Another day, another chapter! (**reposted, spelling correction made:) sorry usually i've been better about this, but I gave my fantastic editors a break to just sit back and enjoy this one while they've been slaving away on "I Can Hear the Drums" )
Thank you to:::
WhoAteMyEnchilada (well, we can't have that can we? :), Batghost (for once, this isn't at all apart of my timeline:), Boooyakasha, jensmit75, Ms. Hawkeye, m klindt, Dsgdiva, shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod, Daughter of the North (why thank you! i'm not into pointless fluff either, so i avoid it at all costs), TheNaggingCube, Hamato Alexa, horsequeen1379, Qweb, YukinaKid(i hope your test went well! we just had Food Animal Internal Med (like, every animal meant for food) ), comicsans-spideydehaanfan, MO-5431, Niom Lamboise, discordchick, JRBarton(oh my spelling truly is deplorable, but you enjoy that time off! and love this little ride:), Jokerang(Thank you! like i said, veterinary over this way, so this is what we do with every species and I'll just apply that to people:), Lillehafrue
Friends Check for Bullet Wounds
Chapter 4
"Hang with me, Clint. Focus here, don't think about the rest. Look at my face." Bruce instructed dutifully. Two panicked eyes met his. Clint's color was beginning to fade. He could hardly breathe now, though he still attempted to form a few words. All around him the action in the elevator was electric. The field surgeon kept his stethoscope to Clint's bare chest while the paramedics lifted his arm up and back. A pair of hands began to palpate along his ribs only seconds before something cold and wet hit him.
"Che—ches—tu—" he croaked.
"We think the knife may have hit your lung. There's air and blood pooling in your chest. We need to get it out." Bruce replied.
Clint shook his head. No.
"You won't be able to breathe until we do this." Bruce continued to rationalize with him. The elevator door sprung open, and with one paramedic still lathering Clint's skin in surgical scrub, they rushed into the trauma room.
"We have a thirty-year-old, white male victim of a knife attack. Knife is in place." Dr. Martinez announced the minute they entered. The rest of Tony's team had already arrived. "Pneumothorax with presumed hemothorax. We need an emergency thoracotomy, patient's O-2 stats are in the eighties and rapidly falling. Allen, I want you on chest tube. Someone get radiology here immediately. The minute the tube's in place we are starting there."
Clint continued to shake his head. He tried to pull his hand down, but someone grabbed it and kept it up. He nearly rolled right over.
"Grab him!" Martinez exclaimed.
Despite his inability to breathe, Clint's overwhelming desperation to avoid a chest tube won out. When it came to a fight or flight response, Barton always had a large helping of both. First he would fight, anyone and everyone in front of him, and once he thought he'd fought enough he'd disappear into the wind. Trying to accomplish that feat in a hospital setting never exactly went over well with the men attempting to help him. Today was no different. The bulkier heroes arrived just as Clint considered throwing himself right out of bed, knife in his guts or not. Thor set on him instantly with Steve returning to his own position and Tony left Pepper by the door to lay on Barton's legs.
"Clint, stop!" Bruce shouted over the general ruckus. The archer's side was prepped and ready. A nurse came around to pin Clint's left arm down with a shackle while another one began injecting healthy doses of pain drugs against Clint's rib.
"O-2 states are almost seventy, he's gonna die if we don't get that tube in him!" Martinez commanded the controlled chaos. "Allen, get in there, get the tube in. Mike, ready with that clamp. Is he tied down? Good, get his left arm tied. Do me a favor and nobody let go of him until he can breathe again."
Bruce, in the cloud of confusion, remained at Clint's face. "Stop fighting. I know it's going to hurt, but you've got to let us do it. Watch me, all right?"
What air Clint could force in released in a swift scream as the blade of the scalpel made its first slice into his skin.
"Someone put a splash block in that now!" Dr. Martinez commanded.
A sea of helping hands appeared and Clint jumped when the stinging sensation of medication flooded the new wound.
"Dr. Banner, if we can't keep him still, we're sedating him." Dr. Martinez chimed.
Clint shook his head again.
"Then you have to stay still." Bruce whispered. Desperately, Barton tried.
At the door, Pepper stood watching the flow of work go on like a well-oiled machine. Martinez controlled the room like a conductor for an orchestra. His word was law. His instruction made everyone jump instantly. Under his direction, things were getting done in fast succession. Tony didn't relent from his position holding Barton down, even when the archer stopped fighting him off. Thor and Steve too kept their positions. Neither knew what to do beyond Bruce's assigned roles and seemed content to stay until doomsday unless asked to withdraw. Bruce kept his entire attention focused on Barton's mind. Pepper couldn't overhear what exactly the doctor promised him, but whatever was being said had a considerable impact.
"Feed the tube in. You've got to get it in. Patient's dying, get the tube in!"
Pepper held her breath. Clint's eyes were beginning to unfocus. His face had changed from red, to pale, and now slightly blue. He continued to try and gasp, but it was as if he was breathing against a boulder trapped on his chest. An alarm went off somewhere. Someone announced that his heart rate dropped.
"Line's in!" a man announced.
The rush of air that evacuated Clint's tense chest was loud enough to hear. Following that was a flood of straight blood. The latter, thankfully, stopped after a few minutes of unrelenting concern. If it hadn't, the staff was fully prepared to forgo radiology and wheel Clint right into surgery. The archer's eyes flipped open. He sucked in a breath of utter relief and Pepper found herself breathing again too. Bruce's steady voice continued.
"Slow," he whispered. "Slow, shallow, it's going to be fine. Slow, shallow breaths."
"Heart rate's coming back up. Blood pressure's lower, but stable." One of the nurses announced. All at once the mood of crisis ended. Half the support staff took hold of the chest tube material and evacuated the immediate area while the other half prepped for the radiology team to come through. After all, surviving a pneumothorax was one thing, Clint still had a knife trapped in him to deal with.
Bruce systematically tapped Thor, Steve, and then Tony. He gave them a direct look. "It's all right, now, I think you guys can take a step back. Right, Clint?"
"Ye-yeah." The archer said.
Together the three stepped away and headed back toward where Pepper stood and observed. Tony crossed toward her and slipped his arms around her waist. Pepper melted against him.
A chill went through Barton's body. He somehow managed to keep his core from shifting but his arms and legs began to vibrate. Bruce pressed his hand into the archer's strapped down one and squeezed.
"Can't stop shaking. Can't." Clint bit his bottom lip.
"It's just the adrenaline." Bruce told him. "Are you feeling cold?"
Clint nodded. "Feel's like I'm freezing. Can't feel my side."
"Your side has a tube in it and half a bottle of lidocaine. We're getting you a blanket now." Bruce glanced at Steve who left instantly.
Dr. Martinez strode forward again and leaned into Clint's line of site. "Agent Barton, how you holding up? I know a lot's going on right now, but it's nothing you haven't been through before, right?"
"Right."
"I've got a mobile x-ray unit here and we're going to snap a picture of that chest. You don't have to do anything but sit there and look pretty. I'm stealing Dr. Banner for a second, though. I think the last thing we need is for a little extra radiation floating around."
Bruce squeezed Clint's hand again reassuringly and headed for the door. Steve moved past him for a second to hand off his discovered blanket to one of the technicians before he too was shuffled out. The room door sealed behind him.
:(:):(:):
"Windows are lead lined. Not sure why I decided to do that, but I did. I guess I'm happy I did. It's digital. The X-ray is digital. It won't take long to come up. They can manipulate the images. I don't think they'll move him. They shouldn't have to. It's on a telescoping arm. I built it myself." Tony repeated every thought that passed through his head.
The team stood side by side in the hall staring into the exam room while the lead-layered medical staff took over Clint's patient care. Someone draped a gown over Clint's lower half while another slipped the portable plate in behind his back. Clint simply did his best to remain calm while the world tumbled around him. The oxygen mask remained on his face, his eyes fixed on the five beings who watched him from the other side of the glass.
"How did this happen?" Steve asked.
"Mission." Tony supplied. "He didn't say where he was."
"Close enough to take a cab here." Bruce said.
"Why didn't he just call one of us? I was back from DC. Tony's been in all week, and you haven't even left the Tower yet. Why didn't he just ask one of us to go?"
"Clint's been a solo spy for a while. I doubt he knows how to ask." Bruce replied.
"So is Natasha, and the two spent half of last month together." Steve defended. He pushed off of the wall and paced away a few steps with his head hanging down.
"That might work fine for her, but Clint's been working cases alone since before Loki scrambled his brain." Bruce extended a hand toward Thor. "No offense."
Thor shrugged his broad shoulders. "None taken, I know very well the trouble my brother has caused and I feel the weight of that guilt every day. I am happy Barton has fared better than my friend Selvig, however."
Pepper looked around Tony to ask, "What happened to Dr. Selvig?"
"He had, I believe it is called, a breakdown of his nerves? I have not spoken to him in some weeks and the words he uses are peculiar to me. Nonsensical. They are keeping him watched very closely."
"They?"
Thor returned her look. "I believe he still resides in the hospital."
Bruce hadn't thought much about Selvig since the attack. He was familiar with the scientist's work before when he'd been in academia but most of Selvig's current research emerged one year ago, when Bruce spent the majority of his time in Calcutta. Since returning to his scientific research, he simply hadn't caught up on Selvig's work with the Foster Theory beyond the scope of the Avengers' mission in New York. Thinking of an illustrious scientist like him, who had at one time been a front runner for the Nobel Prize, reduced to a mental institution with a "breakdown of his nerves" only made Bruce more nervous for the man sitting across from them. Working alone, not reaching out, sleeping on a nest on the floor all did little to inspire confidence in Bruce that something more sinister wasn't brewing under Clint's calculated exterior. He felt a small tap on his leg and shared a private look with Tony. Apparently he was sensing the same.
"Barton's got to know that he can rely on us. He can't think that going out alone like that is a smart idea. How'd he describe the guy that did this too him?"
"He held a visage similar to myself." Thor recalled.
Steve slouched and folded his arms. It sounded completely ridiculous for Barton to take on a guy like that without any back up whatsoever. What good was having a team if they didn't actually do anything for one another?
"He's not going to want a lecture." Bruce warned. "He didn't even want me playing mother hen. He just wants to do his thing. I get where you're coming from Steve, but devil's advocate says he's going to buck you on this."
From the other side of the glass, Martinez waved them back in. Further discussion ended until they at least knew whether or not they'd have an archer for the foreseeable future. The sight of Clint's x-ray, though, challenged that notion precisely. Pepper didn't stop by the door this time. While the heroes all clustered around the radiology viewer she went to Clint's slide and placed her hand in his. It was still strapped to the bed rail in a large, padded cuff. No one thought releasing him was a good idea, even when she requested it.
" 's alright." He whispered, reclaiming her attention. "Used to it."
"You're used to being tied to beds?"
He smiled a little at the connotation she stuck into her voice. "Not trusted." He clarified. Before Pepper's curiosity could peak into a question he switched his attention to the cluster of men surrounding his scans. "What's the verdict, docs?"
Not bothering with words, Dr. Martinez grabbed the side of the mobile screen and turned it toward Hawkeye. The image was completely self-explanatory. He could see the outline of white bone on a plane of bluish/black swirls that stood in place of his lungs, heart, and diaphragm. Bisecting the lot of it was the stark white line of a dinner knife. Somehow it looked bigger as it was running through him then when the guy held it that morning. The faces of the men around him were grim.
"What's the plan?" Clint asked.
"Good question." Martinez said, folding his arms. "Right now, I don't have one. I'll be honest. I do have a surgical team prepped and ready in the next room in case what we do next gets bad. Radiographs are good to give us a broad picture, but if we really want an idea of how to help you, we need to try something else."
Pepper held Clint's hand a little tighter. Maybe it was really him squeezing onto her, but he wouldn't admit that to himself.
"What do you want me to do?"
"You have one job, Agent Barton. Don't panic. You panic, you get sedated, and that's not fun for any of us. Not in your case. We need a CT scan which we do have access to right up this hall. To get it, that means we have to lay you down."
"Move me?!" Clint growled. "Wasn't this whole thing about not moving me? Wasn't that the plan?"
Martinez nodded, allowing Clint to vent his frustration.
"We said this might happen." Bruce interrupted. "You can't sit up in a CT scan. We have to lay you down. If we skip this, we can anesthetize you, take you to surgery now, and see what we find, but to give you a better chance it would help us all out to know what we're dealing with."
Clint didn't like it, which was very obvious. Apparently he wasn't really getting an option either. He stopped flexing his arms and let his eyes close. If they were going to do this, he wanted to think as little about the process as possible. Martinez noted Clint's acquiescence and moved in before the archer decided to change his mind. The Avengers took their original positions again and Clint tried to remain untensed as half a dozen pairs of hands took him all at once. Bruce unshackled his left hand for Thor to manipulate better. Martinez called out the procedure as the nursing, paramedic, and surgical staff all stood to the side on standby. Pepper stayed by his still-cuffed right hand, determined not to be shuffled away.
One of the nurses dropped the head of the bed back, took Clint's blood stained pillow and dropped it to the floor. She grabbed the top handle on the expanding backboard and extended it the length of the bed. At first, Clint remained in his half reclined position with the help of Thor on his upper body, Steve on his lower half, and Bruce's hands cradling his head and neck. Dr. Martinez gave the signal and as one unit, each lowered Barton down. Clint himself was still shaking uncontrollably. Tony spread the blanket across him in hopes it might help. During that critical transition, no one breathed.
Halfway down Clint jolted like an electric shock ran through him. He hissed through his teeth causing the entire room to stop.
"Talk to us, Barton." Martinez commanded.
"Fine, it's fine." He groaned.
"I'm serious, is something wrong?"
"Cramp in my side."
"Which side?"
"Right."
Martinez moved closer and carefully palpated in the area Clint indicated. He felt a knot of unhappy muscle firing beneath his fingers. Not an uncommon finding for the archer who was about as stressed out as a cat in a room of barking dogs. Just beneath a few layer of skin and muscle, though, the knife was most likely shifting in the torn lung they knew it cut into. "That's ok. It's normal." He lied. At his direction the men continued to lower Barton in a controlled manner until for the first time in hours, Barton lay flat on his back. Clint pulled his hand out of Pepper's to grab the side of the bed rail instead. At least that he could wring without worrying about breaking it.
"Hurts." Barton gasped.
"The cramp or something else?"
"Else."
His lung, Martinez thought. The heart rate began to spike. Someone reset the blood pressure to get a better reading. If Clint suddenly began to bleed internally, that would be their best indication. The Avengers gave them room to work, even though they wanted more than anything to jump right back into the fray. After a few minutes of checks, double checks, and Clint's careful self-control, the mystery pain ebbed away. His blood pressure was stable. His heart rate dropped back down to normal, and he opened his eyes.
"Can we stop doing that?" he whispered.
Martinez rubbed his shoulder. "You're job's almost done. We're going to pack you up and wheel you up the hall. You're right and left hand are going up over your head so we can see your chest a little better. I'm locking you in again."
"Yes, sir."
The support staff packed up the monitors and equipment for the short trip up the hall. Bruce unshackled Clint's right arm and slowly lifted it up to join the left at the head of the bed. Clint didn't resist the peculiar treatment. Instead, he treated it like the status quo.
"How you holding up there?" Bruce asked, finishing with the last strap.
"Trying not to run away." Clint admitted.
"Hence," Bruce tapped the cuffs and smiled.
"I don't like doctors."
"I'm gathering that. It's good to know. So the next time you decide to walk home with a knife in your back, we'll skip the pleasantries and just strap you to a bed. I guess I should applaud you for staying in your room and not walking upstairs to dinner."
"I thought about it." Clint said.
"Dr. Banner, we're ready to go." Someone interrupted.
As a unit the Avengers filtered out into the hall again, made space, and watched Clint's bed disappear in the direction of the CT scan. The group huddle lasted all of four seconds before Tony headed off in the direction of Clint's bed.
"Tony, they aren't going to let you in." Banner warned.
"Like Hell! I bought the thing!" Stark shouted over his shoulder.
The others exchanged looks amongst themselves and eventually folded. The most interesting thing happening that night was most certainly not back upstairs where their cold dinner had been left abandoned. Besides, Clint needed them whether they were in the same room, or not. There was no doubting the absolute danger Barton found himself in. No one wanted to admit to the truth, but it was entirely possible the archer would not survive the night.
Another chapter done. another grind of feels to overcome. what will happen next?
Remember, if you do wanna have a gander at Clint's x-rays (radiographs:) or check out my other Clint projects, just find me on facebook.
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