Chapter Twenty-Eight

Dad and I climbed back inside the plane. He pulled the door shut behind us. The inside was lit by a few emergency lights. Harry, still in his armor, lay across two seats, his arm dangling limply.

"Doc!" I called. "You okay?"

"Yeah!" I saw him turn around in his seat and look back into the cabin. It was the first time I had seen him smile. "You did it, Sp...Mayday."

"Yeah," I sighed. "But it's not over yet. Dad, the antidote..."

"Got it here." Dad picked up the flask and handed it to me. I stepped over to Harry and set the antidote down on the seat. With my good hand, I pulled his helmet off his head.

Harry was a sickly gray; the light cast a ghostly pallor over his features. His hair was thick with drying blood, and his face was black and blue. Both lips were split. His mouth was slightly open.

Dad grimaced. "I did that."

"You had to. It was Hobgoblin." I fumbled one-handedly with the stopper of the flask. Dad reached over and opened it for me.

Harry's breathing was ragged. I put the flask to his lips and titled it, pouring the amber liquid into his mouth.

We stood there, watching tensely. Harry lay on the seats, looking as battered as ever. He coughed slightly, and his eyes fluttered open. He jerked. "You stay away from her! You're not getting me again, you-- "

"Harry! Harry! It's okay!" I grabbed his shoulder. Harry stared at me, his face white. "Hobgoblin...Black Widow..."

"They're gone. They're both gone. We just gave you the antidote. It's okay," I said. "Garcia's gone."

Harry blinked at me. "Garcia?"

"Yeah. Black Widow was Ms. Garcia."

Harry gaped at me. "The chemistry teacher?"

"Your chemistry teacher?" Dad gasped. "Oh, jeeze..."

"Oh, sorry...Dad, this is my friend Harry Osborn. Harry, this is my dad, Peter Parker."

There was a silence. At first I didn't realize what was causing it, until Harry said, "Mr. Parker...I'm sorry."

Dad waved it away. "It wasn't your fault."

"Yes...it was," Harry grunted, pushing himself up onto his elbows. "I blamed you. For what happened seven years ago. I hated you."

He grimaced, as if confessing to a horrible crime. "I wanted revenge."

"It's not your fault. You couldn't have believed any different. There's nothing to forgive," Dad said. "You are not Hobgoblin, Harry. And you never have to be. You choose who you are."

Harry shook his head mutely, then sucked his breath in with a hiss. "My...head..."

"It's okay. Just lie back down," I said.

Harry smiled at me. "You did it...Spider-Girl."

"Oh, not really," I muttered. "And the name's Mayday."

I saw Dad glancing between us quickly.

"You know, I, uh...I'd better go see how the plane's handling." Dad said awkwardly, climbing over the seats and into the cockpit. I could fell myself turning red. What did Dad think, that Harry and I were, well, more than just...friends?

"Dad!" I called, "It's okay, you don't have to go anywhere!"

I could have sworn I heard him mutter, "Damn, I've got a lot of catching up to do."

"Dad!"

The cabin door shut behind him with a click.

I didn't think I'd ever blushed so deeply in my life. "Dad!" I yelled, burning with embarrassment. "Seriously! I have absolutely no objection to your staying! None whatsoever! You can sit right here! Dad! Dad, are you listening?"

"Mayday, my head hurts bad enough without all the shouting," Harry said weakly.

"Oh, uh, sorry," I mumbled. I fidgeted with the binding on my hand. I tried to ignore the pain.

Harry coughed. "Mayday, I, um, yeah...I just wanted to say..."

"What?"

Harry smiled his lopsided smile, but it was weak. "Thanks, Mayday. You saved my life."

"Oh, um, you're welcome," I muttered, then mentally kicked myself. Why couldn't I come up with a better response than that?

The plane shuddered through an area of turbulence. There was silence. What was there to talk about? I was wrung out, exhausted, trying to block the events of the night from my mind. I didn't want to think about them. The knot in my chest had just begun to loosen.

Black Widow was gone. Gone forever. The rig was completely destroyed.
"I know you're thinking about it, Mayday," Harry said. "And don't. It's over."

I said, "It's over." The words felt alien on my tongue. "It's all over."

There seemed to be a catharsis in those words. Over, over, over. The ordeal was over. All of the fear, all of the sadness, and all of the anger...they were ghosts, half-remembered blurs.

Except for Garcia's face, laughing at me...

"And," said Harry, "You found your dad." He shut his eyes, grimacing in pain. "Hurts...to breathe."

"Shh," I said. "It's okay. Don't talk. We're getting you help. Don't worry."

Harry's fingers brushed mine. His face was ashen. "Mayday...about...it all..."

Harry whispered, "God, Mayday...I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault."

"It is. If I wasn't such an idiot none of this would have happened. I- "

A harsh, racking cough shook him, and a trickle of blood dribbled from the side of his mouth. He lay back limply. I grabbed his hand. "Harry? Harry!"

Harry's eyes were closed. He didn't answer.

I reached for his neck, feeling frantically for his pulse. For a moment I felt nothing. "Harry!"

Then, there it was. He was alive. He'd only fainted. I let out my breath in a whoosh, sitting down on the floor next to him, still holding his hand.

There isn't much left to tell.

We landed on Roosevelt Island about an hour later. It was foggy enough for Doc to steer the plane into the river without notice. Afterwards, Dad tore open the hull of the plane. The last vestige of the rig sank beneath the water on a lonely island in New York.

Doc had to get to his house on Staten Island. He couldn't be connected with anything that went on. He reluctantly took the ferry back.

Harry had to get to a hospital. We hid his armor in a warehouse on the island. He had a T-shirt and jeans on under it, but no shoes. We weren't even going to try to explain it.

In the early hours of December twenty-fourth, Dad and I webswung with Harry to the roof of Manhattan General. Dad couldn't go in; he had not way to disguise himself. So I unbound my hand and pulled my mask back on, picking up Harry, still unconscious. Golden winter sunlight slanted across the graveled roof.

"What's wrong?" Dad said once we had landed. I was carrying Harry.

I swallowed. "I'm not the most popular person in New York."

Dad nodded. "Does it have to do with a certain newspaper executive?"

"Yeah, partly. But...people have been blaming me for the disasters that have been going on. If I walk in there..." I trailed off.

"I'll take him. I'll make up some story..."

"No, Dad, it's okay. I've got to do it."

"Good luck, Mayday."

I forced a smile, then stepped off the side of the building to the sidewalk below. In my costume, tattered, bruised and filthy, I walked straight through the doors of the hospital.

It was crowded, noisy, and bright. People in wheelchairs, others on crutches, people talking and arguing with doctors and nurses. I walked in, as Spider-Girl, carrying Harry.

All of a sudden, there was total silence. Every head in the room turned to gawk at me. Jaws dropped.

"Spider-Girl! It's Spider-Girl!"

"What's she doing in here?"

"This guy needs a doctor. Now!" I said. "He's Harry Osborn."

One of the nurses, a formidable middle-aged woman in a perfectly starched uniform stepped forward. "He's Harry Osborn? The kid who inherited the billion dollars?"

"Yes, he is! He was kidnapped by Hobgoblin," I shouted, so that the whole room could hear. Well, that part was a half-truth. "Something about a ransom. He's hurt bad."

That got their attention. One of the orderlies started yelling into a walkie-talkie. Nurses and other orderlies swarmed around us, putting Harry on a stretcher they seemed to have pulled out of thin air. They took his pulse, checked his blood pressure, all in the waiting room.

"He's got at least two broken ribs, looks like one of the floaters."

"Possible a skull fracture, and looks like multiple fracture of the left radius."

"We've got to get him to an MRI. Make sure there's no internal bleeding."

"Is he going to be all right? Hey, you!" I yelled. "Will someone answer me?"

One of the doctors, a young man in scrubs, turned to me, looking as if a rock had just spoken. "Well...uh...Spider-Girl," he said nervously. "It just looks like some broken bones for now. He took some pretty good hits. We'll have to wait and see, but I'll bet that after a few days in recovery he'll be fine."

"Let's get him up to radiology," another doctor, this one in a white coat, yelled over the din. And then Harry was gone, ashen-faced and unconscious, into an elevator, surrounded by doctors and nurses who didn't look back. Everyone kept staring at me, nudging each other and whispering. I felt my face turning red under my mask. "I'll...I'll just go now."

"Spider-Girl?" A thin voice spoke from behind me. I turned around. It was an elderly woman, leaning on a cane, even smaller than I was. She had white hair that hung around her head like a cloud, and brown eyes that looked strikingly bright in so aged a face. She was leaning on the arm of a black-haired man, maybe thirty. I narrowed my eyes. I was sure I had seen him before, but where?

"Spider-Girl," the old woman said.

"That's me, ma'am," I said uncertainly.

"I've been hearing a lot of stuff about you. Reading it in the papers, too. That you've been wrecking trains and such."

I sighed, and didn't answer. Of course everyone believed what Jameson wrote about me, about Spider-Girl.

"I've heard it all," the woman said, staring straight into my eyes. "And I don't believe a word of it."

I blinked. "You...you don't?"

"I don't," she said. "Because I can't believe that a girl who would do things like that would risk her life to save my grandson."

"I...I..." I stuttered, totally befuddled.

The man, her grandson, smiled at me. "You remember? Jack Nguyen. Helicopter pilot. Never had a flight quite like that."

"The bridge! You were one of the pilots," I said, astonished.

The old woman stepped forwards, putting her hands on my shoulders and looking me in the face. "You save lives, girl. That's what you do. Even if you had only saved one person, like my grandson or that boy that was just here, that makes you a hero. You care about us. You risk your life so that others can live. You are a hero, Spider-Girl. Don't ever let anyone tell you different."

The old woman stepped back, leaning on her came. Her grandson, Jack Ngyuen, grinning, raised his hands and started to clap.

I felt my face getting even redder. Then someone else started to clap, from the crowd waiting in the lobby. She stood up, clapping loudly. The man next to her got to his feet, too, clapping and smiling.

I stood, wide-eyed, as men and women, little kids and teenagers, stood up and started clapping, until I was surrounded by a swarm of cheering people. A crowd of paramedics shouldered through the crowd. "If it weren't for her, we would've never gotten those guys out of the subway. She dug them out of the wreck."

My mouth was open. These people were clapping and cheering...for me?

Even the doctors were clapping and smiling. Someone, I think she was a doctor, tried to shake my hand, and I flinched.

She took a step backwards. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I said through gritted teeth. "My hand's just a little messed up."

"That's more than a little. Let me see that," she said, and before I could stop her she had pulled my glove off.

I grimaced at the sight of my hand. It was red and swollen, and it hurt to move my fingers.

"Looks like a couple of fractured metacarpals. You'll definitely need a cast on that."

I tried unsuccessfully to pull away. "I'll be fine. I can heal...well, pretty quickly."

The doctor raised her eyebrow. "Unless you want it to heal crooked, you're going to need a split at least. Hey, guys! Brian! Jim!"

Two of the paramedics looked up.

"You guys think you could get a splint on this young lady's hand?"

"Oh, no, seriously, I'm okay!" I protested. "I can't pay for this..."

The first paramedic grinned, set his bag down on the information desk and said, "Let's say it's for your help on the subway. We'll call it even. Now let's see what we can do for that hand of yours."

Twenty minutes later Dad and I were at the end of the sidewalk of the little townhouse in Queens. I had found another set of emergency clothes hidden in a Midtown alley, and I was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, with a neatly splinted right hand. Dad was still in his guard coveralls. Yellow rays of sunlight silhouetted the house from behind.

"Where's the spare key?" Dad asked.

"Where it's always been," I said. I walked over and lifted the front mat, picking up the key and handing it to him. He held it an inch from the keyhole, hesitating.

I smiled, feeling a prickling in the corners of my eyes. "Go ahead, Daddy."

Dad pushed the key into the lock and turned it. The door creaked open into the front hall. Old, worn rug, pictures on the wall, a tall wicker basket full of umbrellas. A stairway polished smooth by years of sliding.

Home.

I shut the door behind us. The line of Dad's mouth was quivering as he looked around. "It's the same..."

I stepped forward a bit and peered around the doorframe into the kitchen. Mom was sitting at the table, her head in her hands. She was asleep. I watched her for a moment, feeling a wave of guilt wash over me. She must have been up all night, waiting for me.

"Mom?" I whispered.

She stirred, blinking blearily in the morning sunlight. "Mayday!"

She shoved her chair away from the table and leaped up, throwing her arms around me. "May! Benny told me...I thought I'd never see you again!"

I hugged her back, biting my lip. "I'm sorry, Mom, I'm sorry...but..." I pulled away. "I brought someone back."

I turned around as Dad stepped into view in the doorway. "MJ?" he said.

Mom's mouth opened. Her face was white, her eyes wide. She stared, as pale as if she had seen a ghost. Dad stared back, his eyes glistening. "Peter?" she whispered.

Then her face lit up with a joy that years had buried under layers of worry and time. "Oh, Peter!"

Mom rushed forward, limping on her cast as Dad threw his arms around her, saying over and over, tears streaming down his face. "I love you, MJ. I'm so sorry. I love you. I love you."

I knew I was crying too, when Dad reached out and pulled me into their hug. Mom grabbed me and kissed me on both cheeks, laughing through tears.

"What's all the noise? It's like what, six?" A small voice spoke from the top pf the stairs, and Benny Parker was there on the stairs, blinking sleepily down at us.

"Ben? Is that you?" Dad asked, seeing the boy who he knew as a smiling, chubby toddler now eight years old.

Benny narrowed his eyes and frowned curiously at us. Then his eyes flew open. "Dad?"

I nodded behind his back, feeling a grin crease my face. A real smile.

"Dad!" Benny vaulted over the banister and tumbled into us, throwing his arms around Dad. "You came back!"

I was pulled into another hug, and the Parker family stood in the kitchen on the morning of Christmas Eve, the house filled with a joy that nothing else could ever match.