Making it was only the very first small step on a long road to recovery, which Rhodey knew all too well. Tony likely also recognized that-or he would, when he was awake enough-but admitting it wasn't his style.
Even without the sedative, Tony spent more time asleep than awake for the first several days, and when he was awake, he didn't often try to communicate beyond answering yes or no questions.
As his wakefulness increased, so did his expressiveness. It got so they could tell how he was feeling by how much he was gesturing. Clint was regularly impressed at how much Tony managed to convey with only the upper half of his face, his spelling, and the few rudimentary signs at his disposal. He offered to teach Tony more of the signs that might be useful to him, but Tony declined. Too much work.
Finally, a week and a half after Tony first arrived at the hospital, the not-Bruce doctor told them Tony could have more visitors. Tony vehemently signaled his disapproval.
"But the team wants to see you," Steve objected.
Tony tapped the breathing tube.
"You want to wait until the tube is gone," Rhodey interpreted.
Tony gave a thumbs-up.
"We have already been reducing the amount of help the ventilator provides," the doctor said. "We're not quite to the point of letting him try to breathe without it."
After the doctor left, Tony tapped on Rhodey's hand and spelled Rachel.
Rhodey frowned. "I thought you didn't like her."
No.
"You sure? I'm sure they have someone here already."
R-a-c-
"All right, fine, we'll contact her. No guarantees."
Tony rolled his eyes.
"Rachel is the respiratory therapist he had at Columbia," Rhodey said before either Steve or Clint could speak. "He complained about her endlessly."
"But if she knows what she's doing . . ." Clint said.
"She kept him in line, and that's no mean feat."
Tony's eyebrows scowled. They pretended not to notice.
.
Late the next afternoon, their game of cards came to a halt when they heard a commotion at the nurses' station a short distance down the hallway. Even Tony, who had been dozing, listened as a woman's voice rose until it was audible above the noise of the machines. "I've showed you my ID, my credentials, and the request for my services. Now tell me where my patient is or I'm going to start raising hell."
Tony tapped the bed's railing to get their attention, but before he could start spelling, Rhodey said, "I know. I'll go handle it."
"Rachel?" Clint guessed as Rhodey left the room.
Yes.
When Rhodey returned, he was holding Rachel's bag while she pushed his wheelchair to the bedside. She crossed her arms and regarded Tony, ignoring the rest of the room for the moment. "So we meet again," she said at last.
Tony waved a little.
"You'd better make this worth my while, if I'm going to have to deal with nurses like that the entire time."
He shrugged, then rubbed his fingers together.
Her stern expression melted as she laughed. "Yes, I'm aware that you're wealthy. Let's get down to business." She took her bag from Rhodey and pulled out a stethoscope. She listened to Tony's breathing from the front, then helped him shift forward so she could do the same on the back. Then she told him to inhale as if he was breathing without any assistance while she had a hand on his chest and the stethoscope against his back.
She made sure Tony was settled comfortably again before she hooked her stethoscope around her neck, absentmindedly swinging her long red-blonde braid out of the way, and crossed her arms again. "Have they tried taking you off the vent yet?"
No.
She frowned. "I need to see your chart. Do I have to prepare for a pitched battle to get it?"
"I can go with you to ask," Steve offered. "The nurses seem to like us."
She looked him up and down. "Of course they do, honey," she said, then added, "I'm sorry, I never introduced myself: Rachel O'Leary, respiratory therapist. What shall I call you?"
"I'm Steve, and that's Clint," Steve answered.
Clint saluted. "I can't quite place your accent. From the last name, I'm guessing Irish?"
"Not quite. No offense, but I'm not here to chat about my background. I'm here to get this one"-she gestured with a thumb at Tony, who looked ready to fall asleep-"back on his feet. Again."
Steve went with her to the nurses' station and they returned very shortly thereafter accompanied by Nikki, who was apologizing profusely for the earlier misunderstanding. "I knew you might be coming but I hadn't been able to notify the next shift yet, so of course I was away from the desk when you arrived," she said ruefully.
"No harm done," Rachel replied absently, her attention absorbed by the information on the tablet she held. "Why the hell haven't they done a wean screen on him yet? He's not been on the sedative for five days, it's well past time to get him off the vent."
"They wanted to wait until at least tomorrow, to be on the safe side. The doctors have been concerned about how the preexisting damage to his lungs will affect his recovery."
Rachel went to the ventilator and examined the settings, then consulted the tablet again. "They're underestimating him," she said shortly. "The only real concern at this point is whether he can cough properly after having a machine breathe for him so long."
Clint watched their interaction with fascination. He had only the vaguest idea what Rachel was talking about, but her obvious irritation with the way Tony had been handled definitely put Nikki on the defensive. He felt bad for her; she was only following what she'd been told. At the same time, Rachel struck him as ruthlessly competent, so if she thought Tony could do something, it seemed likely that she was right.
Rachel pressed a few buttons on the ventilator, then handed the tablet back to Nikki. "You can enter that I started a spontaneous breathing trial at, what time is it? Fifteen thirty-four."
"Is there anything you would like us to prepare for you?" Nikki asked as she made the entry. Her voice did not betray her thoughts on the matter.
"If he tolerates this, we'll maintain these settings overnight and evaluate for extubation in the morning."
Nikki nodded and left without another word.
"What does that mean?" Steve asked.
"We're letting Tony try breathing for himself for a while," Rachel answered. "The ventilator still provides oxygen, but he has to inhale it. If that works well, the tube could be removed as early as tomorrow."
Rachel's confidence in Tony proved correct, for he managed the change in ventilator settings without complaint or problem. Knowing that Tony was breathing more or less for himself made Clint a little paranoid that something would happen overnight while Rachel wasn't there to intervene, but the night passed uneventfully.
Tony appeared more tired that morning than had become normal, though the machine readouts hadn't changed. Breathing is hard, he joked as he fell back asleep after only a few minutes awake.
Rhodey didn't seem surprised, Steve looked worried, and Clint studied Rachel's reactions in an attempt to figure out if they should be concerned. "He's doing just fine," she reassured them.
Tony slept almost all morning. When he woke up again, he was more alert and picked a fight with Rhodey over Rhodey not budging from his bedside in days. Again. Clint just watched in amusement, but Steve intervened to break it up, worried that Tony would exhaust himself. With Steve's encouragement (if you could call it that when he was threatening to sideline Rhodey for not taking sufficient care of himself), Rhodey agreed to accompany him back to the compound for the afternoon under the pretense of retrieving some personal items for Tony.
Rachel returned as Steve and Rhodey were leaving. When she opened her mouth to speak, Tony motioned urgently for her to remain silent until Rhodey was out of earshot. Clint monitored their progress from the door and gave a thumbs up when they had turned the corner.
"I'm not even going to ask," Rachel said, shaking her head. "I came to check you over to see if we can get this tube out today."
Tony indicated his assent and she went through a procedure similar to what she'd done the previous day, listening to his lungs while he breathed and coughed.
After a while, she nodded. "We can do this," she said confidently. "I'll need to pull some things together, but you'll be able to talk again by dinnertime."
Before Rhodey gets back, Tony suggested.
"We can manage that," she said agreeably.
Within the hour she and Nikki had a whole tray of equipment standing by, along with a different machine and a variety of tubes. Rachel explained to Tony what she was going to do; he understood much more quickly than Clint, probably because he'd done it before, so Clint wasn't sure exactly what was happening even as it began to happen.
There was talk of oxygen and breathing deeply and then Rachel was swiftly sliding the tube out and Tony was coughing even as she strapped a mask onto his face. "Good job, Tony, you're doing a fantastic job," Rachel murmured absently as she listened to his breathing and watched the monitor. "Breathe a little deeper now . . . yes, there, like that."
Clint watched, fascinated, from the opposite side of the bed. Tony eventually noticed and gave him a weary thumbs up, not trying to talk around the mask.
After maybe a half hour with the mask, it was traded for a tube that hooked up to Tony's nose. Rachel took a deep breath once that was connected and operating the way she wanted, then sighed and turned to Nikki. "A cup of ice water for him, please?"
"So what just happened?" Clint asked. He wanted the details to report to Rhodey upon his return, since he was unlikely to be pleased he'd missed it.
"We removed the tube, then administered some medication via nebulizer to help ease the swelling in his throat that the tube can cause. He's getting supplemental oxygen through this high flow nasal cannula for now; I'll move him down to a standard cannula as soon as he's breathing well enough," Rachel explained patiently. "He can now talk and eat and drink, though his throat will be sore for a few days."
Tony was touching his face and frowning as he scratched at his cheeks. Shave?
"If one of your friends will do it for you," Rachel said.
Tony sighed and sagged against the pillows.
Nikki returned with a styrofoam cup complete with lid and straw and handed it to Rachel. Rachel set it down for Tony, who took it carefully and sipped it slowly. "Ow," he whispered.
"Sore throat lozenges or sprays might help," Rachel said helpfully. "The pain will last longer this time than it did before because you had the tube in a lot longer."
Tony nodded. Clint texted Steve to request one or both of those things "for when the tube comes out." It wasn't a lie, not exactly.
Rhodey didn't seem as upset to have missed the whole process as Clint expected, but he didn't get a chance to ask about that until Tony woke up coughing in the wee hours of the next morning.
He nearly passed out watching last time, Tony signed between sips of water from his cup. He'd tried talking a little when Steve and Rhodey had returned, but his throat was raw and painful so his voice was rough and weak. Wants to be here, can't stand to watch everything.
Having now seen and heard things he'd never forget, Clint could understand. Hospitals truly weren't for the faint of heart.
.
God, he hated hospitals. The worst part was knowing he still needed to be there. He was slowly clawing his way back to something like health, sure. But he could feel exhaustion tugging at his limbs no matter how much he slept, his chest ached and burned, and now his throat was raw agony when he swallowed no matter how many sprays or lozenges he tried. Having that infernal tube out was worth it, but ow.
Rachel was a cruel vixen who forced breathing treatments on him twice a day that made him cough up and choke on the gunk clogging his lungs, which was painful and unpleasant and left him more weary than he'd thought was possible. And then she had a physical therapist start coming in, too, and that was just too much even though the guy was nice and didn't work him nearly as hard as she did.
Through it all the same three people were there, and he had a question about that he could only voice to Rhodey but he could never seem to manage to be awake when just Rhodey was there.
Then, finally, he was awake when the other two left to get food (they kept offering him food as well, but he wasn't interested in angering his throat further). As soon as they were gone, he croaked, "Why are they here?"
"What?"
You heard me.
"Why wouldn't they be here? Everyone is concerned about you, and they're the ones that stepped up and volunteered to spend endless hours watching you sleep. You got a problem with that?"
Other side.
"The lines have shifted, Tony. There shouldn't be sides anymore. Or have you forgotten we're supposed to be a team?"
Tony raised an eyebrow and fixed him with a skeptical look.
"Are you really going to be like that? No, never mind, I shouldn't be surprised. Okay, look: I'm here for you. You know that. They're here for you, too, but they're also here because I can't do this on my own." He gestured toward the array of medical equipment. "You've been here two weeks already and I'm guessing you won't be allowed to leave for a while yet. I physically can't be the only one sitting with you all the time, so unless you want to be alone sometimes, you're going to have to deal with them being here."
Under normal circumstances, alone would be highly preferable to dealing with Rogers. Or Barton. But stuck in the hospital, chained to machines, still reeling from how close he had come to not waking up again and anxious about how long it would take to recover . . .
Rhodey took his proffered hand and Tony gripped it firmly. "I'll behave," he promised.