Lois II

It wasn't the first time Lois had ridden in an aid car while they took Superman to Metropolis General. And she hated the feeling even more now than she had the first time. The feeling of helplessness, when all there was left was hope and prayers. It had been a long time since he'd been exposed to kryptonite and even then he hadn't fallen unconscious.

He was so pale and his hands were cold when they put the stretcher into the van. She had to sit in front, with the driver. There wasn't room in the back for her. It wouldn't look right, in any case. Publicly, she was married to Clark Kent, not Superman. Superman was married to the Lady Zara of New Krypton. Oh, if they only knew how complicated it really was.

Doctor Klein would be waiting for them. She had called him before the aid car left the house, rousing him from bed.

Clark was starting to gasp for breath, never a good sign. The technician tending to him placed an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. Superman on oxygen. He hates that. He hates that feeling of helplessness. Dear God, let him be all right.

Bernie Klein was waiting in the emergency room when the aid car rolled in. He trotted beside the gurney as they wheeled their patient into the waiting examination room. "What happened?" he asked Lois.

"An assassin had a poisoned knife. Kryptonite and something else," she explained.

"He started having trouble breathing about ten minutes ago," the EMT said.

Clark's breathing had gone from bad to worse even as the emergency room team transferred him from the gurney to the examining table. One of the technicians pushed a thick, black, hose-like tube down his throat and set up the respirator. The rest of the team was already starting their protocols. Determine current condition, check for other injuries, start IVs, take samples. The suit was cut off his body, put in a bag for later examination.

The lighting had already been shifted to a redder light spectrum. After fourteen years of having Superman in Metropolis, the largest, most modern hospital in the region was actually prepared to treat an injured Kryptonian.

Klein, a medical researcher at Star Labs, had hospital privileges for only a handful of patients: Superman and the Kent family. Lois knew that Klein had told the hospital administrators that Clark's year on New Krypton with Superman had altered his physiology to closer to Kryptonian than expected. He'd also dropped hints that Kryptonians had visited Earth before and left offspring who'd bred into the population. According to this theory, there was the possibility of humans with minor Kryptonian traits, like fast healing and an 'allergy' to kryptonite, being part of the general population. It was a brilliant ruse.

"Okay," Klein said. "We're under the Red Sun protocol. No one is allowed in here unless expressly allowed by myself, or Mrs. Kent, here. There will be a security guard outside this door at all times." He turned to the EMT still standing there. "Oh, and thank you, you can go. But please keep this confidential. We don't want bad guys to find out what's happening."

"Is he going to be okay?" the technician asked.

"I don't know yet," Klein admitted. "First we have to figure out what's wrong with him."

Lois stood in the corner, watching, waiting. The medical personnel had put her out of their minds. How many times had she stood like this? Not that many, really. Most wives would never experience this even once. But then, she wasn't most wives. Clark was Kryptonian, immune to Earth diseases, except when depowered by kryptonite, or under the effects of a red sun like Krypton's had been.

"Heart rate 55, BP dropping, 80 over 60," one of the nurses announced. She turned Clark's head to one side and Lois could see bright red blood pouring from his nose. The fresh bandage on his arm had turned crimson.

He was bleeding to death before her eyes. Dear God, help him.

Klein barked out instructions, and activity in the room became frenetic. She watched as One of the nurses – Kenyon, Lois recalled from reading the name tag – started more I.V.s, pouring fluid into Clark's veins. An orderly brought in bags of blood, and more tubes went into Clark's body. Klein had talked Clark into keeping a supply of his blood in storage at the hospital some years ago. Lois wasn't sure how much blood they'd set aside, but there was so much blood on the floor now.

The phone rang and one of the nurses answered. After a moment: "The lab says the main toxin looks like a warfarin derivative, but there are other things they haven't IDed yet."

"That gives us something to work with," Klein said. "Mephyton, 50 milligrams, slow I.V., 1 milligram per minute, no more, so keep an eye on it." He turned to Lois. "It may take a while. Maybe you want get some coffee or something."

Lois managed a smile at the scientist/physician. He didn't have any other patients and his bedside manner frequently left something to be desired, but Klein's social skills had improved somewhat over the past fourteen years. "Thanks, but I'll stay," she said, hugging her coat around herself.

Clark I

Calling this a long day and night was putting it mildly.

Martha and Wanda were trying to get the blood off the leather sofa. Kal-El flew Richard back to his home, back to Penny, who was watching the Kent children.

"What happened?" Penny asked, obviously seeing the stricken look on her husband's face.

"An alien assassin attacked Superman. He's in the hospital," Richard explained. "We don't know how bad it is."

Penny covered her mouth with her hand. "How's Lois and Clark?"

"Lois is well as can be expected, considering," Kal-El said. "She went to the hospital with him. I was going to take the kids back to their house. Their grandmother and Wanda can take care of them."

"We can watch them," Penny offered. "No need to wake them. But the baby should be with her mother."

"I'll see to it," Kal-El promised.

Within a few moments he was heading to Metropolis General with a baby in a carrier, looking for the child's mother.

X-ray vision revealed Lois was seated inside the door of an examination room. A guard stood outside the room and a medical team was hard at work over a dark-haired man. Kal-El realized with a start that they were working on Clark. He wasn't invulnerable. Kryptonite, or was it the poison?

He landed outside the emergency room doors and walked inside. As late as it was, the emergency room was busy.

An attendant spotted him and the baby. "Superman, can I help you? What's wrong with the baby?"

Kal-El wondered for a moment how he was going to explain. "Nothing's wrong. Her mother came in a while ago, with your Superman."

"Mrs. Kent," the attendant said. "They're in treatment room five, right over here." She led him to the room with the guard at the door.

The guard opened the door slightly and spoke to Lois. "The other Superman is here, with a baby."

Lois came out into the hallway. She looked exhausted, dark circles under her eyes.

"Richard and Penny offered to watch the children but suggested baby Martha should be with you," Kal-El explained, handing the carrier over. "I found the assassin's body in the river and disposed of it. I didn't think you'd want any surprises on that front."

"How?" she asked.

He tapped the side of his face next to one eye and smiled. The smile faltered as he looked beyond her, into the treatment room. "How is he?"

She shook her head. "They've mostly stopped the bleeding, but they've gone through all the blood he had put away here. Doctor Klein is wondering if they can use fresh human blood instead. But we just don't know. They can't get his blood pressure up, even with the anti-shock garment. He's never lost this much blood before. They have him hooked up to monitors I never knew existed."

"I'm not sure if human blood would be a good match. I mean, Kryptonians are human, but there are differences," Kal-El said. "Maybe… I don't know how close a match I am, but we can check, assuming we can even get a sample from me."

"They should be able to," Lois said. "Depending on how you react to red sunlight."

"Is that how they're keeping him vulnerable?"

Lois nodded and led him into the treatment room. "Kryptonite exposure turns off his powers, but it's too dangerous to use, and it takes a long time for him to recover. Red sun spectrum is safer." She stepped over to Klein and beckoned him over to Kal-El.

"Bernie, this is Kal-El. He's Superman's counterpart from an alternate time-line," Lois explained. "He's offered to donate blood, assuming it's a match."

The doctor looked both surprised and relieved, shaking Kal-El's hand as he looked over his shoulder at one of the nurses. "Manda, can we get a type and cross-match here? He's volunteered to donate."

The needle actually stung as the nurse found a vein to take a blood sample to test.

"You've never had blood drawn, have you?" the nurse asked, seeing the surprised expression on his face as he watched the needle enter his skin.

Kal-El shook his head. "I've been invulnerable since I was about five or six, except when I've gotten exposed to kryptonite. And even then, I recover pretty quickly.

Manda took the sample and methodically cross-checked it against Superman's blood. "Perfect match," she announced. "We'll have to draw the blood in here, though, so we can keep you vulnerable under the red spectrum. It shouldn't take more than ten minutes."

She pulled out the chair that sat beside the storage cabinet and moved it closer to the door. Manda set up the equipment next to the chair and motioned for Kal-El to sit down. "We're just going to do this as if you were fully Earth normal. I'm going to draw one pint and then we'll see how you feel. Let me know if you feet faint."

"I can probably give as much as you need, so long as I can get some unfiltered sunlight in between the donations," Kal-El told her.

She smiled and patted his hand. "Let's just follow the protocols to begin with. Then we'll see how it goes."

Lois moved her chair closer to him, holding baby Martha close to her chest. "Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome," Kal-El responded. He watched the blood in fascination as it went down the plastic tube attached to his arm.

"You've never seen your own blood before?"

"Not like this," Kal-El admitted. "I never dreamed I'd ever see this." He gave her a puzzled look. "They all treat him, and me, like we're pretty much fully human. Like being Kryptonian isn't much different than being black or Irish. And they don't think it's odd that Clark Kent's wife is hanging around Superman while he's in the hospital."

Lois chuckled. "I was hanging around Superman, in the hospital and out, long before I got married to Clark. I've been his chief press contact since almost the beginning. I named him, remember?"

"Nobody wonders about it?" He pitched his voice low, quiet.

"I've been accused of betraying my husband with him, yes," Lois admitted. "But that was when Clark and I were first married, and we were able to prove the photos were faked. Since then, people pretty much understand that I'm a relative, sort of. I'm Superman's sister-in-law. Clark went to New Krypton with him. He's his brother, like Ching is. Superman doesn't have any blood relatives on Earth, so we're his family. The hospital accepts my authority as next-of-kin since Clark isn't here and there's no one else they can call. I admit, it's a little odd, but we are talking about Superman, after all."

"And it works?" Kal-El asked. It seemed too simple, too obvious.

Lois considered his question. "Superman appeared in Metropolis as an adult from Krypton, fourteen years ago," Lois said. "No family, no contacts, no connections. He comes here and makes friends, me for one, and Clark for another. He helps people and disappears, probably to another emergency somewhere else in the world. It's a big planet."

Manda came over to check on him. "How are you feeling?"

"Okay, so far," Kal-El told her. "I was telling Mrs. Kent how strange it feels, you and your team treating him, and me, as if we were 'normal'."

"Right now, you are," the nurse reminded him. "And since treating humans is all I know, I'll assume you're human until that assumption stops working." She smiled and began undoing the tubing from his arm. She put a piece of gauze over the wound and flexed his arm to hold the gauze in place.

She took the newly filled bag and placed it on the IV stand with a second bag of clear fluid. The man on the treatment table didn't move.

"Let's keep our fingers crossed," Klein announced as they began the next blood transfusion.

Lois I

Wanda and Martha got most of Clark's blood off the sofa.

"The carpet's a lost cause," the older woman muttered, mostly to herself. "I guess they really should have gone with hardwood, like Clark wanted in the first place. A nice light oak, I think. At least we'd be able to mop it down."

Wanda found herself smiling, wondering if her Clark's mother was like this woman. Probably. The two Supermen were similar enough even though they were completely different.

Martha stopped, wiping her eyes and adjusting her glasses. "I just wish I could be there for him. It's so hard."

"At least Lois is there," Wanda reminded her.

"But she's there as a friend, not as his wife," Martha said. "Superman doesn't have a wife or a family. Certainly not a mother who's worried about him."

"Lois will call when she has news," Wanda promised.

"I know she will, honey," Martha said, hugging herself. "I just wish I could be there with her, be there for my baby."

"What was he like, as a baby?" Wanda asked.

"He was the sweetest little thing, fit into my arms like he was my own. Big brown eyes, always looking at everything. Jonathan and I were so afraid someone would come for him, someone would find out we'd found him in a spaceship. He was so happy and sweet, hardly ever cried, and he loved everybody. When he was about three or so, talking pretty good, he would invite the grocery clerks home for dinner. He would tell them what I was planning to cook and he'd just invite them over."

"Did anybody ever take him up on it?"

Martha laughed. "Heavens, no. They all knew he was just being friendly and helpful, even the ones who looked down on Jonathan and me for adopting somebody else's illegitimate baby, especially one that looked a little 'foreign'."

Wanda was horrified. "That was horrible. How could they think that?"

"It was easy," Martha told her. "When we found him, we had to come up with an excuse for having a baby, since we couldn't have one of our own. We told everybody he was my cousin's baby, and that she'd died. We never mentioned a father. So people assumed the worst. I know people said things and Clark heard, but he never mentioned it. But Jonathan and I always made sure he knew how much we loved him and how proud of him we were. I just wish I could be there for him."

Lois II

"How are you feeling?" Lois asked Kal-El when he came back from a flight to the upper atmosphere to regenerate in sunlight. He'd started to look a little pale before leaving the treatment room after giving blood.

"Better," Kal-El responded. "How's he doing?"

"Better," Lois told him. "The bleeding's stopped, finally."

Doctor Klein spotted Kal-El and Lois and came over to them. "I think he's out of the woods. His blood pressure is coming up and we're getting ready to move him into the isolation ICU. As soon as we're sure the poison is out of his body, we'll go to the yellow sun radiation so he can begin to regenerate."

"And when will that be?" Kal-El asked.

"Tomorrow, most likely," Klein told him, then turned to Lois. "I'd like to keep him here a couple days at least, to make sure he doesn't have a relapse."

"Well, you already know how hard that'll be, once he starts feeling better," Lois reminded him. "Since things are looking better, I'll have Kal-El take me home. I'll come back later, after I've gotten some sleep."

"I'll give you a call if there're any changes," Klein promised. "We'll be keeping him sedated, so you won't have to worry about him escaping, at least till later tomorrow."

"Thanks, Bernie," Lois said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. He blushed.

Outside the hospital, Kal-El picked Lois up while Lois held onto the carrier with baby Martha. It was a quick flight to the Kent house, but Lois noticed he was distracted.

"What do you see?"

"I'm not sure," he admitted with a frown. He landed on the deck, setting Lois on her feet. It was nearly dawn.

Lois opened the deck doors and walked into the living room. She heard voices in the kitchen and followed the sound. Wanda and Martha were sitting at the breakfast table having coffee.

"How is he?" Martha asked.

"The blade was poisoned. They were able to stop the bleeding, finally," Lois said, making herself a cup of herbal tea. She wanted coffee, but caffeine and Kent babies didn't mix. It was going to be a long year until this one was weaned. "They got him stabilized and Doctor Klein was having him transferred to the isolation ICU when we left."

Lois sat down with the other two women. "I've never felt so helpless, watching them work on him. They were working on Superman, for God's sake." The day's events finally caught up with her and she began to cry.

Wanda put her arm around the other woman. "Believe it or not, I really do understand. Kal-El, my Superman, fell out of the sky less than a week ago. There wasn't anything our doctors could do for him except wait."

"I'm not sure how long I was unconscious," Kal-El said. He was standing in the kitchen doorway. "I don't remember falling."

"They managed to keep you in the hospital for all of about twenty-four hours," Wanda told him. "You know, there might be a story in who is paying for your hospital stay and the equipment they wrecked trying to work on you."

Kal-El chuckled. "They should know by now if they can't stick a needle in me, they shouldn't expect anything else to work right."

His head came up, eyes focused on the outside as he listened to something in the distance. "I think the storm's back."