Nothing registered with Philip until he arrived at he hospital, and even then, the minutes, hours and days passed by in an odd web of disjointed memory. He could remember when his father showed up. He could also remember how long that had taken. From what he was told afterward news travelled slowly, in an attempt to spare gossip of Eacker's deed. Thirty minutes Philip lay alone on the hospital bed, shaking of fear, shock and what could have been the start of an infection that almost killed him. The doctor tending to his wounds didn't speak, or if he did, Philip couldn't remember. He couldn't remember his face either. He wanted his mother, her soft smile, her warmth. She would know the words to soothe the consuming fear he felt. And there was so much pain. At some point before his father showed, Philip began to sob. Already struggling to breathe, his breaking was strained ever more as he came to many realisations. He was shot, Eacker had one. He'd failed his father, his father had failed him. He was going to die, maybe alone in a white room with a man who he had never met before. The clock he could just about make out, a grandfather to his left, ticked on in a rhythm which sometimes slowed, sometimes quickened, but always seemed to watch his heart beat. If he strained his neck and tilted his head just so, he could see it, so grand and towering, but that brought on a wave of nauseating pain, and confusion. He handles seemed to move too quickly, then too slowly, and succeed in lodging a migraine right into the thick of his consciousness.
All this was happening, or had happened when Alexander Hamilton, always so dignified, ran into the room and cowered over in grief at his bedside when their eyes met. Even though Philip felt betrayed; his father had been the one to give him the instruction to shoot towards the sky, he welcomed his face with a smile strained in pain.
"I did exactly as you said, pa, I held my head up high. Even before we got to ten... it was seven if I recall..." All of this loss of air was making him feel increasingly light headed but talking felt good, it made him feel more alive than he maybe even was, at that point. "I was aiming for the sky.."
"I know, ..I know." Philip had never heard his father's voice quaver like that. Every word he spoke was purposeful and a monument in itself. Not so unsure, grief-riddled and broken.
"I tried to defend you're honour but now..." He had to gasp to catch his next breath. "Now I'm here. I should've shot. Him."
"I'm sorry, Philip. God, you know I'd do anything to trade your place for mine right now. I'm so sorry, Philip."
It was the first time he'd ever heard his father mutter those words. To anyone.
The words past these that Alexander spoke to his son were long lost in the overbearing pain Philip felt and in the heaving painkillers he'd been administered by the surgeon. The bullet had been extracted from his arm, he could physically feel its absence. But there was something else, in his wake. A fire was burning underneath his skin, eating away at him. The infection was spreading, he presumed. Another indicator was the sweat that stung his vision every time he tried to open his eyes to find his father's face. The next vivid memory came, an unregistered amount of time later, when his mother, Eliza, appeared in even more of a distraught state than Alexander had been. She was howling with grief even before she reached the bedside, and hung onto Hamilton, shaking him, begging her to tell her all he knew, and had he known about the duel before it'd taken place? Philip ignored the dialogue. He focused on her face and that grounded his thoughts a lot more. His parents, whose relationship had been strained, they were together now. If he did die, Philip thought with a slight tinge of happiness, at least he might've brought his family back together.
It was hours before he heard a doctor talk to his parents. Philip would be okay, he heard him say, but he's still unstable and might lose consciousness on and off because of the morphine. Eliza doubted for her son's life. Philip could see it in her eyes later on. She didn't think he would make it, even when he was well on the road to recovery in the days and weeks after the duel. He knew that it was probably the right of him; his frailty, the right arm which would never been completely okay again, his tendency to pass out at relatively sporadic moments. Despite her constant fear and worries, Philip was grateful she was by his side. Hamilton came when he could. His father's friend, John Laurens, who had been shot by British Soldiers years ago and lived to tell the tale, made his way up from South Carolina to speak with Philip and give him some advice for his recovery. He'd come as soon as he heard, but it was two weeks before he arrived in New York. Even at that time, post and message delivery were painstakingly slow.
Philip was grateful for Laurens' presence, he enjoyed his company, his kindness and the stories he shared of the Revolution and his fellow revolutionaries. He especially liked the stories Laurens shared of his father, not just because he loved hearing about Hamilton's antics, but also because of how Laurens changed when he talked about him. Somewhere inside Philip, in an area of himself bare for the things he wanted to desperately keep from his mind, he knew why Laurens had come to his side so quickly. He knew it was just another excuse to see Alexander, who was now far too overworked to keep up with Laurens or his other friends from the war. But Philip focused on the fact that there were people around him that wanted to see him better, and that encouraged him to be stronger, to force his way back to life and into every day with the valour and heart of a solider, like his father before him. Like Hamilton survived, overcame and rose above the battlefields to which he laid his life bare, Philip would survive a different sort of war. He had been afraid to die, but it wasn't that fear that gave him what he needed to live. It was the people he knew, who surrounded him.
He was still bed ridden when the first letter arrived from Aaron Burr. It had been published in a newspaper earlier in the week, and Hamilton had brought it upstairs and read it out to Philip as he stood by the bed. It made Alexander out to be a conspiring dark figure who had, in short, stood in the way of any major advancements in Burr's political career. It was an attempt to tarnish his name, something that Philip knew his father wouldn't stand for.
"Philip, I know you stood up for my name, for our name. For what I am you also are. And, son. I am not going to let this go unanswered. I will do you justice, not just for me. You'll see what I can do to him." Without another word or time given for Philip to answer, Hamilton left the room, his steps loud and heavy with the anger that he too felt.
He couldn't have possibly known then, that this was the beginning of a number of long months of writing, back and forths with Burr, that would eventually lead to his father's death, and his need to avenge it.