He drives back to Joyceās busted up house after Eleven closes the gate and finds a kid he doesnāt know passed out on the floor and Steve looking like he died, came back, and was making a valiant effort to die again.
He makes sure Will is okay and then leaves Eleven with Joyce (this is fine, ideal for this scenario). He hauls Billyās unconscious ass into his truck, pulling a muscle in his back in the process, and then puts Steve in the passenger seat.
Steve immediately vomits up blood onto the carpet as soon as the car starts moving (less ideal). Hopper looks at the pool of blood seeping into his interior and says, āThatās probably from your nose bleeding.ā
Steve says a truly pathetic voice, āIt sucks.ā
Hopper chooses to ignore the tears in his voice out of respect and instead asks questions about what happened. His words seem to slide off Steve because he doesnāt really get an answer to anything other than the fact that kid wants to go home.
Hopper gets to the hospital and places Steve in a chair in the waiting room. He tells him to sit tight for a minute, āWe figure this out and then you go home. Got it?ā
Steve, not having a good grip on much of anything right now, āGot it.ā
Hopper gets a gurney and a couple of nurses to help get Billy out of the truck, and then ends up in a twenty minute interrogation with the head nurse about what drugs he was on. He was asked a lot of questions about Billy despite - and Hopper cannot overstate this enough - he does not even know the kidās name. Much less know if he has any allergies.
The nurse doesnāt budge so Hopper ends up radioing Powell and having him - no questions asked - drive out to Joyceās and ask Max Mayfield what her brotherās damn name was. She also didnāt know his allergies.
A whole hour passes before he makes it back over to where he left Steve, but the kid is gone.
Hopper kinda assumes that Steve was taken back by a nurse to be treated and is promptly proven wrong when he asks for his room number.
Then comes hours or searching the hospital, the surrounding roads, the Harrington house, and then circling back to Joyceās. He checks in on El, lies about Steveās whereabouts to the other kids, and then formulates a game plan with Joyce.
He ends up pulling Powell and Callahan in on the search but no one really comes up with much until Hopper stops to get coffee a little after five AM. The cashier says that yeah, he saw a beat up kid.
The cashier nods like, āYeah, kid was in a bad way. Almost called ya myself but someone picked him up.ā
āI dunno, man. A friend?ā
This lead goes dry almost immediately. Steve, he realizes, doesnāt have a lot of friend and the Hagans hadnāt hear from him.
He doesnāt get anywhere until he stops by his house for a change of clothes and listens to Wayneās message on his answering machine.
Running on zero sleep and sheer force of will, Hopper shows up at Wayneās front door where he is told to go home. The boy is alive and he aināt leaving.
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