¹𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆,𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐨𝐧 ✔

016-safe and sound

CARLA IS AWOKEN BY A REPETITIVE BEEPING.

Her eyes flutter open, capturing the bright white room shes in. Her ears are filled with continuous beeps and sounds of machines, and her body is filled with pain.  It's not a terrible pain, but it isn't anything she'd like to have.

The sudden pain seems to recall some of Carla's  memories of the previous night. Leaving the school with Jonathan and Nancy, setting up to fight the monster, Steve showing up, getting attacked, Steve saving her—

"Oh my God, Carla!"

The Wheeler girl slightly jumps at the voice, eyes meeting the figure of Karen Wheeler sitting at her bedside. The woman looks tired—she has no makeup on, and she's wearing her pajamas—yet utterly awake at the same time. "Baby, are you okay? God, I can't believe you're awake."

"What happened?" Carla asked. Of course she knew what had happened—she'd been attacked by the creature—but she wasn't quite sure how she ended up in a sterile hospital room with wraps around her arms. She doesn't remember anything after getting into Jonathan's car. 

Karen gives a sympathetic look to her daughter, "They called me late at night to tell me you'd been admitted in—your wrists were all slit, one of them was broken, you'd lost a ton of blood....." she trails off, as if she doesn't want to remember the sight, "Honey, you scared me so bad.....you scared all of us."

"It's okay now, Mom." Carla tries to reassure. What happened wasn't okay by any means—how would being attacked by an inter-dimensional monster ever be okay?—but she needs her mother to calm down. "I'm fine."

"Thank God you are." Karen runs a hand through her hair, clearly stressed. "You had us all worried with your condition—I don't think that Harrington boy has slept since you were brought in."

Carla's heart rises in her chest. Steve was here? 

"Speaking of him.....is he okay? Are Jonathan and Nancy okay? The boys?" Carla asks. She doesn't care that her mother doesn't know why she's asking if they're okay when she's the one hurt, she just needs to know whether or not her friends were okay. Whether or not the creature came back.

"Take it easy honey, they're okay." Karen replies softly, watching as the girl tries to sit up in her bed. Noticing the sling around one of her arms, Carla lowers herself again, causing the mother to explain, "You'll have the cast and sling until your wrist fully heals. Then you'll have that wrap—" Carla looks down at her other arm to see a wrap around her wrist, "—until your scars are healed via the stitches."

Carla nods. "How long will I be here?"

"I'm not sure, honey, but hopefully you'll be out soon." the Wheeler woman replied, "But maybe since you're awake now, it'll only be a day or two until you can come back home."  The brunette looks behind her, a light smile crossing her face as she turns to face her daughter again, "But, while I go talk to a doctor, I think there's something—or someones—waiting outside to make you feel better."

As Karen spoke, three heads peeked in the doorway, smiles gracing their faces.

Karen gives a reassuring squeeze to Carla's shoulder before getting up and walking out of the room.

The three teens outside then came in.

Nancy was first, sprinting right in to take a seat where her mother had been. She's wearing a relieved expression as she eyes her sister up—she'd been guiltily eating herself up the past hours, scared that something bad had happened to her sister because of her. It was a relief to see she was okay.