Chapter 51 "Doing Better"

A/N: (15 April 2017) It never gets old, thanking you for your very kind and thoughtful reviews, and the love you are showing this story. I am very grateful, and happy to be writing something you enjoy.

This chapter is another present to you all, with the hopes you enjoy it.

I promise to deal with Rachel as soon as the story lets me, which may be next chapter, somewhere in there. *Hugs* to all!

CBS owns Hawaii Five-0, and has an interesting Danny-centric episode coming up, which I just read a little blurb about. No more spoilers other than that, but I am looking forward to it!

I put Danny's thoughts in italics.

Chapter 51 "Doing Better"

(Tuesday, 27 December 2016, 3 p.m.)

It had already been quite an interesting day, in strange and wonderful ways, plus some things Danny knew he would have to work through slowly, emotionally. He was being quiet, while Steve and (of all people) Lou Grover kept him company, back in his room. They were talking quietly near the door, because Danny had his eyes closed, and was very relaxed, not even trying to overhear what they were saying because he had so much to think about. And some of it involved Lou.

Danny had been sprung from ICU around noon. Kono, Chin and Abby had all been in to see him, with Hannah at Steve's side as long as she could be, and Becca at Danny's side as long as she could be, because she had to work today. Every chance she got, she popped in to see him, and of course so did his doc, the man who had no-other-way-to-put-it saved his life. Again. Possibly again squared, since Danny hadn't forgotten his gratitude when, a bit over a year ago, his girlfriend Melissa (then called Amber) had rushed him in to Tripler's ER, bleeding and barely conscious from taking a butcher knife to the gut, courtesy of Amber's crazy ex-husband. Who Danny didn't even know about then. Who had patched him up? This doctor, taller than Steve, kinder than a prayer, and unforgettable.

But Danny had forgotten more or less about him after a year of visiting other ERs as a patient or visitor, until the plane disaster, with Steve shot up while piloting a plane in an undercover drug sting gone totally south. Rushed to Tripler after Danny of the zero piloting skills had been talked through not crashing the crippled Cesna on Waikiki beach, with the CLEAR THE BEACH sirens still blaring, Steve had gotten very lucky with the attending physician assigned his case, who Danny remembered well when he saw him again, and who he trusted to get Steve –and himself—through Danny donating half his liver to the otherwise-not-going-to-make-it Steve.

It was amazing, the unexpected things that happened in hospitals.

Dr. Isaac Cornett was now an important figure in both their lives, and in a stranger than fiction twist he was going to be their father-in-law, because he was Becca and Hannah's father. At least Danny had also met his future wife in this hospital. Steve had met Hannah at the Cornett's home. He reminded himself to take Chin up on that offer to play the recording Pua Kai had made of that meeting. He wasn't sure how Pua fit into that scenario, but soon enough he would know. Pua had also been by briefly to see him.

Life is so strange, and so unpredictable, and so beautiful just when you think it is so bad, you don't know how you will get through. But Danny knew that people got him through. People who meant a lot to him, strangers praying for him, nurses and doctors and friends of friends' friends. The kindness of strangers. He didn't open his eyes to look again at the stacks of as-yet-unopened cards on the bedside cart. They had been waiting for him when he was returned to his room. He still couldn't get his head and heart around the kindness people were showing him, a stranger but for one little news story that had run a few hours after he was still unconscious, having had to fight for his life with the help of a truly kind, compassionate, and skilled and stubborn doctor who was not about to give up on one of his soon-to-be sons-in-law. How did I get so lucky? …How did I get so lucky?

Yesterday, Danny had been in the strong grip of PTSD, depressed, silent beyond what was a very bad sign in him at any time. And then a bizarre accident had happened, and he had almost died. Danny Williams knew what had happened to him the day before. He knew about the medication mix-up, and the near disaster that had followed it. He had spent hours thinking about it after sharing chicken soup with Steve in the pre-dawn hours down in ICU. He had thought about a lot of things while Steve finally slept in the plastic chair, and Becca kept him company, taking charge of Angel, who had to avoid sleeping on him because of the wires monitoring every organ, brainwave, heartbeat and rhythm, breath, the oxygen saturation of his blood from that breath, and a few things he felt were way too personal, but were thankfully gone now. Angel was playing with ribbons on the bright mylar balloons tied to the chair next to the bed, the one Steve would take back when he finished talking with Lou. Angel was acting like a kitten, instead of the now official Therapy Animal she had papers to prove, and the little ID badge she wore on her collar.

What a day it had been. Danny felt content, listening without listening to Steve and Lou talk and his kitten playing with balloon ribbons.

Normally, knowing he had been intubated and had to have help to breathe, had had his heart shocked back into beating more times than he felt even Dr. Cornett was telling him, would have upset him greatly, to put it mildly. Today, he didn't really mind. He was alive, when he could easily have succumbed. His doctor had refused to give up on him, when the assisting physician had twice opined out loud that it was a lost cause. But Dr. Cornett had kept trying until the medication he was reacting to was known, and the antidote administered. After that, his improvement had been rapid.

He was very tired. And he ached all over, in a way that told him they were being very careful about his medications. He was not on 'the good stuff'. Whatever he was on was keeping the pain manageable, but he was not able to sleep with the level of discomfort he was feeling. Had he really wanted to, he could have called the nurse and probably gotten a topper to whatever he was being given, just enough to dull the aches enough that he could sleep.

But he wanted to think, and this was a good time for that. He hadn't been left alone since … the box. Funny, I wasn't even alone then, because I had Angel. But since being rescued, he had literally not been alone one moment, so if he needed to think, he closed his eyes and took whatever occasion afforded itself. He wasn't about to tell his friends to scram. They needed to be with him, and he needed to have them at his side.

The worst thing was his sore throat. It had been bruised by the tube that allowed him to be hooked to the breathing machine. The shocks to his heart had required all medical personnel to stand back, so the arching of his body had caused his throat to press on the tube. It was scraped and raw, and bruised. His voice sounded like his vocal chords were made of rusty wires full of sand. Which was a strange image, unsettling, so Danny let it vanish like vapor into a blue sky.

But Danny would accept a sore throat over a coffin any day. He was glad to be alive. He was very grateful to his doctor for not giving up on him, and for the prayers and hopes from his friends for his recovery, and all the people he didn't even know who had been praying for him, were still praying for him.

Their prayers and hopes had been answered. He had survived, and would recover fully. Grace and Charlie still had their father, and his friends and family did not have to figure out how to cope with attending his funeral. No one had to grieve for him. Not today. Not today. I am so blessed.

Technically, Danny knew he had grounds to sue the socks off Tripler, except he really didn't want to. It was a mistake, and he had used his scratchy voice to ask Dr. Cornett to make sure the nurse and pharmacist got into no trouble. His doc had come through for him again, and had also informed him that policy was now that med orders had to either be faxed down to the pharmacy, or entered into the computer, and double-checked. No more meds ending in -ilol being mistaken for something ending in -olol.

Danny had never felt anger at the nurse who had made the error. She was nice, but when her replacement had had to miss her shift to run her husband to the Queen's hospital ER, because he had tripped in the dark over their kid's Christmas train set and given himself a concussion landing on the locomotive, the smokestack (non-working) then punching a nasty hole in his forehead. So his nurse had to stay until they found someone to fill in –rules of the job- and she had put in so many hours, and been so tired that when she was allowed to go home, she had turned off her phone and crashed into bed.

When Becca fell asleep around 6 a.m., after Danny had kissed the hand entwined with his, then her soft lips, watching her try to get comfortable before drifting off, and Steve slept on, his face for once relaxed and very vulnerable, he had stayed awake, in thought, and Angel had snuck over to the one place on the bed –between his arm and his body – where there wasn't a wire or something she had to avoid, and had settled down to rest, slit-eyed in happiness, until she too fell asleep.

The worst thing that had happened to him in the last eight days had been because of simple human error. No one had tried to kill him, or isolate him, molest or emotionally blackmail him into anything. And yet he knew how close he had come to having his ticket punched that one last time.

It hadn't been his job trying to kill him, or Steve's driving (which technically was part of his job), or a murder attempt. It had been human error.

Human error could happen any time of any day. For some reason, it made Danny come to grips fast with his situation. Instead of worsening his PTSD, it had eased it greatly. All the things Stan and Rachel had done almost seemed small to him. They weren't, but emotionally he reacted differently now. The thing that had saved him was having his friends nearby, reacting to their gut feeling that something was wrong, calling in the nurse so she could be there when he started to crash.

Angel peeked her blue eyes open and gave him a chiding, squeaky half-meow, and stretched before flopping back down to rest. Danny had to smile. His own voice was still very scratchy, but he thanked Angel again for having the special senses she did which had alerted Kono to alert the nurse. Angel purred until she fell asleep again.

Before he had been fully released from the ICU, Lou had stopped by, shyly, carrying a card and yellow pineapple mylar balloon and little insulated bowl of, of all things, homemade chicken soup. Lou's wife, Renee, had sent him over with it. Danny had grinned, and that reaction had stilled Steve's step forward, because Lou and Danny were definitely going through a rough patch, were not even friends anymore. For a while, Five-0 had even wondered if Lou had torched Danny's house, and possibly more than that.

Danny had stuck out his left hand to Lou, who had looked at it and switched everything to his right hand so he could shake it. "Hi! Voice. Wonky," Danny had explained, while Steve filled Lou in on the barest essentials of what was pertinent to know. Steve had shaken Lou's hand too, and introduced Angel, who was showing no anxiety at the big man's presence.

"It's good to see you both," said the unusually hesitant former colleague and friend. "Uh, if you hate the balloon, I can ditch it, but I had a funny feeling when I saw it and all the others were reindeer or either too mushy or too bland. This one kinda had your name on it. If you like it, that is."

Danny did. "I do! Thanks!" The ribbon string was bright red, and Angel was showing intense interest in it. "Meet my cat, Angel. She wants that ribbon so bad." Danny's voice did a falsetto squeak and crack, and he fumbled for his cup of water, which Steve instantly put before him, and held the straw so Danny could drink. Danny said thanks to Steve with his eyes.

Steve took over the conversation, inviting Lou to let Angel play with the ribbon.

"Her thingy, uh, halter?, says she's a therapy animal for Danny? It's none of my business, I don't mean to butt in …."

"It's okay," said Danny, and the end of the word shot up into the range that would make dogs bark, provided they were within the very small range necessary to hear it. Steve took over again, and Lou put the soup down on the tray that had the water on it too. Danny looked at it, already enjoying the aroma wafting from it, and had rubbed his wedding ring finger then pointed to Lou.

"Oh! Yeah. Renee sent that over with her lo … uh, best thoughts and prayers. You know. It's good! If you aren't hungry, uh, you know you don't have to eat it."

Danny gave Lou one of those 'are you kidding me' looks, and dove into the soup, made blissful noises that didn't somehow require his vocal chords, or maybe they only reacted to things that were spelled. It didn't matter, Danny enjoyed the soup, and listening to Steve and Lou entertain Angel.

It was Steve who decided to pin Lou's visit down to a reason. "What brings you by?"

Lou bit his lower lip, and asked if he could sit down in the other chair, by Steve, and Danny nodded.

That was how they found out about the news broadcast, featuring a Five-0 police detective having a string of crises. "It was well done, and talked about you and the plane and the liver donation, being kidnapped and the attempted murder, the starvation, the whole house thing, and that you needed some Aloha in your life. It suggested people thank you for helping the people of Hawaii by helping you get back on your feet and know your service to us isn't unnoticed. And, well, Renee made you soup, which meant she wanted me to get my sorry ass over here to see how you were doing, so I went balloon shopping, and figured I could leave these with the nurses at the station since I didn't think you'd want to see me, but the, um, this … endowed … nurse said I should go right in, so, you know, I can leave if you want. I you know kinda wanted to apologize for the, that is, when I messed up so bad, and I'll tell Renee you liked the soup."

Danny entirely ignored that last part. "Oh, you met Wow!" Steve filled in that her name was Janice, and she was really quite nice!

Danny and Steve were apparently tag-teaming. "And I loved the soup, thank you and Renee. So how are you doing? Business picking up?"

They talked for a while, and Danny mentioned his engagement, while Angel was having a serious tug of war with the end of the red ribbon.

"You and Melissa?" asked Lou, watching Steve watch Danny with a look of surprise and he wasn't sure what on his face.

"No, Melissa left after the plane and liver thing, but I met this amazing nurse practitioner here, her name is Becca, and she's my doctor's daughter! One of two! She works here too, helped Grace when she hurt her arm, and while I was stuck in that box, I could not stop thinking of her." His voice was making all kinds of hash out of talking, but he was determined to say what he might not get another chance to say, and he had seen the surprised looks Steve was giving him. "You know, Lou, life is too short. Life is too short. Mistakes happen, bleep happens, and then an old friend stops by with a pineapple balloon and chicken soup, and I sure as heck hope you and Renee come to the wedding, no date set yet. Please come."

Lou was startled, and he looked down and a tear fell on his hands. "I didn't think you would ever call me friend again."

"Yesterday I almost died, so I get a fresh start. Grudges are over-rated. You made a mistake, have apologized, I've accepted it, and let's move back into what matters, and, Lou, the only thing that really matters is the good will we do, the love we show, and in my crazy book, possibly brought on by brain trauma or whatever, is that a pineapple balloon and amazing chicken soup are good will and love, and we can rebuild on that. Steve, my voice is about to go."

Steve held the straw again, while Danny drank and thought it was time to let the other two men work out their differences, here or wherever they chose.

Lou thanked him sincerely, nodded, and was deeply touched, humble. He promised again that he and Renee would come to the wedding. He turned to Steve. "If, um, if you would allow it, I'd like to apologize to Kono and Chin, and to you, but when it's a good time, I don't want to force it. I didn't expect … Danny to, you know. I know this will take time."

Steve finally fully smiled, which made the observing Danny very happy. "Lou, Danny clearly has brain damage, but the right kind. So the thing is, he's not the only one getting married!"

And the conversation was off and running. Lou was still there when Danny was released to return to his own room, so Lou helped with that, and Chin and Kono stopped in and it turned into a big reunion. There was hesitation, awkwardness, some odd pauses here and there, but it was the beginning of what Danny hoped would be a mending in the assorted relationships and friendships that made up the Five-0 task force individuals.

Dr. Cornett and Becca came by, so Lou got to meet Danny's fiancée and shook hands with his doctor, who could tell a corral's worth of fences had been mended in the few hours he had been checking on other patients. Lou was a charming and humble gentleman towards Becca, and she gave him a hug when he congratulated her on snagging one of the best single men on the island. Then, after a brief chat, he took Dr. Cornett aside and apologized to him, too, for all previous bad behavior. It ended with Dr. Cornett patting Lou on the back and shaking his hand again.

Lou was about to leave when he remembered something else to bring up to Danny. "Um. Well, I know your things got, you know, the fire destroyed stuff. See, Renee had an idea. She been bugging me for a year to make a new dining room set, since the one we have doesn't match the new paint job in the kitchen, so, the thing is, she wants you to have the old one? I mean, you one time said you really liked it, and it needs a loving home."

Danny was stunned, and his voice decided to play How Many Octaves Can We Visit as he answered the question that didn't have a question mark. "You want to give me your dining set? The nice one with the carving on the legs and chair backs, that you made?"

Lou shrugged shyly. "It needs a home, and you need a dining set."

"How much are you asking for it? It's worth a lot!"

Lou flinched and shook his head. "It's a gift. I know, I know we have had problems, but, see, it's not a bribe. That's what I mean to say. It's a gift. If you don't want it, it goes to St. Vincent de Paul. So, me and Renee want you to have it."

Danny took Becca's hand in his, and swallowed around the lump in his throat. "That's very kind of you, Lou, and Renee too. Um," he glanced up at Becca's gentle eyes and soft smile. "I don't have anywhere to put it yet, and Becca should see it, would that be okay? Because I don't even know if she already has one."

Lou smiled. "Sure, Danny. If Becca likes it, it's yours, and not your wedding gift, either. I gotta think of something for that."

"Thank you, Lou," said Becca. She accepted the piece of paper Lou scribbled his address and phone number on. Shortly after, he took his leave after saying sincere thank yous to all.

Steve rested his hand on Danny's shoulder. "Who are you, and what have you done with my curmudgeonly partner?" he asked, grinning.

Danny sheepishly grinned back, and whispered, in an attempt to stave off the unpredictable shifting octaves of his sore vocal chords. "I want to start fresh, Steve."

"Does this mean no more carguments and hissy fits?"

Danny harrumphed. "Oh hell no!"

Just then, a volunteer candy striper in her pink and white striped apron came up and knocked on the door jamb. She was carrying two large, heavy mailbags. "Um, Detective Danny Williams?"

"Yes?"

"The mailroom sent these cards and letters up, Where would you like me to leave them?"