One week later Danny woke up.
His hospital room was covered in a thin layer of disinfectant and the ectoplasmic smell of Fenton inventions being tinkered with while he was asleep. At the side of his bed was a large zip-up hoodie and a Jazz curled within it, sleeping. Her head barely poked out of their Dad's sweatshirt which covered her like a massive blanket with sleeves.
Danny's body hurt. It went a little further than sore, he thought. To his left a nurse was picking at his many tubes and wires, smiling gently down at him, a finger pressed to her lips.
He waited, and just when she was finished, she whispered that the doctors had cleared him for possible trauma to his brain, which there was none, and decided it was time he woke up.
Danny frowned at her, though he was grateful.
"H-how?" his voice cracked from disuse. "How long?"
"One week, Hun," the nurse smiled sadly now. "A whole week."
Danny blinked at her, blue eyes brimming with confusion and fear. His arm instinctively reached out for Jazz, who he touched on the shoulder. She stirred, and as the nurse left the room, she awoke to see her brother, sitting up and looking terrified.
"Danny!" she cried, rushing to his side. Though she was encumbered by the massive sweatshirt jacket, she wrapped him in a giant, gentle cloth hug.
Danny grasped her small frame with both arms and held her to him tightly. It felt like his ribs were splitting apart with the force of it, but he didn't care. He was so afraid and confused.
"What happened?" he choked out.
Jazz finally pulled away from him, gently fluffing his pillows and settling him back on the bed. She took her place in the chair to his right and began.
"You went into the portal and set it off. It's working now, for some reason, but it started working while you were inside it," she grumbled at him. He felt himself deflate before her angry concern. "The explosion took out the whole street's power. We found you huddled in a ball on the floor inside. Poor Sam and Tucker thought you were dead."
Danny's breaths came faster and more ragged as she spoke.
"We rushed you here to the hospital, but you were so unresponsive. They did tests for hours and…" her voice began to falter, her eyes filling with tears. "And, well, they said you might be brain-dead, because you were breathing fine, but you wouldn't talk or open your eyes at all!"
A panic attack, he suddenly thought. That's what this is.
"Danny?" Jazz suddenly asked. "Oh, no, Danny it's okay, you're okay! Look, see, you're fine!"
She grasped his shaking hands while his breathing reached a terrible pitch. Her thumbs kneaded his wrists and his hands, and she talked him down, telling him gentle things, about the terrible hospital food, about how Sam and Tucker came every single day after school to see him. That their parents were coming in less than an hour and how excited they would be to see he was alright.
Danny registered half of it as she worked away at his panic. He had nearly died. He was lucky to be alive! The reality of that blur of a night came back to him and then slipped away just as quickly. As he listened to Jazz speak, he felt his heart rate slow, and after a long time his breathing came easier.
Finally, and most likely because his body was already exhausted, he lay back against the pillows and closed his eyes, at peace.
.
.
.
"How can Mr. Lancer assign me extra homework if the rumor at school is that I'm brain-dead?"
Tucker laughed, tapping away at his Gameboy in the chair to Danny's right. Sam was curled at the foot of Danny's hospital bed, her arms resting gently on his ankles.
"I think he has faith in you," Tucker quipped. "He knows you're stronger than all that."
"Or he just really hates me."
"That, too," Sam agreed, smiling sadly up at Danny.
"I'm okay, Sam," Danny told her for the tenth time. She only nodded.
"So, when are you getting out of here?" Tucker asked.
"Soon. I think tomorrow, actually?"
Sam and Tucker shot one another with a relieved glance. Danny only sighed.
"Are you two still beating yourselves up over this? Come on it was my decision, too."
They didn't answer for a moment. Tucker's fingers stopped tapping on his Gameboy.
"Guys?"
"Look, dude," Tucker said quietly. "We thought you were… dead. Honestly, the only thing in the world Sam and I could feel? Thinking you were dead? Was how it was all our fault."
"We're a team, Danny," Sam said without looking at him. "A unit - three halves of a whole. We thought we'd lost part of ourselves that night…"
Danny wanted to joke about how they were being too dramatic, that there couldn't be three halves in one whole, and that 'he was supposed to be the one bad at math'. But their eyes were so haunted, their skin pulled tight over faces that had barely eaten in one whole week.
He couldn't joke now.
"You're right," he told them. "We are a team. So, let me share in the burden of our mistake, okay?"
They didn't seem ready to share, but one day they would. One day it would be a bad dream they all woke up from together. One day they'd laugh about it.
"Oh, and Danny?" Sam started, hesitant.
"There's one more thing, dude," Tucker added.
Danny frowned; one eyebrow raised.
"What do you mean?"
Sam uncurled herself from the foot of the bed and Tucker stood. They both came up to him on both sides, their voices very, very low.
"You, um… you sort of changed in the portal."
"Yeah, how are you feeling?" Sam added.
"What?" Danny frowned even deeper. "What are you talking about?"
Sam reached for Danny's hair. His spine tingled a little when she ran her fingers through it, parting black tufts and staring intently at him.
Tucker was watching Danny's eyes, which were blue and confused and a little uncomfortable.
"Uh, guys?"
Sam and Tucker looked at each other.
"Maybe we imagined it," she said quietly.
"I don't think so," Tucker crossed his arms.
"Imagined what?"
His friends were almost frightening him. Was this some joke?
"You're fine now," Sam said before Tucker could interrupt. "You don't have to worry about it."
"No, Sam, he needs to know!"
"But there's nothing wrong with him now, Tucker!"
"Guys!"
At that they stopped arguing and looked sheepish.
"What changed about me? In the portal?"
Sam took a deep breath. "Your hair, it was pure white. Your eyes were green, but… more than that they glowed."
"You know the blackout?" Tucker asked. "The only way I found you in the dark was your glowing, green eyes."
He looked between his two perfectly serious friends and felt dread.
"Please tell me this is a terrible, mean-spirited joke?"
"It's not, man," Tucker insisted. "Once your parents came downstairs you finally… I don't know? Relaxed? Your eyes faded to blue, your hair was black again and then you didn't wake up."
"You were just… staring," Sam said. "You wouldn't even blink it was like you'd seen-"
"Don't say it," Danny snapped. "There's no such thing as ghosts."