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The visitor form asked for her relationship to the patient.
MJ stared at the line. It was a small box, the kind designed for one word. Wife. Sister. Mother. Friend. The pen the nurse had given her was chained to the clipboard like someone might steal it, which said a lot about Metro General's faith in the goodness of strangers, and the chain was just short enough that filling in the bottom of the page required holding the clipboard at an angle that made her handwriting worse than it already was.
She could write "friend." That was the closest honest answer, and it still felt like claiming more certainty than she had. She could write "ex-girlfriend," which was technically true and also felt like claiming a relationship she couldn't remember having. She could write "woman who was told she used to love this person by the person himself and then said she didn't love him back because she didn't know him, and who is now at his hospital bed at close to midnight for reasons she is not currently prepared to explain on a form."
The box was not big enough for that.
MJ left it blank and handed the clipboard back.
The nurse at the third-floor station glanced at the empty line, then at MJ, and then past her at the man leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and dried blood worked into the seams of his jacket. Frank had been standing there when the elevator opened, positioned between the hallway and the room like he'd been cemented into the linoleum. He hadn't said hello. He'd sized her up the way he sized up everything, which was like he was deciding how much of a problem it was going to be.
"She's with me," Frank said to the nurse. He did not elaborate.
Earlier that night, Ned had been on the couch with the news on his laptop while MJ worked on a sketch at the kitchen table that wasn't going anywhere, and then the feed had cut to a breaking-news banner and he'd said "MJ" in a voice she hadn't heard from him before.
She'd come around the couch and they'd watched the broadcast together. Spider-Man had been shot. Spider-Man was at Metro General. The footage cut between the hospital exterior and cell-phone clips of the crowd already forming outside, people holding signs, a woman holding a candle, a kid in a Spider-Man mask standing on a milk crate.
Neither of them had said anything for about ten seconds.
"We should go," Ned said.
By then, MJ was already reaching for the drawing under her sketchpad. The one she'd made when Spider-Man came up to the apartment - Peter and Ned on the couch building the Lego X-Wing. Peter had worn the mask the whole time. She'd drawn him without it. She folded it once and put it in her jacket pocket.
They'd driven together. Ned had sent a text canceling plans, then put his phone in his lap and stared out the window. Neither of them turned the radio on. The broadcast had called him Spider-Man. MJ had the drawing in her pocket and could not stop thinking of him as Peter.
The crowd outside Metro General was bigger than the broadcast had made it look. They'd found a way in through the ER entrance. Frank had been in the lobby. He'd looked at both of them. Then at MJ only.
"Just you," Frank said. He didn't look at Ned.
Ned had opened his mouth, and MJ had put a hand on his arm.
"I'll text you," she said.
He'd sat down in a plastic chair in the lobby with his phone in both hands and let her go, which was not the same as being okay with it, and MJ knew the difference.
The nurse set the clipboard down and studied MJ.
"Relationship to the patient?"
There it was again.
"He told me something about himself," MJ said. "A while ago. I'm still figuring out what to do with it."
The nurse held her gaze for about three seconds. Then she stood.
"He's unconscious. He's been unconscious since they brought him in. Vitals are stable. He heals faster than anyone I've seen. When he wakes up, he's going to think that means he can leave before I clear him." She looked at MJ directly. "Don't touch the IV line. Don't wake him up. Ten minutes."
MJ walked in.
The room was small and beige and dimmed to its lowest setting. The monitors beeped. There was a chair pulled up to the bed with a dent in the cushion like someone had been sitting in it for hours.
Peter was on the bed.
At the apartment, he'd worn the mask while he and Ned built the X-Wing. MJ had drawn him without it anyway, piecing his face together from the housewarming and Frank's houseboat. Now that face was pale against a hospital pillow, with a bandage wrapped around his left side visible where the gown had shifted. The green Metro General fleece they'd given him was folded on the bedside table next to a plastic cup of water and the edge of a chart.
MJ sat down in the chair. She took the drawing out of her jacket pocket and unfolded it on her knee. Peter and Ned on the couch, Lego scattered between them. She had made Peter look open and unguarded. She had no idea whether he had actually looked that way under the mask.
A knock. MJ looked up. Frank filled the doorway, one hand on the frame, not entering.
"How'd it happen?" she asked.
Frank looked at the bed. At the bandage on Peter's left side. At the monitors. He did not look at MJ.
"He's alive. That's what matters."
"That's not what I asked."
Frank exhaled through his nose. He just didn't bother answering when he thought silence would do the work. MJ had noticed this about him on the houseboat too, when Peter had brought her there and Frank had moved through his own space like a man who couldn't decide whether having guests was a threat or just an inconvenience.
"Redhead," Frank said. "Telepath. She was the target."
"I know who she is." MJ's voice came out flat. She let it. "He told me what she did."
"I had the shot lined up." He said it the way he said most things, like the sentence was a tool and he was putting it down on a table. "I took it. He moved."
It took her a second. Then she understood.
"You shot him."
Frank didn't flinch. He stood in the doorway of the room where the person he'd shot was unconscious and he didn't flinch.
"He got between the round and her." Frank's voice was level in a way that sounded like it was costing him. "He moved faster than I've seen anyone move."
"Because he's Spider-Man. That's what he does."
"Yeah." Frank's hands hung at his sides. "That's what he does."
Peter's chest rose. Fell.
"The girl," MJ said. "Jean. What did she do after?"
Frank's mouth pressed into a line.
"Kept him breathing." He looked at the bed. "She wasn't in the car. Didn't come here. Whatever she was doing, it didn't stop."
MJ looked at Peter's chest. Rising. Falling. Steady.
"Where is she now?"
"Don't know. Haven't seen her since I got him out."
MJ looked at her hands. Jean had used this body without her knowledge or consent. Somewhere else, she was also keeping Peter alive. MJ hated that both things could be true. She knew what had happened to her because Peter had told her. Her own body gave her nothing back.
She looked down at the drawing still open on her knee. Peter and Ned building Lego on the couch. Peter carrying the history. Ned laughing beside him like none of it was strange. It had looked natural. That was all she knew.
"Peter," she said quietly, and then heard herself.
Frank was watching her.
"Peter," he repeated. Slowly. Like he was fitting a word he hadn't known to the person in the bed.
One slip was not permission to give him anything else.
Frank didn't push. He looked at the bed one more time and stepped back into the hall.
She smoothed the drawing flat. She looked at the nightstand beside the bed. The folded green fleece. The chart. The plastic cup. There was room for one piece of paper between the cup and the fleece, right where his head would turn when he opened his eyes.
She placed the drawing there. Adjusted it once so it lay flat.
She sat for another minute. She watched his chest rise and fall. She didn't love him. She'd said that and she'd meant it. Coming here did not turn that into a lie.
The drawing was beside his bed. He'd wake up and know she came. That was enough.
MJ pushed the chair back. She walked out.
Frank was still in the hallway. He hadn't left.
"He's going to try to discharge himself," MJ said.
"I know."
Frank tilted his head toward the elevator. "You good to drive?"
"Yeah," she said. "I'm good."
She walked to the elevator without looking back at the room.
The lobby was loud after the third floor. Ned was still in the plastic chair. His phone was in both hands. He looked up when the elevator opened.
"He's stable," MJ said.
Ned nodded. He didn't ask anything else. He put his phone in his pocket and stood up.
They walked through the crowd outside. Someone was holding a sign that said WE LOVE YOU SPIDEY in marker that had already bled through the cardboard. MJ didn't look at it for long.
They drove home with the radio off.
At the apartment, Ned went straight to the couch and sat down and didn't turn anything on. MJ went to the kitchen table and sat in the chair she'd been in before the broadcast, and looked at the empty space where the drawing had been, and didn't fill it with anything new.