The first sensation to enter his awareness was pain—throbbing, white-hot painthat seared the back of his head and echoed throughout his skull.
The second was darkness. His eyes were closed, and he feared to open them for reasons that eluded him; it was related to the pain he felt, but perhaps that was but the strain of thought—
Light. Bright, artificial: unnatural, but thankfully not supernatural. There were shapes that he could dimly perceive, even as his eyes fought to adjust
The effort had been fruitless. His surroundings were indecipherable—and the pain; his head, surely, had been cleaved asunder—
He fell into unconsciousness once more.
Pressure.
He felt what he could only term as pressure, and he struggled to reconcile it with something with which he was familiar...
Warmth.
He opened his eyes.
"Danny!"
He had been drawn awake by another's hand on his own, and recognition did not find him until the name slid thickly from his lips.
"J...azz?"
"No! I mean—shh, don't try to talk..."
"Wh...app'nd?"
"Danny, shh! You've suffered a traumatic brain injury, a four on the Glasgow Coma Scale, and...Danny, your head's been hurt. You'll make it worse if you—if you do anything."
"How..."
"Do you want to make the pain worse?"
Danny frowned. He knew the answer, but what was the word?
"Not."
That wasn't right.
"No, Danny, no, you do not want to get worse, and that's why you'll—you'll stop speaking."
No. That was it.
"Ah, yes, he is. You're awake sooner than we might have expected, Mister Fenton," said a new speaker. He started to examine the female doctor who had entered the room, but he took in little other than her standard white coat before the pain in his head spiked, and he shut his eyes.
"...developments?"
He hadn't noticed her begin to speak.
"Aphasia, slurred speech," responded Jazz, and Danny felt slightly annoyed that he was being spoken of while he was sitting in the room. Had that happened recently?
"Aphasia? What words has he had trouble with?" Danny detected the sound of paper moving against paper.
"Just one. 'No.' He said 'not' when he had meant 'no.'"
It's not like asking the patient what's wrong with him will cause spontaneous combustion.
"Thank you, Miss Fenton." Then, she advanced toward Danny—brown hair, brown eyes, Robertson on her nametag; he doubted that he would remember her for more than a week—with a small, metal object in hand. After his brief inspection, he decided that his eyelids were too heavy to hold open. She only had a flashlight.
"Daniel, please open your eyes."
'Daniel'?
Why should I?
"Daniel, I just need to check how you are—doctor stuff, you know. Please open your eyes."
Please treat me like I'm five. She smelled of cleaning fluids.
"Daniel, please. I need to do this. Another doctor tested you before, but it's been awhile, so I need to check on you again."
Wait, what? Danny didn't remember having tests run on him. What if they had...
"Now, was that so hard?" There was a metallic glint before light ran across his vision. It was gone as quickly as it came, and Dr. Robertson was set to explaining before Danny had the chance to react.
"That was to see if your pupils—the pupil is the black part of your eye—" Gee, thanks, I wouldn't have known "—are responding to light properly. They are, which is very good for you, Daniel."
This woman was starting to really get on Danny's nerves.
She looked at Jazz. "I'll leave you alone with your brother. Your parents have been contacted." With that, Dr. Robertson left, and Danny briefly entertained the hope that she would not return.
"Danny... Don't speak," Jazz added quickly when he was about to respond. "Um, blink twice for 'yes' and three times for 'no,' okay?"
Danny blinked three times.
"Little brother, you seem... upset. Did Doctor Robertson bother you?"
She was only acting like I'm about as bright as a broken streetlamp, Jazz. Weren't you here the whole time?
"Oh, quit freaking out."
"D-Danny? What is—" she spluttered, "How are you—?"
"It's no big deal, Jazz. I've gotten concussions before, and I was fine! Stop worrying."
Jazz seemed ready to say several things at once, but instead she whispered urgently, "Danny, calm down; Mom and Dad are probably almost—"
"You've had concussions in the past, Sweetie?" came the voice of their mother as she entered the room, blue hazmat suit more conspicuous than usual against the sterile white of the hospital walls.
"What! Danny's been hurt before?" shouted Jack Fenton as his hulking figure invaded the doorway and he nearly shoved his wife aside in his fervor, "Did it have something to do with ghosts?" If Maddie's suit stood out, then Jack's was the sickening amalgamation of everything bright and orange.
Well, at least he didn't have to explain to the doctors why he was hypothermic.
A/N: I am off to bed. Sorry if I've failed to note anything important.
A/N (5-13-12): Well, I'm sure late, but here's what's going on in this chapter.
Danny received his injury at the end of chapter 4, when "his world exploded in pain and darkness."
The explanation for Danny's improvement is that he is healing rapidly. Jazz doesn't know of this being one of his powers (hence her reaction when Danny tells her to quit freaking out), and obviously nor do the doctors (Dr. Robertson commenting on how he was awake sooner than expected, correct pupillary response to light being "very good"). I also tried to hint at this with the progressive coherence of Danny's inner thoughts.
The hypothermia line at the end was a reference to Danny being worried that his powers are slightly out-of-control. He thought that, because Dr. Robertson did not make any mention of his temperature being significantly below the norm, his temperature was not taken; however, it was, and in reality, his ghost half/ice power were not influencing his body temperature when it was recorded.