gone away
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 — 8:31 AM
Both psychiatrists have a meeting with the parents, as well as Dr. Cho. Tony and Pepper, Maggie and Jim Paxton.
“I need you all to understand that the extent of these kids’ trauma is much, much more than you could have ever predicted,” Sarah Wilson says. “You can’t be going around and wrecking their mental progress”—she looks pointedly at Jim— “because of your personal feelings about what happened. I need you to put them away for now, please.” The man’s still on JARVIS’ watchlist after the stunt he pulled on Monday—not allowed to go anywhere but the Medbay. “I understand that you all have been through a hell of a trauma—but you need to keep from projecting onto these kids. Get your own therapists, work through your own shit—because these kids are in no place to handle unstable parents, do you understand me?”
The Paxtons both nod, and Tony and Pepper follow. Maggie Paxton is writing most of this down in a small notebook; Tony is sitting there near entirely silent; Pepper’s writing text into her phone—notes of this meeting.
“What they need right now is stability. Predictability. That means mealtimes, medication times, sleeping hours, all of it. And yes, Mr. Paxton, they are staying together. Both Cassie and Peter have shown massive cognitive improvements since they were reunited—and I’m not giving it up because you feel uncomfortable. If we get any sign of violence, sexual abuse, anything—then we’ll pull them. Until then? We’re going to let them stay in the same room—the nurses have been informed, everyone has been informed, and we’re gonna keep the cameras inside for both of their safety.”
Beside Pepper, Tony shifts in his chair, and she watches as he folds his arm tight against his chest. She knows, she remembers—he’s not a big fan of cameras anymore.
“Currently, both children are still in the stage of what we call acute stress. One month after a trauma, if a patient is experiencing periods of extreme distress, mental confusion, that kind of thing—it’s acute stress disorder. They can get re-experience memories of the trauma, repeat behaviors performed during it, go quiet, have outbursts, anything. Both Peter and Cassie are poster children for acute stress disorder.”
Both children have done that daily since they arrived here.
“But by next week, we will have reached the end of that point,” she says. “Next Friday, we’re getting into the realm of PTSD—and honestly, it looks like we’re headed straight for it. Their symptoms aren’t going away—and that’s typical for survivors of extremely traumatic events, especially over such a long period of time.”
Alexis nods, and she adds, “This isn’t something Cassie or Peter will be able to shake easily, okay? So at this point, I don't want you talking to them about it. Not unless they bring it up first. No questions, no interrogations. Nothing. You can listen,” she says, nodding at both sets of parents, “but that’s it. Whatever you hear, just file it away for later. That's not what they need right now. Right now, we’re just trying to get them to adjust.
“Unfortunately, the problem with acute stress disorder is it’s not something that can be medicated. It’s just…the way that patients respond after an event like this.”
Sarah nods at her colleague. “We’re gonna try to get them a little more social, a little more mobile, maybe take a look outside, see if that might help. Both of them are still very afraid of hallways, doors, things like that, so we’re going to try to desensitize them to it.”
Alexis adds, "Just remember the focus, please. Stabilize. That's it."
Pepper nods. Beside her, Tony is making some kind of grimace. "Yeah," he whispers, agreeing.
She thinks Tony might need someone to talk to, too.
Truly, Peter’s doing much better now.
At the bare minimum, he’s talking more. Never more than a couple words at a time, but he’s doing it. Some actual responses, some echoes of what other people say, but he’s present, much more than he was a couple days ago.
He’s here—and he knows he’s here, a thought that sinks deep into him every few minutes, clear in the way he’ll just stop moving and stare off into nothing, look to Tony with this horrible mixture of exhaustion and humiliation before burying his face into his knees.
And now that he’s fully present—he doesn’t like anyone touching him. He's refused to be bathed, even dry-bathed with wipes. That morning, Nurse Kaelyn comes to Tony and says, “He won’t let us touch him with the sponge,” she says. “Usually he just…” She winces. “…lets us , but now we can’t get close enough, not with the girl around. We’ve skipped the last couple days—tried to give him some time to adjust, but I don’t want him getting infected, Mr. Stark.”
So Tony has to come to him, explain very carefully what’s happening. He’s become a proxy of some kind for the medical staff—and an assistant, too—the only one able to calm Peter down enough for them to do labwork, the only one able to explain to him what’s going on with Peter actually listening.
“You gotta let them help, bud,” he says. “They gotta wash you—
Peter just stares at the blanket. He does that a lot.
“You with me?”
The kid nods without looking at him, his eyes still trained on the blanket. He’s sitting in the middle of the bed; Cassie and her mother are playing quietly on the floor, wiggling a stuffed zebra over the hospital-white tile.
“You don’t have to explain why ,” Tony starts, “but you have to let them wash you. We don’t want anything getting infected, especially with your central line—that thing there on your shoulder? You’re better, but you’re not well enough to go without bathing, bud. It’s gotta happen.”
And then Peter says, in this horrible croaky voice, those dull eyes flicking up to Tony’s face, “I have to.”
The pit of horror in Tony’s stomach liquifies and rehardens. “No,” he says quickly, “no, buddy, of course not.” He thinks about his language, the you gotta and you have to and his stomach just sinks. The way Peter just said that, like he had no choice, the way he just moved his body like he was giving up. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
Peter’s stare goes sideways again, drifting over Tony’s shoulder.
“This is,” he adds, “just about, like, cleanliness, we’re just trying to keep you from getting infected…”
Tony feels someone looking at him and realizes he can’t hear the little girl playing anymore. When he turns, Cassie Lang’s eyes are trained on him. One hand on a stuffed toy, the other slack at her side. “Is he coming?” she whispers, and it’s clear the question is directed at Peter, but the kid doesn’t answer.
“Is who—“ Tony cuts himself off. No talking about what happened. Normalize. Stabilize.
Luckily, Maggie Paxton’s already taking over, reassuring her that no one’s coming, it’s just them, without knowing who the kids are even talking about.
Peter doesn’t get along with the nurses, even now with their white coats. When Nurse Kaelyn comes in to give him his meds—injecting them straight into the tubing of his central line—Peter cowers away from her.
When she speaks, then, he nods and nods and whispers, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and every time she says something else and tries to move towards him, he just backs away from her. “Just let her help, Peter,” says Tony, trying to comfort him. “She's just here to help.”
“I don't know,” he whispers, and he glances up at her for just a second, “I don't know…”
And so Nurse Kaelyn waits and waits, and eventually he calms, poking his arm out, and he just closes his eyes as it happens, and he just dips out a little bit, going still and quiet long after Kaelyn is gone, and Tony stays by his side.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 — 1:27 PM
Peter remembers where he is, and he tries to breathe.
It’s so hard to stay awake, hard to stay here in this room.
He feels like he’s skin is on fire, like Charlie’s lurking around every corner—HE’S THERE—HE’S ALWAYS THERE HE’S ALWAYS GONNA CATCH YOU—
And then he just goes away in a haze of terror and bloodsoaked horror until he feels a pressure at his hand, and he comes to, and there’s Cassie beside him, looking at him with those eyes, saying, It’s okay. We’re in a good place now. Mommy’s here.
She’s more there, more grounded than him—she’s even learned to peek out into the hallway to check if anybody’s there, which sends such a sheet of terror over Peter that he always grabs her back from the door, throwing her bodily backwards, guarding her against the wall until his vision refocused into something other than shadows and color—faces coming into perspective. Tony’s usually there, often with that blonde woman, but sometimes Dr. Cho, who he sometimes remembers—black-haired, Korean, hair back in a ponytail, white coat, always worried.
His spidey-sense is fucking fire—it’s like gasoline in his mind. the it’s all over the place, constantly screaming danger danger danger, and he doesn’t have a second to think, he just braces himself and braces himself and he can hear his heart rapid-drumming in his ears, and WAITS FOR THE HIT TO COME—
This room. It’s—it’s the Medbay. He remembers—he remembers the Medbay. Laying in this bed, waking up to Tony’s face over his saying, Whoa, there, cowboy, lay back before you give yourself another concussion.
This room —it feels like the bunker painted white, feels like him and Cassie’s room but it’s not, and he’s so fucking confused…. Everything feels wrong. Everything feels wrong. Everything feels weird and wrong and Peter’s terrified, always terrified…
Maybe he cracked. Maybe he finally, finally cracked. Maybe Charlie cracked his brain open with hammer and is letting him spill out bloody onto the chair—THE CHAIR THE CHAIR OH GOD THE CHAIR—and all this is his mind in the two seconds before he dies, flashing and spiraling and twisting into that final light, the universe finally giving Peter what he wants most—painlessness, peace, home: the Medbay.
This is real, but it—it isn’t real. This isn’t real, this can’t possibly be real. Peter knows this isn’t real and yet he can smell the room, and he can see Tony in front of him and he’s just seeing these white walls covered in his old kid posters.
(He’s not a kid anymore. Peter stopped being a kid the moment the bunker door closed behind him.)
“Hey,” Tony whispers, “you with me?”
Peter stares at him. He looks at his face drinking it in: the man looks different. Mr. Stark used to always look so immaculate, his beard perfectly shaven, his brown eyes always sparkling with something mischievous. Now he’s something different—a dream Tony, not real Tony, something haunting him. Maybe he’s staring at Charlie. Maybe he’s strapped to the chair now and he’s just staring at Charlie.
Charlie’s brown eyes and brown beard—his wild eyes, his wild, wild eyes, that would focus on him for a split second before he moved— Charlie licked his teeth and sweat slid down his forehead, and his eyes bugged wide enough that the white rims circled his irises like something liquid, and he opened his mouth—snarling, his teeth rotted away, he’s high he’s high and he’s always worse when he’s high—LISTEN TO HIM CRY, LISTEN TO HIM CRY FOR YOU, STARK! THIS IS ON YOU! THIS IS ALL ON YOU, HA—WANNA HEAR HIM SCREAM? SPIDER-BABY SCREAMS SO GOOD FOR ME—GIVE ME THE KNIFE—NO, THAT ONE—YES! LOOK—A FREE SPOT, A GOOD SPOT, SO CLEAN—LOOK AT IT PARKER—I’M GONNA FUCK IT UP GOOD—TAKE ONE LAST LOOK BEFORE IT GOES—
“Pete,” he says. “Pete—buddy, stay outta that head of yours, okay? I know it’s not a nice place right now, and I… I don’t wanna lose you again.”
Peter keeps trying to remember— how did he get here? He has no sense of time, none at all—the more he remembers, the more the timeline gets all fucked up in his head, a tangled whirlwind of thoughts and glimpses of memory.
“Peter,” Tony says again, and he blinks hard, trying to ground himself—bed, his bed. His blankets. “Stay with me, bud.”
He can feel his hair go sticky across his face—oily and unwashed, and he touches it. Cassie used to braid it, but then they got tired. They got scared, and they got tired, and they gave up on ever leaving. He whispers his name again, and it makes him feel like he’s here. Sitting in this Medbay bed. His bed. This blanket, this blanket… “Hi,” he says.
The man’s face breaks into this worried smile. “Hey, buddy. You okay?”
You okay? You okay? Peter hasn’t been okay in a long time. He hasn’t felt good in a long time.
“Sorry,” he says quietly, “stupid question.”
Peter’s busy staring at all the wrinkles in his face. He didn’t used to have that many wrinkles. And the gray. The gray hair frays through his beard and speckles over his head, highlighting that hair that used to be perfectly black.
Tony’s a dream. Not a dream. Not a dream. Not a dream, because this feels too real. Stupid Peter, stupid Parker, just a stupid fucking freak, a piece of meat for charlie to carve his knife into, you’re nothing you’re nothing YOURE NOTHING— SAY IT! YOU’RE NOTHING! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A FAILSAFE, MY FAILSAFE— failsafe, failsafe, Peter’s nothing, just a failsafe, just a stupid fucking failsafe—
“A what?” asks Tony.
Peter jerks his head back to Tony. He keeps forgetting he’s there, sitting beside him, waiting for him to speak again. “Sorry,” he whispers, and the man just shakes his head and whispers softly, “It’s okay. ”
The phrase hollows out in his mind, like he’s staring into the wishy-washy pool of milk at the bottom of a cereal bowl, watching it morph and swirl: it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay… And the words sound good, taste good, and he drinks them in: it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay…
Peter tries to think, and he can’t even remember that first day, can’t remember ever meeting Cassie for the first time. He can’t remember, even, the moment when Charlie took that hammer to his knee. It seems like an ever-present pain, something that he’s had forever—could he ever really walk? Could he ever really run? Cassie, too. He can’t remember not knowing her—her and May and Tony and Pepper—it all gets mixed up, hiding under the bed and eating pad thai with May and playing on the cement floor with Happy Meal toys and doing Lego with Ned and braiding Cassie’s hair. Taking a chemistry exam. Writing numbers on the walls to figure out the code. Laying in the Medbay after a bad patrol. Laying on their cement bed waiting for the next injection of sedative. It’s all the same. And it’s all covered in this blanket sense of unease—something’s wrong,something’s wrong, you’re not safe, you’re not safe, YOU’RE NEVER SAFE HERE—YOU’RE GONNA DIE HERE—
“Think I’m losing you again,” he says. “Right, buddy?”
He finds himself in the bed again, drags his eyes up to Tony, and he nods—that’s what he wanted? A yes? He doesn’t really remember what the question was, but he wasn’t angry. It was… Was he angry with him? Tony’s never truly angry with him, not Charlie-angry, not Beck-angry, not even Mason or Jon kind of angry…
Peter touches his hair again, drags his hand through it like the ends of a knitted blanket, and it snags around his fingers.
“...but maybe we can try something?” Tony is saying; he has a beard. His beard looks strange, full, like he’s been living in the wilderness. A long time ago, a really long time ago, Peter used to watch Survivor with May; it was their favorite show. For some people, it took a couple weeks to grow a beard like that—for others, a couple months.
He supposes, for Tony Stark, it took five.
“We could, um. listen to some music, or. Sarah—you remember Sarah?—she brought some pencils and things, we could…” He swallows. “I know there’s a lot of things you don’t…like anymore, but I figured it might help…” He’s got something in his hands, and for a second Peter’s mind sees a thousand things—a knife, a blowtorch, a hammer, A WRENCH, A SCALPEL, A NEEDLE, A WIRE—
And it’s moved away, and it’s out of sight, and the air comes out of him in a shaky rush, and Tony says, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I moved too fast—I shouldn't have moved like that. I'm sorry.”
Peter slowly, slowly calms, drawing that blanket tighter around herself, and looks down on the floor where Cassie is playing with her mother. Cassie's mother is easy to remember—Peter has imagined her a thousand times, and she’s just as Cassie described: the blonde hair, pointed nose, freckled face that Cassie shares. She looks so much like Cassie, and she moves slowly, and Cassie is so happy with her. That’s easy to remember. She's safe.
Cassie's safe, the door is closed, and Peter's belly is full. He's not there anymore, Charlie is in prison with everyone else, and Peter is in the Medbay at Avengers Tower and Tony is here beside him. And he’s safe.
That’s what Tony keeps saying. He’s safe, he’s safe, he’s safe.
“I just, I brought something…” Tony presses his hand to his forehead. “It’s not… God, how am I supposed to—look, how about this, you don’t have to do anything for it, okay? It was a gift… but it’s nothing bad. I promise it’s good. I… I don't know how to give this to you. Like Christmas or something, okay? It’s free. It’s all yours.”
YOURS—yours, and he thinks he might’ve said it out loud because he feels the remnants of the word in his mouth. Peter says it again, he whispers, he echoes, trying to latch on to something because he can feel himself going away again. Yours, yours, yours—YOURS, YOURS, IT’S YOURS—
“No, not mine…” He rubs his forehead. “Yours. Peter’s. Not Tony’s. Just… you don’t have to do anything for it, I just wanted to show you, okay?”
SHOW YOU—I JUST WANT TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING, PETEY, YOU WANNA TAKE A LOOK, COME ON—YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE?—SAY IT, SAY YOU LIKE IT—SAY IT—
“Okay, bad lingo, I got it, I said something wrong, okay, I won’t say it again—it’s just me, just me, buddy, just Tony. Mr. Stark. Just me. Look at me, Pete, it’s just me.”
Beyond the haze of his spidey-sense screaming holy hell, he sees a man—pressing his hand to his chest, to that blue circle in his chest, and something in Peter calms, softens, like butter warming on a kitchen counter. JUST ME—just me, just me, just me… he can feel his mind begin to cool, to settle, and the sick spiral of thoughts begin to settle, and there’s Tony in front of him, holding his hand gentle and flat against his own chest, his hand glowing slightly blue atop the circular thing in the center of his chest..
“Uh… okay. Lemme try again, um. You remember how you used to love Star Wars? Still, I guess? You still like Star Wars, right?”
He looks up at Tony. He finds himself nodding.
“Great, great—um, so I got a…a… Star Wars thing for you. And well, your friend Ned, he’s, uh, he’s pretty worried about you, you know, and he keeps leaving all these Lego kits in the lobby, he’s taken all his apart and boxed ‘em up and left' em for you at the front desk. Labeled them, even chronologically. By movie. So I thought you might wanna…”
Somehow the rush of speech, the tangle of words all coming from Tony seem to make more sense than anything he’s heard in the past few days, and Peter finds himself loosening a bit, the tension in his shoulders turning soft. “Ned,” he says.
“Yeah, Ned, your friend, your best friend, your guy in the chair? You remember him, right? It’s his, really, he wanted to give it to you, so it’s not mine at all, I'm just the messenger. You want it?”
Peter’s mind stirs with memory, and he just stares down at the box. Blue. Legos.
Slowly, Tony pries open the box, removing the small strip of scotch tape holding it together— that’s Ned’s handwriting there, he remembers, he remembers, Ned his best friend, Ned his guy in the chair— and opens it, and there’s something in his lap. A tray. Slow, cautious, he shakes the Legos out into the tray, and that spill of sound—Peter isn’t afraid. He… He remembers that sound.
He flinches at the first click of the pieces together, but after the second and the third, the consistent sounds—he’s remembering, and he’s calming, and he’s just watching Tony work. Peter just curls his knees up to his chest and watches him. And watches him and watches him, and his breathing evens out.
There’s a couple mini-figures spilled out onto the tray, too. A blond guy with a blue lightsaber, a bearish creature, a brunette in a white dress, another guy in a tan-and-brown outfit.
Peter extends his fingers towards it, and then immediately pulls them back.
These are Ned’s—they’re Ned’s, Ned and him did this together. He remembers building this with him, playing orchestral soundtracks in the background. His Lola brought them snacks and scolded them for not sleeping—because they stayed up all night making it.
It’s slow, and it’s beautiful, and the sounds are so fucking familiar that it draws our some kind of ache from inside him. “Oh,” he says softly, as Tony’s clicking together a flat piece to a small one.
Tony smiles but he doesn’t look up. Beck would’ve looked up. Beck would’ve inched closer and closer and put his hand on Peter’s neck to make sure he didn’t move. Beck would’ve said, You give and you get, right, Petey? and asked him for more.
But Tony… Tony’s movements are steady and steady and steady, like an old machine, like a black-and-white television, like a typewriter. He clicks together piece after piece, glancing down at the instructions, and Peter wants to do it. He wants the stupid Lego set—he wants to touch it—he wants it so bad—but if he takes it he doesn’t know what will happen. Nothing? Something? He feels like something will happen. Something horrible.
But Tony's not moving, and the sounds of those plastic pieces are steady, going click, click, click, and Peter’s not going to touch those Legos—so he just watches. He watches Tony work, and he feels like he’s home again.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 — 12:06 PM
Sarah Wilson is only working at Avengers Tower for one reason—to help Peter Parker and Cassie Lang readjust to their lives after a horrific trauma.
But somehow, on Saturday afternoon, Sarah finds a certain blond supersoldier standing in her office doorway.
She got the office a couple weeks back when she first arrived—it’s nothing like her usual office, much more high-tech and so high in the air that you can’t see anything but fog out her window. Her door’s always open, of course, propped open with a stack of old psychiatric textbooks, but no one unexpected has truly ever walked inside.
Yet Steve Rogers just did. Well, not walked in per say, but he’s lingering in the doorway now, sneakers settled awkwardly on that line, glancing inside. He’s dressed casually, in a blue hoodie and jeans, and he’s got on a warm knit hat. “You’re Sam’s sister,” he says.
“That’s right,” she says.
“He’s a good guy,” he says.
“Sure is.”
“You’ve got kids,” he says, glancing again around the office like he’s expecting to find a supervillain lurking around. “I think I, uh, met them once. Sam brought them to a, uh, Avengers thing outside of Boston. They were pretty thrilled.”
Sarah smiles. She remembers. “They're big Captain America fans,” she said, and she immediately regrets it because the man takes a step towards the door. “But you’re not here to talk about my kids, are you?”
The man looks at her, squints a little, and then glances out the window—down eighty-some stories is the street.
“They gave you an office,” he says, ignoring her question.
“Yeah,” she says. “They figured I’d be here for a while, so…”
“You’re here for Peter,” he says. “I’ve seen you, you know, coming in and out of there.”
She nods. “I’m not generally supposed to speak about my patients,” Sarah says.
“Right. Yeah. Sorry.” And the man just nods and shoves his hands into his pockets. He’s remarkably demure for someone with such body mass—from afar, everything about him screams buff and brawn, but he moves as though he’s much smaller, ducking his head a little, soft-spoken. He moves through the room and to the couch, where he picks up a magazine from the coffee table, flipping through it. “It’s a nice office,” he says
She nods again, scanning the man. “They let me pick it out,” she says softly—she’s trying to get a read on him, but it’s difficult—he wants something. Sarah looks up at him, the man is incredibly tense. “You wanna sit down?” she asks.
Steve shakes his head, and he makes a small face, wrinkling his nose. “Not really a shrink person,” he says, but he doesn’t leave the room. “I was just, um,” he says, “wondering about some things.”
Sarah stays seated at her desk—she has a feeling that if she gets up, that the guy’s going to bolt.
“It’s been a few weeks since this thing happened, and I…” He swallows. “I was just wondering how long it takes, to, you know… Uh, forget about it.”
A few weeks—she can guess what thing he’s referring to, but she’s trying to put on her psychiatrist hat instead of her Avengers one. “What kind of thing?” she asks gently, and Steve glances towards the door again.
“Uh,” he says. And the man moves again, pacing through the room, plucking a stress ball out of the basket on the coffee table, putting it down on the shelf, peering down at the small fountain in the corner. “Lotta stuff here,” he says. Sarah nods again, watching the man as he moves, finding distraction after distraction. That’s what they’re there for, after all. Steve picks up a magazine, flips through it, and sets it down again. “And it’s all…for…”
“For my clients,” she finishes. “Yep.”
“And is it, uh…” He swallows. “....confidential? When you…”
“If you want it to be,” she says.
And he makes a humming sound, moving again through the room, picking up that stress ball from where he left it and dropping it back into the basket, shuffling over to the window with his hands in his pockets and attempting to peer through the fog.
So finally Sarah says, “Steve?”
He makes a hm? sound.
“You wanna sit down?”
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 — 2:41 PM
At a prison hospital in New Hampshire, there is a dangerous patient on the top floor who all the nurses are warned about. As per police request, he is only allowed to have male medical staff above the age of thirty—and he is not allowed any reading material, any trinkets, any tech, any visitors, anything. And at all times, this man has two prison guards standing outside of his room, and occasionally one on the inside.
They aren’t allowed to know his name, but they all know what he did. They’ve heard him scream about it on his court-appointed phone calls, heard him mumble to himself, heard him curse about it to the ceiling. They know that he’s a registered sex offender, that he has a history of this behavior, mostly with young males, and that someone came and took their revenge on him—that’s why he’s been beaten nearly to death.
They all agree—he deserves much, much worse.
And on Saturday afternoon, a man comes to the top floor and requests to see this man. He introduces himself as Norman Osborn, a name that several of the nurses freeze at. He is a strange-looking man, with high cheekbones and intense eyes. His face is taut and clean of wrinkles, as though from years of plastic surgery, and his grin is something haunting. A sweep of brown hair tops his perfect smile. He’s dressed in a silk-blend, forest-green suit and a black button-up.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Osborn,” says one of the doctors, glancing at the nurses for help. “But we’ve been specifically instructed to deny him any visitors—”
“I am his lawyer,” he says, “so I assure you, he’s allowed to have one.” He grins—although it is not a situation conducive to grins and smiles, so it only serves to draw the medical staff into further unease.
“Mr. Osborn—”
“You will not like,” Osborn says, very coolly, with that same chilling smile, “the havoc I will wreak if you do not let me in to see my client.”
So the doctor speaks to the prison guards, and the prison guards speak to the police, and the police speak to the sergeant.
And then the dangerous man is allowed to have his visitor.