AN: So I got this anonymous review from the last chapter that says,
"That doesn't make sense. In chapter 8, Barry truly believes that he deserves to be punished but then this chapter comes and he wants to leave?"
I wanna address it before moving on.
Yes, in chapter 8, Barry's seems to be having a mantra that he deserves all the pain and torture the Dominators are putting him through. But there's a difference in what one thinks and what one believes. Because of the inner turmoil Barry is going through from all his accumulated mistakes, he thinks he deserves what's happening to him, but deep down, he wants to get away. It's just a natural survival instinct to want to get away from whatever it is that's hurting them.
So yeah, that's my explanation, I suppose.
Also, please note I have little to no medical knowledge. Bear that in mind. I have a certificate in first-aid training though...
Enjoy!
"Doctor Snow, I'm pleased to report that Mister Queen's vitals have stabilized."
She knows. She has eyes; she can see Oliver's vitals on the monitor but she remains polite. "Thanks, Gideon."
Thea shifts in the seat next to her brother's bed, bags on her eyes evident from the tears of relief she's been shedding. "Is he going to be okay?"
It's a legitimate concern, she understands. Despite the fact that her DNA is infused with the meta-gene, meaning there's always this possibility of her completely losing herself to her icy psychotic split personality imminent over her head, that doesn't mean she's lost her compassion as Caitlin Snow, licensed medical doctor.
Approaching the scared young woman with the pragmatic tenderness, she slips off the stethoscope from her ears and wounds it around her neck. "Physically, he'll be fine. He's just a little malnourished and dehydrated. The metal that'd been embedded in his sides gave him a couple of hairline fractures on his ribs. The cauterization Superman did to stop the bleeding is actually pretty good. Aside from that, he'll heal, Thea."
But Thea's smart; she has to be for her line of work as a civilian and as a vigilante. The young brunette's gaze holds hers with a weight of that who is grieving; she can't look away. "That's not what I meant."
She knows that's not what she means. In their certain professions, the younger being a vigilante and the older being a medic, they're no strangers to life-threatening injuries. Even though they are both a witness to several near-deaths and actual deaths, they make it through day by day because that's how one lives when one has this kind of job. They have to will themselves to believe those of them who risk their lives saving people, protecting them, will make it through another week because if they don't, they can lose themselves to paranoia.
But heroics has it toll on heroes. There's a reason not so many people want to do it. It's hard to keep loved ones at arm's length because they know bad people can use that to their advantage. It's hard to have a normal life when catastrophe can ooze out from anywhere. It's hard to see the ones affected by the ones they couldn't save.
It's hard to be selfless.
She glances back at her patient and friend.
If she's going to be perfectly candid, she hates it here in the Legends' ship. It's great for a piece of technological advancement but she doesn't like the med bay at all. Yes it's futuristic, yes Gideon's there but technology can never compare to sure hands. There's always going to be a margin of error, human error, but at least back in her station in STAR Labs, she has the power to do something. She can monitor vitals, perform surgery, draw blood, do tests, anything to keep her hands and mind busy, to keep herself from worrying.
But she can't do that here. It's all too advanced and all she can really do is wait for Gideon's constant updates and watch the monitor as Gideon does her job so she just stands there by Oliver's side like a tool that isn't needed for this particular job.
It's supposed to be her job.
Ever since the particle accelerator exploded, her predictable world was thrown upside on its head. Her life now is anything but predictable. In a room full of medical equipment and maybe an MRI, that's enough for her, predictable.
And then aliens.
It just had to be aliens they have to deal with now.
Will Oliver be okay?
After hearing from John Diggle the extent of their fake world of absolute perfection, then Thea's testimony of Oliver's further psychological torture and now a witness to every injury that's been inflicted on him, she can't be too sure if he'll bounce back from this one quickly. She inwardly shudders as she remembers the half-crazed eyes Oliver possessed before she had to tell Gideon to sedate him so he can't hurt himself further.
"Barry! I need to go! Kara!"
She's a doctor, a steady figure of authority over certainty. To Thea, her word on Oliver's condition is God because she is his physician.
"I don't know," she ends up saying, melancholy but genuine, "but he's Oliver. He'll be fine."
Thea takes her word for it.
Just as she's about to lay a consoling hand on the younger woman's shoulder, a breach appears and out pops Cisco.
"Cisco? Where's—"
She gets cut off quick. "Shh! No time to explain! We need your help!"
She gawks at him with wide eyes. "Me?" Of all people in this ship filled with heroes, goes unsaid.
"Well, we have a doctor back there but seeing as she's trying her best to keep an incredibly angry super-powered alien at bay, we need a second one."
"Why do you need a doctor?" Her mind immediately goes to Barry. How bad is he that they can't get him to her?
"We don't have time! The Dominators could come back any second!"
She doesn't hesitate. "Okay."
*—*—*—*—*
The first thing she notices is yellow lightning dashing around the room. Just yellow, pure yellow with no ounce of red so she knows that's Wally running around. Nate and Sara stand by the entrance, acting as defense. Kara and Alex are right in front of her, with the former bending a piece of metal in her hands while the latter is comforting her. And right behind them is a tank full of what looks to be some sort of clear liquid.
And Barry's inside it.
"Oh god!" She exclaims, running forward, hands running against the glass.
There's that feeling again of absolute fear and anger, bubbling beneath her skin, demanding her to pay attention, to let go. Even though she has the bracelet inhibitors, that voice within her is so loud. However, in all the times she's had that cold turmoil within her, she doesn't listen, doesn't heed to it. One of her best friends is in danger; Barry doesn't need her wreaking havoc across this ship when the situation clearly calls for a doctor and not a meta.
"Get him out!" She shouts, pounding a fist against the tank.
Lightning stops next to her. "That's the problem!" Wally tells her. "We don't know how! I can't find a button or anything!"
"So how are we supposed to get him back?"
"That's what we're hoping you'd know?"
She can't answer. Her mind is racing for ways to get Barry out safely. She looks up and finds his temples attached to wires. She understands now why Alex is controlling Kara; they can't have her bust him out not knowing the devastating consequences it could do to him. There's a collar around his neck and she instantly recognizes it as a power-inhibiting collar.
Ice beneath skin, she's slowly losing the battle that shouldn't even be taking place. She has the cuffs, and she can't lose herself in such a crucial time so she takes in a deep breath to ground herself.
God, he's thin, scarily thin for someone with a metabolism that's always skyrocketing. His face is gaunt, his ribs are protruding, the skin on his sides looks more torn that it was on Oliver. By the way his limbs look, she's scared his muscles are going into an atrophied state. With the collar on, his muscles can't regenerate themselves...
There's no other way. There's no other way she can think of to get him out quickly, for her comfort and for his safety. They're standing in a ticking time bomb; they don't know when they'll get swarmed by aliens running on bloodlust.
"We have no choice," she says carefully.
"But—"
"We have no choice!" She repeats, facing Wally. "We have to get out of here quick and I'm not seeing any of us making any progress to getting him out." She glances at Kara, whose eyes are glowing just a bit. "Kara."
She nods, looking relieved at the development of a plan. Alex lets go of her shoulder.
"Sara, we're going to need to head back to STAR Labs," she says.
"Oh no, you can go on ahead and tell Gideon. Nate and I are staying back to have a little chat with our alien friends."
She nods at the blonde. Nate looks at Sara. "We are?"
Any further comments are halted by the sound of glass shattering.
*—*—*—*—*
Without missing a beat, Cisco tells Gideon to take them back so the Waverider immediately goes back to present-day Central City, right in the parking lot of STAR Labs, ignoring the questions the others throw at them. Superman takes one look at Barry's state and Kara's panic, and flies straight into the atmosphere, presumably to help Sara and Nate. Over her shoulder, she tells Thea, Felicity and Ray that they need to transport Oliver into STAR Labs. Cisco then immediately breaches her, Alex, Kara, Barry and himself straight into their med bay.
"Just lay him down," she instructs Kara, going into what Cisco refers to as full-doctor mode. "And get that thing off him."
As she rummages around for her drip bags and needles, Kara gently rips off the collar around his neck and crushes the thing without even blinking. Alex is already controlling the bleeding with an ungodly amount of gauze; Kara tells her sister that she can just close up the wounds with her heat vision, as Superman did with Oliver.
"Okay, okay," Alex says, slowly peeling off the red stained gauze. "Do it."
She stands back and watches in morbid fascination as Kara's eyes tighten and a precise beam of light from each eye singe Barry's skin but effectively close up his wounds and stop the bleeding.
She decides that, since the bleeding has been controlled, they'll deal with that later; right now, the sharp angles of Barry's face will definitely haunt her dreams. She deftly inserts an IV line into the back of his hand, tapes it so it doesn't budge and sets it to flow through quickly.
God, he's even more malnourished than Oliver. The skin on the back of his hand isn't elastic and it scares her that he's practically dangerously dehydrated, almost to the point that he shouldn't even be alive.
Despite having worn the collar that temporarily severed his connection to the Speed Force, he still needs to consume food and drink water just as regularly as he had.
"Kara," Alex says as she attaches Barry to the heart monitor and sticks the pulse oximetry on his forefinger.
She's frantic. "What?"
"X-Ray vision. Tell me how his ribs are?"
She doesn't have time to ask and chat about such a fascinating power (Do you know how useful it is to have that power? Especially in a world full of heroes that tend to hide their broken bones just because they think their injuries are an inconvenience? Grow up! She's a doctor for this team for a reason). Kara glances down at Barry's torso as she sticks electrodes on his temples to keep track of his brain activity. The blonde stares for a few seconds before straightening out and blinking rapidly.
"He has three broken ribs, five bruised ones."
"His organs? Is he bleeding internally?"
"His organs seem... fine, but I'm not the best judge. I don't see any internal bleeding—"
Beeping interrupts her. There's a high-pitched staccato beeping that demands their attention as Barry's body jerks violently. His eyes are half-open and saliva escapes his mouth, bloodstained from what she suspects is from a wound he's bitten. Eyes quickly dart to the clock: it's 05:13. She looks up at the EEG machine and isn't surprised to see the high spikes but it scares her to see just how bad it is.
"What's happening?" Kara cries out. She understands; it's horrific to one who isn't exposed to such medical abnormalities.
"He's seizing!" She elaborates. She knows it's because they'd ripped off the wires attached to him prematurely in the ship. But there's also a possibility it's because he's essentially starved and dehydrated.
"Shouldn't we hold him down?"
"No, don't! I'm not gonna risk him breaking any more bones!" She points at a cupboard behind Kara. "Grab a pillow! Alex, help me turn him on his side!"
Both the sisters do as their told. As soon as Kara retrieves the pillow, she takes it and places it under Barry's head to keep him from causing any further injuries.
It's agonizing to watch Barry like this all over again. It's like back in 2014 when he was first wheeled in and she had to watch him get seizures almost every week. Medical mystery Barry Allen was, getting seizures when the monitors dictate he had no heart rhythm. Of course, a couple months down the line, they realize it's because his heart was actually beating too fast for the EKG to pick up.
The difference between then and now is that she knows Barry. He's not some enigma meant to be solved, he's a friend she has to get back.
This is Barry Allen. The Flash. He has to come back from the hell he's been put through because he's Barry.
She eyes the clock carefully as she waits for Barry's seizure to run its course, timing it so she'll know if it's worse than they think.
Eventually, before the clock reaches 05:17, the beeping stops and Barry's body relaxes.
But then that's when the loud steady noise starts.
"He's coding," she says in low voice before springing into action. "Vitals are dropping quick! Alex, the oxygen! Kara, stand back!"
She rolls Barry back from the recovery position. With one hand over the other on his chest, she starts doing compressions with a rhythm she can sort of zone out of. But she can't, not with Kara sobbing in front of her. She glances at her best friend, just remembering he's been here this whole time, crying silently on his own, and says, "Can you take Kara out?"
"No! I'm staying right here!"
Like Oliver, there's that almost-insanity that glazes over her eyes as she desperately watches Barry.
Right. She remembers they're soulmates: her and Barry. Then Thea told her Oliver's also their soulmate. She realizes it's not just worry on Kara's and Oliver's part; all three of these people are tethered together by the order of the universe. Both Kara and Oliver can feel to a certain degree what Barry has gone through, his pain, if their reactions are anything to go by.
She's not heartless.
She tells the blonde hero that she and Alex can't work with distractions and right now? They can't afford to have any.
She's lost Ronnie — her own soulmate — twice. And it almost literally killed her. But she's moved past it, thanks to Evil Wells (in his own spectacularly deceiving way), Cisco, Iris and, most importantly, Barry.
She doesn't want to find out just how much it would hurt to lose Barry. He's one of her closest friends and he stuck by her side through everything. He's proven to her so many times that he trusts her through and through; he even trusted her enough to place his life in her hands when she was in the crossroads of completely losing it to Killer Frost.
"C'mon. Kill me, Caitlin." The sharp piece of ice felt heavy in her trembling hand. "You can't do it. You can't. Because underneath all that cold, you're still you."
She has to trust in herself now, to not lose control because if Barry believes in her, she can too.
Ice beneath skin but she's covered in a thin sheen of sweat.
She can't lose someone so important to her, so integral in her life. No. Not again.
"I'll stand by the corner! Just— please don't make me leave!"
She allows that one compromise.
The double doors burst open and it's Thea, Diggle, Felicity and Ray wheeling Oliver in on a gurney.
God, not now.
"Is Barry dying?" Felicity yells in a panic but doesn't come any closer, and she grateful Felicity's smart enough to know that she and Alex need the space.
"What's happening?" Diggle asks. He and Ray push Oliver up to the bed next to Barry's, lifting him up and settling him in. Oliver's still unconscious, thank goodness.
"He just..."
The rest of Alex's sentence die when the screeching from the monitors stop and resumes to display the reading on Barry's vitals that are slowly starting to stabilize. She lets go of a breath she doesn't realize she's been holding and drops her hands to her sides. She exhales shakily, holding still for a moment in case anything goes wrong again. After a few seconds tick by, she lets her hands do their thing again.
She grabs the blood pressure cuff and puts it around Barry's left bicep, letting the sphygmomanometer do its thing. Seeing the drip bag finished, she fishes out a new one and replenishes Barry's IV. She grabs her tablet and makes quick notes of Barry's vitals. She shudders at how low his blood pressure is and how high his heart rate is; his temperature is significantly high: a hundred and six degrees, but that's to be expected from someone that's severely dehydrated. She inserts an endotracheal tube down his throat, straight into his airway to ventilate. With a couple of broken bones and the pulse oximetry displaying a low oxygen level, she knows he's having difficulty breathing, and having the tube sending oxygen straight to his lungs instead of relying on a mask or a nasal cannula gives her some semblance of a sense of peace.
People are talking around her but she's not listening. She's drowned herself in her work because she has to work.
She moves on to working on Oliver. There isn't much to do since Gideon has done much of the heavy lifting. All she does is attach him to the monitors, give him a drip and connects him to the ventilator with a nasal cannula.
As she's running the cannula over Oliver's ears, she can see Alex walk over to tell Kara to head outside, soak in the yellow sun before it goes completely dark so she can heal further and even gather more strength. She's surprised it doesn't take much coaxing. Kara nods and heads out the door.
But then the beeping starts again. On both Oliver's and Barry's monitors.
Of course.
"It's their soulmate bond that's keeping them stable... Kara! Come back!"
It'll all be okay.
She knows now.
She's going to fix them up.
She's a doctor.
That's her job.
Ice beneath skin. She grabs her handbag and fishes out the charger to her cuffs. She works best without ice beneath her skin.
I know. Not as exciting as the previous chapter, I admit.
Shameless self-promotion: come say hi/follow me on tumblr at temmie-loony. I post WAY TOO MUCH Karivarry stuff on there that I can't really put into fics.
AN: I'm no damn science person, much less a medical one, but I tried. *cue me closing all my tabs of Youtube videos and medical articles so I can at least make this somewhat believable*
Actually, this was supposed to come out first week of September. As I said on my last fic, I struggle with bad carpal tunnel syndrome and chronic leg pain that I was supposed to take a break for a month. But my carpal tunnel surgery was postponed from last week to today so I've devoted the past week to writing this so the wait for the next chapter won't be as long.
Thank you.