She cracked her eyes open and felt nothing but pain coursing through her body. Her back ached and her jaw and face felt warm with a stinging sensation that was entirely unfamiliar. She wasn't exactly sure where she was, until her vision finally focused and the first thing that caught her eye was that there he was, sitting in a padded folding chair facing her bed, his jaw slack in sleep, mouth wide open, and his arms crossed over his body. His legs stuck out straight and she could see his mismatched socks poking out from under his pants—one navy and one black. That wasn't like him, she thought to herself, and blearily tried to figure out what was going on.
When he finally awoke, he saw her propped up a bit in bed, wearing her rarely worn glasses and paging through her planner. He set his jaw and shifted in his seat.
"Donna."
Startled to see him awake, she reflexively looked up from the planner, wincing as she turned her head to face him.
"Donna," he repeated, and let out a deep sigh when they made eye contact. He scooted his chair a bit closer to her bedside, anything to get nearer to her, to be with her, to check his emotions and reassure himself. "You're okay."
"Of course I'm okay."
Harvey furrowed his brow, and she waited for the argument and lawyerly debate she was sure would come, but he seemed to have reconsidered, for the time being at least, and let it go.
"What are you doing with that?" He inquired, his eyes moving to the pen and planner in her hands, his forehead scrunching up with disbelief.
"I'm scheduling some—"
"Donna, stop," he chided, snatching it from her hands and putting it on the side table aside two vases of fading flowers and a Ziploc bag with the simple gold necklace she always wore and that ring, which seemed to be glaring at Harvey. "You're in the hospital," he noted. "Let it go."
"I'm okay."
"Are you?" He asked, somewhat incredulous. "Really, are you?" This was just like her, insistent and stubborn, even when stuck in a hospital bed. She was difficult and mind-boggling, and now, in this scenario, it frustrated him to no end.
Then a pretty, youngish nurse came in with her floral scrubs and clogs, silky dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, checking Donna's vitals with a few beeps and chirps from the machine beside her bed, changing a few bandages, and mechanically forcing the bed's angle back down to encourage her to rest. Harvey thanked her with a smile on her way out.
"You two are friends now?" Donna asked, snidely.
"It's been a few days. We've…bonded."
Donna bit her lip, ignoring his snarky comment clearly alluding to the 20-something nurse with that silky hair. "A few days?"
"It's Wednesday," Harvey explained. "Wednesday morning. You were admitted here early Sunday morning. Saturday night, really."
"Jesus Christ," she swore, flopping down on her pillows with a wince. "Damn it."
"We're going to have to talk eventually, you know," he noted seriously, eyeing her. "We need to talk about it."
"I know," she responded in a smaller voice than either of them were used to hearing. She just pursed her lips and stared at the ceiling with its grayish square tiles, counting left and right, left and right, anything to distract her, until her vision blurred. "I know," she repeated. "Eventually."
He got pissed, really pissed, the next time he caught her quite obviously reading work email. He came in after running across the street for a coffee stronger than the shit you could get in the cafeteria in the hospital, and he knew exactly what she was up to when he caught her eyes, full of guilt and a bit of mirth for having bested him.
"Donna, take it easy, okay?"
"Easy for you to say. It's boring as all hell sitting in here all day."
"You're recovering. You need to recover," he insisted, snatching her Blackberry from her hands. When her wrist turned outward, the ugly purple bruises on her inner wrist were revealed to him, and he couldn't help but wince, his forehead crinkling instantly.
"I'm okay, Harvey," she promised, gently, not for the first time since her admission into the hospital. "I'm fine."
"I feel like you aren't taking this seriously enough," he admitted.
"I feel like you care a little too much," she pointed out, upping the tension between them and creating distance in an instant. Donna always knew how to establish a little space, push him out of her personal life, change everything between them in a sudden moment.
He frowned, didn't say anything, didn't go anywhere. The muted television mounted in the corner of the hospital room continued to flash its too-bright screen, and they both stared at it, anything in order to avoid making eye contact with each other.
Three weeks later, everything still felt unsettled to Harvey. Donna had stubbornly refused to talk to him, to really talk to him, while still in the hospital. She'd been released and gone straight to her apartment and had been essentially hibernating. She took off of work. Harvey was stuck with a temp, which he wouldn't have minded if Donna had been truly recuperating, but he knew as well as she did that she was perfectly fine three full weeks later, her stitches removed and her broken rib and strained neck healing completely on schedule. Harvey knew this because he'd been begging Rachel to tell him how Donna was doing, and Rachel couldn't deny Harvey information when she saw that desperate, wild look in his eyes that seemed to scream for Donna.
He tried communicating with Donna, asking her how she was doing, and could he bring her anything, trying to be a good friend. He got one-word responses and no-thank-you-Harveys, and he couldn't help but feel slighted after waiting by her bedside for days while his assistant lay unconscious, the dark bruising on her skin making her look scary-pale, her fiery locks strewn across the pillow without their typical luster.
He texted her on a Thursday night when he was working late, his office dim and the whole building mellow. He wasn't getting anything done, just lost in his mind and thoughts. "When can I have you back?"
He knew it was a little much, to push her buttons like that, but he was getting desperate and bored of the non-responses garnered by his messages that asked "How are you doing?" and "Feeling better today?"
Tonight, though, a response came from Donna, "Soon, Harv. Soon."
He was struck by this. It seemed melancholy, somehow sad to him, and he wondered where her head was at, what she thought about late on Thursday nights alone in her apartment, whether she had told her parents and if so what she had told them, what she remembered about that night three Saturdays ago, whether she still ached as she tried to fall asleep each night. When would soon be, he wondered, when he knew from Rachel that medically she had long since been cleared to be at work.
"Are you at home?" He texted her, not sure why. He knew it was invasive and too much but couldn't help but wonder where she was, what she was doing, wanting to know every last detail.
"No," she texted back. "At O'Reilly's."
Harvey frowned, alone in his office, thinking about his assistant on medical leave but managing to be at O'Reilly's late on a Thursday night. He wondered what she was drinking. Without thinking, he threw the folders on his desk into a messy stack, shoving it to the side for the morning, and got up abruptly with a destination in mind.