Chapter Six: See You Soon
While Bane suffered, across the hall, Talia lay gently sleeping.
The light was blinding as Bane's eyelids cracked open, his lash line was kept clean from Theresa's dutiful attention and no debris stung his orbs as they rolled about wildly within their sockets.
His inky black pupils rapidly dilated, the rods and cones were suddenly alive, electric within their burnt butterscotch irises.
Dr. Steele extinguished the piercing penlight as he leaned over Bane, lowering his face closer, his eyes sweeping across Bane's tortured face as he absorbed the infant stages of newly returned consciousness.
Dr. Steele whispered more to himself than Bane, stating aloud his findings from his cursory exam, excitable, like he'd stumbled across some great artifact.
A sweet, succulent golden ticket.
Bane's scarred lips parted, allowing for a low keen to slip free.
Roderick Steele never took his eyes off of Bane as his body began to tremble and quake, reaching over to the metal table to retrieve another loaded syringe.
It was too soon for Bane to go from slipping free of the afterbirth before he could walk, run and kill.
"That's enough for now," Dr. Steele murmured as he injected the potent sedative into Bane's IV line, allowing for chemical respite to sweep inland and take Bane away.
As Bane descended back into the comforting arms of unconsciousness, outside the medical center in the wake of Gordon's departure, a multitude of voices began in concert that both condemned and praised his words.
Televisions, tablets and all things screens were on one of two channels as people tuned in to have the journalist tell them exactly what they thought.
When pixels became too much, from triggering to jarring with the imagery and people would turn off their screens in disgust, they'd turn on the radio to hear Captain Chaos regurgitating Gordon's well-chewed speech before spewing the word gumbo from between the thin lips of his ignorant maw to fill the ears of Gotham City.
Dawn Lemon had recently had her veneers redone and viewers were dazzled by her wide, sparkling smile as she delivered her carefully disseminated point of view on Gordon's words after they played the chart-topping Christian song for a bit.
Dawn even snapped her fingers to the rhythm, her smile, never slipping, although inside, she cringed at the holier than thou lyrics.
She had a particularly soft spot for European death metal.
"Patriots," she began, her eyes narrowing at the camera. "You just heard Gordon talking to you, talking to all of us," she began, "he's made a lot of promises. He vowed much, he stated more today, he wants us to support him, cast our votes for him, elect him, allow him to govern the city, yet is he going to follow through?" she asked her audience that hung on every one of the words from between her megawatt teeth.
"I enjoyed Gordon's little speech, makes me want to believe in feeling safe again."
Dawn pressed her lips together and affixed a solemn expression as she continued. "I just hope this is not a ploy to look anywhere but his shining face, a move from the left's playbook."
"He needs to come through for the people, for us, for you. Gordon needs to get those two in front of a judge, to a cell, to the chair and heal this fractured city, truly bring peace."
"Your vote is unique to you," Dawn said. "I'm going to go to the polls and cast my vote for James Gordon. I'm going to believe in the change that he said he will bring," she continued, not caring of all the accusations that would come flooding into the station about voter manipulation, fully embracing her right to speak freely.
"Follow through Mr. Gordon, follow through," she stated, standing up straighter, only missing a majestic eagle landing on her head.
Over the radio waves, Captain Chaos screamed into his microphone, furious about what he referred to as Gordon's smoke screen, "peacekeeper huh? Does no one see what's happening here? Look around, quit watching the sideshow," he demanded of his audience.
Truth was sitting across from him in the shabby studio and added encouraging words as Captain chaos continued. "None of this is real. This is all staged. Gordon is just a puppet who'll be heading to D.C. with his wrongly imprisoned revolutionaries, hoping to plant and cement his political flag."
"Gordon is just a small cog in the war machine that is coming to Gotham, it will be mutually assured destruction for all, don't be blinded by Gordon holding up the falsely imprisoned Bane and Talia who are being held against their will. They are pawns, all of this was carefully designed."
"Theatricality and deception," he spit before Truth seamlessly picked up the conspiracy theory by the tail.
"They don't want us to see what's really happening, look at the price of gas, who's looked at their utility bill lately? These new taxes: do you know what your hard-earned money is funding Gotham? Do you know who you're supporting right now as you stand here and call yourself a patriot?"
"Have you seen the activity near the old power plant? No one is looking around," he shouted. "Have you seen the lights on at the reactor at night? You haven't because you're all watching the hospital, you're hanging on Gordon's every word, sucking mother's milk from that overly tanned Dawn Lemon and her partner Sam Jones who has less testosterone than her."
He collected himself before continuing, always careful because the FCC listened more than Santa, Russia and the NSA combined.
While Truth continued his conspiratorial tapestry, the world wide web, surely with at least one user named Charlotte, and the Book of the Face along with the Ticking Tock, all began to swirl with similar hash tags.
Soon it was difficult to discern who was actually talking.
The social media arena was packed full of activity, unable to sort the left from the right, the moderate and extremes.
Not able to separate the ups and downs and all the way the fuck arounds.
What was on and who turned you right off?
At one point, most of Gotham City was tuned into the holy Trinity of the Owl News Group, GNN and Goth Net.
During a brief break, Sam Jones touched up his make-up and fixed his hair before returning to his live broadcast.
"Well, Gordon came out here and said a lot to us, this is Gordon certainly trying to get those last-minute undecided voters," Jones began, smirking with an even more modelesque manner than Dawn Lemon was capable.
"Here again we have the right coming out of the desert, a savior having subsided on locusts and honey as they took on our sins. Now they are here to liberate us, subterfuge under the guise of keeping us safe."
Sam Jones continued with a similar diatribe about voting.
"I will buy you a ticket to meet me at the station."
"I will proudly stand in line for you as we exercise Our right to vote."
"Do not allow the right to continue to dominate this city, don't give them further power during this fracture, to enforce a further divide while maintaining the façade of change."
"Look beyond Gordon's poaching of popular music in order to distract you," Sam pleaded, camera ready from every angle, one could directly thank his fashion icon mother for that.
In an undisclosed location, another voice continued. "Don't let this become a landslide election," Captain Chaos urged. "Go and hug your local politicians, get up close and meet them all."
All the voices lifted up and became as one.
The same words on multiple screens and through crackly speakers.
Hash tags swirled on the interwebs and flew through vestigial gums and out from flapping jaws like the swirling hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium during nuclear fusion.
# Drain the Swamp
# Who's Pulling the String
# Past POTUS Problems
# Gordon is a Puppet
# Gordon is a Savior
# Lock Him Up
# Bane and the Ho have Got to Go
# Staged
# Political Prisoners
# Extremists
# Look to the Left
# Look to the Right
# You're all Looking in the Wrong Fucking Direction
# Who's Really Paying Gordon
There were conspiratorial whispers about an influential foreign trifecta of fuck.
# Foreign Money
# Foreign Power
# Foreign Government
With all the swirling combustible voices outside filling the ether, upstairs, inside the temperature controlled Medical Center, Dr. Steele continued to quietly observe Bane as he fell deeper into his chemical slumber.
The lines in Roderick's forehead relaxed as he tracked a tear that had been forced from the corner of Bane's eye from the expelled energy as he had struggled with the first breaths of consciousness.
Roderick let out a low, incoherent murmur as he plucked a square piece of gauze from the metal table and wiped away the rolling crystalline tear drop as it rolled down Bane's face.
Across the city in Old Town, Bruce Wayne was hunkered down in a blue booth with a ripped seat at Tom's Diner.
He had a wool cap pulled down low over his usual coifed cute hair, with a thick coat pulled around him as he picked at the rich, buttery crust of a slice of deep-dish apple pie.
He'd looked up at the screen when the Breaking News segment turned from the recycled coverage of Bane and Talia to show James 'The Peacekeeper' Gordon outside the Medical Center, people crowding around as he delivered his pious campaign promises to make Gotham great again.
The undercover billionaire looked up from his pie and over to the counter where a waitress with the name tag S. Vega was dragging a dull knife across the crusty surface of a slice of toast, spreading the creamy, yellow butter in its wake.
A crumb from the handmade crust got caught in his throat and made him cough, his side coming to life, a sharp reminder that he was recovering from being stabbed.
He fought an outward flinch when all of a sudden, a pale hand with long fingers reached out and plucked a piece of apple from his pie, his eyes followed the retreating hand and piece of brown sugar encrusted apple disappear between the two plump, luscious lips of Selina Kyle.
"You never called," Selina said flatly before settling across from him. Her side of the booth had less rips than his, but it was still uncomfortable with the coils pressing against her bony ass.
Bruce sighed heavily and shook his head before he dropped his gaze back to his half-eaten slice of pie.
"I wouldn't have known what to say," he finally admitted.
Selina rolled her eyes and pulled the plate away from him, "it's not gonna eat itself," she said with a smirk as she arched an eyebrow and loaded a fork full of the sugary unctuousness.
As Bruce watched Selina eat his piece of pie, back at the Gotham Medical Center, Doctor Steele left Bane's room, pausing to pull the door closed behind him before he crossed the linoleum hall to Talia's room.
The last tech had left her door ajar, he stood at the room's threshold, imagining he was asking Talia to grant him entry to her private quarters.
His footfalls were soft as he approached the side of her bed, staring down at her face, the exquisite features smooth, serene.
Dr. Steele's hand shook with the barest perceptibility as he stroked the top of her hand with a couple of his smooth fingertips, "you'll be amongst us soon, my hand has been forced," he whispered.
Roderick was having to fast-track the physiological process, bend nature to his will.
It didn't allow for a lot of time for proper procedure and starting with Bane was a necessity if the science went south and Bane's body failed.
Dr. Steele was already looking ahead to the possibility of Bane's central nervous system collapsing from the accelerated process, but knew his corpse would make a great dissection for an anatomy class with the physical malformations received from shoddy surgery with shaking hands.
"I'll be seeing you soon," he whispered, his fingertips trembled as he hovered them over her face, millimeters away from brushing across her cheekbones when the sound of someone clearing their throat tore him out of his hypnotic fugue.
He whipped around so fast that the contents of his deep pockets gave a jingling metallic melody as he found Theresa Maria Berezini standing in the doorway.
"Good evening doctor," she greeted him in a clipped tone, already moving into the room sans invitation. "I forgot my water," she added as she picked up her bottle from where she'd left it after an earlier bed linen change.
Dr. Steele watched Theresa slip the metal cylinder into her backpack, the stainless-steel cannister was decorated with comic strips of an arachnid man in homage to the immortal Stan Lee.
Theresa's presence made Roderick feel strangely uncomfortable, it became clear she was dawdling as she squatted to tie her already tied laces, growing dangerously close to being late for practice.
As Dr. Steele forced himself to take his leave when Theresa did, he spared a glace back at Talia, he'd be goddamned if he'd turn into a pillar of salt.
He couldn't help but notice Theresa's backpack looked like it had a pink tail from the synthetic wig that stuck out through a hole in the fabric.
Dr. Steele shook his head in pity as Theresa left the southern hospital doors to the staff parking lot, he'd never understand why a woman would choose to remain childless and surround herself with cats.