I just wanted to say, you're all being troopers here! I know I am not making it easy, this is no soft stuff: but you are sticking with it and, most importantly, appreciating even if it's hard.

So give yourself a pat on the back: the worst part is over!

Edit: I will be unable to post tomorrow, so new chapter on Thursday.

Son of a…

Gillian thought it, keeping the cussing inside her head; Zoe mumbled it behind closed teeth while shaking her head; Emily, the voice of innocence, was the one who said it out loud causing Dr Schultz's eyes to nearly pop out of their sockets.

And Cal to grumble in outrageous approval.

Because even he, after all, could see the dark irony in the fact that less than 24 hours after they had started the countdown on unplugging him from the machines he had decided to throw the best of curve balls and wake up.

Emily had been the one in the room when it happened. Well, sort of. She was there in the morning, keeping vigil as usual while her mother had gone looking for a quiet room where to have an important call. Emily had left her father's side for a few minutes, not going very far but just using the ensuite bathroom of his hospital room, when her phone had gone off. It had gone on ringing for a couple of minutes - someone must have wanted to speak with her really badly - and when she had finally come out she had found Cal rolling his eyes at the obnoxious never ending sound as if that was the worst thing that could have happened to him.

Emily had scrambled furiously once her brain had confirmed that yes, her father was indeed awake and, by the look of it, eager to get that breathing tube out of his throat. And after having rang all the alarms, called nurses and doctors and fumbling with her phone to call her mother and Gillian that was exactly what was happening.

Dr Schultz was taking his time with it, not for the sake of putting up a show but because understandably he was positively surprised by the sudden turn of events. He was well aware of the four sets of eyes on him, studying his every move. The three women behind him, peeking from over his shoulders, he had become used to after a week of seeing them constantly around the patient; but the eyes of the man lying in bed, staring up at him with wild impatience, those were a very different thing to deal with.

His left pupil was reactive, overactive even, struggling to keep track of the light he was shoving right at it because he'd rather try to catch a glimpse of his family behind the physician. The right eye was still covered by the bandage to control the swelling, something that was on his immediate list of things to check, but before getting to that Schultz glanced at the monitors, assessing what the numbers said and coming to the conclusion that it was worth trying to extubate.

But he had to check on something else first.

"Dr Lightman, do you know who I am? You can nod yes, don't worry about the tube."

Cal took a second, looking more like he wasn't sure he could trust the doctor, then nodded slowly. The three ladies behind Schultz all sighed in unison with visible and audible relief, and Cal's eye immediately travelled in that direction, widening as it landed on the objective. Dr Schultz followed the one-eyed sign then turned back to Cal and stepped into his line of sight, pointing at the trio behind him.

"Do you know who they are?"

They couldn' really call it a smile, how could he smile with a tube coming out of his throat and tape all over his face? Still, one way or the other they all knew what that little crinkle at the corner of his eye meant even before he nodded yes again, with all the enthusiasm he was capable of.

"Ok." The doctor huffed. "Your oxygen level looks good, should we try to get that tube out?"

It was a useless question, and rather than nodding Cal rolled his eyes and made a guttural croak that would have sounded ridiculous at any other moment, but that after days of silence felt like a heavenly chorus. Dr Schultz nodded back and slowly started to remove the lines of tape from Cal's face, then carefully held the tube and instructed him to cough until it was all out. It looked like a very uncomfortable manoeuvre, especially when followed by Cal's raucous coughing, but it didn't really matter to Emily, Gillian and Zoe.

Once the cough was gone and the doctor had allowed him a quick sip of water, Cal swallowed slowly and looked at his women with a smirk.

"I'm in trouble, aren't I?"

They hated themselves for laughing at the crass opening, they knew they shouldn't have let him off the hook…but not long ago they had thought they would never see that cheeky grin again and they welcomed it with open arms. Literally, at least for Emily, who after a quick look to Dr Schultz to check it was ok to do so nearly launched herself towards Cal for a long overdue hug.

"Easy there love," Cal moaned softly, returning the hug the best he could and smiling at her when she pulled back.

"Sorry, I- Well no Dad, I'm not sorry!" She changed her register rather abruptly, fighting the urge to slap him. "How could you do this? How could you keep this from us?!"

"I didn't want you to worry Em."

It was a ridiculous explanation considering how things had worked out, and in general it was somewhat insulting. And yet, it was so on brand for him and really, seeing him awake, moving and talking made it easier to forgive him.

Easier, not easy.

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Dad, it was a brain tumour! How could you-"

"Was?" Cal couldn't help it, cutting off his daughter and looking for Dr Schultz. "Doc?"

"Yes Dr Lightman, we got it all with clean margins."

Cal smirked, satisfied, but then looked over at the female audience and found them arms-folded staring down at him with annoyed looks. The smirk quickly faded, even with one operating eye he could tell it was probably too soon to push his luck, then Cal looked back at the doctor.

"So, what went wrong?"

He was a lot more serious when he asked, easily picking up on the vibe in the room and deciding it was best to go with it. After all, in his mind he had been put down for the surgery and woken up on schedule, although the visibly upset trio at his bedside, the tube in his throat and the patch on his right eye clearly hinted that things had not gone as planned. He found out just how bad it had been soon enough, as Dr Schultz summed up for him the complications during and after the surgery, mentioning his coma but at least graciously sparing details on how close he had gone to end it all. Cal listened to him but watched the women, Emily more than anything, easily reading the rollercoaster of emotions she had been through even with just one eye. When the physician was done with his recap, Cal slowly lifted a hand that suddenly felt very heavy and reached out to Emily who was sitting close to him on the edge of the bed. Towards the end of Schultz's summary she had looked away and was staring at the floor, probably trying to hide tears from him, but when Cal touched her shoulder she sniffed and took a deep breath before turning around. Seeing her father's apologetic expression the girl melted away, laying down on him and gently resting her head on his chest as he brushed her hair with one hand.

"I'm sorry Em," he whispered. "But I'm gonna be ok now, yeah?"

Emily grumbled something and squeezed him gently, clearly intending not to go anywhere for the time being and paying little to no attention to the other people in the room. Then she looked up at the doctor, looking a lot younger than her nearly 18 years of age with those begging eyes.

"Is he?" She asked Schultz. "Will he be ok?"

"Emily, he just woke up. Perhaps we should just take it easy?"

"But-"

"Your mother is right, we should." Schultz explained, urging to follow up with the positive part. "The fact that he's awake and, should I say, rather energetic is a really good sign. But he needs to rest now, because we are going to have to probe him and poke him extensively to make sure he's gonna stay ok."

Cal grumbled in protest, but found no support in the people around him.

"Alright then, can we start with this?" He asked, pointing at the patch on his right eye. "I mean, I get that you poked at my brain through it and it all got messed up but if I'm awake now-"

"Cal," Gillian softly voiced her admonishment, equally scared and impressed by how quickly and easily he had fallen back into the familiar, frustrating, pattern of dismissing people trying to take care of him.

"What?" Cal quipped with a weak shrug. "It's not like I have somewhere else to be."

"Actually Dr Lightman, I want to get you into an MRI machine as soon as possible. The first thing we need to do is to check the swelling on your brain, then we'll get to the rest."

"Help me out here Foster," Cal mumbled, keeping his good eye on the doctor. "I only have one good eye right now but he looks like he's threatening him."

"Well, you kind of deserve it," Gillian mumbled back, causing Emily and Zoe to chuckle.

Cal wisely refrained from answering in any way and instead looked at the doctor, releasing a theatrical resigned sigh before speaking.

"Shall we, then?"

Dr Schultz was more than happy to comply, thinking everybody was getting something out of it. He could put his mind at rest and run every possible test he could think of to make sure Dr Lightman was indeed going to be ok; his patient clearly needed the same kind of reassurance and some rest; and after days of pretty much camping non-stop in the hospital room, the three women needed to be able to go home without carrying the painful burden of uncertainty.

Not to mention he was starting to feel a very weird energy filling the room now that Lightman was awake, and after experimenting first hand the patient's interaction with his family the doctor felt that was something he didn't want to be a part of. So after another quick awkward hug to his daughter and a couple of warning looks from the older women, Schultz called in a nurse and together they wheeled Cal out of the room and off to the first stop of his post-come check-up tour.

Gillian stood close to the door, watching from the back row.

She had been doing the same pretty much since Cal had been brought back to his room, which in the meantime had been transformed by a rather exuberant Emily who could barely contain herself. After days of fear and dark thoughts, days spent preparing for the worst case scenario, her young and still mostly innocent mind seemed to be refusing the idea that there might still be something wrong with her father, and while they waited for Cal to return she had launched into a cleaning spree of sorts. She had examined all the flowers still in the room, throwing out the dead ones and rearranging what was left in improvised compositions, then she had gone through all the cards and get-well messages and gifts deciding what to keep and what not, seeing the most negative ones as monikers of a worst possible outcome that, at least for her, was no longer viable.

Zoe had tried, timidly, to thame her optimism, more out of maternal instinct than anything else. She too thought that Cal was out of the woods, and why wouldn't she? He had woken up and even though he looked understandably tired he seemed as sharp as ever. But as the mother she felt it was her duty to keep her feet on ground and be ready, just in case Cal and the doctor came back with a not so pleasant surprise.

Gillian didn't quite know where she stood, literally and figuratively. To see Cal awake, talking, daring to joke and dismiss his deception just a few hours away from the deadly deadline was certainly something to relish, but like Zoe she'd rather hold her enthusiasm. Not to mention her internal confusion; after days of the bleak work-hospital routine her own mind was struggling to adjust to a new pattern, one that included an awake Cal, able, and eager, to talk back. It had been shocking enough in its own right to call Anna and share the update, hearing her shriek of surprise and happiness as she couldn't help but yelling and relaying the information out loud, followed by a spontaneous and loud cheer from those who happened to be around her at that moment. In less than a day she had gone from preparing to say goodbye to having to revise plans she had come to think she would never have to share.

She was still mulling that over in silence when Dr Schultz had come back into the room, pushing Cal's bed back in its spot with the man himself propped up in a seated position. They had all immediately noticed the biggest change, that the white patch on the right eye had been replaced by a dark one on the left eye. Cal had acknowledged the change and the confusion it created as they settled him down again, warning he was the only one allowed to make pirate jokes, then he had let the doctor give the necessary explanation.

Everything was good, that was how he had opened. The MRI was clear, no more sign of the mass in his brain and no more swelling. EKG was good, which meant Cal's heart had no problem, he was breathing normally and aside from a predictable weakness in his muscles he presented no issues.

Apart from the blurry vision in his right eye.

The doctor had addressed it with Cal already but had to go again for them, explaining how that was likely a side effect of the manoeuvre they have had to do in order to release the pressure while he was unconscious, and that they hadn't noticed before because he wasn't awake to tell them there was a problem. The doctor had stressed that it was likely a temporary thing that was going to resolve itself as Cal got better, and that by putting the patch on the good eye they were going to force the weak one to get back into shape faster.

Gillian hadn't been entirely surprised when neither Emily or Zoe had panicked at the news: whether they had shown it or not they had been ready for worse news, perhaps to find out that there was still some brain damage, that the tumour was still there or even that something might have happened while they checked him out. With that in mind, the fact that one eye had gone lazy on him was a minor thing. What truly shocked Foster was the fact that Cal himself seemed to be relatively calm about it. Of course, it didn't take long for her to realise that he was just keeping up appearances, probably due to a combination of personal relief for being still alive and kicking and mindfulness that Zoe and Emily - Emily above all - had to keep focusing on the bright side.

That was why she stood back, recognising the family moment and that she wasn't part of it, not that time, waiting.

She waited through Cal's over-dramatised report of his medical expedition, through the occasional play on being the poor sick guy who needed to be served and showered with attention, through the crass jokes and the self-deprecating remarks about his big faux-pas, and even through the first real meal he had the chance to consume in days. She waited, participating when needed or asked to but still maintaining a low profile, for the first time in years feeling like a superfluous appendix, until Zoe finally announced that it was time for them to let Cal rest properly. Emily wasn't having it, of course, but Cal himself played his part, sharing that he was indeed exhausted and that he really wanted his daughter to go home and finally relax. The back and forth push-back from Emily had not been as bad as the adults thought, either because she was finally coming to terms that nothing bad was going to happen anymore or simply because she too was feeling the looming fatigue now that she wasn't gripped by constant fear anymore.

Eventually, after a long series of goodnights and hugs and kisses, Emily and Zoe gathered their things, exchanged some words with Foster and left. Gillian watched them leave, walking down the corridor shoulder to shoulder in a tight embrace, dragging their relief with every tired step. Then she took a deep breath and walked back inside the room, finding Cal staring down at his own hands. She gave him a minute, mostly to make sure he was truly aware of her presence, then stepped closer to the bed and slowly sat on the chair Emily had been occupying for the past few hours.

"So," Cal huffed after a while, still looking at his hands. "I'm half blind now."

"That's not what the doctor said, Cal."

Gillian's remark came quickly, showing him she had been waiting for something like that to come. Cal chuckled and smiled bitterly, only then finally looking in her direction with a face that had lost all the playfulness, calm and acceptance he had been displaying until a few minutes before. The mask fell in the blink of an eye, and Gillian immediately saw all the fear and despair clearly painted on his face. For a moment she had to wonder where those had been the last time she had seen him before his secret surgery, once again asking herself how she could have missed it and once more honestly admitting with herself she knew very well why.

"What if-"

"How bad is it, really?" She asked, wanting to take control of the conversation not to let him slip on a downward spiral.

Cal shifted on the bed, uncomfortable about the question and unsure about the weight of the answer he was about to give.

"It's all a blur, foggy. Everything looks out of focus."

"Cal, I'd hate to point out the obvious but you had a brain tumour removed, you were in coma for a week, nearly-" She had to stop herself, neither of them was ready to hear where that sentence might have ended. "You had a major surgery and emergency procedure afterwards, and you've only been awake a few hours without getting any rest."

"There's no need to sugarcoat it, love."

"I'm not. Trust me Cal, with all that has happened in the past week, if you think I'm in the mindset to be nice to you just because you were sick then you are sorely mistaken." She hissed at him, softly but still clearly showing how upset she was for all that he hadn't told her. "Dr Schultz said he was expecting this, and that there is no point in drawing any conclusion yet."

"That would be all well and good if I could have seen him while he said that and assess whether he was lying or not."

"Well I saw him Cal, and I can tell you he wasn't. How- No, answer this." Gillian cut him off when she saw he was about to object: she hadn't waited hours in the curtains to let him have his self-loathing way. "When Dr Schultz took the bandage off the left eye and you had both open, what did you see?"

Cal opened his mouth but then closed it again, because he felt like a scolded child and because he immediately understood where she was going with it. It hadn't been that bad with both eyes, it wasn't like he couldn't recognise the faces of people in front of him at all, and his left eye was 100% fine. Sure, with only the bad eye in use he wasn't able to read but he could still see, it was just not as clear as he was used to.

Still…

He sighed and shook his head, shifting on the bed unease with his own thoughts and feeling the weight of Gillian's eyes on him. Then he inhaled sharply and threw his head back on the pillow looking up at the ceiling.

"What if it doesn't get better?" He questioned then, not necessarily talking to her. "The other eye is fine, I could probably make it work but what if- How are people going to trust my judgement with only one eye? How could they find me reliable if I don't- It's my science Foster. I studied it, I invented it. I perfected it, I teach it to others, I tell people everything they need to know is right there to be seen if you know how. If I can't-"

"You're not your science, Cal." Gillian silenced him, taking hold of the hands he was frantically waving around with hers as she spoke. "People might come to us because of what we can do but it's the way we do it that gets through to them. We do it together, as a team, we have dozens of people working on every case and help each other when needed." She stopped, blocking his possible attempt to counter not with her words anymore but simply with a smile. "And you, you are so much more than just your science."

Cal held her gaze, so sweet and understanding and so in contrast with the fact that she had just easily and mercilessly unmasked the real nature of his fears. Because of course that was what he was thinking, what he was really afraid of: to find out that without his ability to read microexpressions he had nothing else to offer.

And safe from something happening to Emily, there was only one thing that scared him more than that.

Edit: I will be unable to post tomorrow, so new chapter on Thursday.