Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Monday, December 30
Tony scrolls through a file on his StarkPad at the kitchen island and sips from the cup of black coffee in his hand. He’s trying to concentrate on a proposal that he meant to brush up on the night before, but Peter’s loudly chomping down on bowl of Captain Crunch, is slurping at the milk, and the sounds are enough to make his own stomach churn.
“Slow down or you’re gonna choke, kid,” he warns.
“M’hungy and you said I needed to get my weight back up!”
“That’s from the steroids. And yes, I’m glad you have your appetite back, but slow down, okay?”
He drinks the last of the milk from the bowl and places it down on the table. “When’s my appointment again?”
“Nine. We’ll go up together. I can’t do dinner, but maybe we can watch a movie later? To…celebrate?” He tries to concentrate back on the file but pauses when he realizes how weird his sentence just sounded. “Wow, not the right word, Tony, um,” he says, putting his StarkPad down and sighing. “You know what I mean, kiddo.”
“You really don’t have to come, Tony,” Peter says. “I-I know you’re busy, and it could be a while, with the tests, and you’ve already missed so much work-”
“Did you hit your head again? You’re not going to this appointment alone.”
“But Tony-”
“None of this ‘but Tony’ business. May can’t be here, and I can’t send you with Pepper because she doesn’t do well with medical stuff, so I’m going. End of story.”
The first part of the appointment goes well enough. Bruce and Dr. Cho both listen to Peter’s lungs and ask him about his symptoms, let him have a break from his oxygen to see how he does in the office, which he’s excited about because it’s been getting easier to breathe without it, but the appointment quickly progresses into a ten-vial blood draw, x-rays, and a series of pulmonary function tests.
It’s the pulmonary function tests that do him in. They always have, even before the pneumonia fiasco. He has to skip his inhalers and nebulizers the morning of each time because it interferes with the testing. The clip on his nose during the test may as well be a vise and the white cylinder connected to the computer is heavy in his weakened state. He coughs and gags between rounds of inhaling and blowing with all of the energy and lung power he can muster. His face is red and hot from the force, lungs and diaphragm sore. He’s starting to get a pressure headache when they ask for one last set. He can feel his fingers tingling, but he doesn’t want to say no, so he steadies his breathing, tells himself he can do this, and nods.
“Two normal breaths. Just like that. Alright, really deep breath in, and blow. Keep blowing, keep blowing,” Bruce instructs, but Peter feels a cough rip through the little tube he’s got between his lips and as he pulls away, rips the clip from his nose, he feels the coughs deepen, feels the Captain Crunch from breakfast come up. He barely makes it to the garbage can, needs Tony to help hold him up as he coughs and pukes and coughs.
“It’s okay,” Tony’s comforting as Peter heaves into the can. “I’ve got you.” He can’t get his coughing or breathing under control, is dragging in raspy, painful breaths even after the puking stops.
There’s a flurry of activity around him as Tony tries to wipe his mouth with a paper towel. They transfer him to a bed, raise the back and decide on a nebulizer treatment to get his tight wheezing under control. Peter closes his eyes, feels woozy from the strain on his lungs and the rapid beating of his heart. He’s used to this feeling, and yet, at the same time, he’s not. What’s happening right now isn’t even that bad compared to the last few attacks, but it’s also the first time since the pneumonia that he’s pushed his lungs to this limit, and he’s angry that he can’t get his breath back.
“Doing great, Pete,” Bruce is commenting as he places a nebulizer mask connected to oxygen over his mouth and nose. “Let me know if you feel like it isn’t helping, okay? Cho, can you get a pulse ox on him?”
“Dizzy,” he moans, fighting to stay conscious.
“Told you to slow down on that cereal,” Tony jokes softly, and he’s there, brushing Peter’s hair from his sweaty forehead. Peter’s eyelids flutter. “I know that sucked, but I need you to stay awake for me, kiddo.”
Peter blinks his eyes open, but everything is fuzzy, so he closes them again. His fingers are tingling. No, scrap that, his whole body is tingling, and he feels himself drifting.
“Tony, I don’t…don’t feel so good…” His eyes aren’t focused enough when he opens them to catch the sheer panic on Tony’s face when Peter utters those familiar words. “Gonna…gonna pass out. T-tony? Tony…”
The bed is flattened, and pillows are placed beneath his legs to help bring the blood back to his upper body. There’s a cuff on his arm inflating, squeezing, and a clip on his finger that’s making something beep too fast for his liking, and he tries to focus on not passing out, on making this unpleasant feeling that’s everywhere go away. He swims in a dazed pool of wakefulness and sleep for a few moments, feels Tony brushing his hair out of his face again. It’s helping, makes him cling toward attentiveness. He works on slowing down his breathing, as hard and loud as it is, and fights to stay awake.
“Still want to go to this appointment alone?” he hears Tony joke softly. Peter gives a pitiful huff in response beneath the mask.
“Your blood pressure dropped,” Bruce explains after he listens to Peter’s lungs and glances at the monitor beside the bed. “And you had a small attack. But you’re okay. I think the PFTs sent your nervous system into overdrive. We call it a vasovagal reaction. It happens. Don’t sweat it, kid.”
When the nebulizer’s finished and he’s finally feeling like his lungs aren’t collapsing, they sit him fully upright. He feels his blood pressure adjust and grimaces.
“Color’s coming back,” Tony says. “You went full ghost on us, kiddo. Thought we’d lose you against the sheets.”
“Why does my body always have to be so dramatic?” Peter groans. “Tired of this.”
“You’re pretty rare, Peter,” Dr. Cho explains. “In the Spiderman sense, but also with your asthma. Only 5% of people have eosinophilic asthma.”
“Great.” He doesn’t even try to hide his lack of enthusiasm. “This just keeps getting better.”
Bruce cuts in. “I think it’s important to note that, at some point, this exacerbation was going to happen whether or not you took your inhalers consistently. Your lungs were a ticking time-bomb; we didn’t have you on the right medications because we didn’t know about the extent of your immune system involvement, which was a failure on our part. I don’t want you to beat yourself down if you still have attacks, Peter. Even with your healing factor kicking in and all of the medication changes we’re going to discuss today, this is going to take time. We need to be patient. That’s going to be the hard part.”
And he wants to snort at Bruce’s suggestion that being patient is the actual hard part in all of this, but the reality of his words, what he’s really saying, sinks in a little too deeply. “I’ll still have attacks?” His heart drops into his stomach, fully and completely, because he thought he was getting better, thought that the wheezing would fully disappear soon, that the tightness in his chest would be a thing of the past once he got over this infection, just like all of the other times.
Bruce gives his classic half-smile-half-grimace, the one he uses when he has to deliver news he doesn’t want to. “E-asthma is tricky. And it’s different for everyone. Thankfully, you do okay on the steroid inhalers. Not many people do. We just need to get you on the right combination.”
“E-asthma makes it sound like I enjoy vaping,” Peter grumbles.
“Peter,” Tony warns, but it’s soft. Peter knows that his moodiness is heightening the already tense tone in the room, so he stares at his hands in his lap and lets the adults talk. They pull up his PFT results and x-rays on the computer, compare them to those from the past year. They decrease the amount of time he’s supposed to be on oxygen so that he’s only using it at night and as needed during the day. There’s debate over whether they should add Singulair pills to help with the fact that a chemical called leukotriene likes to team up with over-eager eosinophils. They deliberate over brands and dosages for his daily steroid inhaler and whether they should keep him on the prednisone or switch him over to prednisolone, whether it should be increased or tapered, if he’s at risk for rare lung infections on the steroids, especially once they add in the Nucala. There’s discussion of how many treatments he should be taking a day and what medications he should be doing them with, if they can be combined, if he needs prophylactic inhaled antibiotics or if they should wait until it’s absolutely necessary. They’re trying to calculate all of it against Peter’s metabolism, genetics, and healing factor, which has finally kicked in, and then Dr. Cho brings up how often they’ve needed to use epinephrine to get his more severe attacks under control, and it’s too much. It’s all way too fucking much. He feels himself zone out, wishes he could run far away from everything that’s happening because he knows they’re going to talk about the Nucala injections next and he’s not ready for that.
He’s not ready for any of this, honestly, but he’s really not ready to talk about injections.
He feels woozy again, so he rubs his sweaty hands on his jeans and works on steadying his ragged breathing.
He’s been doing some reading and the side effects of Nucala can be scary. Biologics, he thinks, are fucking scary. They’re the big guns when it comes to autoimmune disease, and they come with a whole host of side effects that would make anyone turn and run in the other direction if they could. He’ll be immunocompromised, which will be a field day for his already compromised lungs. And he could get site reactions the size of sand dollars and nausea and headaches and sepsis with even the simplest of infections.
And it could help him be Spiderman again, help him wean off some of the other meds once the loading doses have settled, be a stroke of luck. Or it could blow up in their faces, be months of wasted time and pain. Physically and emotionally.
Peter feels like his luck ran out a long time ago.
And while he’s thankful they’ve chosen to forego low dose chemo in favor of the Nucala, which Peter assumes they’ve talked about without him because his digging online indicated that it’s considered a strong treatment option for his exact situation, he’s nervous. Because low dose chemo is scary, too, and he never in a million years would have thought that he’d be in the position he’s in now. He didn’t even know any of this existed a week ago. And he knows that if the Nucala doesn’t work out, if the few other biologics don’t work out, that the chemo med is later on the list, that’s it’s ridiculously effective against a whole host of autoimmune diseases, and while it’s supposed to be good news because it means there’s a back-up plan, it still hasn’t helped to settle his nerves in the least.
It’s a low dose of a chemo drug, he knows, not chemo itself in the general sense, and they’re not even there yet, might never even be there, but he knows his biology and basic chemistry. He’s read more than enough to be panicked about failing the Nucala and the short list of biologics after it.
Not only because losing some of his hair and feeling like crap for days is high up on the side effects list even for the lower doses of the chemo meds, but also because they have to call it failing the meds, as if you were the one who failed and not the medications that have failed you.
His head is swimming and he feels himself getting overheated even though the room is ice cold. This is too much too much too much and he needs to get out, needs air.
He’s up and out of the room, running down the hallway before anyone can stop him. He lets his feet guide him and pull him as far as they can, as far as his lungs can, before he collapses into a puddle of tears on the tile floor. It feels like he’s in a maze he can’t get out of, realizes that there is no way out, and he can’t bear the thought that this isn’t going away.
“Hey,” Tony’s saying, so softly that Peter barely hears it as he feels Tony’s arms wrap around him and rock him as he sobs between wheezes. “Shh. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
“Go away!” he’s yelling, trying to break free, but Tony refuses, holds him so tight that he can barely move an inch.
“Relax, Peter. It’s okay,” Tony soothes as Peter kicks his legs.
“It’s not okay! None of this is okay!” he screams. He’s using every ounce of energy in his body to use his arms and legs to escape, but Tony has one hell of a grip on him. “It’s not okay! It’s not okay!”
And he doesn’t care about who is watching, doesn’t care if Tony’s not going to let go, because he needs to get it out, all of it. Needs to let everyone know that he wants to be anywhere but here, be anyone but Peter.
He doesn’t want to do this.
“I don’t want to do this! I don’t want to do this!” he’s sobbing, and he wishes he had the energy to keep going because he doesn’t want to stop, feels his brain ready to fight as his body deflates on him. He’s holding his hands over his ears now, pulls his legs in as close as he can, hears himself as he repeats, “Make it stop! Make it stop!”
He doesn’t know how long they sit there in the middle of the hallway listening to him repeat make it stop like a mantra while his breathing hitches because when he opens his eyes, he’s in his own bed, curled into the smallest ball possible, Natasha’s blanket covering his shoulders and back, oxygen line back on. He expects to be alone but sees Tony shift in his peripheral at his desk, focuses his eyes to see that he’s hunched over his StarkPad with his glasses perched on his head, is not in the meetings he was supposed to be in this afternoon, and total and complete humiliation is the only emotion he can feel.
“Hey there,” Tony says, gentle and nonchalant like Peter didn’t just have a complete and utter meltdown in the middle of the MedBay wing earlier in the day. “Feeling any better?”
“I want to crawl in a hole and die,” he responds, pulling the blanket up and over his head. Tony sits beside him but doesn’t pull the blanket away or put a hand on his back, just sighs quietly.
“I had a feeling that today was going to be a lot for you. I know it was a lot for me,” Tony admits.
“Calling today a lot seems like the understatement of the century,” he mumbles. “I was all dramatic with my blood pressure dropping and then I went and had a meltdown while you guys went over all of my meds. A full-on, nuclear meltdown. In front of people,” Peter complains. “In front of SHIELD people.”
“May said you haven’t had an anxiety attack in a while.”
“You called May?!”
“She called me and asked how everything went.”
“And you told her. Great,” Peter moans. “All of this is just fucking great. Can I go crawl in that hole now?”
He feels Tony put a hand on his back. “Why didn’t you tell me about your panic attacks, Peter?”
“Because it hasn’t happened in a long time? Did you…did you give me something? Head feels funny.”
“Bruce had to give you one hefty dose of Ativan to get you to calm down. We thought you were going to send yourself into another attack.”
“Right, because everything is about my asthma now! Oh, I’m sorry, my e-asthma.”
“Been waiting for that anger to rear its ugly head. You need to get it out, kiddo.”
“Like you’d understand.” And he knows as it rolls off his tongue that it’s cruel and probably not true, but he doesn’t apologize, just stays still beneath the blanket.
Tony chuckles. “I love that you think I’ve never had a medical or mental breakdown. In front of SHIELD, no less. It’s cute, in a way.”
“Because you haven’t,” he says, pushing the envelope.
But Tony doesn’t take the bait, just cranks up the sarcasm. “I’ll take ‘things that have happened’ for $1,000, Alex.”
“I still want to crawl into a hole and die.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You don’t get to tell me how I feel? When I clearly feel like crawling in a hole and dying? Anyway, no one else, in the history of the Avengers, has ever had a nuclear meltdown like I did today.”
“Or,” Tony proposes, rubbing Peter’s back in small circles, “how about we stop assuming things about other people? Especially those on your team? On your side? Hmm? What’s all this comparison about anyway?”
“You should be in your meetings.”
“I should be doing a lot of things. Drinking more water, eating less red meat, sleeping better, but could’ve, should’ve, would’ve, no?”
“Not funny.”
“I cancelled my meetings.”
“That makes me feel worse.”
“Those meetings ended up as emails, which they should’ve been in the first place, so it’s fine.”
“Why does everyone keep lying to me?!” Peter pulls himself into a tighter ball beneath the blanket.
Tony’s hand stops on Peter’s back. “No one is lying to you, Peter. What are you talking about?”
“I know those meetings were important! And I know that what happened is not how Steve or Natasha or Bruce would have handled today’s appointment if they were in my shoes, and I know that you and Dr. Cho and Bruce talked about the low dose chemo option without me, I know it, and-”
“Hold up. Chemo?” Tony, wide-eyed, tilts his head to the side and blinks away his confusion. “Wow, that Ativan really did a number on you, kiddo.”
“I’m not stupid, Tony.”
“Never said you were. But what’s all this chemo talk about, hmm?”
“I did some research about my asthma. I know more than I want to know. So much more than I want to know, a-and some of the literature-”
“Peter, I can promise you that we did not discuss low dose chemo, with or without you. I read about it, too, but we know the exact protein causing your issues. You don’t need to worry about low dose chemo right now. You’re going to drive yourself crazy if you keep reading things online. You’re going to send your anxiety into overdrive.”
“I don’t have anxiety!”
“Ah, so, you’re allowed to be upset when you think I’m lying to you, but you can lie to me and it’s no problem?”
“No, Tony, I…my anxiety isn’t the issue right now.”
“Ah, so now you do have anxiety?”
“Ugh! You’re really frustrating, you know that?!”
“Are you really that sure about your anxiety not being an issue right now? If what happened today wasn’t anxiety, then what was it?” Peter shifts uncomfortably beneath the blanket. “You can tell me. I want to be able to help you.”
“I don’t know, I just…want all of this to stop,” he says, sniffling. “I need it to stop. And we didn’t even…we didn’t even talk about the Nucala injections yet! I don’t want them. I know I n-need them, but I don’t want them!”
“Well, maybe…” Tony starts, and Peter knows that he’s trying to say that maybe it won’t be so bad, but he stops and sighs, rethinks his strategy. He’s not great at this, this heart-to-heart stuff, probably because he never had anything akin to this with his own father. And although Pepper’s taught him how to be a bit more understanding of her feelings and emotional trials, it’s different with Peter. He’s too…smart. Too much like Tony to fall for thinly veiled phrases meant to comfort. “They’ll probably hurt, yes,” he finally admits. “And we’re all worried about side effects. I can understand why that’s making you nervous.”
“I just want the attacks to stop,” Peter manages. “I want the wheezing and coughing to stop. It’s been getting harder, not easier. I thought this was supposed to be getting easier!”
“It will get easier, kiddo.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“And if it doesn’t, then we find a way to make the absolute best of it. You know I would go to the ends of the earth to make sure of that, Pete. But I have a good feeling about all of this. I really do. Bruce and Cho are the best of the best.”
Peter doesn’t answer, just stays beneath the blanket, and Tony doesn’t pull it away. He’s noticed that Peter’s defense mechanism throughout all of this has been hiding beneath blankets, and while childish at first glance, Tony knows there’s much more going on beneath the surface. He knows Peter and May have been through more than enough, that Peter’s seen and experienced things most people his age could never imagine. May had detailed Peter’s anxiety situation on the phone as Peter slept off the Ativan, Tony responding in a hushed tone from just outside the bedroom door, keeping watch for fear that Peter might wake in the midst of panic and confusion.
“He used to have nightmares, too,” May had shared. “About plane crashes, car accidents. You name it, Peter dreamt it. The anxiety attacks themselves got worse after everything with Ben, but seeing a therapist helped, along with the low doses of Ativan here and there. It was rough couple of months. He hasn’t had one as bad as you described in nearly two years, though. Do you think I should come home? Be with him? Maybe I went back to work too soon?” She’d sniffled. “I should have been home for his appointment today. I knew it was going to be upsetting. Maybe I could have explained some of the medical stuff? Do you think that would’ve helped?”
“Don’t beat yourself up, May. I think this was going to happen regardless. He’ll be okay once he’s up. I’ve said it before, you raised one hell of a tough cookie, that’s for sure.”
“The panic attacks are going to keep happening, Tony.”
“Bruce recommended a therapist.”
“Can’t say I disagree. You know Peter, though. He’s going to fight it.”
“I have someone in mind.”
“How do you know we can trust them?”
“Because I saw them for years after Afghanistan and New York. After I thought I lost Peter.”
He rubs his temples, wills away the headache growing from a lack of coffee. He hates that Peter feels so isolated, so different, like he has to do this all on his own. He thinks back to what he told Peter in MedBay the other night, hours after they’d had to give him the epi-pen.
“Maybe this is an unhealthy strategy, but I always went with being brave in the moment and dealing with the emotions later, which…isn’t exactly the best idea, but…”
“Is that how you got through Afghanistan?”
“Yeah, kiddo.”
With his eyes still closed, Peter says, “Guess we’re a lot more alike…than I thought.”
Peter’s in the after of Afghanistan, of New York, Tony thinks. Metaphorically speaking, of course. He’s in it, clawing his way back to normalcy. Tony remembers feeling like nothing would ever be okay again, like he’d never be able to accept the hunk of metal in his chest, or the gaping hole that Peter’s absence left. He’d been so trapped in the panic of making it out of both experiences alive that he hadn’t been able to imagine an actual after. And then he’d gotten home, was thrust back into the normalcy he’d been so desperately craving, and Tony had felt anything but normal, anything but himself.
He’s not sure he ever got those parts of himself back.
But to Peter, Tony just woke up and got over all of that in one fell swoop. To Peter, Natasha shrugged her past off like the blankets she knits, and Steve found the quick cure for all that ailed him, and Bruce controlled his anger by focusing on the present and his human emotions without any trial or error.
But that’s not reality. Tony knows that, was there when Natasha had her night terrors and when Steve doubted his intentions and Bruce lost complete control. Over and over and over.
And even though Peter’s been through so much in his short life, Tony’s aware that this time, it’s different. Because this time, Peter knows that there’s no timeline for healing, can’t stop focusing on the word chronic, and honestly, Tony doesn’t blame him for wanting control, for wanting there to be some kind of positive end result in all of the confusion.
“You’ve never seen me when my heart goes into an arrhythmia,” Tony says, looking down as his hands.
Peter pulls the blanket down just enough to look at Tony.
“It’s quite dramatic, actually,” Tony continues slowly. “My arc reactor shorting, me falling to the ground all helpless, chest heaving so badly that I swear my reactor is going to burst from my chest. Bruce calls it an arrhythmia like it’s subtle and innocent, but it’s the opposite. And the first time it happened, I said the same thing you said today when I was trying to calm you down in the hallway.”
“Make it stop?”
Tony nods. “Exactly. Only no one could hear me because I didn’t have enough breath to get the actual words out, so I looked like a babbling idiot.”
“Was Pepper there?”
“No, but SHIELD was.”
“How’d they get it to stop?”
“They had to shock me.”
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Like hell.”
Silence.
“Is…is this supposed to be comforting or something?” Peter asks.
“Look, Pete,” Tony says, sighing. “Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to. Everyone does. It’s cliché but it’s the truth. And I know that today was rough. I knew it was going to be and that’s why I didn’t want you to go alone. I always went to my appointments alone, and then I’d hide away in my lab afterwards because I would get these panic attacks that made me feel like the whole world was caving in on me. I’d go in fine and then I’d just shatter afterwards. Bruce and Cho are good at what they do, but they get to leave after the appointment, go back to their regular non-medical world, while you go home with new medications and therapies and crushing anxiety.”
“You take medication? I…never knew that.”
Tony nods. “I’m getting older and my heart isn’t what it used to be, plus, I’ve got all of this scar tissue from the hack saw job they did in that cave in Afghanistan. The surgeries have helped, but they don’t fix the root cause. Bruce has been trying to convince me to yank my reactor for years, and maybe he’s got a point, that I’ve been avoiding it because I don’t want to do it. Because I’m scared. Because I’m used to feeling like this and I’m nervous that even with the surgery, I won’t feel any better than I do now.”
“If you don’t want to, then you shouldn’t have to.”
Tony shakes his head. “Doesn’t work like that, kiddo. It’s gonna have to happen sooner or later. It’s going to force its hand one day, and I’d rather it be my call and on my terms than leave it up to fate.”
“But you need it to run your suit.”
“Not anymore, I don’t. Not with the nanotech.”
“But…what if…”
Tony gives him a knowing smile, pats him on the back. “We might be superheroes, Underoos, but we’re still human. We can still break.”
Peter lets the thought ruminate. He’s not used to feeling human, feels like this asthma stuff has him feeling a little too human and broken lately.
“You hungry? I’m thinking Top Gear re-runs and lo mein,” Tony says, and Peter’s happy that his health is no longer the topic of conversation. He nods, pulls the blanket down a little more so that he can sit up. Chinese food sounds great, seems like just the thing to pick up his mood enough to get his mind off of his embarrassing meltdown.
The guilt creeps in, though, during the lull in their conversation.
“I’m sorry, Tony,” he says, rubbing the back of his head.
“About your panic attack?”
Peter shakes his head. “About everything.”
“Kiddo,” he says, sighing and shaking his head. “You don’t need to apologize about any of this. It was going to happen sooner or later. Your immune system was rearing to go. Not your fault. Neither is the anxiety. No more apologizing about any of this.”
Peter nods his head, feels Tony’s words roll off of him because he still feels guilty, still feels like he should have known better, like he could have prevented all of this drama if he’d just done what he was supposed to do even though he knows that wasn’t what made this happen.
“I want to hear you say it.”
“Hmm?” Peter asks.
“Repeat: It’s not my fault.”
“B-but it is, Tony. This is my fault!”
He shakes his head. “No, kiddo, it’s not. You didn’t cause this, didn’t deserve this, and it’s not your fault. Say it.”
Peter clenches his jaw and tries not to say anything stupid in response. He knows what Tony is getting at, but he doesn’t feel it, which is why he doesn’t want to say it. But he knows Tony’s going to make him. He’s in Dad Mode, and Peter has to play along.
“I didn’t cause this, don’t deserve this, and it isn’t my fault?” he asks like it’s a question. It feels awkward, like a shirt that’s too loose fitting.
“Again.”
He groans. “Tony.”
“Again, kiddo.”
Peter takes a deep breath, his exhale bordering a sigh. “I didn’t cause this, don’t deserve this, and it isn’t my fault.”
“Awesome.”
“Can we order food now?”
Tony ruffles his hair and smiles. “Yeah.”