HIGHER and HIGHER - Steve Harrington x Reader

xxviii - not the end

— 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐝 —

MY EYES opened, slowly, only to be met with brightness. I close my eyes again and then open them back up. I squint and bring my hand up in front of my face. Unable to adjust my eyes to the brightness, I sit up quickly. I feel a sharp pain in my side as I do so and I grunt.

"Hey, hey. You're okay." I hear from beside me.

A hand places itself on my shoulder and I jerk my body away, earning another sting from my side.

"Hey, sweetie, it's just me. It's Joyce."

I close my eyes, again, and then open them once more. I start to adjust to the brightness and my vision regains itself, slowly. I look over in the direction that Joyce's voice was coming from, and sure enough, my eyes adjust to see Joyce standing next to me with a small smile on her face. She puts her hand back on my shoulder and my body relaxes.

"Where am I?" I ask, my voice cracking and barely able to speak.

"You're in the hospital. You got hurt pretty bad."

"Where's my dad?"

Joyce looks at my face and then purses her lips. I see tears start to form in her eyes and I look at her, confused.

"Joyce? Where's my dad." I say, making more of a statement than a question.

She shakes her head at me and a tear spills out of her eye. My jaw drops and I feel my face heat up. I look away from Joyce and down at my hands. I start to cry, softly at first, then my body begins to shake from the sobbing. Joyce pulls her arm over my shoulder and around my back, resting her head on mine and rubbing my back as I cry into my hands. After a few minutes, the door to my hospital room opens.

"Miss Hopper, you're finally awake!" A cheery doctor says as he enters the room, flipping through papers on a clipboard.

I take my hands off of my face and quickly wipe my tears.

"Finally?" I ask, through choked speech.

"You were out for two-weeks. We thought we were gonna lose you at some point." The doctor says.

He walks over to the other side of my bed and takes his stethoscope from around his neck and places it in his ears. He listens to my chest for a few moments then takes it off and puts it back around his neck. He then walks around to the side of the bed where Joyce was and she steps back.

"Now, lets take a look at that nasty wound of yours, shall we?"

He lifts up my hospital gown on my left side to reveal a bandage. He carefully removes the bandage from my skin, but I still groan from the stinging pain. The wound is bruised and a bit bloody, but it looked to be stitched up. There were three long gashes across my side and towards the center of my torso.

A nurse walks into the room with some more bandaging equipment and makes her way to my side. The doctor writes something down in his clipboard and moves out of the nurses way. She begins to bandage me back up.

"When can I go home?" I ask.

"Well, we are gonna keep you until you can walk again. Once you're able to show me you can walk, you can leave."

The nurse finishes bandaging me and walks out of the room.

"I can walk now." I say.

"Lets give it a day, okay? Then you can start to get up and move around. You just woke up out of a short coma, Miss Hopper. You need a minute to recover."

He walks out of the room and I look back over at Joyce.

"How's Steve?" I ask.

She smiles at me and scoots her chair towards the side of my bed.