amateur detective ━━ stiles stilinski¹

xviii; hospital daze

JULIETTE WASN'T ALLOWED TO SEE STILES while he was at the hospital. Scott managed to find his way in, and stuck around whilst they ran some tests on him. Her phone has been loaded with missed calls from her father, who recently came back to Beacon Hills, and Isaac who was wondering why she skipped school. Juliette took extra credits when she was home schooled in Eichen House, as it was a distraction and time of escape from the mental institution. Because of that, she had little to few classes to miss.

But that didn't stop her from spending the whole day outside of his hospital room, trying to catch glimpses of him when the doors opened, then getting cajoled at again and again by the nurses every time. "I need to talk to him, Sheriff." Juliette begged Noah Stilinski again and again.

     "Jules, Stiles is in there taking his tests, and the last thing I want is for you to go in there and tell him that getting tested for frontotemporal dementia is a waste of time."

     Juliette groaned. "That's because it is a waste of time! He doesn't have dementia, Sheriff."

     "Then what does he have, huh?" He asked. "If you know why my son's been hallucinating and acting a little too much like his mother, then tell me!"

     How do I tell a father his son is possessed by a demon? The only answer she could think of was that she can't. "I need to ask him something." Juliette softened her tone. "I haven't seen him since before he went missing, Sheriff, and it's driving me insane. Just let me see him, please."

     "I'm sorry." Noah sent her a sympathetic look. "Your dad has been waiting for you for hours, you know that, right? He told me he called you a thousand times and you haven't answered once. I told him you're keeping Stiles company, but you need to go back home. He's worried."

     Juliette stared at her phone, at the twenty missed calls her father left her. "I texted him, he knows i'm fine." She said. "I can't go home, Sheriff, how can I go home and have dinner with my dad pretending everything is okay when my best friend is in there with doctors running MRI tests on him all day?"

     Without saying a word, he pulled her into a warm embrace. "He'll be okay, alright? He just woke up, needs to take one more test and then we'll know for sure. Then you can see him."

    "Okay." Juliette pulled away, rubbing her eyes. She hadn't gotten much sleep last night, no more than two hours on the hospital chair, but that might have had to do with being deprived of the sleeping pills. "Can you ask him something for me? He said something over the phone, I think he was just hallucinating that someone was with him. Can you ask him if he remembers who it was?"

     Juliette already knew the answer, it was the Nogitsune with him, in his head. But did Stiles also know? Did Stiles find out that he was possessed when he left her at the party to find out? A million questions flooded her brain, wanting to know how the possession worked. Was Stiles really himself when they cruised in his jeep the night before he went missing? Or was it the demonic spirit, only pretending to be him?

      She clutched onto her backpack strap, and when she turned to her left; she saw Derek Hale at the end of the hallway, checking in with Scott on how things were going. The two werewolves then split, both going on different ends of the hallway.

      Derek Hale was familiar with Kitsunes, she recalled, and since Juliette had all her knowledge from the mythology books, she needed him to separate her facts from fiction. She started running over to him, but he was at the parking lot by the time she caught up to him. "Derek! Wait!"

      He finally stopped, turning around to face her. "What do you want?"

     Juliette stopped to catch her breath. "Listen, i've been trying all fucking day to get someone to listen to me; but Scott is too scared to believe me, Lydia is too into her guilt from being wrong last night, and Isaac is—" She stopped when she realised she didn't know where he was, because she's been researching all day and too distracted to check his texts. "Probably with Allison, or something."