The next week's updates were truly progress reports. Every day there was something new to report - no longer needing the walker and beginning to walk to therapies, improvements with handling small parts (the CT family was quite amused to find that Ryan's therapists had given him Star Wars LEGO toys to build as part of his therapy), less difficulty with memory and concentration. The day that both Ryan and his parents reported that he hadn't lost his temper in 3 days was cause for a huge celebration that left a lot of the CT family easily agitated themselves the next morning. Ryan was still having problems with confusion and withdrawal when he was overstressed, but the episodes were less frequent and shorter.

One evening when the boys talked to Ryan (they'd given up on passing the phone around and just put it on speaker, since several of them talking at once was no longer too much for Ryan to cope with, at least for short periods), he told them, "I almost blew my cover this morning!" They knew that he had chosen not to tell his fellow patients that he was a professional singer.

"What'd you do, Ry?" Keith said with a grin. "Hit some poor therapist with a blast of Dark Destroyer?"

Ryan laughed. "No," he said, "But I did forget myself and start singing while I was working on those LEGO sets. Didn't even realize I was doing it until the man working next to me told me I should sing out more and let everybody enjoy it."

"So did you?" Neil wanted to know.

"Yeah, after I cleared it with my therapist. It was fun, and everybody seemed to be enjoying it. Seemed to perk everybody up. A couple of people told me I should go professional when I was leaving for my next therapy."

"Nah, that'd never work. Who'd pay to listen to you?" George said, completely deadpan, which brought a burst of laughter from everyone.

"How'd you do with the breathing?" Emmet asked tentatively. He was almost afraid to bring the subject up since it had been such an issue earlier.

"A lot better," Ryan replied, bringing sighs of relief. "I can get through the lines now, at least, but I'm still out of breath at the end of a song. They've got me standing up while I'm working, and I'd have to sit down as soon as I finished. When I was just singing to myself I could stay up a lot longer, but trying to project it was tough."

"Well, you're getting there, then, brother. We'll have you back soon at this rate." George said.

"God, I hope so," said Ryan. "I'm sick of the hospital, I'm actually starting to get bored at times. I wish they'd give me my phone and my laptop back."

"So do we, then we could be in touch more often, and we could actually see your ugly mug over Skype," Neil teased.

"My rotten haircut, you mean," Ryan said. "I don't know why they had to shave only half my head, it would look a lot better if they'd just shaved the whole thing. I look lopsided." This brought a number of retorts about how he always did look lopsided with that smirk of his anyway, so what was he complaining about?

A few days after that, Sharon got a request for a conference call with Shivaun and the Kellys. She knew things had been going well, so she hoped it was just a formal update. Closing herself into her room with the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, she waited for the call. After the greetings, Mr. Kelly said, "We need some ideas here. Ryan is convinced that since he's handling things well here in the hospital, he's ready to go home. It's true he's made incredible progress, but there are still a lot of issues that he isn't seeing."

"How long do you think he still needs to be there?" Sharon asked.

Shivaun answered. "Well, with anyone else we'd probably say another month, but Ryan is so far ahead of normal timelines that I think two weeks would be sufficient - if we can keep him motivated and enthusiastic."

"Why do you think he's not ready to go home yet?" Sharon asked. "I'm not second-guessing you, just trying to understand."

"Ryan's handling things well in the hospital - a small, enclosed environment that has a steady schedule and routine. He hasn't been out of the hospital at all yet, and he's still not ready to cope with the level of distractions and the lack of routine outside yet," Shivaun explained.

Sharon thought for a moment. "That makes quite a lot of sense," she said. "I seem to remember you saying that there were ways he could get out of the hospital for a day, or out to a movie or something, is that right?"

"Yes, and that's an option we had considered, but we wanted to get your opinion," Mr. Kelly said.

"Well, my thought is that you should let him have a day at home, and don't try to make things easy for him. Treat it as an ordinary day - talk to him, have a few friends over to see him but don't tell him when they're coming. If he can manage it, then he was right; if he can't then you'll have ammunition to back yourselves up."

"That's a brilliant idea," said Shivaun. "We can easily let him have a day at home this weekend."

"The other boys told me that Ryan said he's getting bored at times - has he mentioned that to you at all?" Sharon wanted to know.

"No, he hasn't, not in so many words. He has been pestering us to bring his guitar for him, though. If he's bored, it would help explain why he thinks he's ready to leave," Mrs. Kelly said.

"Let him have his guitar, and I can even have David send one or two of his solo pieces for him to start working on," Sharon said. "There is one we're hoping he'll be able to play guitar for, and giving him additional time to work on it and get his hands back in practice won't hurt. Shivaun, would he be allowed to have his phone or his laptop there?"

"Yes, we can arrange for that," Shivaun said. "What are you thinking of?"

"Well, for one thing, we could send him sound files of the music for his songs so he has something to sing along with," Sharon replied. "And it will give him a chance to get back out onto social media and see the tremendous support his fans are sending, which will keep him motivated to get done and get back to us. Not to mention him being able to get back in contact with them - it's something he values very highly and I'm sure he's missing it. I know the fans are; no matter how often I send out information, I'm getting hundreds of requests for updates on how he's doing every day."

"Really?" Shivaun said, intrigued. "That seems unusual to me, is it common in the entertainment world?"

"Not really, not the way we do it," Sharon laughed. "By their own choice, the boys are in frequent contact with their fans through Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram - in Ryan's case, it's been daily or even multiple times per day up until this injury. The fans worry about the boys when they don't hear from them; in fact I'd been getting nearly as many questions about Neil as I had about Ryan until recently. Neil wasn't posting anything because he couldn't think about anything but Ryan and he wasn't allowed to say anything about him, so he just didn't post. The other boys started including Neil in some of their pictures and such just to let the fans know he was OK."

"How incredible," Shivaun said, quite stunned.

"That's why we say we have the best fans in the world," Sharon said. "They're almost part of the family at this point."

Mrs. Kelly laughed. "Yes, they've been amazing," she said. "Not only have they been sending get well cards for Ryan, they've been sending notes to us in them as well, letting us know they are thinking of us and praying for us. Shivaun, if you haven't been to Ryan's room lately, you need to go look; he's got one whole wall almost completely covered with cards and pictures from fans."

"I'll do that," Shivaun said. "One thing I don't need to worry about with this patient is adequate support systems, I see!"