October 11, 1948
By the sheer power of coincidence, on the same day and only a few hours after Richard Starkey had clawed his way out of the depths of his debilitating coma, John Lennon awoke too, just one room away. However, unlike Ritchie's coming about which had been slow and gradual, like easing into or perhaps out of a lake, John awoke quickly and suddenly, his eyes shooting open in one instant and jarring him from sleep to wakefulness. For quite a while after he had awoken, he simply lied there rather uselessly, blinking in utter confusion and trying to readjust himself to reality. The small part of him that was even bothering to recognize his surroundings registered the fact that he was in a hospital, but another part refused to believe that that was where he was. John couldn't remember anything at all happening to him to facilitate being in a hospital. He couldn't remember getting sick or hurt in any way, so he couldn't possibly be in a hospital. Not if he wasn't sick, that was. Was it possible that he was visiting, and had simply lost track of time and fallen asleep?
The only problem with such an explaination was that brought to mind the question of who he would visit in a hospital. Was it his mother? No, it couldn't be her- at least he didn't think so. Someone, though, was in a hospital. The details were becoming clearer, he could remember. Someone was in a hospital, but whom? Someone he knew, most certainly, someone his age. One of his friends. Was it Paul, perhaps? George? Neither one seemed right. It would have to be the fourth member of their group then… Ritchie. Yes, that was his name, despite how embarrassingly long it had taken for John to conjure up the two simple syllables. Ritchie. But what had happened to Ritchie? And would knowing whatever had happened to Ritchie even explain in the slightest why John himself would be in the hospital?
While John was preoccupied with his excessive ruminating of possibilities, a small bit of dust floating in the air found its way up his nose and caused the young boy to sneeze, a ridiculously spastic and unexpected motion that, once finished, flopped him unceremoniously and awkwardly back down onto the lumpy mattress like some sort of Raggedy Andy doll.
"Hey, you're awake," said a nonchalant voice without warning from somewhere beside John. Involuntarily, he startled a bit, for he wasn't expecting to hear anyone speak, but once he had gained the presence of mind to turn around and investigate who the sound came from, he found himself face to face with a boy of roughly his own age: freckled, with green tinted eyes and jet black hair even darker than Paul's, dressed in a school uniform and sitting in one of the rickety chairs offered to visitors. Behind the boy was a small girl who looked an awful lot like him, his sister perhaps, sleeping in a bed with her left leg propped up on a short stack of books and blankets, wrapped in an uneven plaster cast.
"I don't know who you are," John replied for lack of a better response, his words sounding quite George-like in their deadpan delivery.
"Oh," said the boy, standing up from his seat and offering a handshake. John absently shook the young boy's hand, pushing himself up in his bed and making an effort not to look like the weakling he perceived himself to be lying on the mattress. "My name's Stu." He grinned at his own introduction and performed an exaggerated mock bow that brought a smile to John's otherwise stoic face. Whoever this Stu boy was, he seemed so far to be quite likeable.
"Stu?" asked John, slightly amused by the name. In his mind, he conjured a picture of the boy's parents holding him on the day of his birth, a cauldron of stew beside them, and deciding joyfully to name their newborn son after the liquid dinner dish.
"Well, my name's not just Stu. It's short for Stuart. Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe."
"Oh, well I'm John," the other boy introduced himself back, slightly disappointed that his companion hadn't been named after Stu. John intently studied Stu, wondering for the first time exactly how long he had been lying obliviously next to the aforementioned boy. "Why are you here, exactly?" he asked, in an effort to break the ice.
"Me?" asked Stu, sitting back down in his wooden chair and tapping the sides in a bored manner. "Well, that's my sister over there," he gestured to the young girl behind him. "Her name's Joyce. She came here yesterday."
"What's wrong with her?"
"She broke her leg," Stu said offhandedly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"How?" asked John.
"Yeah," said Stu. "I came here right after school to see her, but mostly because mum made me. She said that when Joyce wakes up she'll want to see me or her or someone else from the family. My other sister Pauline is here to, but she's off with mum getting lunch or something." Stuart shrugged and readjusted himself in his seat. John remembered the chairs as not being very comfortable at all and wondered why Stuart was willingly subjecting himself to their hard-seated horrors when he could just as easily stand up.
After a short lull in conversation, John started up the pleasantries again. "Hey," he said, causing Stu to look up and raise his eyebrows. "Do you know what day it is?"
Stu looked at the ceiling for a moment, as if very deep in thought. "October eleventh," he stated after a while.
"October eleventh?" John exclaimed in disbelief, eyes wide. "Last time I remember it was October seventh! Are you sure that's what day it is?"
"Well… yes. I mean, they put the date on the board at school," said Stu uneasily, looking at John wide-eyed like he was a talking fish or something of the sort. "And school is never wrong about what day it is. Why do you ask?"
"Cause that's…" John paused his sentence for a second as he did the math in his head. "Four days! And what happened to my birthday?"
"When's your birthday?" asked Stu.
"October ninth."
Stu held up his pointer finger in a silent gesture to remain quiet for a few seconds, and then hopped up from his chair, pulling a clipboard from the bottom of John's bed. "This paper says you came here on October ninth," he commented with an air of slight interest as he looked at the print on it, handing the clipboard over to John and standing next to him in order to peer over his shoulder. "See? Right there." Stu pointed to a small line labeled 'Date of admission', and sure enough scrawled in messy writing next to it was 10/9/48.
"Well then…" John said distantly. "What happened, anyway?"
Stu shrugged. "Wouldn't know. I only came here yesterday. But whatever happened to you, it sure did a number on your face."
"Huh?" asked John, self-consciously bringing his hands to his face and remembering that it had hurt to touch his eyes when he had awoken. He scowled for no particular reason.
"Yeah, maybe you got beat up or something?"
"I did not get beat up," John practically hissed, narrowing his eyes at Stuart, his manner turning sour in less than a second. Surprised at what seemed to be a complete overreaction to his suggestion, Stuart held his hands up in mock surrender and took a step backward.
"I was just saying," Stu muttered defensively. "You don't have to be all touchy about it."
John dropped his hands to his side and plopped back down onto the bed, turning crossly on his side so he was no longer facing Stuart and instead treated to a view of a sickly looking older boy of about thirteen. He bit his lip and pouted slightly, not caring that he was acting childish. John crossed his arms over his chest and hugged himself- an action he performed a lot whenever something provoked his easily volatile emotions. Besides, it was nice to be hugged.
"You know, you're being a real git, right?" Stuart said sharply, invading into John's inner circle of stewing anger in his brain and only serving to heighten it. "It was just a suggestion! And what on God's green earth do you have to be bitter about anyway, you're only seven!"
The last part sent John Lennon's already boiling temper over the edge. Somehow, everything that Stu or anybody else so ignorant, so ignorant about who he was and why he acted like he did had ever said up until that pointed spilled forth, straight from his brain out his mouth. In fact, as he was screaming at Stuart, he didn't even realize what he was saying until much after he had said it. "Eight!" he practically yelled, sitting up and looking straight at Stuart Sutcliffe. "I'm eight, apparently, since two days ago, and I wasn't even awake for it! And I don't even know what the hell happened to me, and nobody's probably going to tell me because nobody cares! Nobody cares about me at all, and they never ever did!"
"I'm sure at least someone cares about you…" Stu said uncertainly, all of his previous annoyance dissipated, wringing his hands. "Your mum was here…"
"My mum," scoffed John bitterly. "What does she care?! If she cared she would maybe think about saying hello to me or something every once in a while! If she loved me she'd walk me to school and kiss me goodnight like everyone else's mum does, but she doesn't! If my mother cared anything about me she wouldn't have let Bobby do all this to me!" He pulled the sleeve of his hospital gown back and pointed to a patchwork of whitish pink scars on it, acquired from the years of, as he saw it, his mother simply not caring. He pushed the sleeve back down and hugged the blankets closer to his chin, hunkering down farther into the bed, embarrassed at revealing what more or less amounted to his entire life story to a complete stranger. "It's not fair," he sighed softly, not to Stu or anybody else in particular. "Just not fair at all."
The conversation petered out slowly in the tumultuous and awkward wake of John's outburst, and Stu leaned against the wall between John's and Joyce's beds, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his knickers as he looked off towards the door. "Who's Bobby?" he asked softly after the short lull.
"Stepfather," said John shortly, the word tasting palpably bitter in his mouth.
"You should tell someone what he does to you," suggested Stu. "It's not right."
"Won't matter," muttered John, avoiding Stu's gaze and focusing on a water stain on the ceiling. "He's been gone now, for… almost three weeks." The figure surprised John once he did the math. Had it only been that long? It felt like forever since that one certain day with Bobby, when the awful life that the small nuclear family had shared had come to a climax and then completely imploded, fault of none other than himself, the stupid little idiot he was. And so much had happened, with his mother, Ritchie, the rest of friends, and everything else he could possibly imagine. Bad things just seemed to happen around him. Perhaps, if he wasn't around, the world would be so much bettered for it.
"Did your mum kick him out?"
"He's dead." John squinted and looked hard at Stu, pleased slightly when his acquaintance's face revealed only slight surprise, not pity or shock or anything else to that effect.
"Oh," said Stu. "My father's a bit like that, too." He had a wistful, sad look on his face as he revealed the information. "He doesn't hurt me or Pauline or Joyce or anything ever, but I've seen him being really mean to my mum sometimes. Drinks a lot too. But at least he's not home too much, he's usually working in a boat." Stu shrugged, and wiped off the strange look from his face in as impressive an effort of apathy that John's had ever before seen, except maybe some of his own work at hiding emotions. "She's told people, and he's gone to therapy some. Mum says it's making him nicer… I wouldn't know though."
John nodded.
"Stuart?" a woman's voice said. The door to the hospital room opened and a small, dark-haired, timid looking woman showed her face behind a backdrop of white hallway light. "Come on, let's go home. You need to do your homework."
Stu removed himself from the wall and shuffled over to his mother, who put her arm around her son and began to lead him out of the hospital. Just before he left the room, Stu turned back towards John and waved at John, who waved back enthusiastically. As the door closed behind Stu, John leaned back onto the lumpy bed pillow and smiled in contentment. It seemed that he had found a new friend.
A/N: Yup, I know, I just HAD to include Stu... because Stu is awesome and everyone knows it. You know why? Because Stu's awesome. Anyway, I'd love to see some reviews, did you love it, hate it, want more, want to hit me with a rubber chicken? Love to hear it either way :-)