Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
Summary: You know you've got problems when Frank Castle is lecturing you on the importance of friendship.
Or: how Matt's broken leg becomes the least of his concerns.
Warnings: Spoilers for season 2.
Author's Notes: I am not a doctor, but I write about doctors in fanfiction. My grasp of medicine is therefore equal parts research and hand-waving. Apologies if this is taxing to you medical professionals out there. I hope it does not detract from the storytelling overall.
Readers, you are my favourites. Thank you so much for all your kind support and enthusiasm! I hope you enjoy this installment. I'm looking forward to coming back with more soon!
"I was a blindfold and never complained.
All the survivors singing in the rain.
I was the one with the world at my feet.
Got us a battle, leave it up to me.
…What it is and where it stops nobody knows
You gave me a battle I never chose"
~Metric, "Blindness"
Chapter Two
Doc gets cleaned up in careful silence and Frank double-checks the perimeter. He locks doors, checks windows, and takes an inventory, checking intermittently that Doc hasn't reached for a phone and that Red is breathing.
"What happened?" she asks, tugging on a fresh pair of gloves.
"Ceiling fell. Crushed his leg," Frank tosses his head towards to injury.
She comes to stand next to the table in a clean apron and glasses; glossy black hair pulled into a low ponytail. Serious to the point of overcompensation. She holds her gaze on Red's chest as she offers a penlight to Frank. "Check his pupils," she says quietly. Her eyes flit towards the mask to tell Frank why she isn't doing that herself.
He takes the penlight. She moves immediately and sets to work on the leg, her back to Frank and the face she doesn't want to see.
"You think your ignorance is going to save you?" he asks.
Doc stiffens. Her ministrations continue, but the way her shoulders drop and back straightens say that was her hope, yes.
Frank holds her in his peripheral vision. No need – she's focused on her task of removing Red's boot, the whole time trying to ignore him, trying to ignore how close his hand is to holster, how quickly a bullet can be in her brain. He fiddles for the edges of Red's mask and has to unzip his armour in order to find it. Face to face with the devil in the bare fluorescent light, Frank notices how unsettlingly opaque the eye pieces in Red's mask are. No wonder people think he's a devil, fighting with shit like that in his line of vision.
"Maybe your lack of curiosity has saved you in the past," he comments, finally loosening and lifting the mask from Red's face, "but when this is over, I'm not going to be the only one with a gun to your head. That guy I threw off your table has friends who'll want to know how he bled to death on the floor."
Doc says nothing. She tears off Red's boot, snapping the coagulated blood gluing it to his foot, and sets it on the counter next to her. The sock follows. She probes Red's gray foot for a pulse. Red doesn't react, not until Frank tugs at his mask. That's when he lashes out.
The attack is over as quickly as it begins. Frank catches a forearm to his neck before he can pin Red's flailing arms, but the tapping of legs against the metal table are what kills the fight. Red gasps, cries, shakes. He pushes against Frank's grip, thrashing weakly in all the directions opposite his shattered leg like a compass needle on a frantic search for north.
"Easy, Red," Frank shuts Red up before he can yell. The devil can be so damn vocal when he's trapped.
Red lists his head away from the sound, or maybe he's still trying to distance himself from his leg. The limb is rattling on the table as the Doc tries to cut at his armour. Her scissors aren't doing much against his pant. She reaches for a scalpel and tries with that.
"Where are we?" Frank forces him to lie back. Red twitches his broken leg pointedly, gasping again in pain. "Who is that? Who are you?"
"We're in a butcher shop. Doc's trying to get a look at your leg, but she can't cut through your armour."
"No, she won't be able to," Red admits breathlessly.
She gives up but continues holding herself with Red's head out of sight, "We'll have to remove the tourniquet."
"Better do it fast. I think…I think an artery's been severed."
Frank raises a brow, "You a doctor, Red?"
"No, I've…I've got a feeling…" since he is breathing rapidly despite his best efforts to stay calm. Sweat collects on his beard, pouring through the gap between his face and mask.
"If it was severed, you'd have bled out by now," Doc informs him. "Partially severed is possible, but that's not common with a crush injury. Your armour isn't broken."
The devil bristles. His tone goes from pain-stricken to icy, "My armour is knife proof. Blunt force is going to break the skin before it breaks the suit."
Doc nods, twisting her head towards the counter. She changes the subject to a more productive one, "Cognition sounds good. How are his pupils?"
"They're fine," Red declares twice: firmly to Doc, even more firmly to Frank, who doesn't but it.
"Severed artery's one thing, Red, but you took a hard fall onto a stone floor. Not going to save you from bleeding to death only to have you lapse into a coma."
"No."
"Wasn't asking."
Frank holds him down. Easy task with blood loss depleting Red's reserves. The devil's scrambling very quickly disintegrates into ragged breathing, then a pained gasp when Frank leans over his chest. "Broken ribs?" Frank asks, receiving a shaky nod in response. He's careful not to jar them when he moves back. The doc isn't interested, but he plants himself between her and Red for cover. Give the devil a little bit of privacy as he lifts the mask.
He knows the face. Or maybe it's his brain playing tricks on him? No, Frank swears internally, up and down, he knows that face. The sullen tilt to the head, determined purse of thin lips, broad forehead, neatly parted hair: he's so familiar to Frank, but the memories are harried, confused. He's a bystander in Central Park the day of the shooting. He's an inmate at Super Max. He's one of Fisk's cronies. Jesus, who is he – cop? Judge? Juror? Lawyer?
Lawyer.
Frank almost drops the mask in shock. The fucking lawyer, the blind one who led the way into the hospital room. The one whose voice sounded so God damn familiar, but Frank couldn't place him because he can't place anything with his memory. Not his family, not the devil of Hell's Kitchen. He's stuck in the now, staring at this kid in a Hallowe'en costume. The kid who handled himself in a fight with ninjas – who handled himself in a fight with Frank – is blind. Right?
One hell of an act if he isn't: marching around with a cane, favouring his ears over his eyes so much of the time. At the moment, Red's gazing down and to the left. Either he's purposefully avoiding Frank's stare, or he has no idea where Frank's stare is. His pupils look even though, suggesting the bruise on his cheek and forehead is a surface injury. A quick flash of the penlight doesn't make him flinch. Red's eyes don't react to the light.
Frank marvels in spite of himself, not wanting to give the game away to the doctor but needing to ask just the same, "Your uh…your eyes working, Red?"
"As well as they can," Red replies darkly.
Frank returns the mask to his face and rises to his full height. Doc turns around at last, waiting for the prognosis. Frank assures her, "Pupils are fine."
Doc starts gathering supplies from a plastic tote in the corner. "Take off his chest piece," she says between glances at sterile equipment.
The ribs can't feel good as Red rises into a sitting position. Neither can his leg, twitching against the metal carving slab, but he holds it together in stony silence. He reaches for the zipper on the spine, fighting a moan. The sound rises out of his throat as a broken and snarled thing, more pained and broken than if he screamed. Frank rolls his eyes and grabs the zipper for him. The devil's armour unpeels from Red's skin. He helps push the sleeves from his arms before Frank eases him back onto the table.
Red's scars are waxy in the kitchen light, and they rove his chest up and down, side to side, along diagonals. This is when they're not blossoming like flowers on the top of his shoulder or his hip. There's a long one, deep and hooked and ugly on his abdomen; two more under his clavicle. "You got a girlfriend, Red?" Frank scoffs.
"Do I look like a guy who has girlfriends, Frank?"
Yeah, actually, he is. In his cheap suits with neatly parted hair, sunglasses and a cane. Red has girlfriends. Frank almost mentions Karen, a person whose name he can remember, but he stops himself before he can give out personal details. "Just wondering what you tell them," he scoffs.
The Doc takes over before Red can answer. She arrives at the table ready to start an IV. One look at Red's arm tells her there's no need to tie off. The veins are bulging on his forearm. Two seconds and the IV butterfly pumps a small spurt of blood onto the floor. She attaches the sack of saline, discarding the bag used on her previous patient to make room for the new one.
"You have any allergies?" she asks, opening a fresh syringe.
"No," Red replies.
"Ever had anesthesia before?"
"I don't need anesthesia. I can take it."
The answer is rehearsed, so Frank knows Red isn't posturing. Doc continues prepping her injection using the contents of the vial in her pocket. "No, you can't," she says, drawing a sizeable amount of liquid into the syringe.
"I've had bones set before."
"Setting bones is one thing. I'm suturing an artery. Probably going to have to close a split laceration on your calf. This is before I remove a piece of tissue from your leg to give the muscle room to swell, resulting in an incision that won't be closed for up to five days depending on the inflammation," she stares into the devil's eyes, unable to meet the Punisher's. Frank has to admit she's good. Been working around criminals long enough to know which ones to tough talk and which ones to clam-up around. "I'm going to be digging around in your leg for at least an hour. You can either pass out from the pain or take your chance with the meds. Your choice."
Red's fear is louder than hers. His shaking takes on a nervous energy, so much so that his bottom lip quivers, "What are you giving me?"
"Fentanyl."
"Show me."
She does, for all the good it does Red. Frank reads the label for him and gives him a nudge to the wrist as a confirmation. Which is, Frank realizes, exactly what Red wanted him to do. "Give it to him."
Doc punches the injection, tosses the needle into the sharps bin on the counter, and moves swiftly to Red's leg in anticipation. She's right to hurry. Seconds after the injection is administered, Red is melting into the table. The last of the tension drains out of his shoulders. His head falls to the side as his shuddering ceases, muscles sagging. Even the devil's glossy eyes go dim as he fades out.
What the hell is his name? Frank tries to remember. Frederick? Franklin? No, that was the other one. The nervous one. The one who did a half-decent job of lawyering before Frank fucked it all up. This one had a biblical name. Michael? Mark? The fuck was it, Frank? Come on.
"We don't have much time," Doc snaps him to attention. "I need you to loosen the tourniquet and tighten it again once his pants are off."
Frank nods, mute. He rounds the table, wrapping his hands around the buckle while Doc deals with the latches and zipper on Red's waist. Weird not to see the kid squirming when he's touched. To see the empty husk of the devil spilled out across the table like an armoured bloodstain. Doc rolls his pants down until they hit his thighs, and Red only moans softly, the wrongness registering in his chemical haze.
"Got you, Red," Frank reminds him quietly, and Red's sounds go from angry to exasperated. Clearly, Frank's presence is no more welcome than the hands working their way over his legs.
The skin is pink above the tourniquet, rubbed raw from the pressure. Frank tugs the strap of the belt out of the knot he created. He unclasps the belt without untwisting it, knowing he'll work faster that way.
Doc takes a deep breath. She finishes tugging the pant leg down as far as it will go on Red's right leg. Then, "Now," and Frank unwraps the tourniquet.
For a long moment, the kitchen is filled with the sounds of Red gasping, of his blood spreading across the table, of the Doc straining against the inflammation to free the injured area. She uncovers his thigh, and Frank hurriedly replaces the tourniquet before side-stepping her to take over. He has the pants off in one fierce tug that rattles the broken bones inside Red's leg.
Red is silent. Frighteningly so, given the sight of his leg. His calf has ballooned to inhuman proportions, the skin mottled with bruising and popped blood vessels. The skin has split along the back of the shin, a huge gash cutting almost to the bone draining crimson no matter how tight the tourniquet is.
"Help me roll him," Doc says, taking Red by the shoulders. Frank minds the kid's leg, cradling it in one hand as he lifts with the other.
Lisa broke her leg once. Bad fall from a trampoline. Only Frank was overseas when it happened, so he couldn't have held the limb in his hands like he's doing now. He couldn't have lain her limb down gently so the doc can tend to it. Lisa had a face that looked like Red's leg in the end. A bright red hole of shredded meat surrounded by bursting skin. That's what little girls are made of.
Frank can't help but wonder if this isn't the end of Red.
Happy reading!