8YowazzzpoppinitsyourboiCopperInkWellhereandimbackwithmoretopqualitycontentandnospaces. Ye. This would have come out way sooner if the past four weeks haven't been full of -wait for it- exams. Exams plus the sudden inspiration to draw(my art block, which sorta made me even begin this was cured) instead of writing. That plus pure procrastination.
Anyways, my thanks goes out to the people who followed and left a review last chapter and those who even read this. Enjoy~
After the hospital gave a call to the Fenton family, it barely took them two minutes for them to be packed up snugly in the old car they owned and ecstatically driving in a hellbent manner that only that family of scientists could manage to the location of the hospital. When they got there, finding parking wasn't an easy task either. If the hospital was a ghost town when Maddie visited it less than a week ago than this time it seemed busier than a Walmart on a Christmas eve. Compliments to the help of Jack's infamous driving because that was how they got a good spot.
Then, after dealing with a receptionist who refused to even acknowledge the waiting family's existence for a good twenty minutes, did they finally get somebody who could give them the run-through of how Danny was doing and lead them to his room. Said person did their job. They lead them through busy, winding hallways while putting themselves on a pedestal and raving on about how with the aid of state-of-the-art technology and educated staff that they were able to heal his muscle and skin, which were practically cooked and should have been rendered useless after an accident of such magnitude.. After that doctor was finished with their boasting, they left the family to their visit with the information that Danny still may be asleep.
Maddie was the one who opened the door with Jazz and Jack following behind her eagerly into the room. They saw Danny lying there clad in hospital clothes resembling pajamas, looking like any other patient, not that protective white and black hazmat suit which had been melted onto his skin barely a week ago. He was in a normal bed this time too, without the previous surplus of wires Maddie saw connected to her son that were keeping him alive on her previous visit. And his arm. It hadn't been shriveled and charred remains of skin that were desperately clinging onto raw and exposed muscles, veins, and the sliver of exposed bones peaking through red, black, and neon green from his arm to his back like it did when Maddie and Jack found him. Sure Danny and his arm still looked pretty bad and they had a bit of a way to go before he would be completely healed save maybe a Litchenberg scar, burn scars, and any form of scar tissue in general but maybe whatever that doctor was saying about artificial super healing evidently was somewhat true. Besides that, Danny was lying there asleep, much to everybody's secret but shared dismay. Especially for Jack. So he proposed the idea of trying to shake Danny awake.
And that's how they got into the argument they were in now.
"You're lucky that the hospital even let us visit him so early, Jack. Don't. Push. It," Maddie, who was well beyond annoyance, said for the umpteenth time.
"I know but do you think if try shaking him, or if I try making some noise, that he'll wake up faster?"
"Jack," she began sternly but her face eased up in a way of understanding, "While that theory may be true on more than one level, I highly doubt that would cause more harm than good. The stars know that we already have a bad reputation, or at least the reputation as 'that weird couple'. This is the last hospital in the general area of Amity Park which we haven't been banned from and I highly doubt the nurses, who are keeping an eye on us and already dislike us, would appreciate it if we shook somebody, even if he is our son, who is a patient that just got out of the intensive care unit for extensive skin and muscle damage."
Jack lowered himself into one of the chairs next to Jazz the rather small hospital room was decorated with and sent something mixed with a pout and a scowl to his wife that was still standing up next to the bed. "Fine," he sighed in a short reply, without malice, but still rather loudly. "I will not shake Danny to wake him up, but I will instead just sit here and think of some sort of loophole. I bet that I can create some sorta gadget that will work.. Yes, I'll invent something to wake up people without making anyone mad," said the man, not even trying to hide his schemes.
"Dear. Honey. I don't even think it's even possible to wake up someone like Danny who is a teen who loves sleep forcibly without making the person in question the slightest bit mad. Therefore whatever invention you have in mind would fail," Maddie retorted in a fond manner, haven given up on being angry.
"Alright then, I'll just have to make an invention to remove the emotion of anger entirely while having the function of being able to wake up people."
Laughter escaped the woman when that ridiculous idea was declared. It was actually a miracle that that she hadn't already began to laugh a bit before due the nature of and her part in the conversation which took a somewhat comical turn. Jack was now grinning because he thought that he won but Maddie came up with her next counter-argument. Her mind had came up on a way to debunk that claim incredibly fast, actually. One of the problems with that idea was something like that would take over a month to build, if they knew what they were doing and all the parts could be ready for assembly. Besides possibly being useful for getting Danny up in the mornings by the time school started again, they wouldn't really have much use for it. Jack never got to hear what the response would have been though, Jazz spoke first.
"I would love to write a library's worth on the concept of and the possible psychological effects of 'removing anger' could have on a parson if it was even possible and why you shouldn't do it, but that would mean a lifetime worth of writing so I'll just be the voice of reason in a more forward way instead, Dad. I don't even think that machine would even be necessary... I think you've already woke Danny up when you two were getting excited about that invention.. concept thinggy..." she finished the sentence with a hand gesture and her parents let out a small 'oh'. Thus they forgot about their casual argument, or at least let it rest to be resumed latter.
Jazz, of course, was right. The boy in question was beginning to stir. Slow rises and falls of his chest were becoming closer to the rhythm regular breaths. His face, namely his jaw, began to move a bit, like he was moving his tongue across the roof of his mouth to test how dry his mouth was. Previously still fingers on his right hand were twitched experimentally then the same action was reported fingers on his left. The action of moving fingers on the sore arm which retained the worst electrocution damage and was treated not too long ago made him wince. Danny spent another minute doing this before his eyes finally cracked open.
The Jazz and Jack, who moved from the chairs to standing right next to Maddie over the edge of the bed that Danny lay in, were able to let go of the breath that they weren't even aware that they were holding. His eyes were now busy on surveying the room he didn't recognize before they focused on the faces of his family. The faces of his family that were decorated with the nearly invisible traces of furrowed brows that indicated worry and concern and pushed behind the more prominent delicate smiles that signal good news and relief.
Danny greeted his audience with a simple hello. They responded with cautious hugs, not wanting to hurt the boy. After he found more of his voice, he got help from them with drinking a glass of water because his arms didn't want to fully cooperate with him quite yet. After the family effort to get Danny a drink of water, they began with asking him how he felt and if he remembered how he landed himself in the hospital. He hesitated before he replied. Finally he said in a rather lame manner that while he didn't remember much, besides he trying to clean one thing and then tripping on another, that he did feel like he was a viciously tenderized and fried piece of meat. His parent's faces fell just a unnoticeable bit, which he noted despite being out of it. Nobody acted like that happened though and everybody proceeded to tell him about their week.
Danny learned that his family had a awful week. The conversation, which was mostly everyone chattering for the sake of making noise and filling time to the him about one thing or another while said teenager gave small, tired, and halfhearted nods for replies, went on for a hour before Danny fell asleep again.
Three days later and Danny was still feeling terrible but at the same time he was loads better by time he was allowed to get visitors that weren't his intermediate family. That was good because he was dreadfully bored. He already used the only entertainment he had available, which was counting the spots on the ceiling, to occupy his mind. At the moment Danny did not want to be alone with his thoughts. They were bothering him. Like the ones that were asking since when was his eyesight good enough to see every individual dot on the ceiling. Nope. Danny did not want to think of something that his bored mind was probably just exaggerating. Noise prevented these thoughts from roaming much more, to his delight. And the noise itself was not bad either because it was the clamor he reconsidered as his family. Who also came along with his two best friends.
Que the chorus of angles and an analogy comparing those people who had just walked into Danny's hospital room to beams of sunlight after a storm, or something poetic like that.
As the door opened and his friends and family poured into the small space, he tried his hardest to not wince as he positioned himself from laying down to sitting up in his bed so he could be braced to take in the river of hugs that he was about to be showered with. Considering how his entire back and left arm stung badly when he moved them or rubbed them against the fabric of his bed, he would say he did a decent job because his mom and Jazz weren't giving him lectures about being gentle with his body. The greetings and pleasantries that required people to touch his still hurt body were done and over with, gladly for him. His intermediate family stepped back while they left Danny to talk with his two best friends.
"But seriously. We were so bored without you around at first and then we were worried. I'm glad my parents even let me visit you, considering the bad impression they have of you," Sam mumbled, at the end of the monologue she just preformed with Tucker at the side of Danny's bed.
"At first you guys were bored but then you got worried when I was not around," Danny said with fake hurt plus a pause for a more dramatic affect, "Do feel free to elaborate."
"Well Dude, for the first four days we didn't even know you got into some mysterious lab accident until we decided messaging you wouldn't do any good, because that's what we were doing for three days straight. We went to your house to see if you got grounded, or if there was something else that could explain why you disappeared off the face of the Internet. When we got there, we were whisked away to talk with your parents and then we got filled in on the whole hospital deal. Oh, and Jazz kept us updated on you. Even with that, both me and Sam still were worried though," Tucker elaborated at request.
"Also it didn't help that your parents gave us pictures of the blood-bathed, fiery battle field that was the lab that they took in order to document the aftermath. I think that made us think you became something worse than barbecued chicken," Sam added.
"Good thing you're healing up good too because our friendly neighborhood vegetarian here would have to abandon you if you were a piece of barbecued chicken," Tucker said resulting in Sam giving him a glare that could cut steel, which made him snicker while swiftly moving out of Sam's intermediate punching radius without a word.
"I guess that I'm lucky that I feel more on the scale of fried chicken. Wait, no. I'm doing better so maybe I've downgraded to the scale of barbecued chicken.. I guess this means the end of our friendship, Sam. But either way, it could be considered foul play," Danny said with a lopsided grin.
"As my fellow human who has decided to identify as a piece of meat, I have decided to honor you with the sacred gift of your technology rectangle and the chord which to power it with, because you have made a pun, and puns deserve rewards," said Tucker, who had moved back closer to Sam's side and was now looking at his goth friend expectantly. The goth rolled her eyes while talking off the backpack she had been wearing and proceeded to unzip it and to and fish around inside of it.
"A 'technology rectangle and the chord to power it with' are crude words for somebody who holds the title as a techno-geek at such high esteem such as yourself, Tuck. But I'm guessing what you mean is you want me to give Danny his phone and charger," Sam spoke while handing over the very items they were speaking of.
Danny accepted them with his good arm along with his ever present grin. He was not in the least surprised at all that his two best friends were the ones who knew him well enough to know what kind of things to bring him in situations like this. "Oh, I'm glad to see my phone. I've been driving myself crazy with boredom over the past few days. Thanks for thinking of this," he said while his blue eyes were already busy looking at the screen. "Crazy how much things you can miss when you aren't on the Internet for over a week. And seriously guys, I'm speechless and i expected nothing less," he had by now saw most of his notifications. "You both sent me over eight hundred messages in total."
"Well, we did try to reach you for a while.. and we decided to spam you because, ya know, that usually gets your attention," was the reply that Tucker offered for both he and Sam, even if it wasn't needed.
Aaaaaaand there we go. Fiiiiiiiiiinaly got this chappie done :)
But yeah. The last half feels sorta forced? idk lol, but i needed to include it. Ghost hunting AU where Sam and Tuck weren't there so they don't know Danny's secret? What could possibly go wrong? Also we can consider that the halfa himself doesn't know shit about anything yet(or at least, we don't know everything that he knows)- well, he has some small suspicion as of now but still. :))))
Hehe I'm sorta excited to write more of this :3
As always, opinions, comments, conservative criticism, theories, or any type of review that won't scare me away from writing in general is welcome and encouraged. Thanks for reading :D
-CIW