Aftermath

They got kids in there sometimes.

Under the Superhero Protection Act, it was law that the hospital couldn’t force anyone under a mask to give up their identity or any information that wasn’t deemed medically necessary, but still. You could hear it in their voices. Lanky superheroes in homemade costumes with acne visible in the gaps of their masks, voices that tried to sound deeper and more menacing than anything that matched their fidgeting hands and bravely raised chins. The nurses were always kind to them.

But still. This was a new one.

The boy sitting on the exam table in front of Nurse Mendez glared at her defiantly from under his black mask, as though his leg wasn’t currently bent in a place legs are never supposed to bend.

“You know I saw you on the news earlier,” she said conversationally, writing down his blood pressure. “That was a pretty big fight you got caught up in. I’m guessing this happened when Mrs. Manhattan dropped you out of that window?”

His eyes narrowed balefully. “She didn’t drop me. I jumped. It was an escape.”

She looked up from her clipboard, meeting his eyes coolly. “From what I saw, the only reason you’re not in handcuffs right now is because she was too busy fighting Shard to bother with his sidekick, and you got a chance to limp away.”

“I’m not a sidekick!” He squeaked, voice cracking in the middle of the sentence. He cleared his throat and tried again, and she could see the flush in his neck of embarrassment and anger. “I’m not a sidekick,” he repeated. “I’m Lord Mayhem, and I’m a super villain too, and someday you’ll bow to me, and so will the rest of the whole entire world!” he hissed, puffing out his chest. He immediately deflated with a small gasp of pain.

“The whole entire world, huh? That’s pretty ambitious,” she said, making a note on his chart for the doctor to check for broken ribs. “And how are you going to do that?”

He perked up again slightly, though he didn’t puff up his chest this time. “I’m gonna be an inventor,” he told her importantly. “I’m gonna make all sorts of cool weapons and stuff so that no one can ever defeat me, not even the superheroes!”

“Ah, you like science, huh? I can relate,” she said, smiling. He regarded her suspiciously, but with interest. “Hey, it’s true, you wouldn’t believe how many science classes I had to take to get here,” she gestured to the hospital walls with her pen. “So you’re the inventor. Since Shard mostly just stabs things from what I’ve seen, I’m guessing you’re the one who built that thing that exploded outside the bank?”

He nodded slowly, eyes still narrowed. “It was an electromagnet.”

“Pretty impressive. Your parents let you build that inside the house?”

He looked away, glaring at the white cabinets instead of her. “Don’t have any,” he muttered.

Her heart sank. It always was the orphans, wasn’t it?

“Is there someone who takes care of you?” she asked, carefully neutral.

His head snapped back around, giving her a look that could cut glass. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me,” he spat ferociously. “I take care of myself.”

The nurse’s eyes flicked pointedly to his broken leg. “And how’s that going for you, kid?”

He hunched down on the exam table, his hands tightening into fists. She noticed his knuckles were bloody. “M’not a kid,” he mumbled.

She hesitated for a beat. But she didn’t really have to think about what she was going to do. She had known she couldn’t just walk away from the minute she walked into the room.

Her hand lifted the first page of the chart, scribbling something on the bottom of the second page, which she carefully tore around. She reached out to the boy, taking his fisted hand, which loosened in surprise. She tucked the scrap of paper into his palm. “That’s my number,” she told him quietly. “You don’t have to give me your identity to use it. You can call me anytime, okay?” He opened his mouth, and she raised a hand to cut him off. “I know, I know, you don’t need anybody. But you’re in a dangerous line of work here, and you might find it’s not such a bad thing to have a trained medical professional in your corner. Just don’t throw the number away, alright? That’s all I ask.”

He didn’t respond, didn’t even look at her. But he didn’t drop the paper either, and she counted that as a win.

“The doctor’s going to come in and take a look at you in a few minutes. Just sit tight and we’ll get you all patched up and ready to go take over the world in a jiffy,” she told him with a bit more cheer.

“Thank you,” he mumbled.

She opened the door, tucking the clipboard into its little basket for the doctor to see, then she paused. “Hey,” she called to the boy, who finally looked at her again, chin raised like he was ready for a confrontation. She grinned at him. “When you become a big time inventor, think you can come back here and design some new machines? Because we’ve got an MRI machine that’s getting up there in years and could definitely use some improvements.”

The boy looked startled. Then, he offered her a small, genuine smile, the first one she had seen all night. “Yeah, I guess I can do that.”

She nodded in parting, giving him a last smile in return. “Cool.” She shut the door and walked back out to the nursing station.

She had other patients to attend to. There were a few other injuries in the explosion that morning, mostly minor ones, thank god.

Another one of the nurses practically shoved past her when she got back to the front.

“Heads up, some guy in a costume blew up a bridge about ten minutes ago. We’ve got a couple ambulances coming our way, start prepping for emergency response,” he called, moving briskly towards the ambulance dock as he spoke.

She got back to work.