-Chapter 4-
Larry sat in a chair in the corner of Danny's room. He watched as a nurse checked Danny's vital signs and made notes in her chart. She turned and nodded at him.
"Okay Larry. No change." She smiled a sad smile at him and left the room.
Larry stood up and walked over to the bed. He laid his hand on Danny's forehead, careful not to disturb the bandage covering his stitches. He ran his hand back through Danny's hair and sighed.
"Come on Danny boy. Wake up, please." He leaned down and kissed the top of his son's head. If only there was some reaction, his finger moving, his eye twitching, something that told Larry that he heard him. But there wasn't. He was completely still. The doctor had told him that even though Danny was in a deep coma at the moment, there was a chance that he could hear his father talking to him. So Larry talked to him. He had already told him about how they were going to spend some more time together when he got better and about what he knew of his friends back home. That was all just this morning.
He settled himself back in the chair next to the bed and wished again that the ICU rooms had televisions. After ten minutes of staring at the walls, Larry had had enough.
"Alright Danny, " He stood up and looked down at his son. "I'm going to go get some lunch. I'll be back soon." He let his finger brush against Danny's cheek before he walked out of the room.
Halfway to the elevators, Larry heard a commotion coming from the nurses' station off to his left. He stopped walking and turned to look.
"McCoy… Daniel R. McCoy." Ed Deline was starting to get mad at the woman sitting on the other side of the small counter. She shook her head and Larry realized that she was one of the nurses who didn't know English. While he was sure she understood his son's name, she had no idea what Ed wanted with Danny.
"Ed!" Larry walked towards him, actually laughing at the misunderstanding he was interrupting. Ed turned to him, a look of relief crossing his face. Larry reached him and nodded toward the nurse. "She doesn't speak English." Ed looked incredibly guilty for yelling at the woman.
"Sorry." He mumbled in the woman's direction as Larry led him away from the nurses' station. Larry reached over and took some of the bags that Ed was carrying.
"Thank you so much for bringing this stuff. I've been wearing the same clothes for days now." He smiled slightly. "The nurses offered me some scrubs, but I just didn't want to wear those." He turned and walked into Danny's room, dropping the bags in the corner. He walked over and put his hand on Danny's forehead, to let him know he was back, and turned to find Ed still standing in the doorway.
Ed watched Larry disappear around the curtain. He could see the end of Danny's bed and hear machines beeping. When Ed blinked and looked up again, Larry was standing in front of him again. "Come on." Larry motioned for Ed to follow him and this time, Ed did.
He walked right around to the chair next to the bed that Larry had offered him and sat before he let himself really look at Danny. The boy looked terrible. His face was so pale that he almost looked gray, except for the dark bruises covering his eyes and the various marks beginning to turn yellow over the rest of his face.
Ed reached over and picked up Danny's hand, unhappy to find it heavy and lifeless. He turned slightly so he could see Larry, who was sitting in a second chair by the window. "How's he doing?"
Larry shrugged. "It's so hard to tell. I guess the good news is that he hasn't gotten worse." He was quiet for a second. "There really hasn't been any change at all."
Ed looked back to Danny's face. He stared at him in silence for a full minute. He had been prepared for what he would see in this room, after all, he had seen it so many times before… But this was Danny, his protégé. His… his what? Not his son, no that was Larry's title. But Ed couldn't help feel like he was looking at his own child unconscious in front of him. He sat forward slightly and put his hand on the side of Danny's face. He could see a tube coming from the back of his head and looked back toward Larry, questioningly. Larry stood up and walked over so he could see what Ed was looking at.
"Oh, that's connected to the shunt they put in. It drains fluid from his brain as the swelling goes down." Larry frowned. "You know, I never wanted to be so well versed in medical information." He walked around Ed's chair so that he was closer to the head of the bed. Reaching over, he turned Danny's head carefully like he had seen the nurses do so many times. "See? The last time they checked it, they said it was doing alright, but until they run some more tests, they won't know how much the swelling has gone down." He shifted Danny's head back to its normal position and ran his hand over Danny's hair softly. "I never get used to him with this military haircut." He laughed softly. "He never had really short hair as a kid and he wasn't ever home when he was first in the Marines."
Larry sighed quietly and shrugged as he walked back to the other side of Ed's chair. "Anyway, that's the worst of the injuries. The doctor said even his leg isn't as dire. They're pretty sure that's going to heal fine. He might have a limp, but he can live with that." Larry's voice choked slightly. Ed looked up and found the other man staring straight ahead, blankly. Before he had a chance to react, Larry had cleared his throat and was turning back toward the bed. "He's got other minor injuries too. A couple of broken ribs and some internal bruising, nothing that won't heal completely.
The two men sat and watched Danny lay in the bed for a long time in complete silence. Ed had no idea what to say that would help. He was having a hard enough time trying to accept the fact that Danny might not make it through this.
It was late in the afternoon when Ed followed Larry through the sliding doors of the hospital entrance. Ed had insisted that Larry go with him to drop his things off at the hotel and then get some food. It seemed that there wasn't going to be any great change in Danny's condition and he thought it would be a good idea for Larry to get out of there for a little while.
When they walked into the hospital room, Larry was surprised to find the doctor and one of the nurses standing around Danny's bed. "What's going on?" He moved closer, but could see no change in his son.
The doctor held up a hand and shook his head. "Don't get alarmed, please Mr. McCoy. I was just doing a complete check up on Danny." He turned back to the nurse who had been busy checking Danny's vital signs and waved her away. Turning back to Larry and glancing towards Ed, the doctor motioned toward the chairs in the room. "Let's talk."
As the two men moved further into the room to sit down, the doctor again looked towards Ed. Larry caught the glance this time and pointed toward Ed as he sat down. "I'm sorry. Dr. Miller, this is Ed Deline. He's a close family friend." Ed and the doctor shook hands quickly.
Once Larry and Ed were seated, Dr. Miller looked directly at Larry. "Once again, from these brief check ups, there is no change in Danny's condition. At this point, we had hoped to see some improvement." Larry swallowed hard and glanced toward the bed where Danny lay. "It's been several weeks and at this point we need to start thinking about running another battery of tests. I need to get a look at how his leg is healing anyway, so we're going to take him and do a more thorough examination."
Larry sat up more in his chair. "What kind of tests are we talking about?" Dr. Miller sat lightly on the edge of Danny's bed.
"We're going to check the level of swelling in his brain. If that has gone down a significant amount, as we think it has, we will check for brain function." The doctor continued quickly to hold Larry's questions. "Now, what we could find is that he's just coming back slowly. He's in a pretty comfortable state right now with machines to do pretty much everything for him. We would never begin to back down the ventilator at this point though. We need him to show us some basic functioning before we will even try that." Larry shook his head.
"What do you mean by that?"
"We need him to try taking a couple of breaths on his own. I'm sure you've heard us referring to him triggering the vent. If he was attempting to breathe, it would pull on the mechanism in the ventilator and cause an alarm to sound." He smiled briefly. "It's a good alarm though. Once he begins sounding it more regularly, we would turn the machine down slowly, letting him build up to breathing on his own again fully. When someone is on a machine this long, we can't just take them off of it suddenly." Dr. Miller shifted himself around slightly and picked up his paperwork, flipping though the pages in the chart. "The other thing we need to talk about is if we do find that the swelling has gone down and we don't find any brain activity. I'm obviously not going to ask you to make any decisions at this point, but it's something you might want to begin to think about." Larry's eyes moved to his son again. "Do you have any questions?" The doctor looked between Larry and Ed this time, who both shook their heads quietly.
The doctor stood up and walked toward the door. "A nurse will come by in the morning and we'll take Danny and run those tests. If you think of anything you need to ask, give me a call."
The two men sat in complete silence for a while before either of them moved. Ed was the first to react. He took a deep breath and stood up, walking to Danny's bedside. He reached down and picked up Danny's hand. "Well, Larry." He turned back toward the other man. "We both know that he's a fighter and if it's in him at all, he's going to be fine."
Larry looked up at Ed with tears in his eyes. "I can't lose him now." He shook his head. "What will I do if they tell me that he's gone?" The grief that Ed saw in Larry's eyes and on his face was the same that he felt in his heart. He put Danny's hand down and walked back to sit in the chair again. He rested his hand on Larry's arm, shaking his head slowly.
"I don't know." Ed frowned and looked over at Danny. "I just don't know."