Alice the Amazing ⇒ STRANGER THINGS

[76] Aftermath, II

A/N After this, only the part 4 epilogue remains until our hiatus!

This one's a lot of description. Not a lot of action BUT I hope you still enjoy it!

TW for implied sex, but it's fade-to-black so nothing explicit is shown/described. Also warning for drinking.

{The Piggyback, Part V}

The next 36 hours crawled along and flew by, simultaneously.

A few hours after Alice woke up from surgery, Dr. Clovers returned with some not-stellar news: Alice's healing powers had been weakened so significantly after the "animal attack" and she couldn't use them for a while.

"It's like when an athlete tears their ACL," Dr. Clover said. Off Alice's confused look, Dr. Clovers asked, "Do you play sports, Alice?"

"I'm a theater kid," Alice admitted.

"Think of it like this, then," Dr. Clovers said, reframing her metaphor. "If a singer strains her vocal chords, she needs to go on vocal rest. Eventually, with enough rest and proper training, she will be able to sing again. But she needs to avoid singing for the time being so she doesn't cause permanent, irreparable damage."

Alice didn't like the sound of permanent, irreparable damage, so she agreed not to use her powers...

...until later that evening, when her friends came to check on her and Robin accidentally let it slip about Max's coma.

"Alice, please," Nancy said. "Come back to your room and rest."

Alice, tired and in pain and stubborn as a mule, had shuffled out of her hospital room at the news and commandeered a wheelchair. She very, very slowly wheeled herself down the hall toward the elevators. Nancy, Robin, and Steve followed alongside her, proof that Alice's great escape wasn't so grand after all.

"I don't need rest!" Alice said. She wheeled forward another centimeter. "Max needs help. I woke myself up from a coma. How hard is it to do that to someone else?"

"Didn't your doctor just tell you that you had to lay off healing for a while?" Robin said.

"That's irrelevant."

"I think it's very relevant, actually," Steve quipped. "You've got to take it easy, Al."

"Nope. Which is Max's room, again?"

"At the rate you're going," Nancy said, "by the time you reach Max's room, she'll have woken up already."

Alice huffed and wheeled herself slightly faster.

"Okay, enough," Steve said, grabbing hold of the back of her wheelchair and holding her in place.

"Jokes on you," Alice said, nose in the air. "I'll just walk."

She stood on shaky legs and immediately plopped back into the chair.

"You were saying?" Steve said. Al grumbled incomprehensibly and crossed her arms. Steve's expression softened. He crouched in front of her, hands resting on the tops of her knees. "Al, please. I know it sucks, and I know you're worried about Max—we all are! But you have to listen to your doctor. You could really hurt yourself if you try to heal anybody and I—we can't lose you..."

An unspoken "again" hovered in the air. But Alice didn't remember dying in the Upside Down, and no one wanted to remind her of that just yet.

"Fine," Alice groaned. "Take me back to my room."