The Healer
by TheBucketWoman
Disclaimer: I do not own Wizards of Waverly Place or anything else I reference herein. All real locations are used fictitiously. No profit is being made and no infringement intended.
A/N: Rated T, mainly for language.
Chapter One.
1.
As a rule, and contrary to what pretty much anyone would expect, Alex Russo did not have a pottymouth. She made exceptions, when she grabbed the handle of a frying pan for example, or when Kelbo's birthday chicken bit her.
Therefore, it wasn't that unreasonable for her to curse like the spirit child of Eminem and Kevin Smith when she stepped wrong and fell on the spiral stairs, breaking her ankle.
"Son of a fucking bitch OWWW!" she gasped. Good thing, too, because her mother might actually burst into flames if she'd heard that. The idea that neither Teresa nor Jerry Russo would begrudge their daughter some good old fashioned off-color catharsis in situations such as this would never occur to her, nor would she believe it if anyone told her.
OhGodOhGodOhGod, she thought, twisting to see the damage, and just the tiny shifting movement was boiling lava bikini wax agony. Even the change in the air was enough to get her screaming.
And yeah, there it was, clearly broken, purple and swelling right before her eyes. Like the way bread baked in TV commercials. Stupid cheap fucking dollar-store flip-flops. If she survived this pain, she was going back to that store, if she had to be wheeled there, just so she could take one and hit the guy behind the counter. It was his fault she was writhing on the cold dusty floor when all she wanted was some leftover empanadas.
2.
If Alex cursed rarely, Justin cursed not at all. Or at least he never had. He could, however, always be called upon to ask what in the Helsinki was going on, or to insist that the F in WTF really stood for fish tacos (and his little brother Max still believed that this was true, of course). That said, the first thing out of his mouth when he saw his little sister screaming and writhing on the floor was a proper, classic "What the Fuck." Alex didn't seem to notice this of course, though Justin would be sure that she would've eaten it up any other day.
He came down the stairs as fast as he could and actually had had to hop over his sister to get to the bottom. By the time he got there, her screams reached a decibel level and frequency that bit at his nerves like hungry baby alligators.
"Alex," he tried to say calmly as he knelt down next to her. It came out watery and panicked and she gave no sign of having heard, wrapped up as she was in increasingly operatic screams.
"ALEX, SHUT UP!" he yelled. "Shut the fuck up and let me help!"
"Don't touch me!"
"Alex," he said. "Hold still."
"No."
"Come on, let me shift you—"
"NO!"
"Hold still," he said. He sounded impressively calm, if he did say so himself. "Let me see."
"No, it hurts."
"I know," he said. "Let me see, though. I got you." He took hold of her calf.
"Let me see," he repeated, holding her still spasming leg.
3.
The pain lessened.
"What..." she said.
"I got you," he said again.
"But..."
"It's kinda swollen," he said. "I'll get some ice and—"
"It's broken."
"It's not broken," he said.
"It is!" she said, gesturing to it and pointing at the spot where she'd seen the bones looking all pokey-outey and saw little of what she'd seen a minute or so before. The ankle was still purple and swollen but not as swollen, and it hurt, but not as much.
"What'd you do?" she asked.
"Huh?"
"What did you do?" she repeated. "It was broken!"
"Don't be a drama queen," he said. "Let's get you to the ER, though. Maybe you saw something I didn't."
But, sure enough, after twelve years of waiting in the ER, the doctor had wrapped her in a bandage and sent her on her way.
So maybe she had imagined that it was broken. Whatever.
Six months later, though, she thought of it again and was sure that she hadn't imagined anything.
It was snowing, and New York City schools only closed if the snow came up to the top of the buses, so Alex, Harper, and Max had to deal with the always fun trek home in the ice and the lip-cracking wind, the snow actually accumulating on top of their heads, passing cars sending up hunks of snow, weighing their already wet jeans down just a little bit more.
Harper's hat had bells on it, so every time she shook her head, it was like Santa was coming up Varick Street a few weeks early and after two blocks, Alex really hoped that the bell would rust from all the wet. By the time Varick turned into 7th Avenue South, Alex was looking for distractions so that she wouldn't take the thing and throw it into the street.
"Hey Max," Alex said.
"Yo."
"You know that yellow snow over there?" she asked. "It's lemon-flavored."
"Think I'm falling for that again?" Max asked.
Harper stopped in her tracks and looked at Alex reproachfully.
"What?" Alex said. "It didn't let him eat it." Harper shook her head, starting that maddening ding-a-linging all over again.
"I don't know why I'm even surprised at this point," Harper said.
"Uh-huh," Alex said. "Hold that thought." She turned and zapped the snowball that zoomed towards her head back at Max, where it hit him full in the face.
"Man!" Max said, after he was done sputtering. Back to the drawing board for him. One of these days he'd realize that he was bigger than she was and could just pin her down if he wanted to, but for now, he was happily oblivious.
But he had really good aim and better reflexes than she did, and he actually hit her with the next shot.
"You just wait till we get home," Alex said, through gritted teeth as Harper high-fived Max.
Harper giggled.
"Yeah, well you better sleep with one eye open, too," Alex told Harper.
"I usually do," Harper said.
There was a silencing spell somewhere in the book, Alex was sure of it. Her dad had lately kept it out of her reach for fear that she'd learn some nasty stuff to use on her brothers, but she didn't see how anyone would fault her for wanting to shut that infernal bell up.
Alex had never been so glad to see Christopher Street. That guy, Barry or Larry was outside, playing with his two big Afghan hounds, Marcello and Cupcake, in the snow. She saw them everyday and they never failed to slobber on her and Harper and absolutely never missed an opportunity to pounce on Max.
"Oof!" Max wheezed. "Marcello!" While he was on the ground, he gathered up some snow with one hand and threw it. Marcello leapt off of him and ran after it, wondering where it went when it hit a parked car and disintegrated. The dog's head whipped from side to side, like Where'd it go? This made Alex wonder how on earth Max managed to find the one creature on this planet more oblivious than him. But it was too cold to stand there and think it over. She left Max and Harper to frolic with Marcello and Cupcake all they wanted; she was going someplace warm.
Shortly after she passed that little pink stucco frosting house on Waverly, Max and Harper rejoined her.
"Come here, little bro," Alex said. She held out her arms for a hug. Max, who had no survival instinct, did what he was told, getting some ice shoved down the back of his collar for his trouble.
"You're so dead," Max said, chasing her, or trying to; climbing through the knee deep slush on the sidewalk slowed him down a little.
And Justin, sitting in the mostly empty sub-shop, grinned at the two of them smugly when they came within view. He was warm. The windows of the shop were slightly steamed.
Asshole, she thought. He was so getting his face washed in snow, A Christmas Story style. Or maybe she could wait until he went to sleep to sneak downstairs and fill a couple of Chinese takeout soup containers with snow and bring them up to his room...
But first, she wondered if she could get Max to stick his tongue to a flagpole. Again. Thinking about all this, she hadn't seen at first when Max stepped out into the street, which looked pretty clear. That was one good thing about living in NYC. They plowed early and often, which was why they usually had school when most people didn't.
But sometimes it was still hard for the city to control the black ice. Which caused a slightly overconfident Hyundai driver to see the supposedly clear street and speed up a little, only to lose control, missing Alex by millimeters as she screamed and fell, whacking her shoulder and her back a little on a newspaper box on the way down, but mostly landing safely in a slushpile.
Max wasn't as lucky.
Alex hadn't seen him actually get hit, but once she sat up, she saw him bleeding and unconscious on the ground and she saw Justin run out, wearing only a Dark Tower t-shirt and jeans. O Discordia, the shirt said. His skin turned red immediately, and Alex found it easier to watch that happen than to look at the blood and what might have been some of her little brother's hair in the snow a little too far from his actual head.
The driver threw up. He stood outside his open door, with his cell phone in his hand and he'd either been using it while he was supposed to be driving or he just took it out to call for help, but he was too busy puking to use it. He was about her dad's age, maybe a little younger.
Justin didn't seem to notice how cold it was. He got down on his knees in the snow, leaning over Max while at least one nearby mom blocked her daughter's view by smooshing the kid's face into her coat.
Somebody or other called 911. Maybe Harper. Alex should have, but she was having a little trouble speaking at the moment. And breathing. Breathing was hard, too.
She couldn't look at Max's face, afraid of what she'd see. There might be gore. Or there might be nothing. No Max.
"What do we do?" Harper fretted, kneeling by Justin and finally whipping that stupid hat off her head so she could concentrate.
"Breathing," Justin was saying. "He's breathing."
"Don't move him!" somebody said.
"We can't move him," Harper agreed.
"No," Justin said. He had his hand on Max's arm, like he was afraid to touch anything else. Alex was still studiously avoiding looking at Max's face, to the point where she put one hand up near her eye to block her vision.
By this time, their parents had made their way outside and the screaming got to be widespread. Or maybe it was sirens. Or both. Probably both.
Alex really wasn't the best witness. One would think that an artist would be more observant, but she kept noticing all the wrong things, like Harper's rain boots with the ducks on them. And how Harper's hair started out all staticky when she took the hat off, but then got wet and laid down again. Alex didn't even see the paramedics until they started talking to her and touching her face.
"Get off!" she said.
Some other ones loaded Max onto a stretcher, using all the stuff, because they were really scared to move him. The backboard, that stiff collar. Everything. Oxygen...
"Look over here, mami," the paramedic was saying, flashing a light in her eyes.
"Quit it," Alex said, slapping the flashlight out of his hand.
"Can you get up?" he asked.
Crap. She was still on the ground, her whole back was wet. Or wetter. But she got up, shaking the paramedic guy off.
"I'm okay," she said.
"You need to let them check you out," Harper said.
"No," Alex said. "I just wanna—" She didn't really know what she wanted, actually. Somebody put a blanket on Justin. Mom had her arms around him, sort of rubbing his arms. His ears were a really dark red and his hair was as full of snow as Max's had been. Before.
"In the ambulance," Dad said suddenly. She hadn't even seen him come over. "Now." So she got into the other one. They wouldn't let either of them in with Max, but Dad rode shotgun in her ambulance.
Mom met them there, with Harper and Justin, who had a coat on when Alex saw him again. The doctors had decided that she was more or less okay, and let her go sit with them. Dad stayed with Max. Or as near as they'd let him stay. They probably might have let Alex go stay by her dad, too, but she couldn't look at her brother like that, and she couldn't be around the beeping and hissing of the machines, either. It was too easy to imagine one of the beeps solidifying into a big long Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-
So that was out.
It was hard to sit down, and once she did, hard to get settled. Mom took her coat off and rolled it into a makeshift cushion for her, but it still hurt like hell. If nobody else had gotten hurt, she would have milked these bumps and bruises for all they were worth ("But, Mom! I can't do homework! My back hurts!" She would have said. "Also, Justin should take my shift!") but right then, she tried not to acknowledge them at all. Harper sat next to Alex and finger-combed her hair, just to have something to do with her hands. Alex supposed she should stop her friend before she wove her hair into a basket or something, but at that moment, the headstroking was soothing.
"Who wants cocoa?" Mom wanted to know. Nobody said anything, but she went and got some anyway. Alex liked holding it at least. Seemed like Justin did, too. Harper managed a sip or two of hers.
"Toma, papi," she told Justin. He shook his head. "It'll warm you up." He shook like he was still outside in twenty degree weather and no coat, though by this point he was bundled up tighter than Kenny on South Park.
Alex wasn't sure how long it took for her Dad to come out and talk to them. She'd gotten half absorbed in one of the Law and Orders, with that guy from Scream who looked like Johnny Depp when Dad came over.
"He woke up for a little bit," Dad said. Mom burst into screamy tears and buried her head in Dad's chest. Justin put his head between his knees, like he was going to pass out. Alex wondered how he could bend over that far in his bubble coat.
"They're gonna keep him," Dad continued, "but he woke up and talked to me, and answered questions and squeezed the doctor's hands."
That did not seem possible. As much as Alex wanted it, she didn't think it was really happening. That much blood—
"The blood," Justin whispered. It was the first thing he'd said in a couple hours.
"Yeah," Dad said. "In your head there's lots of veins and stuff close to the skin. You cut it and it bleeds like crazy, so it must've looked pretty scary, but—"
"No," Alex said.
"No," Justin said.
"Thank God," Mom said, grabbing Justin and kissing the top of his head with an audible smack. Then she moved on to Harper and Alex, to do the same.
"You're still all wet," she muttered. "Both of you! You'll catch pneumonia!"
"Mom!" Alex said.
"Anyway, there's a concussion, a pretty bad one," Dad said. "They want to monitor that for a day or two at the very least. And his leg's broken. But it looked worse than it was."
"You did this," Alex told Justin. He startled, like she'd slapped him.
"What?" Justin asked. "I—"
"Alex!" Mom said, shocked.
Harper looked around nervously. "Alex..."
"You did," Alex said. "You saved him!"
"Saved him?" Mom asked. "I thought you were saying—"
"Alex, honey, that doesn't happen," Dad said. "Ever."
"No!" Alex said, keeping her voice low. "He did it. He healed him. Like my ankle that time."
"N-n-no," Justin said. "I can't..."
"But what if you can?" Alex asked.
"I can't," Justin said. "I didn't."
But Alex was sure that he could and he did.
TBC