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"I'm the Chief of Police," Hopper roars.
"You could be the President of the United States for all I care about," the EMT nurse argues back. "I'm still not letting you ride in the ambulance with us."
"At least just let me speak with her. She's awake now."
Joyce looks around owlishly, trying to make sense of her situation. One moment she was ringing up items at the cash register, the next one she's here, strapped to a stretcher in the back of an ambulance.
"You've got a minute," the woman says, clearly exasperated and at her wits' end.
Hopper climbs onto the back of the ambulance that precariously sways under the weight of his heavy steps. Joyce feels a wave of relief washing over her. Up until now she only heard his voice; now she sees him, he's really here, her mind isn't playing tricks on her.
"Hey," he says in perhaps the softest tone she has ever heard him use. He cups her face with one of his big hands, stroking her cheek with his thumb. "How’re you feeling?”
Joyce narrows her eyes, forehead pinched in visible confusion. “What happened?”
“Karen said you were her giving her her change back and then you just fainted,” he explains. “Were you feeling sick this morning?”
It comes back to her – the way that everything around her just went blurry and how her head felt empty of any thoughts. Joyce remembers how badly her back had been hurting from the moment she stepped out of bed, the horrible cramps that had been plaguing her for hours now. When she headed to the bathroom for a pee during her morning break, she noticed that was already bleeding through her panties. The signs were there, in plain sight. She asked Melvad if he’d let her go home real quick for a change of clothes, and she can still see how ill at ease he looked as she explained to him the reason why. She washed up, changed clothes, and, as she was pushing an Advil down with a gulp of water, she glanced at the calendar on the kitchen wall and found it strange how early her period had come this month.
“Chief,” the nurse, going through a medical kit, pats his shoulder, “I need you to step out now.”
Hopper ignores her. “Imma go to the station real quick to leave Powell in charge and then I’ll meet you at the hospital.”
“No!” She grasps his hand a little tighter than she intended to but she suddenly feels so queasy. Her breakfast is tossing and turning around in her stomach, in the imminence of making its way out through her mouth. “This is nothing. I’ll be fine.” He tries to speak but she doesn’t let him. “Go get the boys from school and look after them for a bit. I’ll be home soon.”
He nods but – “When you’re discharged, call home and I’ll pick you up, alright?”
“Okay,” Joyce promises. “If you need anything –”
Hopper leans down to kiss her forehead. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be just fine.”
As Hopper steps out of the ambulance, he looks back at Joyce and recoils at the sound of her throwing up into a plastic bag being held up against her mouth by the EMT nurse. She doesn’t look as fine as she claims to be. The ambulance doors are slammed shut, the blue rotating lights are turned on, and the blast of the siren makes him, caught off guard, flinch. He stands in the middle of the street, desolate and helpless, staring at the ambulance as it drives away.
He notices the small crowd around him and reverts back to being Chief of Police Jim Hopper, quickly dispersing the curious onlookers. One quick stop at the station and he leaves Powell in charge of things, though in all honesty, what is there for the man to care about in a sleepy town like Hawkins?
The church bells chime - three o’clock – just as Hopper is getting into his Blazer. During the short ride to Hawkins Elementary, he internally rehearses what he’s going to tell Jonathan and Will. He parks across the street from the school and once an avalanche of kids comes pouring out the doors, he steps out of his Chevy. There are a few parents – moms, that is – waiting there, and slowly, Hopper ambles closer to them. He crosses his arms over his chest and pointedly ignores the way everyone’s staring at him. He feels so out of place among them. Soon enough, all the kids come out, walk up to their mothers or the bus, but Hopper is still there, waiting. He then remembers that both Jonathan and Will are enrolled in extracurricular activities because Joyce comes home late in the afternoon and the boys are still too young to be left alone and unsupervised at home.
He walks through the school halls – everything around him looks so tiny, and he feels even more out of place. For some reason, sweat springs up to his palms and forms under his armpits. Will anyone let him walk out with the boys? Sure, he’s the Chief of Police and he’s in a relationship with Joyce, but for all intents and purposes, he’s a stranger. He’s no one to these boys. Any good school staff person would, or at least, should, stop him from walking out with children who are not his kin. If he does manage to take Jonathan and Will home, what will he tell them? What will he do to keep them entertained? God knows how long Joyce might stay at the hospital. And what of Joyce? Though he didn’t let it through, he has been distressed ever since he got to Melvad’s and realized that it was Joyce who was hurt. He has no idea what has gotten her this sick to the point of passing out, and neither does Joyce which is all the more troubling.
“Chief,” a disembodied voice says, yanking him out of his thoughts. “Anything I can help you with?”
He halts just a few steps before bumping into a mustachioed, knitted vest-clad man. Hopper burrows his eyebrows; the man’s name is on the tip of his tongue.
“Scott Clarke,” the teacher smiles, stretching out his hand, “science teacher.”
“Right,” he shakes the man’s hand. “I’m, uh, here to pick up Jonathan and William Byers,” it feels weird to say Will’s full name, and it’s even weirder to attach their absent father’s surname to their names. “Their mother is at the hospital and I’m to take them home.”
“Is she alright?” the teacher asks, genuinely concerned.
“Don’t know anything about it.” Though I wish I did. “D’ ya think I can go get the boys?”
“Oh, I can gather them up for you. I’ll bring them here in a bit.”
Hopper nods, and as the teacher is walking away, he adds, “Just don’t tell ‘em about their mother.”
Scott Clarke turns around and offers a small smile. “Of course not.”
Of course he won’t tell them. He’s not stupid, Jim.
Soon enough the teacher shows up with the two boys. Whatever he told them before pulling them away from their activities didn’t seem to make them suspect that something grave is going on. Will, carrying on his back a schoolbag almost as big as him, brings a paper sheet in his hands, explaining to his brother what he had drawn. Jonathan shuffles along, keeping up with his brother’s smaller, slower steps, unconsciously dragging his jacket on the linoleum floor.
“Hop!” Will happily shrieks, running tilt at him.
Hopper ruffles Will’s hair as he loops his arms around his waist in an awkward side hug. Jonathan picks up the speed, eyes locked on Hopper’s.
“Why are you here?” Though his tone sounded rude, Hopper takes no offense. He knows that Jonathan is not being condescending; it’s just that… worrying is second nature to Jonathan.
“Your mother is going to be working late today. Inventorying or something,” he says, trying to sound casual about it.
Will looks up, “So we’re going home with you?”
Hopper nods, freeing the little boy of his backpack, “Yeah. And I’m staying at least ‘til she’s home.”
“Cool,” he smiles a tooth-gaped grin.
Six-year-old Will believes him; ten-year-old Jonathan not so much. Hopper gives the teacher a nod before gathering the boys and leaving. He slings a strap of Will’s backpack over his shoulder and places a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder, hoping that the touch will ease his worriedness.
“She’s at work, right?”
Hopper looks around, Will is running towards the swings, a few feet away from them. He sighs and goes down on one knee, being eye to eye with Jonathan.
“She’s at the doctor’s. She was feeling a little sick, nothing bad,” I think, “really, but she felt that it was better to get checked up. In the meantime, I’m staying with you two, and I’m counting on you to help me out. We don’t need to tell Will about this, do we?”
Jonathan shakes his head. “Mom’s at work, that’s all.”
“Yeah, that’s all,” he stretches out his hand; Jonathan tentatively reaches out with his. They shake hands, sealing the deal. “You’re the best kid that there is in the world.” Jonathan blushes… hard. He pulls back his hand and looks down at his sneakers. “I mean it.”
The three of them get into the Chevy; Hopper makes the kids get into the backseat despite the two of them having shouted shotgun and having raced each other to the passenger’s door. Hopper lets them roll down the windows and turns on the radio, “Wham Bam Shang-A-Lang” is playing. Jonathan plays his role of big brother really well as he tries to sing along to the chorus of the song and does silly faces which makes Will laugh and try to copy him. Hopper checks on them through the rearview mirror and wonders if this is what being a father is like – feeling nothing but pride and joy from watching little human beings living life without a care in the world.
Joyce had left some clothes out to dry in the clothesline, so Hopper and the boys quickly gather it all up – Jonathan carries a small bundle of clothes into the house. He drops it on the couch, Will puts away the clothespins, and Hopper is the last one in, bringing in arms the larger pieces of dried clothes. Jonathan and Will retreat to their bedrooms to get started on their respective homework sheets while Hopper makes a mountain out of a molehill as he tries to fold the laundry neatly. He’s not great at doing his own, but he learned in the army – his mother couldn’t be prouder, after having spent years of her life picking his clothes that he piled up everywhere but on the laundry hamper.
As a first-grader, Will’s homework apparently encompasses nothing much more than tracing the alphabet and repeating the same letters and words some ten times down a single line. He ends up in the living room some time after, as Hopper is swearing, sweating and fighting the hell-bent demonic will of a fitted bed sheet, to show his worksheet. He’s excited because he knows all of his letters now, and that he can write them in both upper and lower case. Hopper grabs the piece of paper and takes a closer look at it. Will is learning to write in cursive and he has beautiful calligraphy. He takes note of how prettily he has written his name on the top of the worksheet – the neatly looped ‘L’s’’, the perfectly dotted ‘I’s’, and how he so impeccably strung the ‘B’ and the ‘Y’ together in a way Hopper doesn’t recall how to pen anymore.
“Did I make a mistake?” Will asks, coming to stand by Hopper’s side, trying to peek at the piece of paper.
“No. Not at all,” he says, giving him back his homework. “It’s just – I don’t know I know how write like that anymore.”
Will tilts his head. “How come?”
Hopper represses a smirk. “Flo says my cursive writing is chicken-scratch so I only write in block, upper case letters.” One of the words Will has had to write and rewrite was ‘xylophone’; he points at it, “I don’t think my hand knows how to do all these loops.”
“I coul’ help you with it!” he pipes up, beaming.
“Sure, but maybe another time. I have to make dinner and,” he looks at the piles of clothes he has folded, “and put these away. Think you can help me put it in the right drawers?”
Will nods resolutely. “I’ll just put this in my schoolbag,” he says as he runs back to his bedroom, apparently in a rush to be back and help.
In a reversal of what usually happens, it is now Hopper tailing Will around the house. “Shirts in this drawer,” he points at the chest of drawers in his bedroom, then at the wardrobe, “pants here. Undies and socks are on the bedside table.” The pieces of clothing were easy to identify because of their sizes, but underwear and, especially, the socks? Impossible! – but it sends Will into fits of laughter, so, at least something good comes out of his mistakes, “These are not mine”, he says, riffling through the drawer and clutching to his chest Jonathan’s socks and undies.
Next up they move to Jonathan’s bedroom to put away his clothes, and though Hopper has already figured out the logistics of it, Will keeps on dutifully helping, telling him where to store every item. Jonathan looks over his shoulder to see what the noise is about, but then turns to face his homework assignment again.
Hopper stands behind Jonathan and peers over him at the worksheet. “Need any help?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head, “’m almost done anyway.”
Hopper places a hand on his shoulder, gives it a light squeeze. “We’ll be making dinner. Come help us when you’re done.”
He doesn’t really need the boys’ help to cook dinner – he could probably put something together faster without the two of them buzzing around him – but, for some reason, he feels like he needs to keep the two of them by his side all the time. He’s irrationally afraid that something will happen if he leaves them unsupervised for more than a few minutes. It’s true that they don’t really get up to much trouble, but they’re still kids, and they’re boys; Hopper knows how boys’ brains are wired.
“We still have these to put away,” Will points at a few pieces of clothes piled on the couch – linens, and Joyce’s clothes.
Hopper puts away the bedding and tablecloths on the shelves and drawers in the hallway closet, just as Will tells him where they should be stored away, but then he lingers by the door of Joyce’s bedroom, finding himself unable to walk in. It feels wrong to walk in her bedroom without her in the house. She’s now lying in a hospital bed, far away from home, when she should be here with the boys, with him. How is she? How come she hasn’t called yet? What’s –
“I dunno where Mom puts her clothes.”
“Well,” Hopper clears his throat, being yanked away from his thoughts, “me neither. We’ll just leave it here,” he says, forcing his suddenly lead-weighted legs to move and sets her clothes on top of the chest of drawers.
Dinner is an easy affair. Will asks for mac and cheese; Hopper checks in the freezer but upon finding nothing more than some ground meat and two boxes of pizzas, he realizes he’ll have to make it from scratch. He searches the counters and pantry for the ingredients. Jonathan emerges from his bedroom, having finished up his homework. Hopper catches a brief, sad glint in the boy’s eyes, but soon enough he’s snorting a laugh as Will pushes him away, trying to stop him from stealing the bits of cheese he is shredding into a bowl. Hopper can’t help but feel so sorry for this kid putting on a façade to keep his brother alienated from the whole situation. It’s not fair, he’s only a child.
Jonathan is not as enthused about being involved in the making of dinner as his little brother, but he lingers around and tries to be of help. Young, sweet, innocent Will is the one who keeps the ball rolling, talking and being his normal, silly, six-year-old self. It’s because of him that both Hopper and Jonathan engage in a conversation and keep their thoughts about Joyce’s well-being on the back burner. While dinner is in the oven, Hopper tells the boys to set the table. He hears them bickering not even a minute later – they’re arguing over a plate, yanking it from each other’s hands in turn. He snatches it from them before they break it and hurt themselves.
They babble at the same time, their childish voices escalating in tone with each sentence,
“He wants to put Mom’s plate on the table!”
“She’ll be back for dinner!”
“She won’t!”
“She will!”
“Enough!” Hopper’s voice booms through the room like a thunderclap, shushing the boys. He carelessly tosses the plate onto the table. “The plate stays on the table,” he looks between the two boys – Jonathan seems to be on the verge of crying, feeling belittled and betrayed; Will blows him a raspberry, naively proud of having won the argument. Jonathan runs around the table to try to smack his younger brother. “Enough!” Hopper rebukes, this time louder, holding them by their wrists and keeping them apart at an arm’s length. He eyes the two of them sternly. “The plate stays on the table. If she’s back soon, she’ll have dinner with us. If not, she’ll eat the leftovers. Are we clear?” Their little, mournful yeses tear at Hopper’s heart but he stands his ground. “Go wash your hands.”
They’re squabbling again the minute after. Hopper heaves a tired, thorough sigh, running his fingers through his hair. Will starts to cry. Hopper stomps towards the bathroom.
“What is going on here?”
Will hiccups sullenly, “J-J-Jon spla-pla-plashed wa-water in my-y face!”
“How old are you two, huh?” They’re acting their ages, Jim, but you’re too stressed to remember that. Jonathan starts to cry as well. For Christ’s sake… He sighs once again and goes down on a knee. “C’mere,” he wraps his arms around their waists and pulls them in for a hug; they curl up into his body, tiny, fragile, vulnerable. “I’m sorry I yelled.”
“I’m sorry,” Jonathan mumbles sorrowfully. He adds in a whisper, “We had a deal.”
Hopper hugs them tighter. “It’s alright, it’s all good,” he assures them. “Now apologize to each other so we can have dinner.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Will wails, stepping back.
“You taunted your brother and he retaliated. You both did wrong. Now apologize so we can eat.”
Jonathan apologizes right away and, after some persistence from Hopper’s side, Will apologizes too. They sit at the table, eating in silence – Jonathan seems worn out, Will is getting sleepy, and Hopper is barely holding his shit together. Now and tonight, more than ever, he understands how exhausting being a father is, but the more he looks at the boys before him, the more he realizes that he’d do anything for them. Anything but leaving them. The multitude of feelings that take over him overwhelm him to the point of making him unable to stomach food so he turns his focus to the boys. He feeds Will just before he slumps his head over the tabletop and falls asleep, and taps Jonathan’s foot under the table so that he stops stirring his food around. He clears the table and does the dishes and prepares their lunch bags (after catching Jonathan in the middle of doing it himself) while the kids change into their pajamas and brush their teeth.
Hopper tucks Will into bed and smiles fondly at the sight of the tiny human before him, curled up in his bed like a kitten. “I’m just down the hallway if you need anything, alright, kid?” He cards his fingers through Will’s bangs, smoothing his hair away from his face, “Good night.”
“G’ night,” he mumbles through a yawn.
“Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” Jonathan says, standing by the door, eyes fixated on the floor. He plays with his fingers as he looks up at Hopper, “You’re supposed to tell him that. And to turn on his nightlight.”
Will’s eyes are already fluttering close, so Hopper doesn’t bother to speak again and stir him up, but he flicks the nightlight on and closes the door halfway behind him. He guides Jonathan to his bedroom with a big hand resting on his shoulders.
“I’m sorry I was bad before,” Jonathan says barely in a whisper as Hopper tucks him in bed.
Hopper sighs, sitting on the edge of his bed. “You didn’t –”
“We had a deal and I –”
“I’m sorry,” Hopper cuts him short, softly. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault. I dumped this on you and I shouldn’t have. You’re–” he slides down the bed and kneels on the floor with two pronounced thuds – his knees hitting the wooden pavement – that echo through his bedroom and reverberate in his ribcage. He feels his throat closing up as he strokes Jonathan’s hair. “I was nothing like you when I was your age. Hell, I was nothing like you when I was twice your age. You worry too much. You worry too much for someone your age.”
Jonathan is close to tears, voice coming out all choked up, “I need to help Mom and look after Will. There’s no one else –”
“There’s me.” He breathes in and out thoroughly. “There’s me. I ain’t goin’ anywhere. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.” He says it right away, his tone is nothing but a mewl, but he sounds so resolute all the same.
“Good,” Hopper nods. “Now get some sleep.” He gets up to his feet with a grunt. “I’m just down the hallway if you need anything. Good night, kid.”
“Night.”
Similarly to what he did with Will, Hopper flicks the light off in Jonathan’s bedroom and leaves the door ajar behind him. His feet instinctively carry him to the living room. He doesn’t even look in the direction of Joyce’s bedroom. It feels so wrong to even think of sleeping in her bed without her there. He toes off his shoes and lies down on the couch. He’s so tired that he’s imagining patterns on the ceiling. He’s so tired and strung out that he falls asleep in a matter of minutes, though for him it felt an eternity went on until sleep caught up with him.
The first stages of his sleep cycle are inconsistent, though. He jolts awake now and then, checks on the boys sound asleep in their bedroom, checks if they’re breathing, and then returns to his spot on the couch. He’s deep asleep, snoring loudly, when Joyce returns home. He doesn’t hear her, doesn’t hear the cab dropping her off and driving away. She opens the door as quietly as possible and walks through the house submerged in darkness, a hand outstretched in front of her to avoid hitting anything, another one feebly holding onto her aching stomach. Hopper only wakes up when he hears water running in the bathroom. At first, he thinks it’s one of the boys who might have gotten up to pee, but he quickly realizes the water running is not the toilet but the bathtub. He ambles towards the bathroom and hears the feeble rustling sound of clothes being stripped off. He lingers by the door for a bit and then knocks.
“Can I come in?”
Joyce opens the door just enough to meet his concerned gaze. She looks at him – and loses it.
“Hey, hey,” he tries to hush her, hugging her, rubbing her back, “what’s wrong?” She continues to cry; panic starts to overtake him. “Talk to me, Joyce. What’s wrong?”
Joyce doesn’t say a word, she can only cry. Hopper doesn’t know what to say, he can only hold her in his arms. The bathtub overflows, water spilling over its edges; Hopper only becomes aware of it when his socked feet suddenly feel wet. Fuck the water, he doesn’t care. He just wants her to say something, and, at the same time, he doesn’t want to hear what she has to say. His brain conjures up every worst-case scenario possible to justify her crying but the conclusion is always the same – she’s dying, she’s dying, she’s dying –
“It was probably better this way,” she eventually says, parting away from his embrace. She wipes her tears and walks to the bathtub to turn off the water.
“What was— wha— Joyce, what is wrong?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing’s wrong. I need to take a bath, so if you don’t mind,” she gestures at the door.
The hell I’m leaving! I’ve seen every bit of you countless times before, don’t play shy. You’re just pushing me away because you’re – you’re – no, you can’t – you’re not terminally ill. You’re not! You can’t!
“I didn’t spend a whole day with your kids, worrying about you for you to keep me in the dark!” he shouts, perhaps a bit too loudly, suddenly forgetting about the two sleeping kids in the house. “Tell me what’s wrong! Whatever it is, I can take it.”
“Not now, ok?” he says softly. “I need to take a bath and rest.”
He looks at her apathetically, his posture is as straight and stiff as a robust tree trunk, but he gives in. He leaves the bathroom and shuts the door behind him. Will shows up in the hallway, tottering sleepily while rubbing his eyes, Jonathan is peeking through his ajar bedroom door. Hopper picks Will up, easily hoists him on his hip and walks towards Jonathan’s bedroom. The kid scurries off and gets under the bedcovers, pretending to be asleep.
“I know you’re awake,” Hopper grunts. Jonathan sits up, his hair sticking up every which way.
“Is Mom okay?”
Hopper sits on the edge of Jonathan’s bed with Will in his lap. He swallows a lump in his throat, “I don’t know.”
The nightlight coming in through the window only seems to accentuate the gloomy expression in Jonathan’s face. His lower lip trembles and he curls up in Hopper’s embrace, sobbing softly.
“Did Mom get hurt?” Will asks in a whimper-y tone, sleepy and confused.
Honest to God, Hopper doesn’t know what else to do – he’s tired, they’re tired, he doesn’t want to lie to them, he doesn’t think he can even make up a lie either. He simply hugs them tight and hopes that they’ll eventually stop crying. They’ve had their fair share of crying for the day.
That’s how Joyce comes to them a while later – the three of them huddled together, the boys sobbing and sniffling as Hopper, droopy-eyed, rocks them in his arms. Tears brew in her eyes again and she now knows that she has to tell them what’s wrong. She can’t keep it a secret from Hopper, he deserves to know, and she can’t hold onto it for years before, maybe, ever telling it to her kids.
Hopper opens his eyes as she pads softly into the bedroom. The mattress sinks slightly as she sits next to them. Her sons flock to her embrace and she hugs them, tears streaming down her face like rivulets.
“Do you know what a miscarriage is?” she asks her sons but is looking at Hopper. He inhales sharply and looks like he died on the spot. But he’s not dead, far from it; his warm hand cupping her face, his thumb gently stroking her cheek let her know that he’s here, with her.
The word sounds strange to her sons’ ears, the concept of it over their heads. Much to Joyce’s surprise, Hopper takes the lead in explaining it to them,
“It means that there was a baby in your mother’s belly but it – she lost it.”
Will frowns, “How’d lose a baby?”
“It wasn’t a baby yet, hon,” Joyce tells him. “It was only a month old. It was still growing in me.”
“What happened then?” Jonathan asks. “Did it,” he pauses for a moment, “die?”
Joyce heaves a deep sigh. “The doctor couldn’t tell what was wrong because it was too small.”
“How small? Did you see it? Was it a boy or a girl?” Will asks, utterly curious, and as much as it pains her to explain it to him, Joyce expected as much – he’s still too young to understand what happened. He doesn’t even know how babies are made.
“How ‘bout we all go to sleep and, uh, and we’ll talk about it better in the morning?” Hopper suggests.
“It seems a good idea.” Joyce kisses the top of both her sons’ heads, “What do you think about sleeping with Hop and me tonight?”
The four of them fit in the master bed – Joyce and Jim on each side, the boys between them. One by one, they fall asleep – first Will, Jonathan not much after, then Joyce, and lastly Hopper, after having spent the entire time staring at the three of them.
There’s me, he remembers what he had promised Jonathan just hours before, I ain’t goin’ anywhere.
The four of them fit in the master bed – a bed which could easily fit five.