Ch. 18 Recovery

Savannah slept for a grand total of two days. When she woke up, she looked better than she had since she got home, but still sick.

"She woke up today, and she's been eating for the last eight hours straight."

Eliot could hear the shrug on the other line as Dani spoke. "Yeah. I told you."

"Well, how long before I should be worried?"

"Another day or two."

"Another day or two?! Eating?!"

That time he heard the eye roll. "Yeah. What do you expect? She's not even close to an average human being anymore. And let me give you a heads up. Once she's done eating, she sleep some more, for about a day. She'll wake up a little disoriented. After that, she'll have a normal sleep cycle. She'll experience a lot of migraines and spontaneous muscle soreness over the next couple weeks. In between the migraines, she'll have a lot of energy."

"When you say normal sleep cycle, do you mean average-human-normal, or Savannah-normal?"

"Probably Savannah-normal."

"Probably?"

"What do you want from me, Spencer? How many times do I have to point out she's not a normal case, by Academy standard, by Van House standards. I had to do a bunch of estimations and guess work and a lot of alterations."

"Right. I'm sorry. And thank you."

"Don't get sappy on me, Spencer. Our entire dynamic is based on the facade that we hate each other."

"Yeah, I know that play well."

And Savannah ate for the next day and a half. She didn't say a word that didn't relate to food. Hardison had to go grocery shopping twice. Eliot usually did the shopping, but he couldn't leave Savannah's side.

Savannah woke up from her second mini-coma. She looked drastically healthier, still rather thin, but better. "Welcome back," Eliot said from the recliner he'd drug into bedroom in the middle of her insomnia. She just groaned in response. "How're you feeling?"

"Mildly hungover."

He couldn't help but laugh which made her laugh. "Well, I have to go grocery shopping. Hardison shops like an eleven year old, and the idea of paying for things is still lost on Parker. I won't be gone more than more than two or three hours, do you think you can handle yourself for that long?"

She shrugged. "I could come with you. I could use some time away from..." She trailed off.

He didn't want to hurt her feelings, but he had no idea how he'd handle if she had an episode in public. "I don't know if you can handle it. It's been a rough couple of weeks."

She started getting out of bed. "It's just grocery shopping. How bad could-"

He put his hand up. "Don't say it."

"We still haven't been back to the spring," she muttered, sitting back down on the bed, dejected.

"You still have some recovery to get through before we even think about that." He saw her chewing the inside of her cheek in irritation. "Come on, it's not that bad." And that was stupidest thing he'd said all week.

She glared at him. "Neither's grocery shopping," she snapped.

"You're a pain in the ass, you know that?"

"I've heard."

"Fine, but if you have an episode, you're not going out until you're fully recovered." She didn't say anything in response, just smiled with a smug satisfaction as she pulled on her combat boots.

Being at a grocery store with Savannah was one of the most surreal experiences Eliot could remember, and part of him found that really amusing. She didn't seem to care too much about the actual grocery shopping; she really just wanted to be out and about. About ten minutes into the trip, she started leaning on him.

"What's up?"

She shook her head to dismiss his concern. "My legs are sore. Which is weird. I don't think I've felt pain since the accident. And before that I don't remember other than the Academy. And they're just randomly sore, it didn't even build up from use. Just started hurting."

He tried to balance between relaxing without brushing her off. "Dani said that could happen for a while."

"Well, that helps."

She clutched his shoulder to keep herself steady, and shopping went on, though he could see an odd limp developing and what looked like a few dizzy spells that she brushed off. He let them go. She started to perk up, and tell anecdotes that related to things they ran across in the aisles. He picked up a few extra things for her sake, like popsicles.

"Remember the time you asked me about my favorite memory about Sasha and I told you about the swingset and the popsicles?"

"I do." He smiled more to himself, watching a small part of her reminisce what little childhood she had.

"These were the brand of popsicles."

So he put two boxes in the basket. She seemed to try and hide the smile on her face. Later, she tossed in a couple bottles of hydrogen peroxide, a habit she'd never really kicked, though she toned it down. He glanced at her with a condescending smirk, and she rolled her eyes.

They were about to check out when he felt her grip on his shoulder weaken, and looked over to see her falling, barely conscious. Reflexively, he reached out and snatched her out of the fall to back on her feet by her waistband. She leaned into his hold and grabbed onto his shirt with both hands. He saw her leg bend really oddly, but after she reached down and adjusted her pant leg, it seemed to go back to normal.

"That doesn't count as an episode. I didn't hit the ground."

He held back a chuckle. "Alright, sure. But we should get back anyway."