Disclaimer: So, I so completely own absolutely nothing. Like, the amount of nothing I own greatly exceeds the level of nothing. Therefore the nothing I own has reached the level of something. Nothing is something! Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Don't sue me!
Captain Quentin Lance would never lay any claim to being any sort of medical expert. He took yearly refresher courses on CPR, trauma treatment, and first aid. He also spent a decent amount of time learning about gunshot treatments. On the job injury training that came from being a father also meant he had covered basics bumps and bruises.
However, even he happened to know that oxygen was relatively important. In fact, he would personally place the importance level of oxygen as fairly essential. It was really more the definition of something essential. At least, essential for living beings.
If people happened to run out of oxygen then those people stopped breathing. When people stopped breathing their hearts stopped working and their organs and other important things shut down. This he knew led to imminent death.
This made it extremely unfortunate that Lance actually needed several fingers to count up the number of times he had seen key members of Team Arrow (namely Oliver and Felicity) operating extremely short on oxygen. Personally he would have preferred to have the people he cared about, no matter how begrudgingly, fully stocked on the essentials. As was previously established, oxygen fell in to that category.
The first time it happened he had witnessed Felicity Smoak go in to anaphylactic shock from eating a chocolate chip cookie that had had peanut oil in the batter. She had made a slight choking sound and gestured frantically at her throat. Lance had realized and begun to move but Oliver had been in motion before Lance's eyes had time to track the motion.
Oliver had flipped her purse over, extracted an epi-pen from the mess that had spilled out and jabbed the injection in to her thigh. Moments later her breathing had already begun to ease, but there had been one terrifying moment when her breathing hadn't eased and it looked as though the treatment hadn't worked. Oliver had lifted her up and brought her to the md table where Diggle, who had been only seconds slower on the uptake had already pulled out an oxygen mask.
When Felicity had gotten her breath back she had dropped the oxygen mask and glanced between the three men. Her eyes landed on Oliver's and she sighed. "Not that I don't appreciate you helping, but sometime in the near future when I'm sure I can breath we might have to discuss you carrying me around when bad stuff happens. I'm not Lois Lane. And by that I mean not the cartoon version. The version and Smallville was actually a bit kickass. A bit like Laurel..."
Lance felt like he equal parts wanted to shake some sense in to her and verbally ream her for the scare she had caused and laugh out loud in relief. Oliver laughed with a small shake of the head. Lance could hear the panic and relief in equal measures in his voice. He leaned forward and placed a small kiss on her forehead just under her hair line, reaching out and running his hands over her arms. "Take a second to breath and later we can talk about anything you want."
Lance personally was still in favor of carting Felicity off to the nearest hospital emergency room with all the sirens on. However, he figured if Oliver (the overprotective stubborn bulldog) had resigned himself to the fact that that wouldn't be happening then it was about time to give up on that idea.
If there was a single person on the planet who was more stubborn than Oliver it was Felicity. It was part of what made the two of them such a terrifying united force. Lance had noticed that if the two of them ever agreed on something then anything getting in the way would probably have been flattened. Frequently Oliver would attempt to be more stubborn than Felicity was only to be worn down insistently until he capitulated or played deaf until whatever had been discussed had passed.
The next time Lance had witnessed either Oliver or Felicity run drastically short on oxygen it had been Oliver. A new semi-radical criminal group had attempted to kidnap Oliver and had only managed it by knocking him on the back of the head with a cement block. They had wanted information on a new project being run by Queen Consolidated. They had wanted Oliver Queen not the Arrow.
The criminals hadn't managed to get anything from Oliver but it had hardly been for lack of trying. If the Oliver Queen they had expected to kidnap and interrogate had been the one they had actually gotten they would have gotten everything they were after. As for the lacking in oxygen... well, there was a reason that members of more modern governments had outlawed waterboarding.
Diggle had performed immediate CPR when they had arrived while Thea and Laurel had cleared the perpetrators in to a corner so that Lance's cops could arrest them. Quentin had then made sure everyone not in the know about Oliver's Green Secret had cleared the building and doubled back to check on him. The scene he had found had been none to pretty.
Oliver was propped up against a dirty wall with Diggle's arm around one shoulder to hold him that way. He was coughing up briny looking water at a concerning rate. As Lance watched, he fell back with a gasp. Lance could see his chest heave as his lungs worked double time to fill themselves with air after being repeatedly deprived of it.
"Are you going to be okay man?" Diggle asked with concern. Oliver nodded tiredly, swallowed, and then winced. "Okay," Diggle said helping reluctantly as Oliver attempted to stand. "Let's get you back to the van and to base so Felicity can check on you herself."
Lance saw Oliver nod and pushed open the door so that Diggle could help Oliver through. "Exactly how much of her loud voice am I in for?" he asked.
Diggle shrugged. "Probably not too much until tomorrow at least. For now man, she's probably just going to be happy you can breath again." Quentin could hear the sigh of relief Oliver let out at that. "I'm not going to lie though," Diggle started. "She's been pretty freaked out for the last couple hours, and she is going to draw your blood and make you take antibiotics."
Squinting in to the dim light Lance could see Oliver pulling a face. It almost made him want to laugh. Oliver's expression was exactly the same as the one Lance had seen him pull when he was seven and had had to take medicine for Strep Throat. Of course, that version had been a little damp and a little bit more able to breath. Plus a bacteria and some oxygen he supposed.
The next time it had happened, Oliver and Felicity had both managed to catch the flu. Lance supposed it shouldn't have been that surprising for Oliver to catch something. After all, the guy spent every night out stopping crime rain or shine. Lance guessed that all of the time spent on the island had probably given him a pretty killer immune system, but germs were apparently always changing.
Felicity had caught the bug from Oliver after having flat out refused to leave him alone. She had also neglected to actually get a flu shot when everyone else had. "Getting voluntarily jabbed with a little pointy needle?" she had ranted. "No thank you. Besides, my exposure to people is limited to you guys anyway. And the last time one of us got a flu shot it was Dig and there was Vertigo in it!"
Thea hadn't hesitated to quote those exact words back to her when she and Laurel had dropped off supplies at the door of Oliver's bedroom. Lance figured that had pretty much covered all relevant "I told you so's". So instead of saying anything he had called in to the precinct saying he was going to be late and gone down to the kitchen to find supplies for soup.
When he had brought it upstairs he had heard a loud cacophony of coughing and wheezing. "Not being able to breath sucks," Felicity managed.
"Uh huh," Oliver's voice muttered, followed by the rustling of blankets as he turned over. "I love it when you babble but it's probably not a good plan right now."
"Kay," Felicity said between sneezes. "Sit up so the icky stuff doesn't go in your throat."
Lance heard Oliver grumble and knocked once on the door. He heard someone roll out of bed and a few footsteps moved towards the door before it opened. It revealed Oliver with a few days worth of extra stubble. The concerning thing though was his eyes.
Quentin had seen Oliver look bright and happy as a little boy. He had seen his eyes tired, sad, and drunk. But his eyes had almost always seemed alert. Especially lately. But just now they seemed just exhausted and glassy. He glanced down at the soup Lance held. "Your old recipe?" he asked.
Lance nodded. "Had some time this morning and I figured... you know. Well, you two already can't breath, I figured you might as well be fed."
Oliver nodded and managed a small, grateful expression. "Thank you."
"Yeah well," Lance said, suddenly feeling awkward about the earlier impulse he had had to cook in the first place. He just hadn't been able to fight the impulse to take care of the two of them. Fatherly instincts kicking in and resurfacing at a high gear. "Just, take care of yourself okay? You and her both."
The nod he got in return would have been much more reassuring if Oliver hadn't been swaying on his feet. Oliver pulled in a deep breath that Lance could actually hear catch in his throat. Then he turned and moved in to the room again.
Several long stories made short, Lance had seen Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak both very short of oxygen in a few different situations. Drowning was one of them. Then there was anaphylactic shock which presented a whole different ball game. Other varieties had arrived in the forms of panic attacks, the flu, torture, pneumonia, and in one particularly memorable occasion the collapsed remains of a brick and cinderblock wall
After that last one Oliver had luckily been around people who had seen him in his business clothes. The legitimate kind not the vigilante one. He had been taken to a hospital in time for his crushed left rung to be repaired and re-inflated. Then it had just been a little while for Oliver's lungs to both stay that way. That particular hospital trip had also involved the setting and taping of a few cracked ribs. Panic on the parts of Felicity and Thea had generally abounded.
Captain Quentin Lance knew almost nothing about medicine apart from CPR and emergency first aid. His best version of illness care involved a special version of chicken noodle soup he was pretty sure had originally come from the back of a can. But he did know that oxygen was very incredibly important for the continued welfare of any member of the human species. And not just the human species. More like, all things living.
He had seen too many people he cared about lacking in oxygen too damn many times for him to count.
Maybe it was time to add an oxygen tank to the back of his squad car...
A/N: So how did I do. I'm not so sure this is my best chapter but I needed to get something written to flex the right brain muscles. Still, tell me what you think! I'm sorry it took so long to get this posted. I'm also sorry, t this will probably be the last one for a little while. I'm still at camp and it is incredibly busy. Review for me! xoxoxooxoxoxooxoxoxxoxoxoxoxooxoxooxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxooxooxoxooxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxo