Assault, injuries, and hospital stay (my poor MC)

I'm sure someone with real medical knowledge would be of more help, but if someone's unconscious they're not feeling pain so giving them painkillers wouldn't make sense. 24 hours of unconsciousness would mean traumatic brain injury of some degree, and anything that would mask the symptoms of brain damage would not be used.

The kick could cause anything from bruised or broken ribs to major organ damage and internal bleeding. These are very life-threatening. I think it's possible that a symptom of internal bleeding may be thirst?

I can't imagine that she would be dehydrated, as they'd almost certainly put her on intravenous fluids.

More concerning is the amount of brain injury she must have sustained to remain unconscious that long. Outside of fiction, most people don't just 'faint' and stay unconscious for hours. Normally the moment your head becomes level with your heart, the blood flow resumes to your brain.

Prolonged unconsciousness, as far as I know, signals severe brain injury.

One suggestion is that during the time between when she is attacked and when you want the next scene to start, you can have her be kind of stunned and "out of it" from adrenaline so that time seems to pass strangely, and that way you can basically cut from the attack to the hospital with just a "the next several hours were a blur of flashing lights and concerned faces" type of transition.

I have heard of people after car accidents/attacks barely remembering being taken to the hospital, even when they had no brain injuries and were reportedly conscious for the whole thing.

However, in a hospital setting the nurses are going to be overworked and will be attending the patient in the next room who is screaming their head off and throwing the bedpan. The unconscious patient will be on a variety of monitors that will beep if the patient stops breathing. The nurses might only see her every couple of hours to check vitals and don't realize that she's in and out except if she changes position in bed. If the patient is truly only unconscious for an hour or so and then just sort of out of it (combative when they try to talk to her, shine lights at her face etc, but otherwise "resting comfortably") for a day, there need not be any major long term brain injury. Being in a hospital does not mean there is a nurse watching them 24 hours a day. Being "unconscious" means different things to different people. If you avoid mentioning medical terms that are specific to certain medical definitions of varying stages of unconsciousness, then you might not need much rewriting. It could be as simple as adding one line of the doctor telling the family, "Well technically it's not a coma. Right now the scans are ok and we just need to let her rest and keep an eye on things." To the average person, being in a deep sleep is the same.

Oh, but she will wake up either in diapers or with a catheter. That IV fluid has to go somewhere, and they will want to monitor the output in some sort of fashion.

mmm, that was weird, my computer didn't list any posts after #5 until after I posted

If she's unconscious, and doesn't regain consciousness in the ER, she would go to ICU. They wouldn't just put her in a bed on a regular floor. Yes, they'd check vitals but they'd also do periodic neuro checks, waking the patient up and assessing whether they are alert and oriented. All that stuff has to be charted.