Chapter Text
Waking up in that hospital in 1986 was like waking up from a dream. There was no other way for Chrissy to rationalize why Eddie Munson’s face was resting in her lap. It must be why he looked like he had never been more at peace in his life.
Chrissy had weird dreams all the time, dreams that she’d go to college in Chicago, a place so big that her troubles couldn’t find her. She’d dump Jason and go to college for Biochemistry, anything smart, something her mother wouldn’t approve of. Dream Chrissy would have it figured out. Dream Chrissy would cut her hair. She’d burn her cheer uniform and all her pageant sashes. She’d be brave enough to eat in a cafeteria. She’d be brave enough to conquer the world, but Dream Chrissy was just a fantasy, just like this hospital room.
The faces that came into focus as the thin lacy gauze of her sleepy haze lifted were not very familiar to her either. Chrissy recognized one of the Freshmen that Jason complained about, but she didn’t know his name. Steve Harrington, ex basketball star, cheerleaders used to vie for who got to cheer loudest for him. She knew Eddie. Chrissy had been his lab partner when he decided to show up to chemistry.
Chrissy didn’t mind working alone anyway. Jason didn’t like that Eddie still got credit for the lab reports that Chrissy wrote, but she always ended up writing his too.
Jason wasn’t among the assembly, neither was her mother. Chrissy felt herself let out a sigh of relief. The odd group of people in her hospital room seemed less stressful, even if they were less familiar.
“Jesus H.” Eddie gawked at her. “She’s up! Dustin, get a nurse.”
“Sure thing, loverboy.” A boy with a normally contagious, wide smile and curly brown hair piped up. This was strange. Chrissy decidedly did not like this.
“Shut-up.” Eddie glared at him. Chrissy could assume that the anger on Eddie’s face was false. She still knew what happened when you assumed. She tried to school the fear on her face.
The sweet boy, Dustin, darted out of the room, the ball cap on his head nearly falling off.
Eddie turned his attention back to Chrissy. He rubbed his thumb over the top of her hand. “You’re alright Lemon-Lime.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Chrissy pulled her hand out of Eddie’s, where it had been all the while she’d been asleep assumably. This was strange. Chrissy was not asleep. She wasn’t dreaming.
“We got Vecna, for good, for good,” Eddie looked so haunted. Chrissy had no idea what he was talking about. What the hell was ‘Vecna’? “We’re safe now, and we can go home. You never have to talk to your mom again.”
Chrissy’s jaw tensed. Eddie knew about her mom. What else did he know? Who told him? How did he figure it out? If Eddie Munson, two time senior, drug pusher, could figure out about Chrissy and her mom, who else could?
“How do you know about my mom?” She asked. Eddie just looked at her like she took something from him. She wanted to have something familiar, just something.
A nurse walked in wearing Winne the Pooh scrubs, Dustin was following at her side.
“Miss Cunningham!” The nurse exclaimed. She peered up at the machine that was reading Chrissy’s vitals. The nurse scribbled down several numbers on a clipboard in her hands. “You’ve made it to the world of the living. We’ve got a lot of tests left still to run, so I will have to ask all of our visitors to leave.”
The group of boys left the room. Eddie tried to linger, but the nurse gave him a very pointed look that seemed to communicate that Eddie should not try his luck. He got the message, shutting the door to her hospital room behind him with a soft click. Some deep foreign part of Chrissy didn’t want him to leave. That was not normal.
Chrissy shunned the feeling. She buried it deep down, like hunger.
“Alright, Christine-” the nurse began.
“Just Chrissy is fine.” Chrissy interrupted.
The nurse smiled at her. The nurse’s eyes crinkled in a very kind way when she smiled. Chrissy decided she liked the nurse. “Chrissy then.” The nurse nodded, looking back down at her clipboard. “We do have a few follow up tests to run, but I wanted to ask you about those boys who brought you in.”
“I don’t know them.” Chrissy said softly. She looked down at her hands, fiddling with the heart monitor on her finger. “Not really.”
“They told us not to contact your parents. Since you’re eighteen, we were going to leave the decision up to you once you woke up. Your condition wasn’t life threatening, or at least, it wasn’t going to worsen, so we didn’t think it necessary to contact them unless you could decide for yourself.”
“I,” Chrissy felt tears welling up in her eyes. This whole situation was just so overwhelming. She didn’t want to go home, but where else was there to go. She just needed something she knew. “Well, can I call someone?”
“We just have to figure out what you remember. The brain is delicate, sweetie. If we expose it to too much too soon, it could be very traumatizing. That is why I asked those sweet boys to leave the room.” The nurse explained. She looked at Chrissy, her eyes softening before they turned back to her clipboard. “You said, you don’t remember them?”
“I know Eddie from my chemistry class last year, and I remember Jason,” Chrissy huffed, “my boyfriend, complaining about the one boy. I’ve only ever really seen the other two in passing.”
The nurse made some notes on her clipboard. Chrissy was worried about them. The nurse probably thought she was crazy. Chrissy thought she was crazy.
Why was she in the hospital? What had even happened?
“I’ll leave it up to you who to call, dear.”
Eddie couldn’t keep pacing a hole in the floor of the Indianapolis hospital that the doctors insisted that Chrissy be flown to. He wanted to rip his hair out. He wanted to rip Steve’s out more since he thought it was a great time to flirt with residents. Lucas looked pretty shaken. Eddie wasn’t too hot himself, Demobat battle scars had been stitched up months ago, still hurt like a bitch. The scars were pretty intense. Chrissy thought they were pretty, and that was all that mattered.
Dustin called it Vecna Part Two. He wasn’t as strong, but he’d done a number of Chrissy, trying to make one gate to end all gates Eddie supposed. He left the Upsidedown shit to the professionals, those professionals being a gaggle of freshmen. It didn’t matter, Henderson knew buckets more about all that supernatural garbage than he did.
All that mattered was that taking Vecna down left Chrissy with severe brain swelling. The doctors put her in a coma to let her body rest while the swelling went down
Now Eddie had been kicked out of her room, and was pacing the halls being useless.
It had been about an hour before he decided to call Wayne. Wayne loved Chrissy. He would want to know that she’d woken up at least.
Eddie looked at Steve from where he stood at the reception desk talking to a nurse who smiled and laughed as he chuckled. Steve nodded in a silent acknowledgement. Eddie spun on his heels and was in hot pursuit of a phone.
Eddie finally tracked one down after trekking across what seemed like the whole damn place. He breathed. He knew it only seemed like that because he was frustrated.
He dialed the number for the trailer’s landline, his and Chrissy’s castle for the last ten months. The line only rang once.
“Ed, how’s our girl?” Wayne’s voice sounded over the off white receiver. Eddie hoped the old man hadn’t been too worried about her.
“She’s awake.” Eddie said. He looked down at the scuffed checkered linoleum.
“And you managed to let go of her long enough to let me know?” Wayne pressed. “Can I talk to her?”
Eddie sucked in a breath. This is exactly the situation he had wanted to avoid. His uncle had a massive sweet spot for Chrissy. The two had spoken after the first Vecna. Eddie had no idea about what, but they were exceptionally close. “The nurses are with her now.”
“Nothing wrong with her?” Wayne’s voice pitched.
“She, she was really stressed.” Eddie replied. “I think she’s just tired, Wayne.” Eddie didn’t think that he could handle any other situation.
“They aren’t giving you any trouble up there, are they, boy?” Wayne asked. The way he did made it seem like he was willing to hop in his truck and gas it up to Indi to be there.
“The nurse kicked us out of the room, but I think that’s just normal.” Eddie reasoned. He dug the toe of his reeboks into the floor.
“Make sure that woman doesn’t get to talkin’ to her again.” Wayne said the word ‘woman’ with veracity and venom that he so very rarely used.
“I told them that her parents were out of the picture.” Eddie sighed. “They were going to ask when she woke up. I don’t see Chrissy wanting her mom here.”
“Bring her home in one piece Ed.” Wayne sounded serious.
Eddie was serious too. “That’s the plan.”
Eddie decided the most productive thing to do was pace some more, since he couldn’t just look at Chrissy’s conscious body. He was getting pretty good at strolling back and forth and combing his fingers through his hair until they got caught.
Walking to her room, wouldn’t be over stepping. He was just walking around a hospital, nothing crazy, nothing wild. He’d been waiting to see Chrissy for three hours, clearly it was time to check in.
Eddie was not going to just sit fucking by and let Chrissy fall back into the life she worked so hard to get out of. He would just be proactive.
The door opened and to Eddie’s shock and horror, there was no Chrissy, just a few nurses changing out the sheets.
“Hey, uh, there was a girl in here, do you have any idea where they moved her?” Eddie asked.
“That’s a question for the front desk, sorry kid.” One of the nurses replied as she tucked the corner of the bed.
“It’s fine, that’s cool.” Eddie shut the door behind himself and resisted the urge to bolt to the desk. Harrington and the freshmen had ditched the desk, probably in the search of food. Eddie chose not to dwell on it.
“I’m looking for Christine Elizabeth Cunningham.” Eddie said near out of breath. He should have stopped smoking sooner.
“What’s your relationship to the patient?” The young woman at the desk asked.
“I’m her, I’m her boyfriend.” Eddie combed his fingers through his hair. “Look I drove her here, she doesn’t really have family in the picture. They told me that they’d tell me what was going on.”
“Well,” the woman hummed. “It looks like she was moved to the donor wing.”
“Can you please tell me what room she’s in?” Eddie pleaded.
“I didn’t tell you this.” She nailed him with a piercing look. “She’s in room 428.”
“Thank you.” Eddie sighed.
The woman emphasized. “Seriously, don’t mention it.”
Eddie was running. He ran to the elevator.
The fact that they moved her without telling him was odd. It didn’t sit right. It was different than asking him to leave so that the doctor could ask Chrissy some questions. It implied that Chrissy would be separated from him. The Chrissy he knew wouldn’t have wanted that.
Holy fuck, this stank of trouble.
It had been about a week since Chrissy had moved in. The center of Eddie’s world had stayed on music, but Chrissy was a close second. It was like when Chrissy had described what would happen if the Earth had two suns. Except, there would be no black hole, no cosmic void, just Chrissy and metal.
No more Vecna, just the two of them. No crazy mom or wack job town, just Chrissy and her lip gloss on his face.
Eddie knew that she was hurt. A person can’t just stop loving their family no matter how fucked up they are. In the quiet Eddie tries to love her the hardest. Chrissy needs as much as she can get. Eddie tries to be the infinite supply to her black hole heart, just keep giving and giving until she can’t stand it.
It was one of those nights, the hard ones. Eddie knew Chrissy hated herself, which didn’t make any sense to him. How could the person that he loved so much not understand how perfect she was? How could she not see the wonderful, smart, beautiful person she was?
Wayne had made grilled cheese and Chrissy had finished the whole thing. Eddie was so proud. She had a hard time with food. She had a hard time with the fact that there was no scale in the trailer. She had no idea how much gravity was pushing down on her. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion. Then he could see it on her face. It was like all the brightness in her disappeared.
The two of them sat on the floor of the bathroom. He sat rubbing the love of his life’s back, holding her hair. That was all he could do. That was hard.
Eddie was used to running. Vecna had changed that for him. He wanted to fight for Chrissy. He had wanted to fix everything for her. He wanted to save her. She had ended up saving him right back.
He’d get his GED. Chrissy would go to college. They’d figure it out in Chicago. They’d be happy.
Eddie thought of the time Chrissy’s dad asked what her plan was as she was leaving, her mom had simply lost it screaming at her. Chrissy didn’t respond.
When they got home with a basket of clothes, books, and a few boxes, Eddie had asked her what the plan was. She smiled.
There was a Post It Note that simply read,
‘Chrissy and Eddie’s Plan:
‘-Be Happy
‘-Be Healthy
‘-Be Together’
Just being with her, Eddie thought they could do it.