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Max bounces her foot in the chair beside Lucas’s bedside and apologizes for the hundredth time in two days. She has one set of fingers intertwined with his peeking out of the cast. The other set anxiously drums on her knee.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, heart lodged in her throat. “Please wake up.”
The only response Max gets is from machines. The rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor. The soft airy hiss of the oxygen concentrator.
Wishing alone won’t bring anybody back from the brink. Max knows this and she wishes fiercely anyway, squeezing Lucas’s fingers tight. They’re comfortlessly clammy and limp as gummy worms.
“…it should’ve been me.”
Max knows this too. She can admit it aloud now, since it’s just the two of them. Couldn’t squeak the words out in front of everybody else. Dustin, head bowed between his knees, rubbing Eddie’s guitar pick necklace like a worry stone. Mrs. Sinclair decorating the walls with posters between dabbing at her eyes while an unusually quiet Erica painted pictures on the bulky plaster arm cast that nearly went up to her brother’s shoulder. Mr. Sinclair asked what happened at least three times. Not suspicious as though he believed Max to be lying, more so just painfully shell-shocked, like he couldn’t even begin to wrap his mind around the state Lucas was in. Max didn’t blame him. She could barely believe it herself.
Max had told the paramedics and everyone else that Lucas was thrown from the window of the house they were in when the earthquake struck. It wasn’t her best lie but it’s not like she could explain what actually happened.
That he’d been possessed by a villain across dimensions and floated up into the air, his sneakers out of her pitiful reach, even when she’d jumped as high as she could.
That his limbs broke midair, one by one, wrenched and spun at sickening angles as the horrific snapping noises echoed through the attic.
That it had been so long since Max had been Lucas’s friend, she had absolutely no fucking idea what his favorite song was. She was tone-deaf and would’ve belted it like a Broadway star anyway, if she had.
Didn’t have the strength to admit that she’d held him as he died, tears streaming from her desperate eyes as blood gushed from his clouded milky ones.
That she performed CPR so fucking hard it hurt her wrists and— it was supposed to be her, damnit! It was supposed to be her!
Max was the one who saw the grandfather clock. Max was the one who was cursed. Max was the one who escaped Vecna once before. They had a backup plan for Max, for Max they had Kate Bush. There was no backup plan for Lucas…maybe that’s why Vecna switched his target.
It’s late now. Way past visiting hours. Everyone else left when they were over. Went home like they were supposed to. Followed the rules.
Max has never given a shit about following stupid rules. Besides, what would she go home to?
Her mother? Mom works most nights now. Works her brittle fingers to the bone to keep the shabby, leaky roof of their dumpy little trailer over their heads. On the off chance her mother is home, she’s probably passed out drunk, stinking like she took a booze bath.
Lucas has a good home. Lucas has a big warm house with a roof that doesn’t leak. Parents who are there, sober, and waiting for him. An impressively tough little sister who loves him even more than she bags on him with her wicked repartee. Whose paintbrushes have said all the words for her that she suddenly can’t seem to speak.
“It should’ve been me,” Max confesses again, lifting her gaze to the almost lightning like scarring under Lucas’s painfully shut eyes.
She lets go of his hand and traces over the scarring with her fingertips, her touch as gentle as a dragonfly resting on a waterlily.
If Max had known that this could happen to Lucas, she doesn’t believe she would’ve tried to escape. She thinks she would’ve just went limp when the crimson red vines went tighter than tight. Closed her eyes and let Vecna kill her.
For the past six months, Max has been praying for bad things to happen to her. It sounds demented but it’s true. Because deep down, she knows she deserves it.
Guilt has chained her chest since Billy’s last breath wheezed between his ichor stained teeth. Neil left Mom’s bank account dry and her skin bruised. Max watched Mom fade along with her bruises, eyes losing their light above the dark circles of exhaustion. Max felt herself fading too, weary of carrying all this weight and going through the motions of normalcy. Everything felt like a chore, even the things that used to be fun. Her energy dried up with her smile but sleep brought nightmares instead of relief.
That was Max’s life. Dull and hopeless and going nowhere. But Lucas had things to look forward to, didn’t he?
He was in with the popular crowd. The basketball coach was finally letting him off the bench.
Max isn’t stupid. She knows it’s not easy for Lucas and his family in this small town with its ugly share of small-minded people.
But his smile was still real. Hers hadn’t been since the move to the trailer park. She hadn’t laughed a laugh that wasn’t bitter until Lucas magically made her joy bubble up two days ago. Two days that suddenly feel like forever ago.
If Lucas is the sun, than Max is a supermassive black hole. His spirit shines while hers consumes.
“You didn’t deserve this,” she murmurs, aching deep in the pit of her stomach. “Wake up and yell at me, Lucas. Yell at me for doing this to you.”
Once again, the only response comes from machines. Her sweet stalker remains still and silent.
Visiting hours are over. Max is bound to get kicked out when some nurse comes in to check his catheter or change the IV, or something. Far less likely but not completely impossible, her mother might come home from work early enough to notice Max is gone and come here looking instead of cracking open a Coors.
Sooner or later someone will force Max away, but that moment is not now. She swallows and gathers herself, pulling back the thermal baby blue blanket draped over Lucas’s form. She crawls underneath and scrunches herself up in a small ball, resting her head on his chest. Her crown brushes the neck brace as Max gets as comfortable as she can in this unfriendly hospital bed, pulling the blanket back up before she locks her arm around his waist.
His heartbeat thumps beneath her ear. It is the promise that Lucas is still alive. It's not enough, but it's not nothing, either.
These days, Max feels that hope is one of the hardest and scariest feelings on the planet.
But Lucas is worth hoping for, so she lets his heartbeat be her lullaby and prays for his eyes to be open when she wakes.