@jericholeader​ sent a meme but actually this didn’t turn out to be a response to the meme because i ended it here. but here is a this.

It was called a Spontaneous Breathing Test. It was a prerequisite for extubation, which Connor had been told he’d failed twice in the past (he believed them, though he had no memory of the attempts and rarely failed anything at all), a period of two hours where they switched off the ventilator and waited to see how well his body breathed on its own. There were criteria to fulfill for an SBT and many of them were right at the start: the first breath in, the ability to cough “adequately” (whatever that meant), whether it was harder to draw air off a ventilator than it was on it.

He was past the first hurdles this time. The first breath was a little delayed, but he drew it in with a rasp and then a cough, hand grasping at Markus’ (he could not lift his head to find him). The focus it required worried him. Like he might somehow forget to breathe if he wasn’t paying close attention, but the alternative was staying intubated. Nobody had said much about it, but Connor was a Detective. He did not need to be able to lift his head to catch the feel of the room when they considered leaving him intubated longer still, longer than it had already been.

Shit, was what Connor would have said, if he had been able to speak, at this point. Breathing for himself, even with a tube down his throat, made a lot of it sharper somehow. The way his ribs ached, the cuts and scratches on his hands and neck (some of them defensive wounds; some of them a murder attempt), the bone-deep tired that probably had taken those memories of the first two attempts, and may well take this one. The fact he wanted Markus there, and it was a shame he could not see him. Instead of swearing Connor squeezed his hand, now, and Markus returned it, murmuring something patient and warm. This must have been awful for him. It was unfair, vastly unfair, that they were here, when Markus should have been moving on from time in an ICU room and courtrooms and being scared.

Connor rolled his head just that fraction of a distance that meant he could find Markus, now, sitting behind him and close enough Connor could see the much-later-than-five-o’clock shadow that he’d been feeling every time Markus pressed a kiss to his knuckles, or temple, or hair. Likely Markus just hadn’t considered it much of a priority, but he liked him like this, Connor thought. He had always liked when Markus’ facial hair got a little longer. Scruffy. A little bit scratchy. Maybe not to keep, but it was nice, to see it every once in a while. He would see many more of Markus’ five-o’clock-shadows, probably.

It was warm to think about. He remembered very recently thinking he would not see Markus, or anyone, again.

Two hours wasn’t long at all, Connor decided, when Markus leant forward to brush a thumb over his cheek and offer a book, or sketching, to fill in the time. Connor liked to watch him sketch. It was easier to follow than the cadence of Markus’ voice as he read aloud, though he had the sense Markus had done that quite a bit, these last few days (days? weeks?). Time had a way of disappearing inside hospital rooms, and so far breathing was maybe a little uncomfortable, but not hard. The difficult part would be staying awake the whole two hours, and he would not -- did not -- have to do that on his own.