Friday, September 10th, 2004.

Day One: The Accident.

7:28 PM

Somehow, Sam and Tucker's screams managed to cut above his own. Despite the agony piercing through every inch, every molecule of his body, he could still hear them calling his name in panic and fear.

Even though he felt, even though he knew, with a certainty that was almost absolute, that the amount of electricity coursing through him meant he was going to die in a few more moments. That there was no way he was going to survive, he didn't let himself surrender himself to the pain. He couldn't, not while his friends were still calling his name. He couldn't let them down, he couldn't die, shirk his responsibilities to his friends and family. Who would the school bullies beat up when they were angry at Sam? Who would stand there and offer support and ridicule while Tucker was rejected by his crush of the week? Who would Jazz psychoanalyze when she had a new theory to test? Who would his parents blabber on to about ghosts?

"DANNY!"

Their voices gave him the strength to move amongst the pain.

He pitched himself out of the whirling mass of green, not noticing the fully functional portal he left behind him, nor his changed appearance.

To push away the pain, he focused on his friends, taking a few weak steps forward before his knees gave out and he hit the floor.

And then everything went black.

7:37 PM.

'This is wrong.'

The thought repeated like a manta, over and over in Tucker's head, even as he called both an ambulance and the Fentons. He pretended that the wrongness of the situation was not weighing down on him like a heavy cloud. Pretended that he didn't want to just sit down and curl up into a ball. He couldn't do that, not now. He had to be strong.

He couldn't let himself break. He had to be strong for the sakes of both of his friends. For Danny who was laying motionless on the floor of the lab and Sam who was sobbing hysterically at his side. He pushed back a wave of hopelessness. Sam didn't cry. Sam never cried. She was... She was just Sam, the one who could handle anything without faltering. Their calm, level-headed friend. He remembered every single time she had ever cried and he could count them on one hand.

He put down the phone and knelt next to his crying friend, trying not to look at the still, white-haired form of Danny.

"Sam, it's going to be okay." He didn't know that, but she needed to hear it. He wanted to believe it and he threw every effort into making himself believe it. "The ambulance is coming."

"Tucker..." Sam choked. Her hand was pressed to Danny's neck, just under his jaw. "He's... I-I can't find a pulse."

Against his will, Tucker's eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat. He pushed Sam's shaking hand away and checked Danny's pulse himself.

His skin felt like ice, but that wasn't what concerned him as much as the fact that Sam was right. There was nothing, not even the faintest hint of a heartbeat.

'No...'

Tucker tried and failed to get one of Danny's gloves off to check the pulse of his wrist, looking for some other confirmation. He tried the other side of Danny's neck again.

Still nothing.

'No, he can't be dead!'

Danny couldn't be dead. He'd known Danny and Sam since as long as he could remember. It had always been the three of them. Balancing out each other's faults and weaknesses. Supporting each other. What was left if one of them was gone?

Cold air tickled Tucker's wrist. It took him several moments for him to realize that it was coming from Danny. Icy breath.

"H-he's... still breathing..." Tucker stammered, hope and confusion mingling in his voice. If he was still breathing, then he had to be alive, right? But he still had no pulse. Both Technogeek and Goth girl watched, fascinated and scared, as Danny's chest rose and fell evenly.

"He... still doesn't have a pulse... but he's breathing..." Tucker repeated, mostly to himself. But Sam seemed to take heart that he was breathing.

"Th-that's-" She interrupted herself with a soft gasp.

Danny was stirring.

He let out a groan, bringing one hand up to his head and tiredly blinking open his eyes. Tucker gasped, pulling back, but not before he noticed that even though Danny was moving there was still no pulse.

"Wh-what happened?" Danny said hoarsely. He sat up, wincing, before he took notice of things around him. Namely, Sam's muffled sobs. "Sam? What happened? Why are you crying?"

Sam said nothing, her eyes wide and shocked and her hands raised to her mouth.

"Come on, Sam, don't cry," Danny put a hand on her shoulder, pain forgotten. "You're making me nervous. What happened?" He repeated for a third time. "I only remember going into the portal. Sam, say something!" Danny was getting both worried and freaked by Sam's silence.

"Y-your eyes..." Sam whispered breathlessly, her own eyes wide with both shock and awe.

Danny put a hand up to the side of the offending sensory organ. "What's wrong with my eyes?" He turned, confused and helpless to his other friend.

Tucker's jaw fell open and he gasped, stuttering wordlessly.

Seeing no answers from his friends, Danny got to his feet with a wince and went to the mirror over by the wall and looked at his own reflection. He didn't notice when his foot went through Sam's knee, but both his friends did.

He expected to see black hair and blue eyes. Instead, he saw himself with white hair, glowing and ethereal, just like his skin and clothes, and his eyes had turned a bright, glowing emerald green.

He fainted.

8:45 PM

'Not going to freak out, not going to freak out, not going to freak out.'

Tucker's mantra had changed since they had arrived in the hospital. They were sitting in the waiting room now, dumb shock taking over every sense in their bodies except for the burning desire to flee, in Tucker's case.

Hospitals. His most dreaded fear for years. He hated everything about hospitals: The smells, the sounds, the needles, the instruments. He couldn't even stand the hottest of nurses.

Part of him desperately wanted to leave, but the other part was unwilling to. He couldn't leave, not with his best friend in the emergency room and his other best friend sobbing into his shoulder.

They were there for a long time.

After the first hour, Sam stopped crying, though she still looked on the brink of it. The doctors had given them progress, and they said that it looked like he would be alright. That had reassured them quite a bit. But still nobody said a word. Mrs and Mr Fenton sat across from them, Jazz next to her mother, her eyes glazed with worry and still, nobody had said a word.

He couldn't even think straight. He couldn't consider the events only an hour and a half before. He couldn't make himself think about how Danny had gone from black haired to white haired to black haired again in less than twenty minutes. He would remember later, but the only things that mattered right now was that he was sitting in a hospital, and his best friend was in the ER.

When doctors rushed by with a different patient, someone from a car accident. Tucker couldn't help but shrink back into his chair with a muffled squeak of alarm that did not fail to catch Sam's attention.

"Tucker?"

He met her tired, concerned eyes and before he could stop himself, he blurted out, "I hate hospitals. I hate, hate, hate hospitals."

He clenched his eyes shut tightly, but relaxed when he felt Sam's hand on his shoulder.

"Maddie and Jack Fenton?"

Tucker's eyes snapped back open, fears momentarily changing from hospitals to his friend as he saw the doctor approach. And then he saw the smile.

That was good. Doctors wouldn't be smiling if Danny was dead.

"I would have to say your son is very lucky. He only has a few minor burns and he was a bit dehydrated, but I expect he should make a full recovery in a matter of days."

"Thank goodness," Maddie sighed in relief. "May we see him?"

"Yes, Mrs Fenton. But just family, at the moment."

"B-but..." Sam started to protest, but Maddie beat her to it.

"May I speak to you a moment, doctor?"

She dragged him aside. When they returned about a minute and a half later, Maddie was triumphant.

"Come on, kids, let's go see Danny."

Tucker tried not to shudder at the sight of the IV when they entered the room. Tucker hated hospitals, everything to do with them, but needles bothered him the most. He couldn't even stand sewing needles.

The thought of the needles, though, were almost driven out of his mind when he saw how incredibly healthy Danny looked. Only a couple of burns laced his skin, and to all intents and purposes, he looked like he was sleeping peacefully after a rather tiring day.

Except Sam and Tucker had been there during the accident. The burns had been much worse than that only an hour or so ago, and he had not looked nearly so healthy. Hell, he hadn't had a pulse. And then there was the icy chill that had been seeping from him... Shouldn't a burn victim be hot to the touch?

And then there was the issue with the white hair and green eyes, and reversed-color jumpsuit and...

Tucker blinked, and then frowned, trying to recall what had happened earlier.

After Danny had fainted, two weird rings had appeared and left him just as he had been before the accident, except with the addition of several huge burns. The white hair and black jumpsuit had vanished, but Danny had been wearing a white jumpsuit before entering the portal, only to have his t-shirt and jeans on again after passing out.

'I'm too tired to think about this,' Tucker thought tiredly. He sank into a chair next to Danny's bed, watching the Fentons arrange themselves around the room, with Maddie on another chair on the other side. Sam sat down next to him, her face pale and drawn and now devoid of makeup due to crying. She met his eyes for a moment, and then focused worried violet eyes on the still form in the bed.

Tucker sighed and leaned back. 'I'll argue with her when I'm not so tired.' And he fell asleep.

A/N: I intended for this chapter to be longer. Really, I did... There's just only so much you can work with to do with less than two hours of time sitting in a hospital waiting to see if someone is alive or not. I'm not sure if my portrayal of the hospital is remotely accurate -if it isn't let me know, please. I don't really spend much time in hospitals, and both times I've been there myself, I was too drugged up to remember much except the room was cold, the IV was cold, and all I really wanted was some quiet, a dark room, and a nice glass of ice water.

Anyway, onto to random stuff about the story. First of all, concerning the beginning of the chapter...

Ghosts have obsessions. Finding ghosts without obsessions is hard as hell, especially since most definitions of ghosts is something along the lines of "a person's soul or remnant of a person's soul bound to the earth due to unfinished business."

That is why I wrote the bit at the top. Because, though he's not a crazy fruitloop like Vlad, or just a wacko like the box ghost, Danny definitely has things that could count as an obsession. Thus the bit at the top. Danny's obsession is more or less his friends and family (and, to a lesser extent, humanity) – let's face it, Danny can be an overprotective little guy. It's in his genes. Now in more than one way.

As you can tell, the majority of this chapter is from Tucker's point of view. There will be time for the others later, but for now, Tucker's the only one thinking straight enough to focus on, and even then, it's only because he's making himself think straight.

The difference in the accident is partially to do with the theme-song, really. It specifies on him waking up to realize his hair and eyes had changed colour. My logic for the difference in 'Memory Blank' was his parents continuing to work on the portal, refining the process and probably making it a bit less... Well, shocking, for his system.