chapter twenty-nine
what a year today has been

        The time between El's disappearance and now is fuzzy in Alex's head. 

She doesn't know how long they are in the classroom before the paramedics find them.  Her three companions continue to call for a girl who is no longer there, but Alex remembers just staying here.  For her, it's as if time has altogether stopped.  As if she's paralyzed by it.  She remembers being scooped up by the paramedics when she doesn't move and wheeled out to the back of an ambulance.  The paramedics ask her questions, that she doesn't remember answering.  The world is moving too fast for her to comprehend.  It sounds like her head is underwater again.  She doesn't remember how to breathe.  The paramedics strap an oxygen mask to her face.  She doesn't resist.  The blanket that they wrap around her shoulders does nothing to help.

She's in shock.  They tell her. 

She's just numb.  The same numbness she feels when Will is pulled out of the water, except this time it's more consuming.  Maybe it's because this time, there is no hope of El being alive.  She doesn't even fight the overwhelming feeling of nothing.  She's too tired.  She just wants to sleep.  But the paramedics asked her to keep her eyes open for them.  Sleep will not claim her just yet.

The police hover a few yards away.  It's clear that they want to ask her about the events that transpired over the course of the past few hours.  Alex doesn't know if she'll be able to answer.  The paramedics tell them to leave.  Red and blue lights flash and bounce across every reflective surface in the parking lot and into her eyes.  Sirens wail.  Lights flash.  People stare.  She can't breathe.  Alex just wants to shut everything out.  Everything is so loud.  Everything is so bright.  It's too much.  She feels everything everywhere all at once.  She wants it to stop.  She just wants the world to stop, for just once.  She wants to catch her breath.

She wants her brother.  She needs Steve more than ever now, and he's not there.  She needs to know that he's safe.  She needs him to tell her that she'll be okay.  She needs him to tell her that it's over.  She misses her brother.  Where is Steve?  She can't breathe.  Where is he?  Where is he?  Where is he?

She doesn't know where her friends are either.  They fight harder against the paramedics than she does because they still have hope that El is somewhere on the other side of the school.  This is what Alex gets for being a realist.  The weight of crushing reality on her shoulders.  She's already accepted that there is no going backward from here.  There are no do-overs.  El is dead and there's nothing that they can do about it.  Alex does not get to have the mercy of denial.  It is straight to acceptance and grief and guilt.

"Alex!" The voice is fuzzy, but Alex recognizes it.  "Oh, Alex."

Her mother is pushing through the crowd followed by her father.  Her mother's hair is pulled haphazardly into a bun at the nape of her neck.  Dark circles adorn her eyes and her nails are jagged as if she had chewed through them.  Her father's condition is not much better.  A messy collar, stubble, and dark circles that match his wife's.  She notices her mother's hand gripping her father's.  Ever since the illicit affair, there had been a rift between her parents, but that seems to have been mended in the time that Alex spends away from her home.

The paramedics to not stop her parents as they approach her.  Laura crouches before Alex, sinking to her knees.  Alex only watches.  She can see tears brimming in her mother's eyes.  She cups Alex's face in her hands as if to make sure that Alex is real before she pulls the girl into her arms.  Alex doesn't resist.  She's too tired and she's been longing for her mother's foreign embrace.  Laura sobs into her shoulder and runs a hand over Alex's hair soothingly, rocking her back and forth.  She's cradling Alex as though she's a child all over again, when she wasn't as angry.  Alex's arms hang limply at her sides.  And finally, after a few moments, she wraps them around her mother's waist. 

It should anger her that it takes the possibility of losing Alex for them to finally see her.  And maybe it will anger her tomorrow, but today, she is tired.  She melts into her mother's embrace.  She used to think that maybe if her parents knew just how tired she was, they would be kinder.  Maybe, now that they've almost lost her, they'll try to build their relationship from the bottom again.  They only have so much time.  If there is one thing that Alex has learned over the course of this week, it is that time will never be on their side.

Her arms remain around her mother, and her mother's arms remain around her, but she gazes up at her father.  The reflection of her brother.  He smiles at her and she knows that he loves her too.  Her father loves them passively.  He doesn't need to tell her anything.  His smile holds thousands of words.

And then, she realizes that Steve is not with them.  The panic sets in again.  Steve should be with them.  Where is Steve?

"Where's Steve?" she asks faintly.  "Mom.  Where's Steve?"

Laura pulls away from Alex and cups her face in her hands again, brushing Alex's hair out of her face with her hands.  Alex wants to bat her hands away.  She almost doesn't want to hear the answer.  "He's at the hospital."

"What?" Alex feels her heart pound in her chest.  "What do you mean he's at the hospital?  Wh-what happened to him?  Is he okay?  Mom?  Why are you so calm?  What happened to him?  Dad—"

Joseph shakes his head.  "It's not like that.  He's okay.  He's with Jonathan Byers and Nancy Wheeler."

"Why are they at the hospital?" Alex asks.  Her heart does not calm.

"Because..." says Laura with a fond smile.  "They found Will."

. . .

The waiting room is silent.  Everyone is lost in their own thoughts, processing everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.  The Chief sits at the very end of his row, staring blankly ahead.  He's already there when Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan arrive at the hospital.  Nancy's father is in the chair neighboring the Chief, head leaned back against the wall and mouth opened slightly as he snores softly.  On the other side of the room, Karen Wheeler sits with her hands clasped in her lap and her knee bouncing up and down.  Nancy sits beside her, arms crossed over her chest.  There's something bothering her.  Next to her is a boy with curly hair who leans on the shoulder of the boy who wears a camouflage bandana—both friends of Alex—both are fast asleep.  Nancy's brother sits beside them, wide awake, eyes red and puffy from crying.  Laura and Joeseph stand coupled together in the corner of the room, hovering awkwardly.     

Steve thinks Alex would've hated it, but she's sleeping soundly, curled up on the chair next to him with her head in his lap and a worn-down book clutched tightly to her chest.  He gazes at Nancy for a few moments, but she refuses to meet his eyes.  Yeah, he deserved it.  He deserved the scars and bruises that line his face as well.  He'll make it up to Nancy.  He'll make it up to Byers too.  But for now, all he can do is wait and calm Alex whenever she twitches in her sleep.  She's been through so much more than he will ever understand in the span of a single week.  He couldn't be there for Alex before, while she was out fighting her own monsters—the very monster that he had fought back at Byers' house—but he can be here for her now.

From across the waiting room, the door opens and Byers stands in the doorway.  There's a smile on his face—Steve doesn't think he's ever seen him smile before.  Nancy's brother's head snaps up and Byers gives him a nod.

Mike jumps up and shakes his friends awake.  "Guys!  Guys, he's up.  Will is up.  Guys, Will's up!"

The two boys are just barely stirring, jumping apart from each when Mike moves onto Alex.  She shoots up, blinking the sleep from her eyes.  "Stevewhat'shappening?" She slurs.

Steve only laughs.  "Will's up."

This seems to dispel all the sleep from her eyes, and in an instant, she's shooting up out of the chair and following her friends down the hallway, still clutching the book tightly to her chest.  And then Steve realizes that it's the book that Will had lent to her all those weeks ago.  The same book that Alex muttered reverently about the night that they had pulled Will's body from the Quarry.  It was finally returning home.

For a moment, when she wakes up, she forgets where she is, and then, in a millisecond everything comes rushing back to her.  They found Will.  Will's alive.  But El is gone.  El sacrificed herself so that they can live to see another day.  Her gaze shifts to Hopper.  They still don't know if it was Hopper who had sold them out—Alex has a feeling that they'll never know the answer—but that still doesn't stop her from giving him a withering glare when she enters the waiting room with her parents.  He doesn't notice.  He's too caught up in his own thoughts.  Nancy seems just as numb as Alex was back in the ambulance.  She thinks this only reminds her that Barbara is gone.  Alex shakes her head.  She can't think about Barbara right now.

Alex is the last one to enter Will's room.  There's a wide beam on her face, but Will is not the first person that her eyes travel to.  Joyce Byers sits at his bedside.  She still looks tired and bedraggled, but she looks happy and at peace.  She looks whole again.  And then Alex's eyes drift to Will.  He looks so small, engulfed by the hospital bed sheets.  He's still pale and sickly and there are tubs in his nose, but he's there, and he's alive. 

"Byers!" Lucas exclaims. 

The boys pile on top of Will, engulfing the small boy in a hug.  Alex hangs back, suddenly overcome with crippling self-doubt, unsure if she's welcome in the hug.  They've known each other for so much longer.  She feels almost like an imposter, even though she knows she's earned her place there in the room.  She lingers in the doorway before the boys finally release Will from their embrace.

"Locker buddy!" Alex exclaims, stepping forward.

"Alex!" Will replies with a laugh, almost surprised to see her accompanied by the rest of the boys. 

"I, um, I have your book," She tells him with a small smile as she sinks to her knees at Will's bedside.  Will grins and Alex places it on the foot of his bed. 

"You won't believe what happened when you were gone, man!" Lucas exclaims.

"It was mental!" Dustin adds.

"You had a funeral!"

"Jennifer Hayes was crying."

"And Troy peed himself."

"What?" Will asks, wide-eyed.

"In front of the whole school!" Dustin adds.

"And Alex punched him!" Lucas adds.  "It was amazing!"

Will grins, but that soon fades away as coughs rattle his lungs, almost as if there is something within him that he is trying to expel.  Alex frowns for a second.  The joyous mood sobered.  Will may be alive, but he's been through more than they will understand.   Alex doesn't know if he will recover, but she does know that things have changed.  Trauma manifests itself in different ways.  Will is going to be different.  The only thing that they can do is be there for him while he recovers. 

"You okay?" Mike asks softly.

Will lowers his hand from his mouth and tilts his head toward them.  "It got me.  The Demogorgon."

"We know," Mike tells him softly.  Then, with a soft smile, he assures Will, "It's okay.  It's dead.  We made a new friend.  She stopped it.  She saved us.  But she's gone now." 

"Her name's Eleven," Dustin tells her with a grin.

"Like the number?" Will wonders.

"Well, we call her 'El' for short," Lucas adds.

"She saved our asses so many times," Alex tells Will with a grin, though it doesn't quite reach her eyes.  The wound that El's absence leaves is not even close to being healed.

"She's basically a wizard," Dustin tells him. 

Lucas lowers his voice to a whisper.  "She has superpowers."

"More like Yoda," Mike corrects.

"She flipped a van with her mind," Dustin narrates enthusiastically, "and these agents were trying to shoot us—"

They launch into an explanation of El's powers, and the harrowing adventures that they had embarked on in Will's absence.  Laughter fills the room for the first time that day.  While ghosts of those who should be with them linger around them, Alex basks in the light at the end of the dark tunnel and lets out a contented sigh.

What a year today has been.

author's note: let me just say that alex & will's friendship >>>>>