Hela searched her bag again, after a moment her fingers brushing a familiar bottle. "Here, this might help." She said as she dropped to the ground on Victoria's other side, a small blue bottle, almost glowing, in her hand. "Ma'am, try to swallow, alright? Just a few drops." she called softly as she uncapped the bottle and pressed it to Victoria's lips, letting a tiny bit of the liquid trickle into her mouth.
"What is that?" Did the Asgardians have something for healing?
"Strengthening potion. Healing spells and elixirs are tricky at best, and without more experience with mortals it's too risky. A strengthening potion, though, it might buy some time." Her fingers gently stroked, sparkles of blue light dancing, and speeding up the work of the potion, the red streaks in Victoria's hair fading and her hair lightening all together.
It tingled, whatever had slipped down her throat tingled, but Victoria suddenly found the strength to open her eyes. Anything more than a few inches from her face was a blur, her glasses streaked with swamp water and the frame bent, and she couldn't draw a decent breath, but there were people with her. People who knew who she was. Maybe there was a chance, if for nothing else to to warn Coulson and the other agents before it was too late.
"Whatever that stuff is, it's working." Bruce said. It wasn't much, but the pulse he had barely been able to find a moment before was coming back. It wasn't much, still a weak flutter, but hopefully enough for them to get her to the hospital. How to get her to the hospital, though, that was going to be tricky. Tony or Thor flying her, he wasn't sure if that was the best plan, given how bad this was.
"I can get us there, if you can show me where to go." Hela said. "Papa gave me something, to open his secret ways between the realms."
"Okay." Bruce wasn't sure what she was talking about, but he was going to go with it. If she had some way to move them fast, this lady might have a shot. "Tony, we need to get her to a level one trauma center. Can you find the closest one?"
"Trauma…. Here." He hadn't thought to summon his armor but he still had tablet in hand, and maybe that was the better option. He pulled up something and then held the resulting hospital website complete with map out to Hela.
"That's good. We talked to a doctor there when we were trying to find someone to do Tony's surgery. They're good." Pepper said as she looked at the tablet.
"Level one trauma?" Bruce watched as Thor lifted the injured agent as carefully as possible, a third blanket tucked around her, and adjusted her a bit, so her head was supported against his shoulder.
"Right. Best around according to whoever does their PR."
"Sleipnir, Jor, the two of you wait here. Watch those two villains." Hela ordered her oldest and baby brothers. Fenrir could pass for a Midgardian dog if he shrank a bit but her other brothers would send humans screaming. She stood, and touched the crystal of her necklace, a pulsing blue light jumping from her fingertips to the stone and then out, washing over the group as they vanished through the newly opened pathway.
"We can't tell anyone who she is." Tony said as they appeared, just outside the doors to the emergency room, where luckily there were no ambulances waiting, or people to spot them. With the chaos at Shield and the Hydra situation, and he recognized the agent in question. Victoria Hand was pretty high ranking. If anyone knew she was helpless in a hospital, he wouldn't be surprised if either the government didn't go after her for Shield info or Hydra didn't make another attempt to kill her.
"We found her on a walk." Walking in the middle of a swamp sounded crazy, but they were with Tony Stark. People expected crazy from him. "Hey!" Bruce shouted as they came through the doors. "We need help now!"
A nurse looked up, her eyes going wide at the sight of the group pushing through the doors. Was that Tony Stark? But then she caught sight of the woman the large man was carrying, blood soaking through makeshift dressings, and she jumped to her feet, hitting a button that had more help appearing in moments.
"Here. What happened?" a doctor said as he motioned for them to get Victoria onto the stretcher an intern shoved in.
"We don't know." Tony said. "We were taking a walk and we found her, on the edge of the water out near my new place. Bruce here's a doctor. He bandaged her up and we got her here as fast as we could."
"Three gunshots, two to the back, one to the abdomen." Bruce added. "Extremely labored breathing, the right side of her chest is barely moving at all."
"Ma'am, can you hear me?" The doctor called as he pressed his stethoscope to Victoria's chest. The woman's eyes were open but unfocused. No breath sounds on the right side and there was tracheal deviation to the left. She had to have a massive hemothorax going on. "Page Peters and Wilcox down here now!" he ordered the nurse at they started to hustle the stretcher towards a trauma room. "And tell them to get a OR prepped! Anyone who isn't critical, bounce them if they have to! And tell the bloodbank I need four units of O negative blood up here yesterday and activate the massive transfusion protocols!"
"Can you go to the waiting room? Someone will be with you shortly." The nurse said, waving with one hand as she hit buttons on the phone to activate the necessary personnel. "The police will want to talk to you."
"What they're doing, it sounds like they know what they're doing, right?" Tony demanded as soon as the group was off in a corner of the waiting room, with Hela casiting silencing and notice me not spells to give them privacy.
"They're moving fast. Get a chest tube in, get transfusions started, get her up to surgery, she's got a chance." Bruce said after a moment.
"Would it help if we could watch?" Hela asked. "Hildy found a spell in one of my books that allows for limited observation."
"A spying spell?" Thor said.
"With her brothers, the child needs it." Hela replied. "And it's limited in the distance it can reach, but I'll try if it might help."
"Try it." Bruce said, and Hela waved her hands, chanting softly as the air shimmered in front of her, before an image appeared.
"Ma'am?" the doctor or who Victoria assumed was a doctor from the way he was talking, called to her. He was just a blurry figure to her as people moved around her, cutting her clothes away, removing her glasses which limited her vision more, and attaching wires and tubes everywhere. "Ma'am, we're going to help you. Just stay awake, alright? Let's get a chest x-ray to confirm before I get a tube in." The doctor said before turning to the intern who was drawing blood. "I need a type and cross and coag profile as fast as the lab can get it!"
What he expected was on the x-ray, two bullets still in the lung, and a right lung almost filled with blood, leaving barely any space for air to move. "Ma'am, this might hurt a bit." He injected an anesthetic into Victoria's side, but he with how bad the damage was, he didn't have the time to make sure it had taken effect completely before making a cut into her right chest wall, and pushing the chest tube into place.
"What happened?" Doctor Wilcox called as she hurried in. "I didn't hear an ambulance calling a trauma like this in." Blood was pouring from the chest tube, not good.
"A group of people brought her in. They said they found her out in the swamp. I swear one of them was Tony Stark." the first doctor, Doctor Martin said as he worked, securing the tube and making sure it was hooked up to the drains before placing a second to hopefully clear the blood faster and get some space for air in her lung again. Her O2 readings were lousy, hovering in the 80s, and her blood pressure was in the extreme danger zone, 50/30 and dropping. "Does someone have that blood?"
"Got it." A nurse called as she hurried in and got the blood hooked into place to be rapidly infused. "They're getting plasma and typed blood ready. The OR's on standby." Doctor Peters, the thoratic surgeon came hurrying in behind her, and after a moment to study the scene, turned to the x-rays, trying to figure out the best approach if they could get this woman to the operating room.
"She's bleeding into her belly." Doctor Wilcox called as she gently examined the abdominal wound. "How much blood has she lost?" A lung nearly completely filled, couldn't that hold nearly 40 percent blood volume, and add the bloodless into the abdomen and then external bleeding, this woman had to have lost at least 60 percent. But her eyes were still open, and it looked like her vision was tracking people moving around the room. That was the only positive sign she could see. "Do we have a name for her?" It probably didn't matter to them, but she always liked to have a name for her patients.
"No ID, the people who brought her in said they didn't have a clue. The police are on their way. Hopefully they can get an ID for us." Blood pressure was edging up a bit, 55 over 30. Not stable and he normally wouldn't move someone with a pressure less than 60, but he had the feeling this lady didn't have that time. "Let's get her to the OR now!"
"Ma'am, we're taking you to surgery now. Just stay with us a little longer." Victoria heard one of the doctors say as she felt herself moving. She struggled to comply even as she felt her mind drifting away. A message. She had tried her best to leave a message. Had the people who had found her understood? Even if it was too late for her, the rest of Shield had to know what happened.
"Surgery. They're getting her to surgery. That's good, right?" Tony asked as the image faded. And he had recognized one of the doctors, Peters he thought the name was. He was good. Good doctors and they could fix this, right?
"I'd like it if her blood pressure had been up a little more, but she was still awake. That's a point in her favor." Bruce said after a moment.
"We need to call someone. Tony, do you know how to get ahold of anyone trustworthy? What about Natasha or Clint? Or Steve?"
"I've been trying to get them since this happened no luck." Tony said.
"Coulson." Hela said, her voice soft and her eyes suddenly focused on something beyond all of them. "No." She called firmly. "You've done your duty. Let the doctors do theirs now. There's nothing you can do for her but endanger her."
"What…" Betty started to say.
"She sees dead people." Darcy blurted. "It made our tour of the Tower of London really interesting."
"Dead people? And you couldn't have mentioned this while we were in Vegas?" Tony said.
"Tony." Pepper hissed. Dead people, that explained what Hela had been saying back in the swamp. "The other bodies from the plane?"
"Guards from the Hub. Agent Hand managed to hold it for Shield." Hela said after listening for a moment. "The other man's John Garrett. A Hydra agent they were transporting to the Fridge. Ward was his protege. He asked to come along, and then shot them, and took over the plane."
"Do they know anyone we can contact to let them know what happened?" Pepper asked as the name Hela had mentioned suddenly hit her. "Wait did you say…."
"Agent Coulson was at the Hub. He might still be there." Hela replied.
"I sent two hundred dollars in flowers to his funeral. He isn't dead?" Tony said.
"My Lady Sif saw him not more than a few weeks ago when she came in search of Lorelei." Hela said. "Papa says he's a very bad influence."
"Loki." Hela had been talking about her father in the present tense the entire time she had been on Midgard. Why hadn't he picked that up before? His brother had managed to fool him again. "And is there anyone else who's death might be in error that we should know about?" Thor asked his niece.
"Grandmother, although to be fair, I didn't know she and grandfather hadn't visited and informed you of what happened until I arrived on Midgard myself. Grandmother said they were going to tell you. She said she wanted to see England at a time when their capitol wasn't on fire and bridges weren't falling down. But apparently Grandfather's new fascination with Mai Tais and parasailing distracted them a bit. And…. Look." Hela's eyes went wide and she pointed at her uncle, and the front of his shirt, stained with blood, blood that formed numbers and letters.
"She wrote a phone number." Tony said. Not able to speak, Victoria had written what could have been a final message in her own blood. "Let's just hope it's Coulson's." He pulled out his phone and crossed his fingers as he dialed. He would even forgive Agent those expensive flowers if he would just answer the phone now.
