far too young to die ✰ m.w.

CHAPTER SIX

Emily tried to open her eyes as she slowly came to, but a bright light hurt her eyes terribly, causing her to slap a hand over her eyes and cry out. She heard frantic movement nearby and then felt a hand on her arm.

"Hey, what's wrong, sweetie?" Joyce asked worriedly.

"The light," Emily groaned.

"Shut off the light," Joyce instructed someone.

There was the click of a light switch, and Emily slowly opened her eyes. The light was indeed off now, but as her vision cleared up and focused on her surroundings, her headache came back, though much less intense than it had been before. As Mike, Bob, and Joyce watched her, Emily looked around the room, recognizing the place she was in as Hawkins Lab.

Suddenly, she felt very sick and hurriedly clapped a hand over her mouth, trying not to vomit. Noticing this, Joyce quickly grabbed the trashcan next to Emily's bed and gave it to the girl, and she retched into it as her mother rubbed her back.

Emily continued to lie in bed in silence for a few minutes, but finally, she looked over at Joyce and asked, "What happened?" She remembered Joyce driving onto a field, but after that, everything was extremely hazy.

"You hit your head," Joyce told her, "apparently pretty hard, because they say you've got a concussion."

"They said you were dehydrated, too," Mike added, "so they had to put in that IV."

Emily looked over at her right arm but quickly looked away when she saw the IV, afraid that the sight of it might make her throw up again.

The room fell silent again as Emily tried to remember what had been happening before she passed out.

"Did you find Hopper?" she asked, looking from Joyce to Bob and back again.

"Yeah, we found him," Joyce answered. "He's here, too. They're cleaning him up and making sure he's okay, since he was down in those tunnels for so long."

"Yeah, apparently the environment down there is super toxic," Bob chimed in. "You'll notice that they've taken our clothes and made us change into these scrubs."

Emily looked at Joyce and Bob and the light blue scrubs they were wearing before looking down at herself. "Yeah, I see they've forced me into a stupid hospital gown," she said bitterly.

"Well, that's a bit different," Joyce said. "You're a patient."

"So? Why can't I be a patient in my pajamas?"

It was then that Will sleeping in the bed next to hers caught Emily's eye, and she was reminded of what she had seen and heard just before she had lost consciousness.

"Is he okay?" she asked Joyce, her eyes full of concern.

Joyce exchanged a look with Mike and Bob before saying, "We don't know, honey. They don't really understand what happened... We'll find out when he wakes up."

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

At some point, Emily had drifted back off to sleep, but her mother's voice talking to Will woke her up.