and it is bitter (EON one-shot)

In sixth grade Toby gets pulled out of the middle of his math class.

"Lucky," he hears one of the boys in his class say and for a moment he thinks he is because when you're in sixth grade and you get to leave school early it is the best feeling in the world and nothing bad happens. So, Toby takes his backpack and his books and all his other things and runs down to the main office with a smile on his face because his birthday is coming up and his parents did promise that they'd take him to Six Flags, except, when he finally gets there it's just his dad, with his eyes suspiciously red and his overall demeanor screaming tired.

"Toby..." his dad says slowly and the smile instantly drops from Toby's face as he hurries to his father's side.

"Dad?" Toby asks, "What's wrong?" His dad just gives him this sad look and pulls him in for a hug and suddenly Toby doesn't feel very lucky at all.

++

A lot is wrong, as it turns out. Toby sits in the chair of the hospital's waiting area and stares at his shoes in an attempt to keep himself from crying and to keep anyone else from actually seeing him cry. He digs his fingers into the cushion of the chair and keeps his face blank.

His dad talks with the doctor in hushed tones, somewhere off to the side and Toby can't hear everything that they say but he does hear things like "car accident" and "she's in stable condition" and coma. Toby latches onto that last word and repeats it over and over in his head like a mantra. Coma coma coma coma. 

His father makes this choked up sound, a sob that stopped itself midway in his throat and he asks a question that Toby doesn't really hear but he does hear the doctor's answer.

"There's no sure way to tell when she'll wake up. Comas can last anywhere from several days to several years in more severe cases. But it shouldn't come to that, and while there isn't much we are able to do right now, we will do all that we can to help your wife. She'll wake up, you just need to have hope."

Have hope, Toby thinks, and squeezes his eyes shut. He wonders if that will be enough.

++

He visits his mother every day while she's in her coma, missing days of school except for the days where there are rehearsals for Annie because even though he's not technically in the play, the backstage crew is still very important and sometimes Toby catches himself humming the songs, singing them to his mother, especially the song Tomorrow because it's the most hopeful song he knows. Two weeks pass by, including his eleventh birthday and he doesn't care that he doesn't have a party or presents but his dad still buys a cake and sticks a candle in it and the only thing Toby wishes for is for his mother to get better.

His dad comes with him, of course, but he can't stay in the room long enough and look at his unconscious wife without his heart breaking all over again and so he goes down to the cafeteria for coffee or steps outside the hospital completely just for some space and therefore, it's Toby that's there when she wakes up.

Her ring finger twitches and then her eyelids flutter open, she blinks and says something that Toby can't really make out because he just starts crying so loud.

"Mom!" he exclaims and immediately rushes over to her, wrapping his arms around her in a hug, tears a mix of relief and happiness and just a little bit of exhaustion because it's kind of been hard to sleep. She pats his back a bit awkwardly and he wonders what's wrong and thinks that maybe it's because there are too many tubes and machines in the way except when he pulls away from her it's sort of like a stranger staring at him.