It took nearly a week for Andrew to be released from the hospital, and in that time, he didn't hear from Cassandra at all. Abigail dropped in every day, except for a Wednesday when her husband Vlad had work and she spent the whole day looking after her son. She brought in old newspapers and tried to answer Andrews questions, and he was careful never to ask too many questions about Cassandra. They made Abigail tense up, and there was nothing to be done about the situation right now. Even if Andrew wanted to confront her, or try to win her back, now was not the time for it. He was still weak from the coma, and he looked about as much like himself as he felt, which was to say not at all.

On the day he was released, he could still walk scarcely more than a few steps, and Abigail had to push him out of the hospital in a wheelchair. The doctor promised that he would be out of it before he knew it, and it was certainly better than being bedridden, but it was still demoralizing that he needed help with as simple a task as walking.

"You know, this is an awful lot like pushing a stroller. If you think you could hold a one year old in your lap, I could start taking you to my stroller walking groups."

"That sounds... humiliating."

"You would have fun," Abigail assured him, though he was absolutely certain that he would not.

She didn't bring it up again, and she did prove remarkably capable of pushing him all the way to her car. It was a bright red minivan, and to someone who didn't know much about cars, it would have look rather unassuming. Andrew certainly didn't claim to know much about cars, but he did know a lot about Abigail and with the kind of money that she had, he felt sure that the van was top of the line, and maybe even more expensive than the sports cars she had driven back when they first met.

"Alright, let's get you strapped in. You're going to take this easier than Owen getting into his car seat, right?"

"I'm not a toddler," Andrew agreed, though in the end he did need quite a bit of help getting into the car. He had never realized before just how much of a step there was between the ground and the floor of the car, and as Abigail helped push him into the seat, he felt as though the coma had aged his body a hundred years rather than the three that it had actually claimed.

As he buckled his seatbelt, Abigail struggled with the cheap wheelchair that the hospital had issued. It was supposed to be able to fold for easy storage in the trunk, but it didn't seem to be cooperating, no matter the sequence of buttons she pushed and levers she pulled.

"And I thought strollers were hard," she joked, and rather than putting any more effort into dealing with the chair, she threw it haphazardly into the backseat without folding it. It was turning out to be a good thing that she had changed to a minivan, for Andrew at least.

About ten minutes later, they were outside of a familiar apartment building. It was eerie to look at so familiar a building-- so much of it was the same, but all sorts of small things had changed, from the trinkets on display in the window, to the font of the sign that welcomed them in. Though it was the first time Andrew had seen this redesign, it was already worn with time and looked rather old indeed. Andrew could have stared, mesmerized at all the little details forever, but Abigail was pushing him forward at a steady pace. They drew a few eyes, but each gaze that lingered would look away just as quickly, ashamed to be caught looking at at him.

"How are we going to get up to my floor?" he asked. "I could barely get in the car, I don't exactly think I'll be running up three flights of stairs any time soon."

"They fixed the elevator."

Andrew didn't say anything, but he raised an eyebrow. They had asked the building manager to fix the elevator a hundred times, but he had always made excuses about how long it would take. Three years was certainly a long time, but it was still off-putting to be rolled into a brand new elevator that looked as though it had already seen thousands of passengers.

The hallway was familiar, and when Abigail rolled him towards his own front door, he felt more at home than he had ever since he had woken up. He was already thinking about how Abigail claimed to have redone the whole apartment, and part of him resented her for that without even seeing the place. It was practical, sure, but now that he was awake, he could have used the comfort of his old place to make him feel a little bit better about the chaos that his life had become.

"You ready to head home?" Abigail asked, letting go of the handle of his wheelchair to grab the door for him. She looked back at him and smiled that same goofy grin that made her look so much like she always had, and Andrew felt bad for being upset. Of course Abigail hadn't meant to upset him. She was one of the sweetest people alive.

"I'm ready," he agreed, and as he took a deep breath he resigned himself to calling a new place home.

Dramatically, as if she was working on a home improvement show, Abigail opened the door. Little by little, and image revealed itself, and it didn't look anything like the modern, upgraded apartment that Andrew had been expecting. In fact, as the door opened fully and gave Andrew a glimpse into the room, he realized that the apartment looked an awful lot like it had when he left.