Chapter 8
“Can someone explain to me what is going on?” Tony asks no one in particular as the doors to the infirmary open.
Nat is holding Peter Parker in her arms and dumps him unceremoniously onto the stretcher that Helen Cho had pulled out from seemingly nowhere. Once again, Tony felt grateful she was on his payroll. Barton is trailing behind her, looking a little sweaty and wide-eyed. The adrenaline rush from doing these kinds of missions was no joke. It was basically one of the best feelings in the world.
“Peter!” Gwen cries in relief, placing a hand on the kid's forehead. She hisses and jumps back in shock.
“What the hell?” she exclaims.
“What?” Tony asks.
Helen has already started to place little bits and bobbles on the kid, cutting open his wrecked and damp-looking shirt. He’s covered in dust and smudges of dirt.
“What did you do, roll him in the mud before driving here?”
“He was like that when we found him.” Clint says.
“He’s warm.” Helen mummers, placing a hand to his forehead. She draws her hand back sharply like Gwen had. “Very warm.” she corrects. She places the back of her hand to his forehead and frowns.
“Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh? What do you mean, uh-oh?” Gwen implores, looking from Peter to Helen.
“He was inside a building right?” Helen asks, walking swiftly to a counter and pulling out medical items, things wrapped in plastic and sterilized, things that Tony was never really conscious of when they were needed around him.
“Yes,” Nat says, brows crinkling just a bit “It was air conditioned, if that's what you’re asking.”
“Natasha, Clint can you get some ice from the break room freezer? Ice packs, anything as much as possible.”
To her credit, Nat leaves immediately for the break room. Clint hesitates for only a moment before following.
“Are you serious,- heat stroke?” Gwen asks in disbelief, figuring it out before Tony.
“What is happening?” Tony demands a little more forcefully. “The kid’s got heat stroke?”
“I don’t know.” Helen admits. She takes a little plastic thing like a metal ball at the end and places it on Peter’s forehead. Her eyebrows rise.
“His temp is at 42.”
“Huh?”
Cho rolls her eyes and grabs a sharp looking needle and an alcohol pad. “108 degrees.”
“Holy shit.” Tony says. That’s bad for sure. He remembers getting the stomach flu and having a fever of 104 and feeling like he was going to die.
Helen wipes down the kid’s arm with the pad and smoothly puts the needle in. She holds a plastic cap in her mouth as she places the plastic tubing for an IV line for his arm. She draws a few vials of blood.
“Open that fridge for me and get that saline, please. Is he allergic to anything?” Helen asks Gwen, pointing to the mini-fridge that Tony hadn’t noticed before. Gwen does, handing Cho an icey-cold bag of saline. Helen attaches it to the IV and hangs it up on the metal bar by the stretcher. She puts a blood pressure cuff around the kid’s arm and lets it beep for a few moments. When the numbers flash on the monitor she mutters something under her breath in Korean that sounds suspiciously like a swear.
“He’s not allergic to any medication that I know of.”
“What are you doing?” Tony asks.
“Getting him set up with intravenous crystalloid fluids, now where… ah.” Helen jogs over to the cabinet and rustles around in it. “He’s got hypotension. We need some vasopressors for hypotension refractory to fluid repletion-,”
Peter begins to shiver almost violently on the table.
“Okay, and we need to give him some circulatory support. Gwen, get 5mg of Dobutamine and inject it into the saline bag.”
Gwen makes a beeline for the medication.
“Hello, still not knowing what is going on?” Tony asks. Gwen has a needle in her hand and is putting something in the saline.
“He needs positive inotropic support in the treatment of cardiac decompensation due to depressed contractility.”
“Talk to me like I am five.”
“He’s got low blood pressure. We’re giving him vasopressors that contract his blood vessels and raise his blood pressure. That way he’s shivering, we need to give him benzodiazepines to help control the movement. The longer he’s like this, the more at risk he is for rhabdomyolysis, which is essentially damage to his muscles.”
“That is not something a normal five year old would understand.”
Nat and Clint jog into the room, arms laden with ice packs and bags of ice.
“Put it under his armpits, his neck, his back and groin, basically everywhere.” Helen orders, busy measuring out some more medication.
“I’m going to give him a muscle relaxant to control the shivering. Shivering increases body temperature, making treatment less effective.”
“Did we give him enough?” Gwen asks worriedly.
“I don’t know, he seems like he doesn’t weigh much, but his body is…” she’s at a loss for words. “It’s like his body is burning through the medication. We’ll give him more of everything in a minute.”
Tony looks at Gwen for answers. She sighs.
“Medication amounts are based on weight. He’s not even a buck-fifty so these should be working, but it seems like he needs more.”
“We could immerse him in cold water, but he might go into shock. Ice packs will have to do.” Cho said. She opens her hands and Clint throws her an ice pack, which she places on Peter’s forehead. She looks over the saline bag, which is almost empty.
“What the-, I’ve never seen that before.” Cho says. “Gwen, get another bag of saline and attach it, please.” Gwen does as Cho hooks up Peter to a heart monitor. It starts beeping all kinds of noises as soon as she turns it on.
“His blood pressure is low, but he’s tachycardic. How did he get heat stroke?” Cho asks.
“He was under a sink getting cold water poured on him. I don’t know how. The car was cool and the building was air conditioned.”
Helen places the metal-ball thing on Peter’s forehead again. “His fever is going down, slowly. I’m going to give him 1000 mg of acetaminophen and see what that does.”
“I thought it was heat stroke?” Tony asks.
“It is- or, it isn’t. The fever is so high it’s causing him to get heat stroke. It doesn’t make sense. It’s like the heat is coming from inside him.”
“Dr. Cho, the ice packs are melting.” Nat says, holding up a dripping wet ice pack.
“Place them in the freezer and get new ones on him. We need to get this controlled.” Helen puts a white plastic thing on the kid’s left index finger and frowns.
“What in the world?” she asks, taking Peter’s left hand in hers, staring at the back of it. Tony looks at the hand.
There are two little puncture marks, no bigger than the tip of a pencil. They’re small, but angry and red, almost like mosquito bites.
“Did he get bit by something?” Cho asks.
“No idea.” Nat says, not looking up from her ice packs.
“Keep him cool. I need to take his blood to the lab for a work up.”
“That could take hours.” Tony says.
“Not with my tech. Fifteen minutes, tops.”
“Be quick about it, Dr. Cho.” Gwen says. “I’ll give him another 500 mg of acetaminophen.”
“Good.”
It’s the start of one of the longest fifteen minutes of Tony’s life. They work in silence, Nat making trips back and forth from the break room, bringing warm ice packs to the freezer and cold ones to Clint and Tony to put on Peter. Gwen stood by the monitor, muttering to herself and every once in a while putting medication into the IV line.
While holding ice packs to Peter, Clint tells Tony about the rescue, sneaking in and the conversation they had overheard. Tony grumbles.
“That lying bastard. I knew Peter was there.” Tony mutters.
It seems like ages when Helen runs back into the room, holding a few packers of white cloth.
“Everyone get away from him. Now!”
“What?” Gwen asks, backing up quickly. Tony and Clint back off too.
“He’s got radiation sickness.”
“He what?”
Cho tosses the packs she’s holding to Gwen.
“PPE. Put them on.” Helen says, ripping open her bag. It’s a white suit that looks like something painters wear. She jumps into the suit, puts a mask on and puts on thick gloves. Gwen follows suit.
Helen is holding a metal device and walks up to Peter.
“Is that a Geiger counter?” Tony asks. Helen nods and she holds it over Peter’s hand. The thing starts going off like crazy.
“We’ll need to rinse this. I'll lance it, Gwen get water and mix it with ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. We’ll use that to clean the wound.”
“What about us?” Clint asks.
Cho tosses Clint a pair of gloves and the detector. “Walk around and see if it goes off. We may be okay. I didn’t get anything on the way here or in this room, really. Just from Peter’s hand. You all need to take showers and throw away your clothes after, just in case. Throw out the ice packs too.”
Tony watches as Gwen and Helen work quietly, Helen giving orders and Gwen following dutifully as Clint walks around the room.
“Nothing,” he says. “It’s only coming from him.”
“That’s what I thought,” Helen says, putting an oxygen mask over Peter’s face. “Go shower with your clothes on and take them off in the water. Bag your clothes up in plastic bags twice. We’ll have to burn them. When he stabilizes, Gwen and I will do the same.”
“The 26th floor has locker room showers.” Tony offers Clint and Natasha. They both nod and head out the door towards the elevator.
“Tony, you should go too.” Helen says.
Tony taps his metal heart. “I’ll be okay for now. Tell me what’s happening.”
“He’s stabilizing now. We’ve given him almost 5000 mg of acetaminophen. That much would normally damage someone’s liver.” Helen says, wrapping Peter’s left hand delicately in a white bandage. The floor is covered in liquid, water mixed in whatever Gwen had mixed into it
“Normally?” Tony asks.
Helen shakes her head, looking at the monitor, the wild beeping becoming more and more steady.
“It’s like his body is burning through the medication. Like Steve does.” she says, checking his temperature again. “He’s not a mutant, is he?”
“No,” Gwen says, looking somber. “I mean, I don't think so. He’s as normal as people come.”
The monitor beeps quickly and Pete’s eyes open with a gasp.
Tony feels a sense of relief, just a moment.
And then Peter jumps six feet out of bed and hangs upside down from the ceiling. By his fingers.
“Oh.” Helen says quietly, looking up at the ceiling. Tony’s blood pressure drops.
“Yeah, Oh.”