Author: Misha
Title: Waiting
Disclaimer: All these characters belong to someone else, of which I know DC Comics and Warner Brothers, but I’m sure there are more people involved… and that certainly does not include me. I just write for fun
Category: Other / POV
Raiting: YTEEN to be on the safe side.
Summary: What do you think when you enter your hero's room? What do you wonder while you wait for him to recover? From a nurse’s POV. One-shot fic.
Author’s Note: This story is companion to Not Human, (viewtopic.php?t=15274) which tells a doctor's POV, but you don't need to read that one to understand this one.
Special thanks to Saavikam for taking the time to beta the story. Thank you girl!
Waiting
It’s the eerie silence that sends chills down my spine, the silence and the stillness of the room. Nothing is rushed here. Nothing seems to move at all. Almost as if time itself has stopped. It’s as if the whole world is holding its breath, waiting. Just waiting.
I half consciously step in trying to make no sound myself, as if the slightest noise is somehow disturbing. And as surreal as this whole thing is, I can’t help thinking for a moment that, of all the places I ever thought I might see him, this was not in that list.
The guards outside are silent and always standing straight, having such a solemn stance that I can almost believe they are statues except for the brief, hopeful smiles they give me on my way here. They are waiting, I know, waiting like the rest of the world for good news. I’m waiting for good news as well.
That’s why entering to his room sends chills down my spine; because standing here I’m faced with the very hard possibility that the news might not be good.
I catch myself thinking how this whole thing is different, so much different, than anything any of us has ever experienced, and it almost frightens me. I feel paralyzed for a fraction of a second at the thought that I don’t know what I can do. I shake the feeling off though. I can’t let it take over me. And so I approach his sleeping figure, effectively breaking the frozen feeling, and I concentrate on doing what I do know. On keeping things on a level that I can manage.
It's not the first time I'm in his room, for all the 18 hours he’s been here, but I seem to always marvel at the same facts: how human he looks, yet how many things are so unique to him, tell tale signs that something is off. Not just the medical inconsistencies like a stab wound that doesn’t bleed or that can’t get infected, just like the fever that never came. It’s other things, mundane things that I notice. Things like he doesn’t seem to need to be shaved, or even to be combed; there’s not one fallen strand of hair on his pillow, not even a tan line on his wrists.
Tell tale signs of a life so different from ours. Differences that everyone wonders at some point or another, especially these days, when every turn I take leads to some news relating to him. It makes me wonder if he sees the world the same way I do. If he enjoys a long walk after a stressful day, or if he has a favorite spot on Earth. If he sings along to songs on the radio and if he wakes up late on Sundays.
I wonder if he dreams of flying.
I –quietly- laugh at my musings as I check that the monitors are working properly. Still, I can’t stop thinking that there’s so much we don’t know about him, really, that my smile fades away rather quickly. How can we help him when we are in the dark?
We’re trying though. We are really trying. Everyone is pulling double shifts attending to the huge number of patients that yesterday’s earthquake left. We’re not enough, and we are always busy, yet our thoughts seem to drift one way or another to our most challenging patient. The one we can’t really help, I sadly realize.
Doctors whisper back and forth in closed rooms and in not so closed hallways. As the hours go by, and he’s not regaining consciousness, those whispers have been growing, getting louder. Anxiety runs through the specialists’ faces who are waiting –like everyone else- for a change.
Not that we nurses haven’t been paying attention. We would need to be deaf not to hear them half of the time, to tell the truth. Should he be exposed to sunlight or is his body too exhausted to absorb the sun’s energy right now? Does he need to eat if he can’t absorb the sun’s rays, then? Maybe his body is in some sort of stasis, reducing everything vital to the minimum. Maybe all this is just a natural state for him in order to recover. Maybe this, maybe that. The more I listen, the more I don’t want to, and the sense of helplessness that I feel is spreading through all of us like a dark cloud.
The one thing everyone seems to agree on, though, is that he’s stable right now, under these conditions, so we’re not altering anything about them. Same light, same position, same room, same everything. And so, all that is left to do is to keep waiting.
I take his pulse and marvel at how human his flesh feels like. A needle might not get through it, but I hope he can sense my touch. The burning marks on his hand have almost faded away, and that gives us hope that he’s getting better. Slowly, yes, but steadily as well, just like his heart beat that hasn’t changed since yesterday.
With no IV’s to change, nothing to dispose of, not even hair to comb, I just stare at him for a long moment. This instant seems to stretch on forever as I think about what I know about him. He left more than five years ago. He came back less than five days ago. Why is he in a hospital bed under my care, then? Superheroes are not supposed to fall. Superheroes are not supposed to be vulnerable.
Superheroes are not supposed to be like us.
I want to say something, but I don’t know what. I’ve been around plenty of comatose patients, so I’m no stranger to this situation but… it’s as if I am afraid to say the wrong thing, something that would upset him. And it’s not only me who’s like that. That’s why he’s been placed here to begin with, away from prying eyes and loud noises and all the mayhem a hospital usually is. The brand new wing on the fifth floor; the one that wasn’t going to be really used until next month. No patients here, no rush, no sounds. Just him.
I suspect that’s why doctors and specialists alike lock themselves as far away from here as they can. They don’t want him to know how scared they really are.
Which is an interesting contrast with the people outside, I reflect as I look at the window. They all keep vigil, hopeful, waiting for some news and wanting him to know how much we care for him. How important he really is to our lives. There’s no hiding or locking away those feelings, and I hope he can hear them. I hope he knows someone cares. A lot of someones by the looks of it.
Everyone wants to be here, so I wonder how come I’m the one actually standing beside him, tongue-tied, as I watch his chest slightly rising and falling. I’m the wrong person to be here, period. Someone like Charlotte should be here, an ER nurse who’s always got something to say. I laugh –quietly again- at the picture of the 37-year-old black, big woman telling him one or two things about responsibilities.
“You went away for five goddamn years and now you’re back, so get that cute butt of yours out of that bed, get the hell out of here, and go save some lives!”
She said as much this morning when I went downstairs to help the ER staff. Right before I was told I was going to take care of him, actually.
I flinch. If he can hear right now, then he has heard Charlotte’s not so quiet voice for sure.
It isn’t fair though, that we expect him to be on guard 24/7. It’s no life for anyone, especially when it involves deciding who you save and who you don’t. But as my eyes turn once more to the window, I think that what isn’t fair is that no one is really here. No visitors are allowed, of course, but I somehow feel like the doctors and we nurses are not exactly what he would like to have by his side.
How ironic would it be that the one being that proved to us that we’re not alone in the universe, could be the loneliest of us all? No, I won’t have it. I can’t allow my mind to think he can feel that way. He’s got the whole world around him, doesn’t he?
Doesn’t he?
How empty the world suddenly feels to me. We are a sea of strangers to him, so why does he help us then? Why does he risk so much when he’s so different? When he’s not one of us?
I stare at his still face and I wonder how his life really is for the millionth time. He must have friends, I realize suddenly, people close to him, people he cares about in a personal way. People who can’t be here because no one’s allowed. Because no one here knows. And though for one more moment the idea that he’s actually completely alone in this world intrudes my mind, I refuse it. Someone like him cannot be alone. He’s got too much to give. He cares too much to not have someone.
I can’t be sure, really, but it strikes me that I’m right, that he cares about the world because he cares about people close to him. That he wants us to be safe because those very same people are part of us. Those who make him want to stay, want to help… Maybe that’s exactly what he needs to hear to wake up then: what he’s leaving behind.
So I smile at him, aware that he can’t see me, though I hope he can feel me, and I take his hand and hold it, strongly, almost hoping that he might return the grip. “When you wake up,” I say out loud, not letting the idea that he might never wake up enter my mind, “you go to your love ones.”
And as I look at the window for a moment, imagining those who wish to be here, the people he cares about, I finally add:
“You go to those who make you care for the rest of the world.”
The End