A few hours later, after Art and, eventually, Rachel got their turns visiting with a still-sleeping Tim and Raylan finished giving his statement and choking down a turkey and cheese sandwich from the cafeteria, he wound up stretched out on the couch under the window. Tiffany had brought in an extra stack of blankets and a pillow, and it hadn't taken much in the way of convincing to get them to let him stick around after hours, what with how much they wanted to keep an eye on him, too. Tiffany'd poke her head in every hour or so, strike up a bit of conversation, which Raylan knew was all just a clever way of making sure his egg wasn't too scrambled.
He tried telling her that ship had already sailed, but she just laughed him off and went about her business, so he went about his.

There was a game on the television. He couldn't have said who was playing or how they were doing, though. He had the volume up just enough that it made a nice haze around those blessed infernal beeps from one of the half-a-dozen monitors Tim was hooked up to, but low enough it didn't aggravate his headache too much. The words ended up sort of blurring together, anyhow. He didn't much care, anyway. After the day he'd had, he'd have had trouble getting into much of anything that wasn't him falling asleep or Tim waking up.

Even tired as he was, it was an easy choice which he'd rather.

Problem was, much as he wished Tim would open those baby blues sooner rather than later, Tiffany was holding fast to her prediction of him sleeping through the night, at the very least. And Raylan wasn't selfish enough to want him to come out of it sooner than he was ready. No, he wanted Tim to take all the time he needed, rest up; he'd come around when he was good and ready. Raylan just wasn't too fond of waiting was all.

Lucky for him, he did still have option two: sleep. And as the game went off and the usual late-night infomercials came on, that option started looking better and better. He shifted, turning over on his side and tucking an arm under the pillow. It wouldn't make for a very comfortable morning, sore as he was already getting and damn near geriatric as he knew he was gonna be when he woke up, but it lifted his head up enough that he was level with the bed, and could watch the almost-imperceptible rise and fall of Tim's chest under the blankets, see the profile of his face in the dim light of the moon. It wasn't twisted up. His brows weren't scrunched, his lips weren't drawn. He wasn't hurting. He wasn't scared. He wasn't trapped somewhere in that head of his, dodging gunfire or explosions or whatever the hell he saw when he closed his eyes. He was just…sleeping.

And it wasn't too much longer before Raylan was doing the same.

The voice that woke him up wasn't what he'd call a familiar one, but at least it was one he recognized.

"…to lower the dose, now." Some papers were shuffled. "The dressing change is still scheduled for eight?" Another person hummed a confirmation. "Sounds great. Page me when it's time; I want to get a look at it before you re-dress it."

As the woman spoke, Raylan slowly peeled his eyes open and started to sit up. Which was where things got kinda tricky. Moving, in general, turned out to be a pretty piss poor idea, or at least every inch of him seemed to think so. He was sore all over, in places he hadn't been sore in a good long while. His head pounded a steady rhythm, and it felt like even thinking about moving anything made his muscles pitch a fit.

"Ah, Deputy Givens," said the voice, and Raylan blinked a few times trying to get his eyes adjusted to the hellishly bright light of the hospital room before giving up altogether and just squinting at her like an old man. Or worse, Art. "Welcome back to the land of the living."

Grimacing, Raylan sucked it up and pushed himself more or less upright, bracing one hand on the makeshift bed beside him and one on his head, just in case it did what it seemed to want to do and went on and rolled off his shoulders. "Oh, is that where this is?" he said wryly. His voice was hoarse, and his mouth tasted like something had died in it, but that was just about usual course for the odd Saturday morning.

Doctor Cason just smiled, and were her teeth whiter and brighter, or was it just the little drummers beating around in Raylan's head? "As far as I know." Sliding the clipboard she was holding back into the little slot on the bed, she closed the distance to Raylan's little hideaway, and Raylan tried real hard not to hold the clip-clopping of her shoes against her. Same with the little pen light she took to shining in his eyes. "At the risk of asking a stupid question, how are you feeling?"

Raylan blinked a few more times, this time trying to clear the spots from his vision once the nice lady doctor put away her torture device. No surprise, it didn't work this time, either. "At the risk of giving a wiseass answer," he replied dryly, "like I've had a bank dropped on me."

"Only a bank?" she asked good-naturedly.

His shrug was one-sided and half-hearted at best. At worst, it probably just looked like he was twitching. "What can I say? It was a slow day in the office."

"Can't imagine what that must be like." And she must've been telling the truth, because she couldn't even seem to take the time to talk without doing her work, too, poking and prodding his bumps and bruises like she was prospecting. It was damn uncomfortable.

"I'm sure you can't."

"Better it's all upstairs than downstairs, though."

Raylan was gonna say it was on account of the concussion that it took him so long to get her meaning. Downstairs meaning the morgue. Right. "Fair point."

She nodded. "I do make those from time to time." And mercifully, she seemed to be done with whatever it was she was doing. "Good news is, you're not any worse than you were last night," she said.

"Funny thing about good news is it's usually followed by bad."

"You're pretty quick for a man with an ostrich egg on his skull." He wasn't entirely sure it was a compliment, but he kept it to himself. "Bad news is, it'll probably take a while before you're feeling any better."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Raylan said. "I'm fit as a fiddle." To emphasize his point, he started to stand, made it all of an inch, and very deliberately sat back down. "I rest my case."

"And your ass," Doctor Cason said bluntly.

Raylan pointed. "That too."

"That's actually probably for the better, Mister Givens. I'd say you need at least a week to get back on your feet, and that's just for the concussion. The rest, we'll have to see after your follow up, which you can either do through the hospital, or through your general practitioner."

"Who's more likely to give me the all clear first?"

"Depends. Who's your doctor?"

Something told Raylan the question was rhetorical. The fact that she turned around before she could answer and started walking over to the sink to wash her hands kind of supported the theory. Not too shabby for a knocked noggin, if he did say so himself.

He knew she was busy, so he didn't mind it much. She had things to do, and he didn't mean to get in the way of her work. Still, "What about him?" he asked, nodding towards Tim. He hadn't moved, as far as Raylan could tell, since he'd fallen asleep watching him. And if that sounded less creepy in his head, then he reckoned it was a damn good thing that was where it was staying.

"He's doing about as well as can be expected," Doctor Cason answered, a bit more seriously than the rest of the conversation had been leading up to that point. "I don't know how much you heard before you saw fit to open your eyes, but we're going to start inching back his morphine dose a little."

Raylan's brows furrowed. And promptly un-furrowed when he realized it hurt like a bitch. "Isn't it a little early to start cutting back his pain meds? Not that I'm doubting you or anything; I just mean he was in pretty rough shape, and I don't see that changing much overnight."

"No, you're absolutely right. His recovery is going to be a slow process. But we're not taking him off pain medication entirely. We'll wean him off it gradually over the next couple days, and get him switched over to something that's going to be a little easier on his system. Plus, the longer he stays on it, the harder it's going to be to get him off of it and the less effective it's going to be over time. Right now, we just want to give him enough to get him through the post-op and help him make the transition to something a bit more long-term."

"So it's not gonna wake him up hurting, bumping the dose down like you are?"

Doctor Cason smiled, but it was the kind of smile that didn't really reach her eyes. "Unfortunately, chances are he's going to be in some pain when he wakes up regardless. But we're going to make him as comfortable as possible, I promise."

And something about the way she said it told Raylan that was just gonna have to do, because there wasn't anything else could be done. He hated it. Not Doctor Cason or the fact that she was doing it, just that it had to be done in the first place. He hated the thought of Tim being in pain. Lord knew he'd been through enough of it the past twenty-four hours, and damn it, he deserved a break from it.

"Just take care of him, Doc," was what he said finally, and even he could hear how tired it sounded. It was more than just physical exhaustion – he had that in spades, too, given it was only just then closing in on seven in the morning, and he'd only just managed to nab a few hours of sleep – but this sort of bone-deep weariness that probably wasn't gonna go away until this whole ordeal was well and truly behind them. Which reminded him, "Hey Doc?"

"Mister Givens?"

"About how long do you think he's gonna be in here? The hospital, I mean. How long'll it be before he gets to go home?" Because if he knew Tim, which he reckoned he did, he wasn't gonna take too kindly to being cooped up in there. He'd want to get home just as soon as he could. Probably sooner. And beyond it being a pain to keep Tim anyplace he didn't want to be, Raylan wasn't looking forward to having to tell him he was stuck there for however long it was gonna take. He'd just as soon get him home – to his place, of course, because Tim wasn't gonna be on his own for a while yet if he had anything to say about it – and get him settled in there. He wasn't fighting fit himself, exactly, but give him a day or two and he'd be fine. A week was really overkill, in his experience. He'd had worse concussions than this one and been back in the mines the next day. And everything else was just surface stuff and exhaustion. Nothing a couple hot showers and some Tylenol wouldn't fix.

Doctor Cason didn't answer right away. She pursed her lips like she was thinking about, which Raylan both hated and appreciated, because it meant waiting, but it also meant she was probably gonna give him a real answer instead of just pulling one out of her ass.

Finally, though, she settled on, "No less than two weeks, I would say, but it's really all going to depend on him. We'll do some more tests once he's awake that should be able to give us a better grasp on his condition, and that should help us predict his recovery time. Just…it's important to remember not to rush these things. It's going to take time."

"Of course," Raylan said. "Thing is, it's not me that's gonna need convincing." He'd hog tie him to the bed for a month if he thought it'd help, to hell with whatever sulking and spitting Tim saw fit to throw his way. But Tim didn't really do idle well. Watching someone through a sniper scope was one thing, but Raylan'd seen how well Tim did with being cooped up: that is, not very. For someone who spent a lot of his career being dead still, he had more nervous energy in him than just about anyone Raylan'd ever met. It was like he kept all his attention span stowed somewhere in his guns; take them away, and he was the most restless son of a bitch Raylan'd like to have ever met.

"Then I suppose it's a good thing we'll have you around to keep him in line," Cason said. And this time, the smile did reach her eyes. "If that's everything you need, I've got the rest of my rounds to make. But if you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to get a nurse to track me down. Alright?"

Raylan nodded gingerly. "Alright. Thanks, Doc."

"Anytime, Mister Givens. And I'll send someone in with something for you and that goose egg of yours."

"Much appreciated." As Doctor Cason turned and left, Raylan walked across the room to stand by Tim's bed. He was right; he hadn't moved. Not as far as he could tell, anyway. Looked like they hadn't disturbed him any just yet, although he imagined it was gonna take some moving to get at his bandages, what with his shoulder and his leg both needing a dressing change. "Makin' trouble everywhere you go, huh?" he said to the air, since Tim wasn't really listening. "You and I are gonna have to have a long talk about all these bad habits you're pickin' up."

And as he said it, Raylan was sure if he listened hard enough, wherever he was, he could hear Art snort.