A/N: Time for some angsty angst. I'm still pretty horrible at writing it, but it's getting better.

Warnings: like, one swear word, some body image discussion, medical jargon (!), and yeah.

Also fluff, but you might as well just expect it at this point.

Reviews are cherished...enjoy!

-Justin

Chapter Five: Wake Up

November 12, 2010 (Phil)

I held his hand while I waited for him to wake up. He'd just been moved to recovery, and they'd finally given me the all-clear to join him in the semi-private room. It'd been a total success, but he'd be in a lot of pain for the next few weeks. Every five minutes, a nurse came through the curtain to check vital signs and fiddle with the needles in his arm. On the fourth trip, she walked over to me instead.

"Each time is different," she said softly, placing a hand on my shoulder. I nodded in response, eyes glued to Dan's face, watching his soft movements as he slept. "He'll wake up any minute now." I could hear the smile in her voice as she removed her hand and walked over to the monitor over his bed. Her fingers tapped the screen a few times, and then there was a low screech as a paper printed out the side. I glanced over to watch her take the print-out, eyeing the badge on her lapel. The blonde-haired face on the shiny surface didn't match the one with dark hair pulled tight.

I jumped when I felt him squeeze my hand. My eyes went immediately to his, where his eyelids were fluttering. The soft and steady beeping on the monitor increased slightly, and the woman let out a little shout of joy. "Here we go," she announced, stepping closer to the bed. She kept her distance, though, and I was grateful for it. I'd promised him I'd be the first person he saw.

He looked right at me when his eyes finally opened. He was smiling, the corners of his lips curling up and creating two dimples that were just one of the many things I loved about him. "Hey, Bear," I murmured, rubbing my thumb over the back of his hand. "Everything was perfect."

"Mmm," was the only thing that passed his lips. He closed his eyes again, just for a moment, and then they were open wide and watching me with an expression that always knocked the breath right out of me. His grip tightened on my hand and his lips parted slightly as he uttered, barely audible, "Good."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

October 27, 2014

My foot tapped relentlessly on the tiled floor as I waited for some kind of news. Louise was sat beside me, running a hand up and down my arm in a soothing manner, and I didn't have the heart to tell her that it wasn't helping in the slightest. Every so often, my eyes would shift to look toward the double doors near the back of the waiting room, watching for a sign of someone come to tell us something. A few more minutes passed, and I began chewing on a thumbnail.

"Dan, he's going to be fine," Louise tried to reassure me. "Try not to worry so much." Her voice quavered slightly, so she wasn't even listening to herself. She knew as well as I did what the chances were that he'd make it through this. He'd been lucky, apparently, because the blood clot had broken in two before passing through his heart; if it hadn't, he'd have died right there on our lounge floor. I tried not to dwell on that fact for very long.

"I know," I lied, giving her my most convincing smile. We'd been waiting for hours- did it really take that long to open up his chest?

Five minutes or hours later, a doctor appeared at the doors. We were the only ones in the room, so I didn't wait for him to ask if we were the right people. Louise slipped her hand into mine and I held on tightly, grateful for the contact.

"He's stable for now," the man said- his badge said Spencer-, looking over a clipboard. His puke-coloured scrubs were stained with blood right above his chest- I wondered if he knew. I wondered if it was Phil's blood. I remembered everything that could have gone wrong in that operating room and then I felt Louise's fingers squeezing my palm, forcing me back to reality. "He's in recovery, should wake up soon." Dr. Spencer continued, and then his features twisted into an uncomfortable expression. "I have to warn you, though. Mr. Lester's oxygen levels were dangerously low when he was brought into surgery. There's no telling what kind of damage that's done to his brain." He glanced between us before moving on. "We'll prepare scans once he's awake and alert, but you need to be prepared for the possibility of amnesia."

"What does that mean?" I asked, though I knew exactly what it meant. I didn't know why I bothered. I didn't want to hear the answer.

"It means he might not remember you," Dr. Spencer finished, sorrow crossing his face momentarily before resuming the aura of professionalism. I wanted to know how many times he had to say that to someone's loved ones, but I kept my mouth shut for now. What was I supposed to do if that was what happened? I couldn't think about it, not right now. He shuffled on his feet, passed the clipboard to his other hand. Suddenly, there was a loud beeping in his pocket. He stuck a hand in and pulled out a pager- who still used pagers? - and then he was smiling. "He's just woken up," he told us proudly, as if it were his son who'd just made the football team. "If you'll come with me…" He gestured with his palm as he turned on his heels, and I fell into stride close behind him, towing Louise along.

"It'll be okay, Dan," she whispered to me, low enough that Dr. Spencer couldn't hear. "No matter what, it'll be okay." She squeezed my hand once more and then we were standing on one side of curtain. Suddenly, I couldn't wait any longer, and my hand reached out to yank the curtain back.

Phil was attached to a lot of things. Two needles in his right arm, a pressure cuff wrapped tight around his left. Something bulky strapped to his left index finger, something else beeping steadily behind him. Louise kept a firm grip on my arm as I stood there to take it all in, and then my eyes fell on his face. I'd almost forgotten about the memory loss.

He was watching me.

"Dan," came his whispered voice, and I could have melted into the floor right then. There were tubes wrapped over his cheeks, tiny nubbins poking into his nostrils. I realized quickly that it was oxygen tubing and remembered the doctor saying how low his levels had been. He wore a godawful green checkered gown, and I could see white from a bandage poking through a gap on his right side, and he looked frailer than I'd ever seen him in my life, but none of that mattered right now. The only thing that mattered was that he was alive, in this room, saying my name with that expression in his eyes that never failed to take my breath away.

"Philly," I mumbled, pulling away from Louise and going to his side. The relief I was feeling in that moment was enough to spill tears, and I hoped he didn't notice them. He stretched his arm out, lifting the hand with the tiny machine on one finger, and I let him gather me into a one-armed hug, pressing a kiss to his temple. "They said you might not remember," I blurted out, already exhausted from the intense relief of pressure in my head. I slid down until I was sitting in a strategically placed chair, never letting go of him.

"I couldn't forget you," he said with a smile. He raised his hand once more to stroke my cheek, but it dropped suddenly. "I love you," he started, laughing softly, "but I'm really tired." He shuffled a bit then, and winced. "And sore."

"I love you too, baby," I promised, reaching out to smooth his hair back where it'd started to curl around his forehead. I knew how much he hated it like that. "Go on back to sleep; we'll still be here when you wake up."

He nodded once, eyelids already sliding shut, and then his body fell slack, chest rising and falling steadily. I tore my eyes away from him to look back at Louise, who was stood in the makeshift doorway, which was really just a gap in between two curtains, smiling widely with tears on her cheeks. I couldn't say much- I knew my face looked just as bad. I walked over to her and wrapped her up in my arms. "Told you," she muttered against my chest, and I didn't have to see her face to know she was grinning.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The road to recovery was evidently three weeks long. As soon as I'd left the room Phil was in, Dr. Spencer had led Louise and I to a small office, where one nurse was already waiting. "I'm very happy with the turnout," he began, almost excitedly. "Almost ninety percent of our patients with oxygen-deprived brain damage present with some degree of memory loss." He glanced down at a stack of notes. "However, while his mind seems to have handled the stress well enough, his physical body has not."

I braced myself for the worst.

"When the body is deprived of oxygen for any length of time," Dr. Spencer continued, "the body's systems go into haywire. Brain cells don't send enough signals, or they send too many. Chemical imbalances occur, and even the muscles are affected." He looked down again. "Has Mr. Lester been under a lot of stress recently?"

My thoughts went immediately to the asswipe from the underground. "We came out to our fans last week," I explained, watching closely as he scribbled things down on his pad. "One of them wasn't too happy about it, confronted us in the tube station. Phil's never been good at handling the hate comments."

Dr. Spencer only nodded, not forcing me to go further into detail. The nurse standing behind him never uttered a word, and I wondered if she was just in here for legal reasons. To make sure he didn't try to kill us or rape us or lie to us or something. "We'll be admitting him to Room 314," he told us, sliding over a tiny slip of paper. "Go on up there to the waiting room, and a nurse will collect you once he's been transported."

Louise and I both nodded, rising to our feet simultaneously. She led the way this time, letting me hold on to the piece of paper with Phil's room number written on it. We passed by Phil's curtained-off cubicle during our walk back to the main lobby. I peeked in for a moment before anyone could shoo me away and watched him sleep. His hair was curling around the edges again, glistening with sweat. It was strange how we both hated our own natural hair but loved each other's, but that was just one of the many not-normal things about us.

After a few seconds, Louise was tugging on my wrist, and I followed her through the heavy double-doors into the lobby, where she looked around for a moment before spotting the elevator bank.

It didn't take long to find the third-floor waiting room, and as we settled into chairs in the corner, I allowed myself to lean into her side. Louise was the only one, besides Phil, who could make me relax just by being near to me. It helped that she was equally as worried- Phil was like a son to her, even though she was only a couple years older than him. The events of the day were already weighing me down, despite how well things had turned out, considering.

"I'll wake you up when he gets here," Louise said to me, nudging my shoulder. "Go on and rest."

A/N: I'm truly sorry for the angst, because I hate it so much in other fics when I'm reading.