Today's pre-chapter note comes to you in three parts:
1. I'm very, very sorry about the delay for this chapter. Without going into detail, due to some personal issues on Tuesday, I was not emotionally or mentally prepared to edit this beast. But! The chapter is a little longer than usual, so maybe that makes up for the wait! And finally-you haven't gotten whump in so long, but here it is, in extra doses.
2. Lots of questionable science/medicine in this chapter. I have done some research, but I am 100% certain that a lot of it is not accurate nor plausible. Bear with me. One medical instrument in particular is taken from the Flash Season Zero comic, and I don't think it actually exists in real life? But it is here.
3. I am a bad counter, I guess. For some reason I told you last chapter that there were two chapters to go! When clearly there were three! AFter this one there will be two! Bonus chapter!
Enjoy!
The moment Caitlin lowered the gun, the area was flooded with activity. In the narrow, dim space, she had to squeeze herself tight against the wall to allow the passage of the two cops—she really would have to learn their names—and Joe. Caitlin clicked on the safety of the gun and handed it back to him wordlessly. He nodded infestiminally to show his understanding, then jerked his head in the direction of the main room.
"You'd better get to them quick," he said. "I'll be right there."
With the gun out of her hands, Caitlin shook like a leaf in a gale. She nodded back at Joe and took off down the passage, back toward the orange light. Handcuffs clinked behind her, Jason grunted. She left it behind.
In the open space with the lantern, Caitlin crossed to the two dark bundles at the far wall. They were a few feet apart, pressed close to the wall, half-hidden in shadows. There was no way to logically determine which one to go first. They both needed her attention. The question was, which needed it more immediately?
Without the luxury of time to make her decision, she ran to the first sign of overt distress and crumpled to her knees. It was harder to see any damage with Barry's dark blue STAR shirt and sweatpants, but Cisco was wearing a white shirt beneath the hoodie—the blood stood out starkly, and in terrifying amounts.
All confidence and poise dropped at once. With shaking hands, she lifted up Cisco's shirt to see what kind of damage she was working with. Blood. So much blood. While it didn't appear that he'd suffered any stab wounds, it did look as if Jason had used him as a sharpening board. She peeled off her jacket and bunched it up, seeking out the worst of the cuts to press against. Even that pressure wasn't enough to wake the man, whose head lolled in unconsciousness. The blood caked down the side of his face indicated a likely head wound to go along with the cuts.
Plus—yes, those were additional broken fingers on his left hand, a hand bound to the other with more zip-ties.
A whimper from her left made her look up. To her surprise, Barry's eyes were open as slits, watching her. He made another distressed noise and stirred feebly away, so Caitlin crawled over to him. When she reached out to touch him, he flinched.
"Hey, hey, it's alright, it's just me. Just Caitlin." Even the reassurance didn't do anything to settle Barry. She withdrew her hand. "You're safe now." Her eyes went to his hands. Like Cisco's, they were bound, but not by zip-ties—with razor wire. Jason must have learned his lesson from Barry phasing through his bonds earlier.
Joe's arrival went unheard, but she felt his presence as he kneeled beside her.
"The EMTs are on their way down," he said. "We've got an ambulance ready outside."
Caitlin was still too busy assessing Barry's condition to look up at Joe. Barry's sweatpants were too baggy to see much, but she remembered the crunch of Jason stepping on Barry's knee. From what she could see of the angles of Barry's legs, the assault hadn't ended there. And if he'd started healing already…
"Barry can't go to the hospital," she said suddenly. "His healing factor. Nobody knows that Jason kept them down here because they're metas. If Barry goes to a hospital, they'll know."
"His life is more important than his identity," Joe said.
"Let me handle them," Caitlin insisted. "One more favor, Joe. I know how to treat them better than anyone."
"Cisco," groaned Barry. "Please, his head…kept hitting his head…"
His face shone red from the old wounds and the fresh ones. Caitlin reached for his arm again, glanced back at Cisco, looked to Joe. "Please, Joe."
Footsteps hurried through the main passage, moving toward the half-shadowed group. The EMTs were quick, efficient, and driven, Caitlin knew.
Joe stood to greet them. "Two injured. We're taking them to STAR Labs."
"But—" one of the medics tried.
"They are equipped with state of the art medical equipment," Joe said. "The—victims—will be in good hands."
"I'm their personal physician," Caitlin added, fully aware of the threat she had once given Barry when he'd tried to use the term. "I assure you, I have a fully-stocked medical lab and assistants on-call." Alright, that may have been a stretch, but now that things were in action she felt as though she was running out of time once again.
Joe's word, or hers, must have carried more weight than she could've hoped to imagine.
"We need both of these guys on backboards," said the head EMT, a woman with a soft face but authoritative voice, said to the other two. They swarmed the scene, forcing Caitlin and Joe off to the side. In the flurry of activity, Caitlin wanted to interject watch the legs, watch the head. But these people were focused, and she was too afraid of disturbing something crucial.
As the EMTs did their initial work, Joe pulled Caitlin aside. Maybe he saw that she was beginning to lose her threads of stability. "You go in the ambulance with them, alright? I'll go ahead in the car and get everything ready for you. What do you need?"
I don't know, I have no idea. "Just make sure Iris and Wells are ready to help. I might need hands."
"Ready to move!"
Joe gave her a reassuring nod, but now she could tell for certain that he was just as shaken as she was by what they had found.
In what felt like no time at all, she was outside in the dark again, the deep charcoal of midnight impending. She'd left her jacket down in the dungeon on Cisco's chest, and the night air lifted the hairs on her arms. In a daze she watched Barry and Cisco get loaded onto the ambulance, and automatically she followed.
Squeezed into the corner of the ambulance, Caitlin could feel herself drifting, detaching. It was a defense mechanism, she knew, because her body was rapidly shutting down under pressure. However, the EMTs didn't slow, so she forced herself to at least listen, gather facts, watch the preliminary steps of putting her friends back together. All other noise tuned out.
Possible fractured rib…pulmonary contusion…get the oxygen mask...stab wound…pressure here…dehydration…watch the leg…compound fracture…
Only when the ambulance pulled to a stop did some of the chatter stop. As soon as it did, the action intensified. Immediately they pushed the doors open and, with trained precision, carted Barry and Cisco out.
With this head start, Joe had arrived at STAR first as promised. He waited at the entrance to the lab for the group, ushering them in and holding the door for Caitlin, who trailed like a lost animal even in the familiarity of the location.
Once they reached the cortex and the medical bay, though, once she saw the doubt creeping onto the EMTs faces, she slipped back into her role. She couldn't let them take Barry and Cisco away. She couldn't let anyone take Barry and Cisco away again.
"On these beds," she said, striding forward and motioning at two of the examination beds closest to her workstation. "Yes, just there."
"What else do you need?" asked the head EMT.
Caitlin looked her over once, took the apprehension that was being radiated and dampened it. "I can take it from here. Thank you very much."
One more look. One more moment of hesitation. Then, one by one, the EMTs filed out of the room. Off to the next emergency.
The minute they were gone, Caitlin sprang into action. She went to Cisco's side again, pulling open the shirt that the paramedics had sliced down the front. When he woke he would not be happy about that.
The presence of Joe and Iris and Wells had been a peripheral thing before; Iris sidling up behind her was similarly detached. "What can we do?"
"Gloves," Caitlin responded automatically, prodding lightly at a dark bruise on Cisco's chest. Her hands were already bloodied from the initial inspection of her friends, of course, but she needed the gloves. If only to reaffirm her professionalism. To reaffirm the fact that this wasn't crazy, that she had the power to save her best friends' lives, that something ordinary still existed.
A moment later Iris handed her the gloves. Just as she snapped them on, a moan drew her attention up in laser focus.
"Barry," she said, briefly leaving Cisco's side to tend to the speedster. She put a hand on his arm to keep him from trying to roll off of the bed. "You're okay. Shh. You're safe."
"No, no." Barry whined, eyes unfocused. "Stay away from them."
"Barry. Do you know where you are?" Caitlin said, simultaneously trying to get him to focus and checking his wrists, which had been sliced free from the razor wire.
Barry squinted. "Caitlin?"
"I'm safe too," Caitlin said. "You're at STAR. I'm going to take care of you."
"I can't run," he mumbled, clearly dazed. "I can't…"
He trailed off, and Caitlin motioned to Wells. "X-ray," she said to him. "Oxygen to Cisco," she directed Iris. As these orders were carried out, she took hold of the compress that had been applied to Barry's shoulder and continued pressing down. From her hurried overview, it looked as though Jason had re-created the wounds that had speed-healed earlier, including the stab wound below Barry's collarbone. Barry winced at the pressure, so, to distract him, she asked, "Hey, can you stay with me? What do you remember?"
"Kept hitting Cisco's head," Barry mumbled, barely intelligible. "I couldn't—I couldn't—"
"Shh," Caitlin said again, looking up worriedly at Cisco. Iris was fitting him with an oxygen mask. The blood down the side of his face, and the fact that he hadn't yet shown signs of waking, troubled her. These new details began confirming what she already suspected, that Jason had targeted their powers with specificity: Barry's legs, Cisco's head.
"X-ray on his legs," Caitlin instructed Wells, who had arrived with the portable x-ray machine. "Joe—keep pressure here." With surprising agility, Joe was at her side, taking her place with the cloth against Barry's shoulder. She just caught Barry's confused "Joe?" before turning away to give her attention to Cisco.
"I've been cleaning these up as much as I can," said Iris shakily. In a calmer situation, Caitlin might have felt a rush of appreciation for the other woman—though she still needed guidance when it came to the more serious medical emergencies, she had learned a lot in the past year. She had cleaned up Cisco's chest enough to see clearly the cuts on it. None of them seemed deep enough to require stitches, thankfully. The cleaning had revealed some new bruises across his ribs, though, added automatically to Caitlin's list of possible causes and effects and treatments.
"Light." She held out her hand. A second later Iris pressed the penlight into it. She peeled back one of Cisco's eyelids, the one not puffy from a bruise, and watched his pupil.
"I want to have this looked at before we give him any drugs," she said. "Wells, Joe—take him down to the MRI. We have some time before we have to set his fingers. No super-healing to worry about."
Wells and Joe obeyed immediately. As they rolled Cisco away, Caitlin moved on to the x-ray images.
"Speaking of super-healing…" she lowered the images and put herself back in Barry's unfocused field of vision. "Barry, did Jason inject you with the power-dampening serum?"
"I think…twice," Barry slurred. It was clear he was trying to be helpful, despite obviously hovering on the brink of awareness.
"That's what I thought," Caitlin said. To Iris, she said, "Get that machine over there."
Iris came back with the indicated wheeled contraption, an adjustable device with a reinforced tube at the end. "What does this do?"
As gently as she could, Caitlin tugged off what was left of Barry's torn sweatpants and threaded his left leg through the device until the hole encased his knee. The damage to both of his legs was far worse up close. They were bruised almost beyond recognition, and the mess of dark blood on the right one confirmed a compound fracture. The worst of the damage, though, was in the left knee.
"When Jason first found out that Barry was the Flash, he broke his knee," Caitlin explained, booting up the machine and punching a few buttons. "He let the power-dampening serum wear off so Barry's healing factor would knit everything back together, but improperly. I think he then re-broke the knee before administering the serum a second time. You can see in the x-ray. A poorly-healed break, and a fresh one in a different spot in the knee."
Apparently Iris didn't need to see to believe. She moved to the opposite end of the table, by Barry's head, and carded a hand through his hair as if she too instinctually knew what was coming. "So what is that for?"
Caitlin allowed for a tiny crease of sympathy across her face. The most she would allow. "To re-break it one more time. Cleanly." She pressed a few more buttons, and the cuff tightened around Barry's knee. Barry twitched feebly. She wasn't even sure how conscious he was at that point, but she chanced a glance upward. "I'm sorry, this is going to hurt for a second. Try to breathe." His bloodied face was slick with sweat.
She punched a button. A crack. A devastating scream.
And she was back. Back in the warehouse. Darkness was creeping under her skin, and her friends were screaming. The sounds cut deep, and she strained against her bonds. Except the screams were too loud, pressing against her. Except she was not bound. Except she was the one causing the pain, her eyes blazing frigid blue.
"Cait?"
Iris' voice brought her back to the present. A support on her back kept her from falling; she had begun swaying on the spot.
"Here, sit down," Iris said, guiding her over to a seat. "You need to rest. You're dead on your feet."
"What's going on up here?" Joe and Wells reentered the room with a still-unconscious Cisco. Joe nodded at Caitlin. "You good?"
"Fine." Caitlin resisted Iris' attempts to make her sit down. "What did you get from the MRI?"
"Severe concussion and pulmonary contusion," Wells said, his face a shade paler than usual. "You can take a look at the scans yourself—"
"Leave them here."
"Is there anything we can do?" Joe said, looking worriedly at Barry, who had passed out again.
"I can help set Cisco's fingers," Iris said.
"Or stitch up Barry's shoulder—"
"I'm fine," Caitlin said. Though the pain levels made it understandable, she still didn't like Barry's unresponsiveness, coupled with the confusion and the intense shivering that had begun. Not to mention Cisco's internal trauma. Back on her feet, the triaged lists of necessary actions were stretching longer, organizing themselves. "I need you all to leave."
Iris was the one to come forward. "Let us help you, Cait."
"You can help me by giving me some space," Caitlin snapped before the broaching anxiety could overwhelm her. "I need to concentrate." The truth was, she couldn't afford any slip-ups, and, while she trusted the rest of her team, she was unwilling to let anything or anyone slip through her fingers.
The group must have sensed how dead serious she was, because, after a pause, they filed out of the room silently. There would be hell to pay later, Caitlin supposed—guilt for being harsh with them, or remorse if anything happened on her watch.
But for now, with her two best friends unconscious and bleeding before her, alone was good. Alone was the only thing holding her together. With a deep breath and a grimace of determination, she went to work.
Thanks for reading! Two more chapters to go (for real this time). I hope the medical drama wasn't too distracting. The whump is definitely back.
As always, I appreciate feedback. I'll see you all on Sunday (also for real this time).
Till next time,
Penn