The story begins in the middle just like how the first story began.
Monday May 28, 2012 (10PM)
"Are you done, Winter?" asked Cathy, one of the RN's working that night.
Winter yawned, "Yep! I'm going to catch the bus back to Castle Rock."
"Jesus... Enjoy that adventure!" she laughed. "I can't believe how insane it's been here tonight. The children's unit is full! So many kids coming from the Canal Days Festival. Some of them have limbs torn right off of them..."
The voice from Winter's memory spoke in her head. She remembered little Lily's voice, "He ate Georgie's Arm, too..."
Winter rubbed her eyes, trying to get the voice to go away. "That's messed up. Do they need more staff? I can stay and help." she responded.
"No, you did your twelve hours. Go home," she smiled at her.
She looked back at Cathy and weakly smiled, "Okay... Well, I'll see ya later, Alligator."
"In a while, Crocodile!" she responded.
Winter walked down the hallway in her black scrub pants and her navy blue zip-up sweater. As she continued to walk, her intuition told her to turn her head to one of the hospital rooms that had the door closed.
It was a room that was in her unit, as she had been taking care of patients that had been given the rooms to that particular unit that night.
She noticed the clip-board in the folder rack that hung on the wall beside the door. She blinked at it confused as everyone in that hallway had been discharged, and it was only Cathy and a couple of others RN's units that were now occupied.
Winter picked up the clip-board and looked at the paperwork.
Name: Henry Bowers
Date of Birth: May 3, 1980 (32 years old)
Reason For Admission: Suicide Attempt/Alcohol Poisoning
Winter's breath got caught in her chest and her heart began to race as she read the paperwork. The face of the love of her life that she left four years ago passed through her mind. Not only was her experience from last night still stuck in her head, the last memories flashed in her memory of him talking to ghosts and trying to escape the voices by drinking alcohol.
"You have no idea how much I love you, Winter. I can't live in a world without you in it with me..." his words kept replaying in her head as she thought about being in that very hospital with Henry by her side.
With anxiety building up in her stomach, she opened the door to the hospital room.
She walked by the first bed that was unoccupied and walked closer to the window to the second bed. She stopped to look in the bed that was unoccupied, as well.
Confused, she looked around the empty room. There was nobody admitted in there.
"Henry?" she called towards the washroom. She knew he wouldn't have been able to walk to the washroom. If he was there, he would have been on life-support.
She wanted to be sure, though.
Winter walked to the closed washroom door and turned the knob.
When she opened the door, Henry's body fell from the ceiling and he had stopped midway as a rope around his neck snapped his neck.
Winter screamed and fell backwards, landing on the floor.
She hyperventilated as she watched Henry's body swing from side to side in between the door frame.
'It's not real, Winter! You're dreaming! It's the PTSD! You're just dreaming!' she thought to herself as she closed her eyes tightly. 'But why was his name on the clip-board?!'
Winter slowly opened her eyes.
Henry was gone.
Winter grabbed her inhaler from her pocket and inhaled the medicine into her lungs.
She quickly got back up to her feet and left the empty room. For the second time in the past twenty-four hours, she thought she was going crazy.
Walking back to the RN desk, she could still feel her heart racing in her chest with what she had just seen.
Cathy was still here, working on some patient paperwork. She looked up at Winter, "Are you okay? You look like you seen a ghost..."
Winter's pupils were wide, her face was pale, and she looked traumatized.
"My hall was all discharged, right? There was no new intakes down that hall?" she asked, wanting to know that what she saw was only a dream.
"Yeah, no new patients are being admitted down there until Susan shows up for the night shift..." she nodded, still looking questionably at Winter's face. "Even on the security camera down that hall, the last patient that went in was at 9:15PM, and it shows them leaving at 9:52PM after you stitched them up."
Winter nodded, "Okay..." She sighed, "I'm just really tired. I think I might go in the showers to wake me up before I leave."
Cathy nodded, "I haven't seen anyone go in, so they're all yours."
Winter walked down the hallway towards the showers. She had been in the showers before in that hospital, but not since she was seventeen and suffering from a 107F fever from the infections and Pneumonia she developed in the sewers.
She stepped into the bright shower room. Looking around; She had flashbacks of the hallucinations she had in that shower room when she was a teenager and was sick as a dog. She couldn't help but feel the pinch of fear in her stomach.
Before she took off her clothes for her shower, Winter grabbed her phone to check what she had missed during her shift in the past twelve hours.
'Three Missed Calls from Derry, Maine & One Unread Text Message'
"Derry? Who's contacting me from here?" she asked quietly to herself.
'Twenty Missed Calls from Eddie Kaspbrak & Seven Unread Text Messages'
"Jesus Christ, Edz! What could be so friggin' important that you're calling me twenty times and texting me seven times from out-of-state while you're working?"
Winter opened up the text messages from Eddie and skimmed through them from oldest to newest.
9:45AM - 'You know what would have been fun? If you came with me to New York. Driving people around and conferences has been so boring... How have you been?'
10:30AM - 'I know you're probably working, but check this out when you get the chance! Definitely the coolest celebrity I've ever had in the back of my limo! You're going to FLIP OUT!'
There was a video attached of Eddie in his suit and tie standing beside Leonardo DiCaprio on the sidewalk in front of Kleinfeld.
Winter pressed play.
"There we go! It's recording now!" Eddie said to the camera as him and Leonardo looked at the screen. "Before you leave, could you say hi to my best friend, Winter. She loves you!"
Leonardo waved and smiled, "Hi, Winter! I like your name! Winter's my favourite season, too! Eddie told me a little about you, and you sound like a wonderful person."
Winter laughed as she watched the video. "No! Fucking! Way!" she exclaimed.
She continued to watch the video.
Eddie shook Leonardo's hand.
"It was nice meeting you, Eddie!" Leonardo said to him,"Give me your card. I'll call you whenever I'm in the Maine area."
Eddie reached into his suit pocket and smiled at him, "Thanks for the video, Leo. I appreciate it."
As Eddie walked back to his limo, he looked into the camera and made a silly face by blowing all the air to one side of his face which made him look like a chipmunk. Then he wiggled his eyebrows individually.
Winter smiled as she watched him make faces in silence.
"This is why you should have come to New York with me!"
The video ended.
"Oh, my God!" Winter blushed and smiled at the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio said hi to her.
Once she got herself back together, she continued on with skimming Eddie's messages.
11:31AM - 'Just got off the phone with Myra yelling at me for an hour. I need to make things right soon and figure out how I'm going to leave her without her trying to destroy my entire business and wipe my bank account dry. I can't deal with this bullshit anymore! February and March were the best months of my life when you and I lived together. I want to go back to that! Fuck all of this!'
12:10PM - 'You need to call me back ASAP! I'm getting on a plane to come back to Maine right now! Did Mike call you? I fucking crashed my car when he called me!'
"Mike? Mike who?" Winter said out-loud.
2:01PM - 'Winter, please answer back! Which hospital are you at tonight? I really hope you're not in Derry! I'm going on the plane soon, and I'll be offline for about 7 hours. I'll text you when I land.'
9PM - 'Just got off the plane! I'm really fucking worried right now. Text me where you are and I'll come pick you up.'
"What's going on?" she said out-loud, feeling concerned.
Eddie had just texted her while she was looking at her phone.
'I drove to Castle Rock Hospital... you're not there. You're in Derry tonight? If you don't answer, I'm just going to drive there anyway.'
Winter replied back to him, 'Yeah, I'm in Derry tonight. Just got off work. About to take a shower at the hospital. What's going on? PS. Loved the DiCaprio video!'
As she exited Eddie's texts, she went to the unread message from whoever was trying to call her from Derry.
1:00PM - 'Hey, Winter. It's Mike Hanlon. Eddie gave me your number. Call me back when you get a chance. Even if it's late when you get this, just call me back. It's urgent.'
"Mike Hanlon?" Winter said out-loud. She shook her head from the distractions, "I need to shower."
She put her phone on the chair and undressed. She walked over to one of the shower heads and turned on the warm water and began to shampoo her hair.
As she cleaned herself, Eddie was calling her and texting her. Although she didn't know as she was listening to the water hitting the floor tiles, Eddie's newest text read, 'No! Fuck! Don't go into the showers! Stay in a public area! I'll be in Derry ASAP! Just stay around people!'
As Winter showered under the hot water the scars on her stomach began to burn. She quickly looked down at them and saw blood pouring from her stomach as if they were fresh.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" she exclaimed in pain and fear as she clutched her stomach.
"GET ME OUT OF HERE!" screamed a female voice from the shower drain.
Winter jumped at the scream and looked down towards the shower drain where the water and her light red blood was being washed away down into the sewers.
The Derry sewers!
Cautiously, Winter got down to her knees and leaned over the drain. She was startled and confused about the voice that just came through.
"Hello?" she said above it.
A few seconds later, the voice responded, "Please help me!"
Winter blinked confused. She felt deja-vu as she heard the girl yell back to her.
"Who's down there?" she asked.
"My name is Winter Callaghan. I've been stuck in the sewer with a clown. It killed two children named George Denbrough and Lily. Please help me! I'm getting sick and I think I might die."
Winter's breath got stuck in her lungs and her eyes went wide with shock. She began to shake and remained quiet.
'I remember this! I remember this!' Flashbacks of her at seventeen years old yelling up towards one of the drain pipes when a woman spoke into it after she met Ace came rushing back. 'I WAS TALKING TO MYSELF?! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!' Then it dawned on Winter... This was the night before she was found, exactly fifteen years ago to the day.
"Hello? Please don't leave!" her younger self cried.
Shaking as she stared at the drain, Winter said to her seventeen-year-old self, "Winter, you're going to be okay! You're going to be led out tomorrow morning, and Jim Hopper is going to be there..." She began to cry as she remembered the day she was carried out from the sewers, "And Henry's going to be there!"
'Henry... The love of my life... I miss you so much... That little teenager in the sewers doesn't realize how haunted the both of you are going to be from the experience, and how it's going to pry the two of you apart in the future.'
"How do you know this?" she cried.
"Trust me, I just know, okay?" Winter put her hand to her mouth as she shook and cried. "You're really sick, so don't fall asleep! Just stay awake... like how you told Georgie... just sing and don't sleep... And don't blame yourself for Georgie or Lily, okay?"
"Okay..." Seventeen-year-old Winter sobbed.
Winter sat on the shower floor shaking and crying. 'There's no way! There's no possible way I was talking to myself when I was in the sewers!'
But it's what happened. Winter could never figure out how the woman on the other end of the pipes knew that she was going to be rescued the next day. The realization hit her hard.
As Winter reflected, it dawned on her. "I'm right above the clown's freezer! Oh, my God! I'm standing above Its home!"
Winter got back up to her feet and turned off the water. She grabbed her towel and dried herself off as she walked towards her clothes.
As she put her clothes back on, she looked down to her stomach that had just been bleeding. The scars were healed. They were still there like usual, but they healed.
She grabbed her phone and her duffel bag and left the shower room.
Winter read the last text message from Eddie and decided to call him.
There was only one dial tone before he answered on his bluetooth.
"Winter!" he exclaimed, "I've been so fucking worried!"
"Hey..." Winter said as she walked quickly down the hospital hallway and looked around as if she felt the boogeyman watching her, "Are you going to be here soon? Something real fucking strange is happening here tonight. Kinda like at the concert last night."
Eddie paused for a moment before he asked, "What have you seen?"
Winter squeezed the bridge of her nose as she tried to think of everything, "Well, for one, the kid's unit is full of kids with missing limbs. Then, before I left for my shower, I saw Henry hang himself in a hospital room. Then, during my shower, teenage me was talking to current me from the sewer drain. What's going on, Edz?"
"Fuck!" Eddie exclaimed, "Are you near people, Winter? Please don't be by yourself."
"I'm walking in the hospital, just heading to the waiting room. I'll be around people when I..."
Winter stopped talking as a woman in her seventies with long grey hair walked in front of her. It was the old lady from her dreams. She always wore the same clothes; A pink fitted sweater and black leggings. She had a black jacket on that had "Derry High" written at the back, and she looked like she hadn't showered in years. Winter continued to watch her walk in front silently as she stayed on the phone with Eddie.
"Winter? What happened? Are you still there?" Eddie asked.
"Yeah... Yeah... I'm here..." Winter was distracted and followed the woman from her dreams.
Eddie became concerned, "What's going on?"
"You know that lady I told you about from my night-terrors? The one that's always stuck in the sewers with me?"
"Y-Yeah... The old woman?" Eddie answered nervously.
"She's walking in front of me..."
Eddie began to panic, "I'll be there in a couple of minutes, Winter! Don't follow her!"
The phone had begun to crackle out.
"The phone's cutting out, Edz. What did you say?" she asked.
Eddie kept repeating, "Don't follow her!" But the phone was crackling out and Winter could only hear him say, "Follow her!"
The phone died.
As Eddie continued to drive, he said into his bluetooth after he heard the disconnection, "Winter?!" The phone beeped. He hit his steering wheel, "FUCK!" As he continued to call her back, the signal continued to drop.
When the call dropped, she quickly looked perplexed at her screen that showed there were no signal bars left.
"Dammit!" she whispered to herself. She quickly stuffed her phone in her duffel bag and moved her damp long hair back as she followed the old woman from her dreams.
The old woman continued to walk in front of her, going straight down the hallway. As she walked, she left a trail of sewer water behind her. She was soaking wet.
"Excuse me?" Winter called to the lady.
The woman just continued to walk without paying attention to Winter behind her.
As Winter had her attention on following the woman, a group of nurses came out of a room that was occupied by a man who was crying in hysterics.
"We've got to give this man a sedative!" one of the nurses that Winter never met said to the group as they walked away.
Winter's attention broke from the older woman as she continued to walk silently down the hall to the man sitting up in the bed that the nurses were just tending to.
"WHY WON'T ANYONE LISTEN TO ME?!" the man with the cuts and bruises cried from the bed, "THE CLOWN ATE MY BOYFRIEND! I WATCHED HIM EAT HIM AND NO ONE IS FUCKING LISTENING TO ME!"
Images of Pennywise flashed through her memory. She remembered the monster with animal-like features and movements haunting her.
"I am the eater of worlds! I am the eater of children!"
Winter's face dropped and she felt numb as she walked into the room with the man crying on the bed.
The man looked up from his shaking hands at Winter, "Why won't anyone FUCKING listen to me?!"
She could feel herself shaking as she pulled up a chair and sat herself in front of him. She rested her arms on her thighs and leaned in to show that she was open to listen to the man who was traumatized.
He looked at her face and saw that she looked scared, "Oh, my God! You believe me?! You know what I'm talking about?!"
Winter continued to stare at him, "A clown ate your boyfriend?" she repeated. "What happened? What did It... The clown... look like?"
The man tried to speak calmly, trying his best to keep from crying, "Adrian and I were just at Canal Days. We were on the bridge above the Barrens where a few fuckers beat him up. They threw him into the river..." His lower lip began to quiver as he went on, "When I went closer, I saw him floating to a clown that looked like he was pulling him towards him - like magic!"
Winter placed her hand to her mouth as she began to shake with fear. Her stomach was tying into knots from anxiety and she felt like she was falling as she didn't feel steady with the ground underneath her.
"He picked him up and the clown's face morphed into... into..." he couldn't find the word.
"Like a shark? Mouth full of razor-sharp teeth?" Winter finished for him.
Adrian began to cry again, "I watched him eat my boyfriend right in front of me! Then the Barren's filled up with hundreds of red balloons!"
Winter's eyes went wide and she felt like her sense of self was disappearing. She could feel a range of emotions taking over but she couldn't focus on which emotion was stronger. All the emotions came from fear and trauma. She thought about the night before at the concert, and wondered if that was connected to the clown.
She blinked her eyes tightly, trying to come back to her senses and talk to this traumatized man. "My name's Winter. What's yours?" was the first thing that came out of her.
"Don..." he looked deeply into her eyes, "I see the trauma in your eyes when I talk about it. Are you the only one in this town that believes me?"
Winter quickly got up on her feet and raised her sweater to show Don her three large claw scars on her stomach. "That same thing that killed your boyfriend did this to me when I was seventeen. I was stuck in the sewers with that clown for three days."
Don blinked as he stared at the scars and looked back up at her face. He blinked away more tears as realization hit him, "You're Winter Callaghan..." it dawned on him, "You were in the Maine newspaper for weeks..." He looked at her kind of relieved, "So I'm not going crazy?"
'Nope! And neither am I...'
Winter shook her head as she put her sweater back down, "Not at all... And don't let the nurses, the town, the police or anyone make you think that you're crazy! There was only one cop in this dumpster town that believed me. It was Officer Jim Hopper. Unfortunately, he passed away about six years ago..."
"You're a nurse and you believe me..." he said quietly.
Winter looked to the ground as she quickly thought of Officer Jim Hopper and then looked back up at Don, "Officer Hopper told me when I was scared that he wouldn't believe me that there are a lot of sane people in this town with the same insane stories. I'm one of those people. Just know that the cops and the hospital will try to put a label on you as insane, so I just want you to know that everything you told me is off the record..." he continued to stare into her eyes and noticed her pain and sincerity. "If you need to talk, just call me..." she handed him a card with her name and number on it. "I'm so sorry about your boyfriend."
He took the card and wiped a tear from his cheek, "Thank you, Winter. I'm sorry that you had to go through everything that you went through back in '97."
She weakly smiled at him.
The phone in her duffel bag began to vibrate. As Winter walked out of the hospital room, she looked at the caller ID on her phone. It was the same Derry, Maine number calling from earlier - Mike Hanlon.
"Hello?" she said when she put her phone to her ear. "Mike?"
"Hey, Winter..." His tone was friendly, yet it was terrified too.
"I'm sorry, Mike. I was going to call you back, but I'm just getting out of work and got distracted," she said as she leaned her back against the wall in the hallway.
"No worries, Winter."
'This is where you're going to tell me that the clown is back...' she thought as she anxiously closed her eyes.
"Winter, It's back..." he said cautiously, "You and Henry never promised like the rest of us did, but I wanted to see if you wanted to help us fight It again? We will be sure to destroy It this time."
"Um..." Hearing him say it made reality hit really hard. "Have you talked to Henry? Is he going?"
"Yeah, he's going to come," Mike said.
Winter pinched the bridge of her nose and thought about seeing Henry after four years. Tears began to build up in her eyes as she kept her eyes closed... She wanted to see him so bad... She wanted the man who she grew up with back, before Jim Hopper, Will Hopper, and Earl Bowers died in a car crash and before the ghosts attached themselves to him and tried to get inside of his head.
"Are you still there, Winter?" Mike asked after she fell silent.
Winter opened her eyes and quickly wiped the tears away, "Yeah, I'll come."
As Winter continued to lean against the wall in the hallway, she noticed Eddie running up the hall, looking in all direction for her until he saw her leaning against the wall. He ran up to her still wearing his work attire and looking stressed out.
She was happy to see him after everything that had happened that night.
Winter wrapped her arm around his shoulders with her other hand still holding the phone to her ear. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into a hug.
"Sounds good, Winter. I'll text you the details, okay?"
"Yeah, sounds good, Mike. I'll see you tomorrow..." she pressed the end button on the phone and wrapped her other arm around Eddie's shoulders.
Winter pressed her face against the side of his neck as he hugged her even tighter.
"What a fucking terrible day! I was having a panic attack the whole way here and went through nearly my whole inhaler!" Edz said into her neck. "You don't have to do this, Winter. You didn't make the promise,"
Winter took a moment to think about it, "You're going, Edz... Henry's going, too... This clown stole my whole life away..."
Eddie unwrapped his arms from her waist and she unwrapped herself from his shoulders. He wasn't sure if he was more worried about the clown or about Henry and her reuniting. He looked at her closely, and Winter could see the worry in his expression, "We need to get out of here."
Winter put her bag over her shoulder as her and Eddie walked down the hallway, "I want to quickly go grab some medical supplies from our inventory room."
"Are you allowed to do that?" Eddie asked as they approached the room with the key-card lock on it. It was tight security to get access to the room, but the windows were huge and all the drugs on the racks could be seen by anyone who walked by.
"Nope!" Winter answered quickly, "But, thankfully there's no cameras guarding the door. I think maybe the security guards are junkies and go in here to steal drugs."
Eddie looked at her surprised and then said sarcastically, "Oh! Great! That's reassuring!"
Winter couldn't help but smile at his sarcasm. Just his facial expressions and things he would say could make her smile.
"Just wait out here and guard. I'll be quick..." she reassuringly smiled at him.
"Yeah... Guard... I can do that..." he said worried with a bit of sarcasm in his voice.
Winter could sense how uneasy he felt being in Derry with just the two of them after the news of the clown just broke out. "Hey, Edz..." she grabbed onto his shoulders and smiled at him, "I'll be two seconds. You can even wave to me from the glass windows. We can even play charades while I'm in there."
Eddie laughed at the image of the two of them playing charades in such a stressful situation, "Jesus Christ! How come you can always make me laugh when I'm stressing out?"
Winter smiled and shrugged, "It's a gift, I guess!"
"Uh-Huh!" he expressed with a comical expression, "Your gifts are definitely unique, I'll tell you that much!"
Winter shook her head and giggled. "I'll be a couple of minutes!" She swiped her key-card and went into the drug inventory room. The room wasn't big like a pharmacy's inventory room would be, but it had everything the hospital needed.
She looked around for gauze, pain killers, stitches, needles...
Eddie knocked on the glass window.
Winter looked over at him.
He held up two fingers.
Winter giggled and yelled so he could hear her, "Two words!"
He gave her a thumbs up. He rolled an invisible camera.
"Movie!"
He nodded and smiled.
She continued to glance over at him while she was picking out more supplies that the group would need.
He held up one finger.
"First word!"
She continued to watch Eddie as he began to throw punches at the air, like he was fighting somebody. He pretended to punch himself and dramatically fell to the ground as he continued to make it look like he was beating himself up.
"What the fuck?!" Winter broke out laughing. "It's gotta be Fight Club!"
He gave her a thumbs up and a smile from the ground.
Winter continued to giggle as she picked out more medical supplies. She was happy that Eddie was there to put some light in the stressful situation.
As Eddie waited outside the room, he looked up and down the hallway to make sure no one was going to be walking by soon. He didn't want Winter to lose her job for stealing.
He jumped at the sound of tapping at the glass window.
When Eddie looked over, he was face to face with Stan on the other side of the glass in the inventory room. It was Stan as a kid, looking the way he last remembered him. He looked different, though; His skin was blue, almost like ice. Eddie thought that he looked dead as he stood there, smiling a very toothy smile at Eddie.
"Hey, Speghettiman!" he said very raspy, like it wasn't his voice, "I guess I was one of the two who was supposed to die! Do you want to be the next?"
Eddie began to panic and inhaled from his inhaler.
Stan disappeared.
Eddie looked over to where Winter was and saw her picking more supplies. He became distracted and noticed a tall evil shadow walking over to her.
It was the clown!
Eddie began pounding on the glass with his hand, "WINTER!"
Winter shot her head over to Eddie who was panicking and trying to open the door, but the lock was too secure that he wouldn't be able to open it without a card.
"Edz?" she said nervously, feeling like she was going to cry. She was too scared from his expression to turn her head towards the direction that she could feel a presence.
"WINTER, GET OUT OF THERE!" Eddie yelled.
Winter stood frozen as her lips began to quiver, scared to move or look over to whatever was standing in front of her.
Slowly, she turned her head.
The clown smiled at her standing at seven feet tall, wearing the same colourful clown outfit that she remembered as a kid. Its makeup was the same, and the force coming from It felt stronger than It ever did, as if It became stronger as It slept for the years that passed.
As Winter stood frozen, she looked into Its eyes. She never remembered feeling this scared when she saw the clown before. It gave her the impression that It wanted revenge on her for sedating It in the sewers fifteen years ago. Then the thought dawned on her, why did the clown wake up so much earlier? It's been fifteen years, not twenty-seven...
And then another realization hit her... This was the same presence she felt last night at the stadium... This was Bob Gray.
"FUCK! WINTER!" Eddie panicked. He tried to hit and kick the glass as hard as he could so it would break. He was punching the glass so hard that his knuckles began to bleed.
Winter continued to stare into the clown's eyes as Its pupils began to turn into lights.
The dead lights.
Winter felt hypnotized and she was no longer in control of her actions.
"Fill it up!" the clown directed her.
Winter grabbed a syringe and needle and a vile of Fentanyl. As she continued to look into the clown's dead lights, she pushed the needle threw the lid of the vile and pulled the opioid into the syringe.
Eddie looked up from the window he was trying to break and saw Winter hypnotized with the full syringe in her hand.
"NO!" he screamed.
He didn't know what else to do. He wondered what could make the locks unlock without a special key card.
It quickly dawned on him what he needed to do. He ran over just a few feet down the hallway and pushed down on the fire alarm.
The loud alarms sounded off in the hospital.
Eddie ran back over to the supplies room, and was relieved that the door was unlocked.
Winter had tilted her head to the side and was about to stick the syringe into her neck. Eddie ignored the clown directing her what to do and grabbed her and her hand before she killed herself under the clown's orders. He threw the syringe to the floor.
He put his arm around her as he ran her out of the inventory room and walked her down the hall before any nurses, administration, security or doctors came by and found them acting suspiciously. Eddie led her out the first exit door outside to get away from the loud alarms going off in the building.
He put both hands on her shoulders and looked at her as she was beginning to wake up from her trance. "Winter, are you okay? You didn't get the needle in your neck, right?" He brushed his thumb against the side of her neck that she was about to insert the needle into and looked closely for any needle marks.
She shook her head still disoriented, "No... No... I'm fine..."
Eddie continued to look at her with worry in his eyes. He had vaguely remembered scary moments with the clown, but that was by far, the scariest.
He continued to stare deeply into her eyes.
She stared back into his, "You saved my life..." she said.
Eddie put one hand to her cheek and rubbed her skin with his thumb. He really wanted to say, "fuck it!" and just kiss her there for everyone to see.
As he thought about it, one of the doctors him and Myra knew walked out from the building. It was one of Eddie's specialists named Doctor Clarkson.
"Hi, Eddie!" Doctor Clarkson waved.
Eddie took a step back from Winter and smiled at the doctor and nodded.
"Good thing you're out here and not in there with all the alarms going off. Someone must have pulled it by accident," said the doctor. "How's Myra?" he asked.
Winter rolled her eyes at the mention of the name and looked towards the streets.
Pretending that everything was okay, Eddie faked a smile and said, "Good... She's good."
Later that night, Eddie and Winter had arrived to Winter's home in Castle Rock after driving for nearly two hours.
Winter walked into her apartment with Eddie close behind her. She quickly turned on all the lights and they headed towards her kitchen.
Winter slouched her body over the island in her kitchen and rubbed her face, "Jesus! I don't know how I'm going to sleep tonight."
Eddie sat on a barstool at the island and stared at her as she sighed.
She took her hands away from her face and looked at him, "Will you stay the night with me?" She hoped he would.
Eddie's eyes expressed sadness and he looked like he didn't want to give the answer he was going to give her, "You know I can't... When I crashed the company car in New York, the insurance company called my house. Myra knows I'm back in Maine."
Winter got back up from her slouching position and put her attention on a spill on the counter and grabbed a towel to clean it. The thought of Edz manipulating her and her using him dawned on her again. "I hate this, Edz... I feel like a Goddamn home wrecker."
Eddie looked at her seriously, "My home was wrecked before we even ran into each other in January, Winter. I was separating from her when you and I began hanging out together."
'Here we go again with the same argument...'
Winter continued to keep her attention on cleaning the counter, "It doesn't even matter if you were separating back then. As of right now, for over a month, I've been 'the other woman', the 'side chick', the 'Mistress'. I'm getting tired of us having an actual relationship behind closed doors, but once we're in public, anyone that knows you and Myra could be watching. I turn from being the best relationship you say you've ever had, and the best sex you've ever had, to being introduced as your best friend, Winter."
Eddie put his hand through his hair and sighed. "You're not a side chick, the other woman, or a mistress, Winter. Myra has me by my balls right now! She's planning to destroy my whole business, which she co-owns, if I bring up separation or divorce again," he said frustrated.
Winter glanced up at him and noticed his frustration, "I'm just saying that I hate having just half of you. I want all of you."
Eddie continued to look at her admiringly, "You will once I make things right... Will I have all of you, though?"
"What do you mean?" she asked confused, but she knew what he was talking about.
"You're still not over Henry. I understand and accept that you'll never love me like you loved him. I just want to know that, when we do make our relationship official, that you'll be over him..." he brought up.
The fact that Winter and Henry will be seeing each other tomorrow didn't help the situation for Eddie.
Winter knew that's what he was going to bring up and he was right.
She sighed, "It's been four years... If he's moved on, then I need to move on. When you were separating back in February and March, you had most of me. We were happy."
He nodded, "I know we were... I want to go back to that..."
"Now I don't even know if that's going to happen with your mom and Myra on your back about staying married. I can't sneak around forever. It makes me feel like shit. Unless you're back from leaving Maine a day early, you basically just fuck me and bail so you're not home too late..." she said sadly. "It makes me feel..." she looked at him, "Like you're manipulating both me and Myra."
Eddie looked at her in disbelief and got up from the bar stool. "Why would you think that? I've been in love with you since I was a kid! It fucking hurts to hear you say that!"
Winter sighed, "Well, it does, Edz! I'm trying my hardest to move on from Henry, and when I think I'm moving on with you there supporting me by coming over, and we confide in each other, It makes me feel so amazing and happy... But, then when I'm alone, and I remember that you're leaving me to go home and be with your wife, I feel like garbage."
'But I'm using you for sex, so it's a fair-trade, right? Or am I letting Pennywise get to my head?'
"Hey!" he walked over to her, "I'm going to make things right, okay? I'm going to figure it out so it can be just the two of us!" He placed his hand on her cheek and stroked her chin. "I don't like hearing you call yourself that because of me. I'm trying to figure out how I can do this."
As Winter stared into his eyes with Eddie so close to her, she didn't want to argue about it anymore. All she wanted was to feel again; To feel alive with love and happiness. She spent almost four years numb and depressed.
She placed her hand on top of his hand that was on her cheek and softly kissed his fingers. She looked at him, "I just want to feel things again, Edz. Some days I feel like I'm still alone, walking around in the sewers, but then you make me feel things I thought I could never feel again since Henry and I broke up. You're like my light out of the darkness..." she paused and stared at him, "But then I remember that you're married... And that just takes over away all the great feelings I get when I'm around you."
He stared lovingly at her, "Fuck, Winter, I'm going to do everything I can to make things right. Just please give me more time."
He kissed her lips passionately. He parted her lips open and snuck his tongue into her mouth and played with her tongue.
She put her hands through his hair and felt herself getting turned on. She brought her leg up to his hip and he pulled it up further as he thrusted his crotch into hers. She could feel the bulge from his boner on her pelvis.
He ran one of his hands up the front of her sweater and squeezed her breast. As he did so, he pushed his waist more into hers.
His cell phone rang in his pocket.
He parted from her and said, "Just ignore it."
Eddie grabbed her waist and picked her up so she was sitting on the island. He zipped down her sweater, pulled it off of her, and then slid her tank top over her head and he placed it on one of the bar stools. He grabbed the side of her head and kissed her passionately again.
His phone began ringing again.
He looked down and sighed, "Fuck!"
Winter spoke annoyed, "You should get it..."
Eddie met her gaze with the same sadness in his eyes. He grabbed his phone from his pocket and answered it, "Hi, Myra."
Winter could hear the female voice from the other end.
"Eddie, it's past one in the morning! Where are you?"
"I had to pick up my friend from the hospital."
She sighed, "You're supposed to be home with me! Because of you, our car insurance is going to go up, the house hasn't been cleaned in a week, laundry isn't done, and the trash hasn't been taken out!"
Winter thought, 'Why can't you do most of those things on that list, bitch?'
"I know! I know! I'm coming home now. I'll take out the trash when I get in!" Eddie looked embarrassed. "Bye, Myra."
"No, Eddie! Say, 'I love you, Myra!'"
Eddie shut his eyes tightly and all the wrinkles showed on his forehead. He looked like he was about to explode. Tensely, he said, "I love you, Myra."
He hung up and put the phone back in his pocket.
Winter stared at him as she was still sitting on the kitchen table in just her bra and pants.
They remained in silence until Winter pulled him over to her and put her hands in his hair. He was so embarrassed and ashamed that he continued to look down at the ground. She put her forehead to his, "Hey, Edz..." she said softly. He slowly looked up to her eyes; "Thank you for saving my life tonight. What you did was really heroic."
He put his hands to her waist and kissed her lips a couple of times. He looked at her again, "You're the only person who's ever made me feel like a man."
She softly smiled at him, "I've always seen you as a man, Edz." She kissed his lips again. "You should get going, though."
He sadly nodded, "I guess I should..." he kissed her forehead, "I'll pick you up at around two in the afternoon. We can drive to Derry and meet the others for dinner." He kissed her one last time before grabbing his keys from the counter.
"See you tomorrow," Winter said as he approached the door to leave.
He looked at her, "Try to get some sleep, Winter. I'm so sorry I can't stay."
Once Eddie had left and Winter was left all alone in her apartment, she could feel the emptiness of the place. She quickly looked around and feared that she would be going another night without sleep.
And now that she was left alone, like usual, her mind drifted to Henry. She thought about the night before again when the clown made her believe that her and Henry were talking in the crowd. That had to have been the meanest trick the clown ever pulled on her.
As Winter cried while she sat on the island in her kitchen, she grabbed her phone to distract herself. She had barely checked her social media accounts. She never became attached to the social media world. She kept her profile very private and inactive.
For the first time in a long time, she checked her Facebook Messenger.
Her attention was caught right away by an unread message that was there since the night before:
Henry Bowers:'I'm not sure if you're the Winter Callaghan I'm looking for since there are hundreds on here. If you are, I hope you message me back.'
Winter stared wide-eyed at the message. She realized that he messaged her a day before anyone even knew that the clown was back and that they were all going to meet again. She wondered how long he had been looking for a way to contact her.
Thoughts kept crossing her mind as she read the message and looked at his profile photo: 'Is he sober now? Is Vic, Belch and Ace still harassing him?'
She bit her lip and pressed down on her keyboard:
'Hi, Henry. It's me.'