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It’s right after lunch when the entire basketball team and cheerleading squad crowd into the gym, and Billy realises he’s an actual idiot.
Because he’d known this was coming.
Coach had handed out the form two weeks ago, and Billy had taken it home, had filled it out from memory, writing ‘n/a’ on every question about his mum’s side of the family’s medical history, had shown his dad once he was done, and Neil had signed it. Billy dropped it in his messenger bag to make sure he didn’t forget to bring it back to school.
And he didn’t forget to bring it.
But he did forget it was happening at all. His dad did, too, evidently, because usually he’s smarter than this.
But he’s been highly strung ever since Billy failed to bring Max home that Sunday night a few weeks ago. Billy’s knuckles have healed, as has Harrington’s face, but Neil’s anger hasn’t waned. Anything Billy does can be taken as insolence, as lacking respect or responsibility.
He’d stopped by his locker to grab the form, and had briefly entertained the idea that maybe he could make a run for it.
Then Tommy had appeared and slung his arm over Billy’s shoulder, the other one wrapped around Carol’s waist, and Billy had suppressed the whimper he wanted to let out as the added weight shifted something in his ribcage.
There’s stations set up in the gym, a long line of curtained cubicles. Both Billy’s coach and the cheerleading one are there, directing them to stand in alphabetical order, girls and boys mixed. Billy ends up behind Tommy but in front of Harrington.
“Think I could get Marta to let me examine her? ” The guy in front of Tommy, Matt, asks.
Tommy laughs. “Gonna listen to her heart?” He holds both his hands above his chest, cupping them and shaking them rhythmically. “Ba-boom, ba-boom.”
“Ba-boobs,” Matt laughs.
The girl in front of Matt sends them a disgusted look.
“Marta?” Billy asks, frowning.
Tommy turns to him, explaining, “Dr. Lloyd. Matty here overheard the nurses talking to her last year, found out her first name’s Marta. She’s the one who listens to our hearts and lungs, and checks our joints and shit.”
“She’s so hot”, Matt says.
But Billy’s more focused on what Tommy said. “They do that? Listen to our lungs?”
Tommy shrugs. “Yeah. Of course they do. What, you don’t have sports physicals in California?”
They do, but they’re in private, at a doctors office, and Billy’s only ever gone when Susan remembers to take him.
“Yeah, but like, at a doctor’s office.”
“Huh,” Tommy says, but turns back when Matt taps him on the shoulder.
He whispers something that has Tommy bursting out laughing again.
Billy looks down at his shoes. Listening to their lungs and heart means he has to be shirtless . That’s bad, that’s really fucking bad.
He clutches at his mother’s pendant as he stands in line, forcing himself to take a step forward after Tommy, to not run away, because there’s nowhere to run, nothing to do, this is inevitable and he knows that even as his thoughts race, trying to come up with an excuse to leave.
He feels too hot and too cold at the same time. He doesn’t want to be here. There’s no way this can end in his favour.
Tommy disappears behind the first curtain.
Billy hangs back, his gut churning. His heart’s beating too hard, hard enough to hurt.
It’s less than five minutes later that Tommy steps out, continuing down into the next cubicle. Billy’s frozen. He keeps rubbing at his pendant.
“Earth to Hargrove,” Steve says from behind him. He nudges a hand between Billy’s shoulder blades. It’s not very forceful, but Billy still startles. “Tommy’s done. Your turn.”
Billy pulls the curtain open, steps in, and makes sure it’s closed.
There’s a portable stadiometer in one corner and a scale beside it, a table with papers against the makeshift far wall. The nurse has her back to him, looking through some papers on the table.
“Alright, Harrington-“ she starts to say as she turns, but pauses, looking surprised when she sees Billy. She gives him a smile. “New to the school?”
She speaks quietly, quiet enough that the others just a few feet outside hopefully won’t hear. Billy couldn’t while he stood out there, but Billy can barely hear anything over the rushing in his ears.
He nods. “Yeah. Just moved here.”
She holds her hand out for his form. Billy hands it to her, wincing at how crumbled it’s gotten from him gripping it too tightly. “Where from?”
“San Diego.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Well, welcome fo Hawkins…” She looks down, checks his name. “William.”
“Billy,” he mumbles.
She smiles again, quickly scanning the rest of his form, before she gestures to the scale. “Billy. If you’ll step on the scale?”
He does so, sticking his hands in his pockets to keep her from seeing how they shake.
She notes his weight down on her own form, then has him stand by the stadiometer so she can check his height. This is fine. This isn’t the scary part, but the faster this is over the quicker he’ll get to the scary part, and he doesn’t want that.
She tells him they’re done, and hands him his form back, along with the one she’s started filling in, but folded, like he isn’t allowed to read it.
He wits a minute outside the next cubicle for Tommy to step out.
There’s two chairs and a table in this one, otherwise it’s the same thing here. A bit of surprise at seeing him instead of Harrington. He hands this nurse - a man - both forms, and is told to sit in one of the chairs. He checks Billy’s blood pressure and pulse.
“A little high.”
Billy swallows, chewing at his lower lip.
“Nervous?”
He nods, quickly.
“We’ll do it again, just to be sure. Take a deep breath.”
Billy does, as much as he can. It doesn’t help a lot, but the pressure in his chest does ease a little.
“There you go. You’re alright.”
He checks them again, and they’re still a little high but lower than they were. “I’ll put it down to nerves, then.”
He writes his findings down on the same form as the previous nurse, folds it, and hands both back to Billy.
He ends up waiting a little longer outside the next cubicle, long enough for his heart to start racing again. He rubs at his pendant and feels dizzy, which he doesn’t think is all because of the concussion he’s pretty sure he’s got.
Tommy steps out, grins at Billy, and shit.
Shit, is this it?
He digs his nails into his palm and forces himself to step past the curtain.
She smiles at him when he steps in, and she is beautiful, and young, and she does have a rather impressive set of breasts, but she isn’t…
From the way Tommy and Matt talked about her, he’d gotten the impression she’d be showing them off, that she’d be, well.
If he’s completely honest, he’d pictured she’d be like Karen Wheeler.
But she isn’t. She’s wearing a lab coat and scrubs with a stethoscope around her neck, and her bronze coloured hair is short and a little wavy.
She holds her hand out to him. “Dr. Lloyd. What’s your name?”
“Billy Hargrove,” Billy mumbles, and hands her the forms. He wants to leave.
There is no possible outcome of this day that will be good for Billy.
There’s a rolling stool and desk and an actual padded exam table in the middle of the space that she gestures for him to sit on while she reads through his forms.
“Alright, Billy, if you could take off your shirt and I’ll listen to your lungs and heart.”
She says it casually, so casually, like she isn’t about to destroy his life and doom him.
He reaches up and unbuttons his shirt with trembling hands. It takes him a few tries, the buttons slipping through his fingers.
He lets his shirt fall off his shoulders and bundles it up in his arms, not caring about the wrinkles. It won’t matter. Nothing matters anymore.
Dr. Lloyd takes in his bandaged chest in silence. Billy wants her to speak, Billy wants her to say something, Billy wants to leave, Billy doesn’t want to be here, Billy wishes none of this was happening, Billy wishes he could turn back time so he hadn’t made dad mad, hadn’t let Max sneak out, hadn’t been forced to move cross country.
“What happened?” Dr. Lloyd asks, her voice carefully neutral.
“I bruised my ribs,” Billy says.
He’s not looking at her. He’s looking at a spot on the gym’s hardwood floor.
“Okay,” she says. “And who wrapped them?”
Billy’s gaze shifts to his lap, at his shirt. He’s hiding his hands in it, but if he looks hard enough he can still see that they’re trembling. “I did,” he says, so quiet he hopes she didn’t hear.
But she must’ve. He can see her, out of the corner of his eye, stepping closer. She rounds the table, ends up behind him. “I’m going to unwrap them. We don’t recommend that you wrap them anymore, because it restricts your breathing and could lead to pneumonia.”
“Oh,” Billy breathes. He flinches when she touches him.
“Shh,” she says. “It’s okay.”
She unwraps the bandages slowly, gently.
The hair at the nape of his neck flutters a little when she sighs, seeing the bruises along his side. Billy knows they look bad. Dark, his skin a little scraped at some parts, all along his left side.
“I’m just going to feel along them for a second.”
She lightly places her hand over his bruises, pressing in a little, and Billy can’t help but whimper. He took some Tylenol after lunch but it doesn’t do much when she’s actively pressing against his ribs.
“Have you had a doctor check them?”
“Yes,” Billy lies.
“Okay. I’m going to listen to your lungs. Breathe as deep as you can.”
Billy does his best, suppressing a shiver when the chest piece of her stethoscope touches his skin. She moves it around a little before stepping back and rounding the table.
And coming to a stop before she can tell him to breathe again so she can listen to his heart and lungs from the front.
Billy can feel her gaze fixed on the healing cigarette burn below his right pec.
He got that one for dressing like a whore at home. In front of his sister, in front of Susan. In front of the neighbours.
“What-?”
“I did it,” Billy whispers before she can finish, because he doesn’t want to hear what the question would be.
Then he realised what he’d said and his eyes widen.
He glances up at her, sees her look around at the flimsy curtain walls with a frown. For the first time someone other than Billy seems to realise what a shit setup this is, how lacking in privacy it is.
Billy knows that’s the idea of the forms. That they’re supposed to have written everything down that the physicians will need, and then they will write their findings down, and that’ll be it. No one says anything private, they just do the tests with barely any talking.
But that doesn’t work with someone like Billy.
He wishes it did. Wishes they could just not talk and he could just leave and everything would be fine, normal, would stay as it is.
“Do you hurt yourself a lot, Billy?” she asks, voice so quiet it’s almost a whisper.
He shakes his head quickly. “No.”
“Okay. Can you look up at me?”
She stares into his eyes once he does, and takes out a small flashlight from her coat pocket. She turns it on and shines it straight into his face, from the side and in towards his nose.
Billy flinches and groans, turning his head away and squeezing his eyes closed. His head throbs.
He jumps when he hears a voice from just outside the curtain. “Hargrove! Stop flirting with her, you’re holding up the queue!”
Fucking Harrington.
Dr. Lloyd looks and him and nods, but she still looks bothered. “It’s okay. You can get dressed.”
She goes away to the desk, starting to write something on his form. Billy pushes himself off the table, stumbles, and bites his lip to keep from letting any noises out when the movement sends shooting pain through his chest. He puts his shirt back on, keeping his back to Dr. Lloyd.
“Here,” she says once he’s dressed again, and hands him his forms.
“Thanks,” Billy mumbles. He takes them, brushes the curtain aside and steps out.
Harrington stares at him. Billy gives him the finger and turns around his back to him, walking towards the next cubicle. He unfolds the form she’d written on, shooting one quick glance to it, and sees the last thing written is ‘Possible concussion’.
He finds it back up and steps into the final cubicle, because he can see Tommy waiting for him by the wall on the other end of the gym.
The man in there checks his eyes, which is just fucking great. He reads through Billy’s form and does the same thing with the flashlight. This time Billy forces himself to stay still.
He says nothing to Billy about a concussion.
He just asks Billy to read off the letters on one of those charts they always have, the ones where ever line is a smaller font the further down you get. And Billy hates it, because usually his vision is great, but he can’t get his eyes to focus as far down as he usually manages to read and it frustrates him to no end.
He’s released after that, ends up hanging out with Tommy while they wait for Carol, but Billy barely listens to him as he prattles on. He knows that this isn’t it, that there’s more shit coming, and he spends his next class feeling like he can barely breathe from the pressure weighing down his chest, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And it does, right before last period.
Six little words over the intercom for the whole school to hear and Billy feels so lightheaded he fears he’s about to pass out.
“William Hargrove to the principal’s office.”
It repeats twice more.
Billy can feel people staring at him.
Tommy claps him on the shoulder, hard enough it makes Billy gasp. He grins at him, eyes wide and curious. “What’d you do?”
Billy shrugs his arm off. “Fuck off, Tommy,” he mutters.
“Hey!” Tommy says, about to start something, but Billy walks away before he gets the chance.
For the second time that day he entertains the idea of running. But he has to pass the principal’s office in order to get to the exist, and even if he’d succeed in it all it would do would be to prolong the inevitable.
He walks like a man heading for the gallows, resigned to his fate.
There are too many people waiting for him in the principal’s office.
There’s Principal Reid, of course, and there’s Dr. Lloyd, and Ms. Kelley, the school counsellor. And then there’s Chief Hopper, frowning in a corner with crossed arms. He’s the only one standing up, Principal Reid sitting behind his desks, Dr. Lloyd leaning against it, and Ms. Kelley sitting in a chair in front of it.
There’s only one empty chair left, beside Ms. Kelley and in front of his principal and the doctor.
Billy forces his legs to unlock and walk up to it and sit down. His heart shoots up in his throat and stays there.
He wants his bandages back on. He felt steadier with them, and he feels naked without them, like anyone can see through his shirt down to the bruises underneath.
He can’t do this.
—
Jim stands in the corner of Principal Reid’s office, where he can easily observe the rest of the room’s occupants, but Billy Hargrove in particular.
Jim hadn’t know what to think when he got the call about an hour and a half ago.
Because Billy Hargrove?
Really?
Jim had already pegged him for your standard big city asshole. Although to be fair, most of that had been based on what El had said about him, which had been relayed from the rest of the kids, and from Jim’s minimal interaction with the kid whenever he stopped him for speeding.
But now? Seeing the kid sink into that green chair like he’s got the weight of the whole world on his shoulders, looking miserable and like he can’t trust any one of them, well, Jim thinks he might be starting to see it.
No one says anything for a minute.
Billy’s the first to speak. Jim sees him take a deep breath and grimace. “What’s going on?” he asks, and he sounds wary, but also like he knows what the answer is but can’t help hoping that he’s wrong.
“There were a couple things on your form which concerned me,” Dr. Lloyd says.
Billy seems to sink deeper into the chair. His hand has reaches up to the necklace that always seems to hang around his neck, rubbing it between his fingers. “Okay.”
“Your right shoulder’s been dislocated. Your left arm broken, twice, and your wrist once. You’ve had four concussion in six years, and I’m fairly certain you’ve got a fifth once right now.”
Billy winches. Shrugs with one shoulder. He’s staring at the floor by his feet. “I play a lot of contact sports.”
“Sure,” Dr. Lloyd says. “But this is excessive. And then there’s the fact that you’ve got ribs that are either bruised or broken, and you lied to me about having had them checked out at the hospital.”
“I didn’t-“ Billy mumbles.
“I called my colleagues, and there’s no record of you ever having been to the hospital in Hawkins.”
“We haven’t got the money,” Billy says. “And I get in a lot of fights, I-“
“I heard that,” Dr. Lloyd interrupts. “Your principal told me that you’ve gotten in a lot of fights with your peers. But I can also see that your knuckles aren’t split and we’ve all agreed you don’t seem like the type of boy to lie still and take it if one of your classmates started punching.”
Billy’s lets go off the necklace to instead wraps his arms around himself, hiding his hands beneath his armpits, as though trying to hide them from the rest of them.
As though that wasn’t the first thing Jim clocked when he came in.
Dr. Lloyd pushes herself away from the desk she’d been leaning against and crouches down in front of Billy. “We want to help you.”
Billy shakes his head. “You can’t help me.”
Jim’s gut tightens at the certainty in his voice.
“Please,” he mumbles. “Please, can I go home? Can I go back to class? I don’t- I don’t need help. Everything’s fine.”
“Billy. There’s a cigarette burn on your chest. And I don’t believe you did that yourself, no matter what you say.”
Billy shakes his head. He opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but doesn’t know what. “ Please .”
“Dr. Lloyd and Chief Hopper are going to take you to the hospital to get checked out,” Ms. Kelley, the counsellor, informs him. “There’s a social work from a few towns over that’s going to meet you there. The Chief’s going to take some photos.” She reaches out and puts her hand on his arm. “We’re getting you out of there, Billy.”
Contrary to what she’d probably thought, Billy doesn’t react well to that. He flinches, making her hand fall. Jim sees his eyes well up, sees him squeeze them shut and shake his head and groan. He puts one hand to his head and tangles it into his hair. “I don’t want to go into foster care,” he sobs, and then he gasps, and starts to hyperventilate.
His eyes shoot open and his hand leaves his hair to clutch at his shirt, and he whines and whimpers between the gasping, harsh inhales that make it sound like he’s choking. Dr. Lloyd said his ribs were either bruised or broken.
Jim can’t imagine how much it must hurt to have a panic attack with injured ribs.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Dr. Lloyd says, her voice calm and even and kind. “It’s okay. You’re okay, Billy. You’re having a panic attack, but you’re safe, and it’ll be over soon. Look at me, hey? Look at me. There you are. We’ve got to slow your breathing, I know, it hurts, I know. Breathe in through your nose, that’s it, one, two, three, four, five… and hold it… and out through your mouth, just like that, shh… again, in, one two, three, four, five…”
She stays crouching by him, holding his gaze as she directs him, until Billy’s calmed down enough that his breathing gone close to normal, although he’s still crying and sniffling and whimpering any time his ribs must hurt.
Ms. Kelley looks at him with sadness in her gaze. Jim glances at Principal Reid and sees him staring at Billy in horror.
“Please,” Billy mumbles. “Please, I don’t want to go into foster care. I’ve only got a year and a half left until graduation. I can wait.”
Ms. Kelley’s expression falls even further.
Dr. Lloyd shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Billy, but we can’t wait for that. We need you to be safe now .”
“Please,” Billy whispers. “ Please .”
“Do you live alone with your dad? I saw you didn’t fill out anything about your mum’s medical history on the from.”
Billy shakes his head. “She left. When I was a kid. She couldn’t deal with it anymore.”
God.
Jim moves away from the wall and rests half his ass on Principal Reid’s desk, hopefully succeeding in blocking him from Billy’s sight, if he were to look up.
Billy doesn’t need to see the expression on the man’s face.
“He’s got a stepmother and stepsister,” Jim says.
“What’s your stepmum like, Billy?” Ms. Kelley asks.
“Susan?” Billy says, and lets out a noise that Jim can’t decide if it’s a laugh or a sob. “She’s… She doesn’t do anything. She’s scared he’ll turn on her or Max, so she doesn’t do anything, she just stands there and watches or takes Max away so she doesn’t find out.”
Jim had been wanting to ask about that. He needed to know if Max was in any danger. But according to Billy she doesn’t even know her stepfather is hurting his son. “I’m going to have an officer pick Max up from school,” he tells them. “And another will get Susan and take her to the station.”
“Susan didn’t adopt me”, Billy whispers. “She doesn’t… She doesn’t like me. Max hates me.” He seems to fold in on himself, arms wrapping back around his chest, holding himself together as he stares at his lap. He’s shaking, when he says, so quiet Jim wouldn’t have heard if he’d still been standing in the corner, “I want my mum.”
And God. God, okay. This kid’s so convinced his stepmother doesn’t care about him and that his sister hates him - two things Jim can’t even dispute in any honest way, because he knows nothing about Susan Hargrove and he doesn’t know which opinions that leave El come from the boys and which come from Max - that he’s clinging on to a woman who left him behind as a child, probably to the same fate that she’d suffered.
And still, that is what Billy wants, and if Susan doesn’t want him, then his mum might very well be the first person they’ll try to contact.
But what if she doesn’t want him, either?
For all the posturing Billy does, he’s just a teen. Just a kid. A hurt and scared child, who seems to think himself completely unloved by everyone in his life.
God. He needs a hug. Someone should hug him, but Jim doubts Billy would let anyone in this room do that.
He wishes Joyce were here.
He glances at the clock. He feels exhausted. “We should go now,” he says. “If we want to avoid the crowd of students when the classes end.” He stands up fully, as does Dr. Lloyd.
Billy does his best to wipe his tears away but it’s still obvious he’s been crying, eyes red and skin puffy and wet. He sways a little when he stands up, catching himself on the armrest of the chair.
The three of them leave Ms. Kelley and Principal Reid behind. Jim stays close behind Billy, completely aware he’s hovering, as they exit to the car park. Dr. Lloyd climbs into her own car, while Jim gets the cruiser open and gestures to the passenger seat to Billy.
Billy leans away from him, resting his head against the window. Still hugging himself.
Jim starts the car, following Dr. Lloyd to the hospital.
He wants to believe he’s doing the right thing. Objectively, he knows he is. He wants to think that anything must be better than living with a man who drove your mother away and who gives you concussions and bruises your ribs and presses lit cigarettes to your skin.
But Billy is terrified of ending up in the system, and Jim knows that too often it can be like playing Russian roulette, that too many bastards manage to become foster parents.
He thinks that the way Billy lives now he’s got a car, and his own possessions, he seems to have some autonomy, he knows his abuser and he knows the rules, and maybe Billy thinks it’s better to stay like that than to risk ending up somewhere worse, somewhere with different rules and restrictions. And maybe Billy’s right.
But he shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t have to want to stay with someone who hurts him. He should be able to know that his other options are better, always . They shouldn’t be bad or maybe worse or maybe the same or maybe better or maybe maybe maybe.
Jim can’t promise him that everything will be alright.
He can’t promise him that Susan will want to take care of him, he can’t promise him that they’ll be able to find his mum, that she’ll be in any position to take him in, that she’ll want to.
But Jim wants to. Jim wants to promise him that everything will be alright.
And Jim.
Well.
Jim has a contact who easily made him an adoptive parent once. Maybe he could do it again.
Jim’s never raised a boy. Jim doesn’t know that he’d be good at it.
But maybe he could find out.