, and she continued.

“I had a friend. Nate. We hung out together a lot in California. But one day, Billy and his shithead friends were doing something they shouldn’t, as usual. And Nate stood up to them. So Billy broke his arm. And we had to move before his parents filed charges.”

Max felt a pang as Nate’s face resurfaced in her mind.

“I remember hearing Billy through the wall…cursing, yelling, breaking shit. Telling me it was my fault we were moving. Because Nate poked his nose in where it didn’t belong. So we had to move to Hawkins. Away from Nate. Away from my dad.”

Thinking of her dad brought an unexpected wave of sorrow. Truthfully, Max had not thought of him in a while. It wasn’t like he kept in touch. She wondered where he was now, and if he even had a family. A wife who wasn’t her mother. Children who weren’t her.

Max had momentarily forgotten El was standing next to her until she felt El take her hand.

“Do you miss your dad?”

Max’s shrug didn’t make the ice pick in her heart hurt less, but she didn’t want to worry El.

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “But he’s got his own life now. So, it doesn’t matter. Every day, I miss him a little less.”

Max listened to El grapple silently with this information. She seemed to be mulling this over for herself.

“I miss Papa sometimes, too,” she said.

You actually miss him? That psychotic asshole? Max wanted to say.

But she bit her tongue. She understood all too well.

Max immediately started thinking of a less painful memory.

As she and El returned to the void, Max felt a little dizzy, a little sick. But she knew they had to keep going, to make the connection to her body stronger. So before El could comment on how Max didn’t look like herself, Max dragged them into her next memory.

It was nighttime in this one. Dark blue sky hung like a blanket over the Hawkins junkyard, with clouds of fog wrapping the night in gauze. She and El sat on the roof of a defunct bus. It was strange to be sitting on the bus roof without feeling the chill of the metal, or the shivery fall breeze.

El was taking everything in, her widened eyes swiveling around the junkyard.

“Why…are we here?” she questioned.

“We were baiting a Demogorgon,” Max replied.

She would have laughed at El’s shocked expression under any other circumstance. But, like everything else, this situation seemed much more dire in hindsight.

“Why would you do that?” Eleven almost sounded angry.

Max shrugged. “Dustin found a baby Demogorgon in his house. It was eating his cats. He kept it like a pet. And then when Dart got older – ”

“Dart?”

“The name he gave it. The full name is even stupider. D’artagnan. Whatever that even means. But Dustin seemed to think he could train it to like chocolate rather than cats. That’s when Dart ran away. So we were here trying to find him.”

Max couldn’t blame El for looking alarmed. Max had considered it to be a fool’s errand at the time, and this notion was only solidified at her current age as she watched shadows bend and shift in the junkyard, watched the outlines of Dustin, Steve, and herself move around within the old bus. In the distance, a dark creature slunk through the fog, and another crept around nearby. Demogorgons. Max had to remind herself that they couldn’t hurt her and El in here. But this younger version of their group was undoubtedly vulnerable. Even against Dart, for whom there was not a shred of evidence that domestication could be achieved in any capacity. An errand for a fool indeed. Fools, all.

The metal of the roof door screeched open. Max and El both turned to watch the younger version of Lucas hoist himself up through the hatch, his binoculars clutched in one hand as he used the other to pull himself up onto the roof. Max couldn’t help but smile a little watching him – curious, eager, intelligent Lucas, his youthful face growing serious as he scanned the junkyard through his binoculars. So keen to drink in what was around him. So unaware of what awaited him in this life.

This year felt like an eternity ago, Max thought with some sadness. They’d been so young then. And so naive. The stakes had felt so much lower, their odds of surviving so much more promising. Their madcap foolishness seemed just that – foolish. They had been stupid, impressionable children. Thinking that the world wouldn’t rip them apart at a moment’s notice.

As she watched younger Lucas survey his surroundings, let her eyes rest on that stupid adorable headband she was sure he’d tied himself, Max wanted to pull this Lucas close to her, protect him from everything she knew was coming their way. She didn’t want that sweet, hopeful face to break, to grow weary like she knew it would. She knew some of that was her fault. If Max could go back and change it, she would. But for now, she focused on holding the memory close in her mind. Trying as hard as she could to imprint it into her subconscious.

The hatch creaked open once more, and Max saw a flash of her own red hair as the younger version of herself climbed uncertainly through the roof door. Yes, she remembered this too. The Upside Down and Demogorgons and Eleven herself had all been myths to her back then. She’d thought they were crazy, the whole group of them. Max had thought she’d moved from California into the Twilight Zone. She could almost hear Rod Serling narrating in the background: “These youngsters don’t know it yet, but what they are about to witness is a creature from another dimension. The Demogorgon. A fearsome fellow with a mouth the size of an umbrella, and enough teeth to frighten a dinosaur -”

This was the first day where Max had questioned her own logic. After seeing Dart, an unidentifiable pollywog creature days earlier, and then going on the hunt for a startingly larger version of him – as they were doing at this point in the memory – she remembered that Lucas’ story had started to hold a note of truth in it, as much as she’d refused to admit it.  

Max’s thoughts were broken into by her own voice.

“It’s kind of awesome.”

“Huh?”

“The fog, I mean. Looks like the ocean.”

Nice, Max, she thought to herself, cringing. Lucas didn’t seem put off, though. It was much easier to watch Lucas, Max realized. Watching herself was too strange.

As Lucas asked younger Max if she missed California, Max watched her own eyes go far away as she told him about leaving, specifically about leaving her father. Even now she felt it squeeze at her heart. But younger Lucas remained engaged, and Max felt warmth in her belly as she watched younger Lucas sit up, focus his attention on her, start to listen.

Max felt her gut clench as she heard herself mention Billy. She could hear the pain in her own voice. The fear. The sadness. Things that looked so different now than before. The fear wasn’t concentrated on Billy so much anymore, he was gone, but had expanded out to everything else around her. The sadness – that was still there. And it would always be there.

“I guess…I’m angry too,” younger Max said, her voice now very quiet. “I’m sorry.”

Lucas’ eyes had grown soft and deep. He wasn’t prying, wasn’t trying to get his hooks in her like everyone else. He looked as if he were trying to see.

Max knew what was coming next. He was about to tell her she was cool, and different, and super smart. Lucas’ eyes were about to soften, a crooked grin about to bloom onto his face as he reassured her.

A high-pitched ringing seared through the peaceful night atmosphere. She gasped a little as the colors became oddly intensified, the sounds became crackly and muffled. Lucas’ youthful face had suddenly turned dark, a far contrast from the soft, gentle look that she remembered. Instead, he opened his mouth, and said in a low, unforgiving voice: “You’ll end up just like him.”

Max felt herself stumble backwards a little as the memory faded away and they became enveloped in darkness once more. Her eyes started filling with tears. Her chest felt like it had been punched out. Watching Lucas say it somehow hurt much worse than she’d thought. She could feel El’s concerned eyes on her, felt El’s hand on her shoulder.

“I’m…don’t worry,” Max muttered half in her direction, waving her hand.

“Lucas really said that?” El questioned. She seemed more confused than anything. Max couldn’t answer her. She felt nauseous. Everything felt off, as if every hair in her pores was bent back the wrong way…

No, something was off. Max willed herself to take a few deep breaths, shaking her head.

“El, that’s not what happened.”

Eleven quirked her head at Max, and Max barreled on.

“This isn’t how I remember it. He didn’t say that.”

“But…we are in your memory,” El reasoned. “If it’s your memory, it is what happened. Right?”

Max couldn’t make sense of this. Something was very, very wrong. But it was her memory. Could she have a different version of it programmed in her mind than what actually occurred? She’d heard Mrs. Kelley mention this before. Sometimes when there’s trauma, we tell ourselves a different story than what actually happened. To help ourselves cope.

Mrs. Kelley only talked to people whose brains were sick. And Max knew her real-world brain wasn’t in great shape. Had she been sick for much longer than she’d realized? Or had Lucas finally seen her for what she truly was – a monster-in-waiting? An eventual perpetrator of pain – exactly as Vecna had always whispered to her during those lonely, sleepless nights back home. The nights she’d wanted to die.

Max’s knees buckled from underneath her, and she felt herself sinking to the ground. She felt terrible all of a sudden. Weak, unsteady. Her hands were trembling, her breathing shallow and uneven.

“El, I don’t feel good.”

“We are leaving now. Going back,” El said at once, seizing Max’s arm and tugging. Max felt herself sway in that direction, falling into El’s arms as they resurfaced.

An earth-shattering gasp startled Lucas out of his stupor.

Max’s cloudy eyes had flown open, her chest heaving for breath. Dark blood was flowing freely from both her nostrils. Her pale arms shot out in front of her, grasping wildly at thin air. Seeking someone. Anyone.

And immediately Lucas was there, grabbing her and sitting her up. She clutched his arms in a death grip, still gasping for breath, her eyes wide. El appeared on her other side, wiping her own nose as she put her hands on Max’s shoulder. Will seemed rooted to the spot as he put his hands on his head, his expression helpless. Mike and Dustin sat nearby, frozen, looking terrified.

Max’s skin was clammy, her face white. She vomited over Lucas’ arm onto the bed, the blood from her nose mixing with the tendrils of gray slime that now hung from her mouth.

“You’re okay,” Lucas said at once, brushing her hair away from her face. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

The door slammed open, and Cynthia, along with two other nurses, entered the room.

“Max,” Cynthia said in a raised voice, drawing up in front of her. “Lay back, I need to get a cuff on you.”

Max buried her face in Lucas’ shirt, shaking her head.

“No,” she gulped out.

“Max – ”

“No!”

“Heart rate’s 160,” one of the nurses said shortly, shooing El away so she could get on Max’s other side.

“Max, please – ” Lucas started, but as he watched two more nurses enter the room he knew he would soon be ushered away. Sure enough, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and out of the corner of his eye he saw his friends being shunted from the room. It took all three nurses to pull Max away from Lucas as he was all but shoved toward the door.

“What’s happening to her?” Dustin demanded of the nurse guiding him.

“Her blood pressure’s skyrocketing. Out, all of you. Now.”

Lucas turned back to look, and over the nurse’s shoulder he saw Max struggling weakly against Cynthia and the other nurses as they held down her arms and legs. The needle was in her before he could blink, and the last thing he heard before the door shut was Max cry out “No!” once more, in a long, drawn-out wail.

The metal door clanged behind them as they all poured out into the hallway. Lucas barely heard Mike say “Come on, let’s get some air.”

There were hands pushing him forward down the hallway, out of the sliding doors and into the balmy air. Lucas leaned over, his hands on his knees, feeling like he was going to vomit. Jesus. Watching Max’s emotional distress had been its own torture. But watching her go into physical distress brought him back to that night, that night where he’d had to watch her struggle for air in the ambulance. In his mind’s eye, he could still see her bent limbs, her eyes leaking blood…

He willed himself not to be sick, taking deep gulps of air as he tried to steady himself.

“Easy.” Dustin and Will came up next to him, supporting him on either side. He could feel Will’s hands shaking, could feel how tense Dustin’s usually easy presence was. Mike seemed to be in a daze.

Lucas had half-expected Eleven to have wrapped her arms around Mike for comfort, but she merely stood rooted to the spot. When she finally spoke, she sounded alarmed. “Max has never been like that before.”

Lucas felt okay enough to straighten up, and he addressed her.

“Being in the void hurts her. It has to.”

“Maybe…she cannot be in there for long periods of time,” El responded, looking troubled. “Last time, we walked through three memories. This time, only two.”

“El, you’ve got powers,” reasoned Will. “You can withstand being in there because of that. But maybe for her, since she doesn’t…it hurts her more.”

“But half of her has been in there for months,” argued Dustin, who seemed to still be recovering from what had just occurred. “If it really hurts her, wouldn’t she have gotten worse instead of better?”

“Maybe they’re cancelling each other out,” Mike finally spoke, his voice slightly uneven. “When she’s here, she heals. When she’s there, it hurts her. But now that she’s aware of the connection…maybe that’s starting to hurt her too.”

Lucas gritted his teeth. There seemed to be no way for Max to get out of this without suffering more than she already had. Everything was hurting her.

“How can we get her out of there faster?” he questioned urgently, feeling the knots in his stomach start to tighten. “What can we do?”

They all looked at Eleven, who was frowning.

“Memories,” she said. “Remember? We have been using her memories to bridge the gap.”

“Vecna would use her bad memories against her,” added Lucas. “So maybe for this, she has to face those bad memories and…survive.”

An additional layer of urgency had now settled over their situation. It wasn’t just that they needed to help Max integrate her real-world body and her void self. Now they were on a time limit. And the longer Max was in the void, the more she would suffer. Either leave her in her current state, where she would get worse, or plunge her deeper into her traumatic memories, where she might also get worse. There was no good option in this scenario. His friends all seemed to silently agree, their faces solemn.

Dustin finally spoke. “Lucas…that’s hell. How could anyone get through it?”

“She’ll have us with her,” he said, though it even sounded half-hearted coming out of his own mouth. Another madcap mission that they had no guarantee would work.

But as Lucas looked at his friends, he knew they had no choice.

“She’ll have us,” he repeated.

It wasn’t enough. But it was what they had.

Nighttime felt like another planet.

Lucas edged around the corner, looking for any nurses before he slipped quietly into Max’s room. He couldn’t seem to stay away, no matter how nauseatingly exhausted he was. Upon entering, he saw Max’s slightly tangled red hair on her pillow, her pale face turned toward the window.

“Max,” he said quietly.

Max swiveled her head very slowly in his direction as Lucas drew up next to her bedside. She lay there, slightly propped up, her milky eyes staring vacantly in the direction of the wall behind him. She seemed dazed, and Lucas thought that perhaps the sedative from earlier hadn’t quite worn off yet. She blinked slowly, her eyelids pulling lazily apart.

“Lucas,” she mumbled, reaching out for him. He sat down on her bed, smoothing her hair back from her face.

“You’re a troublemaker, you know,” Lucas smiled quietly.

Max gave a weak laugh without smiling, covering his hand with hers. His thumb moved over her cheek, up and down, caressing her skin.

After a few moments, she turned her cloudy gaze upward toward him.

“Home,” she said. “I want…go home.”

“I know you do,” Lucas said sadly. “I know. You’re getting better every day.”

“No,” Max mumbled, lifting her hand limply and pointing her finger into his chest. “You. Help me. Go home.”

Lucas frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“You help me,” she murmured hazily. “Home.”

Lucas did know, but he had been trying to come off as if he didn’t. She was asking him to break her out of the hospital. And there were so many reasons why that was not a good idea.

“Max. I can’t.”

Max just looked at him.

“Home,” she said again.

“It’s not safe, and I think you know that. What if something happens?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. You’re still on an IV and you can’t walk without your walker yet.” Lucas wouldn’t throw her blindness in her face, though that was the major factor in most of his concerns. “And after today…if we take you out of here, it could make things worse.”

Max’s expression didn’t change. Lucas could tell she’d been ruminating on this all day.

“I’m…b-better,” she managed.

“Yes, you are. But not all the way.”

Lucas smoothed her hair back again, caressing her face.

“I don’t want anything else to happen to you. I can’t lose you again.”

Max’s eyes started to swim with tears, her bottom lip beginning to tremble, and Lucas’ insides crumbled to nothing.

“No, please. Please don’t cry. Max.”

She tugged on his shirt with her weakened grip. Lucas leaned down toward her and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He pulled her up so that she was sitting upright, him holding her steady in his arms. Lucas rocked her slowly, his hand behind her head. More than ever he wished he could just keep her in his arms forever, protect her from all the world’s ills. He knew this would never be possible. Trouble seemed to follow them wherever they went.

Max sobbed a little, pressing her forehead to his temple.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please. Help me.”

Lucas closed his eyes as Max nuzzled into him a little, sniffling. Hearing her cry melted clean away any resolve he’d possessed. Mike’s previous comment echoed in his mind. This place is what’s killing her.

Yes, Mike might have just been emotional. But maybe he had a point. Maybe this place was harming Max more than it was helping her. And maybe she just needed to be home.

Lucas could feel every part of his body telling him not to do it, not to agree to another cockamamie plan. But it was for Max. His girl. And right now, she was begging him to help her.

Lucas placed a small kiss right next to her ear, leaning toward it.

“Okay,” he whispered.

Chapter Text

Hello, my loves.
I wanted to apologize again for the extended wait on the next chapter. Over the last few months, I have been battling some health issues: neurological symptoms (tremors, muscle spasms, and a brief bout of tardive dyskinesia), prediabetes (I’m on metformin now yay), and psych med changes (we FINALLY found a combo that works after some very low weeks).

That said, I want you to know that I am okay, and doing everything I need to do healthwise. And now that my internship is complete - along with completing my master’s degree this coming May - I have more time to dedicate to this story that I love so much.

All I ask for is patience. All the med changes have made my stomach trés upset and my body tired, so I haven’t felt well recently and it’s been harder to write. But once my body expands into the time I now have - time I didn’t have for six months - I promise I will allot time to finish this next chapter, and eventually, the story itself. I know we as a fandom have been THRIVING with season five content as they film, and I’m excited for what’s ahead.

I can’t wait to show you what’s next for our friends in Hawkins. Until then, stay tuned. :)

-rbdtw

Chapter Text

Lucas’ sense of dread never left these days.

As Steve’s car pulled into the dimly lit hospital parking lot, he found his mind was elsewhere. He couldn’t help but think through every step. After they accomplished their plan - breaking Max out of the hospital - then what? They’d just stay close to her, he told himself, trying to ignore the nagging voice inside him that told him this was not a good idea. Nothing much made sense these days, and this plan was as half-baked as any other. What was driving him, though, was the possibility that taking her out of this prison that stank of disease and decay would help her. Make her better, even.

Lucas’ insides squirmed at this foolishly cheery outlook. Even he wasn’t that stupid. The only thing that was going to help her was freeing her from the void. And then later, defeating Vecna. And truthfully, Lucas didn’t know if she would survive the former long enough to do the latter. The powers that be seemed determined to take her away.

They couldn’t take her home. Lucas knew that much. Keeping her sheltered so close to a gate – the one that had taken residence in the Munson trailer – was as good as giving her up to Vecna at that point. He considered their options. Hopper’s cabin was still being fixed up, and the Mind Flayer had already been there. He knew there might not be an ideal safe place, but he didn’t want to take her somewhere familiar to Vecna. He wasn’t sure about the Wheelers’ or his own house. And Dustin’s mother would have a coronary if they showed up unannounced in the state of things. Even though their families were likely keyed into what was going on now, he was hesitant to draw them into the fray. Vecna would view them as collateral damage, evidenced by how he’d threatened Nancy. He’d have to ask his friends if they knew any places.

It suddenly dawned on him. If Max was too fragile to survive her bad memories, and she didn’t make it, none of their party - least of all himself - would want her to die alone in that hospital room. Lucas tried to push the thought from his mind, but it overwhelmed him. They were bringing her home to make her well. At least, they were trying to. But…

What if they were bringing her home to die?

“…and then we’ll get out of here. Sinclair? Hello?”

Lucas started. Everyone’s eyes were on him. 

“Wha – I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “What’s our plan again?”

Steve gave an exasperated sigh.

“Christ. I’m not repeating myself. Can someone do a short version?”

“Lucas, Robin’s going to scope out the side exits,” Nancy explained. Something in her tone told him she knew he was preoccupied. “I’ll be waiting here in the car, while you, Mike, and Steve get Max. Robin will come find you and take you to the exit.”

“You get to Max’s room, and we’ll be your lookouts,” Mike asserted. “Then we wait for Robin.”

“And then I, being of mostly sound mind and clumsy body, will lead us to freedom!” Robin announced with a nervous grandeur.

“I don’t think it’ll be too hard,” Steve noted. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s here.”

“All the more reason to get her out of here,” Nancy said seriously.

“Should we get some supplies, too?” Robin inquired. “I know hospital soap is terrible and those gowns –”

“ —smell like old people, yes, we know. I suppose that’ll be my job,” conceded Nancy. “Robin, I’ll need your bag.”

“Where will we take her?” Lucas heard himself ask. “We can’t take her home. There’s a gate right there.”

The group was quiet for a moment, then Robin tapped Steve’s arm, her eyes wide.

“Reefer Rick’s,” she whispered triumphantly.

“I’m sorry, where?”

“It’s where we were hiding Eddie,” Steve explained. “When he was on the run? Everyone in the town was looking for him? It’s remote. Over by Lover’s Lake.”

“So…Reefer Rick isn’t going to mind that we’re moving her into his house?”

“Well, by this point, he’s either still in jail or dead,” Robin stated matter-of-factly. “So no, I don’t think he’ll mind.”

Nancy shook her head. “We can’t take her there.”

“What? Why not?”

“There’s a gate at Lover’s Lake, too. Water Gate?”

Steve and Robin both sighed exasperatedly, and Steve started muttering to himself.

“How did I forget his stupid Water Gate? I went through it, for God’s sake. Oh yeah, because it wasn’t a good pun. Not even a mediocre pun. He’s an idiot…”

“Anyway,” Nancy brought them back to the task at hand. “There is another place.”

“Where can we possibly take her that Vecna hasn’t touched?” Mike asked incredulously.

“It’s unorthodox, but…it’s the best we have. You know that restaurant, Hideaway Pub?”

Mike’s eyebrows raised. “You want to house her in a pub?”

“It has a basement. I was there once with some friends, and I saw the owner walk down some stairs in the back. I think he lived there. And since most of Hawkins is deserted…”

They all looked at each other, giving grim nods.

“Let’s just hope he’s not still there,” Steve said, then rounded on Lucas. “So do we understand, Sinclair? Your only job is to get Max.”

“Yes,” Lucas replied, though his own voice even sounded distant to him. “Yeah. All good.”

Mike and Nancy didn’t seem convinced, and Robin was even giving him a concerned look. Steve, oblivious as ever, said “All right, team, let’s go.”

The building seemed even more foreboding when it was deserted like this; the fluorescent lights flickering intermittently, the eerie absence of breath. As Lucas walked slowly past the empty check-in counter and into Max’s hallway, trying not to make too much noise, he had a horrible thought that other patients here didn’t have parties they could rely on. Had they been removed under the current climate, or had they been left to rot?

Lucas didn’t have time to consider this or its implications. He reached Max’s room, Mike and Steve behind him. 

“You get her,” said Mike, “And then knock on her door when you have her. I’ll open the door once we know the coast is clear.”

Lucas nodded at him, creaking open the metal door and slowly edging into the room.

Max was asleep, as he’d expected. The weaker she became, the more she slept. He drew up close to her bed, and the pale light of nighttime hit her face. He could see the beginnings of hollows in her cheeks, could see the angle of her cheekbones more prominently. Lucas shook his head. He’d worry about it later. He had to try saving what was left of her first.

“Max,” Lucas murmured softly, shaking her shoulder. “Max.”

She stirred slightly, blinking confusedly.

“It’s Lucas,” he whispered, leaning down so she could hear him.

Max’s pale hand slid out from under her blankets, lifting weakly up into the air and reaching out in the direction of his voice. He guided her hand to his cheek. At once, he watched her face fill with recognition and resolve.

“Time to go?” She murmured.

“Yeah.” He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s time to go.”

She nodded slightly, her other arm emerging from under the blanket, her fingers closing around the bar on her bed. Lucas watched her arm tighten as she tried to pull herself up. Her face flushed pink and then red as she strained to lift herself, but with a sinking feeling he saw her muscles start to shake.

“Let me help,” he whispered, reaching out for her. Wrapping his arms around her back, Lucas lifted her up into a sitting position.

“What do we do about your IV?” He inquired. Max put her hand to it questioningly, rolling the tube in between her slender fingers. Before Lucas could suggest a solution, she had gripped it and pulled the needle from the crook of her elbow.

“Max!” Lucas hissed, as Max held her hand tightly to the spot.

“It’s fine,” she assured him. “Not much blood.”

“Fine, fine...” He pulled her dark green blanket from her bed and draped it over her shoulders. “I’m going to carry you, okay?”

Max gave a slight jerk of her head in understanding, her arms opening toward him. Lucas slipped his arm under her knees and scooped her up. Max gave a little yelp of pain.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said, though her voice was quiet, almost faint.

Lucas had underestimated how challenging it might be to walk quietly with Max in his arms. He tried his best to watch where he was stepping while also moving with reasonable speed. He managed to reach the door after a few minutes of practically tiptoeing through the room. He stopped in front of it and knocked with his elbow once, twice - just as they planned.

“Mike?” he questioned in a hushed tone.

In response, Max’s hospital room door slowly started to open, Mike clearly trying to do so as quietly as possible. Once it was far enough ajar for them to fit, Lucas slipped through, Max’s arms wrapped limply around his neck.

Mike brushed past him. “I’ll grab her walker.”

“Get her pillow, too,” Lucas whispered.

Robin and Steve stood very still against the wall, though they moved once Lucas was through the door. Mike emerged with Max’s walker under one arm and her pillow with the pink case in the other. Robin and Steve drew near to him as he adjusted Max in his arms.

“I found an exit down this hallway,” Robin whispered. “So we won’t have to go past the entrance.”

“Lead the way,” Lucas replied.

He kept his eyes trained on Robin’s short bob of hair as it bounced around behind her, following her closely as she led them to the exit. She pushed the door open, holding it for the rest of them as Lucas, Mike and Steve crept out into the cool night air.

The black clouds looked both more and less terrifying at night. The lack of sunlight against them made them look a dusty orange, though the red lightning still crackled through them. Lucas noticed with some dread that there was even less of the navy blue sky than there usually was. More of it was being eclipsed by the Upside Down, a tower-sized chink of the sky slowly being swallowed by the hell within it.

Lucas barely heard the exit open again behind them, and Nancy emerged, Robin’s now-full bag slung over her shoulder. She tossed the car keys in Steve’s direction.

“Steve, start the car. Let’s go.”

Lucas felt Mike tap his shoulder. “Earth to Lucas. We have to get out of here.”

Even as they piled into Steve’s car and Nancy started it, Lucas could not tear his eyes away from the harsh orange clouds as they rumbled across the night sky. Even watching them behind the print-laden car window did not make him feel any safer.

Max’s head rested on his shoulder, her eyes closed. He could hear how her breathing was slightly labored. Lucas brushed some hair away from her face and leaned his cheek against her forehead. 

She stirred, pulling herself closer, and Lucas could feel her clammy skin against his.

Please, Max. Please hold on a little longer.

Not for the first time, Lucas had misgivings about this idea.

Leaving Hawkins Memorial had been easy enough, and it wasn’t a long drive to Hideaway. The streets leading to the hospital were bare, only surrounded by fields. But the closer they came to town, Lucas started to see isolated buildings and houses. Empty, dilapidated. They had almost a haunted look about them, as if their residents had been gone for years.

As they drew closer to town, Lucas squinted into the distance. By the glow of Steve’s headlights, he was starting to see military trucks in the distance, lining the road. Police lights, flashing blue and red. Steve seemed to notice this the same time he did, cursing under his breath.

“Goddamn it.” The car started to slow.

“Steve, what are you doing?” Nancy hissed.

“Nance, there’s police and shit up ahead.”

“Yes, I see that. You don’t think it’ll look suspicious if we turn around?”

“I mean, yeah, but how are we going to explain any of this to them? Look, just trust me. I know how military people operate, okay? We’re going to pull up, they’re going to start asking questions, and then we’ll be detained. And then we’re really in deep shit. They’ll never let us out of their sight.”

Nancy glanced back at them – at Lucas, who was still cradling Max in his arms; at Mike and Robin, who were both pressed up against their respective windows for lack of room.

“Keep going,” She stated firmly, facing forward.

“Nance – ”

“Just trust me. I’ve got a plan.”

As they predicted, a particularly gruff-looking military officer stood in the road in front of Steve’s car, his hands up. Lucas felt the car slow to a halt, and instinctively pulled Max a little closer to him. The officer tapped on Steve’s window, and he cranked it down.

“Folks, downtown Hawkins is closed off to tourists at this time.”

Steve opened his mouth, but Nancy cut across him.

“We’re not tourists. We’re trying to get back into town.”

She hitched a convincingly anxious look onto her face.

“Here in the back, these are my sister’s kids. They were visiting me and my husband here – ” Her pretty hand rested on Steve’s arm, and Lucas could swear he saw Steve break out into a sweat. “ –when all this chaos started happening. And my sister’s been calling nonstop for me to bring the kids back to her. So that’s what we’re doing. Steve’s cousin is back there too. She was with us when my sister called, and she felt she should come along too.”

Lucas tried desperately to read this officer, trying to gauge how well Nancy’s on-the-fly story would go over. His face was ruddy and round, hard lines creased into it. His gray hair was shaved close to his scalp, and his eyes were black and beady. On his dark blue camo uniform, apart from numerous army decorations, was a matching name tag in yellow lettering: Underwood.

“Is there a reason you’re making this trip at three in the morning?” Underwood frowned at them.

Just then, Max gave a little moan. Lucas looked down at her. She was stirring a little, her mouth trembling.

“Shh,” he muttered nervously, rubbing her back. “Shh.”

Lucas could feel Underwood’s small eyes boring into him.

“What’s the matter with her?” He gestured at Max.

Nancy quickly changed her expression to sorrowful.

“That’s the other reason we’re trying to get into town so late. That’s my niece, Max. She’s ill, and has been for a while. She got worse when all this started happening, and my sister has begged me to bring her home. So if…something happens…” Lucas could actually see the beginnings of tears in Nancy’s eyes. “…at least she’d be with family.”

Underwood looked them all over for another minute or two. After several tense seconds, he nodded.

“All right, go on. But I advise you to be careful. These are dangerous times."

“Yes, sir,” Nancy assented. “We promise, it won’t happen again.”

Underwood gave a jerk of his head, and waved at the other truck blocking the road. It rumbled away, clearing their path, and their car started to move in the direction of the town.

Nancy straightened up, wiping her eyes in a businesslike way.

“Okay. Hopefully they don't have town exits blocked, just entrances. So we'll have to be strategic about how often we're going in and out. But if we can stay within town as much as we can, they shouldn't catch on to anything.”

Steve still seemed thrown from the entire interaction. He merely nodded, pulling forward toward the pub, which sat forlornly on the horizon.

“Lucas?”

He looked down to see Max blinking slowly, her brows furrowing. The stopping and re-starting of the car must have jostled her awake.

“Hey.” Lucas caressed her face.

Her milky eyes swiveled around, and he knew she was trying to ascertain where they were.

“We’re taking you to Hideaway Pub,” Lucas told her. “I’m going to help get you inside, down to their basement. Then you can sleep in a bed. Or on a couch. Depending on what we can find.”

She frowned a little.

“Not home?”

“We wanted to take you there, but it’s not safe. There’s still a gate close by. This was the best alternative.”

Max’s frown eased after a few moments.

“Gate close,” she mumbled, as if communicating that she understood. “Not safe.”

The car slowed to a stop, asphalt crunching beneath tires. The car doors opened, and they all started to get out. Lucas pulled her a little closer.

“Just hold on to me.”

Her thin arms tightened slightly around him. Nancy and Mike leapt forward to help him lift Max out of the car as he got up out of it. 

“Mike, watch her head…” Nancy fretted.

“I got it,” Mike sniped at her.

“It’s fine,” Lucas told them, straightening up. “It’s fine, I got her.”

Lucas stepped onto the asphalt outside the pub, adjusting Max in his arms before making a beeline for the door. He shoved it open with his shoulder, and he could feel his friends behind him as he entered.

The pub was, thankfully, deserted. Dust hung in the air, coating the dark counter and small booths. A forlorn-looking jukebox sat unceremoniously by the back wall. The lights were off, the air still. As Lucas stepped forward into the space, he could hear the floorboards creaking under his sneakers.

Max gave a little sigh, and Lucas looked at her. Her cheek rested against his shoulder, her cloudy eyes boring into the side of his head.

“I’m tired,” she whispered, blinking slowly.

“I know. You’ll get to rest soon, okay?”

She jerked her head a little, closing her eyes again.

Lucas pressed his lips to her temple, adjusting her slightly in his arms. A flashlight beam flooded out from behind him, and Mike drew up close.

“I think the basement’s back there,” he said.

“Yep, just back there,” Nancy pointed, coming up on Lucas’ other side. “Let me go first, so I can see where we’re putting her.”

She brushed past Lucas, disappearing into the narrow stairwell. Robin and Mike followed her; Mike carrying Max’s walker, Robin with her arms wrapped around Max’s pink pillow. Lucas started down the basement stairs behind them, stepping extremely carefully.

One thing Lucas could say about this basement is that it was lived in. A narrow twin bed sat in the corner, covered in a few patchy different-colored quilts. A round patchwork rug sat on the concrete floor, in an obvious attempt to add some color to the otherwise lifeless place. On the other side of the room, a yellowing kitchenette with a sink and an oven sat beneath a few wall cupboards. To the left of the kitchenette sat a bookshelf, though it looked to hold more curios than books. A few model planes, a picture or two. The shelves were largely bare outside of that. An ancient refrigerator sat in the back corner, close to the small back corridor. Two other doors sat on each side of the short hallway, presumably a bathroom and a closet. There was the smell of cigarette ash, hanging dense in the air. Lucas saw tar stains on the top corners of the wall.

“Well,” Steve shrugged, observing the place with his hands on his hips. “I guess it’ll do.”

“Let’s get her in bed,” Nancy beckoned from the corner, pulling the quilts back. Lucas approached the bed, gently lowering Max onto the mattress.

“Max,” Nancy said, her voice slightly raised. “Can Robin and I help you get changed?”

“Need help,” Max responded faintly. “Find clothes.”

Lucas leaned down and helped her sit up, keeping a hand on her back to steady her. She slumped against him like a rag doll, her head lolling against his shoulder.

“Boys, avert your eyes,” Robin shooed them away. “Start looking through the cupboards there. We should get her to eat if we can.”

Only when Nancy hastened over and took Lucas’ place did he feel comfortable enough to leave Max’s side. He, along with Steve and Mike, hastened over to the kitchenette and started opening cabinets, started looking through drawers.

Truthfully, there didn’t seem to be much. After several minutes, Lucas’ own search had yielded only a few cans of soup in one cupboard and a very moldy loaf of bread in the other. Steve seemed to have had even less success, yielding only a few pieces of cutlery and some matches.

He heard Mike gasp in disgust as the rusty refrigerator door screeched open.

“Jesus Christ,” he coughed a little, burying his nose in the crook of his elbow.

Lucas glanced over through watering eyes to see what he already smelled - a wilted stalk of broccoli, the flower of the broccoli a splotchy, sour green, the stalk a sickly brown. It took both him and Mike holding it with one hand – their other hands clamped over their noses – to get it out the back door, both of them throwing it into the dumpster nearby. Lucas went back to the cupboard and discarded the moldy bread loaf in the same manner.

“Any luck?” Steve inquired as they re-entered.

“There’s a few cans of soup,” Lucas shrugged. “But based on everything else they have...I’m guessing they’re probably rotten too.”

“They don’t have anything,” said Steve agitatedly, slamming a cupboard door shut. “A dude who lives here doesn’t have any food. Great.”

Mike and Lucas looked at each other.

“I’m sure everyone at Bradley’s Big Buy is gone,” Lucas thought aloud. “We should go scrounge up some food and supplies.”

Mike looked troubled. “It’s been months, Lucas. I’m sure we aren’t the first ones to think of that.”

“If Max is going to be here then we have to have something for her to eat,” Lucas insisted, his own anxiety starting to rise.

“I don’t know, Lucas. I really don’t.”

Steve rounded on Nancy.

“Stupid. This is stupid, Nance. There’s no goddamn food anywhere in here. And we don’t have any of that fluid shit that she was hooked up to.”

“But she can drink fluids herself now,” Nancy reasoned. “We’ll give her plenty of water. As for food, we’re not far from Bradley’s or the general store. There has to be something in one of those places.”

“Okay, but if something…medical happens, then what? We’re shit out of luck. She could die out here.”

Lucas couldn’t blame Steve for his misgivings around the matter. He was feeling the same apprehension. A voice in the back of his mind echoed: this is stupid, this is stupid, this is stupid. We shouldn’t have done this.

But as Lucas turned his gaze onto Max, the uneasy clenching in his stomach seemed to ease slightly. Max was in a large gray t-shirt, and Robin was tenderly pulling the covers over her. As she lay comfortably on the pillow, curling up in the blankets like a butterfly in a cocoon, Lucas saw a peace in her expression that he hadn’t seen in a long time. He knew it didn’t smell like home to her, but it must be nice to be in a different bed. She looked both unencumbered and naked without all the tubes and wires surrounding her, the dark shadows under her eyes standing out more prominently against the pink pillowcase.

Robin looked up as they approached.

“It’s Mike and Lucas,” she said softly to Max, who had tilted her head up slightly. Max nodded once, to show she understood, and settled back under the quilts. Lucas saw her crumple a handful of her dark green blanket in her fist, bringing it up to her face and inhaling deeply. The beginnings of tears started to glitter at the corners of her eyes.

Robin edged past Mike and Lucas toward Nancy and Steve, who had moved their lowered argument toward the short hallway. Lucas sat on the bed, Max’s stomach warm against his back.

“I bet you’ll sleep great tonight,” he hoped aloud.

Max’s pale hand reached out toward him, and he took it, pressing a kiss to her knuckles.

“Robin’s staying the night here with you,” he promised. “She’ll sleep right over here on the floor.”

“You’re not?”

“If I don’t get home soon, my parents will send the police,” he smiled humorlessly. “And then we’ll really be in deep shit.”

Max gave a little smile.

“Deep shit,” she agreed.

Lucas brushed some hair back from her face, and her sightless eyes stared into his chin.

“I’ll see you again tomorrow. Okay?”

Max nodded. “Okay.”

Lucas leaned forward and planted one very soft kiss right between her eyebrows. Her hand cradled his head, and he could feel her pulling slightly, silently asking him to stay. He pecked another kiss or two in the same spot before straightening up. Lucas wanted to stay, he wanted to with all his heart, but he didn’t want to give his parents an excuse to get involved in this mess.

Steve was jingling his keys. “Taxi’s leaving, let’s go.”

“Call me if she needs me,” he told her.

Robin nodded resolutely, and Lucas trudged out of the trailer, through the creaky door, into the rumbling night.

Max didn’t feel right.

The loneliness of the void had been somewhat tempered. The problem was, the thing tempering it was how her body felt in here. She knew her body out there had to be in bad shape, because in here she was starting to feel awful too. Her limbs hurt with movement. Her head…it was always splitting now. Could she bleed in here? She didn’t want to find out.

Dark blue blobs of color started to fill the space, forming shapes and lines. She didn’t move, frowning as floorboards developed beneath her, a creaky roof overhead. It was nighttime, she could tell that much.

“Hello?”

A muffled voice warbled through the room, and a dark shape started to form nearby.

Max frowned, edging closer to it. As it came into sharper detail, she felt the air leave her lungs.

It was Lucas.

He was sitting in what she recognized as that attic. In the Creel house. The eerie blue light in front of him.

She walked toward him, her steps going faster, her heart starting to hammer. She had to get him out of here, get him away from this house. What was he doing there?

“I’m here.”

Max stopped dead, her veins flooding cold.

“You hear me, asshole? I’m here. Stop torturing Max. She’s been through enough. I’m here because…I want you to take me instead of her.”

“Lucas, no! STOP!”

Max’s horrified scream could not drown out the buzzing of the light, which surged, and she watched Lucas’ eyes roll into the back of his head, his limbs go stiff, his body rising –

Max was jerked awake by the impact of her body hitting the floor, her limbs tangling over themselves in a heap. She scrambled frantically, realizing this wasn’t her hospital room, or her own bedroom. Max didn’t recognize the smells, the feeling of the concrete floor, the blanket that had fallen out of the bed with her. She had to get away, she had to save Lucas –

Max jumped backward as a set of hands touched her.

“No, no, Max, it’s me, it’s Robin! Shh, you’re okay.”

Max’s hand finally found what she realized was the leg of the bed, a thick metal bar, and she curled herself around it, shaking from head to toe. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Vecna was there, he was going to kill her in this strange place. Just like he was going to kill Lucas. And Max couldn’t do a thing to stop him. Fragile. Weak. And you…will…break.

“Max…” Robin’s voice sounded next to her, very small and quiet. “Max, it’s Robin. I’m not gonna hurt you. I swear on everything I own, on my mother – I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Max flinched at the light, gentle touch on her arm. She didn’t trust it. Any moment Robin’s hand would become those black, slimy tentacles, and her voice would turn gravelly. Maxine. He was trying to trick her. He’d finished off Lucas, and was coming for her next. She held on tighter to the bed post, every muscle tensed around it.

“No, no, no,” she mumbled, jerking away as she felt Robin’s palm against her shoulder.

“Okay, Max, I won’t touch. I’m just sitting right here with you. Okay?”

Max could feel her body starting to throb at the impact of her hitting the floor, but her muscles would not relax. She became aware of the concrete against her cheek, cold and unforgiving. Max started to shiver. Her veins were ice, her skin too thin for warmth.

Robin’s voice startled her, though it was barely above a whisper.

”Max.”

Max’s shaking hand reached out from under the bed, finally surrendering. Even if it wasn’t really Robin, and she was being tricked, she couldn’t brave this nightmare world alone. And if it was Robin, Max could tell her to help Lucas.

Robin’s hand met hers, and Max felt herself being pulled into Robin’s arms. Robin squeezed her close, and Max could hear her panicked breathing. If this was Vecna masquerading as Robin, he was putting on a terrific performance. As Robin stroked her hair, whispering “You’re okay, Max, I got you,” she started to become more and more sure that this wasn’t Vecna in disguise.

“I - I – ” Her hands scrabbled uselessly against Robin’s arms. Max’s mind now jumbled when she was panicked. “Find Lucas.”

“Lucas is coming back soon. He and the others went to get the rest of our party, so we can set up shop here.”

“Help him,” Max cried. “Vecna.”

Robin’s body tensed around her.

“Is he close? Can you feel him?”

Max shook her head wildly. Robin didn’t understand.

“Find him,” she wailed. “Find Lucas.”

Robin started rocking her, petting her, and Max could hear the quavering in her voice.

“Max, shh. Shh. Everything’s okay. Shh.”

All at once, Max heard a thud of a door in the distance. She felt slight vibrations on the floor, and heard approaching footsteps, the creaking of stairs. She felt Robin spin around, felt her arms tighten.

“Max?”

She sobbed. Lucas’s voice. He was here. Safe. Alive.

“Lucas,” she cried, throwing her arms out.

Max let out a muffled wail when he reached her, and he pulled her out of Robin’s arms and into his. She flung her arms around him, clinging to him for dear life, breathing in his smell, memorizing the feeling of his skin against hers. She felt his hand in her hair, and she hugged him even tighter.

“Max, you’re okay. You’re okay.”

Max’s body jerked with how hard she was crying, her entire frame shaking uncontrollably.

“You were gone,” she sobbed into his shirt.

“Gone? What do you mean?”

“Vecna took you.”

“He didn’t, Max. I’m right here and I’m fine.”

“You’re here,” she said, more to convince herself than anything. “You’re here.”

She moved back from him, her hands grasping at his face, feeling for wounds, for any disruption. Nothing. He was still him.

She leaned forward until her face found the crook of his neck, and she buried it there. Max barely Lucas question what had happened, barely heard Robin’s worried reply.

Lucas was safe, in her arms, and that was the only thing that mattered.

By mid-afternoon, Lucas had a horrible pit in his stomach.

Once they’d brought the rest of their party to Hideaway, he knew what was coming next. El would have to go back into the void, and she and Max would see more of Max’s memories. She’s too fragile, a nagging worry in the back of his brain whispered. Max’s body was weak. This could break her beyond repair. But they didn’t have a choice. They didn’t have a choice, Lucas told himself.

Nancy had managed to get some water and a cracker or two in her, but Max didn’t seem to have much of an appetite. She’d mostly slept since her nightmare this morning. All the excitement of that seemed to have drained whatever energy she had regained.

Unsurprisingly, El seemed hesitant to initiate this next dive. Her large, sad eyes kept swiveling over to Max, then to him, then to Mike.

“I’m scared I’ll hurt her,” she murmured to Mike, who rubbed her arms.

“I know you are. But we’re doing this to save her, remember? If we leave her in there, that will hurt her too.”

El gave Lucas another uncertain look. He knew how she felt, perhaps more than any of them. But he forced himself to give her a reassuring nod, despite everything in him crying out to do otherwise. She lay flat on the rug, tying the blindfold over her eyes, and that familiar stillness settled into the room.

Lucas braced himself for the fallout.

Max felt Eleven’s hand in hers before she’d had time to think.

“Max,” she said seriously, her other hand on Max’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Not really,” Max tried to smile through her splitting headache.

“Do you still want to do this?”

She chuckled bitterly.

“We don’t have much of a choice, do we?”

El nodded seriously.

“I will be here every step of the way,” she said.

Of that, at least, Max could be certain. She closed her eyes, waiting for the next memory to take shape.

“Hello?”

Max felt her stomach sink to the soles of her feet as the memory formed in front of their eyes. It was Max’s room, her current room, and they were facing her bed, looking at Max herself. Only this Max hearkened back to the time right before Vecna. The Max that was struggling to hang on. She was in day-old clothing, hair mussed, looking haggard and sad. She clutched the phone in her thin hand, the coiled wire spilling down to the floor.

Max knew which memory this was. And she would give anything not to see it again.

El’s quiet presence was the only thing keeping Max from running away, from pushing this memory to the most remote corners of her mind. El’s gentle hand in hers grounded Max enough to stay put.

She recognized the hollowed-out look in this Max’s eyes. This was within the deepest throes of her depression. The days where her bones were made of lead. The days where things like joy felt unfamiliar, and all she knew was exhaustion. The days where she could only feel a deep chasm of despair.

“Max?” Lucas’ cautious voice sounded from the receiver.

“Yeah,” younger Max replied, rubbing her eyes. Max knew this was one of the days were she’d mostly slept. It had been the only bearable thing for her, some days.

“It’s me,” Lucas said, and she could hear his hesitation.

“Hey. What’s up?”

“Well…I’ve been worried about you,” Lucas’ voice grew a little stronger at the invitation to talk. “Is everything okay?”

“Sure, Lucas, everything’s fine. Why?”

“Because I know it isn’t, Max. Something’s wrong. You just don’t want to tell me.”

Younger Max bit her lip, right around the same time present-day Max did too.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” younger Max half-heartedly refuted.

“I just want you to talk to me, Max,” Lucas continued. “You’ve been avoiding me. And if you need your space, I understand. I just want you to know that if I did or said anything to hurt you, I want us to talk about it. So I can apologize, and we can make it right. Whatever it is.”

Younger Max’s resolve was weakening. Max could see it in her eyes. She cleared her throat.

“It’s not –” younger Max choked, and present-day Max remembered the words sticking like glue to her throat, begging her not to say them. “It’s – ”

 “It’s what, Max? You can tell me.”

“I just – ” she stopped, and started again. “I don’t think I’ll ever be happy.”

The silence hung there for a moment.

“What do you mean, Max?” Lucas’ voice was quiet.

“I mean…when people are together, they’re happy. Right?”

“Right…”

“So, you and me. I can’t…I don’t think I can be happy with anyone. In general. A dark cloud has been hanging over me my entire life, Lucas, and it’s always going to ruin every good thing I have, ever.”

Several more seconds of silence, then Lucas’ heartbroken whisper came through the receiver.

“Please. Don’t do this.”

Max felt the sensation of her insides being stuffed through a meat grinder, tearing a raw bloody wound inside her. This was just as awful as the first time. Perhaps worse.

“I…” younger Max couldn’t keep her voice steady any longer. “I’m sorry.”

The crushing sorrow in Lucas’ response made Max want to die. “Was it me? Did I do something to hurt you?”

“No,” younger Max gulped out. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

“I just want you to be happy, Max.”

“Like I said,” she cut across him, and present-day Max knew it was taking everything in her not to break down right there. “I’ll never be happy. But that’s not your problem. It’s mine.”

Lucas’ voice was trembling slightly now.

“I’ll still be here for you. If you need me.”

Fat tears were rolling down younger Max’s face.

“Goodbye, Lucas.”

At the click of the receiver being put back on the phone, Max turned her face away, barely feeling El’s hand on her shoulder.

“El,” she started, but they both jumped as Max’s room door slammed open. Susan Hargrove wobbled in the doorway; drunk, face flushed, skin glistening with sweat.

“Baby,” she slurred, without preamble. “I need some more Coors Light. Here’s a couple dollars.”

She flung a few dollars in Max’s direction, the raggedy old bills fluttering to the floor. Younger Max’s eyes were still swimming, her face still stained with tears as she stared at the dollar bills lying stationary on the carpet. When she spoke, it came out broken. “Okay.”

Susan closed the door unceremoniously without another word. Max felt her own eyes start to swim as younger Max curled up on her quilt, her eyes squeezed shut, her thin shoulders shaking with sobs.

“Let’s go,” Max murmured, unable to bear it any longer. “El, let’s go.”

She turned to go back toward the void – a bleakness she’d much prefer to the one playing out before her – and something crunched beneath her shoe.

Max lifted her Spicoli sneaker to reveal…glass. Smeared with blood. All at once, her bedroom melted away, replaced by tiles bathed in blue light. Thick, cream-colored pillars. A windowed ceiling.

Max stopped dead. No.

“El – ” She started, but she was cut off by the rumbling behind them. El and Max both whirled around to see the Mind Flayer: slimy and almost gelatinous, smearing blood and sinew over the tiles as it squelched toward its target. Its wide gaping mouth revealed those jagged, stalactite teeth that Max still saw in her nightmares.

Out of the corner of her eye, Max suddenly saw Eleven herself, the younger version of her, slung over someone’s shoulder.

Slung over Billy’s shoulder.

“Hey, whoa. El!”

Lucas startled, scrambling over to where El was lying. Her eyes were open, blood streaming from her eyes and nose, dark against her paper-white face.

“Max,” she gulped. “Help Max.”

Max was whimpering lightly from the bed. Lucas knelt next to her, and with horror he realized her eyes were still closed, blood running from her nostrils, blood starting to trickle from behind her eyelids.

“Max. Max!”

He shook her. It did nothing.

“El, what happened?” Nancy demanded, noticing this exchange.

“I tried to pull us out of there,” El managed weakly. “I tried to pull us out and she’s still in there.”

Desperate, Lucas rounded on Will.

“There has to be a way we can pull her out.”

Will’s hands were on his head, his expression distressed. “I d-don’t know – ”

Lucas cradled Max’s face, feeling her blood run into his palms.

“MAX!” 

“EL!”

Max couldn’t see or hear present-day Eleven anymore. She could only see younger Eleven, who was currently subdued under Billy. Panic blinded her. Had Vecna or the Mind Flayer gotten to her? Max had been feeling Vecna’s presence creeping ever closer over the last few weeks. Had he found them again?

Max’s stomach twisted as Billy leaned down toward younger El. His rough voice was quiet.

“Try and stay very still.”

Terror gripped Max, and she found herself mouthing his next words.

“It’ll all be over soon.”

Max jumped as a burst of color exploded onto the Mind Flayer’s back. It screeched angrily, rearing back what was presumably its head. She remembered: Lucas’ fireworks. She looked up at the higher level, searching hopefully, and sure enough she saw him, his arm reared back as he prepared to chuck another firework toward the Mind Flayer. Will was next to him, tossing lit fireworks with abandon.

More color-strewn explosions erupted from the other sides, and through the smoke Max saw Steve and Robin near one balcony, Jonathan and Nancy near the other. All of them pelting firecrackers at the fleshy, slimy mass in the middle of Starcourt. The thing was bellowing angrily, moving squelchily toward each source of its chagrin.

Max found herself moving toward Billy and El. She wanted to pull Eleven away, get in between them, shield her from him. Don’t touch her. Get away from her. As she drew nearer, she noticed the black veins slithering up Billy’s neck, saw the strain in his eyes. Max’s heart broke as she realized Billy must be trying to fight the Mind Flayer’s poison from staining him inside out. He just wasn’t strong enough.

“Seven…feet,” El gasped suddenly from beneath Billy.

Max froze. Billy did too, frowning down at her. El’s eyes were wide, sorrowful.

“You told her,” El continued, her voice breaking a little. “The wave was seven feet.”

And then, Max remembered. The beach in California. Billy, a child whose joy hadn’t yet been snuffed out. And Billy’s mother.  She watched his eyes, normally so full of vitriol, start to fill with recognition, with sorrow.

“You ran to her. On the beach. And there were seagulls. She wore a hat…with a blue ribbon. A long dress, with a blue and red flower. And y-yellow sandals, covered in sand.”

Billy’s face softened – something that Max had never believed was possible – his eyes filling slowly with tears. El was sobbing a little, too.

“She was pretty,” she whispered. “She was really pretty.”

Billy and El were both crying now. Max couldn’t remember the last time she’d ever seen Billy cry – apart from their woefully misgiven sauna test – or display an emotion that wasn’t anger.

“And you…” El choked down a sob. “You were happy.”

Max felt her own eyes start to swim as El’s gentle hand rested on Billy’s cheek. His tears fell onto Eleven’s face as he closed his eyes. All the anger, all the hate that surrounded Billy day after day – El had cut through his darkness with light. Straight to his heart.

Max was startled by the bellow of the Mind Flayer as it drew closer. It didn’t have eyes, but its head seemed to be angled in Billy’s direction. Waiting for him to finish the job. Out of the corner of her eye, Max saw Mike – followed by herself – skid out from the back hallway, both stopping dead at the scene before them.

 Younger El was shaking, trying to get away. Billy stood stock still, staring at the thing as its mouth full of bone-teeth gaped wide. 

Max, do something. Max, DO SOMETHING! Younger Max was frozen, terrified, her eyes stretched wide at the scene before her. Max wanted to run toward her, shake her out of her daze. Not least because she knew what was coming next. And she knew younger Max would never forgive herself. Because present-day Max still couldn’t.

One of the Mind Flayer’s tentacles shot out toward El, and Max watched Billy stop it in its tracks. Protecting El. Thanking her, for returning a part of himself to him. As Billy shoved against the Mind Flayer’s claws, yelling, she watched in horror as another tentacle shot toward him.

“No!” Max knew no one there could hear her, and it only added to the sheer terror and helplessness of it all. Talon after talon sank into Billy’s body, him shuddering each time at the impact.  

Suddenly, the sounds around her all tightened into a shrill, drawn out whine. The colors brightened, the shapes distorted. The pain that sliced through Max’s skull was so powerful that her knees buckled, her eyes watered. She heard herself gasp with pain as she sank to the floor, her hands over her ears as the ringing intensified. Through watering eyes, Max watched as Billy turned his head toward her. He reached out toward her, black slime dribbling down his chin, his teeth stained dark.

“Max!” He begged. “Max, help me!”

Max’s hand opened toward him.

“Billy,” she tried, but she could hardly talk or move amid the cacophony going on around her. Billy was screaming, black sludge and crimson blood bubbling out around each of the Mind Flayer’s claws as they tore into him.

“Max,” Billy groaned, and then he gave a horrific gurgling noise as he tried to call for her again, slime and blood pouring from his open mouth. She tried to move her arm, tried to reach for him…

She felt the killing blow go through her like physical pain, and it hit Billy so hard that she actually saw his back curl in, saw his arms fling out.

“BILLY!”

Max heard her own scream of agony come from behind her, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the scene in front of her. As she watched the wild, reckless life drain from him, watched the light leaving his eyes, the Mind Flayer flung his body unceremoniously to the ground. Max gave a howl of anguish as Billy hit the tile like an old rag doll, his limbs crumpling around him.

Through a blur of tears, Max started to rock slightly, whimpering.

“I couldn’t,” she whimpered. “I’m sorry, Billy, I couldn’t…”

 He was dead. Dead.

And once again, she’d done nothing to stop it.

Max’s eyes flew open.

Lucas jumped back from her slightly as her arms shot out in front of her, flopping in every direction. She was breathing in staggering gasps, her red streaming eyes stretched wide, her nose and mouth covered in blood.

Lucas started toward her at once, taking her into his arms.

“Max, I’m here. I’m here,” he soothed. Rather than sink into his embrace, like she usually would, she struggled against him, twisting away, hyperventilating. Nancy hastened over to them.

“Shh, you’re okay,” she chided, her slender hand on Max’s face. Max continued to thrash in Lucas’ arms, seeming not to notice that Nancy had touched her. Lucas wanted to let her go if she didn’t want to be held - as she was still fighting him - but he was scared she’d fall off the bed. Weak as she’d been lately, he didn’t want her to injure herself further.

“Max, it’s me,” he tried in vain, exchanging a tense look with Nancy. At that moment Lucas got the sense that not only could Max not see him, but he wasn’t sure she could hear him right now either. Not from whatever terrifying place she was trapped in. Max’s panic had only increased, and she was hitting and clawing at him, struggling, trying to get away. Lucas gently took both her wrists in his hands, but this only seemed to make her more hysterical.

Nancy stood up, walking briskly to the corner of the room. When she returned, Lucas was alarmed to see a tiny bottle of clear liquid in one hand, and an unfilled syringe in the other.

“Nancy, what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, Max,” Nancy started, filling the syringe, but Lucas shook his head.

“Wait, wait.”

For indeed, Lucas could feel that Max’s frightened thrashing was finally starting to quiet. He didn’t know what had changed, exactly, as she was still hyperventilating, but she noticed her fist suddenly clenched white around his sleeve, her other hand wrapping tightly around his arm. Perhaps Max was returning to herself. Nancy seemed to decide it was safe to approach, and she set the syringe aside, tentatively reaching out toward Max.

“Shh, shh,” she murmured, brushing some hair away from Max’s eyes. Lucas watched her other hand cover Max’s, and he took it as a good sign that she didn’t flinch away. Though Max didn’t seem to notice it much. Robin wandered over quietly, putting her hands on Max’s back, between her shoulder blades.

“Max, you’re safe. You’re safe.”

It felt hollow to say, as it always did, but Lucas wasn’t sure how else to bring her out of whatever nightmare world was still playing inside her mind. Max’s hands started wandering, trying to identify her surroundings. He remained still so she could find him.

Max’s hands touched Lucas’ chest, his face, seeming to confirm to herself it was him, and then immediately looped her arms around him, burying her face in his chest, her fists clutching handfuls of his shirt. She didn’t cry, but continued her shallow gasping. Lucas held her, his hand stroking her hair.

He could feel wetness through his shirt, and he knew it was blood rather than tears.

The hour hand clicked into place, signaling six o’clock.

The windowless basement didn’t have much to suggest the time of day, except for the tiny square window in the back door, through which Lucas could see the lateness of the hour. To him, there had always been a calmness that accompanied the evening. Under the present circumstances, however, any hope for peace had been significantly disrupted.

Max was curled under her blankets. It had taken a while for her to calm down, and even longer to pry her arms from around Lucas, her hands from the balled up fabric of his shirt. She hadn’t spoken at all. Lucas, Nancy and Robin had simply stayed near to her until she was calm enough to let go of him. There had been talks of administering a sedative – that clear liquid in the tiny bottle that Nancy had stolen from the hospital. Lucas and Robin had talked Nancy out of it, Lucas praying to himself that she’d sleep. Eventually, once they’d cleaned up the blood and tucked her into the bed, Lucas heard her deep, slow breathing, and the atmosphere in the room seemed to breathe along with him. Now, in the twilight of their ordeal, he sat on the bed next to her, gazing down at her still form. Nancy sat in a chair nearby, watching them, and Robin sat on the floor, her back resting against the side of the mattress, quietly folding Max’s clothes they had brought from the hospital.

Lucas had to stop himself from leaning forward and brushing back Max’s hair, from crawling into bed and curling around her. Shielding her from further harm. Not that it would do anything. The monsters were within, killing her from the inside. Nothing that Lucas could protect her from. He was afraid to shatter the calm around her, afraid to bring her nightmares back to life. This might be the first moment of peace she’d had the liberty to feel in a while.

Mike and Will had moved El to the couch, covering her with a blanket they’d managed to find in the closet near the back door. This last trip into the void had taken a lot out of her. Right now, she was sleeping peacefully, turned away from them. Mike and Will sat on the floor next to her; Mike’s hand on El’s back, and Will’s hands wrung in his lap. Lucas didn’t have any doubt that El could handle these voyages into Max’s memories – at least, not currently – but he had to think it was difficult for her too. Not least to see Max in her most vulnerable moments.

The upstairs door dinged open, and footsteps creaked above their heads.

Nancy grabbed her pistol from the bedside table next to her, getting up and stepping lightly toward the basement stairs.

“Hello?” She called into the stairwell.

“It’s us,” Jonathan’s mild voice sounded from above.

Nancy lowered her gun, but did not let go of it until Steve and Jonathan had re-entered the basement, Dustin and Erica in tow. All four of them were carrying grocery bags stuffed with food and supplies.

Dustin set his bags down. “Bradley’s Big Buy is pretty cleared out, as I predicted, but we managed to find some things.”

“As you predicted? Jesus, are your prediction skills that important right now?” Steve sniped at him. “The point is, we have stuff. Which is a miracle in itself.”

“In and of itself.”

“Boys,” Nancy waved her hand at them. “Argue later, please. I need to give Max some water.”

Steve and Dustin set about unpacking the bags, sticking things in the ancient fridge, putting things on the shelves of the bookcase in the corner of the room. Lucas was comforted to see some edible items, at least. They were unorthodox – chips, peanuts, crackers, and the like – but it was something. In Erica and Jonathan’s bags, Lucas also saw an empty jug, presumably to store water, and medical supplies: gauze, cold packs, hot packs, washcloths, a few pill bottles, and one or two tiny bottles of liquid, similar to the sedative Nancy had on hand. Lucas noticed, most glaringly, a strange box-like contraption with a square of plastic attached to it by a thin wire.

Erica noticed he was looking in their direction.

“This box thing is to test blood pressure,” she said shortly, bringing the bag over to him. “Since we don’t have any hospital shit here, it might be good to have. Just in case.”

Lucas examined each of the pill bottles: Tylenol, for pain. Benadryl, weirdly. Then he squinted at the miniscule writing on the bottles of liquid. They both read: Valium, 5 mg.

“What are these?” He held the bottles up to Erica.

“Look, they’re just precautions,” Nancy spoke up from nearby, approaching them and sitting down. “I already have the one sedative. These are just in case we need them.”

“So we’re drugging her now?” Lucas demanded indignantly.

“I trust you know me better than that,” Nancy frowned at him. “I asked Erica to grab the Tylenol in case Max is in pain, and the other stuff if she needs help sleeping. Benadryl is our first line. Holly has allergies in the springtime, and it makes her drowsy. If that’s not enough, we can use the Valium. My mom’s taken it once or twice, and she always goes straight to sleep. And then, if all else fails…” She glanced pensively at her bag. “…we have the Librium.”

Lucas didn’t know what to say to this. He reviled the idea of drugging Max while she was so frail, but after this last dive into the void, perhaps it was a necessary precaution to take. Lucas had never seen her thrash like that before, and this next plunge might yield similar or worse results. And he knew Nancy’s intentions weren’t anything but good.

He gave a deep sigh.

“Okay. But promise me we’ll only give her these things if we’ve exhausted all other options. We’re not doctors, Nancy. We don’t know how these medicines will affect her.”

“And trust me, I know that,” Nancy reassured him, seeming relieved that he wasn’t going to push back any harder on the issue. “I know. But we only have bad options. This is the least bad.”

Lucas heard a clunk as Jonathan put the neck of the jug in the sink of the kitchenette nearby.

“Wait,” Robin stopped him, wandering over. “Not tap water.”

“Why not?”

“I’m sure there’s toxins and shit in it. Do you really want to give her water that could have come from Water Gate? Since we’re here in a pub, they probably have a tap upstairs. Help me?”

Jonathan only hesitated a moment before he grabbed a handle on the jug. Robin took the other one, and they both walked single-file back up the basement stairs.

Lucas watched Nancy take a washcloth from the grocery bag and walk toward the sink, running it under the faucet. Erica stood up, taking the grocery bag toward the kitchenette. On the other side of the room, Mike and Will sat together against the wall, watching El sleep on the sofa.

“I’m gonna get some air,” Lucas said to the room at large, and he trudged through the back door without waiting for an answer.

From this view, Lucas could see the graying forests of white oak and elm past the expanse of the decaying field, an ominous ode to what had now become their less-than-green reality. The thick trunks and branches clustered into each other, making a dense thicket where only the orange droplets of the afternoon sun could peek through. Even the sun couldn’t hold a candle to the dark black and red clouds that now encompassed two-thirds of the sky.

There was a very dirty table and set of chairs flush against the building – presumably the smoking spot, as an ashtray sat in the middle of the grimy table, a mound of cigarette butts piled chin-high. Lucas sat on the metal chair, which groaned beneath him, clearly having had no one sit on it in quite some time. Lucas leaned forward, putting his face in his hands. He let his lungs get in the first good deep breath of fresh – albeit chilly – air he’d had in several hours.

Lucas missed the dark blue of the sky from Weathertop. When they had been together, he used to sneak Max out of her back window, and bike them up to the base of the hill. They’d climb it together, hand in hand, before they lay on the grass at the top, reaping their reward. Those were his favorite nights. Max would be close to him, her arm flush against his, her blue eyes twinkling with the stars. These moments would bring out a tranquility in her that Lucas rarely saw anywhere else.

“I wish I could live up there,” she’d say, her eyes heavy with the midnight blue, and he couldn’t blame her. Lucas knew that sometimes any other world was preferable than the one Max existed within. In those moments, he would slip his fingers in between hers, and she’d give a little squeeze. Then they’d sit quietly. Their closeness didn’t always require pretty words.

I should have kissed her more, he thought, as he watched the rumbling clouds ahead. They’d admittedly been distracted by all the goings-on of that summer, and were constantly breaking up on top of that, but Lucas couldn’t help but wish he’d taken the leap, that he’d pulled her close and pressed his lips to hers more often than he had. She’d been a lot happier then, too. He liked to think she would have liked it, that she would have smiled into their kisses, that her pretty eyes would sparkle with a joy that was only his.

The back door creaked open, breaking him out of his thoughts.

“I know you’re tired of hearing it, but you need to rest.”

Lucas turned to see Nancy walking toward him. He thought she’d have elected to stand, given the filthiness of the chairs, but to his surprise, she sat on the one across from him.

“Yeah, everyone’s telling me that.” He rubbed his eyes, hoping to revive himself a bit.

Nancy gave a sad smile. “We can help too, you know.”

“You have. You are. I just…” Lucas heaved a sigh. “Every time I’m away from her, something happens. Something horrible. It’s worse every time. And I know I can’t do anything to protect her. All I can do is be here.”

Nancy surveyed him as he continued.

“It’s like there’s something in me that believes if I’m here this time, if I’m really there for her, maybe…I won’t lose her again. Because I can’t. I don’t think I’m strong enough.”

He braced himself for further gentle admonishment about how he needed to rest, that he couldn’t control what happened, that it wasn’t his fault. Hollow words that everyone said.

Instead, Nancy turned her gaze toward the trees and the field and the twinkle of sun, nestled in the promise of hell that loomed closer every day. By the glow of the flickering sunlight, Lucas saw the dark shadows under her eyes.

“Remember my friend Barb?”

Lucas’ brows furrowed. “Yeah, a bit. El found her in the Upside Down, right?”

“We were at a party. Steve’s house. His parents were gone, and we were drinking, swimming around in his pool. And I dragged Barb along. I got all tied up in the stupid teenager bullshit: chasing a boy, drinking a beer, forgoing schoolwork. And that’s when she disappeared. I searched for months, trying to figure out where she was. I hoped, somehow, that she was okay. But then El found her. Gone.”

Tears glittered in the corners of her dark irises.

“Vecna took my best friend from me. And the whole time I was looking for her, I kept thinking: if only I had been there. If I hadn’t – ” She choked down a little sob. “If I hadn’t left her behind. Then maybe she’d still be here.”

As Nancy met his eyes, tears trickled down her cheeks, her lips pursed regretfully.

“So I know,” she murmured.

Lucas saw his own emotions mirrored in Nancy’s eyes, and a mutual understanding seemed to pass between them. He hadn’t given much thought to Nancy’s friend Barb – it’d been so long ago, and he’d been preoccupied with finding Will – but then Nancy must know the gnawing desperation, the growing dread that never eased. To watch someone you love slipping through your fingers, afraid you’ll never get them back. And Nancy – she had lost her best friend. Permanently.

Lucas reached across the table, resting his hand on her arm.

“I’m sorry.”

Nancy sniffled as she wiped her eyes.

“I know what it’s like. I know. We can’t let him take Max too.”

Lucas couldn’t think of a response to this that wasn’t relentlessly bleak. He merely nodded.

Nancy’s brows knit in concern. “Are you okay? It got really intense in there.”

“I should be asking you that,” Lucas countered. “You were there in it with me.”

Nancy let out a shaky sigh.

“It was scary,” she admitted. “I really thought I would have to sedate her.”

“At least she went to sleep on her own,” Lucas reasoned, aware the optimism in his voice was forced. “Maybe that was what she needed.”

Nancy was too astute to buy into falsities. She gave him a grim look.

“I don’t know, Lucas. El came back before she did. That didn’t happen last time.”

Lucas could see the scene replaying in her gaze.

“You didn’t see her eyes. They were so wide. She wasn’t looking at anything, obviously, but…she was terrified. I don’t think she knew where she was. Or who we were.”

 Lucas knew he’d have to ask El what had happened in there. He hadn’t broached the subject immediately, as El also needed to recover, but he would certainly inquire as soon as he could. Whatever had happened, whatever memory she’d seen…it must have distressed her on a deeper level than any of the others. Distressed her badly enough that she’d been stuck within it even after El had resurfaced. Nancy was right – that had never happened before. It didn’t bode well for what Lucas knew would eventually transpire. They had to help Max integrate, somehow, but after this plunge he was even less sure they could bring her through it.

Lucas’ voice became very low. “He just can’t leave her alone, can he?”

Nancy gave a sad smile.

“It’s shit,” she acknowledged. “He’s punishing her all over again. Just like you. Just like me.”

Lucas had temporarily forgotten that Nancy had suffered Vecna’s wrath too.

“I’m sorry,” he told her again, and she frowned.

“For what?”

“You know what he’s like. Vecna. So…this must be hard for you too.”

Nancy’s expression hardened.

“It’s only hard for me to know he’s still out there. Because I want him dead.”

Lucas turned his gaze toward the rumbling black and red amalgamation of nightmares, and he knew he felt the same fire in his belly that she did.

“Me too.”

Morning broke through the tiny window in the back door.

Lucas sat up, rubbing his eyes. The floor had done his back absolutely no favors, not at all tempered by the thin blanket he’d slept on. His friends were already awake, he noticed, and he blinked, taking in the scene before him.

He noticed right away that El looked better. She was awake, and the color had returned to her face. She, Mike, and Will were all sitting on the couch, staring at the pub owner’s bed.

He turned his gaze, at last, on Max.

Right away, fear and dread turned his veins cold. Max’s unseeing eyes were bulging out of her skull, her figure hunched over. She was mumbling, saying something Lucas didn’t understand. Nancy was sitting in front of Max on the mattress, murmuring something to her. Robin stood off to the side, her frame trembling.

“Max…” He drew up close to Nancy on Max’s bed, touching her arm. She didn’t respond to his touch, to the sound of his voice. Lucas could now make out what she was muttering.

“El. Zoomer. Snow. Lucas. Our own rules. Benchwarmer.”

 Lucas turned toward El, Mike, and Will. Their expressions were horrified.

“What’s wrong with her?” Mike uttered in a low voice. Lucas wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Mike sound so rattled. Will, too, looked aghast. His hand was clamped to the back of his neck, his eyes far away.

The look on El’s face, however, deeply unsettled Lucas. Her face had a shadow over it, as if she’d seen this happen before. He was dying for an explanation, of course, but the utter helplessness in her expression made him question whether he wanted to hear it.

Nancy looked stricken, too, as she faced Max directly. She leaned forward, raising her voice.

“Max? Max, wake up.”

She snapped her slender fingers in Max’s face, shook her a little. Lucas touched her shoulder.

“Max,” he tried, then louder. “Max!”

It was as if they had done nothing at all. Max continued to stare, cloudy eyes unfocused as she mumbled those same words, over and over. In horror, Lucas saw a slow drip of dark blood start to fall from her nostrils, dotting the skin on the back of her hand a rusty red. She didn’t even blink as the droplets of blood fell and ran down the side of her hand.

The door at the top of the stairs creaked and Steve entered the room moments later. Lucas saw his face tense at the sight of Max, who was still murmuring her same mantra. “El. Zoomer. Snow. Lucas. Our own rules. Benchwarmer.”

Steve turned toward Eleven, his expression desperate. “El, what do we do?”

Tears were running freely down El’s face. “I-I don’t know,” she sobbed.

Steve started pacing around the basement, his hands buried in his hair. “This is not good. This is not good…”

“Steve, shut up. Max!”

Nancy’s sharp voice didn’t arouse Max at all. Not even a little. Robin’s wide eyes were filled with tears as she stood frozen behind Nancy, her hands over her mouth.

Nancy looked at Lucas, her expression grave.

“Lucas, something’s wrong. We have to take her back.”

As much as Lucas didn’t want to do this, he didn’t know what else to do. They should never have taken her out of the hospital. He was kicking himself for even entertaining the idea.

“After all that, we’re taking her back there?” Mike demanded incredulously. “Didn’t we agree she wasn’t doing well in that place? We might make things worse!”

“Worse than this?” Nancy gestured to Max, who remained despondent on the bed.

“We never should have taken her out in the first place,” Steve pointed out agitatedly. “It was a stupid idea and I told Max it was stupid. I told her.”

“Steve, shut up…”

Lucas’ guilt was curling deep and sick in the pit of his stomach. Something that had seemed so obvious when she was lying there, begging him to free her, seemed so impulsive and stupid on the other side of it. Why were they always doing things so half-cocked and reckless? Mike’s question echoed in his mind. What if they’d made her worse? What if he’d made her worse? The thought gutted him. What had he been thinking? That he could save her, somehow? Lucas wanted to slam his head into a wall. He hadn’t saved her. He’d doomed her.

All at once, they heard the pub door open upstairs. A single set of footsteps creaked over their heads.

“Hello?”

Steve and Lucas exchanged a look. Steve put his finger to his mouth, silently walking toward the stairs. Lucas followed him out of the room, pausing in the middle of the steps as Steve opened his palm in Lucas’ direction. Steve stepped through the doorway to the main floor.

“Can I help you?”

“Anyone still work in this dump?” A brisk female voice inquired, a brush of humor in her tone, and Lucas immediately recognized the voice. Lori, Max’s night nurse at Hawkins Memorial.

“As you can see, we’re closed,” Lucas heard Steve shrug. “Sorry.”

Lori heaved a sigh.

“Look, kid. I don’t know who pays you, but I’ve had a monumentally shitty day. Just pour me one beer, and I’ll be out of your – may I say voluminous – hair.”

Lucas crossed the rest of the steps, and emerged just in time to interrupt Steve’s refusal.

“Lori.”

Lori frowned.

“Lucas Sinclair.”

“Hey,” he acknowledged, ignoring Steve’s questioning look.

Lori’s eyes narrowed.

“You’re not going to see your girl today?”

“She’s not – ” He stopped and started again. “I was going to later, I just needed to…do something first.”

Lori gave a chuckle.

“I think the police have got bigger problems than you drinking illegally, if that’s what you’re doing,” she said. “They sure won’t hear anything from me. But anyway, that’s not the point. Max isn’t at the hospital anymore.”

Lucas tried his utmost to feign shock and worry.

“What? Where is she?”

“I don’t know. But she was my last hope for one of my patients to come through all this shit in mostly one piece. And now she’s gone too. So, kid, when you’re done gawking – ” She addressed Steve, who started. “ – can you please pour me a goddamn drink?”

Lucas looked at Steve, gesturing toward the bar. Steve started over, slipping behind the counter and grabbing one of the dusty glasses from the bar. He rinsed it in the sink, and rounded on Lori.

“A Sam Adams,” she told him, before he could open his mouth. Steve gave a jerk of his head, and set about looking for the right tap.

Lucas bit his lip. He knew Max was still in dire straits downstairs. He didn’t even know if they’d be able to move her without arousing suspicion, especially now that Lori was here. But Lori was a nurse, and Max desperately needed one.

“Can I trust you?” Lucas blurted.

Lori didn’t seem to hear him as Steve handed her a now-full glass of beer.

“Ah, you’re a good boy.”

“Lori,” Lucas tried, and she took a long sip of her beer. “Can I trust you?”

She set down the glass.

“Sure, kid. I won’t tell anyone you and your friend here were drinking.”

“No, it’s not that,” Lucas said urgently, and she finally turned to look at him. “I need your help.”

Lori looked bewildered, but after a few minutes she gave a hesitant nod.

“Yeah, you can trust me. What’s going on?”

Lucas looked at Steve, who beckoned to Lori. “Come here.”

Lucas led the way down the old stairs, Steve behind him, and Lori bringing up the rear. When they entered the basement, Lucas saw that the scene had changed. Mike and Nancy were in the corner of the room, alternating between bickering urgently and watching Max mutter distantly on the bed. Robin was sitting in front of Max, trying to rouse her, while El sat next to them, tears pouring silently down her face. Erica, Jonathan, Will, and Dustin were stationary on the moth-eaten sofa, staring in horror at the scene before them.

As Lori stepped off the last stair, Lucas heard her sharp intake of breath. “Oh, shit.”

She shoved past him and Steve, approaching the bed and kneeling beside it. Her weathered hand touched Max’s shirt. For the first time, Lucas saw genuine concern in Lori’s expression.

“I can’t wake her up,” Robin said tearfully as Lucas joined them by the bed. She was shaking, her eyes wet and puffy. “I tried, but I can’t wake her up.”

Lori waved her hand in front of Max’s face. “Max? Can you hear me?”

Max’s lap was now covered in blood. Her face was white, her cloudy eyes still wide. Even with the blood dripping from her upper lip, her mantra hadn’t stopped.

“El. Zoomer. Snow. Lucas. Our own rules. Benchwarmer.”

Lori addressed Robin. “How long has she been like this?”

“Since this morning,” Robin lamented, wiping her eyes. “I came over first thing and she was doing this. I called everyone and we’ve been here two hours.”

Lori pressed two fingers to Max’s wrist.

“Heart rate’s elevated. When did that nosebleed start?”

“About twenty minutes ago.”

Lori’s mask of concern quickly became a severe frown, and she rounded on Lucas.

“You want to tell me why she’s no longer in the hospital, Mr. Sinclair?”

“Look, I can’t explain it right now,” Lucas said agitatedly. “Can you please just tell us how to help her?”

“We’re taking her back,” Lori pointed at Steve. “Pick her up, I’ll drive. All of you, let’s go.”

Lucas stood up too as Steve scooped her up. Her head lay on Steve’s shoulder, her blank eyes staring into his neck as her long red hair dangled over Steve’s arm. She’d only paused her mantra for a moment, lifting her pale hand and smearing Steve’s cheek with blood.

“Snow,” she mumbled, still far away. “Zoomer.”

“Let’s grab her things,” Robin pointed out, gesturing toward the barely-touched pile of Max’s belongings, still in a heap on the floor by the bed. Each of them grabbed an armful of either blankets, cassette tapes, or clothing, and they all shoved into the narrow stairwell.

Lori’s vehicle was a small gray Buick Century, which Lucas knew would not fit them all. They managed to pile in both Lori’s and Steve’s vehicles. Steve gave Max to Lucas, who got into Lori’s car with Robin, Mike, and El. The others got into Steve’s car.

Lucas found he was shaking, and he tried not to break down as Max continued to murmur those same words, seemingly unaware she was in his arms.

“El. Zoomer. Snow. Lucas. Our own rules. Benchwarmer.”

He choked down a sob as the car peeled down the street.

The emergency room was still ominously bare when they arrived, though Lucas was surprised to see a single nurse at the check-in counter. He carried Max up to it, the rest of their group in tow.

“Hey, we need help here,” he said urgently, as Lori drew up next to him.

As the nurse at the desk raised her eyes to observe them, Lucas thought she seemed immediately irked. She had straight black hair and a pouchy face. Her dark brown eyes seemed sharper than he’d thought they would be. She wore navy blue scrubs, slightly faded. Her name badge had a headshot with a smile that didn’t reach the eyes. Underneath, it read: Stacey, RN. Stacey didn’t address Lucas, but turned her questioning look onto Lori.

“Lori? What’s going on?”

“Stacey, we need your help. Her name’s Max Mayfield, adolescent female. Catatonic like this for a few hours. Steady nosebleed. Pulse is elevated. Lucas, can you sit her down so Stacey can look at her?”

From nearby, Robin pulled up one of the patient chairs, and Lucas gently deposited Max into it, his hands on her shoulders to hold her upright. Max barely reacted to this, slouching over on the chair, her wide blank eyes boring into the linoleum. Her voice had dropped to a whisper, but the same mantra still remained: El. Zoomer. Snow. Lucas. Our own rules. Benchwarmer. The blood was flowing freely from both nostrils, dripping onto the floor.

Nurse Stacey flipped over a paper on her clipboard, her dark eyes narrowing.

“Maxine Mayfield? Yes, I’ve seen her name on our paperwork. Recently, in fact. Why is that?”

“I – ” Lori stammered, and Lucas realized she herself had limited information to offer. He saw that the rest of the group were all glancing around at each other, at a loss for how to explain.

It was Steve who spoke first.

“Look, she was here before, okay?”

“She left the hospital on her own,” Robin interjected, her glance indicating they were not to refute this version of events. “She’s been walking better, and she walked out. She wanted to go home.”

“This girl is blind and uses a walker. I don’t see how she could have walked out,” Stacey said testily.

“We know that. She’s…stubborn.”

The nurse gave them another suspecting look before leaning down toward Max.

“Miss Mayfield? Can you tell me where you are right now?”

Max didn’t look at her. “Snow. Lucas. Our own rules. Benchwarmer.”

Nurse Stacey’s dark brown eyes swiveled onto the group at large, her thin lips pursed.

“So she’s been like this a few hours?” she asked in a slightly softer voice.

“Since this morning,” Nancy jumped in. “We were coming to visit her, like usual, and we found her under a tree outside. She was sitting there, doing…that.” She gestured to Max. Unresponsive, far away Max.

“A tree outside where?” Stacey interrogated her, the skeptical look returning.

Lori was frowning too, and Lucas could almost see her trying to connect the dots in her mind.

“Outside…near the hospital,” responded Nancy. “Close to the door.”

“Really? And no one had seen her or tried to help her before then?”

“None that we saw,” Nancy shrugged, though Lucas saw a flash of panic in her gaze. She seemed to realize she was being backed into a logical corner. “It doesn’t seem like there’s many people here. And she was sort of hidden by the tree.”

“Then how did you see her?”

It was becoming clear that Nurse Stacey didn’t believe them, no matter how valiantly they were trying to present their story as factual. Even Lucas knew it fell flat. Max was blind, and so she could have easily walked into the road had she escaped completely of her own accord. Even with her walker, which could have easily snagged on a curb or caused her to fall. Another oversight. Lucas ground his teeth in his head. It would be a miracle if this nurse didn’t call the cops right now, and immediately expel them all from this hospital for aiding and abetting.

They waited for the blow to fall.

After several minutes, Stacey heaved a long sigh, and suddenly any pretense seemed to fall away from her.

“All right, look. I know your story is bullshit. I’m not an idiot. I have no idea why you’re lying about sneaking her out of here, or why you brought her back almost immediately. And I have no idea why you’re involved, Lori. Or why you’d put your license on the line for these kids.”

She gave a short, rueful laugh.

“But you know what? I really don’t care. The world’s falling apart outside, and I’m going to spend my last minutes on earth in this shithole. So it might as well be doing what I do best. Let’s just get her back into her room, all right?”

Lucas almost forgot to react. The others seemed to be at a similar loss for words as Stacey addressed Steve.

“Carry her for me, please. Bad back.”

It was a short trek back to Max’s room. It still looked exactly the same as it had when they’d left – bed sheets still disturbed, the IV needle still hanging from the tube. Stacey vetoed the idea of the entire party coming in with her and Lori, so only Lucas, Steve, Robin, and Nancy went in with them. The rest of the party congregated outside the room, faces tense, mouths tight.

Stacey, for how thorny she’d come off, did seem to be a competent nurse at least. Once Steve had gently lowered Max onto the hospital bed, Stacey set about reattaching her to the half-full bag of IV fluid that still hung from the pole. Max didn’t blink as the needle pierced her skin, didn’t respond as Steve and Robin covered her with her familiar blankets. Robin’s bottom lip trembled as Max continued to whisper “El. Zoomer. Snow.” Nancy placed the large stack of cassette tapes on Max’s tray table, and Lucas saw her eyes filling with tears.

“So where did you actually find her?” Stacey inquired, as she took a towel and sat down, holding it to Max’s still-bleeding nose.

“She was at her home.”

They all looked at Lori, whose expression was unreadable.

“I made a house call because she’s been missing since last night, and none of her emergency contacts were answering. I had reason to believe she was in danger, so I did a wellness check.”

Stacey pursed her lips slightly, but nodded.

“If she doesn’t eat, we’ll have to look at a feeding tube,” she murmured, half to herself. “I saw in her chart…well...perhaps we can try to avoid it. For now, let’s just let her rest.”

“Are there any doctors here?” Lori questioned her. “She needs a brain scan.”

“I haven’t seen one today. But I’ll see if I can find one.”

“We’ll…sit here with her,” Steve offered hesitantly.

“Great,” said Stacey, her gaze flattening as she straightened up, pulling a pack of cigarettes from her scrub pocket. She handed Steve the washcloth, blotched with red. “Hold that to her nose. I’ll go tell whoever I can find that she’s back.”

She’d already popped a cigarette into her mouth before she’d even left the room.

Lucas didn’t have time to settle into the situation before Lori pointed at him, her eyes blazing behind her glasses.

“You, out in the hall. Now.”

She all but yanked him out into the hallway, her weathered face a mask of anger. Lucas couldn’t blame her. He remembered how angry Max had been when they were concealing things from her in the beginning. Lori wasn’t trying to join their party or anything, but he imagined the frustration was largely the same.

“Tell me what the hell is going on,” Lori demanded.

Lucas raised his hands. “Look. I know the last few hours have been crazy, and nothing makes sense. But you’re not gonna believe me if I tell you.”

“Max is my patient. The only living one I have left. If this were a normal day, I just put my license on the line to protect her. Any hospital would throw me out on my ass in a heartbeat. Now why did you take her away from here? And why is she acting like that?”

“She’s sick, and she’s not getting better,” countered Lucas, knowing he wouldn’t get away with skirting the issue. “This place is killing her. We took her out to save her.”

“But that’s not the only reason you kidnapped – yes, kidnapped – her,” She reiterated at the indignance on his face. “I remember the one night you and your friends stayed here with her. She was acting strangely, and she was sick the whole next day. You can’t bullshit me, Sinclair. Something’s going on, and if I’m going to help you, I need to know what.”

Lucas sighed heavily. Another choice he was cornered into making. They couldn’t continue receiving help from Lori if she didn’t know anything. Especially from a medical standpoint. Boxing Lori out would put Max’s life in even greater jeopardy. When she went into the void again, they had no way of knowing about or mitigating how much further harm it would cause her already fragile body. Lucas silently begged the rest of the party to forgive him for drawing her into the fold. He was breaking the rule of law, but he didn’t care anymore.

“Okay. You know how the sky’s weird outside? People are disappearing, and Hawkins is falling apart...we know why that is.”

Lori crossed her arms, her eyebrows raising.

“Oh, really?” She scoffed.

“I swear. I know how it sounds, but it’s part of why Max is sick. There’s a bad guy. We call him Vecna. He’s like this…underworld monster. He can get into your mind, your thoughts. And then he kills you.”

He couldn’t tell if Lori believed him or not, but she was still watching him, her eyes narrowed. Lucas continued.

“He was the one who murdered those teens last year. And he had marked Max as his next victim. We figured out a way to protect her, to keep him from hurting her, but he still got to her. Her injuries…her legs, her arms, her eyes, and her brain – Vecna did that. He almost killed her, but he didn’t do it all the way.” Lucas hesitated at telling Lori how Max had come back. He wasn’t sure if trying to explain Eleven would make things better or worse. “Now she’s stuck. One part of her soul, her consciousness, is here, with us. The other part of her is trapped in this darker dimension – the void. And being in both places is killing her. That’s why she’s getting worse.”

“Eddie Munson killed those students,” Lori frowned.

“No, he didn’t. He witnessed the first death, and it scared the shit out of him, so he ran away. We hid him because we knew he was innocent. And he died in that alternate dimension to protect us. We owe Eddie Munson our lives.”

Lori’s brows were furrowed.

“Her broken bones…I knew they reminded me of something. Those students died from the same injuries, right?”

“Yes. Vecna kills in horrible ways. He breaks your body, your mind. Max survived, somehow. But now she’s in trouble again.”

Lori stood still for another moment, then gave a disbelieving laugh, running a hand through her graying hair.

“This is insane,” she said. “Insane.”

“I know it’s hard to believe,” Lucas acknowledged.

“No, it’s insane because it’s batshit crazy. I should be trying to commit you to Pennhurst right now. And yet, it’s even more insane because it explains some things that otherwise, no one has any explanations for. I’ve never seen a leg or an arm break so awful. Like someone had thrown her into a trash compactor and turned it on. And somehow, Max survived. The science says she shouldn’t have. And her brain – Dr. Sutherland kept saying she shouldn’t be able to function, and she was. She is, still! Max was doing great, and then recently she started declining. And her doctors – before they all jumped ship – couldn’t figure out why. I haven’t been able to figure out why. So your explanation – while I’m still pretty sure you’re fucking with me – is the only explanation I have to go on.”

“I’m not fucking with you. I swear,” Lucas raised both his hands. “I swear. I know it’s batshit. I know. But it’s the truth. And Max is in danger. All of us are.”

Lori sighed exasperatedly, running a hand through her gray hair. Lucas could see she was struggling to believe everything he’d told her, but he could also see that she wanted to help Max in any way she could. After several seconds, she gave him a pensive look.

“What can I do?”

“Whatever you can,” said Lucas. “Right now, we’re trying to help her return to herself. There’s a part of her still in the void, like I said. The solution is that she has to face dark memories and survive them. So, we have to try to keep her body alive. Seeing those memories, being in that place…it hurts her. A little more each time. It would be helpful if we had someone with medical knowledge.”

Lori shook her head again.

“If I find out you’re pranking me, or this is some kind of sick joke, I might actually kill you.”

“I swear,” Lucas promised again. “I swear.”

The nurse’s green-gray eyes softened slightly.

“You really love her, don’t you?”

He nodded.

“With all my heart.”

A foreboding quiet settled against the window of the hospital room.

Lori and Stacey, once they’d gotten Max situated, had departed the room, turning the lights down so Max could rest. Despite his protests, Stacey had given Max a mild sedative. The rest of the group had been able to convince him that it would help her sleep more easily. He had felt himself let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding as he watched her mumbling slowly cease, watched her drift into sleep. Almost peacefully, like it was any normal day.

Steve had driven himself, Jonathan, Will, El, Erica, and Dustin back to their respective homes. He’d reassured Nancy he knew a back way out of town, so the military presence didn’t spot them. Lucas was too exhausted to consider whether or not this would be effective. He hoped everyone could get home safely.

Only he, Robin, Nancy, and Mike remained. Robin and Nancy sat side-by-side, their chairs pulled up to Max’s bed. Mike sat on the floor, his back against the wall, his head bobbing slightly as he fought off sleep.

“Lucas,” Robin’s voice cracked into the space. “You have to go home and rest.”

Lucas shook his head, tears filling his eyes.

“Every time I close my eyes, all I can see is her bones breaking. The blood running from her eyes, her head tilted back…and her dying in my arms, pleading for me to help her.”

Lucas hadn’t let on to them about this before. Perhaps, on some level, he thought he could escape the images that haunted his nightmares. It was a fool’s optimism. He’d never be free of it.

“This is the only thing I can do for her,” he said, without looking at his friends. “And I keep thinking…when she and El go into the void again, she might –” He swallowed, the words sticking in his throat. “— I don’t know that she’ll make it. So this might be the only time I have left with her.”

Nancy’s slender hand touched his shoulder.

“Your parents have to be worried sick,” She murmured.

“So call them. Tell them I’m here with Max.”

“Lucas – ” Mike tried, but Lucas cut across him.

“I’ll either sleep here in the bed with her, or I’ll sleep on the cot. I’ll sleep on the goddamn floor if I have to. But if I leave her now, I won’t sleep at all. I can’t let her out of my sight right now. I just can’t, okay?”

Nancy and Robin’s sighs behind him told Lucas they were too tired to fight him on it. Mike also seemed defeated, looking sadly at Max’s sleeping form on the bed.

“We’ll be back first thing,” Robin told him. “And when we come back, you’re getting some air. It’s non-negotiable.”

Lucas gave her a curt nod, hoping to assuage Robin enough for them to finally leave. Nancy patted his shoulder quietly before withdrawing, and Mike touched his back briefly. Robin hugged him around his shoulders for a few lingering moments, then she left too. 

The pale moon shed silvery light into the otherwise dark room, covering Max’s bed with an ethereal glow. Her red hair looked almost silky as it flowed out behind her on the pillow. Since she was turned away, Lucas didn’t have to lay his eyes on her sunken face, on the purple shadows under her eyes. This was almost better, right now.

Lucas had a bizarre urge to laugh. He’d told his friends he’d possibly sleep on the cot. As if he would deign to sleep on a cot after today. Even that space between himself and Max felt too distant right now.

He crawled into the hospital bed, curling up behind her. He slipped his arms around her middle, and he felt his lungs expand, felt his belly deepen and loosen to feel her warm body against his. Still warm. Still alive. For now.

Lucas nestled his face into the back of her head, into her hair, whispering softly. 

“Don’t quit on me yet, Mad Max.”

Chapter Text

Lucas couldn’t believe where they’d ended up.

Their efforts to break Max out of the hospital now seemed utterly wasted. And she was even worse than before. Lucas tried to push guilt-ridden thoughts from his mind, tried to silence the inner voice that was repeating: You made her worse. You made her worse. It was hard not to think this as he looked down at her, hearing her labored breathing, seeing the sweat gleam against her pale skin in the muted light, dimmed by the ever-growing dark clouds which now seemed to eclipse the sky in full. Now, when the rumbling happened, Lucas could swear he heard the building groan around them, hear it creak.

Lucas knew that the Upside Down was closing in. The true sky was less visible by the day, replaced by the rumbling hell that would soon eclipse any hope of a world beyond what was to come. The utter bleakness of knowing that the end was near…Lucas didn’t want to succumb to it, but it seemed as if it was cornering them. And he could only stand on a sinking ship for so long before his survival instincts kicked in and he fled to the last safe place. For Lucas, that was at Max’s side. It wasn’t exactly secure in their current circumstances, but if their world was indeed going to end, Lucas wanted to die with Max in his arms. Going together into the night.

The only sliver of hope Lucas was holding onto was that all these wires and tubes and machines might somehow allow her to cling to life. At least long enough for him to kiss her one last time. To hold her against the apocalypse. She now wore an oxygen mask instead of a cannula, with a small notch in it to allow room for her newly reinstated feeding tube. She had the IV in her arm, that was familiar, but Max now had electrodes stuck to her chest, and some thin, colored wires slithered out from under her hospital gown and trailed toward a slowly beeping machine.

Lucas could hardly stand to look at her. He wanted to run far away, to wipe this image of broken, dying Max from his mind, but he wanted to take her with him. As if enveloping her in his arms would keep her from slipping through them.

“Lucas.”

He started, turning around. It was El, and she shrunk back at his reaction.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Lucas shook his head, rubbing his eyes.

“It’s okay. In fact, let’s go outside. I…I need some air.”

Without waiting for her response, Lucas brushed past El, making a beeline for the door. He heard her quiet footsteps behind him as he swept right past the chairs outside of Max’s room. The hospital’s four walls were starting to close in on him, and he could barely breathe within their confines. It was only when they were through the sliding doors and on the gray pavement that Lucas felt his lungs expand.

He sat on the grass, his head in his hands. He took his first deep breath in several hours and regretted it at once; the smell of the air was stale, almost foul, like rotting wood. The rumbling clouds almost completely engulfed the sky. The air was cold and cruel. And still, out here was preferable to Max’s hospital room right now.

He felt El sit down next to him, felt her hand on his arm.

“I thought she might be awake,” she admitted.

Lucas chuckled sadly. “She’s not awake much these days.”

It wasn’t until Lucas looked at El before he saw the dark circles under her wet eyes. Her mop of curly hair was unkempt, slightly mussed. Her dark blue jacket was zipped up snug, and she pulled it a little closer around her in the chilly air.

“She is getting weaker.”

Somehow hearing it said aloud made the horrible truth more immediate. Lucas looked at her.

“We have to do something, El. I can’t watch her die again.”

El wiped her eyes, nodding resolutely.

“I think…” She swallowed. “You were right about how to help her. Visiting her memories, and helping her survive them. But I also think when we go into her memories, it has hurt her mind too.”

“Do we even know if this is the way to help her anymore?” Lucas questioned miserably. “It doesn’t seem to have done a lot of good.”

El’s expression solidified.

“It is the way.”

“But how do we know?”

El met his gaze.

“The night you and Will stayed with us. She saw Billy at Starcourt and got scared.”

Lucas hadn’t really pressed El or Max for further details of that night, but knowing they had seen Starcourt was indication enough that the mere sight of the mall was triggering to Max. He hadn’t, until now, realized that Billy had actually made an appearance. It made sense, though.

“She was on the ground, curled up, screaming. I was holding her, and she said she heard your heartbeat. She heard mine…and she heard yours.”

Lucas frowned, both mollified and confused.

“She heard my heartbeat?”

“Max was sure it was yours. That was how we knew it was helping her make a connection. And it wasn’t just that. This last time, when she woke up…I could see it in her eyes. She was confused, and she didn’t know where she was because she couldn’t see. I think the Max from the void was in there for a moment.”

Lucas was still slightly rattled from that day. The image of Max’s wide milky eyes, her white face covered in blood, her jerky attempts at getting away from him…he would never forget it. In the moment, he had been so staggered by Max’s extreme reaction that he hadn’t been considering its cause. But it would explain her sudden hysteria.

“But then,” El explained. “She went back there again. And she was different when she woke up.”

“You looked different too,” Lucas told her, and she frowned. “That day, when that happened…you had a look on your face. Like you’d seen someone do that before.”

El sighed.

“I have.”

She took another breath, as if steeling herself.

“Not Max,” she whispered. “Mama.”

Lucas watched her. She had vaguely mentioned seeing her mother in the months after her return to Hawkins, but had always seemed hesitant to divulge further details. It now made sense why.

“When I found Mama, she was doing that. Sitting in a chair. Staring at TV. Saying the same words, over and over.”

The longing in El’s expression wasn’t lost on him.

“Did she know you were there?”

El nodded.

“She could not talk to me. But she knew. Mama has a mind like me.”

Lucas decided he didn’t want to entertain the possibility that Max’s mind could have fallen prey to the same phenomenon. She seemed to have escaped it for now, as she could still respond to them. But its implications for the next dive into the void had become all the more daunting.

“This isn’t like your mom,” he tried to bolster her. “Max is still here with us.”

El shrugged, her expression bleak. “Until we hurt her again.”

“We had no choice, El. It was going to hurt her either way.”

El’s face tightened, but she nodded.

“Which memories of hers have you seen?” Lucas inquired, suddenly curious. ‘You don’t have to give me details.”

“A few of them were…sad. She has been very lonely. But in her Hawkins memories – memories with us – she is happy. She is smiling, laughing, and not lonely anymore.”

El’s sorrowful smile mirrored Lucas’ feelings. The thought of Max happy…it seemed so far away now.

Eleven’s brows furrowed.

“After the last memories we saw, something has changed.”

“How do you mean?”

“I have gone to visit her once or twice. Her memories come in pieces now. Sometimes I hear her mother’s voice, I see palm trees, I feel boards beneath my feet. But they are all disconnected. Nothing goes together. Nothing makes sense. And Max…she looks like she is in pain.”

Lucas tried to quell the familiar foreboding that was once again stirring in the pit of his stomach.

“So…you think we’re close to bringing her back?”

“We have to be. But I need your help.”

He nodded vigorously. “Anything.”

El reached out and squeezed his hand. 

“There is a memory. It happened a while ago. You and Max were sitting on a van roof. At nighttime.”

Lucas brought the memory forth in his mind. He knew exactly which one El was referring to. It had been the first time he’d seen Max let down her walls a little bit.

“Think of it,” El said from next to him. “And I will join you in there.”

“You’ll…join me?”

El shook her head. “I will explain later.”

Lucas closed his eyes, and let the memory wash over him in his mind’s eye. That dark, cloudy night, where he himself had sat on the roof of that rickety old bus, looking for Dart through the shifting fog. Soon, Lucas could smell the damp air, could feel the metal bus roof beneath him. He opened his eyes, and he now sat on the broken-down bus, the shadows of the gloomy junkyard leering in the distance. Once he’d gotten his bearings, he watched the younger version of himself stare through the fog with binoculars.

It was a strange experience, watching himself in his youth. Not that he wasn’t still young. In the measure of years, anyway. He felt much older now.

Lucas felt El sit down quietly next to him, and he turned towards her.

“Why are we in this memory?”

El was watching younger Lucas intently. “During this memory, something happened. Something strange.”

“What do you mean?” Lucas frowned, but El shook her head, pointing at the scene in front of them. Lucas felt a lump rise in his throat as a familiar scruffy mane of red hair emerged from the door in the roof. Max’s younger self climbed off the ladder, sitting next to younger Lucas.

As the two began quiet conversation, Lucas couldn’t tear his eyes off younger Max. She was as beautiful and vulnerable as she ever was, her face quiet, her eyes guarded. Even her posture seemed drawn in, wary, unsure. The longer they spoke, however, Lucas watched the tension in her face start to ease, her stiff shoulders start to slacken. Younger Max’s face grew sorrowful as she discussed California, her dad, and, inevitably, Billy. Lucas recognized her now melancholy expression, her eyes glassy with tears as she confessed the pain she had endured. This mask of despair she now held was more reminiscent of Max a year ago – any joy she’d once gained snuffed out like a candle in an arctic storm, leaving bleak emptiness in its wake.

Younger Max’s morose expression suddenly tightened. “I know…I can be a jerk like him sometimes. But I do not want to be like him. Ever. I guess…I’m angry too, and…I’m sorry.”

Lucas was reminded of the genuine fear and remorse in her eyes at this notion as it flashed upon her face. Silence sat between them as his younger self processed this. After several moments, Max withdrew again, wiping her eyes, laughing dismissively.

“Jesus, what’s wrong with me?”

Younger Lucas straightened up, leaning in toward her.

“Hey,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re nothing like your brother, okay? You’re cool, and different. And you’re super smart.”

Younger Max’s mouth started to curl up in a smile.

“And you’re like totally tubular.”

Max laughed, and Lucas felt a surge of emotion at the sound. “Nobody actually says that, you know.”

“Well, I do now.”

Max’s teasing grin widened. “And it makes you sound really cool.”

Lucas felt a deep anguish weigh heavy in his soul. It was an excruciating burden to know what awaited this version of Max, and he wished with all his heart he could break into the memory to shield her from it. Even her reminiscent snarky smile, the one he had rarely seen then – and certainly never saw now – made his arms ache for her.

“I like talking with you, Mad Max,” Lucas heard his younger self say, and younger Max replied, “I like talking with you, stalker.”

Lucas was broken out of his focus by El, who was tugging on his sleeve.

“Let’s go back.”

He fought to tear his eyes away from younger Max. It felt like years since he’d seen her so whole. And those eyes, her eyes that were now soft and warm and open…no matter where they ended up, he would never see those eyes again. Not how they were before.

After several more seconds of trying to encapsulate this image of Max in his mind – a slightly happier, certainly healthier, and blissfully unaware Max – Lucas finally allowed himself to be led away by El. He shook his head a little, opening his eyes. The gray pavement and withering grass outside the hospital slowly filled his vision, accompanied by the dark black and red clouds that ate up the sky.

El was wiping her nose next to him, and Lucas turned toward her.

“Are you going to tell me what we just did? And why?”

Her expression was urgent. “When Max and I saw that memory, it was different. Something strange happened. The colors got brighter. There was a high noise, like a scream. And then you said: ‘you’ll end up just like him’ to Max.”

Lucas shook his head, horrified.

“No, I didn’t say that. I would never. I would never.”

“I think Vecna is messing up Max’s memories,” said El, looking reassured at his insistence. “Because that memory in your mind – nothing strange happened. It was a normal memory. But for her – he wants to make her believe her happy memories are bad ones, and her bad memories are worse. So she has nothing left to hope for.”

He uses my memories against me. Lucas remembered that Max had warned him of this. He had always assumed this to mean that Vecna simply reminded her of her darkest memories, on a loop in her mind. But now that Lucas thought about it, warping Max’s good memories – in addition to constantly presenting her with bad ones – would be just as effective, if not more. Leading her to believe she had no good memories at all. It seemed like the kind of twisted thing Vecna would do.

“You think he would still try to do that?” Lucas asked half-heartedly, well aware of his question’s absurdity. “Even now, with so much else going on?”

“Especially now,” El replied urgently, and Lucas was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “Because…I’m scared Max will not want to live.”

Both anger and anxiety spiked sharply within him at these words.

“Why wouldn’t she?”

El pursed her lips tightly.

“Like I just told you. When she came out of her memory and was scared, I think it was the Max in the void. That Max doesn’t know about her eyes. The next time I go in there, I have to tell her.”

It was the same conundrum that Lucas had found himself in weeks earlier. The need to speak the truth, to unseat the terrible burden within, and to be fearful of its bloody, tattered aftermath. All this was reflected in El’s expression, along with the gnawing regret of making things worse for Max. Lucas understood. He was being dragged through the same hell.

“She should know,” he said finally.

El’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“I am afraid it will kill her.”

He felt any disingenuous reply leave him. No comfort seemed attainable now. Especially not for this. Out of this sprang a fresh, seething hatred for Vecna. Because this could be the nail in the coffin. Max was already struggling, growing weaker, and to be hit while she was down…it was as good as killing her. And Lucas didn’t know if her will to live, albeit already flimsy, would survive it.

El was quiet for several moments. When Lucas looked up at her again, she was giving him a strange look.

“What?”

She smiled sadly.

“When Vecna…” Eleven swallowed. “When her heart stopped. She was thinking of you.”

Lucas frowned.

“How do you know that?”

El closed her eyes.

“When Max walked through that house, she was scared. She didn’t know if she could do it. The only reason she could keep going was because you were there beside her.”

Lucas could picture it in his mind’s eye: Max carrying the blue lantern, stepping slowly and quietly, her blue eyes large in the dark. Eyes that flitted toward him every few minutes as he crept in behind her. El continued, as if also mentally reliving the scene.

“You were there when she talked to Vecna. You being there made her strong.”

Lucas felt emotion rise into his throat as she continued, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Max does not say what she feels sometimes. But I know you are important to her. And everyone else knows, too.”

Bizarrely, Lucas found it in himself to chuckle. He had made no secret of his feelings for Max, and he would openly admit his affection to anyone who asked. But Max…she never wanted anyone to know how much she cared. Even though he knew she did. And apparently, everyone else did too.

“She cares so much,” he said, willing the surge of sorrow within him to die down. “So much it hurts her.”

El nodded, squeezing his shoulder.

“I know.”

Lucas’ steps felt heavier than usual.

Once Eleven had bid him farewell, he trudged back to Max’s room. Back to their holding cell.

It was a small blessing that Max looked peaceful. Her breath still wheezed, her skin still glistened with sweat, but she didn’t look pained. She lay on her side, facing him. Lucas watched the fog of her breath fill the mask, in and out. Her heart monitor was beeping steadily, a tense regimen. One that Lucas almost always expected to go south at any moment. Especially nowadays.

He wondered, not for the first time, how aware she was. Did she have any conception of what was happening within and around her? As he’d said to El, Max spent much of her time asleep lately. And when she was awake, she didn’t talk much. Her cloudy eyes would swivel, and she would croak a few words here and there: a name, a request, a response. So Lucas had to assume she had some awareness. But it was impossible to know how much. As he pulled the chair up closer to her, Lucas rested his hand on her head, his thumb gently caressing her temple. He hoped she knew he still loved her. And that he was here, still.

She was thinking of you.

Lucas remembered the look in her eyes as she’d handed them her letters all those months ago. The look in her eyes as they reluctantly met his. Before flitting away self-consciously, as if embarrassed to take up space. Vecna’s threat of death had been looming, yes, but had she had a premonition about her death? Surely she couldn’t have known she’d escape death twice, though admittedly that second time had been far more precarious than the first.

Lucas knew she’d been scared, though. Despite her best efforts not to show it. He remembered stopping her in the cemetery, pleading with her to just talk. Just talk to them.

I don’t want a letter. I don’t need a letter. Just talk to me.

We’re right here.

I’m right here.

Lucas suddenly remembered.

Max’s letter.

He immediately turned in his chair, flinging open his bag, digging through it. He had to have it still…he’d kept it safe all this time…

He finally unearthed from a middle pocket that brown envelope, slightly bent from being transferred around. Lucas’ heart ached as he looked at the name on the front: Lucas. In Max’s handwriting.

He felt suddenly hesitant to open it. Max had established it as a failsafe. For after. If things don’t work out. But, he reasoned miserably, things did seem to be going that direction. And he was lonely for her voice – the way she had been, the way he knew her. Lucas wasn’t sure he could resist the temptation now that it was grasped in his hands.

Internally begging Max to forgive him, he broke the seal and pulled out the letter.

Lucas –

I’ve started and restarted this letter so many times. Being on death’s doorstep is distracting, as you can probably tell, and I’ve also been up all night. Writing everything I want to say. Everything that I need to say. And so, instead of rewriting this letter, again, for the millionth time, I’ll just keep going with this one.

I don’t really have words to describe what you are to me. What you’ve been to me. People look past me, or look down at me. You look right through me, and somehow, whatever you see doesn’t faze you. Even though I’m hard to love. I always have been. But you make it seem effortless. I’m not sure I’ll ever know what you see in me, but whatever it is, thank you.

I guess that’s what I’m really trying to say. Thank you. For loving me. I don’t know if I deserve it, but thank you for doing it anyway. When I got to Hawkins, I hadn’t planned on finding any friends. I hadn’t planned on you. I don’t think I know how to love, or at least love people well enough for it to matter.

But with you, this feeling that I have…if it’s not love, it’s pretty damn close.

Mad Max

Teardrops dotted the thin paper. With shaking hands, Lucas folded up the note and pressed it to his chest as he felt it start to separate, felt her words start to re-lacerate his barely healed heart. More than ever he wished he could reach back across time to take her hand. And if Lucas had known then where they would end up, he would never have let her go.

Lucas’ weeping seized him so intensely that he leaned forward, his forehead against the cold floor. Tears and snot ran down his upper lip and smeared on the linoleum. He was clutching Max’s letter so hard that he heard it crumpling slightly in his tightly closed hands. Gripping what was left of her.

There was a quiet knock on the door, followed by the metal’s creaking as it opened.

“Lucas, we’re here to – ”

Will’s voice stopped abruptly, presumably at the sight of Lucas sobbing on the floor.

Lucas couldn’t bring himself to look at Will. But, as he soon discovered, he didn’t have to. He heard Will’s footsteps approach, felt Will’s arms surround him. Other arms soon enveloped them. It was only when he looked up that he noticed Mike and Dustin embracing him as well, sitting solemnly with him.

Even though he perhaps had the most to lose if Max died, Lucas knew they were all grieving along with him. That alone broke the space open to vulnerability, and he allowed his sobs to rack him harder. He felt his friends touch his back, his shoulders, rubbing slowly, patting.

Only once Lucas sat dazedly on the hospital room floor, in the arms of his friends, did he finally run out of tears.

Max’s head felt as if it were wrapped in gauze.

It was weak enough that she couldn’t lift it. Nor her arms or legs. Max was grateful not to be laying supine. Whomever of her nurses were left seemed to have collectively realized that Max no longer had the strength to sit up, and therefore kept her at an angle all the time. Not that she could see differently either way – or at all – but lying flat all the time couldn’t be good for her. Though Max didn’t know how much good any of this was doing for her anymore.

Sure, her heart was still beating, but to what end? She was little more than a lump of flesh at this point. An empty vessel with a tattered sail. Max wondered if this was what true emptiness felt like. It wasn’t as pleasant as she was led to believe. Numbness, strangely, was uncomfortable. And unfortunately, it didn’t seem to translate physically. When Max tried to move, her muscles tightened painfully, her bones scraping against each other. She felt like her blood had been drained from her body, any trace of fluid gone. Dry as a bone in the desert. Max’s own breathing frightened her; hoarse and faint, like her lungs were full of dust. She willed herself to keep taking breaths.

Something of note had happened within the last day or so, but the memories wouldn’t form in her mind properly. She’d been in Lucas’ arms. She remembered that. But the rest was extremely foggy. The smell of cigarettes surfaced sluggishly in Max’s mind, along with the sensation of a threadbare blanket. And blood. There had been a lot of blood. She still tasted it, in fact.

Max heard a gentle knock on the door, and it creaked open nearby.

“Max?” It was Mike’s voice.

Max tried to make a noise in response, but her vocal cords were arid, mottled roots, snaking up from within, with no soil to fortify her. After a few minutes, she heard Mike’s footsteps.

“Max, are you okay?”

Max managed to finally croak “Mike” into her oxygen mask just as his steps drew up close to the bed. Max heard him give a shaky little sigh. That was the default response from most of them nowadays.

“I’m here to keep you company,” Mike murmured hesitantly.

Max gave a small jerk of her head, and she heard the chair legs drag across the linoleum as Mike sat next to her. Max let her eyes stray toward the sound of his voice as he spoke again.

“I, um…this is…”

He cleared his throat, starting again.

“Max. I’m sorry.”

Max’s brows furrowed slightly. Sorry? Had Mike done something?

“The other night…I was the one who told Lucas we had to get you out of here. So you could start getting better. You’ve been here so long, and we were all going out of our minds watching you waste away in here. I thought maybe if we got you to a safe place, away from all this death and disease…maybe it would change things.”

Could that be the nagging memory at the back of her mind? Max wondered if this was why she was remembering different smells, different sensations.

“Lucas didn’t want to do it, and I put the idea in his head. So we tried to move you. It was a stupid idea, obviously…”

Max could swear she heard Mike’s voice start to tremble.

“It’s my fault, Max. It’s my fault you got worse, I…”

Max gave a soft hum, reaching her hand up slightly toward him. She felt his hand meet hers, squeezing it lightly. She couldn’t shake her head, so she squeezed back, as hard as she could.

Mike gave a watery sigh, and she knew he was crying.

“Lucas said Vecna uses your memories against you. And, well, I know I haven’t always been the best – ”

Max squeezed his hand again.

“N-no,” she mumbled through her mask, though it came out whisper-quiet. Mike apologizing was an unexpected kindness, especially from him…but she barely had enough energy to breathe, let alone speak. All Max could do was clench his hand in hers with any ounce of strength she possessed.

Mike’s shaky breathing and occasional sniffling was so strange. She’d almost never seen or heard him cry. Only Eleven or Will had ever affected him in such a way. With great effort, Max managed to turn her head in his direction.

“Max?” Mike questioned softly. “You can hear me, can’t you?”

Max blinked emphatically. Mike let out a breathy sob in response.

“If we manage to survive all this…maybe you, me, El, and Lucas can go on a double date. Maybe we could catch a movie or something.”

Max blinked hard again.

Mike gripped her hand.

“Do you need anything?”

Max wanted to request her collage, but she wasn’t sure she could say the word properly. She pulled her hand back from Mike’s slightly, and began to trace the letters in his palm. It seemed to take him a moment before he realized what she was doing.

“Wait, Max, start again. C…O…L…L…A…oh, your collage?”

Max blinked as hard as she could.

“You want your collage? Okay…”

Max heard rustling and shifting, and after a few moments, she felt the canvas be placed gently in her lap. At once, Max rested her palms on top of it, letting the cavalcade of textures center her. The smoothness of the shells, the jaggedness of the broaches, the softness of the cotton balls. She dragged her hands over it, searching. There was a specific thing she wanted to find, something that would make her feel safe again…

Max’s fingers brushed against one of the flannel squares, and she quickly went back to it. It wasn’t as if El didn’t come to visit her often, but Max found herself lonely without her there. Where Lucas’ presence was safe and secure, El’s was calm and true. Both were welcome in Max’s current state. Especially now that her body seemed to be in limbo. She could feel her own palms’ clamminess against the fabric. She wanted to inhale the flannel’s smell, but she couldn’t sit up enough to do so. And she couldn’t ask Mike, either. Her vocal cords barely worked. She wanted to wail aloud, to scream until her lungs cracked. But her voice wouldn’t come out.

“You like that, huh?” Mike questioned nearby. Max didn’t respond to him. She didn’t have the energy to. She just kept her hands on the flannel square, allowing it to anchor her.

El was still out there, fighting for her. And today, Max took refuge in that.

Lucas was half-considering sleeping at the hospital regularly.

His mother would barely let him leave the house anymore, and this morning she had almost succeeded by getting his father involved. They had all but blocked the front door, imploring him to stay home.

“Guys, I have to go be with Max.”

His father’s thick moustache seemed to frown along with him. “It’s not safe out there, son. We need to be together as a family.”

“Max doesn’t have any family here right now. Her mom’s in Indianapolis.”

Lucas could see his mother’s resolve starting to crumble in light of that fact.

“Charles, maybe we can bring her here so she’s not – ”

“Mom, we can’t move her. We already tried, and she got worse when we did.”

Erica’s sharp voice suddenly sounded behind them.

“I’ll go with him.”

All three of them turned toward her.

“You heard me,” Erica told them, her expression uncommonly resolute. “I’ll go, too.”

“Absolutely not,” his mother refuted. “I’m not risking both my kids’ safety.”

“I have to go,” Lucas repeated. “I have to.”

Tears sprang to his eyes, and his voice wobbled slightly.

“She’s not doing good, and…if we’re gonna lose her, I don’t want her to be alone. Please.”

His father surveyed him, looking uncertain.

“If I drive you,” he started slowly. “And it starts to look bad while you’re there…I want you to call us, and then I want you to shelter in place. Okay?”

Lucas threw his arms around his parents, who squeezed him tightly back. He knew it was an insane thing to ask of them. And he also knew that he would never forgive himself if Max died and he wasn’t there.

The ride to the hospital was mercifully short, though Lucas now noticed that the constant dark grey and red in the sky made everything look more jagged, more sinister. The buildings looked small against the mass expanse of the clouds, as if standing against a storm about to break loose. He could sense his father’s unease as they pulled into the nearly empty parking lot of the hospital.

“I’m serious, son,” his father said as they stopped at the front doors. “If you can’t come home – ”

“Call, then shelter in place. Got it.”

His father nodded, then reached forward to hug him. Lucas returned it.

This time, when he entered Max’s room, it felt different. He supposed he should plan as if he was now sheltering here. Lucas knew the cot was still here somewhere, and there had to still be food in the kitchens. Hospitals usually had preservable food stashed. And if there wasn’t food already made, he could throw something together.

Lucas let his eyes fall on Max. She was awake, surprisingly. Her head was turned in his direction, her cloudy eyes trained over his shoulder. He knew she was listening for him.

“It’s me,” Lucas murmured quietly.

Max blinked, and he watched her thin hand flop around weakly on her blankets. She wanted him to hold her hand. Lucas grabbed one of the chairs and pulled it up close to her bedside, taking her hand at once. It was clammy and bony, so fragile he was scared to break it. Max didn’t speak, but he saw a shadow of a smile cross her face, and her eyes closed. Lucas pressed a kiss to the back of her hand.

As he let his eyes wander, Lucas noticed with alarm that Max’s IV bag was empty, so empty it looked vacuum-sealed. Her food bag was almost empty too. Uneasiness filled him as he realized that Cynthia was normally the nurse who handled this. She wouldn’t have let Max’s fluid or food bags get so low. Lucas’ eyes traveled to the bag itself, examining it. If the nurses were all gone, he would have to teach himself how to change her fluid and food bags. It couldn’t be that complicated.

Lucas nearly jumped out of his skin as Max’s door swung open. It was Nancy, her arms laden with blankets and sheets. Close behind her was Lori, holding full fluid and food bags.

“Lucas, out. Take a break.” Nancy jerked her thumb over her shoulder.

Lucas scowled at her. “I just got – ”

“It’s not a request,” Lori said, joining them seconds later. “Go to an empty room and shower, then go get something to eat from the cafeteria. I’m sure you can scrounge something up. I promise you can come back once we get her showered and fed. Go.”

Realizing he was outnumbered, Lucas straightened up, albeit very begrudgingly. He leaned down toward her, and he watched her face seem to register his presence. Lucas pressed his lips gently to her forehead. She gave a little sigh, and her eyes closed.

“I’ll be back soon,” he murmured.

Max didn’t try to speak, just blinked slowly in his direction, her eyelids peeling apart as if they were stuck together. She seemed sedated, almost. Or perhaps she was just exhausted. Lucas couldn’t read her facial expression very well under the oxygen mask, and it was too vacant to give him any indication either way. Lucas knew Nancy and Lori were getting ready to forcibly remove him from the room if he didn’t leave voluntarily, so he forced himself to let go of her hand, walking past them and letting the door swing shut behind him.

Max wondered where Lucas was going.

Lucas’ footsteps trailed away, and she felt her heart pulling in his direction. She had heard others come in, but the twilight between sleep and wakefulness was muffling her hearing slightly. She didn’t care who it was. She wanted Lucas to come back. Max tried to voice her dissent, but all that came out was a thin cry. The door closed in the distance anyway.

Two pairs of footsteps slowly approached.

“Nancy, let me get a look at her before you come closer.”

Max’s heart sank. Lori. It wasn’t as if she disliked Lori. She just wasn’t Cynthia. Lori’s steps grew closer, and Max felt her draw up next to the bed.

“Max, it’s Lori.”

“Cindy,” she murmured in the direction of Lori’s voice. Her mouth felt like sandpaper, her dry tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth as her voice was muted by the oxygen mask.

“Hang on, let me get that thing off you. I’m getting some water in you today.”

The mask lifted from her face and Max felt cool air on her cheeks where the edges of the mask had no doubt made indents in her skin. She felt mostly able to take in air without it on. At least, for now.

“Cindy,” she managed again, faintly.

Lori didn’t answer right away, and Max could hear her perturbed muttering as buttons clicked and tubes were adjusted. After several moments of this, Max felt the end of her bed sink a little, and she realized Lori had sat down. When she spoke, her voice had lost its irritation.

“I don’t know where Cindy is, kiddo. Nobody does.”

Max felt her eyes start to well up. Cynthia had become as important to her as any of her friends or family. Not having Cynthia here made Max feel as if she’d been blinded all over again – a vital part of herself now missing, and the hospital room was once again unfamiliar and terrifying.

Lori sat in silence on the bed with her, and Max wondered if she didn’t know what to say. Lori didn’t strike her as the kind to fill Max’s head with false promises and shallow sentiments, and so remaining silent might have been the kindest option.

Lori finally spoke again after a few more moments.

“I’m going to lift your bed up a little so I can get a better look at you, okay?”

The bar behind the head of the bed clanged beneath her, and Max felt her upper body rising, felt the bed tilt upward. Her head swam and her stomach churned with the movement.

“I’m going to touch your arm,” Lori warned her, and Max felt her roughened palm close around her elbow, lifting it slightly.

“Christ. Whoever put in this IV bruised you pretty good. Stacey never was good at placing them…”

Lori clucked her tongue in disapproval as she lay Max’s arm back down on the bed.

“My god, Miss Mayfield, your IV bag is sucked dry. Hasn’t anyone come to check on you?”

Truthfully, Max wasn’t sure. If another nurse had been there, this Stacey or someone else, she didn’t remember them, nor could she place them in her mind.

“Okay. Before we do anything else, you’re drinking some water. Nancy, could you give me a hand?”

It took some jostling, but Max soon felt Nancy’s hand on the back of her head, raising it up a little.

“Okay, Max, I’m going to put the straw near your mouth, and I want you to drink.”

Max felt the plastic touch her lips, and her mouth closed around it. She sucked the cold water through the straw, hearing the slight clicking of ice cubes all clustering against each other. Swallowing felt scary, but she managed to do it. The cold water felt so good on her dry throat, and she found herself drinking with more vigor.

“Good girl. Not too fast, not too fast…” Lori told her, but Max couldn’t help it. She hadn’t realized she was so thirsty.

Nancy’s calm and encouraging voice sounded from next to her. “Good job.”

“The fact she can still swallow is a good thing,” Lori murmured, as Max drank the last bit of water through the straw. “Best we could hope for.”

Once there was only ice in the cup, Lori told Nancy to take the cup to the kitchen and put it in the freezer to preserve the ice. If Max couldn’t swallow later, she said, then they could have her suck on ice cubes.

As Nancy’s footsteps trailed away, Lori’s hand slid down, and Max felt calloused fingers press to her wrist.

“Pulse uneven,” she said. “Your skin’s clammy, and you’re white as a sheet. Can you tell me how you feel?”

Before Max could respond, nausea rose up within her like poison, and within seconds she’d vomited up the water she’d drank down the front of her gown.

“Oh, now,” Lori muttered, and Max felt her stand up. “Come on, let’s get you to the shower. You’re looking a little grubby anyway. Can you walk?”

Max went to lift her legs, to get them moving. In horror, she found that they wouldn’t. Not well enough to walk, anyway. They weighed more than she had the strength to move them. Her eyes filled with tears.

“No,” she gulped.

Lori’s voice had grown soft. “I can get you there, Max. It’s all right.”

Nancy’s quick footsteps soon rejoined them, and they stopped short.

“Is she okay?”

“She threw up. I’m getting her in the shower.”

Max heard Nancy approach the bed and exhale sadly. Presumably at the sight of her. Max couldn’t conceptualize how she must look – pale and ill, with vomit on her gown – but she certainly felt unkempt after the fact.

“I could use your help,” Lori offered from next to her. “She might feel safer with you there.”

“Of course,” Nancy assented. “What can I do?”

“I’ll get her in there, if you can grab our supplies. Soap, shampoo, towels, washcloths. In the linen closet down the hall. Grab new sheets and pillowcases too. We’ll need them later.”

Nancy’s footsteps became distant again as she left the room. Max felt the rush of air as her covers were removed from her legs. She heard things being disconnected, wires being pulled, buttons being pressed…her IV and electrodes detached, her feeding tube clamped off. Max then felt Lori draw close, the fabric of Lori’s scrubs brushing against her skin.

“Here we go. Just hang onto me.”

Max couldn’t keep herself from crying as Lori lifted her up. Her body was giving up on her, and she could do nothing but succumb to it. Her head rested on Lori’s shoulder as they moved across the room. She wished it was Cindy carrying her. Or her mother. She ached for them both.

Max felt the air change as they entered the bathroom, and she heard Nancy re-enter the room nearby. Lori deposited her into the shower chair, removing her hospital gown. Without Lori to lean against, Max felt herself start to droop slowly in the chair, unable to hold up her head, her naked body sinking into itself like melting putty.

“Shit,” Lori muttered, and in one quick motion, she had grabbed Max and slid in behind her on the chair. Her body was warm, a welcome comfort against the chilliness of being bare.

“I’m fat, so I’m not sure how long this chair will hold us both,” Lori noted. “But we’ll do our best. Nancy?”

Max caught a whiff of Nancy’s perfume as she re-joined them. Lori reached over her and Max heard the squeak of the faucet as the hiss of water rained over her. Max whimpered. The droplets of water felt like coarse pebbles against her paper-thin skin.

“Hang on, hang on…” Lori was saying. “It should warm up soon.”

Sure enough, the water began to run warm after a few minutes. It was a balm for her frail body, a temperate embrace. Max let herself be supported by Lori, leaning her head back on her nurse’s shoulder. At least, if her body was weak, it was in the presence of people who helped make her strong.

“Nancy, if you’d like to shampoo her hair, I can use the soap.”

Max felt the smooth bar of soap start to rub across her skin. She heard the squeeze of a bottle, felt the cold glob of shampoo in the middle of her scalp. Nancy’s familiarly slender hands massaged through her wet hair, bunching it into foam. She noticed that Lori’s scrubs were wet against her back, and it occurred to Max that Lori and presumably Nancy were fully clothed. But she didn’t have the energy to feel guilty about it.

Lori spoke into her ear.

“I’m not soaping up any sensitive areas, okay? We’re just getting your back, arms, face, and hair.”

Max made a noise in assent, and they continued washing her.

“Nancy, please grab me a washcloth – yes, thank you. If you want to get the pitcher over there, you can rinse her hair.”

“Bow your head, Max,” Nancy murmured.

Max followed suit, closing her eyes at the feeling of warm water flowing through her soapy hair, turning it smooth and long and heavy. She felt Lori rubbing the washcloth over her back and shoulders, and Max felt the sensation of weeks of stink, weeks of stagnation and vomit and blood shed from her like skin, revealing fresh newness underneath. Nancy wrung out Max’s wet hair, and gently adjusted her so she was once more leaning back against Lori. The washcloth then travelled to her arms, and she let herself be calmed by its soft, repetitive motion.

Lori broke into her thoughts several moments later.

“All right, Max. Let’s wrap up and get you dry, hmm?”

Max felt Lori reach forward past her. The shower squeaked off, and then Max was sitting against Lori’s wet shirt, already violently shivering in the chilly air. It seemed there wasn’t much between her skin and bones anymore.

“Nancy? A towel, please?”

The bristly towel soon met Max’s skin, and she sputtered a little as Lori wiped her face.

“You’re all right, you’re all right,” her nurse muttered a little gruffly, though the towel’s rubbing lessened slightly. “Lean forward a little.”

Max did so, and she felt a towel rest over her back and shoulders. Lori pulled her wet hair out of it, letting it hang over Max’s shoulder. Max could feel how long it had gotten as it tickled her stomach.

“Nancy, can you change her bedding, please? Thank you. We’ll finish up in here.”

As Nancy left, they sat there for a moment, Lori dabbing Max’s face with a corner of the fabric.

“That boy of yours can’t stay away, can he?”

Max didn’t reply. In truth, she was now ready for this to be done so he could come back. She managed a slight jerk of her head. Lori said no more about it, but continued to dry Max off.

Lucas’ earnest face floated lazily through her mind. She didn’t have much to give him right now, this was true, but Max would be happy just to be in his warm, strong arms today. To feel the safety she always felt in them. If she asked for Lucas just to hold her, she knew he would jump at the chance, and then she could forget about everything. Forget her failing body, the damnation of Hawkins, her fear of losing anyone else. Her fear of losing everyone else. Maybe if she just held onto Lucas, she thought, she could keep him safe too.

Nancy called from the door of her room.

“Her bed’s ready, Lori.”

“Wonderful,” said Lori, and she got up from behind Max, one hand on Max’s shoulder to keep her upright. “Come on, kiddo.”

She scooped Max up, and Max looped her arms around Lori’s neck. As Lori carried her back into the room, Max could hear the rustle of blankets being drawn back.

“Max, I’ve changed the sheets and pillowcases, okay? Everything’s new and clean.”

“Pink,” Max gulped out, all at once anxious.

“That pink pillowcase is from home, I know,” Nancy reassured her. “It’s okay, Max, I left it there. Lori, here’s her change of clothes.”

Max felt Lori nod. “Max, I’m going to set you on the bed, and we’ll get dressed. Nancy, if you would take the linens to the laundry room, that would be great. And then go find wherever Lucas ended up. I’m sure he’s pining to get back in here.”

Lori sat Max on the bed, and she could feel the crispness of the new sheets beneath her, could smell how clean they were. Lori’s hand remained firmly on her back as she pressed a soft shirt into Max’s hand.

“Can you dress yourself, or do you need help?”

“My…self,” Max told her. Her muscles were still weak, but she was able to slowly slide an arm through a sleeve. It took her a few minutes to get the other one through. Once the shirt was on, she felt Lori put the towel on her head, and start to rub her hair with it.

The rest passed with almost no consequence. Lori had Max lie down, lift her hips so Lori could put underwear and smooth pants on. Then Lori adjusted her to where she was lying against her pillows, which also smelled fresh and new save for her pink pillowcase, which – to Max’s relief – still held whispers of home.

“There we go,” Lori pulled the blankets over Max. “I’ll wait here with you until Nancy gets back with Lucas. In the meantime, let’s get your oxygen back on.”

As Max felt the oxygen mask cover her mouth and nose, Lori started speaking again.

“I don’t want to scare you, Max. But it’s not looking good out there. The clouds are just black now, with red lightning. And everything feels…strange. Like we’re all sinking into the ground.”

Max wasn’t sure what to tell her. She knew why everything was going to shit, of course, but she wasn’t sure Lori would believe her.

From underneath the mask, Max tried to speak.

“Dan…ger,” she managed.

Lori laughed humorlessly.

“I think we’re all in danger. This place is getting emptier by the day. Patients and staff. My last few shifts, fewer and fewer people have shown up. And patients are disappearing. Just like you. Except we brought you back, because home isn’t safe for you. Not many places are safe anymore, Max. And to be honest, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be around.”

Max’s hand opened, grasping in Lori’s direction. She wanted to hold onto Lori, to keep her from slipping away too.

“No,” she said, her voice small and broken.

Lori gave another dry chuckle, but Max felt Lori’s weathered hand slip into hers.

“I’d miss you too, kiddo.”

Lori let go of her hand after a moment, and Max jumped as she heard the clacking of her cassette tapes on the tray table nearby.

“You’ve got good taste,” Lori observed, a smile in her voice. “Fleetwood Mac, Bowie, Siouxsie…very eclectic.”

There was a quiet rustle of fabric.

“I noticed you like music, so I brought you a few of my own tapes. They’re a little heavier and louder than your other ones here, but you might still like them. I brought you AC/DC, the Stones…”

Max felt a single tape press into her hand.

“But this one…this one’s from my personal collection. Metallica. You know them?”

“No.”

“The song is called ‘One,’ and it’s the only one on the tape. The corner has a chip in it, which should make it easy for you to find. And trust me, you’re going to want to find it again. I think you’ll want to hear it more than once.”

Max’s finger pressed against the notch in the tape cover, unsure of how to respond as she rubbed the jagged edge. The sudden kindness of the gesture had momentarily silenced her. The door creaked open nearby, and Max heard both Nancy and Lucas’ footsteps against the linoleum.

“Thank…you,” Max told Lori finally, as Nancy and Lucas drew closer.

“No need to thank me. Just rest. Lucas and Nancy are here now, so I’m going to go ahead and change your fluid and food bags. Then I’ll come back to check on you in a little while.”

Max heard Lucas’ shaky breath as he sat back down.

“I’m back. I’m here.”

Max reached up and touched her ear.

“Music? You want music?”

Max blinked at him.

“Okay. Yes. Which tape?”

Max raised up the cassette tape she was holding in her other hand.

“Oh, I didn’t see you had one in your hand. Is that the one you want?”

Max blinked, as hard as she could.

“If I put the Walkman in your hand, can you take it from there?”

Max blinked again. She felt the Walkman press gently into her palms. Max rested her fingers against the buttons, and with some effort clicked the button to open the Walkman’s door. Her hands were shaking, and as she tried to get the tape into the Walkman, she could hear it clacking against the plastic.

Nancy’s voice sounded, exceedingly gentle.

“Do you want help?”

No, Max wanted to say, but this once simple task was turning out to be more arduous than usual. Her hands had such bad tremors that she was scared the Walkman was going to slip out of her grasp.

She jumped a little as Lucas’ rough hand rested over hers, steadying her grip on the Walkman. His other hand took the tape, and Max heard it click into place, the Walkman door clasping shut. A button clicked, and the tape started to rewind.

“There we go. All done. Let me grab your headphones.”

“My…self,” Max croaked.

“I’m just putting them in your hands. That’s it.”

After a few minutes, Max was able to clumsily lift her headphones to her ears. Once her hand was curled around the Walkman again, she could remember where the buttons were. Max waited for the whirring tape’s abrupt halt, signaling it was done rewinding. Once the rewinding finally stopped, Max found the play button and clicked it.

The song began with gunshots. People yelling. A cacophony of war and suffering, until it started to fade. A few electric guitar notes began to strum, sounding grim, almost wistful. Then more notes, until the lead singer started to intone:

I can’t remember anything

Can’t tell if this is true or a dream

Deep down inside I feel the scream

This terrible silence stops me

Now that the war is through with me

I’m waking up, I cannot see

That there’s not much left of me

Nothing is real but pain now

Hold my breath as I wish for death,

Oh please, God, wake me.

Max hadn’t realized she was crying until she felt the hot tears catch on the oxygen mask, felt them slip down toward the feeding tube in her nose. Whomever had written this song had known of the dark recesses that were now her living place. As if this song had been written for her, and only her. She felt Lucas take her hand again. She was sure he must be saying words of comfort, but she couldn’t make them out over the guitar, which grew heavier and angrier.

After the guitar’s strumming increased into a staccato rhythm, the singer started again:

Darkness, imprisoning me

All that I see, absolute horror

I cannot live, I cannot die

Trapped in myself, body my holding cell

Landmine has taken my sight

Taken my speech, taken my hearing

Taken my arms, taken my legs

Taken my soul, left me with life in hell

Max wanted to wail with anguish at this as the cruel truth was brought into focus for her once again: her broken body was indeed her holding cell, and all the work she’d done to be free was crumbling away. It was as if Max could feel her own muscles deteriorating, her own bones disintegrating.

The electric guitar continued to grind, louder and more frenzied, and Max lay still, feeling the song cascade over her, feeling the raw emotion plow through her like a train.

And then, the song was done.

A ringing quiet echoed in Max’s ears. Aside from Lucas’ breathing, she could hear only the buzz of the fluorescent lighting, the rumble from outside, the hiss from her oxygen, the beep of the heart monitor. Her hand was still grasped securely in Lucas’, his other hand resting over it. She pulled his hand toward her. Lucas hesitated, seeming unsure of what she wanted.

Max tugged his hand toward her again, and Lucas finally seemed to key in. His footsteps circled her bed, and she felt the covers pull back as Lucas climbed into bed with her. Slowly, Max turned her body toward his, and she felt Lucas’ arms surround her. She gave a little whine of frustration as her headphones started to slip off her ears.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Lucas murmured, readjusting them. It wasn’t just that. Max wanted to sink into him as much as she could, but her oxygen mask and electrodes were making this difficult. Max didn’t get the sense he understood the depth of her chagrin, but he at least knew she needed him in that moment. Eventually, they reached a comfortable position: Lucas’ arms enveloping Max as she lay her head on his arm, her eyes closing. Lucas’ cheek pressed against her head, his hand rubbing over her back.

Max’s finger slowly found the rewind button on her Walkman.

After a few moments, she clicked it.

Max’s head was splitting, screws drilling into her skull. 

The memories didn’t make sense today. It was as if Max couldn’t form a cohesive one. Sights and sounds mixed together, garbled and unintelligible. Lucas’ calm, deep voice amid a thunderstorm. Her drunk mother wobbling around at Starcourt. Even El’s own voice, crying out for Max, while the Mind Flayer tore open Hopper’s cabin roof. The pain in her head grew worse, and Max’s knees buckled.

The floor in the void – if you could even call it that – brought her no reprieve. As Max stared into the blackness, lying crumpled in the moisture-less water, she was terrified to discover she could taste blood in her mouth. Every muscle clenched, every nerve was on fire. It was nigh unbearable, and she didn’t know how to make it stop.

“Max?” El’s concerned voice wandered in, but Max wasn’t sure if it was the El here with her or the one floating across her memories. She was immobilized by pain, frozen in agony. El’s hand on her arm confirmed her presence.

“I hurt all over,” Max managed.

“I know. I’m sorry.” El wrapped her arms around Max. She was crying. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Max didn’t have it in her to cry too. “How many more memories before we break through, El? I can’t do this much longer.”

“I know,” El repeated. “We have to try again. Please.”

El came around in front of Max, holding out her hands. Max took them, and El helped her sit up. It didn’t feel good, and Max didn’t want to, but she willed herself to try. She looked at Eleven, now eye level with her.

“My body in the real world. It’s not good, is it?”

Eleven seemed hesitant to give an answer.

“We are running out of time,” she stated finally, and Max sensed this was the most positive light in which she could frame their situation. “Your body is weak. You are sleeping more, and talking less. Machines and wires keep you alive.”

That made sense. Max felt more awful in here by the day. El prattled on.

“You have your collage. You like to hold it in your lap sometimes. Lucas is there every day, for hours and hours. Nancy helps when the nurse gives you showers. Robin used to bring Braille books, but now she just sits with you and doesn’t talk. Erica will read to you, sometimes. Or braid your hair. She is teaching Lucas how. And the rest of the boys visit, more and more now. Steve drives them. Sometimes they talk, and sometimes they just sit.” 

“Wait,” Max’s brows furrowed. “Braille?”

Eleven stopped short, and the stricken look on her face unsettled Max.

“El, what’s wrong with my eyes?”

El stammered, her eyes filling with tears again.

“I – I – ”

“El, if something’s wrong, you have to tell me,” Max implored, truly worried now. “Please.”

She could tell Eleven was struggling to get the words out, and every second that passed made the gnawing worry in her stomach only intensify. The ache in her muscles started to increase.

“You – ” El choked, then started again. “You can’t see.”

Something cold flopped over inside Max.

“So my eyes are damaged?”

“When Vecna…” El gestured around her own face. “He didn’t take your eyes. Not all the way.”

Maybe El wasn’t saying what Max had thought she was saying.

“They’ll get better, then, right?”

Eleven was unabashedly weeping now.

“No,” she barely whispered. “You are blind.”

A stone – a boulder – dropped into Max’s stomach.

Her veins flooded with ice.

No.

She grappled vainly for comfort. “But…there has to be something they can do. If and when I get out of here, my sight should come back. Right?”

Eleven was sobbing profusely into her hands.

“They told Lucas that your vision will never return.”

The ugly truth was cornering Max, sinking its claws into her, trapping her in the inevitable bleakness. An added twist of the knife was knowing that Lucas already knew. Because that meant he was still by her side, even after the fact. And she’d never see his face again.

 Max could feel a dark beast of anger start to wake deep within her. Her breathing grew harsh, her hands curling into fists…

She chuckled. Then started to snicker. And then a heinous cackle broke free from her, one that she herself didn’t recognize. Her chest shuddered with her laughter, pain shooting across it.

“Well, that figures,” she said, a horrible heartiness to her voice. “Everything else in my life has gone tragically wrong, so what’s one more thing? Of course my fucking eyesight’s the next thing to go!”

Eleven looked up from her hands, her wet face shocked. Max let out another derisive crow of laughter.

“Life is really something, huh? For so long, for so long…I had nothing to look forward to. Nothing to hope for. My life was only night. And then I got moved to Hawkins, where I could finally see the sun. And now, to top it off, my friends are the only thing giving me any hope for escaping this shithole, and now I’ll never see any of you again. Life just couldn’t resist another chance to fuck me over, could it?”

El looked terrified, stunned into silence. Max felt a rush of fury at her expression.

“Go home, Eleven. Go back to our friends, and leave me here to rot. It’s what I deserve anyway.”

Eleven finally spoke, her quivering voice indignant.

“No.”

“El…” Max closed her eyes, trying not to think about how she’d never see El’s face again either. “Just. Go.”

“No!” Eleven cried, and she moved closer to Max, reaching out for her hand. “No, Max, I won’t let you –”

“You don’t get it!” Max shot back. “You’ll never understand what it’s like to be me. To hear, your entire life, that things will get better, that good will always win. And it’s all bullshit. This world is bullshit, and the people in it are bullshit. For any hope I’ve gained, darkness always snuffs it out, and I’m tired.” Tears started to fill her eyes before she could stop them. “I’m tired. And I’m done. With all of it.”

“You are not!” El’s voice was growing louder. “I am fighting for you! We are all fighting for you! Lucas is fighting for you!”

Lucas’ earnest face floated across her mind, and Max’s insides writhed in agony. She couldn’t bear to look at Eleven anymore. She turned away, the dark ripples billowing out underneath her, and pulled her knees up to her chest.

“You should have just let me die,” she said, in a tone of voice that even she hated.

El seemed lost for words. Max knew she was hurting her best friend. It only made her despise herself more.

She buried her face in her jeans, pulled her legs closer. Her voice was tiny. “Please. Just go.”

As a ringing silence fell, Max’s shoulders started to shake, knowing that her best friend had honored her wish.

Eleven was gone.

And Max hated herself for it.

Lucas wasn’t sure if he liked sheltering in place or not.

He had already called his father to let him know he was staying over. Lucas supposed it was nice to sleep in a different bed for a change, though it wasn’t the most comfortable. He’d never get used to the smell, either. That too-clean smell, with the faint tinge of decay. He tried not to think about the last occupant of this bed, and whether that person had made it out alive. When he had arrived, the bed had been stripped, so he had no way of knowing.

As Lucas lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, he held Max’s letter to his chest. He hadn’t tried to re-read it for fear of breaking down completely. He’d barely pulled it together enough to peel himself off the floor the other day. You can’t fall apart right now, he thought to himself. Max needs you. Be strong.

He was startled to hear the sliding door down the hall open, followed by multiple footsteps. As the footsteps drew closer, he could hear hushed voices, growing louder with urgency.

“What did she see? Mike, what’s going on?”

“El, slow down. El!”

Lucas sat up at once, tossing the letter onto his bed as he bolted toward the door. As he entered the hallway, he saw Nancy and Robin skitter anxiously into Max’s room. He felt his feet carry him forward until he himself reached the doorway. Once he entered, he saw that Mike, Jonathan, Steve, Dustin, and Will were also there. El was laid out over Max, her forehead pressed to Max’s chest. She turned her face toward them, and as Lucas approached the bed, he noticed she wasn’t crying. Her eyes were pits of despair.

“Max sent me away,” Eleven whispered to him.

“What happened? What do you mean?”

“I went in to see her. She was in pain. She asked about her body out here, and I told her about her eyes.”

Lucas would have thought El would cry while relaying this, but she remained listlessly sad.

“She was so angry, and she said ‘you should have just let me die.’”

From behind him, Lucas felt the concerned and anxious reactions of his friends ripple through the room. But the expression he shared with El only belonged to them. They had now stepped off the cliff, and with no guarantee that they wouldn’t be diced to pieces on the rocks below. All that was left to know was whether Max could find it in her to survive. And right now…the prospects didn’t look good.

Lucas turned toward the rest of the group. He didn’t know how to temper their facial expressions. Dustin looked devastated, and Lucas could see shades of Eddie in his eyes. Mike had a similar look on his face. Robin promptly burst into tears, and Steve put his arm around her, looking miserable. Nancy stared at the floor, her own eyes brimming as she rubbed Robin’s shoulder. Jonathan held her hand, his face grave. Will was crying too, and he rested his hand on El’s back, tears falling quietly onto the bed.

With all the strength he had left, Lucas finally said “El has to visit one more memory with her.”

His friends’ expressions went from sorrowful to incredulous.

“Lucas, there’s no way,” Nancy asserted in disbelief. “It’ll kill her. Permanently this time.”

Robin turned and left the room, still sobbing profusely. Steve followed her, and Lucas heard them walk down the hallway together.

“Why does El need to visit another one of her memories?” Dustin demanded, and Lucas could tell he was trying to keep his voice from wavering. “Why do we have to put her through that again?”

“Because it’s our last chance to save her life.”

“While also running the risk of ending her life!”

Mike numbly crossed the room toward El, reaching down and rubbing her back as she buried her face in Max’s hospital gown.

Lucas was now trying to keep his own voice from wavering.

“The last time we did this, we think she was in there for a moment. When she…freaked out. We have to give it one more shot.”

Dustin shook his head, looking unconvinced.

“We should have Lori with us,” Nancy suggested quietly. “When we do this, I mean.”

Lucas looked at her. She didn’t seem overly convinced either, but as she met his gaze, he saw acceptance of their situation. Of the looming task ahead. Nancy’s eyes then fell on Max’s pale, still face.

“Lori should be there to monitor her. Watch her vital signs, give medications if needed, et cetera. That way, if something happens…” Her voice trembled a little. “Lori will know what to do.”

It felt like they were planning Max’s funeral. Numbness, bleakness, a resignation to the end. Lucas willed himself to remain composed. He couldn’t break down right now. Max needed him to be strong.

“We’ll have to do it soon, so you should probably find a bed here tonight. Plenty down the hall. We’ll scrounge up whatever food we can find in the kitchens. And tomorrow...go time.”

“Go get Steve and Robin,” Nancy turned to Jonathan. “They’ll want to stay over too.”

Jonathan turned and walked through the doorway wordlessly.

“Someone needs to go get Erica when they can,” Lucas asserted to Nancy. “She’ll want to be here. But you’ll have to sneak her out. My parents will never let her go.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Nancy reassured him.

Lucas rounded on El, Mike, and Will.

“Go get some sleep,” he told them. “I’ll stay here.”

After some gentle coaxing, Will was able to convince Eleven to detach herself from Max. An arm around her, Will guided her out of the room, presumably to find her a bed down the hall. Mike didn’t move.

“Aren’t you going too?” Lucas questioned him.

Mike shook his head.

“No,” he said distantly. “I just wanna sit here for a moment.”

He walked around to the other side of the bed, letting himself fall into the chair. Mike too seemed out of tears to cry as he stared vacantly at Max.

Nancy approached the bed, her pretty hand brushing some hair back from Max’s forehead. She leaned down and pressed her lips to the clammy, pale skin.

“We’re here,” she whispered, and then sobs took hold of her. She promptly left the room, a hand over her mouth.

Lucas sank down into the chair opposite Mike. He didn’t have the strength to work up any more emotion. He was moving robotically, dazedly, numb with grief. Surrendering to the despair of it. As Lucas let his gaze flit toward his friend, he noticed with mixed warmth and sorrow that Mike’s eyes were now glassy with unshed tears. Only El or Will ever made Mike cry. As the unbearable silence sat between them – broken only by Max’s faint breathing – Mike stared bleakly at Max.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, his voice shaking. “God, I’m sorry.”

Lucas focused his attention on pulling Max’s blankets over her more securely. He was trying to drink in her presence – what little there was left of it – while he still could. Trying to imprint her face into his memory, clinging to the feel of her skin against his.

He took Max’s hand, his thumb rubbing over her knuckles.

“Max,” he whispered. “I know you’re still in there. Somewhere.”

Lucas took a deep breath, gearing himself up.

“I know it’s all been so hard for you. For so long. And I know I can’t fix anything. Even though I want to.”

He rubbed her arm, still clenching her hand in his.

“I just want you to know…” Sobs choked him, and he struggled to keep going. “If you need to go, you can go.”

Saying these words was, without a doubt, the hardest thing he’d ever done. But they were here. Lucas leaned toward her, kissing whatever of her cheek wasn’t obscured by the oxygen mask.

“You can let go, Max…” He swallowed another sob. “I love you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He cradled her still face in his hands, pressing kisses to her forehead. He didn’t care that Mike was sitting there. Mike must understand how Lucas felt. To have the person you love most in the world constantly slipping through your fingers, out of reach. Only this time felt like the final time.

“Lucas?” Mike’s tired, cracked voice almost startled him.

“Hm?”

“There’s something in her hand,” Mike muttered, frowning.

Lucas’ brows knit. “Huh?”

Mike beckoned him over. Lucas circled the bed, drawing up on Mike’s side to see what he was looking at. Max’s hand lay palm down on the bed, and underneath it, Lucas could see slivers of yellow and black. He reached out, lifting her wrist slightly, and he realized it was a square of fabric, patterned yellow and gray plaid. The edges were frayed, bits of the yarn tattered, like it had been torn from something.

Lucas realized at once where he had seen it before.

“It’s from her collage.”

He stood up, walking over to where the collage rested against the opposite wall. He could now see, towards the middle, a glob of dried glue, strands of the fabric stuck to it. As he peered closer, Lucas could also see lines dragging down toward the glue. As if Max had needed to scratch at the poster board to get the flannel square off. The same flannel square that now lay on the bed next to her.

“She had her collage yesterday when I left,” Mike told him as Lucas rejoined them.

Emotion flooded Lucas as he gazed down at Max. It was as if she’d sought out the flannel herself – that piece of El – and then resolved to hold onto it. As if clinging to the thread by which her life was now suspended.

Max hadn’t given up yet.

So neither would he.

Chapter Text

Lucas couldn’t escape his sense of dread.

Now that Max was too weak to handle her Walkman, his cassette player was now the music supplier, and the music now permeated the room on a regular basis. Lucas was equal parts grateful and regretful to have it in the room. While it was a balm to fill the space, a welcome distraction from the shadow of death that now loomed, the music only made him think of Max. Especially the Fleetwood Mac tape. Only once had his friends made the mistake of letting it play. He had crossed the room in two strides and ejected the tape mid-song, shutting it in the drawer without another word.

He had thought, mistakenly, that the other tapes would be easier to stomach. They weren’t. If anything, they felt even more like an echo of what once was. As he sat with her now, Duran Duran’s Rio sang out of the stereo.

Her name is Rio, and she dances on the sand…

The image of Max – a whole, unencumbered Max – filled Lucas’ mind. Were Max like this Rio, dancing on the sand, her smile bigger than the shoreline...it seemed like a distant dream. Bare feet, dressed in shorts and an easy-fitting tee shirt. A striped one. With her red sunglasses. Her red hair tinted by the setting sun.

He imagined himself. Walking toward her, smiling too. Taking her into his arms and kissing her, her grin never leaving, her arms surrounding him.

It was a wistful future. One that might never be reached. Lucas wasn’t naïve enough to think it could come true exactly the way he pictured it. Not just because of the state Max was in, but because he didn’t even know if any of them would make it out of Hawkins alive. Not with the state of things.

He let his eyes wander toward the doodle on the wall behind her bed. She had drawn both of them smiling, sitting close. Holding hands.

Lucas had half a mind to steal her away to the Hawk, to hold her in his lap as the movie played. Quietly describing everything to her as it happened. He wondered what movie they would have seen, had everything gone their way. Max had always claimed never to like romantic movies, but Lucas had noticed her lingering just a moment too long in front of the Out of Africa poster a few summers ago. Maybe he would have surprised her with something romantic. Or maybe, they would have just gone to see a horror movie like they had done previously. Maybe Children of the Corn or Firestarter. In either case, it would have been nice. He could picture it now: the two of them, squished into movie theater seats, a bucket of popcorn in between them. As the movie would progress, Lucas would slip his arm around her, and Max would snuggle a bit closer, gazing up at him with those uncertain blue eyes, drawing in closer…

Lucas shook his head, clearing the delusion from his mind. Such a nice dream might only be that – a dream. With no real possibility of coming true. But Max hadn’t given up, her reminded himself. Upon discovering the piece of El’s flannel, Lori had taken a safety pin and attached it to the mattress, so Max always had it within reach. Today, he’d seen that she slept with her hand still over it. Occasionally she would stir, and Lucas would watch her thin fingers curl slightly over it, like she was trying to hold it in her fist. Even though her previous encounter with El in the void had been negative, it was this small scrap of resolve that kept Lucas’ last shred of hope alive. Maybe, somehow, once El got in there to save her – she could be convinced to fight one last time.

Despite all this, however, Max’s medical condition seemed to be more precarious than ever. Lucas could barely stand the feeling. This suspension in time was its own hell. Max’s face was pale and still, like white marble. The only things indicating life were her heart monitor’s steady beeping and her faint, labored breathing, a limp wheeze that seemed to trail out of her. But even this was better than hearing that death rattle. The one he’d had the misfortune to witness the night she was brought back. Max spoke much less now, too. Lucas surmised her ability to talk hadn’t tarnished; she just didn’t have much strength to form words. In essence, right back where they started. Except now, they were worse off than before.

Lori was now bunkered down in the hospital with them full-time, her room adjacent to Max’s, sharing the space with Erica. El and Mike took up residence in the room on the other side, while Will and Dustin were two doors down. As the hallway progressed, the further rooms held Nancy and Jonathan as well as Robin and Steve. Lucas knew their parents would be worried to death, but he had at least called his father and said they were sheltering in place. He hoped his parents had told everyone else on the outside.

Lori seemed determined to bring Max back from the brink, if she could. In any case, Lucas was grateful to have her in their corner. There seemed to be a part of Lori that absolutely refused to give up just yet, and this energy was directed toward engaging Max in every reasonable medical intervention they had available. They had readjusted Max on the bed, changed her sheets and blankets. Lori had gone through every closet she could find and stocked as many supplies as the room would hold. That day and the previous day, sometimes on the hour, Lori was at Max’s side; unclogging her feeding tube, replacing her IV bag, checking her oxygen. The only thing different was a catheter, which hung from the end of the bed. Lori had told him this was inevitable. Since Max was too frail to get up, this was the only alternative to keep infection from setting in. Lucas tried his hardest not to read into Lori’s expressions while she tended to Max, but he couldn’t ignore the helplessness that sometimes slipped into her gaze. Max was clinging to life by a thread, and they both knew it.

His friends had to know it too, he thought. Perhaps not as deeply or intimately as he and Lori. But Lucas felt the shift around him. They all knew that this last plunge into the void carried a substantial amount of risk. And none of them, including Lucas, were completely assured it was worth the effort. Over this last day, their hallway had been unnaturally quiet, as if the building was holding its breath. Any noise, any movement seemed to carry the inevitability of their situation with it. This morning, however, none of them seemed to move much. They knew today was the day, and the weight of it hung heavy in the air.

Lucas started at Lori’s chuckle from behind him.

“You just can’t stay away, can you?”

Lucas couldn’t think of a response to this. He merely shrugged a little as Lori walked into the room and toward Max’s bed, checking the many machines next to it. She flicked the tube coming out of the IV bag, eyeballed the feeding tube bag, glanced at Max’s steadily beeping heart monitor on the other side of the bed next to Lucas. As Lori adjusted Max’s oxygen mask, her expression turned solemn.

“I’m sure she’s glad you’re here,” she said seriously.

Again, Lucas had no reply. He stared at Max’s quiet, still face, listening to her ragged breathing.

Lori leaned forward slightly.

“Max? Can you hear me?”

No response. Lori shook her a little.

“Max?”

Max stirred ever so slightly, and Lucas’ breath caught as her eyes slowly peeled open, sluggishly moving in Lori’s direction.

“Hey, kiddo,” Lori murmured, her voice uncommonly soft.

From behind the oxygen mask, Max let out a thin exclamation. Her hand flopped limply onto her oxygen mask. She pressed her palm against it, trying to push it off. Lori reached over and undid the mask from her face.

Max’s voice was faint, almost a whisper.

“Luh – Lucas,” she managed hoarsely.

“He’s right here next to you,” Lori reassured her. Lucas gently touched her hand, to let her know he was near. Her hand jerked slightly, but she did not pull it away as he pressed her palm to his cheek.

“Are we going?” She mumbled.

“Not right now,” he told her, unsure of what she meant exactly. “Later today, we will.”

Max’s breath wheezed.

“My mom…” Her dry lips parted. “My mom’s…in the hall.”

“No, Max. Your mom’s still in Indianapolis, remember?” Lucas corrected gently.

Her brow furrowed in confusion. Lucas glanced at Lori concernedly as Max’s hand fell unceremoniously onto the bed.

Lori gave Lucas a grim look.

“Do you know where you are right now?” she asked Max.

Max recoiled at Lori’s voice, her expression growing apprehensive.

“N-no.”

“Do you know how long you’ve been here?”

“No,” Max started to cry.

“No, no, don’t cry,” Lori shook her head. “You’ll get even more dehydrated. Breathe. You’re okay.”

Max’s sobs shuddered in her chest, so much so that they seemed to tremble through her entire body.

“My skin hurts,” she cried. “Help me.”

Lucas got up and walked swiftly to the sink, taking the cup from the counter and filling it with cold water. He returned, touching Max’s shoulder. She flinched.

“It’s Lucas again,” he reminded her. “Could you drink some water?”

Max calmed a little at this, opening and closing her mouth in the direction of his voice.

“Water,” she whispered. “Please. Water.”

Lucas cradled the back of her head, lifting it slightly to tip the cup. Max sipped the water quietly. This seemed to assuage her, and after a few hesitant sips she drank with slightly more vigor.

Once she had drank the whole cup, Lucas set it down next to him and helped Max lie back on her pillows. She seemed to be dazed rather than calm; blinking lazily at the ceiling, a stray tear still sliding down her cheek. But she wasn’t crying anymore, at least.

As they were adjusting her blankets, Lucas heard a loud snap near the bar on the hospital bed. As Max yelped slightly, jerking her hand away, he realized what had happened. Some static electricity must have been kicked up and shocked her. Max’s unseeing eyes started swiveling frantically, her breathing grew shallow and erratic.

“No, no, Max…” Lucas tried to calm her, caressing her face, but this only seemed to make it worse as she jerked away, her hands weakly scrabbling against her blankets.

“My mom,” she pleaded, sobbing. “I want my mom.”

It took them just short of an hour to calm Max back down. Having Lori near her seemed to be upsetting and confusing more than anything, so Lucas was tasked with staying beside her while Lori did a minimal check on her vitals. Lori seemed to be trying her best not to touch Max unnecessarily, though Lucas wasn’t sure it mattered much either way. Max wasn’t in her right mind. She seemed to vacillate between clinging to his hand and shrinking away from him altogether. Like a caged, wounded animal seeking release. A frayed wire exposed to the naked air. Eventually Lucas did not try to touch her again, as she lay prostrate and distressed in her solitary hell.

Lori had the idea of giving Max his jacket. It would smell like him, be familiar, but would not involve touching her. Lucas didn’t know what else to do, so he followed suit, taking off his jacket and tucking it in next to her. It took Max only a moment to notice. Lucas’ heart clenched to watch her nearly skeletal hands open and close tightly around the blue cotton fabric, pressing it to her face and inhaling deeply.

“Let’s go now,” she said, before her words disintegrated into incoherent mumbling, growing quieter as she calmed. In another ten minutes she was asleep, her mouth hanging open slightly, her cheeks still wet. Lucas quietly wiped her eyes with his sleeve, and then Lori placed the oxygen mask back on her face.

“She’s delirious,” Lori noted aloud, answering Lucas’ unasked question. “Probably from dehydration and malnutrition.”

She surveyed Max a moment longer before turning to him, shaking her head.

“Lucas, this isn’t good. She can’t make it much longer the way she’s going.”

Lucas rubbed his eyes wearily. “I know. Yeah.”

“I would go ahead and gather up your friends. We need to get a game plan together.”

It didn’t take long for everyone to congregate. They met in the now-deserted hospital lobby, forming a circle on the cold linoleum floor.

“We really appreciate your help,” Nancy told Lori as she sat down.

“Yeah, well…” Lori shrugged. “The best way I can help is to medically monitor her while you do your…psychic thing. Which still sounds batshit crazy coming out of my mouth, but here we are. She’s experienced strange symptoms during and after that, right?”

“Her nose starts bleeding,” Will noted. “She usually throws up, too.”

“The nurses always said her blood pressure would go way up,” Dustin added.

Lori was nodding, her pen scratching. “Yeah, I remember her heart rate spiking as well. What else?”

All eyes wandered toward Lucas.

“She, um…” he started, looking at Nancy. “The last time we did this, something happened.”

“Max was hysterical,” Nancy interjected. “She was thrashing, fighting us, terrified…almost like she didn’t know where she was. Then she started doing that…thing she was doing. Repeating the same words over and over. And that was when you found us.”

Lori peered at them over her glasses.

“When she was hysterical, did you give her anything?”

“Almost,” Nancy admitted. She reached into her pants pocket and pulled out a clear vial, handing it to Lori. Lori’s eyebrows furrowed as she read the label.

“Where did you get Librium?”

“Desperate times,” Nancy responded. “We raided Bradley’s.”

Lori gave a dry chuckle.

“At this point, I’m just going to stop asking questions. Did you grab any other medicines?”

“Benadryl, Tylenol, and Valium.”

“And has she taken any of them?”

Nancy shook her head. Robin spoke up.

“Is there a medicine that will keep her stable the whole time?”

Lori smiled grimly.

“If there was, I’d be out of a job. When her vital signs start going crazy, however, we have a few options. I can have blood pressure medicine ready if we need it. But if the thing causing her blood pressure spike continues – in other words, your psychic thing – then it may not do much. It takes about five minutes for it to work, and that may be too much time.”

“So…we let her blood pressure skyrocket?” Dustin asked.

“We could let her vital signs reach a certain point before we address them. That might – and I stress might – buy her some time, but not much. And we’d be running a risk of her vital signs elevating to the point where something serious happens.”

“What serious things are you referring to?” Mike inquired, and Lucas could hear the poorly concealed anxiety in his voice. “Besides…you know.”

“If her blood pressure goes too high, she could have a stroke, which would cause more brain damage. If her heart rate goes too high, she could go into cardiac arrest. If her oxygen levels go down too far, it’ll also cause brain damage, as well as damage to her other organs.  Not to mention if she starts bleeding too much, blood loss will weaken her. And if she throws up while she’s under, we’d have to turn her immediately so she doesn’t choke on her own vomit.”

Lucas saw his friends’ expressions range from quizzical to bleak to overwhelmed. No one had allowed the word death into the room, though he knew they were all thinking about it.

“So what’s our third option?” He asked. “Besides letting her vitals go crazy or giving her blood pressure medicine.”

“Sedation,” Lori replied shortly. The grimness had returned to her voice. “But I have to warn you all…if we end up having to sedate her, we may not be able to bring her out of it.”

“What do you mean?” El chimed in, sounding worried. “She would not wake up?”

“During sedation, your breathing slows and your blood pressure decreases. She’s already weak. So I’m worried that if we had to sedate her, her respirations would decrease to dangerous levels.”

Steve spoke up, his voice slightly hoarse from lack of use.

“Each of us should monitor something,” he said. “Her oxygen, her blood pressure, all that.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Lori agreed. “That will allow me to focus on Max. We don’t have to sort all that out right now, but I’ll give it some thought.”

She glanced at her watch.

“It’s around three. I’m going to get something to eat and get a nap in. I suggest you all do the same. It’s going to be a long night.”

Lori stood and trudged away down the hall. The rest of the Party all stayed put, looking at each other.

El spoke up.

“Vecna will be lurking,” she stated baldly. “When we do this.”

“What do you mean?” Dustin questioned.

“Lucas and I figured out that Vecna isn’t just showing Max bad memories. He is changing the good ones. Making her think they are bad. Her next memory, that night at the Creel House…it is not a good memory, but Vecna might still try to make it worse. So I will try my best to remind her what is true.”

A grim acceptance seemed to register on each of his friends’ faces. But as they all looked at each other, Lucas was reminded how much grit and tenacity took residence in this room. No one was going down without a fight. Courage doesn’t mean you’re not scared, his father had told him once, and it had never felt truer than it did now.

And Lucas hoped, prayed their combined courage would be enough this time.

Though everyone was back in their rooms, Lucas knew no one was sleeping.

He didn’t have much of an appetite, and he was willing to bet most of his friends didn’t either. As he had re-entered Max’s room, Lucas had found himself frozen. Part of him wanted to have a nice, dumb sleep, to not have to fill his vision with the last whisp of the girl he loved. The other part of him couldn’t bear to leave her. Lucas was terrified that if he left her side, he’d never find his way back.

Eventually, he walked forward into the room, his feet heavier than iron. Max was in the same position she’d been in earlier, her breathing labored and weak even through the oxygen mask. As he drew closer, Lori’s voice echoed in his mind: if I haven’t had a chance to reposition her, make sure you do so. If she gets a pressure ulcer, she’ll be at a higher risk of infection.

Immediately he felt anxious. Max was so fragile. He was scared to hurt her further by moving her. But the idea of her getting an infection was scarier. He drew up to her bedside, leaning down toward her.

“Max?”

She stirred slightly, her eyelids peeling open.

“I’m gonna move you a little, okay?” He requested.

Max just blinked at the ceiling, her expression glazed over. Lucas slid his arms underneath her neck and legs and gently lifted her toward him, her head lolling slightly over his arm. He had seen Lori do this, but she would actually open Max’s gown and examine her skin for ulcers. Lucas felt it was in poor taste to do this.

“Going back down now,” he whispered, and he lowered her to the mattress, her head resting unceremoniously against the pillows. Her eyes drifted lazily toward him, and for the first time Lucas noticed that even the veins in them were drained of life, almost too pale to see.

Though joy or hope were hardly reasonable right now, Lucas felt an inclination to give her something. Something she could hold to her heart. His eye caught Max’s Walkman on the bedside table. Not that he thought music would save her now, but if she was going to slip away, perhaps she could go into darkness  with a whisper of him in her ear. So she wouldn’t have to go alone. He grabbed the Walkman off the table, opening it to see what tape was inside. It was the Metallica one. He took it out and searched the stack of tapes. Once he found the one he was looking for, he clicked it into the Walkman. The song he wanted to give her. One last time.

He then crawled in next to Max, resting his head next to hers on the pillow. He moved her toward him so that her oxygen mask jutted into his chest. She gave a dry breath next to him, barely enough to cloud the mask’s walls. Lucas pulled the blankets over her shoulders more snugly, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

Lucas slipped her headphones over her head. He clicked rewind on the tape. Once it stopped, he pressed play. Lucas could hear the song start, hear the piano notes start lilting up and down. He pulled her a little closer, so that her head was nestled beneath his chin. He could feel tears burning in his eyes as he murmured the words to her.

“As time goes on…I realize…how much you mean…to me…”

Max stirred slightly, and Lucas could hear her give another ragged breath, a hoarse whimper, as if she were trying to speak. He rubbed her shoulder as he continued to whisper the lyrics to her. Trying to memorize the feeling of her in his arms, the smell of her hair, the softness of her skin.

Dreading the moment he would have to let go.

“Color my world with hope…of loving you…”

By nightfall, the air was tingling with dread.

The hospital corridors were bald and naked, unwelcoming and cold. It gave Lucas no joy that he and the Party had the place to themselves. Especially considering the reason why it was so bare.

He had entertained the idea of moving Max to a different bed for this. Under different circumstances, it might have been an option. But she was too weak to be moved any further than an inch or two. They’d already suffered the consequences of trying. The situation was too precarious to test this again. 

Lucas sat forlornly in the chair next to Max’s bed, wondering what Max’s mother would think of them doing this. They had made attempts to contact her in Indianapolis, but to no avail. She had an uncle and a grandmother out there somewhere, but the Party had no way to reach them.

Max was alone.

Not if she survives this, he thought, watching her chest rise and fall. If by some miracle they made it through this last push of effort, she would never be alone again. He would never allow her to feel like she had no one. Max would have him, whenever and wherever she needed him.

For as long as they drew breath.

One by one, the Party filed into Max’s room.

Lori brought up the rear, her arms laden with fresh supplies. As they all crowded around Max’s bed, Lucas noticed that more than one pair of eyes was red and puffy. True to his theory, it didn’t appear that anyone had slept much.

Lori rejoined them once all the supplies were discarded in the corner of the room.

“Okay,” she said, exhaling deeply. “Let me do a quick check on her before we get started.”

Lori drew up close to Max’s side, looping a stethoscope off her neck. She examined the electrodes on her chest, the IV in her arm, the oxygen mask, the feeding tube. Lori pressed the stethoscope to Max’s chest, and Lucas just barely caught the slight alarm on Lori’s face, which was hastily rearranged into a more neutral expression.

“Her heart’s still beating,” she said finally, and Lucas knew this was the most positive thing she could say in that moment. “We’ll need to keep an eye on her heart rate. Which reminds me…”

She pointed directly at Steve.

“Steve, you’re on blood pressure. Normal range for the top number is about 100-120, and normal range for the bottom number is about 70-80. Anything above or below either one of those, I want you to tell me. Understand?”

Steve nodded, looking nervous.

“Dustin, I want you to watch the heart monitor. Resting heart rate should usually be about 60-90.”

Dustin saluted her. “You got it.”

“Will, keep an eye on her oxygen. Oxygen saturation should never dip below 95. If it does, she’s not getting enough air.”

“Okay,” Will replied, a little apprehensively.

“Erica, you’re on supplies. We should have everything we need in here, but in case we don’t, the supply closet is at the end of the hall.”

“Copy that,” she responded.

Lori then turned to Lucas.

“I want you to keep her cool.”

“You – what?”

“I want you to keep a cold cloth on her forehead. Keeping her cool should also help keep her blood pressure from rising too quickly. Erica, if you would grab one of the cloths from the stack over here and run it under cold water…”

As the sink ran in the background, Lori addressed Nancy.

“Okay, we’re going to give her the Benadryl to start.”

“Wait, we’re drugging her now?” Dustin inquired. “Shouldn’t we wait until we need it?”

“I’d prefer for us to start while she’s in a calmer state,” Lori explained. “That’ll give us a bit more room for her vitals to go up.”

She beckoned to Nancy.

“Nance, if you would?”

Nancy took the vial of Benadryl from her pocket, along with a syringe. Lucas watched her hands tremble as she attempted to stick the needle into the stopper. After several seconds, Lori gently took the needle and vial from her, filling the needle with Benadryl.

“When I say go, I want you to put the needle right in here – ” She pointed at the notch in the IV. “ – and that’ll get the Benadryl into her veins. We’ll ride that wave for a little while. I only feel comfortable giving her two doses of that before we move up to the Valium. All right?”

She handed Nancy the syringe full of liquid Benadryl. Nancy took it, holding it in her hands like a baby animal.

Lori turned toward Eleven.

“Do you have everything you need?”

El nodded resolutely.

“Yes.”

She turned her gaze from Lori directly to Lucas, and her expression became apologetic.

“Forgive me,” she said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

He shook his head, swallowing the emotion that had risen into his throat.

“Nothing to forgive,” he replied, hoping his voice wasn’t wavering too badly.

Lucas raised his eyes to Lori’s, and she gave a jerk of her head.

“Let’s begin.”

El positioned herself so she was supine on the cold floor, closing her eyes. Mike sat at her side, slipping a spare pillow under her head. After a few moments, Mike addressed the rest of the group, nodding.

“She’s in.”

As if to prove this, Max’s heart rate started to increase, her breathing hitching slightly, her chest rising and falling slightly faster than before. Lucas gently picked up the cold cloth and rested it on Max’s forehead.

“Here,” Erica passed him a bag of ice. “Put that near her neck.”

He took the bag as instructed. Max gave an involuntary shiver as the bag made contact with her skin. Lucas could hear the slight rustle of activity around him, heard Lori giving quiet instruction, but it barely registered in his consciousness. Max was the only thing right now. The only thing that meant anything. Her heart rate continued to climb, and Lucas tried his damndest not to monitor her every medical machine. They had roles for a reason, he had to remind himself. Steve’s previous words came back to him: We can help, and we want to. So let us.

“Blood pressure’s 140 over 100,” Steve reported.

“Oxygen’s 97,” Will followed him.

Another few agonizing minutes crawled on until finally Lori signaled Nancy.

“Okay, Nance, go.”

Nancy plunged the needle into the IV notch and pushed the stopper. Within moments, the heart monitor’s beeping started to slow back down to reasonable levels. Lucas couldn’t resist a glance at the blood pressure machine, which was re-testing Max right at that moment. He tore his eyes away and settled back on Max, who had become noticeably calmer in the last few minutes.

The only other thing he could do was hold onto her hand, so Lucas did so, his mind whirling with desperate encouragement.

You can do it, Max. Don’t give up. Fight your way back to us.

Fight your way back to me.

Max tried to move.

She lay curled in the dry water, willing her muscles to cooperate. Her bones were made of lead, barely any blood left in her veins. Except the blood she tasted in her mouth.

It wasn’t as if it was unfamiliar. Max remembered death. It had come for her much more quickly last time, though. Max recognized her death, this death, would be excruciatingly slow. And perhaps that’s what she deserved anyway.

El’s hurt expression floated into her mind, as if in its decay her brain felt the need to punish her further. A tear slid down her face, dropping off the tip of her nose. She had immediately regretted taking her anger out on El, but had no way to call her back into the void, and so the shame and guilt had sat in the pit of her stomach since then. It couldn’t have been more than a day or two, surely…but for Max, it felt like years.

Her body on the outside was blind. That word still swam around in her head, her brain unwilling to absorb it. Blind. Max curled into herself more tightly, overwhelmed by the never-ending implications of this. Besides the obvious. She’d never lay eyes upon El or Lucas’ faces again. Or any of her friends, for that matter. Or her mother. Hazy memories from the last few months resurfaced, blurry and out of focus. El had alluded to her real-world self still doing things – walking, even. At least in the beginning. If she’d been managing to walk, then…there must have been something in her that carried on after the fact. Something that had encouraged her to try. To grow a flower through a crack in the pavement.

Should I stay or should I go now?

That song that Will liked…the same verse kept thudding into her brain, over and over. Should she stay here, or go back to the real world? Should she stay in the real world, or go forward into the night? What did she gain by staying? And what would she lose if she left?

Nothing made sense to Max anymore. Lucas was fighting for her. Lucas hated her. El was trying to save her. El had left her for dead. She didn’t know which was true, which to hold onto. All she knew was that she wanted to see them again. El and Lucas. One last time. To tell them she was sorry. Sorry for burdening them.

A swatch of color appeared in the corner of her vision. Max squinted. All of the shapes nearby were indistinguishable from each other. Before this she’d usually been able to delineate what was a person and what was a now-memory. Or a then-memory. But as Max lay curled in the dark rippling dry water, she found she could no longer tell the difference. She thought the large, amorphous mass was moving closer to her, coming into clearer focus…

Max concentrated her gaze. Was it an angel, come to take her away? But as the thing Max now recognized as a person became more recognizable, she felt a sob shudder out of her.

El.

Max reached out in her direction, opening her hands like a small child.

“El,” she cried.

Eleven was there in moments, and Max clung to her for dear life. Thanking whatever gods that existed for this chance.

“I’m sorry,” she wept as Eleven rubbed her shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

El shook her head.

“You do not have to say sorry. But I will not let you give up. I am here to get you out. To face your bad memory with you.”

Max felt anxiety spike up within her.

“I don’t know if I can, El.”

“We have to try,” El said, an uncommon hardness to her voice. “I am not letting you go again.”

What Max had been blinded to in anger rang through more clearly now. It was a balm for the soul to hear the grit in Eleven’s voice. Especially on her behalf. A true best friend. Max closed her eyes, taking a moment to bury her face in El’s shirt. Protection from the darkness. Deep breath in. Slow exhale.

She would reach out toward the light again.

One last time.

Lucas adjusted the cold cloth on Max’s head, moving the ice bag to the other side of her neck.

They had just given Max the second dose of Benadryl. It wouldn’t do a lot, Lori had warned him, but it was better than nothing. They hoped it could keep her blood pressure down long enough to buy them more time. It hadn’t escaped Lucas’ notice that Nancy had preemptively set the Valium vial on the side table. They were burning though their supports more quickly than Lucas liked. He reminded himself that El knew of the time limit.

The rest of his friends stood slightly restless nearby. Mike had dispatched Erica to grab another IV bag. Soon after that, Dustin reported that Max’s heart rate was stabilizing. Her blood pressure was still a little too high for Lori’s liking, but it had at least plateaued over the last five minutes. For now, anyway. Until Max’s body slipped back into distress.

Lucas reached for her hand, lifting it to his lips and pressing a kiss to the cold skin.

Max stood in place, El’s arm around her to keep her steady.

“Think hard, Max…” El whispered from next to her. “You know which memory we need.”

Max did know. No running from it now. But at least if she had to relive the worst night of her life, having El by her side made it seem less terrifying.

Max took a deep breath, and allowed the memory to resurface.

The shapes and colors started to form, and they were bathed in blue light, the walls of the rickety old Creel house producing dark, shadowy corners. Yes, Max remembered this. She could almost feel the boards creaking beneath her feet, the musty stench of dust and cobwebs. The pure adrenaline and unbridled terror coursing through her body as she padded through the halls in her socks, Lucas trailing behind. The realization that Lucas’ presence was the only thing keeping her composed.

At this point in the memory, though, it appeared they were already in the Creel attic. As the scene materialized in front of them, Max saw herself, sitting on that ugly carpet in front of Henry Creel’s shrine. As she and El stepped closer, Max heard her own sad, small voice. Talking to Vecna. Offering herself up as bait so they could have a chance to kill him.

“I've…thought about what you said. That I wanted my brother to die. I thought you were just trying to upset me…to anger me. But you weren’t, were you? You were just telling the truth.”

Memory-Max paused. When she spoke again, her voice shook.

“Billy made my life a living hell. Every chance he got. And sometimes, when I would lie in bed at night…I would pray for something to happen to him. Something awful. I knew he drove too fast, so I would imagine him crashing. Dying in that stupid car. I just…I wanted him out of my life. Forever. I wanted him to disappear.”

Lucas stood off to the side slightly, watching her. Max couldn’t place his expression. She had never admitted these feelings to him or anyone else. Vecna had always whispered in her ear that she was too fucked up for anyone to understand. Even Lucas. Especially Lucas.

“The day he died…I think that’s why I just…stood there and watched. Not because I was scared. Not because I was weak. But because…I didn’t know if he deserved to be saved.”

Max watched tears roll down her own face in the blue light.

“And I can’t forgive myself. I’ve tried, and…I can’t. I can't. So, now, when I lie in bed at night… I pray that something will happen to me. That something terrible will happen to me.”

This statement held the cruelest irony Max could surmise. She had gotten her wish. And then some.

“So that’s why I’m here. Because…I just want you to take me away. I want you…to make me disappear.”

A ringing silence fell after memory-Max finished her statement, broken only by the faint creaking of the house and the quiet rumbling from the clouds outside. Present-day Max felt El give her a slight squeeze, and she glanced over at her friend. She was silent, her face wet with tears. Max didn’t know how to comfort her. It wasn’t as if she’d been lying. Embellishing slightly to bait Vecna, sure…but not being dishonest. And El hadn’t really witnessed much of Max’s suffering that year. She wondered if this was the first time El had realized the pain Max had felt in her absence.

“Is that…all true?”

Lucas’ voice, quiet and apprehensive, broke the quiet in the room.

Memory-Max frowned at him.

“Why are you talking?”

Lucas turned, and chills ran down Max’s spine at his facial expression.

“You ever have thoughts like that about me?”

As memory-Max scrambled to her feet, her expression horrified, present-day Max felt a deep unease.

“Normal people don’t have thoughts of killing other people, Max. You realize that, right?”

Lucas’ voice was all wrong, and it made Max’s hair stand on end.

“Lucas, please,” memory-Max pleaded, her voice small.

“I thought you were getting better. But you’re not, are you?”

Lucas’s eyes were filling with tears.

“Maybe it is good he takes you. Maybe it’s for the best. In fact, I’m glad it’s going to be you.”

Max felt the words echo inside her mind as she watched Lucas approach her memory-self, felt the deep, horrible pit in her stomach grow deeper.

All at once, the shrill ringing tore through the atmosphere. The colors surged, the lights brightened. Max clapped her hands over her ears, and she saw El do the same. Through watery eyes, Max watched Lucas survey her with pure disgust. Revulsion.

“You’ll always be sick, Max. And I’m done with you. You’re not worth the effort.”

The words were a knife, thrust deep into her soul, tearing her insides open. Now it made sense. Lucas had promised her he’d use Kate Bush when needed – until she had bared her soul in front of him. Once he had realized she was sick, beyond redemption, beyond hope…it must have changed his mind. Inevitable, a voice inside her said bitterly. You should have known. He’s no different.

El knelt in front of her, gripping her arms urgently.

“This memory isn’t real,” she insisted. “Max, it isn’t real.”

“Lucas hates me,” she sobbed.

“No, no, Max, he doesn’t.”

“You heard him. You heard what he said.”

“Vecna is changing this memory. Making it look like he said those things.”

Max’s sobs wracked her frail body, and she curled into a ball in the black water.

“Max, it’s not real,” El pleaded again, but Max could barely hear her. Of course El would tell her that. But she couldn’t deny Lucas standing there, saying those things. This was the absolute lowest feeling in the world. The sensation of lying prostrate at the bottom of a deep, dark pit. Circling a drain, and just wanting to fall in. End everything. Knowing that Lucas no longer saw the beauty in her, knowing that he thought she was worthless…

It was worse than killing her.

Max’s breathing came in shallow gasps, sweat coating her pale skin. Lucas sponged off her forehead, picking up the ice bag on the side of her neck. It only contained water now.

“Erica,” he called, holding it up. “Ice.”

Erica snatched the bag from Lucas and ran out of the room. Lucas brushed Max’s hair back, taking her hand again.

“Breathe, Max,” he murmured, as her chest heaved with her gasping. “Breathe.”

 Nancy’s concerned voice broke into his consciousness.

“Lori, we need to give her more Benadryl. What we’ve given her isn’t enough.”

“She’s already had two doses. I’m not giving a third.”

Dustin and Steve chimed in with their respective updates.

“Heart rate’s up to 120.”

“Blood pressure’s 130 over 95.”

Lori shook her head, motioning to Nancy.

“Nance, the Valium. Quickly.”

Lucas didn’t miss the anxiety flash across Nancy’s expression as she passed Lori the vial. Lori popped the cap off the syringe she was holding, plunging the needle into the stopper.

“I’m not going overboard. Just giving her a little bit to start.”

As Lori inserted the needle into the IV notch, Lucas noticed the Valium seemed to take effect almost instantly. Max’s heartbeat slowed several paces, as did her breathing.

“Good, Max,” He murmured, flipping over the cloth on her forehead. “Easy. I’m here.”

He suddenly heard Mike’s voice from nearby.

“El? El!”

Lucas whirled around to see El sit up, her eyes wet, her nose bloody.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” Mike was at her side, his hand on her shoulder.

El pointed at Lucas.

“I need you. Now.”

Lucas frowned, bewildered.

“What do you mean?”

“Come lay here next to me. We are going in together.”

“El, you can’t,” Mike pleaded her. “It’s too much.”

“If I do not, then we will lose her forever.”

“I – ” Lucas stayed frozen, utterly baffled. He then felt himself shoved toward Eleven by Nancy.

“Lucas, go. There’s no time.”

Lucas sat down next to El, lying on the floor next to her.

As she took his hand, Lucas closed his eyes.

A pervasive decay in the air. An eerie, ringing silence. The sound of sobbing.

Lucas’ eyelids parted, taking in the scene around him. The environment around him was only blackness. A never-ending expanse of nothing. It was highly disorienting, trying to establish a point of reference in his vision. There was none. Just terrifyingly empty space.

Lucas jumped as he felt El’s hand on his arm.

“She is over there. Hurry.”

El was pointing in the direction of the noise. Lucas walked in the direction Eleven indicated. As he did so, he started to notice a figure in the distance. He drew closer, breaking into a sprint, and he didn’t need further confirmation to verify who it was.

Lucas scrambled over to Max, kneeling in the rippling water. She was lying curled on the ground, crying profusely, looking pale and ill. Though this Max didn’t look as bad as the real-world one, Lucas could tell she was in a weakened state. He fought the urge to scoop her up in his arms as he knelt next to her.

“Max? Max, it’s me. I’m here.”

Max opened her wet eyes to look at him, her expression a mix of shock and confusion.

“Lucas?”

Lucas reached out to touch her face, his eyes burning with unshed tears. To his utter dismay, she shrunk away from him.

“Go away.”

“Max, it’s me, I’m here to help you.”

Max shook her head, crying as she curled into herself even further.

“You hate me. You said I’m sick.”

“No. What? No, Max, I would never – ”

“Please go away,” she wept. “Go away and let me die.”

Lucas leaned down so they were eye level.

“Look at me,” he murmured.

Max continued to weep, her eyes squeezed shut.

“Max, look at me. Look into my eyes.”

By some miracle, Max opened her eyes ever so slightly, raising them to his.

“I’m not letting him take you again. I’m here to help get you out. And you’re not sick. You’re beautiful.”

More tears swam in her gaze as she raised her thin hand toward him.

“Yeah?”

Lucas nodded, catching her hand and squeezing it. Max sobbed weakly, and Lucas finally felt safe enough to pull her into his arms.

This was her. This was the Max he knew, the Max he remembered. The Max he loved first. Her arms wrapped around his neck, her body shaking, her chest shuddering with sobs. Lucas pressed his face into her thin shoulder, hugging her harder than he ever had in his life.

“How are you here?” She whispered, as he pulled back, cradling her in his arms.

“I don’t have a lot of time, Max. Right now, out in the real world, you’re fighting for your life. And I need you to keep fighting.”

Max’s expression tightened with dread.

“What do you mean?”

“This memory. The one where you die. I need you to survive it.”

She shook her head.

“Everyone’s in danger. And I’m the cause.”

“Vecna is the cause, not you.”

“He’ll never stop,” she told him. “You’ll never be safe.”

“You can’t ask me to give you up,” Lucas said urgently. “I’ve never given up on you, and I’m not about to start now. I came to the hospital – ”

“ – every day,” she finished the sentence, tears streaming freely down her cheeks. “I know.”

Lucas could feel emotion rising up in his throat.

“How did you know that?”

“In here…” she took a breath, wheezing slightly. “I saw you.”

Max pressed her cold hand to his cheek.

“Vecna took my eyes in the real world. I’ll never see your face again, or anyone else’s. I’ll be a burden. So…I can’t fight anymore.”

“Yes, you can fight. You can.”

Lucas’ thumb wiped a stray tear from her porcelain skin.

“You have to fight, because I need you. For the rest of our lives, Max – all I want is to be by your side. Nothing – I mean nothing – could ever keep me from wanting that. I’ll help carry whatever burden you have, I don’t care what it is. Max, I love you. I love you.”

Max started to weep again, and Lucas kissed her. She returned it, her arms encircling him as he deepened the kiss, trying to breathe her in as much as he could. He felt her hand press against the back of his head, pulling him closer. Kissing the girl he loved, telling her how much he loved her, drying her tears…Lucas wanted to live in this feeling for the rest of his life. And if they ever made it out of this, he would spend every waking second trying to get as close as he could.

They finally broke apart. Lucas didn’t want to let go. But he knew he had to. As if on cue, he felt El tugging on his arm.

“Lucas.”

Max’s previously soft expression was fearful again as Lucas caressed her face.

“I have to go now.”

Max tugged at his shirt, shaking her head.

“No, don’t go. Don’t go.”

“If El has me in here much longer she’ll bleed out.”

Max’s expression was tight with panic.

“Lucas, please, I love you. Don’t go, don’t leave me here in the dark!”

He leaned down slightly, so he was speaking close to her ear.

“Hang on just a little longer. I’ll stay close the whole time. I promise.”

Lucas kissed her cheek before forcing himself to lay her back down in the rippling darkness, standing up and taking El’s hand.

“Lucas!” He heard Max cry out in anguish, but it was too late to look back at her as they resurfaced.

“Lucas? Lucas!”

Lucas opened his eyes. He was back in the hospital room, his head splitting. He turned to his side to see Eleven awake, leaned over. She was coughing, gasping, and Lucas could see blood on her hand.

“El – ” He scrambled toward her. “El, go back – Max –”

“Give her a second,” Mike refuted in a hard voice, his hand on El’s shoulder.

Lucas tried to jump to his feet, but his center of gravity had shifted. It felt like his brain was swimming as he stumbled, his legs like jelly. Multiple hands pressed against his back, his shoulders.

“Whoa, man. Easy.”

“Sit down, Lucas. Let’s go slow.”

It wasn’t until his vision righted itself that Lucas recognized Robin and Jonathan, who were guiding him into a chair.

“Are you okay?” He felt Jonathan’s hand on his shoulder, heard his voice nearby.

“Just – ” He waved his hand. “I need a minute.”

All three of them jumped as Max gave a heaving gasp from the bed, and her breathing grew harsh and erratic again.

“Heart rate’s shooting up again,” Dustin reported in a worried voice. “130 and getting higher.”

“Oxygen’s 96,” Nancy called out.

Lucas frowned. It had been Will who was assigned to watch Max’s oxygen. He surveyed the room to see that Will had shrunk to its corner, his expression far away, his eyes huge. Jonathan squeezed Lucas’ shoulder one more time before rushing over to attend to Will.

Max suddenly let out a distressed exclamation, devoid of words, and then this continued in tandem with her shallow breathing.

“Steve, blood pressure?” Lori was adjusting the knob on the oxygen tank they had Max hooked up to.

“150 over 110.”

“That’s too high. Nance, we can give her one more dose of Valium. Let’s make it count.”

Lucas slowly got to his feet. Robin hovered close, looking anxious, but he patted her shoulder. Reassuring her. As he drew up close to Max’s bed, he leaned down, tucking his chin into the crook of her neck, pressing his cheek to hers, his arms circling her thin shoulders.

“I told you I’d stay close,” he whispered. “Follow my voice. You’re almost there.”

Max’s vocal exclamations faltered ever so slightly.

“Shh,” Lucas murmured, rubbing her shoulders. “Shh. I got you.”

To his relief, he could hear Max’s breathing start to slow, her chest no longer heaving desperately. Her whimpering winded down to a quieter moaning.

Lucas locked eyes with Lori. She seemed temporarily relieved, but smart enough to know it had only bought them a few minutes of time.

“Nancy, get the Valium ready.”

Lucas and El had disappeared, and Max felt her legs growing weaker.

She struggled to stay on her feet as the memory of her death continued, watching her own body lift into the air, her eyes obscured, her limbs starting to bend –

“Max.”

El was back, there by her side, and Max felt herself stumble into her friend’s arms, taking them both to the ground. Eleven held her securely as Max trembled.

“El, I can’t do this.”

“Hang on,” pleaded El. “Just hang on a little longer.”

Max watched in horror as her limbs snapped like twigs, one by one, blood running from her eyes like coppery red tears against her paper-white face…Max felt nausea surge up into her throat and wondered if she would throw up as her broken body hung in the air, her head tilted back.

Finally, memory-Max’s suspended body dropped like a limp doll out of the air, limbs flopping. All at once, Lucas materialized from out of the darkness, his arms out, and he caught her. They both fell onto the floorboards.

Lucas’ arms encircled Max’s broken body, his voice trembling as he sat up.

“Max, I got you. I got you.”

Max watched her own head loll back over Lucas’ arm as he cradled her, weeping.

“I need you to wake up. Max, I need you to wake up now. Please.”

He brushed back her hair, his hand coming to rest on her blood-stained cheek as he pressed his forehead to hers.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please.”

The second dose of Valium had entered Max’s veins, but Lucas wasn’t sure it was helping much.

No matter how much he was sponging off her forehead, no matter how many times he sent Erica back to the sink to rinse the cloth out, it now seemed like the perspiration was increasing faster than he could wipe it off. Max’s whimpering had returned too, worse than ever, and even Lucas’ presence didn’t seem to assuage her.

He could tell his friends were getting nervous, too. Steve started pacing, his eyes flicking back and forth to the blood pressure machine readings as the cuff squeezed Max’s arm again. Dustin started tapping his foot. Nancy was watching Max intently, seemingly trying to gauge if the Valium was making an impact. Will had sat down, and Lucas could tell he was trying to calm himself.

“The Valium’s not working,” Steve said, his voice somewhat unsteady. “Her blood pressure’s going up, not down. The top number is at 135 now.”

Lori shook her head, biting her lip.

“It might be time for the Librium.”

“Lori, she’s too weak. She’ll never wake up,” Nancy said urgently.

“It’s either that or we let her stroke out, Nancy. Pick which one you want.”

Nancy gave Lucas a desperate look, and all he could do was gaze helplessly back. What else was there to do? Nancy threw a glance at Robin and Jonathan, both of whom also seemed lost for suggestions. Lucas watched Nancy’s eyes fill with tears as she took out the Librium from her pocket.

“Fine. Then you do it,” she told Lori, handing her the vial with shaking hands.

Lori’s hardened expression had returned as she stared intently at the syringe filling with Librium. Lucas got the sense that this was the look she adopted when shit was hitting the fan. As a nurse she’d have to keep her composure.

“More ice,” Erica said, tapping his shoulder from behind him. Lucas took it at once, placing it on the currently un-iced side of her neck. There were now several bags of ice; two under her arms and two on either side of her neck. The washcloth was only being used to wipe sweat from her face.

The Librium was ready, and Lori slid the needle into the notch without hesitation.

Their last line of defense.

Max heard her own quaking gasp, watched herself shudder in Lucas’ arms.

After an ominous silence of her unconscious, she had now awoken. This was where Max’s own memories became a little clearer. She could remember this part. And where it was headed.

Lucas’ tear-stained eyes widened as Max regained consciousness. “Max! Max, Max! Oh my god. Oh my god.”

The breathing now coming from her younger self would soon inform him that this version of her had been gravely, severely injured. Memory-Max’s intake of breath rattled, and her exhale wheezed. Lucas seemed to key into this almost immediately, and Max watched alarm flash across his expression.

“Max, just breathe. Look at me. Just breathe.”

Memory-Max seemed to be in shock, her milky eyes very wide. Her mouth hung open, presumably to allow for easier breathing, but the shuddering sound of her drawing breath was becoming more frightening by the second.

“Max, breathe. I’m here.”

Lucas desperately cradled her. All at once, Max could hear thundering footsteps on the stairs of the Creel house. She turned her gaze toward the attic door, which crashed open to reveal Erica running in.

“Lucas!”

Lucas turned toward her.

“We need a doctor!” He yelled through his sobs. “Call an ambulance! Hurry, call an ambulance!”

Memory-Max croaked “Lucas,” and he looked back down at her.

“Yes, yes, I’m here. I’m here.”

Even though it was her own voice, Max felt physical pain upon hearing it. This Max’s voice – dying Max – was desperate. Terrified.

“I can’t – I can’t feel or s-see anything,” she cried.

“I know, I know, it’s okay. We’re gonna get you some help, okay, just hold on...”

Max could hear the fear in memory-Max’s voice. She must have felt herself slipping away.

“Lucas, I’m scared, I’m so scared. I’m so scared.”

Lucas sobbed. “I know, I know.”

“I don’t want to die, I’m not ready.”

“You’re not gonna die, please just hang on – ”

“I don’t wanna go, I’m not ready…”

It was all Max could do not to writhe in agony there in the void, watching her own death unfold before her eyes. As bizarre as it was to watch herself dying, it was equally devastating to watch Lucas trying to keep her from doing so. Knowing he had absolutely no control over it, and was refusing to let her go anyway, trying to change the winds of fate himself. Just to keep her there with him.

I don’t want to die. I’m not ready.

In that moment, her own words were haunting her.

And deep down, Max realized them to be true.

Now that her life was slipping away from her, she found herself mentally repeating the same words. I don’t wanna go. I’m not ready. Perhaps it was that thing that happened. Where people on the brink of death suddenly realize they want to live. Max wasn’t sure if that feeling had a word associated with it, but it was the feeling that overwhelmed her now.

“El,” she mumbled, and El looked down at her.

“I don’t wanna die.”

Lori’s face was grey as she shoved her way toward Max’s bed.

“We’re losing her,” she said urgently.

“No, no, no…” Lucas clasped her cold, clammy hand in his. “Max, if you can hear me in there, you have to hang on. Just hang on.”

“Hang on. Just hang on!”

Max felt her own chest growing heavy as she watched her younger self continue to struggle for air.

“You’re not gonna die,” Lucas insisted, though his tone of voice told Max otherwise. “Just hang on! Max, Max – no, no, no, Max. Max, stay with me. Max, stay with me. Don’t go. Look at me, just look at me, Max…”

The horrible truth that this was all in vain wasn’t acceptable to Lucas, and Max’s heart hurt to be reminded of him this way, begging her to hang on. Lucas turned his head toward the ajar attic door.

“Erica, help!” He howled, his face now soaked with tears.

Max saw the realization on his face that she was no longer responding to him. Her own heart sank.

“Max?” His voice was tiny. “Max, stay with me. Max, stay with me. No, no, Max, please stay with me!”

Lucas clutched her even closer to him as he let out a scream of anguish.

Present day Max’s chest seized with sudden severe pain. Her head was growing lighter, her vision grayer. She coughed, tasting blood.

“Max? Max!”

El’s body was starting to shake as she cradled Max in her arms.

“Max, no. I can’t watch you die again.”

“Me neither,” she joked lightly. “Once was enough for me.”

El took her hand, and the gesture brushed up against a memory of Max’s.

Someone had been holding her hand as she died.

“You were there too,” Max wheezed. “When I died. You were there.”

El nodded her head, teardrops falling onto Max’s face. Max could feel her awareness shrinking. If El’s face was the last thing she ever saw, that might not be so bad.

“I think I’m just going to sleep for a while,” she heard herself say faintly, and El let out a desperate wail.

“No, no, Max, please.”

Max’s eyelids fluttered. She coughed again, and tasted blood dribbling from her mouth.

“Tell Lucas…I…” Her chest was growing heavier. “I – ”

El’s face was starting to fade, being sucked into darkness.

And for the first time, Max stepped forward into it.

“Lori, her heartbeat...”

Lucas’ head jerked up at Nancy’s panicked voice, his eyes immediately flying toward her heart monitor. Max’s heart was still beating, but it was out of sync. Irregular.

No.

Not again.

“Max? Max!” Lori shook her, but Max remained motionless on the bed, her heartbeat still erratic and unpredictable. Lori gestured frantically to Robin, who stood nearby.

“I’m starting chest compressions. Wait until I reach thirty, then give her two breaths. You lift her chin, pinch her nose, blow into her mouth. Got it?”

Robin looked terrified, but nodded.

Lucas was all but shoved away from Max as Lori started pumping her hands against her chest.

“…thirty. Okay, go.”

Robin leaned down and blew two breaths into Max’s mouth. Lucas watched her chest rise and fall. Lori started compressions again, her glasses bouncing slightly against her nose as she did so. Robin sobbed a little as she came away.

“I taste blood,” she mumbled behind her hands.

As Lori finished compressions and Robin went down for another breath, Lori said “Erica, go get the AED off the wall in the hallway. Go, now!”

Erica bolted out of the room.

Everything was happening in slow motion, and Lucas could barely keep up. He was having a hard enough time grasping that Max wasn’t breathing, or at least not breathing well enough, and were they really sure? Could Nancy have made a mistake? Because there was no way she was dying. Again. There couldn’t be.

“No, no, come on…goddamnit!”

Erica darted back in holding a boxy device and thrust it in Lori’s direction.

“Robin, tear her hospital gown open,” Lori commanded, powering on the device. “We have to put these pads on her skin.”

A robotic voice sounded from the AED.

“Place the pads on the patient’s skin. Press the green button to administer a shock.”

Robin ripped the fabric of Max’s gown without hesitation, now seeming to recognize the brutal severity of the situation. El was still under, and Mike stayed by her side, but the rest of the party was now gathered nearby, watching the scene in desperation.

Lori stuck two pads on Max’s skin, one over her heart and one on her side near her ribcage.

“No one touch her. Clear!”

She pressed a button on the AED machine. Max’s chest jutted upward with the shock. She remained pale and still. The machine spoke again.

“If the patient remains unresponsive, administer another shock when the light turns on.”

“Clear!”

Another shock. Nothing. The heart monitor’s beeping became even more erratic before it went monotone.

Lucas was in a nightmare. He must be. Nothing was real.

“Fuck, fuck,” Lori muttered frantically. “Clear!”

Another shock. Max’s heart monitor remained monotone, her body limp and motionless.

Lucas thought he could hear his friends crying softly in the background, but he couldn’t be sure. Reality didn’t mean anything for him right now. He found himself laying his head on her chest. No heartbeat. Numb, in shock, he just sat there. Not ready to let her go yet.

Lucas gently slipped his hands underneath Max’s limp figure, lifting her to him, holding her tight. It was the only thing he knew to do now. Everything else was black. A dark, deep hole, and he was falling. Never to find his way out.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, slowly rocking her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Because of course, this was all his fault. Her getting involved with them, her getting brutally attacked by Vecna, and her slipping away now. He was wholly responsible. Lucas wasn’t sure how or even if he would be able to live with this. The thought of Max truly gone…

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Lucas’ head jerked up, hardly daring to believe it.

“No fucking way,” Dustin whispered, his voice thick with tears.

Lucas put his ear near her mouth. Faintly, but undoubtedly…breathing. Quiet, and ragged, but there.

“Max?” He brushed her hair back. “Max, I’m here. We’re all here.”

One by one, pairs of hands came to rest on Max’s arms, her shoulders, her back, and even his back too. Robin, Nancy, Will, Mike…everyone in the room. Even Erica.

Lori finally spoke.

“Vitals are coming back up. Everyone keep an eye on your stations.”

She brought over an oxygen mask, and Lucas put it on her. Lori seemed to intrinsically realize Lucas wasn’t letting go of Max, and instead focused her attention on the rest of them.

“Everyone, status?”

“Blood pressure’s taking now,” said Steve, his voice slightly shaky.

“Heartbeat’s back online,” Dustin chimed in. “It seems like it’s steady.”

“Oxygen is 94 and going up,” Nancy contributed.

Lucas could even see some of the color returning to Max’s cheeks.

“Blood pressure’s 96 over 60,” Will said shakily. He seemed to have taken several seconds to regain his composure. Lucas couldn’t blame him.

“That’s low, but much better than it was,” Lori nodded. “She might not wake up fully. Remember we sedated her. But if she’s giving us these signs of life…things are turning around for her.”

Lori helped Lucas wrap a blanket around Max’s thin shoulders, and he continued to hold her in his arms, legitimately tempted to never let her go again. Her head leaned against his chest, and he couldn’t stop himself from burying his face into the crook of her neck for a moment. Feeling the artery in her neck pulsing with blood, with life…Lucas didn’t have the words.

Max stirred, moving her head, and he drew back to look at her.

Her eyes fluttered open. They were still milky, still obscured, but Lucas now noticed that they held a note of familiarity, one that he had not seen for many months.

He watched, spellbound, as the cloudy pupils moved in his direction. Her lips parted.

“Lucas.”