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Silence didn’t come naturally to Enid; it came from unfathomable pain. It came with a gradually increasing thumping in her chest and an emptiness in her mind that left her hollow and scared, trembling as she stood in the doorway of a hospital room at one in the morning. The sight before her froze the blood in her veins and left her holding tight enough to the doorframe to hear the wood crackle underneath her fingertips.
Floating forward in exhaustion, legs burning from the efforts of the night, she made her way to the bed to look down at her friend, staring at the scratches and bandages. Smelling the stapled and stitched wounds and the dried dirt and blood that still sat crusted into spaces here and there. Enid twitched at the simple thought forming at first, from years of having older brothers getting into scuffles…
“They should have cleaned this better,” she managed quietly, barely a whisper, filling a clean bedpan with water to bring to a small table she stacked gauze she found in a drawer on. Her hands were shaking when she began to clean away blood from the pale edges of the face before her, but she continued, dabbing behind her ears and shifting her bangs aside to clean her forehead.
The dark strands of hair that settled against her pinky, almost curled around it, made her stop and blink away at tears. “This is what happens when you sideline me, Wednesday – I should have been there to help you. Maybe this wouldn’t have happened.” Not that she knew what she could have done.
Pushed Wednesday out of the way and taken the Hyde’s attack full force.
Died in the process?
“I would have,” she muttered confidently, brow creasing painfully. Maybe Wednesday knew that all too well, given their history.
Enid touched the long braids, feeling them carefully before taking a long breath to undo them delicately knowing how important they were to Wednesday’s carefully manicured appearance. She unwound the hair and laid it into her palm, soaking more gauze and then running it down the length she held until the clothe came away clean and then she repeated the process on the second braid, finishing to stare down at the pile of soiled items and the length of loose hair lying over Wednesday’s chest at either side.
Wiping at her eyes, she took another ragged breath and hissed, “I’m not babysitting Agnes again. You know Tyler went straight into the woods and for all of her supposed prowess, she screamed like a schoolgirl.” Enid paused, “Granted, she is a schoolgirl, but Wednesday, I had to tackle her to shut her up – do you know how hard it is to do that when the person you’re chasing turns invisible when they’re frightened?”
Picking up the length of hair closer to her, she began to comb through it with her fingers slowly, hand moving up to caress the back of Wednesday’s head gently to pull the hair even to begin to braid. If it wasn’t perfect, she knew, the other girl would be disappointed. She wove it together between her fingers, eyes closing, hating that this was how she was finally getting to have a girl’s night with her roommate.
Enid imagined this year at school would be so different from the previous. She imagined her and Wednesday would be able to get closer. Not that she ever actually thought Wednesday would let her paint her nails or braid her hair, but she imagined it. Smiling at the thought, she finished her second braid and laid it over her chest before looking down at her hands at her sides, frowning at the oddity of it.
“We got back to the school and I had to yell at her to go to her own dorm room, as to not draw suspicion. She wanted to stay in ours,” Enid grunted at the thought. Agnes in her space again – she was only tolerating it as a sort of truce for Wednesday’s sake.
Enid slipped her fingers under Wednesday’s, closing her eyes at the feel of her cold skin against her own warmth. She frowned at the way she didn’t pull away or argue with her. Her heart would break in some small way, but she would take that heartache to hear her friend growl in frustration, roll her eyes, and slowly inch their flesh apart.
“I waited for you.”
Swallowing hard, Enid raised Wednesday’s hand up across her chest and then she reached for her other hand, taking it equally as slow. Holding it equally as long. Hoping equally as much that the girl lying underneath her torso would push her away and tell her to stop being so affectionate. To stop fussing over her. To get back to Nevermore and hide herself away because she’d accidentally let that monstrosity loose.
Wednesday remained still and Enid bowed her head, then lifted Wednesday’s hand to cross over her other. Arms settled on her chest, the way she slept every night, Enid knew. Braids clean and neat, the way they were every day, Enid sighed.
“Thing came in an hour later and told me. He was in shock,” Enid informed her, feeling her bottom lip beginning to tremble again. “He was covered in your blood, you know. Maybe you should also know that I know what your blood smells like. Specifically. Wednesday, I…” Enid rubbed at her nose and swallowed the thought. “I cleaned him up. He hopes that you don’t mind, but he’s sleeping in your bed tonight.”
Fingers moving to straighten Wednesday’s bangs, Enid leaned into the bed, listening to the soft beeps on the monitor beside her. “I ran here as fast as I could after he fell asleep. I can’t imagine how much trouble I’ll be in if they check the dorms.” She didn’t honestly care. “Wednesday?”
Her voice sounded weak, even to her, and she felt the warm tears that fell suddenly when she blinked. Hand coming up, she turned off the volume on the monitor, and she bent to lay her head to her friend’s chest, hearing that heartbeat. She had started hearing it faintly across the room at the beginning of the semester.
It had become the calming beat that helped her sleep through the night.
“Wake up, please,” she moped.
The heartbeat remained steady and Enid shifted back, searching for a seat to bring to the bedside. Falling heavily into it, she leaned against the bed to watch Wednesday sleep, knowing it was so much worse. She hoped she wasn’t trapped in a nightmare, or some stream of visions she couldn’t escape from. Enid leaned her chin into her arms, folded at Wednesday’s side.
“I’m not even sure if you can hear me,” she told her. “I imagine if you could you’d have woken up to tell me ‘Enid, stop the preening, we’ve got more urgent matters to attend to’,” she managed a smile, thinking of the way Wednesday would cross her arms and bend slightly towards her, eyes widening, voice softening. Enid was getting used to Wednesday’s softer tone.
She glanced up at the pale face and listened to even breathing, finding her heartbeat easily in the quiet. “Don’t sleep too long, Wednesday. I kind of need you… I need you around.”
Enid laid her head in her arms and she smiled, thinking of fairy tales she’d read as a child, wondering if the offense of being kissed would be enough to startle Wednesday out of her coma. She wouldn’t dare, but the thought amused her enough that she chanced to look up at Wednesday once more, just to imagine it before closing her eyes again, the exhaustion from the night’s journey setting in.
Morticia stood in the doorway, watching Enid’s breathing slow as her head tilted, body relaxing at her daughter’s bedside. She smiled at the duo, thinking back on her days at Nevermore with Larissa Weems as roommates. Enid sighed and Wednesday took a long breath with her. Theirs would be a drastically different relationship, Morticia knew, one that would last far further than either one of them would ever dream.
She smiled at the visions that lay tucked away in the back of her mind. They’d been conjured so long ago that she’d almost forgotten the streaks of pink and blue that sat at the edges of blonde hair running alongside her daughter’s black pigtails. Gomez’s hand took hers to kiss before releasing a contented breath as he looked into the room.
“Her little ray of sunshine,” Gomez commented with a hint of amusement in his voice. “Who knew our little tormenta would find one."