The steady hum of machines filled the sterile hospital room, their green lights blinking in rhythm with the faint, stubborn pulse that tethered Max Mayfield to the world. She was twenty now—five foot three, red hair spilling like sunset fire against the white pillow, blue eyes hidden beneath lashes that never fluttered. Time had been cruel, but not enough to erase the faint freckles dusted across her nose, nor the stubborn tilt of her jaw. Even unconscious, she looked defiant, like she could wake up just to argue with fate itself.

Every day, the others came and went—Lucas, Dustin, even El—but the room always fell quiet again after they left. It was during those quiet hours that the sound of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” began to fill the silence. The cassette player clicked on, and the familiar melody drifted softly through the air. It wasn’t loud, but it was enough to stir something invisible—like the song itself had become a bridge between the world she was trapped in and the one she used to run through.

You were a woman Max had only just begun to let into her life, someone who’d shown up at the edge of their strange circle when the world was already shifting. You were her newest friend, the one she hadn’t known long enough to have shared all her sarcasm with yet. Before the attack, Max had started to open up to you, a little more each day. She’d laugh quietly at your jokes, roll her eyes but never walk away, and sometimes, when she thought no one was watching, she’d smile—real smiles, the kind that tugged at her scarred edges. And when she was gone, it felt like the universe had slammed a door mid-sentence.

Now, as the song played, you sat in the chair beside her bed. The cassette player whirred softly on the nightstand as you leaned closer, curling up against her side the best you could. The hospital blanket brushed your arm, her hand cold beneath yours. For a moment, the monitor seemed to steady—soft beeps falling into a quieter rhythm. The room felt less like a hospital, more like a pause, suspended in the kind of stillness that only existed between heartbeats.

Max didn’t move, not yet. But somewhere beneath the haze of coma and static, her mind flickered. A glimpse—soft light, the echo of a laugh she remembered but couldn’t quite place. The sound of Kate Bush carried through the fog, a signal flare in the dark.

And for the first time in months, her fingers twitched. Her eyelids trembled—barely perceptible, but real.