"So, I was six, right? I had just gotten my, uh... I was fat still," Andy says, but April must have missed most of what he was saying. Some of it droned on but he doesn't move an inch; and he hasn't, not since the first one about his pet snake, Sir Wigglesworth. "So anyways, I was six and fat and got pushed off of a roof once."

Andy, the king of the anticlimactic story, begins another one. What little she can piece together, and that's becoming more and more as time passes on, just keeps her in that little self-cradling position for a while. His pet snake makes her turn her head and shift entirely to facing him. It's a tight fit on the bed, but she still looks over at him and makes sure to figure out any facial expressions she can do to make it obvious she's listening to him. It doesn't seem to bother him that she can't really say anything back, though, as Andy takes his promise to tell her stories as serious as her stroke.

Stroke, she repeats in her head. I had a stroke.

April heard the doctor say something about it to her parents. The word stroke pops up more often around her now, as in from zero to ever at all, and it's weird to hear aimed at her. Whatever they wanted to call it, as long as she got to say a few words to someone it'd be much better. One person in particular - the one person that told April he thought she hated him.

"Um, I don't know if you've ever rode on a motorcycle but... they're super fun. Except when you think you're good enough to drive one yourself," Andy taps his chin, looking at her thoughtfully. "Then you just kind of fall over after starting one and aren't strong enough to hold it up. My uncle super hated that."

He keeps tapping his chin and maintains that furtive look. April, meanwhile, wonders which part made him think she hated him. It was likely the part where she said she didn't want to date him or be around him anymore. Said, she thinks. All I did was say it, you dork. Obviously I didn't mean it.

But Andy wasn't the kind of person that needed to be walked around like that. He wasn't the brightest, sure, but that didn't matter at all to her. Instead he made her smile and laugh, more than anyone ever honestly, and that was such a feat in itself that April could scarcely believe he bothered to sit there and tell her meaningless stories about himself and about things he'd seen that day. Even in the past few hours, Andy still bothers. That must have been what mattered to her, before anything else. Still sitting there in that chair, apparently pondering over his thoughts more than she'd ever seen him do, and Andy tries again. That was her usual test on people, and Andy so far seems to have passed spectacularly.

"There's a super cool coupon weekend going on over at the pizza place a block down from my place," he adds in with an almost kinetic emphasis. "I mean, I save all those coupon things where you punch holes in them or whatever. If you bring in 'em all you can take like six pizzas back."

Tilting her head curiously at him, all April can manage now is, "Hm?"

Fucking say it, she tries to screech out. I'll go eat six stupid pizzas with you and yes it will be a date. But, no. None of that escapes her mouth.

The few things she said before this, the doctors weren't at all surprised by. She could say broken sentences and little things here and there, a little in English some in Spanish, but they said it was part of her language center trying to send signals and basically coming up short. So, her little yogurt outburst an hour too late made a little more sense. Her inability to function like the old April was starting to be less a comforting removal and actually scare her, though. Sure, a phrase here and there could get the point across but what if she couldn't even do that in an hour or two? She can't even say a real word anymore, and that frightens her that the doctors won't say a word about it.

Curling back up into her tight, safe ball, April watches him continue with a stutter. It's actually, honestly, kind of cute. And thinking that, even that one word, is a little disgusting. Except that it's Andy, so she's fine thinking he's cute with his face scrunched up and chasing his words without success.

"I, um, that wasn't a date, or anything. I mean, I'll buy you pizzas when you get out. Like, six or seven," he quickly gets out, "but only if you want it. I mean, you like pizza right? Of course you do, everyone loves pizza."

"Yeah," she says on instinct.

Andy's eyes light up immediately. She can't say anything else, try as she might, but she did say something on reaction. It felt real and normal, and makes her look at him, shocked. Andy, though, just looks as jubilant as ever. He only sits forward and smiles, before something apparently catches his attention behind her or in his line of sight that makes Andy return to sitting stock still and back in the chair.

A few more minutes pass and, try as she might, April can't put the sequence together that made that little response come out. One more word is all that would do, but nothing. So she relegates herself to listening to Andy talk awkwardly around the fact that he technically asked her out in the middle of a very serious, traumatic experience. That, in all honesty, makes struggling to find her words have a bigger purpose than to yell at people at the Food 'n Stuff or groan at Ann. Having a little ambition, even if it was for something as stupid as another person, is a nice change of pace. Andy was a nice change of pace in general, actually.

A few more minutes pass and April realizes she's heard everything he's said now. Nothing drops off into an incomprehensible squeal, and the words he says have meaning to them instead of being a dull, pointless void of noise. It's exciting, but she can't get her hopes up like when she was saying some words or responding with a reflex rather than thinking way too hard about it. Now she just lies back in bed and looks over through the window in her room. Dark, she thinks. It's dark outside, and no one's come in for hours to tell him to leave.

April's okay with that, though.

"I'm starting to run out of stuff to say," he laughs and folds his hands. " I, um, I could read from a magazine, or something?"

"Andy, I can read," she says immediately.

It's been happening more and more though, and Andy keeps asking her questions. She answers them sometimes, and when she does he looks as happy as he always is around her. Well, as he usually is. When she can't say anything and likely has a distressed look on her face - or at least she thinks she does, because she widens her eyes and purses her lips in frustration - he just goes back to thinking and asking her things. Something will break through, he must be thinking.

It kinda already has, she thinks.

"Okay, but do you want me to get you one?" he adds on, hoping to get something out of her.

Something that won't ever come. "No thanks," she thinks and it comes out. "No thanks," she repeats.

Andy smiles wider. "What kinda magazines do you even read, anyways? Whatever, that doesn't matter. I have to go get someone-"

"Andy," she stops him. Just like that, with a word that comes out just as she wants it to and so neatly, "Andy, wait."

"What's up?" he asks, shooting up from the chair.

"Can you hear me?" she says because this might all be a dream or a hallucination. Maybe April will wake up to Andy snoring in his chair or gone altogether, never having been there in the first place.

She's probably stuck there still. None of these words have come out and when Andy comes in reality he'll get mad at her for not saying a word, and she hates that she can't but now it's better because he's rightly an asshole and she gets to be correct in her initial assumptions about him instead of having to deal with the fact that some things are and can be her fault too. Some of the things that have happened are his fault, and some of the misgivings and general stupidity has been hers too, but it's a whole lot easier to deal with a reality where none of that needs to come into play and April gets to be right again.

But she'll wake up, and he can't hear her at all. So, in that tiny second after she asks him that, April can almost feel her heart collapsing under the weight of that question.

"Yeah, I can," he answers her. "I'll, um, I'll go grab someone and then get out of here-"

"Why?" she wants to know. Or maybe she wants him to know that he doesn't have to go.

"You'll want me out of your hair, so I'll tell a doctor you're saying stuff and they'll get me out of here anyways," he adds sheepishly, but he's right about the second half.

"I told you I won't make you go," she wants to get up and hug him, probably kiss him too, but her skin feels tingling and her right leg feels so strange and still mildly distracting to consider moving.

"Oh, is that what you were saying?" he says with an amusing mix of realization and profound confusion on his face. "Weird, I thought you wanted me to go."

"So why'd you stay?" she's honestly talking just to talk now. Asking that questions could be a death sentence for her but instead she just wants to keep hearing the words come out of her mouth quickly and fluidly. "If you thought I hated you and wanted you to leave why'd you bother? It's kind of rude to even stay if you thought that-"

"Sorry," Andy looks down and opens the door. "I'll go."

He leaves before she can get another word out. She even told him that she wanted him to stay, and yet she had to say something that made him confused or reconsider everything. There isn't much she can do when a doctor walks in, though. April has to bother herself answering the doctor instead of getting out of bed and asking Andy to stay and tell her more stories. Or, better yet, let her tell him some of her own now that she can say more than a word every few minutes.

a/n: To clear up a little confusion some people may have, an expressive aphasia (what's described in this story) is a failure in the language center of your brain. That, in turn, can screw up some motor function in your right side and make your understanding, usage, and relation to language very foggy and poor. That's just a tiny, microscopic part of a stroke like this. Complications extend beyond simple speech and understanding, though, and may appear in the form of speech impediments, misunderstanding words, and honestly things we take for granted every day.

However, I plan on having a chapter or two after this to work on some more things and we may see more than just angsty April and sad Andy!