PARANORMAL | ❝Nothing is stranger than believing...❞
Cath knows a thing or two about Will Byers. Daphne, on the other hand, knows virtually nothing about Tonya McCarthy. Still, none of that changes the fact that both of them have up and vanishe...
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SUNDAY 13th NOVEMBER, 1983
THE waiting room in Hawkins hospital is certainly a sight for sore eyes.
Everyone looks as though they have been through hell and back — which in truth, they have. Cath sits uncomfortably upright in the plastic chair, both due to its shape and as a way of stopping herself from dozing off. Lucas and Dustin have already succumbed to the wave of exhaustion that hit them all after everything was over, leaning on each other and snoring quietly. Mike, on her other side, sits in shell-shocked silence.
She looks opposite her to Daphne, slumped in her chair and cradling a bandaged hand, her cut properly treated by a nurse. Nancy and Jonathan have the same cut — apparently they cut it themselves, to which Cath, forever the worrier, had panicked over. What puzzles her the most is that Steve Harrington is also sat next to Daphne, sporting a bloodied face and looking rather glum. When did he come into the mix?
It doesn't matter, because it was all worth it. At least, she hopes so. They're still waiting for him to wake up...
Will Byers is alive. And he's in the next room.
The story goes that Joyce and Hopper found him in the Upside Down themselves. He hadn't been breathing when they found him, pale and limp, but they had somehow managed to resuscitate him. And now he was here.
Now, she waits for Will to wake up and for her dad to arrive. A friendly nurse had informed she and Daphne that he was on his way, but was held up by being questioned. Cath couldn't help but overthink it when she first heard the news. Questioned by who? If Hopper was here, how could they be sure it was the police? What if the Bad Men were tricking him, just like they tried to do with Mike's parents?
Don't be silly, Cath, she tries to calm herself down. Stop worrying. They found Will. It's over.
Still, she can't shake off the feeling that they are being watched even now.
Cath finds herself finally having a moment's peace to reflect on this week. She is not the same girl she was on that seemingly normal Monday. One knock on the door and a stupid decision to follow three boys into the rain, and her life has been changed forever. She doesn't know how, but Cath feels... different. Like some things don't make sense anymore. She certainly has no clue how they will all return to some form of normality at school again.
Tick, tick, tick...
The incessant clock is the loudest sound in the waiting room, the only white noise being the distant coughs and squeaking of trolley wheels throughout the hospital. Cath looks up at the time — midnight. It suddenly strikes her that all of this happened in one day, right from hearing Will on the radio to losing Eleven; a twinge of guilt makes her flinch.
