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Twenty-eight days. Nearly a full month.
Twenty-eight days of reading Stephen King books to pass the time, out loud, on the off chance that he could hear you. You had made your way through Salem’s Lot, Pet Sematary, and Cujo – over a thousand pages read and you didn’t know if he had heard a word of it, but you didn’t care.
Twenty-eight days of picking daylilies and pairing them with sprigs of goldenrod to make tiny bouquets for his bedside table, watching as the petals fall and stems gradually begin to droop, signifying the time for a new bunch to be picked for him the following day.
Twenty-eight days of working night shifts so you could spend your time beside him during the days. Twenty-eight days of arriving at the hospital as early as visiting hours would allow, sleeping in short bits throughout the day, and staying until a nurse would kindly remind you of the time.
“Go on home now, honey. Get you some sleep in your own, warm bed. These hospital chairs ain’t for sleeping, anyway. He’ll still be here in the morning, I promise you.”
Her name was Maeve and she was the most sympathetic of the night time nurses, her pale gray eyes showed genuine kindness and not the pure pity of the other nurses. She would let you stay during his bandage changes and even let you help on occasion before it was time for your nightly departure.
“I’ll be back,” you tell him, leaning down to press your lips to his forehead, hoping he could feel the warmth. Hoping you’d have the chance to do so without his eyes being closed and body being limp one day soon. “First thing in the morning. I’ll bring my Walkman so you can listen to some Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. Believe it or not, I’ve started really enjoying them myself.”
Like clockwork, you would return as promised.
It was the morning of the twenty-eighth day when Maeve greeted you as you walked down the hallway to his room. A smile that brought out the laugh lines around her eyes told you exactly what you’d been hoping for without saying a word.
Your eyes filled to the brim with tears that begged to spill over as you ran the rest of the way to his room. Pausing in the doorway, you find him gazing towards the window – one of the sunniest days that Hawkins has had in weeks, but he wouldn’t know it.
Fiddling absentmindedly with a red daylily that was starting to wilt, he turned to look at you and his onyx eyes crinkled with his wide, toothy grin.
“You must be the peach of a girl that Ms. Maeve has been telling me about all morning,” his voice still raspy from weeks of sedation. “Are those flowers for me?” he gestured towards the bouquet clutched in your hands. “I couldn’t help but notice that these are looking kind of sad.”
“Eddie,” your voice cracked as a near month’s worth of pent-up tears began to flow in relief. Before you could stop yourself, you were over to his bedside, tossing the forgotten flowers at his feet and leaning over the bed rail to embrace him as best you could, relenting only when he winced in pain.
“Sorry, sorry!” you jumped back, momentarily having forgotten all of the extensive damage that the demo-bats caused. He was awake, but he was still healing.
“You can hug me as tight as you want,” he put his hand on top of yours from where it was resting against the cold rail. “It’s truly all I’ve been dreaming about for.. twenty-eight days, I believe the doctor said?”
You nodded. “They felt eternal. I’ve never felt so helpless, not being able to do anything for you other than wait. I knew you’d come out of it, though,” he gave your hand a comforting squeeze. “I’m just so glad you’re truly here with me again.”
“I never left you,” his voice and eyes both sincere. “It’ll take a whole lot more than some frigging bats to get rid of me,” he added in a more comical tone, but you could tell from his stiff composure that even just speaking after weeks of being comatose was taking all of his strength.
“I never doubted that,” you beamed at him. “Is there anything I can get for you? Are you thirsty?” you looked around the room to see if he had been given anything to eat or drink. “Do you think you could eat something? I could run and pick up a pizza for you — I know it’s only nine in the morning but the pizzeria two blocks down opens pretty early and their Hawaiian pizza is actually killer..”
“Hawaiian pizza?!” he asked incredulously. “The bats didn’t take me out so you want to finish the job with fucking pineapple on pizza?”
You had to fight the urge to roll your eyes back into your skull. “You’re so dramatic, pineapple on pizza is great, it gives the pizza a diverse flavor profile of both sweet and savory—”
This debate continued on for an embarrassing amount of time, until one of the daytime nurses interrupted to change Eddie’s bandages and offer him some pain medication, which he all too happily accepted.
“So,” you hesitated, trying not to sound too eager. “When do you think he’ll be able to get out of here?” you asked the nurse, whose eggplant colored scrubs were embroidered with the name Collette across the breast pocket.
She looked back and forth between you and Eddie, and you knew you wouldn’t like the answer.
“Well.. it’s hard to know right now,” she started, administering what you presumed to be morphine through his IV. “Eddie has shown great improvement over the last few weeks. He’s come such a long way, but he’s still got a ways to go. Dr. Randall thinks it will be a few more weeks, at least.”
“Cool with me, I suppose,” Eddie shrugs. “Our trailer is kinda still in ruins, anyway. From what my uncle told me on the phone this morning, my room got the worst of it.”
You recalled the first of the few brief conversations that you had with Wayne Munson in passing over the course of the last month, when one of you would be coming or going from visiting with Eddie.
You had just finished visiting with Max for the night, when you decided to stop by Eddie’s room one more time just in case he was waking up (this was three days into the twenty-eight days, before you came to terms with just how long this might take), but when you returned to his room, it wasn’t empty as you had left it half an hour before.
You were beginning to wonder when his uncle would be to see him. Sure, he could’ve come by sometime that you weren’t there, but you were damn near always there.
“Oh, sorry, my bad—” you turned to leave, having noticed the puffiness around his eyes and the defeated look on his face as he clutched Eddie’s hand in his own.
“No, no,” he stopped you, jumping up from where he was perched on the edge of the hospital bed. “I was just about to head out,” he cleared his throat.
“We could both stay?” you suggested tentatively. “He’d probably like that.”
“Yeah,” he gave a sad half-chuckle, sitting back down. “I’m sure he would like that.”
You pulled the poorly upholstered hospital recliner closer to the side of Eddie’s bed, choosing to focus your attention on his matted curls instead of the quiet that now filled the room.
“So,” Wayne was the first to break the silence after several dozen moments. “Are you one of his friends from his club?” he asked, referencing the Hellfire Club and you smiled, still staring at Eddie.
“No, actually,” you looked over in Wayne’s direction. “I’ve never played Dungeons and Dragons before. Eddie had promised to teach me soon but..” you trailed off momentarily. “I guess that’s going to have to wait a while.”
Wayne gave a hum in acknowledgment.
“We just met very recently,” you continued, doing your best to disguise the sadness that you knew your voice was bound to give away. “Through some mutual friends.”
You decided to leave it at that, not feeling it was the time or place to go into great detail about how this time two weeks ago, you’d never said a word to Eddie. It wasn’t until your luck found you caught in the crosshairs of protecting a man wrongly accused of murder, trying to find a gate to an alternate dimension, and fighting genetically fucked up bats in a hellish underworld did you and Eddie become friends. All because you decided to stop by the Family Video Parlor on a seemingly mundane afternoon to see if they had a copy of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi on VHS.
“Well,” he stood up, clearing his throat again. “He’s very lucky to have someone that comes to check up on him. I’ve been trying my best to, but between twelve hour days at the plant and trying to get our place back to a livable condition, I’ve barely had enough time to eat…” he trailed off.
You hadn’t even taken it into consideration— you knew a lot of Hawkins had suffered severe damage, but you had been so focused on Eddie being okay that you didn’t even think about the condition of his home. Quite literally paid no attention to it after you came back through the portal, you and Dustin had been too concerned with getting him to the hospital.
“I have an extra room,” you offered. “If either of you ever need a place to stay.”
“May have to take you up on that,” Wayne’s voice was tired and tinted with resignation.
You snapped out of your flashback as another nurse entered the room with a tray of food (if it could be called that) for Eddie.
“I saw your uncle a few weeks ago. I told him you’re more than welcome to stay with me,” you informed him. “If your room isn’t repaired by the time you get out of here,” you added, trying to seem nonchalant, as if your heart didn’t skip a beat at the thought of Eddie staying under the same roof as you.
He looked as though he was about to argue, say “Oh, no, I don’t want to impose,” but your face must have given away your true feelings— that you truly couldn’t stand the thought of being away from him again, after the last month.
“I suppose that would give me a chance to teach you to play Dungeons and Dragons,” he said in faux contemplation. “As long as you don’t ask me to eat Hawaiian pizza.”
***
It was another grueling sixteen days before Eddie was well enough to be released from the hospital.
You continued to visit him every day in the meantime, bringing him his go-to meal from Burger King as well as some hygiene products and fresh clothes. Every few days, you’d bring a new board game for the two of you to play. His friends came too, both his old friends from Hellfire club and his newfound ones, and they’d join in on a game of Sorry! or Monopoly. By the time the sixteen days were over, you hated playing games with Dustin— he always won.
Eddie asked you to bring him a Stephen King book to read— said it came to him in a dream and you couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear.
Over the course of those sixteen days, the two of you grew incredibly close. You opened up to him about how terrified you were that he wasn’t going to wake up at times, how people acted like you were out of your mind for visiting every day, and how you sometimes thought you were a little crazy too, for so frequently visiting a guy that truthfully, you had just met but already couldn’t imagine your life without.
“Hey, hey, you’re not crazy,” he assured you. He held you from where both of you sat on his bed, his arms wrapping around your midsection from behind and his head resting on your shoulder. “If you’re crazy, then I’m even crazier, because I would’ve been performing witchcraft to get you to wake up, if the situation were reversed.”
You’d melt into his embrace every time he’d soothe your worries. The warmth of his cheek against yours as he’d nuzzle against you confirmed what you knew in your heart all along— he would wake up because he was meant to be here with you.
It was on the drive to your house, right after Eddie’s release, that you were able to see a side of him that was brand new to you. A side that wasn’t him fearing for his life as a man wanted for murder, or hiding and running, or sacrificing himself to protect a town that hated him and then fighting for his life in a hospital bed for weeks.
It was a side that felt light and free.
The drizzle of rain didn’t stop him from rolling the window down on the drive home, sticking his hand out to feel the mist as the two of you jammed out at max volume to Blue Öyster Cult and Morbid Angel on the radio. The interior of your old Buick was gradually getting more and more soaked, but you didn’t care if it meant he was able to breathe for the first time this spring.
“We’re here,” you informed him in a sing-song voice as you pulled into your driveway.
Eddie was silent for a moment, taking in the surroundings of your home. Your hydrangea bushes were in full bloom, scaling halfway up the stonework of the sides of the cottage along with English ivy that had grown out of control.
“I’ve driven past this house more times than I could tell you,” he said, almost in disbelief. “I had no idea this was your place.”
“Well,” you started. “It was my great aunt’s until she passed away last summer. She didn’t have any children, so now it’s mine. Along with this bad boy.” You patted the deteriorating leather of the bench seat of the LeSabre.
“That’s pretty fucking sweet— not your great aunt dying, that sucks, but sweet about the house and car,” he clarified.
“I guess I can’t really complain,” you sighed. Aunt Pearl was never the most pleasant person to be around, even in her prime.
You showed Eddie around the outside of the property before going inside. He admired your flower garden, saying that he’d not only teach you the ways of Dungeons and Dragons but also how to play the guitar if you’d teach him to have a green thumb.
Both of your cats greeted you as you walked up the front porch steps, mewling as though you’d been gone for days.
“They are always this needy,” you told Eddie as you unlocked the front door, both cats dashing in before you. “Just in case you were wondering.”
Outside, the rain was working up from a drizzle to a downpour. Inside, the only light came from the dim, orange glow of the antique table lamps in the living area. The best way to describe the interior design of the cottage was dated but it was cozy and felt like home, nonetheless.
Eddie was immediately drawn to the vintage, 1950’s trumpet phonograph that was tucked into the bay window of your den.
“Are all of these records yours?” Eddie asked, childlike amusement in his voice. He got down on one knee to thumb through the dozens of vinyls in the wooden storage crate next to the turntable and held up The Everly Brothers’ Greatest Hits on vinyl, glancing at you over his shoulder.
“That would be great aunt Pearl’s,” you admitted. “Most of them are, but I did add a few of my own.” You crouched down to where he sat on the shag carpet, running your fingers over the records until you found what you were looking for.
“These are mine.” You handed a few over to him– Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Pink Floyd– probably nothing in Eddie’s normal rotation.
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Eddie smirked at you. “You definitely seem like a Stevie Nicks girl.”
“Oh, yeah?” You quipped teasingly. “And what exactly does a Stevie Nicks girl seem like?”
His eyes had a twinkle of something that you couldn’t quite place as he stared at you for a long moment before the corners of his mouth finally turned up in a grin.
“Sunshine,” he answered simply. “The kind of girl that brings you flowers when you’re in the hospital for a month and insists that you can stay in her guest bedroom.”
“Well, duh.” You readjusted yourself on the floor, crossing your legs at your ankles. He mirrored your actions, situating himself more comfortably in front of you. “I couldn’t let you go back to your house when there’s still a gaping crater through your bedroom floor.”
“About that..” Eddie hesitated for a moment, fidgeting nervously with the olive green fibers of your shag carpeting before meeting your gaze, anxiety written across his expression. Your brows furrowed together in confusion as you waited for him to continue.
“My uncle, he’s– uh..he–” he struggled to formulate a coherent sentence before taking a deep breath. “My uncle finished the repairs to our trailer a few days ago, I just can’t stand the thought of being away from you after spending so much time together the last few weeks so I lied about it still being damaged but I don’t feel right about not telling you the tru–” the words came out like a stream of vomit.
“Eddie, Eddie, Eddie,” you cut him off, grabbing his hands in yours.
“It’s okay,” you assured him, rubbing your thumbs over his in a comforting motion. “I don’t really care,” you admitted. And it was true – you didn’t care. You’d want him here with you even if he had a brand new castle to go home to.
“You’re here with me.” You pulled one of your hands away, bringing it up to cup his face. “That’s all I care about.”
He leaned into your touch, turning his head so that his lips grazed against the skin of your palm.
“You’re someone that I’ve needed my entire life,” he murmured into your caress.
You felt the same. Wholeheartedly. Since the moment you met him in the midst of the world trying to end.
It wasn’t until you met Eddie that you ever felt like you were on the same wavelength as someone. The connection shared was one that needed no rationale or explanation. A few days spent together before hell broke open was all it took to tie your heart to his.
You leaned in closer to him so that the tip of your nose grazed his. Pausing long enough to give him time to pull away, if he didn’t appreciate the newfound close proximity.
He only nuzzled further into you, resting his forehead against yours. Every part of your faces touching except for your lips.
You wasted no more time in bridging the remaining space between you.
He tasted of the menthol cigarette that he smoked in the car on the way to your house and the cherry chapstick that you’d brought to him when he was in the hospital.
You didn’t think there was ever a sweeter combination of flavors.
You were slow at first— delicate with him just as you had been since he sustained his injuries. Scared to hurt him and scared to cross any boundaries. Your lips moved together in a sweet tandem that made the world fade to white noise around you.
He was the first to swipe his tongue across your bottom lip, politely yet impatiently asking for entrance. You immediately let him in, where he took his time getting to know you, your feel, your taste.
The dance between your tongues was one that felt strangely familiar to have been so new.
Both of Eddie’s hands ended up in your hair, long fingers threaded through the tresses. Your own hands trailed between his curls, his face, his neck, his chest— every touch further cementing the fact that he was okay and he was yours.
“Keep me around for the rest of it, then.”