Rhiannon // Max Mayfield

-the aftermath-

Steve Harrington hate hospitals, nothing good ever comes with being in a hospital. He vowed to never go back into one after the time Alex's heart stopped after the tunnels collapsed.

But now he's back in one, having a tragic sense of Deja-vu as the doctors told him about how Alex's heart stopped, and she was declared dead for almost ten minutes, until her heart miraculously restarted.

He sat by his sister's bedside, having to essentially force Max out of the room so she could take care of herself for a minute, just wash up and have something to eat.

"So, I've been helping Dustin with a memorial for Eddie," he took a breath and looked at Alex's still figure, "It's the least i could do you know, he was a good person, way better than me. I'm just kinds pissed it took me this long to realise." He confessed, hoping that somewhere out there is sister could hear what he was saying.

"We we're becoming good friends, you know?" He carried on, letting a tear slip down his face, "But he wasn't like Tommy, or even Robin. I dunno i guess he like spared something inside me, but i can't focus on that spark anymore, but it was similar to the one Nancy made me feel back in Sophomore year. But none of that matters, because I've lost my main spark, so had everyone else." He was crying properly now as he gripped his sister's limp hand.

"I feel like this, even though it was life threatening and all, it was kinda like we had the old you back. Without the cigarettes, or the weed, or the annoying ass boyfriend." He said, forcing a laugh at his own joke, "And you seemed happier as well, like you had found yourself again, or more found yourself in Max." He smiled at the picture Max had put on Alex's bedside of the pair, from some point last year. "I don't think I've ever seen you so determined to do anything, until Max's life was on the line, that first time in the graveyard, and although it couldn't have been more dire, i was just happy to see you back in action."

He was proud of how her friends had banded together to make her hospital room have more colour. Max had left a bunch of photo's around, and for some reason a self-help book, but she said that was a joke between the two. Dustin had left a bunch of comic books, he told Steve that he read them to her when he was in the room alone.

He looked back to his sister, who was paler than he'd ever seen a person, and had a tonne of wires hooked up to her arms and abdomen. He wasn't really paying attention when the doctor's explained what happened to her, but he did pick up some stuff.

The first bullet was at her chest, and was luckily stopped from getting to her heart by her ribcage, but that did shatter the girl's rib. Then the second one lodged in her abdomen, in a similar place to her stab-wound from last year. But then when she moved on the injuries, it made some of the dislodged pieces of her rib, catch her heart and that's what made it give out.

But then after ten minutes of failure to get it started, and Alex Summers was officially dead.

Her heart started on some miracle, it was slow and barely there, but that little lifeline kept her alive while they operated on her heart, to free the bone.

The doctors had told him that she might be slightly brain-dead though, but Steve didn't understand until Dustin explained it to him.

Essentially, she might have parts of her brain that don't function properly, making her classed as disabled, or she might just struggle with things like memory, or maybe mobility.