Three days. You were kept in the hospital for three days. Three days of IV’s, probing, blood pressure being taken, bad hospital beds, worse hospital food, and no access to news about whether or not Spider-Man made it out of the collapsed bank.
At first, you didn’t even remember the bank hold up. You had woken up after passing out from a concussion and blood loss in a white hospital room, beeping all around you. Fear had raced down your spine; was there an accident? Why was there an IV in your arm? What had happened? It wasn’t until you saw the dirt covered, tear streaked face of Alex sitting in the chair next to your bed that it all came back to you.
No one would tell you anything. When you asked the doctors when you could go home, they would respond with numbers and stats that didn’t make any sense to you. When you asked your mom if you could watch the news, she would say you weren’t allowed to look at screens until your head was better. When you asked to check the news on your phone, she explained how your phone had been left in the rubble of the building, and they would have to get you a new one.
Only Alex would tell you anything about the attack. She explained how the bank had collapsed, how the body of the weapons dealer had been recovered, how it had been the only body recovered. You didn’t want to get your hopes up; even though he was a superhero, he must have his limits, right? Could he really survive an entire building collapsing on him? And if he could, was it possible for him to get away without injury? The rumor mill was a ghost town, as no one claimed to have seen Spider-Man escape, and no claimed to have seen him since. He had vanished into thin air, and no one knew when he would be back.
The day you were discharged, you spent the night on your fire escape, positive that Spider-Man would show up. He had agreed that after every major battle and fight, he would be there to let you know he was okay, something you needed to know now more than ever. More than that, you thought for sure that he would want to know about you. Although the mask prevented you from seeing his face, you had heard the way Spider-Man said your name when he saw you in the bank, and when he left you at the ambulance. It was unlike anything you had ever heard before, like a song about a life you’d forgotten. You had heard it, and you knew he had heard it. So you waited on the fire escape, counting the stars until he swung onto the metal balcony and back into your life.
Except he never did. You spent the entire night outside, eventually falling asleep, only to wake up with a headache and a heart full of disappointment. Still, you refused to give up. You thought that maybe he still believed you to be in the hospital, and that he would surely visit you within the next few days, if not the very next night.
But it never happened. Night after night, you waited under the Queens skyline. And, night after night, you awoke both alone and lonely.
Days passed. August ended. Eventually, you stopped waiting. You had to, as two weeks after the bank incident, school began again. You had more to worry about than a superhero leaving you hanging. You had a life before Spider-Man, and—you were a little surprised to find—you had a life after him, as well.
It only took a week for you to fall back into the routine of school. Between classes, extracurricular activities, and studying, you barely had time to worry about what you would eat for dinner, so it went without saying that you didn’t have time to worry about a superhero. Be that as it may, however, you couldn’t stop feeling him around you.
It first happened a few days before the start of school. You were walking home from a little grocery store just as the sun was beginning to set, both hands full of bags of food. Headphones in, you hummed along to your favourite song as you made your way down the street. It was strangely quiet—peaceful, almost—when, from the corner of your eye, you saw a flash of red. You had paused, took out a headphone, and looked around you for the cause, but there was nothing. At first, you didn’t think anything of it; you had always had a powerful imagination, and thought that this was just you projecting what you wanted to see into your real life. You had shrugged your shoulders, slipped your headphone back in your ear, and continued your walk home.
