Take Care of My Heart

Chapter 20 - Purgatory

The last haunting image that Gwen saw before that light overflowed her vision was his peacefully resting smile... he may as well have been asleep. She, along with Mr. and Mrs. Morales, felt their atoms buzzing like a conductor. When the sphere of light cleared, they found themselves with Miles' prone form on the floor of an all-too-familiar hospital... the one place they had hoped to never come back to... they were back in Nueva York's ICU on Earth 928B, Miguel's dimension.

Immediately upon arrival, a herd of footsteps stampeded their way; the doctors and nurses, having prepped for this emergency, rushed over with their medical equipment to surround the boy. Gwen and his parents were pulled away with feeble resistance so they could lay him on their stretcher, strap him with their first aid kit, then get to work resuscitating him.

The three trembled in each other's arms like a group of rescued shellshocked survivors. Watching this scene felt almost like an out-of-body experience to the girl especially; her nerves were going haywire as she sat there, utterly paralyzed... and utterly powerless.

She, as Earth 65B's Spider-Woman, was powerless when she had no means to get to him against the Goblin, and she was powerless now within reach.

Why...?

What did I do in any world to deserve this?

Why does this family have to suffer?

Is it to punish me?

Am I really that bad of a person?

In her questionable rationality, it seemed to make sense; fate was never particularly kind to any Spider, especially Gwen Stacy... for her, it was either death or suffering, and she right now couldn't differentiate the lesser evil.

Why...?

Why did I have to fall for him?

Why did he have to fall for me?

Would it really have been better for both of us if we never met at all?

Gwen shuddered at herself... how can I be thinking this?

He isn't dead yet... not yet... please, not yet.

His eyes remained gently shut, his head bobbing limply, as the medics bounced his chest up and down with their hard compressions against his swollen area; if he was conscious, he'd be crying out in pain... but she could feel nothing from him... not even a slight tingle.

"WAKE UP!" she screamed at the top of her lungs; it came out of her involuntarily. "SPIDER-MAN ALWAYS GETS BACK UP!" Rio and Jefferson were holding her back now. "SO WHY AREN'T YOU MOVING!?" If this teen girl had screamed any louder, she was going to lose her voice.

Just then, she felt a tingle that spiked into overblown waves of electricity... and they heard a sharp gasp from the arching boy... he was awake... and tearing the space down with bloodcurdling screams like his feet were being dipped into boiling water.

"MILES!?" Gwen cried as she lunged forward on all fours, only to be stopped by a handwave. "WHAT'S... W-WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIM!?" Her shouting could barely be heard now, her pain signals from him persisting. "WHY IS HE SCREAMING LIKE THAT!?"

One of the nurses checking him jerked his head up in alarm. "His pacemaker's been fried!" he told the others. "It's literally burning him alive!"

"B-Burning!?" gasped Rio, who was also short on breath. "Like fire!?"

"It needs to be cut out and fixed! Right now!"