The tests were done, and the waiting for a room started in earnest. They had taken his suggestion of sedation, and now Sheldon lay on the stretcher bed that they used to bring him to the various scans and x-rays that were ordered. He was sleeping, or unconscious, Leonard couldn't tell which. He was sitting in a waiting room chair next to him, thinking about going to get Penny so she could wait with them instead of being relegated to the noisy waiting room, restlessly scrolling on her phone.

Sheldon's breathing was even, if a little ragged. The bruises and the cuts looked worse in the stark light against his pale skin. Leonard noticed the laminated hospital band around one wrist and the IV that was looped into his hand. He put a hand on his thin shoulder, feeling the delicate bone under the softness of the hospital gown, and Sheldon didn't flinch or tense up. He was out.

He went to get Penny, scanning the room for her blond hair and pretty face. She was still by the window and she was looking out of it into the night. Headlights were washing through the parking lot with the white glow, and ambulances came through with their undulating red lights.

"Penny," Leonard said, taking a few steps toward her. She looked up, her face puffy and tired.

"How is he? Where is he?" she said.

"He's asleep. We're just waiting for a room for him. I thought you might want to wait with him?"

She nodded quickly and followed him to the exam room where Sheldon was. Her eyes filled with something when she saw him, and to Leonard she looked just like a mother gazing down on her sick child. She reached out slowly and brushed his short hair away from his forehead. He still didn't stir. He probably wouldn't wake up for hours.

Leonard slumped back into the chair he had been sitting in and watched Penny watching Sheldon. He yawned and shifted his weight. These chairs were awful on your back.

It was a few hours later when they had a room available for him, and the nurses that came down to bring him upstairs were nice, two young girls with their shiny hair pulled back into professional ponytails, but Leonard saw the strands that had pulled loose.

"You can come up with him if you want," one of them offered, and Penny immediately nodded, but Leonard hung back.

"I don't know if we need to go, he'll just be sleeping, we can come in the morning…"he said, but Penny shook her head.

"What if he wakes up and wants to see us?" she said.

"I don't think he will, he'll be fine…"

"Fine, then go home. I'm staying with him," she said, and he shrugged and followed them up to the room.

Up in his room the nurse asked them a barrage of questions, the same questions they had asked in the emergency room. Information apparently couldn't travel from one floor to another, but Leonard dutifully answered all the questions again while Penny listened and glanced at Sheldon sleeping in the bed, the sheet and blanket draped loosely over him. Then the nurse left, and the lights were dim, even the lights in the hallway, and he could hear the various beeping and alarms of machines in other rooms.

Penny apparently wanted to stay all night, and he didn't see the point in that, but he tried to get comfortable in the chair he had sat in, shifting this way and that. Penny was sleeping in the other chair, and nurse's and doctors walked quietly by from time to time in the hall, speaking in low voices to each other.

"Leonard?" It was Sheldon, he had sat up and stared into the dimness at him. Leonard had been half asleep, and he shrugged awake when he heard his name.

"Yeah, buddy, what is it?" He went over to the side of the bed and leaned over the bedrail.

"Why are you still here?" he said, apparently having had the same thought Leonard did, that it was unnecessary.

"Penny wanted us to stay," he said in a loud whisper.

"I'm in a lot of pain…can you ask the nurse for pain medication for me?" Sheldon said, and winced as he tried to move.

"Yeah, sure," he said, smiling reassuringly at him, but when he turned away the smile faded off his face. He went out into the hall, feeling out of place as he went by machines he didn't know half the uses for. Well, how would these nurses and doctors feel in his lab?

He went up to the desk but there was nobody at it, so he waited, feeling so tired. He blinked at the clock that ticked away the seconds of his wait. He thought of Penny sleeping away in there and Sheldon in pain. There must be a call light in that room, he was sure, and had half turned to go back to the room and push it when someone appeared at the desk. It was one of the nurses that had come down to the emergency room for them. She smiled at him and he noticed the long sleeve white T-shirt beneath her scrub top.

"Hi, do you need anything?" she said.

"Yeah, my friend in there, Sheldon Cooper, he's in a lot of pain, and uh, can you give him anything?" he said.

"Let me check," she said. Then she nodded at him.

"Yeah, I'll be right down,"

He went back to wait for her, and by this time Sheldon's breathing had become fast and shallow and Leonard worried about the possibility that some organ was damaged and just bleeding out inside of him, but they had done all those tests to presumably rule that out, so he tried not to worry.

"Did you…ask her?" Sheldon said, and Leonard could hear the pain in his voice.

"Yeah, she's coming right down with it,"

The wait seemed much longer than the few minutes that it was, but she came in with a syringe full of something, and Leonard assumed it was morphine or one of its derivatives.

"What hurts? Where?" she asked him, twisting a cap off the syringe. Sheldon was forcing himself to look at her, Leonard could see.

"I don't know, everything…everywhere," he said, squeezing his eyes shut, and she twisted the syringe in her hand into the IV and slowly pushed the medication into his vein. Then he relaxed, his breathing slowing down.

"That'll help," she said.