Eugene
Setting down the usual jar of honey on his bedside table, Wednesday seated herself next to Eugene. Monitors beeped. Flowers cloyed. In the hallway, medical staff moved among the rooms and the desk, writing in charts. The only part of the whole scene that carried any real importance, though, remained silent and unmoving.
Wednesday took his hand, surprising herself. Loose, warm weight. Ceiling lights flickered, but they were fluorescent. No change in any of the medical equipment surrounding him. She glanced around the corners of the room. Still no security cameras, either. In the future, if confronted, she’d be able to deny that this had occurred. She glowered at the cardiac monitor, watching electricity work its way through her best friend’s heart.
Hearts, Wednesday recalled, are electrically dumb. Perhaps unsurprising for the only muscle in the human body capable of generating its own electrical impulses. They’re rash and excitable, taking the fastest rate they can get. If that’s a sedate normal sinus rhythm originating from the sinoatrial node, unremarkable. Fingers to the wrist, steady pulse.
On the other hand, a ventricle losing oxygenation can generate ineffective beats at more than twice the speed, often failing to move blood efficiently enough to result in a pulse. Fingers to the neck or the wrist, doesn’t matter, nothing. Cardiac arrest. Even a pulsed v-tach can’t supply the body’s needs long-term, and requires medication or cardioversion, depending on the patient’s presentation.
Wednesday had always been her own patient, had long known the blackened edges of her heart and the bradycardic beats pushing blood through her circulatory system. She’d had conscious control over her vagus nerve since she was seven, enabling her to slow her pulse at will. (Stopping by after breaking out of the latest institution for the criminally insane, Uncle Fester had taken the afternoon to show her how to pass a polygraph. It seemed that electricity ran in the family.) However, this heartbreak was new.
The fact of the matter was, Eugene was one of three people at Nevermore whose presence she could tolerate, and he had nearly died. She’d abandoned him to go to the Rave’n, the knowledge of which had placed an unreachable, inflamed ache in the center of her chest. She’d also told him not to go out alone, but he’d been in and out of the woods for months before Wednesday had appeared on the scene. Motivated by curiosity, a desire to please, whatever it was, he apparently hadn’t seen much cause to fear the familiar.
Wednesday still remembered what it had felt like to hear him screaming for her, to find him bleeding out on the forest floor. The drop of her stomach, the pickup of her pulse, slightly quicker breaths through a tightened chest. Once she’d reached him, she’d gone extra still, for a moment, trying to calm the physiologic mayhem so she could stay optimally focused. She’d done well for him. But it had taken far too long to regain control of her rebellious, rapid heart.
Even when the emergency medical technician had taken over CPR. Even after she’d grown impatient with the paramedic’s fumbling, yanked the advanced life support kit away from him, and started the IV herself. Even after the cot with her flayed-out friend had slammed through the swinging doors to the trauma bay, she’d been left standing in the waiting room, dressed for a ball, covered in paint that looked like blood and blood that looked like paint, her unruly heart thrumming like a hummingbird.
She’d never installed a pacemaker. But sure, she wasn’t altogether unfamiliar with what Uncle Fester would term “the delightful exercise of galvanism within a mound of flesh.” She’d used a defibrillator three or twelve times, albeit largely for boring reasons like “Pugsley appears to be quite susceptible to positional asphyxia, and trying out other variations of this rope trap will first require getting him out of cardiac and respiratory arrest.” But she’d only ever stopped a heart, never impelled a beat.
The movies had it backward, that way. Defibrillation didn’t induce cardiac contractions. On the contrary, it halted them, broke up a bad pattern to allow the resumption of a more effective one. Asystole was the goal, not the enemy, at least in the short-term. Which meant stillness was never shocked. (If it weren’t such a clumsy metaphor, she’d write it into a Viper novel.)
So when her dead heart had roared to life, kept racing once she’d handed Eugene off to the emergency room staff, she’d thought of burst pacing instead. She’d thought of steady, far-too-fast surges from the little box in the chest, tracing down the leads to the twitching pump. They’d force it to beat more quickly than its intrinsic rhythm, tiring it out until it collapsed and hopefully reset. But she had no pacer, at least not beyond her own shock, her own rage, her own misplaced guilt. How would she return from tachycardia?
Her eyes on Thornhill’s had been meteors, had been magnets. Too dense. Too dark. “He better not die. They better not let him die,” she’d spat. “I’ll fucking kill them. I’ll bring him back just so I can fucking kill him all over again, and then bring him back again, and maybe then I’ll have to kill him again. It’ll be wildly inefficient.” Left unsaid: I’m not really much of a necromancer. I didn’t know I’d need to be.
Thornhill, helpless, had only shaken her head and sighed, tears threatening at the corners of her eyes. She’d slumped into a molded-plastic chair in a bank of molded-plastic chairs, closing her eyes. Glanced up to watch Wednesday stalking from one end of the waiting room to the other. Fussed idly with the dismembered newspaper strewn in sheets across the waiting room, trying halfheartedly to reassemble it.
Halfhearted. One thing Wednesday had never been. Paradoxically, it was how she’d learned calm. The pure, feral passion that was her default might have ended the world years ago if she hadn’t been born an Addams, hadn’t learned the high control and devious outlets that her tempestuous humors required.
Just as she’d taught herself to avoid touching other people, she’d taught herself to temper her interior life, to subdue herself into stillness, to moderate the spillover emotion into something closer to perpetual light irritation than to luminescent thrill or pressing despair or murderous wrath. She could allow no further supernatural feedback knocking out the power grid, not if she wished to retain her freedom. Similarly, she could live in the unutterably beige world only as long as she burned not like a miraculous bush but like a mine fire: hot, fast, and unending, as was her nature; but most of all, underground.
She’d reached a détente with the universe. It had involved some loss, certainly, but that was no different from any other peace treaty. Wednesday was separate, suppressed, and still here. An acceptable outcome. Until that moment, itching and idle in the emergency room, her traitorous flesh unwilling to still itself despite her best efforts.
She’d never wished so much to be halfhearted. What must that be like? She’d smirked faintly, amusing herself with an answer. Atrial fibrillation, of course. The top two chambers of the heart quivering uselessly, triggering inconsistent beats from the lower two. Electrically speaking, lack of coordinated atrial depolarization, leading to irregularly irregular ventricular depolarization. Increased risk of blood clots, leading to stroke or pulmonary embolism. Not a generally desired rhythm, but not immediately life-threatening.
Seemed appropriate. For all the difficulty and discomfort that came along with being Wednesday Addams, she’d been grateful at least to be whole. To be slow when she was slow, fast when she was fast. To know her own heart and her own mind were reliable. A few breathing exercises and minutes of meditation, and she’d been back under 60 beats per minute. Just in time to catch Janet Ottinger (“my normie mom!”, Eugene had grinned upon introducing them, a million fucking years ago last month) as she’d stumbled into the waiting room panicking.
Shaking her head, Wednesday refocused. Eugene had survived that night. Many nights, now. Normal sinus rhythm continued marching out on the monitors, stable blood pressure, oxygen saturation in the high 90s. But would he wake? And would he still be Eugene if he did?
“Ms. Addams, we’ll need to leave in two minutes,” Principal Weems called from the doorway, interrupting her thoughts. Good Lord, was Addams holding Ottinger’s hand? Weems smiled stiffly, shoving down her shock, as Addams startled, all but hiding their hands behind her back as she turned to acknowledge Weems.
A nod later, Weems left, and Wednesday stood up, studying Eugene’s form. It was an odd urge, especially on the heels of the already-unexpected desire to hold his hand, but Wednesday found herself stroking his fluffy hair back, tucking bits of it behind his ears. Here of all places, she’d know if she tripped the circuit breakers or blew out the backup generator. However, here of all places, it was also critical to avoid such an occurrence. The steady continuation of his monitoring equipment was almost as reassuring as the warmth of his face against her fingers.
A tenderness spread through her chest as she watched his weakness. He was her best friend, was like a brother, and family meant everything to her. As appalling as it was, she wanted nothing more than to tuck him in, wish him a horrible night, and believe that he would wake up in the morning.
She remembered, a few years ago, Pugsley’s similar feebleness while their parents were away on honeymoon. Their 38th, if Wednesday remembered correctly, which did not correspond with the number of years they’d been married. (Of course the repulsively romantic pair went on honeymoons multiple times per year.) It did, however, mean a welcome respite from Gomez and Morticia’s incessant, nauseating affection splashing all over each other and any innocent bystander who got too close, or who happened to be their offspring. So Wednesday had had no complaints. Not even when her soft, sappy brother had turned up at her bedroom door the first night with damp eyes. His own, unfortunately, still in his head. “Wednesday? I miss Mami. And Papa.”
“That’s exactly why you’re the first one we’re going to kill and eat if we’re ever trapped in a blizzard,” she’d responded, barely glancing up from her typewriter.
“Awww. So I’ll be a part of you forever,” he’d sighed. “That’s sweet.”
She’d shot him a sideways glance, rolled her eyes. “You’re almost as bad as they are.” Viper de la Muerte was ensnared in a diabolical plot pertaining to the CIA overthrow of a democratically elected socialist government-- ok, she’d leaned on real-world history for a plot point here, so what—and here her spineless little brother was, interrupting. Why couldn’t he handle his own business long enough for her to detail Viper’s meetup with the devastatingly brilliant and principled operative who’d contacted her for assistance? Who appeared to have need of Viper’s personal as well as professional skills? And who, purely by coincidence, looked an awful lot like the girl in algebra class who was currently carrying a grade 0.2% higher than Wednesday’s?
“So you probably don’t want to stretch me on the rack,” Pugsley had moped.
“Absolutely not. There isn’t enough time before bed to squeeze in a proper torture session.”
“Or make me arsenic milk to go with my cookies.”
“Nope. You should have built up a tolerance for arsenic long ago. It’s not my job to give you remedial poisons. You may consult with me again once you’re done with arsenic, strychnine, cyanide, and tetrodotoxin.”
“Or tell me a bedtime story.”
Wednesday had stopped, considering. It was certainly the warmest and fuzziest request on the list so far (revolting), but she could use a sounding board for some of the ideas she’d been batting around for the Viper series. Besides, there wasn’t any guarantee Pugsley’s crying would escalate from the current annoying sniffles to the relaxing heart-rending wailing that Wednesday could fall asleep to, and she wasn’t in a mood to listen to him all night. “Fine.”
After decamping to Pugsley’s room, where he’d burrowed into his bed, Wednesday had begun the bedtime story with lengthy descriptions of various assassination methods she’d envisioned incorporating into the Viper series. By the time she’d gotten to “explosive gelatin,” Pugsley was snoring lightly.
She’d watched him sleep. His round face had conjured up a sickening sense of devotion. If she were a good sister, she’d probably have punched him in the abdomen, teaching him a lesson about letting his guard down. But here, at the embodied surface, the coal-seam conflagration that had made her develop a steel will was dilute, only warming the center of her chest, no violence to it. She was only a mammal, after all, feeling the pull of a littermate. In that moment, she’d cursed her fervent, benumbed heart, cursed her own electricity. Pugsley was barely an outcast, but an outcast he was, and even to put her hand on his shoulder risked destruction and detection.
Hands solidly to herself, Wednesday had risen, returned to her room, and screamed into the night. It was soothing. They’d all slept until well after midnight, rising well-rested for the weekly 3am ghoul-feeding and hockey match.
Nonetheless, things seemed to be operating differently now. She’d kissed Bianca on the mouth, with no real consequence (beyond the untimely demise of Enid's beverage, apparently). Could it be that the excess energy arising from physical contact with other people of supernatural ability was now diverting into her visions, rather than bouncing off her into the environment?
The familiar longing howled through her chest like wind. Could she give Eugene what she’d never been able to give Pugsley? What she hadn’t been able to take for herself? After a quick glance to the hallway, she leaned forward impulsively and kissed him on the forehead.
Her spine stiffened-- oh, devils, not now— her head snapped back, and the vision took over. Everything was blue-dark, swimming, rough water, Eugene pale and struggling, hair encircling his head like a halo. He was sinking, clearly tired, couldn’t make his way back to the surface, all slosh and bubbles and maladroit flailing. Wednesday reached out to grab him, to drag him up. She saw the life preserver, then, a ring floating futilely above them, and Sue’s shocked face, distorted in the wave—
Both mothers’ faces, now, peering down at her with concern, contrasting the bright lights and white ceiling of Eugene’s hospital room. Wednesday met their eyes unnervingly, rigid on the floor. “Has Eugene ever suffered a near-drowning incident?” she asked.
“No,” Janet and Sue Ottinger answered simultaneously, brows creased in confusion, and Wednesday grinned for the first time since she’d dropped those piranhas in the pool at Nancy Reagan High School. She was a fox coming from the henhouse, teeth bright with blood, living on a witnessed death, and her body lightened as she sat up stiffly and rose to her feet.
She brushed off her uniform and nodded once to Eugene’s puzzled parents. “Don’t take him out on a boat. Or to a pool without a lifeguard on duty.” She proceeded out the door without a backward glance. She knew all she needed to, now. Because Eugene couldn’t drown unless first he woke.