|| Hope
"So," Melissa McCall prepped Jacy for her anesthetic, the two in a patient room much too early in the morning, "how long have you been able to speak with ghosts?"
"Too long." Jacy's eyes flickered around the room, whispers brushing past her ears.
Melissa smiled just barely, flicking the syringe in her hand. "Well, out of all the things I've seen, it's nice to know someone more textbook."
"Textbook?" Jacy asked, barely noticing the needle in her hand.
"Before all of, this, I wasn't much on the stories about werewolves or monsters in general, but I always believed in ghosts. It seemed more logical." Melissa cleaned Jacy's hand as she was sewing her up. "It made sense because a ghost is just a person who has died when a werewolf is someone who literally turns into part animal."
Jacy grinned, "Yet both are real, huh?"
She laughed, "Incredibly real."
Jacy winced, but not from the stitches. She closed her eyes, inhaling a soft string of breaths.
"Jacy?" Melissa looked up to the teen, "Did the anesthetic not take?"
"It's not that." She opened her eyes, "It's just, It's kind of loud in here."
Nurse McCall's eyes searched the room questionably.
It was dead silent.
"Do they talk to you often?"
"Usually they just scream."
"Is that what you live with?" Melissa hooked the needle through the end of the long, now closed gash.
"For two years, yeah." Jacy hated hospitals over everything, yet she was in them often. "But I've gotten used to it."
"Two years?"
"Unfortunately." Jacy wanted to spend her Saturday sleeping, but Doctor Dane insisted she went so her cut wouldn't get infected. She absently wiggled her feet decked in maroon high top converse. "Am I done?"
"Yep. Come back in a week and I'll take them out for you." Melissa took off her blue latex gloves and put them in the disposal bin. "So, what are you doing after this?"
Jacy adjusted the sleeve of her loose black sweater before getting off of the hospital bed. "I'm going to go talk to the Sheriff. I should tell him about Stiles."
"Are you sure that's the right thing to do?" Melissa asked, taking Stilinski's position to mind.
"To tell him?" Jacy picked up her brown jacket and draped it over her arm.
"From what I understand, you can't put a time stamp on when you can bring Stiles back." Melissa wasn't sure if she knew about Claudia. "For someone who lost his wife in this same hospital, your claim on Stiles is going to give him hope. A lot of hope."
"Things like hope can help. Stiles has to be strong for this to work."
"Jacy, but what if it doesn't work? I have faith in you and in Stiles, but in everything there's always the slightest chance that it won't work. If you give the Sheriff that hope and Stiles dies, it'll kill him, too."
"I can do this, Melissa." Jacy meant it, with all her heart.
Melissa smiled, putting a hand on her shoulder. "You really care about him, don't you?"
"More than I was expecting to," Jacy replied, trying to ignore the wailing down the hall.
"Do what you think is right, just remember what I told you." Melissa patted her back as they went into the nearly empty corridor.
"Thanks." Jacy's hair was pulled up in a ponytail, but a wisp of hair still hung over her ear. She fixed it like she always did because her hair was very rarely nice to her.
"No problem. I'm here if you need anything." Melissa flipped a tab outside of the room, soon parting with her patient.
Jacy kept her jacket on her arm, not reaching for her keys. She took a left instead of a right.
"IT'S BEEN THIRTY YEARS!" Disheveled, a woman in an 80's era hospital clothes screamed. She pulled on her long braids, a blood stain on the middle of her gown. "WHY CAN'T ANYONE SEE ME?"
Jacy walked past, slipping between a nurse and her post. She glanced over her shoulder, no one watching her. She came across a private wing and looked up to the name plate.
Stilinski, Stiles
Jacy pushed the metal handle, the door opening. She went around the small turn, hesitant. "Stiles?"
She did find Stiles, but not quite the one she was looking for.
Stiles was laid in the hospital bed, the bruise covering nearly half of his face changed from a purple to a muted greenish blue.
Jacy put her jacket on the arm of the chair by the window. She looked over the pictures on the window sill, more there than last time. A smile fell across her lips, Stiles' buzz cut something she had never witnessed in real life.
The machines had more life than the boy did: all of them whirring and beeping loudly.
Jacy took the chair facing the comatose patient and sat with her legs pulled up to her chest. She rested her chin on her knee, looking at Stiles.
His brain activity had dropped, even if it was only a little.
"I'm trying," she sighed, closing her eyes.
The machines keeping Stiles alive drowned out the screams, but somehow this was so much worse.
"What are you doing in here?"
Jacy's head snapped up, turning to the source. "Oh, thank God. You're all right."
Stiles, in the same clothes he was wearing when he crashed, was at the back of the room. He furrowed his eyebrows, "For a coma patient, I guess."
"No, I just mean," Jacy sat up straight, putting her other foot on the ground, "I haven't seen you since Derek's last night." Because his readings had shifted, she was afraid Stiles had been taken from the drifting state so his body could die.
"I don't really know what happened. I got really tired after that thing you did with the sheet and then I heard your voice." He squinted his eyes out the window. "That was only a minute ago."
"You blacked out." Jacy stood up, grabbing her jacket. "I'm sorry, that's my fault. I should've waited until you were stronger, or at least taken it off quicker."
"How long has it been?" Stiles furrowed his eyebrows. "What time is it?"
"Eight." Jacy showed her stitched up hand. "My mom had Melissa sew it up."
"Are you okay? You lost a lot of blood." Stiles glanced to his unresponsive body before returning to Jacy.
"I'm fine." Jacy shrugged it off, "I stopped bleeding once we got back."
"And what happened at your house when you and Scott showed up?" Stiles sat on the bed at his feet, faced towards Jacy. "Did anyone notice you were, oh I don't know, kidnapped?"
"They had wine and cake. They didn't really notice we left." Jacy touched where her new stitches were. "But we brought it up that my mom knew about the supernatural. She only knew about our family line but Scott and Melissa helped me fill her in about the insanity of this town."
"Another person to worry about."
"Another person we don't have to lie to," Jacy said. "Melissa told me how long it took for her and your dad to find out. Not to mention it wasn't you telling them. Melissa was attacked at the station and put in a cell and your dad was kidnapped and almost sacrificed. I trust my mom and I don't want to leave her in the dark."
Stiles pushed at his hair, "We thought we were protecting them."
Jacy softened, "I know. I know that." She thought about what Scott's mom had just told her. "Stiles, do you want me to tell your dad? That I can see you?"
Stiles opened his mouth but shut it a moment later. "Maybe not yet." He seemed reluctant to say it. "It's not that I don't believe in you, but-"
"It's the hope." Jacy nodded, "I get it. I won't tell him until you're comfortable with it."
Stiles looked down, only to have a curious expression etch its way onto his face. "Can you hear that?"
Something broke inside Jacy, her words escaping her until she forced them out. "Yeah, I do."
"Where's it coming from?" Stiles stood up, his eyes flickering up and down.
"Everywhere." Jacy got up when Stiles started to move towards the way out.
The way he looked at Jacy changed entirely, "This is what you hear, isn't it?"
Her voice was strained, "All of the time."
"Jacy-"
"Stiles, please don't look at me like that." She sounded like she was about to break into a thousand pieces. "Please don't."
Stiles' lips parted, confused yet he knew exactly why she asked. "Look at you like what?"
"Like I'm some fragile thing with hell on my shoulders." Her voice cracked, "Even if I am."
"You're not fragile, Jacy," Stiles softly told her. "You're one of the strongest people I know and that says a lot."
"How?" She dejectedly laughed at herself. "I can't handle one drifter. And," she had a stutter induced by her state of emotion, "and you're slipping, Stiles, slipping. The ghost you saw at my house, you shouldn't have been able to. Those voices, the screams," she motioned towards the door and then herself, her fingers grazing her 'J' shaped necklace, "that's what I hear. Those are dead people and as a drifter, you shouldn't be able to unless-"
"Unless I'm dying." Stiles hung on to her every word as Jacy's eyes grew glossy. "That's what you mean by slipping."
"Stiles, I'm trying." A single tear ran down her perfectly pale cheek. "I'm trying so hard to save you." She'd gotten closer to Stiles' comatose body without meaning to. "I just, I don't know how to fix this. That stuff with the radios and moving the cup, I was trying to make you stronger so it would give you a better chance of sticking." Jacy wiped her cheek, "But your brain activity dropped this morning and you blacked out. Now you hear the ghosts which means you're drifting closer to death than life." She looked down to Stiles in his bed, bruised and battered. "You don't deserve this." Her hand touched his, her thumb running over the top of it. "And you feel colder."
"Wait." Stiles walked from his spot towards the hospital bed. He held out the hand Jacy was holding on his real body. "Jacy," Surprised eyes met hers.
"What?" Jacy didn't let go of him, using her free hand to wipe her wet cheeks.
"I can feel you."
Jacy looked back to Stiles, "You can feel me?" She moved her eyes down to the hand she held. "That's not possible."
"Jacy, none of this is, but I can feel it." Stiles sat down on the side of the bed, right next to where she was.
"Stiles, what if I can't save you?" Her voice was small. "What if-"
A beep came from behind them, catching their attention.
Jacy let go of Stiles, moving over to one of the machines. "Wait," Her eyebrows furrowed as she searched the monitor.
"What is it?" Stiles looked to his body, staring at his hand. It was his hand, but it wasn't.
"It's you." Jacy glanced over her shoulder, "Your activity. It's gone back up."
"You're doing it, Jacy. You're fixing me."