The Human Torch Vol. 2 #28:
HOSPITALIZED!
Avengers: Promethean War Tie-In
Las Vegas, the capital of American sin, crumbled into a gray and dust brown skeleton of a city. Hotels and casinos and skyscrapers, once shining in neon splendor and roaring with music and gambling machines and people, collapsed like stacks of smoke and hot powder. Dust and grit wafted high and rolled over the roads in thick blankets like ash pulsed out a volcano. Amid the evacuated city ruins, a hundred costumed heroes battled a mutated human named Leader.
Leader stood at an intersection in the middle of the city. His skin pigment was an unnatural chemical green, and his body was emaciated. His brain and skull had overgrown into a sickly bulbous formation, and his eyes glowed with radioactive heat. With his mind he levitated cars, ripped streetlights out of the asphalt, and gutted buildings of their glass windows and steel beams. He flung the debris at the heroes. Soon, a man with angelic and white feathered wings lay dead on a heap of rubble with a metal rod jutting out of his back, and a beautiful young woman with frost white hair and a black suit felt the impact of a car ram into her and died instantly.
Jonathon Storm, the Human Torch, was among the heroes waging war on Leader. He soared over the city, his body aflame like a golden comet, and he dipped downward and rushed towards Leader. An uprooted tree sped at him, and he maneuvered out of the way. Broken glass shards flew at him, and one large shard cut into his leg just below the knee and out the other side. Jonathon first felt nothing, then felt a hint of pain. He noticed the wound and retreated to distant ground to examine it. The deep cut pumped out hot blood. He smelled the metallic odor and called to Reed Richards in an ear piece.
"Reed, I'm hurt. I think I'm bleeding out," he said.
Reed came and examined the wound. Adrenaline pumped through John's body, so the pain was numbed or maybe he willed through it. Reed called to Cloak and told him to take Johnny to a hospital away from the city. John started to feel lightheaded. Cloak wrapped John in his black cape and they vanished and John only saw dark. It was cold.
They suddenly stood in a hospital lobby. John slowly slipped from consciousness. He saw a haze of bright florescent lights.
"Can you hear me?" said a man's voice as John lay on an operating table. "My name is Dr. Steinbeck and you're in the hospital." The doctor spoke quickly.
A woman piped fast about removing cloth and dirt.
"Leader shot glass at him, probably from a hotel window," said Cloak.
The doctor continued to speak to John. "You have a complete puncture wound in your leg, Jonathon. Try to stay with us, okay?"
The doctor and nurses worked fast.
"Is he allergic to any medication?" said a nurse.
"I don't know," said Cloak.
The doctor began to stitch the wound.
"Stay with us, Jonathon. Jonathon."
"Must get going," said Cloak, and he was gone.
The nurse saw Cloak disappear and was startled and went back to work on John. The doctor hadn't noticed and moved his hands with intense focus.
"Give me two milligrams of TXA," he said.
Thirteen stitches later and John regained consciousness in a private hospital room. The lights were bright and the room tilted. A nurse came to check on him. He mumbled a string of noises that made sense to him, and she sweetly responded in plain English that he couldn't quite understand and wouldn't remember. He looked left and right wide-eyed. His English became better. He talked about a penguin he bought in Dubai. He spoke slow with his eyes almost closed.
"Where's my penguin," he said.
He still felt dizzy, but his mind cleared. The room stopped tilting and soon he could think and process his surroundings. The pallid lights cast an almost greenish sheen on the colorless wallpaper and ceiling tiles. The bed sheets were thin and stiff, and the room reeked of latex gloves and cleaning sprays. John felt weak, but he felt no pain.
His sense became sharper, almost fully normal. Thin plastic tubes stuck to his arm. One tube carried blood, the other a clear liquid. He listened to a beeping of a heart monitor and also the occasional footsteps and voices from outside the room. The air conditioner dryly blew, a clock chugged a ticking rhythm, and a phone beeped outside once or twice.
There was a knock and the door opened, and in came a nurse carrying a clipboard. She looked about middle age, with shineless brown hair and a thin face.
"How are you feeling, Mr. Storm?" she said.
"Fine," said John unthinkingly.
The nurse briefed him on where he was and what had happened. A hospital in New York City, a puncture wound from glass, a hole in the leg, thirteen stitches. As the nurse talked, John noticed a framed color photograph on the wall. The photograph showed a swarm of motor boats docked in front of old Venetian buildings. He studied the driverless boats and tried to sit up.
"No, stay lying down. You've lost a lot of blood and the doctor wants you to get your rest."
John said okay, okay and remembered the collapsing gray husk buildings of Las Vegas.
"How long have I been here?" he said.
The nurse began to change out his I.V. bag.
"You were admitted about six hours ago."
The nurse said the doctor would be here soon, and she asked Mr. Storm if he needed anything else. He said no and she left.
The door closed and John sat up and moved to the side of the bed. His feet were bare and touched the cold smooth tile. He was wearing a teal gown. His blue and black uniform was folded on a chair next to him.
The hospital room had a squat square window. It was dusk outside, and a red sun had almost vanished beneath the black silhouette of a cityscape. The sun was still up but the city lit to life like a starry curtain. Soft yellow and occasional white lights checkered the buildings and dotted them, and below, the streets flowed with head lights and tail lights, like an ocean reflecting satellites and falling stars. The sky dimmed to a murky and somber blue, and between the buildings, the horizon hummed dark red. It looked as if a solemn Prometheus was bringing fire down to man for the first time.
John listened to the ceaseless clock, and he thought about Las Vegas. Leader was becoming more powerful. He had already killed Worthington and Felicia Hardy and possibly others, and John was needed there. He didn't wield the hammer of the gods or control the magic of the mysterious and unknown dimensions, but he could help. He wondered if the battle was even still going on.
John pulled the tubes off his arm. He stood up and felt lightheaded and almost fell back on the bed. His body was exhausted and sore and his leg was starting to hurt. He grabbed his uniform off the chair and changed. The uniform rubbed and pressed on his stitches where his irritated and reddened skin bulged. His leg seared with pain and he tried to cope with it by breathing fast and hard and scrunching his face. The uniform was on and it had a gaping hole around his stitches where the glass had cut through.
He left his room and walked down the hallways of the hospital. The medicines had begun to wear off and his leg almost buckled from the pain. Doctors and nurses and visitors watched and tried not to look obvious while doing it at John as he limped past them. He made it to the elevators and pressed a small round button with a black arrow pointing down. The button around the arrow flicked to a dirty yellow light, and a moment later he heard a quiet mechanical groan behind the elevator doors. A light above the elevator lit with the same dirty yellow light, and the stainless steel double doors opened.
John went in, and inside were neat rows of numbered round buttons. He pressed a button marked with the black letter "G." The button glowed. The metal doors closed, and he was on his way down, like Prometheus carrying fire.