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Neil wakes up the first time to see only one nurse in the corner. When he notices Neil is awake, the nurse quietly leaves the room and re-enters with another nurse and a doctor. They come in saying something Neil can't quite understand, and the inside of his nose burns, and he falls back asleep.
The second time Neil opens his eyes, his mother is in the chair by his bed. She is reading a magazine with edges torn by hands used to wringing themselves dry. When she notices his consciousness, she doesn't say anything, just looks at him once before returning to her reading, one hand on the edge of the bed like she can keep him from drifting away. His father comes back not too long after, but Neil is asleep already again, or at least close enough that he can pretend to be.
As Neil wakes up for the third time, he can already feel something is different. The room is warmer, not in temperature, but in feeling. There is a hand tentatively brushing back the hair on his forehead and two quiet voices in the opposite corner. With his eyes open fully he can see that the hand belongs to Todd and the voices to Ginny and Charlie, who appear to be arguing over something, judging by the way her hands punctuate the air and their body language is more fake casual than their usual posture.
Todd doesn't say anything to alert the two to the fact that Neil is awake, only moves his hand onto Neil's and squeeze gently. Neil tries to squeeze back, but his hands feel like they're encased in lead and he can't move them.
"He doesn't need your guilt tripping, Charlie," Ginny is saying. "Trust me, that's the last thing he needs right now."
"How could I not know?" Charlie whispers the question with all the intensity of a shout. Suddenly they're crying, silent tears sneaking out of the corners of their eyes, and Ginny tentatively wraps her arms around their shoulders. Charlie hugs her back tightly, but still no sound escapes with their tears.
"Hey," Neil croaks, and all eyes immediately focus on him. "Charlie..."
"Hey Neil," Charlie says as they step out of Ginny's embrace and sit in the chair on the opposite side of the bed, the one Neil's mother had been in what seemed like moments ago. "What's up, dude?"
"Charlie," Neil says again, stronger this time. He can finally move his hands and squeezes Todd's hand. "Are you okay?"
"Of course I am," they lie, wiping away the remnants of their brief cry with the back of their hand. "I don't think you're the one who should be asking that question though."
"How do you feel?" Ginny asks from the end of the bed. She's standing up straighter than Neil is used to seeing her, an obviously conscious effort, and some of her hair is sticking out of her headband. Neil wishes he could reach out and pull her hands out of where they're hiding up her sweater sleeves, but he's hooked into too many machines and he doesn't want to accidentally alert a doctor by disrupting something.
"Thirsty?" Neil tries instead of any emotion. If he went with an actual feeling, he gets the idea they might never let him out.
There is a little plastic cup of water on the table next to his bed that Todd hands him. When Neil tries to get a good look at him to judge how he's feeling, he realizes Todd hasn't looked at him once since he woke up.
Taking the cup in his other hand so he doesn't have to let go of Todd's, Neil whispers, "I'm sorry."
"You don't have anything to apologize for," Todd says, finally looking up. His eyes are red, his voice almost as hoarse as Neil's, and there is a crease in his shirt where he obviously slept slouched sideways in his chair. "Thank you for not leaving."
Neil has nothing to say, only grips his hand tighter and lifts the cup to drink from. Halfway empty, Neil holds the cup up in front of himself. He's surprised to notice his hand doesn't shake, and the surface of the water is still, and he closes his eyes again to etch the image on the back of his eyelids.
When he opens his eyes for the fourth time, no one has left.