There is only so much trauma a human body can take.
Levi dies once in the ambulance and twice on the operating table. Or, his heart stops anyway. The blood loss alone was critical, let alone the organ damage, the shattered ribs, the punctured lung.
He was in a coma, afterward. It was impossible to tell, the doctors said, the extent of the brain damage. There had been a significant lack of blood flow and oxygen to the brain, after all. His ribs would heal, and his leg too—as long as the sepsis or brain damage didn’t kill him first, of course.
It was a long four weeks.
After the infection passed, it was largely a lot of sitting around and waiting. Doctors and nurses were in and out, quietly counseling Mortimer on what his options were. Levi’s body, worn down after years of abuse, fought on.
With his first shreds of consciousness, Levi feels the scratch of a tag on the nape of his neck. It’s itchy, he thinks absently. Then, he is gone.
He is conscious again and more aware of his surroundings this time, though he cannot quite move or open his eyes. He hears voices—both strange and familiar. His head hurts. His stomach hurts. There is pressure on his palm, like…like someone is holding his hand. It’s nice, he thinks. I had this, once, didn’t I? Someone who held my hand? He doesn’t dwell on it long as the dark drags him under.
The third time, Levi’s grasp on reality is much stronger. He can feel his fingers and his toes. He can hear the beep of machines, tugging him further awake. He knows that time has passed but he doesn’t know how much. He remembers…he remembers blood. And pain.
Wake up, a little voice tells him. Wake up.
With great effort, Levi opens his eyes.
The doctors weren’t even startled at the sight of Mortimer when he’d turned up at the hospital, wild-eyed, spattered with blood, ranting and raving about how he needed to see Levi. After all, they’d just been dealing with a man who’d taken a spear to the chest and a man who’d had his leg cut off. Some asshole with a bit of blood on him didn’t compare.
Safe to say, Mortimer rarely leaves the hospital during those following weeks.
He does, once, get escorted out, after nearly punching a doctor who had been trying to fill him in on his options. On Levi’s options. Whether he’d ever wake up. Mortimer knew the statistics, he knew once a coma passed a week then the chances were astronomically low of ever waking up, but he didn’t care to hear them said out loud.
Other than that, he sits. He holds Levi’s hand. He waits. He tries desperately not think about the very real possibility that Levi will never wake up. He quietly thinks over plans for Noah, building a leg for him, as a small way he might be able to make up for his wrongs. Some days he tries gently bidding Levi to wake, other days he curses a blue streak at him. It’s the latter that seems to have a result, a spike in brain activity before it’s gone.
It’s normal, the doctors tell him. Coma patients have spikes in activity due to external stimulus. Don’t get your hopes up.
But one day, when Mortimer’s in the middle of reciting King Lear in hopes of waking Levi out of sheer spite, Levi’s eyelids flutter, then slowly part.
“Holy-- fuck, Levi, oh my god,” Mortimer sputters, jumping to his feet, heart going triple-time. “Jesus, don’t try to talk, you’re intubated. There’ll be a doctor here in a moment, I promise.” All he can do is lean over and press a shaking hand to Levi’s cheek, then further up, brushing back hair that’s grown a little too long. “You’re in the hospital, you’re fine. Well, you’re not fine, but-- you’re better, you’re healing.”
