A/N: So this is from an anonymous request on tumblr. It's a little angsty at first, a little dark and probably really melodramatic but hey - that's what I do. I hope you guys like it, but it'd be real awesome if I got feedback. I love feedback, it makes doing this every day so worth it. You can talk to me wherever, but on tumblr is probably your safest bet.

Enjoy!

Andy spends all day in that room, and some days he knows he should leave to get food or get a shower but he can't bring himself to do it. Everyone's so used to seeing energetic, excited Andy that they're taken aback when they talk to him. He can't blame them since half the time he can barely stand up, sitting by a hospital bed and holding onto a pale hand, hopeful.

That day had been a regular, normal day: Johnny Karate gigs, lunch break with April, and sitting around waiting for April to get home after work. Over lunch they talked about ordering a pizza and eating it naked in the living room, just like when they first dated. They had a great marriage, but that sounded more fun than anything they'd done in weeks. He got a little worried when she took a few minutes longer than usual to get home, but figured she'd call him if something popped up. When she didn't, and when April didn't answer and no one knew what was going on either, there was a sharp bite of anxiety in his chest that didn't want to go away.

He remembers reading the text from Leslie a few minutes later, taking in every word. The phrase car crash was just a collection of words to Andy before, and the idea of a coma was just something that had happens to people in those dumb Lifetime movies Ann always used to watch. Andy had been hit by three cars in his life and he was always fine – but April didn't walk away from this one with a broken arm. The entirety of the situation wasn't quite dawning on Andy since he was waiting for her to just wake up from a quick nap and go back home with a cast on or something.

They said head trauma and her heart were two of the problems and she wasn't getting air to her head or something. Andy memorizes most of the diagnosis on the first day they come up with it and asks a thousand questions about her. Andy recalls something about heart arrhythmia and oxygen, but a bunch of other large words are there too and for the life of him he can't breathe and remember them at the same time. He just knows that she's stable on the first night, so he goes home when they order him to and pretends he's going to be fine when Leslie and Ben ask him about it.

"How's she doing?" Leslie asks quietly, and Andy tries not to look her in the eyes because her voice is a shambles and Andy doesn't want to think about it.

"Fine," he croaks, not realizing how dried his throat is, "I mean, besides the part where she's in a coma she's fine."

Leslie gives him a hug and for a second Andy doesn't want to let go. There are other people there too, and they're all earnest when they talk to him, but Leslie just pats him on the back and gives him a warming kiss on the cheek. Andy smiles and thanks her, internally forcing himself to drive and stop shaking when his hands grip the steering wheel.

He's never felt like this before, and he doesn't know how to process any of the information from that day. Going home, it's just Champion there waiting for him. Together they watch some of those bad TV Land reruns April always liked, and Andy orders the pizza but can barely even get through two bites before putting it down. He falls asleep the first night hoping it was just a bad dream, scratching the back of Champion's ears and pretending he'll wake up to April's really awful morning breath burning his nostrils. He doesn't though, and waking up in the middle of the night he's suddenly hyperaware and wrapped in too many blankets. Something like that anxiety is back inside of Andy and he doesn't know how to handle it, but he's pretty sure his eyes are watering.

"Hey," he says, tapping Champion awake, "let's go outside."

The dog looks almost as tired as Andy feels, but the two of them get up and head outside in the frigid Pawnee night. It takes him about ten minutes to realize that Champion isn't going to do anything, but Andy still does a few circles around the block. His hands are gripping the leash too hard, knuckles mere millimeters from erupting through skin. The poor animal looks like he's freezing, giving Andy that look of sadness-near-disappointment and he takes a deep breath before heading back inside. Falling back into bed, Andy sleeps facing the wrong way just so he doesn't have to look at the other side of the bed that night.

He really doesn't want to believe it.

He cancels all of the Johnny Karate shows he has the next day, angering most of the mothers and fathers. Andy doesn't know what to do, since usually April would help him and they'd figure out a great solution together like partners in crime except the crime was to make a bunch of little kids happy. When he goes to visit April, she looks the same as the day before – almost like she's asleep but Andy knows she snores and she frequently falls asleep with her mouth half open. Instead April's just sort of there and Andy doesn't know what to do other than sit down in one of the insanely uncomfortable chairs, rest his head on his palms, and sit there.

"Hey," he tries because he doesn't like the idea of it being so quiet in that room.

When she doesn't answer him, lying back in the cot with her eyes closed, Andy lets go. Soon he's holding her hand, hoping she'll return his grip and he's smiling and feeling something hot and warm trail down his face. Someone enters at some point and tells him she's lucky, because there's a good chance she'll recover. For an instant he's hopeful, but then they say it could be a few months at the very best before they see any signs of awareness.

Now, sitting in the room like he did nearly every day for the past three months, Andy thinks back on those words. Still nothing, and still Andy pretended he was fine. He was definitely fine living without his partner in crime while she sat nearing brain death in a hospital, and no one was going to eke anything else out of him.

"Hey Andy," it's Leslie with lunch, just like every day, "let's go out today?"

"Nah, I think I'll just eat here again Leslie," he answers, grabbing the bag from her hand and sitting back down.

"Okay," she says knowingly, leaving and closing the door.

Andy pretends the last few months haven't been a waking nightmare, telling himself that he can totally live without April even if it's at best a few months. That's what he tells himself and when he gets to that last bit he very nearly chokes on his food at the thought, forcing it down and remembering that the doctors are adamant about her chances. When he goes home at night, being forced out by the scolding nurses and cold PA's Andy tries to write songs to take his mind off things but all of them are super dreary sounding and he just wants to sleep afterwards. Tom insists he come down to the restaurant for free food – it was half off at first but Donna nearly strangled him when he said that – but Andy spends all his time inside or at the hospital. Sometimes he does Johnny Karate shows and at first he feels better seeing the little faces of those kids light up, but then he looks around for April who always claps for him and looks at him like she's just so proud to be with him. He can't find her in the crowd – neither her nor that look and smile – and then he remembers everything again. He usually doesn't go back to play for a few weeks after that.

Waiting for the good news every day, Andy sits in that room for another two months.

"Mr. Dwyer?" a very old doctor enters one day, someone whose name he doesn't really remember. "I've got some great news for you."

"Yeah?" he asks, knowing full well this is just another checkup.

"Well, we've seen some notable improvement," she flips open a metal clipboard and looks down. "I can't give you a hard date because – and I hate to be frank – it's still impossible to know, but there are signs indicative of heightened awareness."

Andy doesn't know what many of those words mean bunched up together the way they are, but he's learned what 'heightened awareness' means. It's minor, and it could just be a fluke because it's certainly happened before, but Andy feels his insides do a twist and he wants to run up and down the hall until she wakes up.

"Thanks," is all he says instead, nearly choking on the word.

He immediately texts Leslie the news, who just sends him one of those little punctuation smiley-faces, and he feels himself grin a little in response. Although the others tried to talk to him and none of them were remotely trying to gussy up their feelings, Leslie usually just sat with him and was there for him to talk to. She never asked for anything more and if Andy knew better he'd guess it was much for her as it was for him. On the second day back from the hospital he visited Leslie at City Hall, unsure of what to do with himself. She asked him if he wanted to go see something that always made her feel a little better and they spent a good hour sitting on the bench in front of one of the murals. Leslie was rubbing his back while he said a bunch of nonsense, but she just sat there and responded with knowing acknowledgments and agreements. He didn't feel much happier afterwards but to him Leslie felt like one of the few people he could confide in since he wasn't going to be telling all of this to Ron any time soon.

"H-Hey," he struggles to get out even though he's been told countless times she simply won't respond to him.

Putting the phone back in his pocket, he takes April's hand again and hopes that this is the part where she can react to physical sensation. He's smiling a little, feeling hopeful again even though he knows that the last time this happened and she relapsed he very nearly had a meltdown in the hospital. Even so he doesn't care because life is boring without April and if there's anything Andy is, it's hopeful.

It's another week, then more good news. At one point her eyelids flutter open and then close again quickly, causing Andy to shout at the top of his lungs. A nurse calls in a doctor and when Andy explains what happened he smiles and writes something down. A few days pass and Andy swears he sees her eyes move beneath their lids, but that's dismissed. Still, he knows that she looked at him when he talked to her.

Johnny Karate makes a triumphant return, doing six shows in one weekend and Andy manages to get through them thinking about the tiniest little movement he felt from April's fingers on that Friday. One of the mothers thanks him and asks if he can do a show for her sister's kids the next week, and Andy says of course. He's never felt better. At home he flops down on the couch and is joined by Champion.

"Hey bud," he scratches the dog's ears and talks to him in an excited tone, "mom's gonna be home soon."

The dog perks his ears a little, and Andy nods vigorously in response. April tells him that the dog can't really understand what they're saying, but he knows Champion gets this since Andy wasn't the only one missing her. That night Andy shares a pizza with the dog, giving him a slice and watching him tear apart the crust on the floor, and Andy smiles to himself.

A few days pass and it happens.

Andy sits on the uncomfortable chair, telling jokes to April. She doesn't respond, and Andy knows she's still only bare at any level of conscious self-awareness, but he can't help himself. The doctors have been telling him it'll be any day and Andy is so impatient to talk to her again – to see that face when he finishes up a gig or her wide, dimply smile that she saves only for him – that he gets carried away with it. So carried away that he almost doesn't notice when April opens her eyes and looks around, almost frightened.

She takes a few heavy breaths and it's almost like she's hyperventilating (something Andy became a little too familiar with for the first few days), but then she calms down. Andy tries to say a few things to her but she doesn't respond, still looking over every detail of the room like she'd never seen a chair or windows before. When a doctor rushed in, Andy was starting to get scared that this was one of those situations he was warned about – all up and at 'em for a few seconds but not really "awake." The idea terrified him.

"Do you know where you are?" the doctor asks, looking directly into April's eyes.

She nods in response.

"Can you answer with a yes, please?"

"Yes," she manages to squeak out, and in that instant Andy feels like he could move a mountain with his bare hands.

"Good," he says, smiling before making her follow his finger with her eyes. "Now, do you know who I am?"

"A doctor," she says slowly, and Andy hears the sweetest thing in her voice – budding annoyance.

"Do you know who he is?" without looking the doctor points to Andy.

For a second Andy remembers that sometimes people forget things when they go into comas, or at least that's what Ann's dumb movies always said, and the doctors had told him she could have very acute memory loss for a few minutes. They said depending on that, they could gauge her recovery. When April turned to look at Andy, he thought his ribs were going to shatter from his erratic breathing. He smiles to her and a grin splits across her face, and Andy could only think of that proud look and he almost passed out.

"Yeah, I know Andy," she says and Andy makes a noise he didn't know was possible.

They don't let her leave for a while, but Andy doesn't care because she's talking to him and asking him a bunch of questions. She's not vibrant or anything, but when has she ever been, and she seems like sometimes she's going to just fall asleep but again he doesn't really care. April's sitting up in the bed and asking questions, laughing at his jokes, and smiling. Another several days pass like this, just the two of them, before April's finally given the okay to go home. Before they leave Andy lets people know that April's doing fine and he makes sure to add ten thousand of those little smiling emotes in his group text.

Waiting in the room for their ride – Leslie – to show up, she asks him how things have been going and he lies better than he thinks he ever could because the last thing she needs to know is how miserable he's been. At first she smiles but then she asks how he's actually been, and Andy wants to break down – he wants to tell April that a few times he didn't know what he was supposed to do.

"It was hard, yeah," he admits finally, "but… I, I didn't know, y'know?"

"Some of the nurses told me you were in this room, like, a lot," she puts so much emphasis on that word and smiles in sequence with it that Andy gets a little embarrassed and just chuckles.

"Okay, it was really hard," he says, scratching the back of his neck. "Life sucks ass without you, y'know."

April doesn't really talk about it, mostly because Andy doesn't thinking to ask her what it was like for the past few months, and he doesn't care at all. Later in the day Leslie comes by, and Andy wants to crush her in his hug because he's so happy. He wanted to do the same with April but he something tells him to wait until they let her leave, so he gets by when Leslie runs in and starts spewing forth questions and looking like she's never been happier. Andy feels the same way and April looks like she's going to get tired just from Leslie's presence, but she still smiles and seems to be actually perking up.

"Okay, well I have to go but," Leslie walked over and gave April a short hug, "you are amazing and so is Andy and both of you are the greatest people I've ever met, and I-"

She was talking as she left the room, but Andy wasn't really paying attention to what she had to say. He was too busy looking at April like she was going to disappear any second and he needed to memorize every detail of her face. He tries to follow her eyes when she looks down and mumbles something, but can't quite recall what it was about when she gives him another wide smile.

"I'm super happy to talk to you again," he mutters.

"Yeah," she responds quickly, but they're interrupted by a doctor before they can say anything else.

Luckily for them April wouldn't have long-lasting disabilities or future issues if they went in for physical rehabilitation once a week. She nods in response to everything, and Andy doesn't know what he's supposed to do with everything broiling inside of him. Andy didn't even really pay attention to much of what the doctor was saying because all he could think about was taking April home and ordering that pizza.