Alexithymia | STRANGER THINGS [ON HOLD UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE]

twenty four | the battle of starcourt

While El continued to scream and Matthew only repeatedly looked between El herself and the bump on her leg with wide eyes, Erica asked them, "What is that?"

Mike told them, "There's something in there."

Then El yelled, "No!"

Then Dustin said, "Jesus Christ."

It was then that Jonathan told them, "Keep her talking. Keep her awake, okay?"

While Jonathan started to quickly run away from them, Dustin said, "Jesus Christ."

While Matthew tried to think of something he could do or say to get El's mind off of the pain that she was dealing with, Mike said to her, "Hey, hey, hey. Stay awake, stay awake." Then Mike said to his brother, Dustin, Nancy and Steve, "Let's get her on this side, on this side."

It wasn't until they'd turned El over that Robin told them, "It's, uh... You know, it-it's not actually that bad. There was a... The goalie on my soccer team, Beth Wildfire, this other girl slid into her leg, and, like, the whole bone came out of her knee– six inches or something, it was insane."

With a sigh, Matthew looked over at Robin and yelled, "How is any of that supposed to fucking help us right now?!"

Robin started to say to Matthew, "I-I'm just saying—"

Then Steve said to her, "Robin."

Robin replied, "Yeah?"

With a shake of his head, Steve told her, "You're not helping."

In turn, Robin said to him, "I'm sorry."

It was then that Jonathan finally got back to them and got onto his knees in front of El before he said, "Okay. Alright, El? This is gonna hurt like hell, okay?"

While sobbing, El said, "Okay."

Jonathan told her, "Need you to stay real still." After putting on some plastic gloves, he held a single wooden spoon out towards El and Mike as he said, "Here, you're gonna want to bite down on this, okay?"

While Mike went to put the wooden spoon in between her top and bottom rows of teeth and El simply grabbed onto one of Matthew's hands, Dustin said, "Jesus Christ."

While Jonathan started to move the knife down towards El's leg, Dustin said, "Holy shit. Holy shit."

Then Jonathan stopped moving the knife and looked over at Mike, who said to him, "Do it."

In turn, Jonathan said, "Okay."

As soon as Jonathan started to cut into her knee with his knife, El let out a muffled scream and tightened her grip onto Matthew's hand, which only got him to close his eyes with a sigh.

After Jonathan had put the knife down and onto the floor, El started to scream some more and let out a sob as the grip she had on Matthew's hand had become even tighter.