The car in flames and the subsequent explosion of the gas tank might have made a dramatic backdrop to their jog towards the train tracks had it been paired with a suitably epic soundtrack. As it was, Natasha's jog was more of a limp and the soundtrack was a steady stream of curses in a delightful range of languages.
They crouched just inside the treeline, within twenty metres of the tracks, listening to the train getting closer. Clint glanced across at Natasha with concern. Her face was set in a carefully controlled expression of concentration, automatically hiding her pain behind an indifferent mask. He did note the tension in her jaw though. He didn't say anything; for now they just needed to finish their extraction. The only thing that mattered was getting on to the train.
They'd chosen this section of track for extraction because it curved around the base of a hill, forcing the train to slow down. It also meant that if they boarded the eleventh carriage, they would be out of view of the driver.
The lead car went by, then the second, then the third. As the sixth carriage passed them, they ran in a diagonal to tracks, Natasha in front and him behind. "Seven… Eight... Nine…" He counted out the cars as they were overtaken by them. As the tenth rushed past and the eleventh came up, he grabbed the rail next to the open cargo door. "I'm up!" He shouted. Nat took a quick glance over her shoulder and jumped up to the rail at the front of the opening. An involuntary groan escaped her as she swung herself up into the car. He climbed in after her.
She lay flat and didn't bother moving other than to thump the floor with her fist, wrestling to get a control on her pain. He kicked the blister-pack over to her but she made no move to take them. He wasn't surprised; she would only take a dose sufficient to take the edge off, never enough to make her groggy.
He cracked open the crate that held their supplies. Grabbing the med-kit, he pulled out the scissors and cut away her jacket. "Ah shit." He muttered, getting to work cutting off her grey SHIELD t-shirt. The right side of her chest wasn't moving as she breathed and as the fabric of her shirt fell away he could see why; purple-red bruising was spreading across her ribs. He gently pressed his fingers against the bruising, feeling the slight give beneath the pressure. The vehemently hissed litany of curses she directed at him confirmed what his eyes and fingers were already telling him: at least two ribs were broken and had punctured her lung.
Air was filling the pleural space, slowly compressing her lung. He rifled through the med-kit for an empty syringe. "Pneumothorax." He said quickly, "I'll try aspirating first."
Nat just nodded and grit her teeth as he inserted the needle between her ribs and removed the plunger. He was rewarded by a quiet hiss of air escaping. "Honestly, Nat, what is this, amateur hour? Thought you'd be more careful knowing there was an inhuman involved." He said with a smirk. It was a cheap attempt at humour but it got the right reaction- a grimace-smile that promised retribution.
Her breathing was shallow and rapid and her face was ashen. After several minutes she whispered "It's getting worse. Looks like… you get… practice… your in-field trauma… management." She winced as she lifted her right arm and rested her hand behind her head.
"How good of you to provide the opportunity, Agent Romanoff." He replied dryly. Of course it had been too much to hope that aspirating would be sufficient. He set about removing the right items from the med-kit and snapping on a pair of latex gloves. It didn't take him long to lay everything out.
He let muscle memory set in as he cut through her bra, exposing the skin beneath her armpit. "You're buying me a new one." She hissed through gritted teeth.
"Yeah, yeah I know" he muttered, passing her a bundle of wooden tongue depressors which she quickly clamped between her teeth. He sent up a silent prayer of thanks that the bra he had just ruined was a sports bra and not one of the lacy ones that were so extortionately expensive. Swabbing a large area of skin he looked up at her. Ready? He asked silently. She nodded, biting down on the tongue depressors.
He pressed an epi-pen-like device against her skin several times, punching lidocaine into the tissue. It would numb some of the pain but this procedure would still hurt like hell. Next he grabbed a scalpel and made a 2cm incision through the skin. He glanced up at her again; her face was impassive. Then again, the incision was child's play by comparison to what was coming next.
He took a couple of deep breaths, then swapped the scalpel for a pair of Kelly forceps clamps. "Please don't castrate me for this later." He muttered, only partly to himself. Then he began using the forceps to dig through the subcutaneous tissue. Almost immediately the muscles in Nat's arm bunched as she fought the fresh pain. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Apologies became a mantra for him.
Natasha squeezed her eyes tight shut as agony radiated across her torso. As if broken ribs weren't bad enough, now her partner was digging through skin and tissue like a collie digging for a bone. The pain intensified as he reached the muscle and continued digging. She slammed the heel of her fist against the floor, barely registering the increased frequency of his 'I'm sorry' mantra. She tried to breathe through it but by this point it felt like she was suffocating. She gasped, attempting to drag air into her remaining functional lung.
Finally she snapped. A weak, strangled yell tore from her throat and was muffled by the tongue depressors clamped between her teeth. White hot pain flared and she thumped the floor repeatedly, willing Clint to hurry up.
"Okay, I'm through." He said, his voice a little strained.
Well isn't that just fucking marvellous? She thought to herself. At least it no longer felt like someone was stabbing her with a chisel. Now they were only using a medium-sized flathead screwdriver. How considerate. Of course when he used another pair of forceps to insert the chest tube, she bit down on the tongue depressors so hard she thought her teeth might shatter.
Clint sutured the chest tube in place; a much louder hiss of escaping air greeted him. Thank God. If he had messed this up Nat would likely have rammed the forceps so far up his ass that Stark wouldn't be the only Avenger with shrapnel zeroing in on his heart. Even now she looked to be breathing a bit easier.
She spat out the tongue depressors and carefully allowed every tensed muscle in her body to go limp. Relief was evident on her face. After a few moments she forced out, "Barton… I'm going to remove… your balls… with a coffee grinder."
"Well you could, but you'd miss them almost as much as I would." He replied with a shit-eating grin.
She narrowed her eyes at him, then relented. "Fine. Just one ball… with a vegetable peeler. Deal?"
"Counter offer: How about you turn the peeler on whichever moron failed to mention we'd be taking on a self-destructing inhuman bomb?" He replied, applying a dressing to where a bullet had grazed her abdomen. When he glanced back at her face, she looked positively gleeful. He pitied the poor bastard who had so spectacularly messed up their intel. "You know, there is a small silver lining to the clouds of this shit-storm."
"And what's that?" Nat raised an eyebrow sceptically.
"Well thanks to the pneumothorax, you can't fly for at least two months."
Her eyes narrowed again, warning him to get to the point before she started reconsidering her position on coffee grinders and his balls.
"And that means you won't be stuck spending your R&R in the Tower with Stark driving you crazy."
"I think my lung collapsing may just have saved Tony's life."