{The Upside Down, Part III}

When Dustin, Mike, and Lucas arrived at Hawkins Memorial with their parents, they didn't expect to see Hopper standing out front with Mews' cat carrier in his hands.

They didn't expect him to ask Mrs. Henderson and Dustin to hang back while the others went to wait for Will to wake up.

They didn't expect to hear the news about Alice—that she'd collapsed at the Byers house with an unimaginable fever, and that she was unresponsive.

"They're running tests now," Hopper explained grimly, having horrible flashbacks to him and his wife hearing news about Sarah. "They don't know what's causing it."

Mrs. Henderson, overcome with worry, burst into tears immediately. A nurse lead her into a private room to wait to hear back from the doctor, and she didn't even make the anxious mother leave the cat behind.

Dustin, on the other hand, was angry. Pissed, even.

He stormed into the waiting room his friends were in and marched to the corner where Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan were standing and whispering.

"What happened?!" Dustin demanded. "Why didn't you keep her safe?"

"Dustin," Jonathan began, but he cut the older boy off.

"Don't patronize me!"

"All I did was say your name!"

"You said it in a patronizing tone."

"I did not—"

"Boys!" Mr. Wheeler barked from his seat along the wall. "Some of us are trying to sleep. Take your bickering someplace else."

Dustin huffed, but lead the teens to a nearby hallway.

"I'm only going to ask one more time," Dustin said sharply. "What. The. Hell. Happened?"

"It was weird, man," Steve said, eyes darting around the hallway, wondering how much he should say. "She like—it was like—she kinda started to—"

"Use your words, Harrington."

"She's got superpowers, okay!" Steve hissed. "She did this crazy thing with her hands, and they started to glow—and her eyes! Her eyes glowed! She looked like a supervillain! Or like she was radioactive, or something!"

"She did something to the Demogorgon," Nancy explained, placing a hand on Steve's arm to get him to stop freaking out. "Steve's right—her hand glowed, and she screamed, and he got thrown back."

"All the way across the house!" Steve added, waving his hands emphatically.

"I'm sure this has something to do with...whatever she could do before," Jonathan said, choosing his words carefully.

This only confused Steve more.

"What do you mean, 'whatever she could do before'?" Steve asked frantically. "Are you suggesting that Al—our friend Alice—Alice Henderson—has superpowers?"

"She does," Dustin shot back. "She can heal people, amongst other things, apparently. It's not our fault your tiny brain can't comprehend anything except basketball."

Steve glared.

"My so-called tiny brain has seen a lot of weird shit tonight," Steve said through clenched teeth. "I'm not about to get talked down to by a ten-year-old dweeb."

"I'm twelve, dipshit!"

"Stop it, you two!" Nancy said, glaring at them both. "You're acting like children."

"I am a child!" Dustin said.

"Dustin, why don't we go wait with your mom?" Nancy said, trying to keep her voice level. "Steve, Jonathan, go wait in the waiting room. I'll let you know if anything changes. And Jonathan? Let us know when Will wakes up."

"Of course."

Nancy lead Dustin into Alice's hospital room, thankful that the Demogorgon was gone—and hoping that Alice and Will would wake up soon.

🏥 🏥 🏥

Will woke up in the morning, shaken up but on the road to recovery.

Alice didn't wake up for two weeks.

The two weeks were long and painful for everyone in Alice's life. Her mother and Dustin rarely left her side, only going to and from the middle school and their home to sleep at night. Nancy and Jonathan visited often as well, spending the time with their heads bent over their confidentiality contracts from Hawkins Lab, deciphering them and trying to figure out what the new scientists that wanted to help Will were up to.

Mike and Lucas visited too, and when Will was better enough, he did also. The four boys played D&D campaigns at the small card table in her room and used her as inspiration for a new character they had created—Alice the Amazing, a roguish sorcerer and the right-hand-man of Will the Wise.

After the first week of Alice being missing from school, her friends Maria and Samuel started to get worried. They cornered Nancy and Steve in the library during study hall one day.

"Okay, where is she?" Maria demanded, pulling a chair out at the table the couple was sitting at.

"Where's who?" Nancy asked innocently, flipping through her math book.

"Don't play dumb," Samuel scoffed. "That's Harrington's specialty."

Steve rolled his eyes.

"Real funny, Sam."

"Seriously," Samuel said, leaning closer to Nancy and Steve. "Did something happen to Alice?"

Nancy and Steve shared a look. They weren't supposed to tell anyone about Alice's condition...the scientists at Hawkins Lab, once they found out she possessed certain 'abilities,' made that very clear.

"We're just worried about her," Maria added, brow creased with concern. "She hasn't been in class, or at drama club, and she missed the auditions for Hamlet."

"She never misses an audition," Samuel said.

"Never," Maria echoed.

Nancy looked around the library and noticed Mrs. Click watching them like a hawk.

"We can't talk here," she said quietly.

"Nance," Steve said, widening his eyes. "We're really not supposed to talk about it at all—"

"So you do know something!" Maria said, crossing her arms. "Tell us!"

Nancy ripped a page out of her notebook and scrawled something on it.

"Meet us at Hawkins Memorial at 4 o'clock," Nancy said. "Room 402. We'll explain everything."

😴 😴 😴

"So...she's in a coma?" Maria asked, jaw dropped in shock.

Nancy and Steve stood in the hallway outside Alice's room with Samuel and Maria. They peered into her room, watching Dustin read a comic book aloud to her with Mews at the foot of her bed.

"It's some kind of infection," Nancy lied smoothly. "The doctors don't know what caused it. We were there when she fainted, and her mom didn't want us to tell a bunch of people and freak anyone out, especially after what happened with Will. She said we could tell you all, since you're so close with her and everything."

"She looks so fragile," Samuel said, tears brimming in his eyes.

"She'll be fine," Steve said quickly, trying to convince himself as well. "The doctors are confident that she'll be up soon."

"How soon is soon?" Maria demanded. "Comas can last weeks, or months!"

"Is she responsive at all?" Samuel asked. "I read a book once about a coma patient who was in a vegetative state, but they still couldn't talk or move for three months."

"Why didn't you tell us?!" Maria asked angrily, whirling around to Nancy and Steve. "And why has she been spending so much time with you two anyway?"

"Like I said, Mrs. Henderson didn't want—"

"Bullshit!" Maria shot back, anger making way for grief. Tears pooled in her eyes and she began to sob. "Alice is one of my b-best friends...the first friend I made in H-Hawkins...and she—and this—"

The door to her room slammed open, causing the four teens to jump.

"What are you all doing here?" Dustin asked sharply, his comic tucked under his arm.

"Alice's drama friends wanted to check on her," Nancy said quickly. "So I told them about the...infection."

Dustin raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, the infection," he said. "Well, you guys don't have to stand in the hall like stalkers. You can come in."

The teens shared a look and filed into the room. A boombox in the corner was playing a mixtape Alice had made, and ABBA blasted through the speakers.

"You can stay as long as you stay quiet," Dustin said, sitting down at his seat by her bed. "The doctors say that Alice can hear what's going on around her, so I've been reading her comics and books and playing music."

Dustin cleared his throat and continued to read.

"'With great power comes great responsibility,'" he said in his best Uncle Ben voice.

"Spider-Man," Samuel said with a small smile. "Her favorite."

"Obviously," Dustin grumbled. Before he could continue reading, his walkie-talkie crackled with static.

"Code Red!" Lucas's voice echoed through the device. "I repeat: Code Red!"

"I need to take this," Dustin said, grabbing his walkie-talkie and shoving the Spider-Man comic into Nancy's hands.

Dustin disappeared into the hall, leaving the teenagers to stand awkwardly around her bed, unsure of what to do or say next.

"So...what do we do now?" Samuel asked in a low voice.

"Well, Dustin said she can hear things," Maria said, pulling up another chair. "So, let's talk to her. Hey, Al. It's me, Maria. You won't believe the stupid thing Tommy H. did in gym class today."

"You're just going to sit there and gossip with her while she's unconscious?" Samuel said with a scoff.

"Why not?" Maria shot back. "She wouldn't want us to stand around and cry for her. That's not Alice's style."

"She's got a point," Nancy admitted.

"Tommy tried to make a three-point shot," Maria continued, "and he missed so badly, the ball bounced back in his face and knocked him over! Oh my God, Al, it was hilarious."

"I have a funny story about Tommy," Steve piped up. "If you're interested."

Maria gave him a side-eye.

"I thought you and Tommy were buddy-buddy?" she said coolly.

Steve shook his head.

"Not anymore."

He didn't elaborate, and Maria didn't press for more details. Instead, she patted the chair next to her.

"So, what dumb thing did Tommy do?"

Steve scoffed.

"What dumb thing hasn't he done?" Steve said with a smirk.

The teens continued to talk to Alice and tell stories, wondering if she really could hear them after all.

For the next week, Samuel and Maria visited Alice every afternoon. Dustin was at first annoyed at the intrusion, but when they got him engaged talking about D&D and his favorite comics, he warmed up to their presence.

On one such afternoon, Samuel and Maria had just left with promises of returning tomorrow. Dustin and his mother were sitting by Alice's bed while he read aloud snippets from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

He had just gotten to the part with the talking flowers when Mrs. Henderson gasped.

"Dusty! Get the doctor!" she crowed, standing up so fast that Mews flew off her lap. "Alice is bleeding!"

A drop of blood trickled out of Alice's left nostril, and the monitor measuring her heartbeat began beeping faster.

Dustin raced into the hall, screaming, "We need a doctor! Now!"

Before anyone could come running, Alice's eyes shot open. She gasped and sat up quickly, looking around in a panic.

Mrs. Henderson screeched, tears of joy leaking out of her eyes. She enveloped Alice in a bear hug, which only confused her more.

"Where is it?" Alice demanded, wrenching out of her mother's hug and grabbing her by the shoulders.

"Where is what, Alley-Cat?" Mrs. Henderson said. "You must've been having some kind of bad dream—"

"The Demogorgon!" Alice shouted. "The monster that took Will and killed Barb! Where is it?! I have to kill it!"

She pulled the oxygen out of her nose and tried to detach herself from her IV, to no avail. A horde of doctors and nurses rushed in, shocked out how alert she was after fourteen days comatose.

"Alice! Stop!" her mother said, rubbing her daughter's back. "You must've just had a bad dream while unconscious, that's all..."

"It wasn't a dream!" Alice screamed, failing to shove away the nurses who wanted to examine her. "It's real! Where's Jonathan? Where's Nancy? Where's Steve?"

"She's unstable," one of the doctors said. "And she's burning up."

"According to this," a nurse said, waving a thermometer around, "she's got a fever of 110!"

"That's impossible," another doctor piped up. "She'd be dead if her fever was that high."

"It's climbing," the nurse said with wide eyes. "114...118..."

Dustin and his mother held onto each other, terrified at the sight of a hysterical Alice being subdued by doctors.

"Everyone, get out!"

The whole room paused, looking toward the man in the doorway holding a clipboard and a beat-up medical bag. Even Alice stopped screaming about monsters for a second.

"Who are you?" Mrs. Henderson said with a sniffle. "Do you know what's wrong with my Alley Cat?"

"Mrs. Henderson," the man said sharply, "your daughter is going to be fine. That is, she'll be fine if these imbeciles listen to me and leave the room."

"And who the hell do you think you are?" one of the other doctors shot back.

"I'm Dr. Sam Owens of Hawkins Laboratory, and I know how to treat this girl."

{Edited July 9, 2020; Reposted November 2, 2024}