Chapter 68

GUYS HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!!!!!!!!! ANNNNND it’s also a very important day. it has been exactly one year since i started ceilings and i can’t believe it’s been that long already. So happy Magcy Anniversary! Thank you all for your support and for sticking with me for this long, y’all make all the writer’s block and long hours worth it:))))))))))

The hospital waiting room feels aggressively fluorescent. Everything is too bright.

Maggie sits slouched in one of the stiff plastic chairs, one leg bouncing restlessly while dried blood sticks uncomfortably to her skin beneath her hoodie. Every few seconds another sharp pulse of pain cuts through her side, but she keeps her face neutral every time somebody looks over.

Mike sits hunched forward in one of the stiff plastic chairs, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor hard enough like he’s trying to burn a hole through it. His leg bounces relentlessly.

Lucas sits beside him, unusually quiet for once, arms folded tightly across his chest.

Nancy stands near the vending machines across the room, still covered in dried blood.

Nobody’s really acknowledged that part yet.

The nurses tried at first. Nancy ignored them so thoroughly that they eventually gave up and retreated. Smart choice, honestly. A blood-covered teenage girl with sniper-level eye contact is not somebody you challenge voluntarily.

Maggie sits a few chairs away, one arm wrapped tightly around her abdomen beneath her hoodie.

The pain has gotten worse. Shocking development. Turns out secretly absorbing monster-inflicted injuries in the middle of a crisis has consequences. Medicine continues to disappoint absolutely everyone.

She shifts slightly in her chair and immediately regrets it.

Lucas notices from beside Mike and gives her a look. Maggie immediately points a finger at him in warning.

Don’t.

Lucas raises his hands slightly in surrender. The double doors at the end of the hallway suddenly swing open.

Nancy straightens immediately. A doctor walks toward them holding a clipboard. Everybody stands at once.

“How are they?” Mike asks instantly.

The doctor looks exhausted already, which never inspires confidence.

“Your mother lost a significant amount of blood,” he says carefully, “But we stabilized her.”

Mike visibly sags with relief. Nancy closes her eyes briefly.

“She’s in surgery right now repairing damage to her abdomen, chest, and throat, but… she made it here in time.”

Made it here in time. Maggie quietly exhales. Worth it.

“And my dad?” Mike asks quickly.

“He’s conscious. His injuries were serious, but less severe. We expect him to recover.”

Lucas mutters, “Holy shit,” under his breath.

The doctor glances between them all, “Only family can visit once surgery is finished, but someone will update you as soon as we know more.”

Nancy nods stiffly, “Thank you.”

The doctor walks off down the hallway, probably toward another horrible situation. Hawkins Memorial genuinely deserves hazard pay at this point.

Mike drops back into his chair and drags both hands down his face.

“They’re alive,” Lucas says quietly.

Mike nods quickly without looking up, “Yeah.”

Maggie is trying very hard not to bleed through her jacket. Frankly, it is becoming difficult.

Every step sends a hot pulse across her ribs. Karen’s injuries had looked bad when Maggie took them. She’d barely had time to think before pulling the damage into herself like instinct.

At the time, adrenaline made her feel invincible. Now it feels like someone shoved broken glass under her skin. Maggie can survive pain. She’s gotten disturbingly good at it. Humanity’s least useful superpower.

Nancy stops pacing long enough to glance over, “You okay?”

Maggie immediately straightens in her chair, “Never better.”

“You look pale.”

“I always look pale. It’s called commitment to the aesthetic.”

Nancy narrows her eyes, too observant. That’s Nancy Wheeler’s whole thing. Maggie forces a grin anyway.

Mike barely looks up, “Can you guys not fight right now?”

“We’re not fighting,” Maggie says.

“We’re about to,” Nancy mutters.

Then a nurse pushes through the waiting room doors and calls another family name, not theirs.

Nancy exhales shakily and sits beside Mike.

The movement gives Maggie the opening she needs.

“I’m gonna go find coffee before I die dramatically,” she says, standing.

Nancy looks up immediately, “I’ll come with you.”

“Nope. You stay here in case they say something important and Mike spirals into a Victorian orphan.”

“I heard that,” Mike mutters.

“Good. Builds character.”

Nancy still looks suspicious. Maggie keeps smiling through the pain clawing at her side.

“Two minutes,” Nancy says.

“Scout’s honor.”

“You were never a scout.”

“Exactly. Which means there are no rules.”

Before Nancy can stop her, Maggie slips into the hallway. The second she’s out of sight, the smile drops. Her breathing turns uneven almost instantly.

“Cool,” she whispers to herself, “Coolcoolcool.”

Blood has started soaking through the bandage she made earlier out of somebody’s discarded kitchen towel. Very professional medical care. The CDC would probably kill her on sight.

She presses a hand harder against her ribs and limps down the hallway. The hospital is full enough that nobody notices, or maybe they do notice and just don’t care anymore. Hawkins has reached that stage of disaster where everyone collectively accepts that something horrifying is happening and simply chooses exhaustion instead.

A nurse nearly collides with her at the corner.

“Sorry,” Maggie mutters.

The nurse stops short, eyes immediately dropping to the blood staining Maggie’s side.

“Oh my God.”

“Nope,” Maggie says quickly, “Not mine.”

The nurse freezes, giving her a knowing look, “…There’s blood actively coming out of you.”

“Technically subjective.”

“You need to sit down.”

“I need someone to stitch me up without asking questions.”

“That’s not how hospitals work.”

“Then this one sucks.”

The nurse stares at her another second before sighing the sigh of a woman who’s worked twelve straight hours.

“Come on.” Victory.

The nurse guides Maggie into a small curtained room already overflowing with supplies.

“What happened?”

Maggie hops up onto the bed carefully, “Monster-related incident.”

The nurse pauses, “…I’m sorry?”

“Car accident.”

“Right.”

Maggie lifts her shirt enough to reveal the wound.

The nurse goes pale, “That needs actual treatment.”

Maggie gives a weak grin, “Great news. You are an actual treatment person.”

“You probably need stitches internally too.”

“Let’s not dream too big here.”

The nurse mutters something under her breath that sounds like a prayer before grabbing supplies.

The disinfectant burns like hell. Maggie sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth.

“There it is,” she hisses, “The universe punishing me.”

“You should’ve come sooner.”

“Busy day.”

“You’re joking a lot for someone bleeding this much.”

Maggie stares at the ceiling tiles, “If I stop joking, I start thinking.”

The nurse goes quiet after that. The first stitch hurts enough to make Maggie grip the edge of the bed hard. Not the worst pain she’s ever felt, not even close, but still awful.

Across the hospital, back in the waiting room, Nancy checks the clock again, then again. She stands immediately, face drawn with concern.

Mike looks up, “What?”

“She’s taking too long.”

“It’s coffee.”

“Nobody takes twenty minutes getting coffee.”

Nancy scans the hallway again.

No Maggie. Something uneasy curls tighter in her chest.

Ever since the trailer park, ever since Vecna, ever since all of this started escalating again, Nancy’s nerves feel stripped raw. Every disappearance feels dangerous now.

“Where’s Lucas?” she asks suddenly.

Mike points vaguely toward the vending machines. Nancy heads that direction immediately.

Lucas is standing there with a candy bar in one hand and an expression suggesting he’s regretting every life choice that led him here.

“Nancy.”

“Where’s Maggie?”

His eyes widen for half a second; a tiny mistake that Nancy catches it instantly.

“Lucas.”

The boy shrugs, trying to be casual, “No idea.”

Nancy’s eyes narrow, “You’re a terrible liar.”

“I’m actually pretty decent usually.”

“Where is she?”

Lucas hesitates, because Maggie had grabbed his wrist on her way past and whispered: If Nancy asks where I am, lie to her. If she finds out I’m injured she’ll kill me before the monsters do.

“Nancy,” Lucas says carefully, “she’s fine.”

Nancy’s expression sharpens immediately, “That is not an answer.”

“She just… needed a minute.”

“A minute for what?”

Lucas scratches the back of his neck. Humanity invented monsters from alternate dimensions and somehow this is still scarier.

“She’s overwhelmed.”

Nancy crosses her arms, “Lucas.”

He caves a little, “Okay, she got kinda hurt earlier-“

Nancy goes completely still.

Mike appears beside them instantly, “What?”

Lucas raises both hands, “Not bad hurt.”

“Nobody says ‘kinda hurt’ when it’s good!”

“She didn’t want you to know!”

Nancy is already moving down the hallway.

Lucas winces. “And there goes my survival rate.”

Mike hurries after her. By the time Nancy reaches the curtained room, Maggie’s halfway through getting stitched up.

The nurse looks up first. Nancy freezes.

Maggie slowly turns her head, “…Hi.”

Nancy just stares. There’s blood on the bed. Fresh gauze. Stitches pulled tight across Maggie’s side. For one horrible second Nancy looks less angry than scared.

“Mags…” she says quietly.

Maggie tries for a grin, “Good news. Apparently, I do have organs in there.”

Nancy storms inside, “You said you were fine.”

“I was emotionally fine.”

“You were BLEEDING.”

Maggie gives a half-hearted shrug, “A little.”

Nancy throws up her hands, “A LITTLE?”

The nurse abruptly decides this is not her problem and escapes the room immediately.

Mike appears behind Nancy and immediately goes pale, “Oh my God.”

“It looks worse than it is,” Maggie says.

“It looks terrible,” Mike says.

“Rude.”

Nancy points at the stitches, “How long?”

Maggie hesitates.

Nancy’s eyes widen in horror, “You’ve been hiding this the entire time?”

Maggie looks away, “I didn’t want you worried.”

Nancy’s anger flickers, cracking open enough for fear to show through.

“You can’t keep doing this,” she says softly.

Maggie swallows, “Doing what?”

“Hurting yourself for everyone else and acting like it doesn’t matter.”

The room goes quiet. Mike looks between them carefully, as if the words are a live grenade about to explode.

Maggie stares at the blanket covering her legs.

“It mattered,” she says finally, “Karen was hurt.”

Nancy’s face tightens instantly. Nancy Wheeler would walk directly into hell for the people she loves and hates seeing the same thing reflected back at her.

“You still should’ve told me.”

Maggie gives her a look, “Then you would’ve stopped me.”

“…Probably.”

“Exactly.”

Nancy exhales shakily and sits on the edge of the bed beside her.

For a second neither of them talks. Maggie leans her head against Nancy’s shoulder carefully.

“Told you,” she murmurs, “Dramatic hospital scene.”

Nancy snorts lightly, “You’re unbelievable.”

“Yet deeply charming.”

Outside the room, Lucas peeks around the corner cautiously, “Am I dead?”

Nancy points at him without looking away from Maggie, “You’re on thin ice.”

Lucas nods solemnly, “Fair. Honestly, I knew that going in.”

It takes a few hours of quiet convincing in her head, but by some miracle, Maggie works up the courage to go upstairs. When she makes it up there, albeit very slowly, the hospital has settled into an eerie quiet.

Down below, the emergency room still rattles with footsteps and muffled voices. Up here, on the floor where the long-term patients are tucked away, everything moves slower.

Maggie stands outside Max’s room with her hand on the door and a knot in her throat that feels almost physical.

She has been here before, just not often, too few times to pretend she hasn’t been avoiding it.

Walking into a room and seeing Max lying still in that bed feels too much like admitting what happened is real. It isn’t the chaos, or screaming, or fighting that lead to this. It’s the fact that the world keeps moving, and Max doesn’t.

Maggie looks down at the hallway floor, at the scuffed linoleum and the pale reflection of the fluorescent lights, exhales through her nose, and pushes the door open.

Machines sit by the bed with their constant little beeps, like reminders that the body can keep going even when everything else has gone quiet.

Max lies still beneath the blanket, hair in two braids beside her head on the pillow, face paler than Maggie ever remembers seeing it. She looks like she’s trapped somewhere Maggie can’t reach, no matter how hard she wants to.

For a second, the sight knocks the breath clean out of her.

Maggie has been carrying the guilt around so long it has started to feel like one of her own organs, hard to separate from the rest of her, hard to imagine life without it.

She shuts the door behind her and crosses the room slowly.

At the bedside chair, there is a half-empty paper cup of coffee and a folded sweatshirt that looks like El’s. That almost hurts worse.

Maggie lowers herself into the chair and immediately regrets it because her side still aches where the stitches pull tight. She smooths a hand over her jacket instead and stares at Max’s face.

“Hi,” she says quietly.

The room stays silent except for the machines. Maggie nods to herself like Max might have replied and she is just being polite.

“I know. Great entrance. Really nails the atmosphere.”

She tries to smile, but it barely lasts a second.

Her eyes drift over Max’s hands, the blanket, and the bedside table with its flowers gone slightly wilted in the vase. Somebody has been trying. Maggie still feels like she has no right to be one of them.

“I haven’t been up here enough,” she admits to the stillness, “Before you think I am just casually terrible, I know that. I know I have.”

The words feel stupid the second they leave her mouth. She looks down and picks at the edge of her sleeve.

“I kept telling myself I would come when I was less of a mess.”

A humorless huff of a laugh leaves her, “Which, apparently, is not a real plan. Turns out the universe does not hand out a certificate for being prepared.”

She glances up at Max again. No answer orexpression, just the awful stillness. Maggie swallows.

“I did not know what to say to you,” she confesses, “And that is saying something, because I usually have a lot to say. Sometimes none of it should be spoken aloud, but that’s never stopped me.”

That gets a tiny, bitter smile out of her, but it fades quickly.

“I kept thinking if I came up here, I would have to sit with the fact that you were here because of us. Because of all of this.”

The room feels too small for the grief in it. Maggie leans back in the chair and stares at the ceiling for a second.

“I know that’s not fair,” she says softly, “Logically, I know none of this is our fault.”

Her voice catches on the last word, and she pauses until it steadies again, “It still feels like it is.”

Grief does not care about fairness. It is a greedy thing. It takes the truth and then twists it until even innocence can feel guilty.

Maggie presses her lips together.

“I keep thinking about that night,” she says, “About how fast everything happened. About how one minute we were all trying to survive, and the next minute…”

She shakes her head once, “You know.”

The silence that follows is heavy. In a softer voice, she adds, “I miss you.”

The words slip out before she can stop them. They are meant for Max, but they feel bigger than that, like they belong to every version of this life that was stolen from them and every person who has been left carrying the pieces.

“I miss the version of you that was still arguing with Lucas about everything,” she says, “I miss you rolling your eyes at my dumb jokes even when you were secretly laughing. I miss you being stubborn and brave.”

Her throat tightens, “I miss when missing someone just meant they were gone for a day.”

Maggie bows her head and rests her elbows on her knees. For a moment, she just breathes through the pressure in her chest and listens to the machine by the bed.

Maggie stares at Max for a long moment and then she lets out a slow breath.

“I keep wanting to come up here and say something useful. Something that makes any of this better. But every time I try, my brain just gives me absolute garbage.”

She rubs a hand across her face.

“Like, hi Max. Sorry your life turned into a tragedy.”

The joke dies almost immediately. Max doesn’t roll her eyes or tell her she’s an idiot, doesn’t smirk.

A tear slips down her cheek. She wipes it away immediately.

“Cool.”

Her voice cracks, “Super cool.”

She takes a breath, “I don’t know how to do this.”

The confession barely rises above a whisper, “I don’t know how to grieve you when you’re still here.”

The words hang in the room, “I don’t know how to grieve Eddie.”

Her chest tightens, “I don’t know how to grieve any of it.”

She stares at the blanket covering Max’s legs.

“Nancy and I aren’t doing great.”

A sad smile pulls at her mouth, “Which is probably the least surprising thing that’s ever happened.”

She leans back in the chair, “Every time we try to talk about any of this, it feels like we’re speaking completely different languages.”

Her fingers twist together.

“She wants me to tell her how I’m feeling.”

Maggie laughs softly, “I don’t even know how I’m feeling.”

The truth of that hurts more than she expects.

“I think she’s angry.”

She pauses, “No. That’s not right…I think she’s scared.”

Her eyes drift back to Max, “And honestly?”

She shrugs weakly, “So am I. I keep pretending I’m okay because everybody else is already carrying so much.”

She shakes her head, “But then Nancy sees right through it, which is annoying.

A small smile appears, but it fades quickly.

“I think she’s afraid she’s going to lose more people.”

Maggie’s throat tightens, “And I think I’m afraid of that too.”

The machines continue their steady beeping. After a while, Maggie reaches out and carefully places her hand over Max’s.

“You know El misses you, right?”

Her thumb brushes lightly against Max’s knuckles, “Like… a lot.”

A shaky breath escapes her, “She tries really hard not to show it sometimes.”

Maggie stares down at their hands.

“But she’s different.”

The words come quietly, “Ever since this happened.”

She swallows.

“She still smiles, just not as much. Sometimes she gets this look.”

Maggie’s gaze drops, “Like she’s waiting for something, like she’s waiting for you to wake up.”

Her voice breaks, “Everybody is.”

Maggie squeezes Max’s hand gently, “I should’ve come sooner.”

Another tear slips free.

“I know that.”

She laughs weakly and shuts her eyes tightly, “I kept finding excuses.”

When she opens her eyes again, they’re shining.

“I’m sorry.”

Not just for the visits. For all of it. The guilt, the fear, the things she couldn’t fix, the things nobody could.

The room remains silent.

Maggie sits there for a while longer, holding Max’s hand and talking softly about little things. About Lucas. About Mike. About stupid jokes Max would definitely pretend not to laugh at.

Eventually, she stands. Her side aches immediately, but he ignores it.

“I’ll come back.”

She reaches out and brushes a loose strand of hair away from Max’s face.

“Whether you’re awake to complain about it or not.”

Her throat tightens one last time. She turns toward the door, grabbing the handle before sparing a glance back. She gives a soft smile before stepping back out into the real world again.