A/N: Hello everyone, thanks for clicking on my story! This is inspired by the Batman 2022 movie with Robert Pattinson. It has been cross-posted on AO3. Happy reading!

At Gotham General, the state hospital, we get what the 1% call the 'dregs' of society: alcoholics who can't get their fix and start to withdraw, the homeless creating their malady just for a bite to eat of the (questionably edible) hospital food, the average gunshot wound from the Falcone or Maroni crime families, and every once in a while, a "repeat offender", as we like to call them, who come in routinely in predictable cycles. We have a pool running to guess the poor individual(s) re-admission date.

The ER is relatively quiet tonight. I expect a few knife wounds or assaults, considering the city we live in, but the beeping telemetry and rustling of bedsheets almost lull me to sleep while I wheedle away my time at the nursing station.

The call light dings.

I swivel over to the phone. "Yeah?"

Our homeless resident whines through the speaker, "This is dog food."

I take a breath before pulling out my best (and most irritating) customer service voice, forehead in hand. "What's that, Steve?"

"You heard me. Don't you have a good steak?"

"We would if this was a five-star hotel, but this is a hospital and it's two in the morning. Go to slee–."

I hear the distinct 'click' before I can finish my sentence. I sigh, fluttering my lips while hanging up. As I said, there is nothing unique about tonight.

This isn't what I was expecting when I went to nursing school. There is no rush, that feeling of rightness as I do CPR on an incoming trauma patient, as seen on TV. I gaze around the open room, glancing past wires from expensive equipment and limp tasteless curtains, rethinking my life choices. Living alone with a cat and wiping hairy assholes at midnight. Yep, I'm at the top of my game.

But some nights are harder than others. The gaping wounds from a drunk driver still haunt my dreams even though I'm dying for the excitement of the next debilitating injury coming through the door. I pretend a pole with some residual red from the 'STOP' sign piercing through a leg doesn't affect me while expertly dissociating for my sanity. Watching a doctor convey a pitying look while a family breaks down doesn't make me cry anymore, though still, I can feel their pain. But I wouldn't say I want to see these on the regular– I'm not that heartless, despite the hospital's best efforts.

So although there's nothing different in the air tonight, it's okay.

The sound of rain on the roof is a welcome break from the monotony. It's perfect timing too, as patients are due for their meds and I have the honorable duty of completing wellness checks (AKA – making sure my patients are not dead while they grumble about being woken up). I heave myself out of the chair with a grunt (not that I'm old enough to have an excuse to heave) and sloth my way over to bed number one.

The next hour is almost a movie montage, so much as to say I don't think I see more than three minutes of it between treating patients and sitting with my face in the crook of my elbows (and wow, this desk is very dirty). My thinking fogs and the lights turn yellow as I sink into a light doze, thoughts drifting toward a much-needed weekend alone with my cat… until the floor manager's voice lances through my skull.

"Heads up! Incoming trauma to bay three via EMS – it's the Batman!" She brings her fingers to her mouth and whistles. "Look alive!"

My chair shoots out from under me as I burst to life with my blue-clad colleagues to prepare for the ambulance. But it isn't just any ambulance. My hands move with automatic precision while I let my brain wander.

The Batman.

I know he's just a man, but he's also a symbol I see in the sky every other night. He's an idea that the good is still fighting in this city. He can't be hurt. It's not possible. To hurt batman is to break the very core of Gotham itself.

A cold breeze knocks into me and whips my braid into my eyes, bringing my attention to the source behind me.

There he is.

He looks terrible. It's hard to see due to the deep black of his armor, but the thick sheen reflecting the fluorescent lights above us gives away the depths of his injuries. Blood soaks the sheets under him. A tube emerges from his protruding jaw while one EMT riding the stretcher compresses Batman's chest as deep as he can through the thick, hard padding.

"What do we got?" I yell as I run to the mass of black and red, gloving my hands.

"White male, approximately late twenties to early thirties, GCS 3 from an MVA at above-highway speeds with prolonged extraction due to the extensive armor of the car. Intubated in the field."

"BP?"

"Uh, eighty-five over…" he rattles off as my mind takes in the information, assisting with the team transferring him to the gurney. He is big. And he is heavy. I can't help but stare. The stubble on his sharp jaw and the splattered pattern of blood are a stark contrast to the deathly pale of his skin. His head jerks a rhythmic beat as one EMT aggressively pumps his heart and another squeezes breath into him.

"We need to get his armor off."

"Yes, please god," the EMT providing the chest compressions grunts, sweat beading down his forehead.

The team shifts in a well-practiced formation as a nurse reaches for an item in the crash cart.

"Scissors? Gary, if it's bullet-proof armor, it's scissor-proof armor!"

"Well, what else do you expect me to fuckin' do?"

"I don't know man, grab a chainsaw?" The resident physician takes a breath, resting his hands on the back of his Batman-patterned scrub cap. "Okay listen up, I want everyone looking for any buttons, clips, latches, velcro, or any other kinda fastening. We gotta get this offa' him, stat!"

The shuffling around the room increases ten-fold as people clamber toward the man in the bed. Fingers search in nooks and crevices of the kevlar, and soon enough, I hear a hiss of compressed air release into the room as the chest plate separates itself from his body.

"We got it!"

"Scissors, Gary!"

"Oh, now you want scissors?!" he yells as he passes them to the doctor.

The team rips the moisture-wicking black shirt off of him as I take over chest compressions, leaning over his bruised body and dropping my entire weight into his breastbone, again, and again, and… finally, I hear the 'crack' of his ribcage. His body is mottled with old and new bruises from colors across the rainbow, crisscrossing scars and burns being the finishing touch of the mosaic. Healing from this shouldn't feel too much different than the average Tuesday for him, I think as I break to allow the defibrillator to shock his heart into next week.

"Analyzing rhythm," the machine says.

The room is dead quiet despite the number of people in the room. We surround the body in a circle, holding our breaths as we wait for the verdict.

"Shock advised… Clear!"

His body arches and slams back on the table as the electricity pulses through him. I climb back up, panting, counting, wishing that we won't fail him. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty… breath, breath… repeat…

"Analyzing rhythm," the machine monotones. We abandon our efforts for another moment.

My heart is pounding in my ears while my throat begins to wheeze with effort. The clock ticks only a few seconds in the silence, but to me it was minutes.

"Normal sinus rhythm detected, no shock advised."

I nearly laugh as I fold over in relief, breathing past the lump in my throat with my hands on my knees. Behind me, the tube used for intubation is being exchanged and connected to a ventilator, the dictating nurse reporting "ROSC achieved after approximately two minutes and…".

An orange glow begins to emerge from behind the sliding doors, blinding me and simultaneously casting the shadow "Gotham General Hospital" onto the stained tiles.

Welcome to another day, Batman. It's over, for now. But there's still a ways to go.