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"Right Now"
Make future plans, don't dream about yesterday
C'mon turn, turn this thing around
Right now
It's your tomorrow
- Van Halen
Will slept on and on, and Joyce was terrified of what it would be like when he woke up. What he'd been through, alone there in that nightmare world, would have to change him somehow, and that was bad enough, but she could handle that. The worst part, the scariest question, was how long his heart had been stopped, how long he'd gone without oxygen. Would he still be her Will? She would love him no matter what, but she would never forgive herself, if he'd lost part of who he was to that thing, for not having been there sooner. If only she'd remembered the axe and chopped through the wall, she kept thinking, watching his pale face. He had known her, there in that darkened library, at least he had known her. That had to be a good sign, right?
She wanted to ask the doctors, but they were not being forthcoming with any information. It was all 'wait and see when he wakes up'. Joyce supposed she got it—she couldn't imagine Hawkins Lab had told the local doctors about the Upside Down, so whatever story they had told probably left the doctors with unanswered questions and suspicions. Still, she would have liked more … anything. Anything but this interminable waiting.
Leaving Jonathan with Will for the moment, she went into the waiting room. All three of the boys jumped up.
"Will?" Mike asked, in the tone of someone who was grasping at the last possible straw to hold on to.
"Still sleeping." Joyce glanced at Karen and Ted. "Do you suppose I could ask you a favor? The doctors think it would help Will if he had some familiar things with him—crayons, paper, some of his tapes, that kind of thing—but I don't want to leave him. Just in case. I don't want to leave him ever again," she added, feeling the sting of tears behind her eyes.
Karen got to her feet, looking relieved to have a task. "Of course. Whatever we can do."
Ted was slower, but no less willing. "We'll be back as soon as we can. Your house locked?"
Joyce shook her head.
"All right." They left, with a quick hug for Mike and a squeeze of Nancy's shoulder. No one had told the Wheelers about the Upside Down, but whatever Hawkins Lab had told them while looking for the children had let them know about Nancy's friend Barbara.
The girl was holding up well, but Joyce could see anger in her. Anger at herself, at the lab, at … the universe. She hoped Nancy could turn that anger in the right direction. The third boy, the long-haired teenager Steve, was hovering around, clearly wanting to help, but out of his depth. Joyce sympathized. These were hard times to care for someone.
As soon as the Wheelers were gone, Hopper drew everyone else together in the center of the room, and they told their stories. Nancy's was terse, quick, and to the point; Hopper's much the same, although Joyce believed he had left out a few things.
Mike seemed to think so, too. He added very little to the boys' portion of the story, letting Dustin and Lucas go over how cool Eleven had been and how there had been blood everywhere. They talked a big game now, but Joyce had to believe at the time they must have been terrified.
"What do we do now?" Mike asked at last. "Just … go back to our lives like nothing ever happened?" His tone said he thought that sounded stupid.
"Yeah, kid," Hopper told him. "Trust me when I tell you I know how that sounds, like nothing can ever be normal again. And no one's saying it won't take a while. But … you have to go back to school, and clean your room, and do your chores, and run your—what is it? D&D?"
"What's the point?"
"That's what you have to figure out."
Mike rolled his eyes and returned to his seat. Hopper watched him, his eyes troubled, then turned away. Slowly everyone else found a seat as well, letting the day's exhaustion take over. Joyce waited for the Wheelers to get back and took the box they brought—a careful, thoughtful selection; Karen Wheeler was a good mom, if oblivious—back to Will's room.
At last—at last, at last—Will woke up. Blinking slowly, shifting his head on the pillow like it was heavy, but his eyes were open.
Joyce saw them, her boy's beautiful eyes, with a rush of joy. "Hey! Hi, sweetheart." She reached to brush the hair off his forehead, and was rewarded with his sleepy smile, the smile of a thousand midnight wakings when he was a toddler.
"Where … where am I?" he asked, and for a moment she hoped maybe he could forget. But then, what he had been through, the recovery, would be that much harder if he didn't remember it.
"You're home," Jonathan told him. "You're home now. You're safe."
Will's eyes had moved to his brother's face, his own lighting up. "Jonathan!"
"Yeah, it's me, buddy. We missed you. We really missed you." A tear rolled down Jonathan's face. If Joyce hadn't been too happy to cry, she would have at how much her boys loved each other. If she never did another good thing in her life, she had given them each other, and she was so proud of that.
Will caught sight of the bandage around Jonathan's hand, from where he had cut himself to draw the creature out with his own blood. "Are you okay?"
"What, this? It's just a cut. It's nothing. You're worried about my hand."
Joyce and Jonathan both laughed at that, in joy, because it was so Will to worry about someone else, even in his own extremity. He was back, he was safe, and he was still himself, still their Will.
Jonathan reached for the box. "Oh, hey, we, uh, we brought you some stuff. So you don't get bored in here." He rifled through the box and found what he was looking for—he had brought it from his car while they waited. "I made you a new mix tape. There's some stuff on there I think you really might like."
Will took it and smiled at his brother, and they all clung together for a good long while before Joyce remembered they weren't the only ones who wanted to see Will.
"Hey," she said. "You up for seeing some friends? Mike and Lucas and Dustin are here. Is it okay if I let them come in? Not too much?"
"No, not too much."
"Okay." She nodded at Jonathan, who got up and left the room.
"Mom?" Will whispered.
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"Do they—Mike and them—do they … know?"
She was glad he had asked, because she needed to talk to him about this before he started asking the wrong people questions. "Yeah, they know. They know—all of it, and have their own stuff to tell you, and so do Jonathan and I and Mike's sister, and Hopper."
"The Chief?"
"Uh-huh." She had forgotten how little Will knew of Hopper and vice versa. She hoped that would change now, that Hopper could become more of the person he used to be. "But no one else, okay? You can't talk about what happened to you with anyone but us. Do you understand?"
He nodded, his eyes big in his pale little face.
The door opened behind her, and Joyce got out of the way as the boys burst in. "Byers!"
"Now, be careful," she said, as Mike ran to Will and hugged him, putting his head down on Will's chest, and Lucas piled on his stomach, and then Dustin forced them both to the side so he could have his turn. "Be careful," she said again, but she was speaking to the air, because the boys couldn't hear her.
Coming in behind the boys, Jonathan said, "Guys, guys, go easy on him."
But the smile on Will's face, the way he did his best to hug back even though he was too weak to move much, was well worth how exhausting the boisterousness must be. Joyce stepped back, letting the boys talk.
Lucas and Dustin took turns.
"You won't believe what happened when you were gone, man," Lucas told him.
"It was mental!"
"We had a funeral."
"And Jennifer Hayes was crying—"
"And Troy peed himself."
"In front of the whole school!"
You had to love boys. They got right to the important parts.
Then Will started to cough. Just a cough, but it was enough to dampen the enthusiasm of the room, the boys watching him silently until he was done, remembering that while they had been having exciting times together, Will had been suffering alone.
Mike was the first to recover, reaching out to touch Will lightly on the shoulder. "You okay?"
"It got me. The demogorgon." His voice and eyes were clear and direct.
"We know," Mike told him. "It's okay—it's dead. We've made a new friend, she stopped it. She saved us. But she's gone now."
"Her name's Eleven," Dustin added.
"Like the number?"
Lucas shrugged. "Well, we call her El for short."
"She's basically a wizard."
"She has super powers," Lucas whispered.
"More like a Yoda," Mike corrected.
"She flipped a van with her mind, and—"
Then all three of the boys were talking at once. Will seemed to understand them, which was more than Joyce could do, and she knew the whole story.
Behind Jonathan, she saw Nancy, saw the smile fade from Nancy's face as she moved from happiness for her brother to the certain knowledge that there would be no happy ending for her friend, no reunion in a hospital room or anywhere else. Joyce's heart went out to her, but now wasn't the time.
For now, she would watch Will and send the boys out when he was too tired, and turn her focus to keeping him safe and getting him well.