24 Epilogue: Waking up

Frieda lay on the couch, sweaty and smelling like french fries and wondering why she had thought working at Burger Fool was a good idea. Then she pulled the check out of her purse and remembered why. Pretty soon she would have a cell phone of her very own.

The home phone rang, but Frieda ignored it, trying to calculate just how many more hours she needed to work before she could afford her reward.

"Frieda, phone!" her mom yelled and instantly the thoughts of numbers and tiredness evaporated from her mind.

"I'm getting it!" she called as she dashed up to her room. She dove onto her bed, purse and jester hat flying. "Hello?"

"Heya, Frieda," her caller said. Frieda's heart did a flip-flop. It was Richie. Ever since the... accident, he'd dropped off the face of the planet. She hadn't seen him since before summer vacation, hadn't even been able to drag any information out of Virgil about how their mutual friend was doing beyond 'fine.'

"Oh my God, Richie! Where are you? Are you okay? I mean, how are you? What're you doing?"

"Home, yes, fine, and planning some stuff," he said in a way that made Frieda wonder if he really had turned into a robot.

"Science stuff?"

"Nah, social stuff. V's trying to put together this welcome home party for Daisy, so I'ma pass you to him in a little bit, but I got this other thing I was wondering if you could help me with?"

Frieda blinked. Richie was a genius now. What could he need help with? "Yeah, sure!"

"Well... do you know Madelyn Spaulding's friends?"

"Yeah, I know them!" Frieda said instantly. "Me and Christine went to Kindergarten together, and I know Abby from journalism class..." She shrugged. She knew all the kids in their grade one way or another. "Why?"

"I wanted to make something for her, like a get well card."

Freida smiled. Of course she would help with something like that. Even if Madelyn was in a coma and wouldn't ever see it.

####

Madelyn opened her eyes. Orange lights blinked above her among splotches of blurry color. She squinted, trying to make sense of what she saw, of the meaningless noise coming into her ears. It was all chaos, nonsensical, frustrating.

She blinked and blinked again, and slowly the world resolved itself, became clear and intelligible.

She was laying in bed in a white room, hooked up to beeping machines. Three people stood above her, talking in quiet, anxious voices. Madelyn smiled, recognizing them.

"Mom?" she croaked, her voice barely a whisper. "Dad?"

Her parents cried and hugged her for a long time, just a little too hard. Madelyn didn't mind though, happy that they were happy to see her after everything she'd done to them. Eventually they let go, wiping away tears and smiling.

"Welcome back," the third person said. Madelyn squinted at him. He was a bang baby, or maybe a cyborg, half his face replaced with dull gray metal and one eye glowing orange. More orange lights were set into his metal skin, like the little lights on the computer keyboards at school. But he had blond hair and glasses and a square jaw that looked familiar. More than that, when she pushed just a little bit with her mind, his thoughts felt like the thoughts of only one person she knew.

Madelyn's hand twitched as she tried to raise it to her mouth in shock, but she just didn't have the strength.

"Richie?" she gasped. Had he done this to himself, or had he been transformed at the hands of some villain?

"Heya, Maddie," he said, a big dopey grin pasted on his mutilated face. "One year, ten months, sixteen days, five hours and three minutes. A little above my original estimate, but some stuff came up, sorry."

"How?" Madelyn whispered and Richie seemed to intuit what her real question was.

"This?" He gestured at his face with a metal hand. "There was an altercation at the gas storage facility. And you know me, I had to go get myself involved the second I thought I could help."

A gentle wave of foreign emotions washed over her. An odd mix of sympathy and horror from her parents directed at Richie, almost entirely blotted out by their overwhelming joy at having their daughter back. And from Richie... If emotions had color, he would have been leaking rainbows. He was happy she was back, proud that he'd been able to fix her, embarrassed it had taken so long, angry about the incident that had left him mutated, sad and jealous over... something.

Madelyn couldn't really determine the causes of the emotions she was picking up, only make guesses based on what she knew. But there was so much she didn't know. She had missed so much. Almost two years? Richie and all her friends would be seniors in high school now, ready to graduate and go on to college and the real world, while she'd lain in bed like a lump, doing nothing but relive her old memories and the ones Richie had accidentally left her.

Tears filled her eyes, making everything blurry again, as weak, hiccuping sobs escaped her.

Her parents' worry blasted through her and in an instant she found herself wrapped again in her mom's arms, her dad petting her hair. She was glad for their comfort, but it wasn't what she truly needed. She had to know what had happened, what she had missed, what had changed, what Richie had done to bring her back.

But she was so weak, so trembling and tired she didn't have the strength to make her mouth form the words and unlike before, there was something blocking her from pushing her thoughts and will into someone else's mind. She cried some more, thankful for that, yet frustrated she couldn't communicate what she wanted.

####

"I hired a meta to do telepathic surgery on you," Richie explained. It had been about a day since Madelyn had woken up, a long and frightening day of finding out just what two years of a coma had done to her body and all the work she was going to have to do just to learn how to walk again. Right now she was sitting in bed in the hospital, propped up against a mountain of pillows, her chest aching as her muscles regained the strength needed for her to breathe on her own.

"How?"

"Well, you remember that guy Copycat?"

Madelyn nodded.

"I had him give you some of my power. It's probably worn off by now, but I think you got enough of it to subconsciously fix what I did, and make it easier for you to parse any extra information you might be picking up and avoid the overload that caused the migraines. Which really should have been a natural sub-power that somehow never manifested..."

Richie's mismatched eyes slid out of focus for a second and Madelyn felt his thoughts rearrange themselves, like a deck of cards getting shuffled. While he did that Madelyn tried to think about what was going on in her own head. She remembered what it felt like to have Richie's power, but that wasn't what she felt like now. She didn't feel all split up into little pieces, she felt... fine. Better and more put together, more under control than she had in a long time.

Richie blinked and went on with his explaining, interrupting her thoughts. "I also took the liberty of designing an alpha-wave sink and planting it in your head." He tapped a spot behind his own ear. "That was Virgil's idea, actually."

Madelyn tried to ask what an alpha-wave sink was, but the sound just wouldn't come out. But Richie figured out what she meant.

"It means you can't overwrite other people's brain waves. Same kind of idea as the zap caps I made for V. It's a way to ground your brain waves so you don't hurt anybody accidentally."

Madelyn nodded minutely, remembering Richie's design plans for the 'zap caps'. "Thanks." She really meant it too. She didn't want to turn other people into puppets, but if the possibility was there... Who knew what might happen?

Richie smiled. "'Course. Now I'm guessing you want me to get you all caught up?"

Madelyn nodded and Richie opened up the laptop he'd brought with him so he could show her a video. The opening scene showed their whole grade, cheering and waving, holding up a butcher paper banner that read Get Well Soon! in purple paint. Then a cut to black with the date 8/22/01, followed by a shot of Richie pointing the camera at himself, already mutated so soon after the start of her coma.

"Hey, Madelyn! Sorry I didn't start this sooner, everything's been crazy lately, as you can see." He glared at the camera with his glowing eye. "But I'm working hard on medicine stuff now, and I thought that when you wake up, you're gonna want to know everything that's happened. So, I'm making this video. Anyway, here's Abby!" He turned the camera around to show Madelyn's best friend, looking awkward and uncomfortable. "Abby, where'd you go this summer?"

Abby smiled at the question. "I went to Yellowstone with my parents and Johnny and Max. I had no idea it was gonna be so stinky and gross. We saw the geysers and deer and this huge waterfall and my dad bought me this!" A stuffed toy bison filled the shot, huge and out of focus.

A new date filled the screen and her friend Christine came on to talk about her summer. One by one her friends and family filled her in about their summers, told her to get well soon. Each scene was only a few seconds long, preceded by a date. Slice-of-life scenes were mixed in between the mini interviews, showing things like Richie fixing her parents' car, Abby giving her candidacy speech at ASB elections, Mrs Brady talking about To Kill A Mockingbird, Richie's friend Virgil in his pajamas eating cereal and yelling at Richie for filming him without warning. It seemed like hardly a day went by when Richie hadn't taken the time to video something, something funny or sweet or everyday.

The last scene showed her parents in the hospital, dated only a couple days ago, promising that they would see her soon.

Richie handed her a kleenex and she managed to raise it to her face, blow her nose.