✓ RECOLLECTION | MILEVEN

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER THREE
"I NEED MIKE."

FALL, 1986

COLD. DARK. empty. the boy lay in front of her, lifeless, his soul caving into the hospital bed, hollow and steep. she longed for him to awaken, to pull her into a tight embrace and tell her that everything was okay.

his coarse lips were parted slightly, but nothing, not a single breath breached the entrance.

a single tear made its way along the fine curves of elevens cheek. that's all she could feel, on the outside at least.

on the inside her organs were one by one being twisted and pulled. she wanted to put up one last fight but it was no use. mike was officially dead.

he'd been in a coma for 3 months, exactly today.

the worst 3 months, 12 weeks, 84 days, and 2,016 minutes of her life.

she couldn't sleep, and even when she did she had intolerable nightmares which resulted in many screams.

no one would break open the door and find the hopeless child awake and crying, everyone in her life was torn away from her.

and now she would wake up terrified in a bleak, empty bedroom.

the byers were never home, each one was occupied with their own activities.

will off with lucas or dustin, and even mike before he was hospitalized, johnathan over at the wheelers comforting nancy, and joyce going on dates often, to make up for the hole left in her heart following hoppers death.

el had been left behind to break down; specifically back to the same state that she was in before, before mike found her and changed her life for the better.

the one thing—the one thing she had left wasn't even hers anymore.

it belonged to some unknown force, a force that had taken both her father and her soulmate.

—

a sea of black. el's lips curved downwards into a small frown, not that she wasn't already permanently wearing one.

this isn't what mike would've wanted. he wouldn't have wanted people to be so depressed, biting their nails and sitting on the edge of their seats to watch his family's next move.

because the wheeler's were most definitely not the same without mike.

she had to be strong—for herself. for mike.

the past 3 months were absolutely dreadful, sitting all alone in her small secluded room without the one person she wanted, no needed most.

she sobbed, she wailed and wept until she had nothing left. el was purely numb. the girl was left in a state of shock ever since that hot summer night, where she found her true form of happiness dead.

her entire world was ripped out of her hands, like if someone was taking candy from a baby—and el had such an innocent and tender heart that she didn't know what to do, or how to stop it.