"Hi, AJ," Elizabeth says, and she steps aside so I can enter the room.
She's a gorgeous young woman with long, honey blonde hair and full, round breasts. She has a killer smile and sparkling blue eyes that I like to imagine she gets from her dad. Even though she is three years older than me, I could see myself asking her out if we had met under other circumstances.
"I haven't seen you in a while. Where have you been?"
"Around," I tell her. "I'm usually volunteering at the community center in the afternoons so I've been coming by in the mornings all summer."
She nods. "That's why we've been missing each other. I usually run errands in the morning."
"Yeah. So, uh, how's he doing?" I ask, gesturing towards the figure in the bed.
It isn't like Hollywood where the patient lies there sleeping and spontaneously wakes up weeks, months, or even years, later feeling as though he's just had a good, long nap. Depending on when I come to visit, his legs might be encased in inflatable plastic boots that automatically fill with air and deflate to prevent deep vein thrombosis, or DVT, which in normal English, is called potentially lethal blood clots. The rest of the time, when someone isn't exercising his limbs to keep them flexible and help slow the atrophy of his muscles, his arms and legs are splinted to keep him from curling into the fetal position. The nurses usually put a sturdy pair of shoes on his feet for twelve hours every day to prevent a crippling condition called foot drop. A feeding tube snakes from a bag on a chrome stand behind the bed through a pump and into a hole in his stomach under the covers, and a catheter drains his urine into a bag. He drools constantly, and the nurses come in to turn him and check his diaper every two hours.
Elliot Stabler was shot while rescuing Ray Ray and me from Henry Micah Briggs. He's been in a coma ever since. Oddly enough, for a bullet in the head, the injury wasn't particularly severe. It just happened to damage something that has cut him off from the world ever since. I started visiting him when I was fifteen because it was the only way I had to express my gratitude. I try to drop by twice a week just to let him know I'm staying out of trouble and trying to be a good person.
"He's getting better, AJ," Elizabeth tells me.
I can't see it, but I would never say so in here because Liz believes he can hear everything that's going on around him. When I cast her my doubtful look, though, she understands.
"He's scoring sevens and eights on the GCS now," she explains. "Three months ago, he was averaging only a six. Last year, it was just five, and before that it was only a three or four."
I nod. Over the years I have learned a little about his condition, so what she says makes sense to me. The GCS is the Glasgow Coma Scale. It scores a patient's eye, verbal, and motor responses to determine the depth of the coma they are in. A score of three is brain dead. Fifteen is fully awake. Elliot is still in a "severe coma," but he is "getting better."
I sigh. Progress is measured in inches over the course of years.