Mira had never been happier to see the Grimmshollow clinic in her life. Her nerves vibrated at the sheer reason for her visit and she kept just barely one pace behind her father, who held an arm out behind him to try and keep his personal space intact. They navigated machine-cluttered hallways together in a single-file line, shuffling between chatting nurses and sidestepping any stray wires on the floor.
Benji prepped her well in advance while they were devising a plan to get Mira on her feet in a safe manner to prevent further injury to the wound.
“Tammi didn’t want Amelia and me saying anything,” he’d told her, handing his daughter a crutch. “She feared it would get your hopes up.”
“In case of what?” Mira asked, sliding off the couch and onto her good leg. She tentatively placed her bad foot on the ground and flinched from the sharp spike of pain. It hovered a little above the floor instead.
“Well, he wasn’t fully conscious at the time. Just opening his eyes every now and again and turning his head towards us when we’d speak but not respond—not that he really could with the tube down his throat. Magic didn’t really become fully conscious until two nights ago. He woke up and got so freaked out that he tried to pull the ventilator out on his own.”
“How is he doing now?”
Her father ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it a little before extending his arm and elbow, which Mira gratefully took for the extra balance. “Better than the day he woke up fully. Still has that cough from when he was stuck on our couch at home and he’s a little dazed, but I would rather have a tired Magic than an unconscious one.”
Mira couldn’t agree more.
They paused in front of the room. Benji put one hand on the doorknob and peered inside the door’s window. Mira watched his shoulders droop with what she could only assume to be relief before the door opened and she followed him inside.
Seated beside Magic’s bed was Amelia, looking far brighter and more well-rested than Mira had seen her in weeks. Her face still showed signs of wear—the bags beneath her eyes hadn’t quite faded away yet and she wore her stress in the wrinkles on her forehead that cleared briefly when she realized there was company in the room.
There was no mistaking the light in her eyes or the relief in her voice when she spoke. “I’m glad you both made it,” she said. Then her eyes found Mira’s bad foot and scanned the single crutch Mira had beneath one of her arms. Her brows furrowed again and this time Mira was relieved to see the somewhat disappointed scorn on the woman’s face. Better that than the persistent worry she’d been plagued with for nearly a month. “Do I even want to know?”
“It’ll be fine,” Mira replied with a small wink to hide the wince of pain as her foot grazed the tiles. “It was my choice that did this to me.”
Amelia frowned at that. For a brief moment, Mira was reminded of the judgemental kind of frown she usually received from Magic. “I don’t suppose you’re going to elaborate?”
“Probably not. But your expertise helped a lot.”
It gave Mira an odd sense of satisfaction to watch her mother figure put the pieces of her statement together. After all, she couldn’t exactly tell Amelia how her scheme went. Not with her father in the room who barely knew anything about the plan at all. When the seamstress finally realized, though, she looked at Mira with an expression on her face that walked a fine line between impressed and aware.
Benji cleared his throat, as if sensing the unspoken conversation between them both. “Is there something I should be concerned with?” he asked, pitch rising with the question.
Mira smiled something roguish and almost came up with something to dissuade his curiosity, but Amelia pushed her chair back with a startling sense of urgency. She gave Benji a pat on the shoulder. “Not your concern right now, Benj,” she said, nudging him in the direction he came from, “but, I’m more than happy to give you some explanations in a walk down the hall.”
Benji rubbed at his temples. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been sitting here since midnight, Benjamin.”
“I know that.”
“And,” Amelia continued, “you also want to know what your daughter did. Which I’m more than happy to tell you. On a walk. In another room.”
Magic’s mother glanced over towards Mira, giving her a small wink while her father looked at the two of them in concerned shock, mouth slightly open, eyebrows raised. She saw the question in his eyes—What did you do?—while Amelia tried to shuffle him out of the hospital room. It was a reassuring sight to behold. This was the Amelia Cooper she knew and loved, always in Mira’s corner to back her or smooth things over with Benji whenever she’d inevitably gotten herself into trouble.
As Amelia swept Benji out of the room, she paused, then glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, Magic's asleep right now,” she called. “Give him a few minutes to wake up on his own. Tammi says it’s better for him that way if he does.”
Then the door slammed shut with a secure sounding click and Mira was left by herself at Magic’s bedside.
She took up the chair Amelia once had, disgruntled to find that the cushion was worn in despite looking relatively new. While the leather was recently shined, the back of the circle seat was sunken in, the seat itself creased. Even the padded arms were cracked with wear. Mira nestled in the pre-established dips that were far too small for her and did her best not to be too uncomfortable while she waited for her brother to rouse.
To pass the time, she counted the gaps in time between the beeps on the monitors signaling Magic’s heartbeat; eyed the singular tube curving up into his nose as it rested gently against a mask over his mouth. The plastic fogged up and cleared with every breath he took. Occasionally, her brother stirred, head moving from side to side. Then, before Mira could even form his name as a word, his eyes closed tighter as if to shield himself from the light in the room. He groaned a little, tipping his chin up to dig his head further into the pillow and Mira leaned forward to place the covers that shifted off of him from the movement back up.
There was a dizzying, weightless kind of relief she felt watching Magic breathe and move on his own.
The last time Mira was here, he could do none of those things.
Now, here he was showing more signs of life than he had in weeks.
Magic moved his arms a little, positioning one hand outside of the covers and another beneath them at his side. Small tubes snaked out of his skin, no doubt connected to one of the bags of fluid stationed at his bedside. One was tapped to the back of his left hand and another on the inside of his arm; for a person ultra sensitive to touch, Mira was shocked he hadn’t tried to yank them out of his skin like he’d apparently tried to do with the ventilator they had him on during his coma.
What Magic did do was groan, the beeping of the monitor a panicked staccato as he pushed himself up a little off the bed. His twig-like arms shook from the effort—Mira had almost forgotten how thin his stint had made him and was shocked that there were no noticeable changes. All she could do was wait for his anguish to pass. Only when he relaxed and the tension faded from his arms and face did Mira clear her throat.
Her brother slowly turned his head on the pillow to stare at her with a hard squint. For some reason Mira couldn’t understand, the doctors had taken his glasses off, leaving him blind to just about everything in the room if it wasn’t close enough. Maybe they thought he’d be too much of a risk with a weapon, even if the weapon in question was a set of thin, wireframe glasses.
To make it easier for him, Mira leaned forward, elbows resting on the edge of the mattress as she pulled the chair closer. Magic said nothing, but there was recognition in his green and hazel eyes as he scanned her up and down, side to side. Hints of the calculating stare he’d had since childhood that Mira knew so well.
Mira broke the staring contest first by trying to keep the waver in her voice at bay. “Hi Mags.”
“Hi Mira,” Magic croaked out.
Never had she felt happier to have a conversation with her brother. She resisted the urge to do anything other than sit by the bed. “It’s good to have you back. I’m glad you’re okay. You feeling okay, though? You looked a little uncomfortable.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Magic rubbed at one of his eyes and stifled a yawn. “Doing okay. The medication’s wearing off, though. That’s usually how I can tell.”
“What’s the medicine for?”
She watched Magic hesitate, then pluck at the inside bed covers with his hidden hand all while maintaining eye contact. “Aches and pains,” he said softly.
A lie behind false bravado, Mira knew, but she didn’t press. “Y’know,” she said instead, “if you weren’t laid up in bed looking like shit, I’d hug you.”
“Thanks for valuing my personal space this time.” Then he paused, his eyes catching on something. His gaze locked with Mira’s own and she knew that he was focused on the fading bruises that dotted her skin. No words left his mouth, but there was a question on his face despite the daze in his eyes.
“What?” Mira asked, resting her chin on entwined fingers. “Something wrong?”
“Not really,” said her brother, lifting a hand to fidget with the tape keeping the tube in his nose. “You look like you’ve been in a fight.”
A simple scoff. Mira rubbed at her eyes with her knuckles, then sat up straighter, lounging against the back of the chair. “You say that like that’s out of the ordinary for me.”
“So you did?”
“I did.”
“With who?” Magic asked, staring at her again with that assessing expression and frowning his usual frown, the one he so obviously got from his mother now that Mira had seen them do the same thing only moments apart. “Who was it you fought?”
“The person responsible,” Mira said without hesitation, crossing one leg over the other. “I taught him a lesson he wouldn’t forget.”
Magic didn’t look fazed by her answer; if he was shocked at all, it was carefully hidden behind a curt nod and a sigh. He turned away from her, allowing the pillow to consume him as he sank further into the cushion and closed his eyes. The monitors kicked up in a steady rhythm, matching his heart.
Then Mira opened her mouth with a question she wasn’t sure she should ask. For the last few weeks, she’d been stewing over this question, the lack of an answer gnawing at her. Before she could stop herself, it was already out there in the open.
“Magic, do you remember?” she asked, hands clasped together so tightly her knuckles blanched. “What happened that day at the watchtower—do you remember it?”
Her brother shrugged, the sheets ruffling with the movement. “Bits and pieces,” he murmured, eyes slowly opening. He stared up at the ceiling, looking the slightest bit dazed. Mira wondered to herself if it was just the exhaustion or the medication flowing into his veins. Or, she considered silently, a bit of both. “My recollection of it feels a bit more like a fever dream than anything else. Kinda like a moving abstract in my head. Not very clear, if that makes any sense.”
“It does.”
It didn’t; Mira wasn’t entirely sure what that was supposed to mean. Did he only remember parts? Certain sounds or faces? As if he could sense her confusion, Magic turned his head to look at her, a small, knowing crease between his brows.
Mira forced a sheepish smile. “Kind of,” she clarified.”
“Think of it this way. When I try to think about it, I don’t remember the things people did or said. My nerves do, though. When they remember, my whole body goes into a panic and I get stuck here with a racing heart and a tight chest. It remembers the way it all felt. It sucks when you’re trying to talk to someone and panic sets in.
“I do get it in dreams, though,” Magic went on, rubbing his face. “Dreams that feel like they could be real life or memories. They always fade away when I wake up, though. I can never get a good hold on them.”
Then his eyes dropped down, almost guiltily, to the sheets. Mira thought he might end up just going back to sleep with how spacey he seemed just staring at the mattress. It wasn’t until he lifted a hand to start picking at the tape keeping the tube up his nose that she realized he wasn’t exhausted—not enough to sleep, anyway—but stalling. Whatever it was Magic had to say, he wasn’t exactly keen on giving those words any kind of life. Eventually, Mira reached over and gently swatted his hand away and guided it to the bed.
“I haven’t told her,” Magic admitted with a whisper. “I don’t really want to. Not when she’s spent the last…” His brows furrowed with the strain of mental math. “Two weeks? Worried about me?” He shook his head, glancing over at Mira who felt a small pang in her chest at the gesture. The trust Magic had to confide in her. “I can’t do that to her again. Not when she’s just finished being concerned over my health.”
“Don’t worry,” Mira replied softly. Relief flooded into his face, branching out into the rest of him in the form of relaxed shoulders and arms. “I won’t tell either of our parents—unless it gets really bad. Then I will. But having a few really shitty dreams from a really shitty day?” She patted her chest, fingers splayed over her heart. “That stays between us.”
“Good.” Then Magic stopped and considered her for a moment. He scanned her up and down and Mira knew that he was looking at the bruises coloring her skin; the crutch she had leaning against the chair. Whatever he was fixating on, Mira knew it was related to what was coming out of his mouth next.
A few beeps from the monitor passed between them before Magic spoke again. “The one you fought. Do you think he learned his lesson this time?”
“I don’t know,” Mira said honestly. “I hope so.”
She wanted to genuinely believe that Bentley and his stuck-up posse of henchmen learned their lesson. If not from her, than from whoever it was that put them into legal trouble after the reinforcers arrived at the house. It would give Mira an indescribable flutter of joy in her chest if that were the case. Knowing Chrome’s history, though, the opposite was more likely to be true. Reinforcers were notorious for letting those kinds of kids off easy, while the rest of them were usually forced to pay for their mistakes, often unfairly. Coal mining families were usually on the receiving end of the least amount of grace possible. The simple fact of the matter remained that, when mining families were the targets of peer abuse, there was nothing to be done about it.
Any of the higher end families, though, could do no wrong.
“I also hope so,” Magic said. “Because I hate being here. I hate how it makes me feel and how tight it makes my chest knowing that I can’t go home. And that’s not even counting this.”
Magic motioned towards his lower half with a flourish. Mira just stared at his hands. She couldn’t recall him having any injuries and, seeing the expectant look on her brother’s face, it felt stupid and almost inconsiderate to ask for clarification. He made another effort to get a reaction out of her by doing it again with a bit more intensity in the motion, but it fell flat as Mira just sat there.
Defeated, he sank further into his pillow and blew out a heavy sigh. “My muscles are weak,” he said with a bit of a whine. “I can’t really move them well on my own no matter how hard I try. Mom, Benji, and the nurses had to move them while I was unconscious to prevent them from getting worse.”
“Can you feel them still?” Mira asked, still a little confused.
A condescending frown twitched on Magic’s lips. “Of course I can. It’s not my nerves that are the problem, it’s the muscles. Tammi seems to think that the extended bed rest I had at home and here—combined with my…less than great eating habits—affected the muscles in my legs. Hands seem okay; they’re a little tingly sometimes, but I can use them.
“They’re looking into a way to get me back on my feet,” Magic continued. “Tammi already told me it won’t be easy. Or fun.” He shook his head, then drove the heels of his palms into his eyes. “At best, I’ll need something to keep me stable. At worst, I have to relearn how to walk. In order to know which, I need a walking test.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
Magic looked away. “Not great,” he whispered, the waver in them clear. “But that’s why I hope the people who did this learned their lesson.” Then he paused, as though considering his next words, only to settle on a soft, barely audible, “Painfully,” through gritted teeth.
The violence wasn’t shocking. Magic was well within his rights to be angry with his peers and the people in power who allowed them to abuse him. She didn’t know how long he’d been sitting on those thoughts, if the desire to see his tormentors punished in some insufferable way was one he’d always had or if it was particularly spawned by his time spent recovering in a clinic. Based on Magic’s tone, Mira didn’t think she’d get a rational answer from him, so she nudged the conversation into something less hypothetical and more likely to produce answers. At least then she could nudge Magic towards something less destructive. “Do you know when you’re supposed to have that walking test?”
“No. Probably not for another few days.” A distinctive popping noise rose from the mattress. Mira shifted herself a little and craned her neck to find Magic’s arm subtly flexing as he plucked at the mattress cover. Beside him, the beeps signaling his heart ticked up a little. There was more he wanted to say that he couldn’t get out, either from embarrassment or lack of confidence or some mixture of both.
Mira adjusted herself on the chair and looked away from him, keeping her focus on the door. People passed by in flashes, blue scrubs appearing and disappearing within seconds as the other nurses rushed past. She lounged deeply in the chair, taking up as much room as possible, positioning herself in a way where the bed was only in her periphery. As if realizing that she wasn’t staring at him any more, the plucking of fabrics stopped along with the noise. Even the heart monitor grew a little calmer.
“Do you want us there for the test?” Mira asked. “Dad took away my bakery privileges because of what I got into, so I’ll be free.”
“Benji has the bakery to run.”
“He does, but what’s another day off? You think he’s been back home since they brought you here?”
“I want to hope so. I wouldn’t want you guys to miss out on sales just because of me.”
Mira hummed and shook her head. “Chrome will always need us.”
The words made her nauseous. Chrome would need its small town stores, the family-owned businesses that kept its economy afloat. As a kid, Mira always remembered her father saying something along those lines, that the town would always need their service regardless of the day or season. Chrome would always need them. That didn’t mean the town would treat them well to get those goods, though.
She frowned. Cogs turned in her mind, the beginnings of an idea. Mira wouldn’t voice them now, though, and zoned back in as Magic was speaking.
“…if you say so,” he said. “Mom might like the company. Would be good for her, too, since she’d have a friendly face for support.”
“When it happens,” Mira said, finally turning back to look at him, “have Amelia let us know. We’ll be here.”
“I will.” Then Magic turned his head, glancing over at her, bi-colroed eyes focused and intense despite the tired haze in them. “Can I tell you one more thing?”
Mira propped up one of her feet on the edge of the seat. “Yeah. What’s up?”
“Thank you. For trying—even if it didn't work,” he added quickly. “Most people wouldn’t.”
“I’m not exactly most people, Magic.”
“I know. You’re my sister.”
The words were a blow to the chest, knocking the air from Mira’s lungs. The beginnings of tears welled in her eyes unprompted and now it was her turn to look away to get herself together. She knew Magic was expecting a response, though, so she took a slight, quivering breath and hid her smile behind a closed fist in front of her mouth.
“Always will be, Mags,” she said. “Always will be.”