A/N: No time, just no time, and a chapter that just didn't want to come out even when I knew everything that needed to happen. Don't you hate that?
Chapter Ten: Put your hand on the glass.
It's the wee hours and he's not actually with her when his mother finally does wake up.
Two further days have passed and although he's left before to shower and change and she's gone with him (they've left Alexis with her grandmother), he hasn't ever been gone for more than a couple of hours. Just enough time to return to the loft and freshen up, before he's accompanied her to her rented apartment and waited awkwardly on the couch (uncharacteristically not snooping), before he's rushed them both right back here.
For herself, she's just been grateful for both her Captain's understanding and Castle's continued acceptance of her determined plan to remain with him. But though she's managed to fall asleep each night on the bench outside Martha's room, she knows Castle has only slept for a handful of hours each day. He'll stubbornly stay awake until sheer exhaustion causes him to crash out finally in the chair that she's currently sitting in – but she's taking the watch tonight.
Things have remained pretty even between them, a truce she thinks, with Castle accepting of her presence and even appearing grateful for it at times. But it was the moment when she finally persuaded him to leave, to go home and to try and sleep properly for a while, that was the moment that Kate felt again that sense of softening within him. For another perfect moment, the man she married was standing before her once more - he was listening, he was hearing her, he was seeing her again.
He agreed to leave his mother in her charge and that decision meant so very much to Kate. Knowing that she'd remain awake, that she'd sit there in his place had allowed him to go home. To take some real time for himself and just regroup a bit, she can't describe how immensely humbled she is by that. She's overwhelmed in fact, because she knows that he's extending her a measure of trust once more, that most precious of lost commodities. It feels huge to her. Much more vital and more important than the subtle unfreezing of his demeanor towards her, and more like some form of 'partnership' being tentatively offered by him once again.
Of course maybe she's just reading into it what she needs to see, because the detective knows her husband wasn't actually thinking it any sort of real possibility that his mother might regain consciousness without him being here, not with the extent of her stroke seemingly so severe. And the waiting has been really hard on them all - knowing that Martha waking up anytime soon seemed nothing more than an unlikely dream.
A dream that's apparently coming true though, because Martha shocks Kate by suddenly moving and although the movement itself it almost tiny, she's just been so very still, so completely out of it since the shooting that any voluntary movement is strikingly vivid in the dead of night. It has Kate up and out of her seat instantly, the urgent press of her shaking fingers on the call button so she can alert the attending medical staff at once.
And it's really not much actually, at least in terms of movement that is - just the clenching of Martha's right hand. Desperately frail looking fingers catching in the blue blanket covering her, gathering it up while her pale knuckles whiten still further before they release, and she repeats the process once again.
It's rhythmic though, and it feels deliberate – something of Martha behind it, Kate's convinced of that.
And so she jabs the call button forcefully again and leans a lot closer, wetting suddenly dry lips with the press of her tongue as she reaches into her pocket for her phone. Her thumb hovers over the screen a moment before she realizes how very little there is to tell him and so she pauses, stowing the phone back inside her jacket as she uneasily decides that she'll wait.
He could be, at least she truly hopes that he's sleeping. Regaining some strength as he finally let's his body do what it must to keep him going. So yes, she'll wait, that's surely the better decision she thinks, at least for now. At least until there is something more to say.
Martha's hand clenches and unclenches again, and Kate is jabbing at the call button in frustration for the third time when the door to the private room finally opens, and one of the ICU's night nurses appears.
"Mrs. Castle?" she asks.
Kate swallows, "It's her hand," she murmurs, pointing towards her mother-in-law just as Martha clenches her fingers once again.
The young nurse smiles and steps fully into the room; she eyes the array of machines surrounding her patient and nods once, seemingly pleased.
"She's showing signs that she's coming around. That's good Mrs. Castle. If she opens her eyes and seems at all lucid that would be a highly encouraging development."
Kate bites her lip. "So I should just stay with her then? You don't need to do anything to help her wake up?"
The nurse smiles gently and gives a soft shake of her head.
"With an injury like this it's more about keeping her sedated until her brain has recovered enough that it's safe to let her come back to us. Thankfully since they operated to relieve the pressure caused by the brain bleed she's stabilized nicely. Her blood pressure is holding steady, her heart rate and her oxygen stats all look really good. We can let her just come around in her own time now, and then we'll see how she's doing."
"You mean how bad the damage from the stroke really is?"
"Yes." The nurse gently answers, "Exactly." She squeezes Kate's shoulder before she says, "I know it's hard, but try to stay optimistic, Mrs. Castle. I have a feeling that this one is a lot tougher than she might at first appear."
Kate manages to smile at this assessment, she can't help it. "Oh she's a fighter," she agrees, a cascade of 'Martha' images and memories clear in her mind, "A real force of nature actually."
"I remember."
Kate's brow creases in confusion and the young nurse hurries to explain.
"Oh I saw her in a play once, many years ago when I was a child," she confesses. "She was really wonderful. I've never forgotten it."
Tears fill Kate's eyes immediately and the young woman looks immediately contrite.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you," she apologizes.
But the detective shakes her head. "Oh you didn't, really, you didn't. I'm just so scared for her and all the challenges she's going to have to face. And I'm more than scared that she won't be herself at all, and how my husband will . . ."
Kate's throat closes up around the words and she falls silent, unable to finish that thought out loud. She has to close her eyes against the pain in her chest, fighting to block it out, hold it back. She forces herself to breath deep and slow.
She feels the other woman squeeze her shoulder gently again, before she just rests her hand there in silent support until she's gathered herself.
"Faith and optimism, Mrs. Castle, don't write her off just yet," she whispers when Kate can look at her again.
Kate nods, "Yeah," she breathes.
The night nurse smiles, before she looks all the rooms' apparatus over one more time.
"If she wakes up fully, let her see you, reassure her that she's safe before you call us. If she remembers anything about the shooting she might come around in a state of fear and a familiar face is much better before she lays eyes on someone new – okay?"
She smiles once more as reassuringly as she can and then she leaves Kate alone with Martha again.
Kate watches Castle's mother carefully as the clenching of her right hand continues, finally she can't stand doing nothing a moment more and she stills Martha's hand with her own, tangling their fingers together and holding onto them tightly.
"Martha?" she says clearly, "Can you hear me? It's Kate."
There's a long moment as Kate holds her breath and then Martha's fingers squeeze with surprising strength onto Kate's grip.
The cop's heart literally skips a beat.
"Martha, you're safe. You're in the hospital," she says. "Can you open your eyes for me, Martha? Come on, I know you can. Open your eyes."
Martha doesn't comply, but she does squeeze Kate's hand again and it feels very deliberate to Kate, a direct response to her words. She's just about to encourage Martha again when she notices that the older woman's eyelids are fluttering, her right one far more clearly than her left – but that's definitely moving too.
"Come on, Martha," she pleads loudly. "You can do it. I know you can open your eyes for me."
Kate reaches out her free hand and gently palms the side of Martha's face, her thumb softly stroking the other woman's cheek. Pass after soft pass until finally there's a sliver of blue that becomes visible and Kate just rejoices, feels her face breaking open into a smile. She wants to move and to call Castle, but she's afraid to let go so she finds herself just talking instead.
"Hey there," she whispers softly. "Welcome back."
Martha's half-opened eyes drift closed and then re-open with much more determination behind the movement. Kate can tell her mother-in-law is struggling to focus her gaze, and she finds herself holding her breath – wondering if this is the moment everything changes and all the worst predictions come to the fore again.
It seems to take forever but its seconds really until Martha's gaze finds and holds onto Beckett's. One side of her mouth curves up just a little, and Kate immediately bursts into tears of relief, she buries her face against the bed until the rasp of Martha's voice calls to her, and Kate swallows hard, raising her face in wonder.
But it isn't words Martha's forming. Its just sounds and it's intelligible and the more of them that she makes the clearer it becomes that Martha is trying and failing to say something, and the failure is completely distressing her.
"It's okay," Kate hurries to tell her. "It's okay Martha. You're going to be okay."
Kate reaches for the call button and stabs at it hard, while the hand tangled up with Martha's keeps gripping on tight and Kate prays that the pressure of it's reassuring.
There's confusion and a clear plea in the actresses eyes now. She's there, Kate can see it, but she just can't seem to figure out how to form words. So until the medical staff gets here Kate concentrates on trying to figure out if Martha can at least understand them.
"Martha? Martha, just listen to me. Do you know who I am? Can you nod for me if you know who I am?"
Castle's mother manages a small tilt of her head and the same tiny lifting of the right corner of her mouth again.
Kate smiles back encouragingly, while she wonders whether she should try and explain to Martha what's happened, and why she's struggling. She debates in agony whether to ask if Martha remembers anything, but then she remembers who she's dealing with and how Martha always was one to cut right to the chase. She wouldn't want it any other way.
"You're going to be fine," she begins, figuring that it's much better to keep telling Martha that than telling her what her limitations might be. "And you're safe," she continues, before she asks, "Do you remember anything about what happened to you?"
The actress frowns – sort of – as it's only the right side of her face that really moves but the way her eyes shift and lose their focus it's obvious to Kate that she's trying desperately to remember. When she finally looks back at Kate, there is no answer in her eyes, just a confusion that's born out when she manages a small shake of her head and what looks like the barest shrug of her right shoulder.
Kate swallows hard, again. Suddenly it doesn't feel right that she's the one who's telling Martha anything, even as she can't bear the thought of Castle having to relive the nightmare if he explains everything. But Martha doesn't even seem surprised to find Kate here and that's really scary – isn't it? Because it raises all kinds of questions about just how much of what she should know Martha's lost here. How many of her memories are going to be missing?
Kate holds Martha's confused stare and battles a war of indecision, finally settling on holding off on telling her anything, or asking her anything else just yet. All that can matter really is that his mother is awake, and so Castle needs to know this. Right now getting hold of him and keeping his mother calm is all that Kate feels she has the right to do.
The detective tugs her phone from her pocket once again and this time there's no hesitation as she punches the call button. As the call goes through and she waits for him to answer, Kate just smiles at Martha, "I'm calling Rick," she explains to her. "So you just stay with me Martha. You just stay with me because your son is coming."