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.
Chapter Two
4.
Jerry called a cab and sent Teresa home with the kids, then he went back to see Max who, though awake, was pretty blotto. They were waiting on a room for him. Meanwhile, there was a little TV bolted to the wall and Max stared at the House M.D. rerun , his eyes drooping.
"We're not at that hospital, are we?" Max asked. "That guy's an idiot."
Jerry smiled. Typical Max question. "Naw, that one's all the way in Jersey," he teased. "We'd still be in traffic if we were going there."
"This one's okay, right?" Max asked.
"Oh yeah," Jerry said. It wasn't St. Vincent's but you couldn't win em all. He thought the coffee from the machine wasn't half bad; he blamed the agita he had on the stress of the day, not the coffee itself.
He watched Dr. House randomly throw medication at his patient, hoping something would work before the poor slob dropped dead. It was only twenty minutes into the episode, so they had a ways to go.
This was not a good thing to watch while inside a hospital. At all.
"Mind if I change this?" Jerry asked. When he got no answer, he turned to see that Max had dropped off. That was okay. Somebody or other would wake him up periodically, especially when they found him a room, so he should get sleep when he could. This looked nothing like typical Max sleep. Usually Teresa or Jerry himself would go check on him to find him half on/half off the bed. Once, Teresa had had to come down to the living room and get Jerry to show him his son because he wouldn't believe her otherwise: Max was face down in a comic book on his carpet, only one foot actually on the bed, the covers tangled beneath him. This wouldn't be unusual if he hadn't started out on the bed, in a relatively normal position.
But that was normal for Max. What Jerry was looking at at the moment, however, was the opposite of normal. There was his youngest, on his back, broken leg elevated and all manner of tubes making it hard for him to shift position. It was wrong, but it could have been so much worse.
Alex had thought it was worse. She'd been sure he was dead. Jerry imagined it was easy to go there, for her at least. But that thing she said about Justin saving him. That was just ridiculous.
He couldn't exactly tell Alex that there was no such thing as wizard healers, though. Not really. They existed, supposedly, but as far as he knew, there hadn't been a legitimate one for a couple hundred years. As with everything else, there were millions of fakes. No one ever stood up to scrutiny.
So to have his eighteen year old suddenly turn out to have healing powers? Jerry wasn't about to bet on it. No, they'd just all gotten off lucky this time.
5.
Because of the weather, business had been painfully slow that day, and Jerry and Teresa had been in the middle of closing when all hell had broken loose. Now, Teresa remembered that she hadn't counted out the register or shut it down.
Dammit, she thought, resigning herself to leaving the kids on the couch for a few minutes. The three of them looked so tiny and scared, and there was a Max-shaped void in the room. What she wouldn't give to see Alex shoving Max off the sofa or Justin trying to get him to pay attention to something on the History Channel. Or Harper making him stand up in one of her dresses so she could hem it.
She thought about that, and then made a mental note to work on some new house rules (No more enforced cross-dressing! We don't shove our brothers off our sofas, Alex!) as she headed downstairs.
The register gave her a hard time of course, refusing to shut down. And the cash drawer came up 28 cents short the first time she counted it and 28 cents over the second. Then it was 95 cents over. Clearly, this was not the time for math. Jerry could puzzle over it in the morning, or better yet, make Justin or Alex figure it out. It would take their minds off things, since there was no way they'd have school. Not that she'd let them go after what they'd all been through, that was. She was keeping them home until Monday if she could get away with it. She wanted them where she could see them.
Justin was the only one still awake when she got back. He was perched on the edge of the sofa with Alex's legs behind him. Alex, for a tiny girl had really managed to fill the the whole space. Harper, pobrecita, was curled into a ball in the chair, her arms wrapped around a throw pillow.
"How 'bout some eggs?" she whispered. Justin shook his head. This, she didn't like. He hadn't eaten since lunch. But, she figured, the second he smelled bacon frying, he'd come around. And the other two would wake up and take a little nourishment, too before they went upstairs to bed.
She threw some onions and leftover potatoes into a pan and let them sizzle and looked over to see Alex's nose start to twitch like a rabbit's, but Justin continued to stare blankly at his infomercial. She tossed bacon into another pan and that took care of Harper.
"What time is it?" she asked, stretching out and dropping the pillow.
Teresa checked the microwave. "1:30," she said. "Isn't Carson Daly on, Justin?" Anything had to be better than what he had on. She was sure that mineral cosmetics could be fascinating in the right context, but this was not it.
"Huh?" Justin asked. "Yeah, okay." He got up to switch the channel. Alex was probably on top of the remote. He caught the tail end of Jimmy Fallon, whom Justin liked but Max just about idolized. Justin got up and switched channels again.
"Hey," Teresa said. "I like that band!" She'd never seen the band that was playing before in her life but she knew he'd call her on it and any distraction was better than no distraction.
"Okay," he said, and changed it back without argument. He was going to be a hard nut to crack, but she would wipe that blank look off his face.
"Ow," Alex said, starting to sit up. Justin got out of the way so she could swing her legs over and sit up.
"I'll get you some aspirins, mami," Teresa said. "But come and eat."
Alex had a hard time getting up, so Justin helped, leading Alex to go "Ow-ow-ow-ow..." but then stop suddenly once she was vertical. She cocked her head to one side and rotated her shoulder, looking puzzled.
"Oh yeah," she said. "I forgot. Thanks, bro." After that, she walked easily to the table and cut herself a huge piece of omelet and helped herself to probably a third of the bacon. Everybody stared at her.
"What?" she asked around a mouthful of bacon. "I told you he could do that. Why do you look surprised now?"
"I didn't do anything," Justin said.
"Okay," Alex said, reaching for the ketchup. "If it makes you feel better, you didn't just fix up my back and you totally didn't, like, put all the bones in Max's skull back together—"
"Alex, if you don't shut up—" Justin said.
"I don't know what your problem is," Alex continued, taking another bite and continuing with her mouth full. "You're probably a lock to win the competition now. I mean, me and Max can't exactly top miracle working." She took a second to swallow. "I'd have to make David Copperfield disappear or something—"
Justin turned and went upstairs. Harper had been watching all of this with a fork poised half-way to her mouth. She put it down.
"Alex!" she said. She started to get up.
"No, Harper," Teresa said. "You stay. Get some food in you before Alex takes it all. I'll go after him."
She was, as expected, faced with her son's closed door. She knocked, then tried the knob. It was locked.
"Should've seen that coming," she said. "Papi? C'mon, open up."
Nothing.
"Talk to me,"she said. She counted to twenty. "Okay. You know where to find me." She turned around to theatrically stomp her feet so that it would sound like she was walking away.
Nothing.
So she walked away for real, checking over her shoulder every few steps and listening for the telltale click of the door opening, but she didn't hear it.
6.
Justin Russo, as the eldest, had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and when the other two got into trouble—real trouble, not detention or grounded or something—it felt like an ogre was sitting on him. And if anyone knew what that felt like...
And this was undoubtedly the worst thing that had ever happened. That's really saying something, he thought.
And he couldn't shake the idea that his little brother still might die. Head injuries were no joke, even if they didn't look like much at first, they could spell doom. Horrible things could happen later. Clots could form. Oxygen deprivation. Loss of motor function. Blindness. Memory loss.
Alex just didn't get it, and he couldn't think of a way to make her understand how serious this was. She was sitting downstairs right now, stuffing her face, thinking everything was hunky-dory despite all evidence to the contrary.
Actually he sort of envied that. Obliviousness was highly underrated.
Because Justin didn't save his brother from anything, no matter what Alex said and it was so beyond irresponsible of her to put the thought into anyone else's head. What if people believed her? What if she decided, for the good of mankind, that she had to tell people? She had a knack for doing stuff like that, after all. And what if some poor person showed up, talking about how he or she had stage four cancer and a family to support? What would happen when they found out that Justin could do nothing for that person?
Then not only would he not have been able to help that person, but he would also have X number of people thinking he was a fraud. That they mislead people on purpose. What then? Did Alex have a snappy answer for that?
He tried to slow his breathing down, because he felt a panic attack coming on. He curled into a ball on his bed and waited for it to pass.
There was another knock on the door. Justin thought that he might've fallen asleep for a while because it was 3:30 and it had been barely 2:00 last he'd checked.
"Hey," his dad said. "You still up?" Justin got up and opened his door.
"Did I wake you?"
"Nah," he lied. "How's Max?"
"They're gonna run more tests in the morning, but so far, he's okay," Dad said. "He wants ice cream. And salami."
Justin nodded.
"And the nurses think he's the cutest thing they ever saw," Dad said.
For no good reason he could think of, Justin picked that moment to burst into tears. After holding it in the whole night, thinking that if he didn't lose it when his mother tried to get in before, that he would be able to keep himself together, his body decided that it didn't want to anymore.
His dad did all the right things, grabbing him so he could bury his face in his father's chest, smelling the usual mix of Old Spice deodorant, oregano, and pepperoncini.
"Yeah, I know," Dad said, squeezing him harder than was strictly comfortable. "I know." Justin was sure that his dad didn't know, but Justin felt a little bit better all the same. Just a little. After a while, he his dad let go of him and he was able to use the hem of his t-shirt to clean his face off a little bit. Then he laughed.
"What?" Dad asked.
Justin told his father he'd been thinking about ice cream and salami. He could just see Max sitting up in bed, taking alternating bites of each.
"Long as he stays away from comakus pancakus, huh?" Justin said.
"I have his wand," Dad said. "And if he says anything weird, we can just blame it on the concussion."
"Yeah," Justin said. "I guess that works."
"Why don't you get some sleep?" Dad asked. "I'll go check on the others and hit the hay myself."
"I could sleep," Justin said. He still wasn't sure that he could, but he'd give it a shot. There would be a lot to deal with in the morning.
TBC