Just a little one-shot for your Saturday. Ambiguously set sometime in season one or two.

Based on the prompt "I don't know why I ever thought I could do this."

Enjoy!

"I don't know why I ever thought I could do this," Caitlin hissed, adjusting her ill-fitting seafoam-green scrubs. "This is ridiculous. It's never going to work."

"Everyone looks good in a nurse's outfit," Cisco murmured back. "It's like, number one sexy costume, right? See, even I look spectacular."

If anything, his scrubs were baggier than Caitlin's, obviously not meant for him. The surgical mask on his face thwarted any attempt at a cheesy smile he might have been giving her. Caitlin rolled her eyes, and the elevator dinged. The two of them resumed their stoic expressions, back on task in an instant.

"I'm going to kill you," Caitlin whispered, one parting shot.

"As I recall, this was your idea," Cisco replied in a low voice. Then he straightened, cleared his throat, and hollered, "Make way, injured patient coming through! Clear the area!"

The two of them bolted out of the elevator and into the waiting hallway, pushing the hospital gurney between them. On the gurney lay Barry, still dead to the world and oblivious of the chaos happening around him.

When Cisco had gotten the call that there had been a shooting at the precinct, his first instinct had been to worry about Joe. It wouldn't have been the first time that an old, vengeful criminal went after him, and it was just as likely that Joe would've gotten himself involved in the mess anyway. However, the second call came from Joe himself, a garbled, half-unrecognizable message:

"Gunman in the precinct—I'm out of town, Cisco, I can't get there—Barry was—"

Barry was shot.

When Cisco had relayed the news to a worried Caitlin, her brow had furrowed even deeper, but not for the reasons Cisco might have expected.

"His speed-healing," she said. "If he was taken to Central City General, and they keep him there, they're going to notice. They're going to connect the dots."

"So?" Cisco had replied, running hand through his hair. "He's shot, Caitlin. What are you proposing? That we break him out of the hospital?"

It turned out, that was exactly what she had been suggesting. Which is how Cisco found himself sprinting down a hospital corridor in someone else's scrubs, wheeling a despondent and possibly catatonic Barry Allen away from all of the doctors that had been helping him. It was, in a word, ridiculously idiotic. Okay, two words.

"Stay cool," he told Caitlin as they ran.

Caitlin threw him a sardonic glance.

It was amazing the kind of power one could wield with a set of hospital scrubs on and an unconscious patient with a chest wound in tow. They passed other hospital workers and visitors alike, and all unconsciously pressed themselves against the wall in respect to the speeding gurney barreling down the hall.

Panting, Caitlin looked across the gurney at Cisco again. "I can't believe we're actually doing this."

"Told you we could get away with it," Cisco said, half-laughing himself, despite the circumstances. "Never discount the merits of a good disguise. People don't even recog—"

He and Caitlin stopped simultaneously. If this was a cartoon, there would have been a comical screeching noise, a puff of smoke, a skidding of feet.

As it was, there was no sound or movement, just Cisco and Caitlin's dropped jaws and David Singh's ragged confusion as he confronted them in the middle of the hall.

"What are you doing with him?" Singh asked. Blood smeared bright red down the front of his shirt. "Where are you taking him?"

"Captai—" Cisco swallowed the word, transformed it mid-sentence. "Sir? Please, uh, step away from the patient."

"Have you been waiting for him?" Caitlin interjected, frowning. Cisco shot her a warning glare, but she was too focused on the agitated Captain.

"He, uh," said Singh, planting his hands on his hips and looking down at Barry. It wasn't a power stance, the hands on the hips, but one of distress. A second of observing the injured man was enough to make him avert his eyes. "He took the bullet for me, you know. He's always been an invaluable part of the team, but I never expected…I don't even know how he got in front of me so fast, he…"

He made eye contact with Cisco, sick-looking. Cisco could identify. Though he'd been there since the Flash's inception, it was never easy seeing his friend like this, not with the mess of IVs and wires and the thick gauze patch too near his heart, hiding the bullet wound itself.

However, after a moment, Cisco realized that Singh's gaze was more than just that relatable fear.

Oh, shit.

"You're…" Singh's expression melted into a frown. "You, you're…"

"A well-respected and trained doctor?" Cisco supplied, and he could feel the absolute exasperated frostiness stinging him from across the gurney.

"We're moving him to a different hospital," Caitlin filled in. "We're seeking more advanced treatment."

Singh's frown deepened, and his gaze shifted back and forth between Caitlin and Cisco. His eyes were impossible to read. "He's going to be…okay, isn't he?"

Caitlin offered a reassuring smile, though the only part of the gesture that made it past the surgical mask was a crinkling of the eyes. "We'll take care of him, don't you worry."

She nodded at Cisco, and he tightened his grip on the gurney, ready to continue their mad dash out of the hospital. "Uh, excuse me, sir, we should really get going."

Just as Cisco was taking his first step, though, Singh snagged him around the arm. Cisco's heart leapt to his throat. He wanted to scream Take him and run, Caitlin! Take him and run! But Singh looked him straight in the eye.

"Godspeed."

He released Cisco's arm. There was no time to stand there dumbstruck, however much Cisco wanted to. Caitlin urged him forward, and he reluctantly turned back to the task at hand. Passing nurses were starting to give them funny looks, anyway.

As they continued down the hospital hallways, the old panic of potential discovery reared its head again, but Cisco and Caitlin faced it wordlessly this time, their misplaced shoes slapping against linoleum. It was only when they were outside in the fresh night air, away from the pervasive stench of antiseptic, that either of them breathed marginally easier.

Clumsily they loaded up the stretcher into the back of the truck, a decidedly non-hospital-looking truck and far more sketchy than anticipated when they'd hatched their half-baked plan. With the stretcher fully loaded in, Caitlin lowered the mask from her face, perhaps to ease the sense of suffocation Cisco shared. Her composure shifted for the first time, another clear sign that the adrenaline was falling. She fussed over her patient with tiny, delicate motions—lifting an eyelid to check his pupils, checking the freshly-stitched bullet wound beneath its gauze, passing a hand through his hair.

It occurred to Cisco then that the blood on Singh's shirt had most likely been Barry's. He closed the doors to the truck and clambered into the driver's seat, but paused before starting the engine. "Singh. He said something…odd to me. You don't think…"

Caitlin shrugged up the shoulder of her ill-fitting scrubs and smiled thinly, knowingly. "Just drive, Cisco. All things considered, I'd rather not get arrested by hospital security tonight."

Thanks so much for reading! If you enjoyed, please leave a comment below!

Till next time,

Penn