A/N: Hi everyone! Thank you for your awesome reviews. I adore reading them. Anyways, this chapter is the first one with no scene breaks, so it was a bit hard to write, honestly. But I finally got it, and I'm pretty happy with it. Hope you are too!

Eric had to admit, his mother was a gifted small-talker; she could draw out even the most mundane of statements for as long as possible. During the car ride, it was neighborhood gossip and talk of what she planned to make for dinner. Occasionally, one of the three men in the car would pretend to be interested, but for the most part they were quiet. Hyde was particularly quiet once the car started moving, eyes growing wide evey time the car went over a bump in the road, his hand instinctively going to the broken rib.

"You okay?" Eric asked.

"Uh huh," Hyde answered, his voice a bit too high.

Kitty, oblivious, was still talking. "I could pick up cherries from the Piggly Wiggly after the pharmacy. How does that sound? Or do you prefer blueberry pie? Or apple? I could make any kind. It's been too long since I've baked a pie." It had been less than a month.

"Cherry?" Eric looked at Hyde for approval, who gave a thumbs up.

"Cherry it is!"

A motorcycle passed them, and Hyde's eyebrows furrowed. The two boys watched as it went tightly around a corner, and, as Red cursed it for speeding, Hyde muttered "show off" under his breath.

"You weren't driving like that, were you Steven?" Red asked, and Eric wished he would shut up.

"Uh, not for the part I remember." He winced as they went around the corner. "And for the part I can't remember, I'm gonna guess not ramming into Angie's car proves I wasn't."

"You really don't remember it, huh?"

"Nope. It's some soap opera level crap."

That comment got Kitty talking about her new favorite soap opera the rest of the way home. Several minutes of rambling later, they were pulling up to their house. Eric spotted Bob Pinciotti mowing his lawn next door as they pulled into the driveway. Red groaned as Bob turned off the lawn mower and started approaching them. "Ah geez, can't I get a minute of peace?" Red whined.

"Howdy, neighbors!" Bob said cheerfully the second the car doors opened.

Hyde opened his door and was greeted with an "aw geez, kid, what happened to you?"

"Here's a word of advice for you, Bob," Hyde began, "if you ever see a bear in your campground, do not fight it back. The bear will win."

Before Bob could be too surprised, Kitty crushed the joke as she walked to the trunk of the car. "Oh, no. Steven just had a little accident involving a motorcycle."

Hyde scoffed. "Little."

Bob still looked impressed. "Oh wow, a motorcycle, huh? Bet the girls'll love that one."

Hyde crossed his fingers, and Eric got out of the car. Hyde called after him, "grab me the crutch, will you?"

"Sure." Eric walked to the back of the car, where his mother was unloading the trunk of everything they'd brought back from the hospital. Eric grabbed the single crutch and brought it to Hyde, and noticed that Bob had wondered off to inadvertently bother Red. Eric stood back as Hyde figured out how to get up and started towards the house, then walked beside him. Eric inevitably got there first, and crossed his arms as he watched Hyde catch up.

"What are you looking at?" Hyde asked, putting on a tough voice.

"You look like Tiny Tom," Eric said, amused.

"It's Tiny Tim," his friend corrected. "And I know."

Eric opened the door with a smirk, and they went inside. As soon as the boys entered, Kitty pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. "Sit, sit, sit!" She ushered Hyde to the seat and shook her head at the sight. "You really should stay off that leg as much as possible." Eric knew Hyde didn't particularly appreciate advice, so he wasn't surprised with how the conversation went. As soon as his mom mentioned using the wheelchair over the crutch, the world's politest arguement ensued between the two. Red came in briefly to get beer for himself and Bob, and put an end to the spat almost as quickly as it had started, telling Hyde (among other things) that that thing had cost a lot of money, god damn it, and he'd use it.

Hyde relented, and soon was situated and pushing the left wheel with as little enthusiasm as possible. After Kitty (who seemed pleased) and Red left to join Bob in the living room, Hyde rolled the left wheel forward twice more, then noticed something. He looked at the right wheel, at the sling he wore on his right side, and reached over his left arm sling to roll the untried wheel. The attempt was a failure; it barely budged. "I seem to have found a fatal flaw in this plan," Hyde said, pushing the left wheel over and over so that he was now going in a circle.

"Let me try something." Eric took hold of the handles and shoved the wheelchair forward about a foot. "Fixed it. I guess the handles aren't decoration afterall."

Hyde gave him the finger, and Eric knew that his "help" wouldn't change his friend's mind about how to get around. Maybe Hyde would give up and give in, maybe not. All Eric knew was that trying to sway him would probably makes things worse, so instead he took the approach of being annoying intentionally to make light of the situation: in this case, by singing the first few lines of "Help" by The Beatles.

"See?" Hyde said, indeed annoyed, and ineffectively shoved one of the wheels. "I can't even ditch you."

Eris sung the next loud even louder. At that moment, Donna and Jackie took it upon themselves to let themselves in (Eric couldn't remember the last time someone knocked before coming in). Jackie immediatly went in to kiss her boyfriend, while Donna hung back. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Hyde."

Hyde smiled. "It's good to be back." Then he looked down. "Mostly."

Donna tried not to smile, noticing the gym shorts. "Are you trying out for the high school basketball team?"

"Yeah, but for some reason I can't nail my trickshot," Hyde said sarcastically, and flicked the sling.

Jackie crossed her arms. "I don't think it's funny." Then she said to Hyde, "you are going to have such uneven tan lines."

"Oh, the humanity!" Eric said.

"Jackie," Hyde said, "I want you to enjoy what I'm going to say next, because it's never happening again. We need to go clothes shopping."

"Yay!" Jackie screeched, and the others covered their ears. "I have been waiting for a boy to say those words to me my whole life."

"Like I said, one time deal. Now let's go to the basement. I need to hear music that isn't of the elavator genre."

Jackie asked him, "how can you do stairs?" She had a good point. How were they going to hang in the basement if moving was such a problem for one of them?

"Trial and error." Hyde pushed himself up and hopped foward a step, using one of the kitchen chairs to steady himself while he grabbed the crutch from the table. "And hopefully not breaking my face in the process."

Jackie moved towards him. "You know, speaking of that, you've got a bruise on your jaw I've been meaning to talk to you about. A little concealer will take care of that, no problem. Oh, and while we're at it, a little chapstick."

"No makeup."

"But-!"

"No."

Eric stood in the doorway that led down to the basement. "Are we going to the basement or not?" The others nodded, and he went several steps down. Hyde appeared at the landing, and stared down the staircase, thinking.

"You're going to need help," Jackie said.

Hyde continued looking down the stairs. "Without the crutch I can hold the railing, and just..." In a quick move, he dropped the crutch, grabbed the railing, then hopped down a step. The crutch noisily slid to the bottom of the staircase. "Piece of cake." He carefully hopped down another step. Eric instinctively stayed near, spotting him.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Jackie asked.

"Whatever."

It took a couple of minutes to get halfway down, then Donna got impatient and decided to step in. "Yeah, doing this ten times a day isn't going to get old," Hyde scoffed. Finally, they were all in the basement, music blaring, and Hyde in his lawn chair with leg propped up on the table at Jackie's insistence.

"Forman, where do you keep scissors?" Hyde lifted his arm, the hospital bracelet sliding down his wrist.

"Upstairs. Help yourself." Eric thought it was clever, but the joke fell flat among his friends. "I'm kidding! I'll get them." He found a pair in a drawer and handed them over. Of course, cutting something off of the same arm you were using to work the scissors was not possible, so Eric did the honors.

After thanking him, Hyde used his teeth to rip off the piece of cotton taped to his arm where the IV needle had been. Then, he picked up the severed bracelet and chucked it across the room. "Good riddance."

Two episodes of Scooby Doo later, Kitty, back from her errands, came downstairs. After commententing on her surprise that he managed to make it downstairs, she handed Hyde a white paper bag and class of water, saying "here, Steven. I went ahead and picked up your medication. The instructions are on the bottle. If you have any questions, I'll be upstairs. But...but don't come upstairs, I don't need you going up and down all day. Just call, or send Eric, or - ooh, maybe I should get a bell."

"No, that's okay, Mrs. Forman," Hyde said quickly. "Thanks."

"Well, alright. I'm going to make sandwiches for lunch, and then get to work on that pie."

Hyde nudged Jackie. "Hey, Jackie, why don't you go help her?"

Jackie looked like a deer in headlights. "Um..."

"Jackie? In the kitchen? No, no. I don't need any help," Kitty said, her worry a little too obvious. "You kids just enjoy yourselves down here, and leave the kitchen work to me." She laughed and retreated upstairs.

Hyde pulled out the orange pill bottle and started skimming the label. "Take one to two every six hours as needed. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery - like that's going to happen anyway, no alcohol, can cause blah blah blah, do not take more than yadda yadda. Okay." He pressed down on the child-safe cap, but couldn't twist it off. "Damn it."

"Here, baby, let me do it." Jackie took it from him, gave him a pill, and then read the label more carefully.

Hyde swallowed the pill before asking, "hey, Forman, you wanna get my stash from my room?"

"Wait!" Jackie said, still reading.

"The doc said no alcohol. He didn't say anything about smoking," Hyde assured her.

She considered this. "Fine."

Eric retrieved the stash from Hyde's room, and soon the circle was in full swing.

Hyde was sporting a dopey, blissful smile. "Man, this is good stuff."

"Which stuff? The stash or the pills?" asked Jackie.

"Who cares? It's all good, man."

"Yeah," Eric nodded in approval. "Too bad Kelso and Fez aren't here."

Donna added, "yeah, we haven't had a full group circle in a week. It's just been a...a pentagram."

"You mean a pentagon," Eric said.

"And now it's a square. A good square, but a square."

"You know," Jackie said, "if you count people as corners then it can't be a circle. Because they have no corners."

"No geometry in the circle," Hyde declared. The group fell silent. Hyde soaked up the pause, then smirked. "Hey...did you know there's this car-"

Eric groaned. Some things never changed. He shook his head, smiling. "Welcome back, man."

A/N: That's it! Next chapter there will be some Nurse Jackie-ing, and then either the second half of that one or the next chapter will be visiting Grooves. So look forward to that! Thank you all so much for reading. Until next time!