Blink 4/7
Chapter Four:
Charlie's recovery is slow and painful in many ways.
While the physical therapy for his atrophied muscles is hard, what's harder to face is the total lack of progress in speech therapy.
Hardest still is learning about all that he had missed while he was gone.
Larry and Laurel had gotten engaged and were working towards adoption.
Amita had gotten her doctorate and started teaching at Cal Sci, even taking over a couple of his classes while he was gone.
Don and Terry had started seeing each other again and even though Don never said anything about it, Charlie wonders if perhaps his coma might have been the crisis that drove Don to seek her out again as something more than a partner.
Alan, grieving too deeply for the loss of both his wife and son, had stopped dating entirely. No one would tell Charlie why his father looked so much older, however Larry had hinted that neither Eppes had fared well in the health department while he was gone. Larry would say no more and both Don and his father flatly denied any problems, their silence frustrating Charlie greatly.
Newspapers are filled with references that are foreign to him. Every song on the radio seems new. Even the math world moved on without him, including Cal Sci.
Charlie feels lost, adrift, out of time. He wants his old life back. So he works hard and fights down his frustration and despair after every fruitless speech therapy session.