Chapter Text
Score: 5. Eyes: 2. Incomprehensible speech: 1. Withdraws to pain: 2.
Prognosis: uncertain.
They had to shave part of his head to relieve the pressure. A subdural hematoma — slow bleed.
They remember the collapse.
Allison had screamed, feud forgotten.
Luther had carried him to the car like a broken doll.
Now, Viktor lay in the ICU under fluorescent lights, intubated, hooked up to enough machines that he looked less like a person and more like a system being maintained.
Catheter. Central line. IV fluids. Sedation drip.
His heart monitor beeped in slow, steady rhythm. The ventilator hissed beside him. His brain was quiet.
Klaus sat beside him that first night, arms wrapped tight around himself, eyes wide and dry.
“It’s weird, y’know,” he murmured. “Seeing you like this. You used to vibrate with sound. Now you’re just... still.”
They kept trying to measure progress. Pinprick to the sole of his foot. Sternum rub. Commands whispered in his ear. “Viktor, squeeze my hand.”
Nothing.
The nurses charted everything. Bowel movements. Pupil dilation. The way his left hand flexed for no reason at 3:17 a.m.
Five read the scan himself. He didn’t trust the ICU attendings to understand who they were dealing with.
Ischemia in the right parietal lobe. Shearing injuries across the corpus callosum. Increased ICP, managed with a shunt.
It didn’t look good.
“He’s not waking up,” Diego said one night, standing at the foot of the bed with his arms crossed. “Even if he does, he won’t be Viktor.”
“No,” Allison said. “He’ll be different. But he’ll still be him.”
Silence. Machines. The slow, rhythmic hiss of the vent.
The days turned into weeks.
PT came and went — passive range-of-motion stretches to keep his muscles from atrophying. They rotated him every two hours to prevent bedsores.
Ben sat in the corner, invisible to everyone but Klaus, watching like a ghost who understood too well what it meant to linger.
One night, Allison found herself yelling at Viktor’s body. "Wake up!" she snapped, fists clenched at her sides. "You don’t get to leave like this. Not again. Not like this. I heard a rumor that you wake up."
The only response was the steady beep of the heart monitor.
Day 36.
They downgraded him from the ICU to long-term care.
Tracheostomy in place. PEG tube for nutrition. Minimal consciousness. Reflexes intact.
Still no voluntary movement.
Allison held his hand every night. Not because she thought he could feel it.
But because she needed to.