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"Only in My Dreams"

No, only in my dreams

As real as it may seem

It was only in my dreams

- Debbie Gibson

Will looked dejected, coming out of the school toward Joyce's waiting car. He hated these appointments, the constant reminder that he wasn't the same as the other kids, and hated even more that they were always during the school day, pulling him away from his favorite things. Joyce had tried to get Hawkins Lab to reschedule, but they always gave her a very polite runaround before scheduling for the same time again. She thought they did it just to prove they could.

But she brightened up when she saw him anyway. She always did now—it was such a relief to look at his little face, to know he was still here, still with her. The principal had escorted him out, and now he opened the car door for Will and helped him in while Joyce went around to the driver's side.

"I should get Jonathan to teach you to drive," she told him cheerfully. "You'd like that." What did it matter that he was too young? Anything to put a smile on his face.

"I like my bike."

"Yeah, the bike's good, too. How were the guys today?"

Will shrugged. "Okay, I guess."

"Mike?"

"Mom, Mike's okay!"

The vehemence in his tone told her Mike still wasn't okay—he was still struggling with the loss of Eleven. Joyce wished more than anything she could tell Karen Wheeler what her son had been through, make the other woman understand, but that was impossible. The best she could do was suggest that Karen give Mike a break, and even that was hard to say now. It had been so long that Karen thought they should all be past it.

Driving down the road with this silent child where her chatterbox had been, Joyce glanced over at him. Will was leaning his head against the window, looking out. She thought about asking to buy his thoughts for a penny, but she didn't think she wanted to know.

"You feeling any better?" she ventured at last. "Will?"

He turned his head, as if she'd startled him. "Huh? Uh … yeah. Yeah. Sorry."

"Hey," she told him, "what'd we talk about, huh? You've got to stop it with the sorrys." After what he'd been through, Joyce didn't think he ever needed to apologize again, but he was so embarrassed by being the center of attention, so uncomfortable with the weight of everyone's worry on him.

"Sorry," Will said without thinking. "I mean—I mean, yeah. I know."

"Hey, listen, you know, there's nothing to be nervous about. You know, just tell 'em what you felt last night, what you saw. Hey, I'm gonna be there the whole time, so it's gonna be okay. Okay?" They had finally decided the lab needed to know about his episodes, and Joyce had been chilled to see how not-surprised Dr. Owens was.

"Okay." Will wasn't convinced, though, and he leaned his head against the window again, cutting off any further conversation.

Joyce was relieved to see Hopper already waiting for them when they pulled in. She felt better with him there. He was less emotional about all of this, and saw things more clearly than she did because of it.

"Hey, buddy," he said to Will as they got out of the car.

"Hey."

Joyce said "hey", too, and put her arm around Will's shoulder as they walked into the lab. They were known by this time, although that didn't make anyone noticeably friendly. Just faster, their badges already waiting for them.

As usual, the nurse weighed Will, took his blood pressure and some blood, taped some electrodes to the side of his head, and turned the machine on. Joyce wished she understood the machine, how it read what Will was thinking and translated it into the lines and peaks and valleys that came out on the paper. Then the nurse, in her chilly way, informed them that the doctor would be with them shortly. Without ever having changed expression, she shut the door behind her as she left. Another lab worker came in while they were waiting, but he ignored them, walking to the line of cupboards at the side of the room and busying himself there.

Joyce managed a smile, and Will tried to give her one in return, but it was a weak effort, at best.

Dr. Owens came in with Will's file already in his hand. His cheerful, easy manner should have been a relief after the clinical coldness of everything else here, but mostly it just felt strange, as if he'd been lifted from somewhere else and put down in this place where he didn't belong. "So, Will, how are ya? Mom. Pop. Let's take a look, see what's goin' on here." He took a seat on the stool next to Will.

They'd never quite managed to explain Hopper's relationship to Will to the doctor. Either that, or it amused him to refer to Hopper as "Pop". Joyce wasn't sure which.

Dr. Owens opened the file and started looking through it. "I see you shaved off a pound since we saw you last."

That worried Joyce. Will was too thin already. She started thinking of ways to convince him to pig out, food that would tempt him.

"Must be makin' room for all that Halloween candy?" the doctor asked, getting a small smile from Will. "What's your favorite candy? Desert island candy. If you had to pick one."

"I don't know."

"Come on. Life or death situation, what would you pick?" The doctor looked genuinely interested in Will's answer.

"I guess, uh …" Flailing, Will glanced at Joyce, who mouthed the name of his favorite at him. "Reece's Pieces?"

"Good call. Good—good call. I'm more of a Mounds guy, but I gotta say, peanut butter and chocolate—come on." He put the file up on the counter. "Hard to beat that. All right, so tell me what's going on with you. Tell me about this episode you had."

"Well, my friends were there, and, um, and then they just weren't, and I was back there again."

"In the Upside Down."

Will nodded.

"All right, so what happened next?"

"I heard this noise, and … and so I went outside, and … it was worse."

"How was it worse?"

"There was this storm."

"Okay. So how did you feel when you saw this storm?"

"I felt …" Will had to think about that one for a second. "Frozen."

"Heart racing?" the doctor asked.

"Just … frozen."

"Frozen, cold, frozen? Frozen to the touch?"

"No. Like how you feel when you're scared and you can't breathe or talk or, like, do anything."

Joyce hated that her beautiful son knew how that kind of fear felt.

"I felt, I felt this evil, like, like it was looking at me."

The doctor seemed to find that interesting. "It was evil. Well, what do you think the evil wanted?"

"To kill."

"To kill you?"

"Not me." Will turned his head to look at the doctor, and there was a chilling matter-of-factness in his voice when he finished, "Everyone else."

"Okay. Okay, well, that must have been scary."

Will nodded.

Dr. Owens got up off his stool. "Well, why don't we let you get dressed, get those things off your head, while I talk to your mom and pop, okay?" He nodded at the lab technician, who came over and started detaching the electrodes, while Joyce and Hopper followed the doctor to his office.

Will would get dressed and be led to the chairs outside the office while the doctor tried to make Joyce feel better. She wondered why they kept coming here, giving more information than they were getting, coming away with no help for her boy. In her secret heart, she was terrified that the reason the lab offered no help was because there was no help to offer—but it was a lot easier to be mad at them for their secrecy.

Once they were all seated, Dr. Owens said, "All right, I'm gonna be honest with you, it's probably going to get worse before it gets better."

"Worse?" Joyce frowned at him. "He's already had two episodes this month."

"He'll likely have more before the month is out. It's called the Anniversary Effect. We've seen this with soldiers. The anniversary of an event brings back traumatic memories, sort ofopens up the neurological floodgates, so to speak."

"So what does this mean for the kid?" Hopper asked. "He's gonna have more episodes, nightmares?"

"Yeah. That. Maybe some personality changes. He might get … irritable, might lash out."

"But what do we do when that happens?"

"Okay. Well, from what we know about post-traumatic stress—and we're still learning, okay? Just treat him normally. Be patient with him, don't pressure him to talk, just let him lead the way."

"So what you're saying is it's just going to get worse and worse and we're just supposed to pretend like it's not happening?"

"It sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but I assure you that is really the best thing you can do for him."

Joyce wanted to believe she was being told the truth—and Hopper's silence told her he agreed with at least some of what the doctor was saying, and she put trust in Hopper's instincts and knowledge—but she hated the very idea of letting this happen to Will, maybe losing more of who he had been, with no way to help him other than to pretend the problem wasn't happening.

The doctor took a deep breath, and spoke in a different tone, less of his careful folksiness. "Listen. I understand what you went through last year. I get it. But those people are gone. They're gone. Okay? So if we're gonna get through this, I need you to realize I'm on your side. I need you to trust me."

He seemed to be, with his honesty and his smiles and his reasonable explanations … but Joyce still didn't feel comfortable here, or with him, or at all.

She glanced at Hopper, whose expression didn't change. So, they didn't trust. That was just fine with Joyce. She paid lip service to the trust, said good-bye to the doctor, and stayed quiet until they'd collected Will and were in the parking lot, Will walking ahead of them, when it all came exploding out.

"'Trust me'?" she snapped. "Are you kidding me?"

"Yeah, I know," Hopper said unhappily. "But, you know, the university gives out a degree, this guy's got it. And, look, that post-traumatic stuff he's talkin' about, that stuff is real." He looked down at Joyce, putting a hand on her arm. "He's going to be okay. All right?"

She gave him a skeptical look.

"How's, uh, Bob the Brain?"

Joyce knew what he was doing, but she glared at him anyway. "Don't call him that."

"Sorry. Old habit." Hopper sounded unrepentant.

"He's good. We're good."

"Good. I'm happy for you. Really. Hey."

Joyce paused with the car door half open and looked at him over her shoulder.

"Things get worse, you call me first. You call me."

"Okay." She got into the car and looked over at Will. "Hey, what about some McDonald's?"

Once upon a time, that would have cheered Will right up. Today, all it got was a half smile.

"Chocolate shake?" she added, temptingly.

That got more of a real smile. "Hot fudge sundae?"

"Both? … Well, I suppose it is a special day. It's the day I finished your costume!"

"No way! All done?"

"All done." She smiled as she pulled out of the parking lot, glad to go back to real life where a Ghostbusters costume could actually make things better.