DISCLAIMER: All recognizable characters belong to DC Comics.
Chapter Nineteen: Quicksand
For a Monday morning, the hospitals were swarming with the wounded. Less than ten hours after the quake, as the sun was just beginning to rise, initial reports were already being broadcasted nationwide. Dozens dead, hundreds injured and many more unaccounted for.
Every off duty officer, nurse, doctor, and medic had been called in. The army was already making its presence known, and the members of the Justice League were seen helping throughout the earthquake ravaged Gotham City.
Yet one emerald clad hero stood on the roof top overlooking the organized chaos that was Gotham City General Hospital.
"Any sign of him?"
Artemis dropped the binoculars from her face and turned as the older boy approached her. She blinked and looked back at the building below, shaking her head when Roy stopped beside her. "Wally's checking out the hospital across town."
"You're supposed to be helping with search and rescue."
"So are you."
"So I am."
Silence fell around the two archers.
"He should come here," she sighed a moment later, pushing her mask back and off her face. "This is the closest hospital to the Alley. He should be brought here."
Roy watched the blonde critically for a moment before coming to a realization. "You're really worried about him."
Artemis scowled at him but otherwise kept her focus on the hospital below. "Of course I am. He's my teammate."
"It's more than that," Roy shifted the bow slung across his back, allowing him to sit on the roof's edge. "Why? You've only known him a few months."
"Like that should matter?" She sighed. "He may not have been over the moon when I joined the team, but he didn't go out of his way to make me feel unwelcomed either. After a few missions together, I don't know, it just seemed like I'd always been working with them. Then, when school started and I met Dick Grayson he made a point of being not just polite to the charity case, but he was sincerely nice to me."
With a small laugh she finally looked away from the scene below them and sat beside her fellow archer. "I never really thought about it, but the first day I was there this kid comes up to me, puts his arms around me, and takes a picture of the two of us; says I'll laugh about it one day."
Roy smiled. "Dick?"
"Dick," Artemis nodded with a warm smile before it faltered and her worried scowl returned. "When Sportsmaster took him from the school, he tried to stop me from interfering. He knew who I was, what I can do, and still he didn't want me helping him."
"He didn't want you hurt," Roy corrected. "That's just the way he is – Batman too. No one hurts their friends, not if they can help it."
"I should have done more. Instead, I let Sportsmaster intimidate and scare me." Artemis dropped her head and sighed. "I felt like I was six years old again."
Without conscious thought the boy put a comforting hand on her shoulder, surprising both of them. When she looked at his hand with unveiled confusion he gave it a little squeeze. "You're not him, Artemis. You're not your Father. It's about time I – and everyone else – saw that."
"Yeah, well," she shrugged but didn't dislodge his hand, "doesn't change the fact that my father did this."
"Yes, he did, but you didn't."
She snorted and turned to Roy. "So, what, you're a fan now?"
He echoed her snort and took his hand from her shoulder. "I wouldn't go that far, but you're not bad, Artemis."
"Wow, such glowing praise!"
"Whatever," Roy kept a faint smile on his lips at her sarcasm. "I'm just saying, if they can't have me on the team they could do much worse than you."
"And the compliments just keep coming!" Artemis elbowed him lightly in the side. "Careful, Harper, or you're going to ruin your image."
He started to open his mouth, a snide remark ready on his tongue, when the sound of an approaching helicopter caught their attention. They were both on their feet when the medi-copter touched down on the Hospital's helipad. In silence they watched as a handful of hospital personnel ran to the aircraft and unloaded a single gurney.
Raising the binoculars to her eyes again, Artemis took a few seconds to adjust the focus on the figure being rushed to the roof access.
"Well?" Roy asked only a second after the group disappeared inside.
"It's him," Artemis swallowed the lump that had formed when she had glimpsed her teammate. What she had seen churned her stomach. "Roy, he-"
When the lump choked off her words she turned away so he wouldn't see the tears pooling at the corners of her eyes. The older teen had no hesitation in his actions as he reached for her and pulled her into his embrace. He didn't say anything, just held her as she sobbed quietly.
.
.
.
.
.
Bruce Wayne ran.
He ran. When the call finally came, shortly after dawn, he sprinted away from the phone and through the members of the press taking refuge inside the sprawling entrance of the manor. Out the front door and down the stone steps, he ran, ignoring the suddenly flashing cameras and shouts of the media.
He ran. Around to the garage where he leapt onto Dick's civilian motorcycle, gunned the engine and squealed the tires as he steered it out of the building and across the pristinely manicured lawn. It skidded on the gravel of a foot trail through a small garden, but he didn't stop until he came to the private helipad a quarter mile from the main house.
He ran. From where he let the bike drop carelessly to the ground, to where the personal helicopter that sat silent on the pad. He was oblivious to the people watching from various windows and doorways, uncaring that he would have to later explain how the billionaire playboy knew how to fly. All that mattered was getting the aircraft up in the air.
By the time he was preparing to pull the yolk back and lift the copter into the air, Alfred was gracefully climbing to the passenger seat and slipping the headset over his ears. The pair shared a quick glance before Alfred spoke. "The Drakes will be here momentarily. Jack will ensure our guests will not go snooping."
Bruce jerked a nod before taking the helicopter up and away from Wayne Manor.
Below them they could see the destruction of the quake, the damage worsening the closer they came to its epicenter in the Alley. Neither man spoke, each lost in their own thoughts of the events of the past few days. The flight only took a few minutes and Bruce expertly lowered the craft onto the roof's second helipad.
An orderly was waiting for them as Alfred took over powering the helicopter down, allowing the desperate father the climb down and hurry to the roof access.
"Mr Wayne," the larger man in hospital scrubs opened the door for the billionaire, "we've set up a private waiting area for you in the Chief of Staff's office."
"I want to see my son." The man snarled as he leapt down the stairs three at a time.
The orderly was hard pressed to keep up with him. "Dr Leslie Thompkins is assessing him at the moment and asks that you wait for her there."
With a feral grown, Bruce spun and grabbed a handful of the man's scrub top and slammed him hard against the wall. "Face or leg; which do I break first?"
"And then I shall break the other," Alfred added primly, yet terrifyingly serious, as he joined the pair.
The man swallowed. "I'll take you to your son."
The third floor of the building was quieter than the rest, but the passage of a frightened orderly and the grim visages of Gotham's most well known citizen and his butler did not go unnoticed. Motioning to a closed door, the orderly quickly departed.
Bruce burst through the door with his dear friend behind him. The viewing area of the surgical theatre was empty and dark, and as they approached the glass that looked down over the room they could see the flurry of activity.
"Where are those boluses?" Leslie was demanding as she was running the ultrasound wand over a severely bruised section of Dick's side. The boy was unmoving, and around the dozen people flitting around him Bruce couldn't get a good look at him. But what he saw was enough to send his rage skyrocketing before plummeting into overwhelming worry for his son.
"Here, Dr Thompkins," yet another nurse burst into the room carrying several sacks of clear fluid.
"Start with the 0.9% NaCl with 5% dextrose, 60ml per hour," Leslie glanced down at her patient and the team of medical personnel working on him.
"Dehydration," Bruce muttered to himself.
"Swelling and purplish discoloration around the visible burns," one of the other doctors voiced. "Temperature holding at 105.3-"
"Infection," Bruce hung his head, his fists gripping the ledge of glass until his knuckles turned white.
"No visible bleeds to the spleen or kidney, but I don't like that bruising. He'll need an MRI as soon as those… things are off his wrists!" Leslie tossed the wand onto the cart next to the ultrasound machine. "I don't like the look of that EEG," She said to a nurse monitoring the graph machine recording the boy's brain activity. "Have them prep a surgical room in case we need to relieve pressure to the brain."
At Bruce's distraught moan, Dr Thompkins lifted her head and, seeing him in the viewing area, excused herself from the gurney, her place immediately filled by another doctor.
"Bruce," She gripped the man in an affectionate hug when she joined them above the theatre. "I figured you wouldn't listen. We brought Dick here, away from the insanity that is the Emergency Room and no media."
Bruce closed his eyes and let his head rest on the smaller woman's shoulder. "How is he?"
Leslie stiffened and extracted herself from his arms. "It could be much worse," she told him carefully, "but it's still bad."
He nodded, his eyes never leaving the form of his son. "Tell me."
"I don't know where to begin," the doctor said gravely. "There are obvious signs of beatings, varying degrees of bruising on his face and torso; some of the worst were to his throat. There is trauma to his vocal cords-"
"He was screaming," the father whispered, the sound of his son's cries as he was being electrocuted seared in his memory. He also recalled how Superman had told him about finding Robin in Metropolis.
Leslie inhaled sharply through her nose and continued. "There is also evidence of strangulation, bruising and damage to the interior of his trachea; no fractures thankfully. "
Bruce clenched his teeth but forced himself to remain, despite the urge to repay Sportsmaster and Guardian in kind immediately. "What else?"
"Severe dehydration and prolonged starvations, his internal organs were in the first stages of shutting down; numerous lacerations to his upper and lower legs, losing several pints of blood; deep tissue ruptures to the sides of his mouth which will require stitches and there are several broken molars and lesions to the interior of his mouth that will need surgical repair; a laceration and contusion to the back of his skull which resulted in a severe concussion; and a score of other superficial injuries that will heal with time."
For the first time in years, Bruce was unable to keep his horrified expression from his face. Swallowing the bile that seared that back of his throat, he latched on to his anger to keep from crumbling and turned to his long time physician. "And the burns?"
Dr Thompkins turned away from the glare she knew was not directed at her, but hard to bare none-the-less. "There are second and third degree burns on the visible skin of his lower arms. His wrists… Bruce, these monsters welded lead – and something else we haven't been able to identify yet – manacles to his wrists."
"Kryptonite," he informed her.
She shook her head in disbelief. "I'll try to keep that out of his file."
Bruce acknowledged that with a curt nod of his head.
"We've begun treating for lead poisoning as a precaution, and once his vitals stabilize a little more, possibly bringing his temperature down a few degrees, we'll take him in for surgery to remove them. The infection makes surgery of any kind risky, but we need to assess the damage beneath the shackles to know for certain where it originated from so we've got him on a broad spectrum of antibiotics to help fight it.
"And if that weren't enough, we suspect bleeding in the abdominal cavity as well as in the brain, but the cuffs are preventing us from using the diagnostic equipment to accurately find the bleeds if they are there. That being said, his vitals are strong enough that we have a little time before that becomes a critical concern, so long as we can lower his temperature and get him into surgery as soon as possible."
With nothing left to be said, Leslie returned to her patient, leaving Bruce and Alfred to the silence.
.
.
.
.
.
The steady tone of the cardiac monitor kept Bruce's thoughts from straying any further than the battered figure lying in the bed next to him. The private room was on the upper floors of the hospital, a quiet place the hospital arranged for the father and his son in the palliative care wing. It had been several long hours, and only a few minutes ago Alfred had left at Gordon's request.
Word got our rather quickly about Dick Grayson's recovery and the media had flocked to the Hospital. Hundreds of reporters, news trucks and cameras had inundated the already clogged streets around the medical facility and were making it near impossible for the injured to get inside. Jim, after checking on Dick's prognosis, had asked that a statement be made to the vultures so they could be thinned down.
Bruce knew the statement would be going out live, but he didn't care. All that mattered to him was watching his son for any signs of consciousness. So he sat in one of the chairs, elbows resting on its arms and fingers tented together as they pressed against his pursed lips.
Injuries to Robin were not a new thing to Bruce, and yet he had been unprepared for what he saw when Leslie had Dick settled in the room and allowed Bruce to sit with him. The bruises and swelling around the teen's jaw-line were a putrid green color, and butterfly-sutures closed the deepest splits to dry lips. The stitches at the corners of his mouth were covered with bandages and the father was tempted to lift them just to assure himself the scars remaining would be nothing like the Joker's. The hospital gown covered Dick's body, but through the thin fabric the deep discoloration of bruising was noticeable. The neck – Bruce tried not to look at it too often or too long. The unmistakable hand-shaped bruises encircling his boy's throat made him nauseous and sent surges of rage coursing through him.
With hands resting on top of the thin blankets covering him, the metal cuffs fused to Dick's skin were readily visible. Gauze bandages wrapped around the edges and parts of the lower arm, ointment and burn relief cream lathered beneath to stave off further infection.
Next to the bed hung two boluses of fluid on the IV stand; the catheter inserted above the bend of the elbow into the basilica vein due to the injuries to the lower arms. The clear fluids was a saline and glucose solution, laced with potent antibiotics, would rehydrate the starved teen and hopefully fight the infection before it set in any of the already weakened internal organs. The second was unmistakable; a third unit of transfused blood to replace what Dick had lost.
"Bruce?" The gentle hand on his shoulder startled him, having been unaware of anyone else entering the room.
He chided himself and turned to the dark haired woman standing beside him. "Diana."
The civilian dressed Wonder Woman offered him a small smile of support and crouched beside her friend. "Have you slept any?"
Bruce shook his head and turned back to the unconscious boy in the bed.
She sighed, carefully settling her hand over the brace on the billionaire's right wrist. She fingered the swollen and bloodied knuckles lightly, drawing the man's attention back to her. "What happened?"
"Fell wrong during the quake," He said in a low voice.
A delicately arched eyebrow rose gently in silent skepticism.
"Fine. Repeated impacts with bullet proof glass and Clark's jaw."
Diana nodded knowingly. "He wants to be here, for you and Dick, but-"
"Until they can remove the kryptonite it's best if he stays away," Bruce growled.
"Is that the only reason?" the Amazon princess asked bluntly. When he didn't answer, she stood up and walked to the small figure in the bed. She stared at the teen a moment, and Bruce noted the near imperceptible tensing of her shoulder. Reaching with a mother's care, Diana brushed a strand of dark hair back from the forehead.
"He's going to be all right," she said quietly, to reassure herself as much as Bruce.
"In time," the father said. "There was more damage to the muscles of his legs than Leslie first thought. They discovered the wounds to his thighs didn't penetrate just to the bone, but into them as well. Whatever pierced his legs burrowed into the bone marrow. She's concerned about the potential for Osteomyelitis."
"A bone infection?" Wonder Woman allowed her sorrow and worry to show in her features as she carefully took one of Dick's hands into her own. "When will they know?"
"With his body already fighting one infection, it's hard to diagnose." He rubbed a weary hand down his face and he leaned forward in his chair. "But he's on a broad spectrum of antibiotics, so that should help prevent another infection and treat it should it develop."
"That's something, I suppose," Diana cupped Dick's face in her palm before leaning down to kiss the youth's forehead. "I should get back out there. I only wanted to check on your both."
Bruce nodded absently.
As she walked toward the door she paused at his side, a strong comforting hand falling to his shoulder. "Just so you know; there is a contingent of barely concealed young heroes waiting on the roof of the building across the street. What should I tell them?"
"To get back to work," the Batman snapped.
Diana just smiled and parted her lips to speak but someone beat her to it.
"Bruce…"
The man was surging to his feet at the raspy breath of a voice from the bed. He tenderly gripped his son's hand. "Dick?" The boy's eyes were still closed, but there was undeniable movement beneath the lids. "Son, can you hear me?"
Bloodshot blue eyes flittered open a slit before falling shut again. He groaned softly and his hand weakly squeezed Bruce's.
"I'll get Leslie," Diana whispered with a quick touch to the father's shoulder. The door clicked behind her before he realized she was gone.
"Dick?" Keeping hold of the teen's hand, Bruce let his other rest gently on Dick's head and began stroking the hair. "Dick, open your eyes." The stern, yet warm, command succeeded.
With great effort, the lids opened a second time and kept them open. The eyes darted around the room, the heart monitor speeding up noticeably and nostrils flaring in panic. Dick's mouth opened but he couldn't get the strength to speak again.
"Shh," Bruce crooned, moving his hand from the forehead to his son's cheek where he kept the boy's gaze on him. "You're safe now, Son."
The grip on Bruce's hand tightened, the muscles in his exhausted arms trying to lift him from the bed. Unable to add strength to his voice, Dick was only able to mouth a single word: "Dad…"
The fear on the face – something Bruce had not seen since Dick's first year as Robin – was all he needed before he was tugging gently to bring his son to a sitting position. He moved swiftly, positioning himself behind the battered body and letting Dick's back lean against his chest.
He wrapped his arms around his son, Dick's arms enfolded within his own – careful not to disturb the IV lines and catheter – and pressed his cheek to the dark hair. At once he could feel Dick's body shaking with silent sobs, the boy's face dry as his body was too starved for fluids to spare the tears.
"Shhh," Bruce whispered into the hair around the lump in his throat, lips pressing against the scalp comfortingly. "Shhh, you're safe now. You're safe.
"It's over."