Death Curl

“You’re doing real good, Petey,” The doctor says, and Peter already finds himself aggravated at the nickname

The second time he opens his eyes, he can see colors. They’re not bright, they’re dark and dull and ugly, but he can see them and that’s good enough for him. He’s not going to be able to patrol for at least a week, if he has any sense of self-preservation.

“Alright Son, I’m going to ask you some questions. I want you to answer either by holding up fingers or nodding or shaking your head, okay?” Peter nods immediately, the sooner he can be done with this the better. This other man insists on treating him like a child, and it’s really the last thing Peter needs right now.

What he needs is for somebody to tell him exactly what’s happening. He needs the factual information explained to him on a deeper level than one would provide for a fifth grader. If he has the basis, maybe he can figure out what the next step is. As it is, he barely has enough to understand what’s happening right now.

“Is your name Peter Parker?” The doctor asks, and Peter isn’t sure if he rolls his eyes or not before he nods. If he does, the man takes no notice.

“Do you know where you are, Pete?” Another nod, “You’re at Metro General Hospital, do you remember why?” This is getting repetitive, and Peter’s senses somehow narrow into the mechanical clock arduously ticking on the wall, every second stretching into an impossible eternity. The blurry shape of Aunt May leaves Peter in the room with his physician.

Peter nods when he’s asked if his aunt takes care of him, shakes his head when he’s asked if he can see alright.

When the doctor asks how much pain Peter is experiencing in his chest and throat, he pointedly holds up two closed fists. It’s not the complete truth, but on Peter’s scale of painful experiences, it is still fairly low. He’ll take the soreness in his neck and tightness under his ribs over being beaten to a pulp by some super-asshole any day.

“You know, Petey,” The doctor says, “You don’t need to lie about anything here. The more honest you are with me, the sooner we can get you home, okay?” Peter nods. “So let’s try again. On a scale from one to ten, one being not at all and ten being excruciating, how much pain do you feel?”

This time, Peter holds up two fingers on his left hand in a mock peace-sign. If this guy wants to get down to the nitty-gritty, Peter can admit that he’s more uncomfortable than anything else. His throat is sore, there’s a pounding behind his eyes, and the tube secured down his throat is obnoxiously obvious, but that’s as bad as it gets. The doctor audibly sighs, obviously unconvinced. It’s not Peter’s job to argue with medical personnel who don’t believe in their own patient’s honesty, so they move on.

“Have you been smoking, son? Drinking any alcohol? Taking any drugs?” When Peter shakes his head in denial, the doctor makes a displeased sound in the back of his throat, “We have your blood in the lab, Peter. I don’t have to tell your aunt if you’re honest, you just need to tell me the truth.”

When Peter doesn’t reply, the man sighs, “Why don’t you get some rest, son? We can try again when you wake up, maybe your head will be a little more clear.”

When he stands to leave, Peter couldn’t be any more grateful. It’s not that he doesn’t respect the doctor. It must be a difficult profession, and there must be kids who come in and lie about their unlawful activity all the time. It makes sense that the guy won’t trust yet another teenager with an inexplicably sudden medical emergency.

Peter doesn’t blame him, not really. He would just prefer a system of mutual respect.

He tries to huff, allowing himself to sink further into the stiff mattress behind him when the action becomes caught in his throat.

The sun filters through Peter’s damaged sight in its full glory, making the passage of time obnoxiously obvious. The attack must have occurred early in the night, and morning is now clearly well underway.

He’s probably already missing school now, and he has a Spanish test second period. One he had actually studied for, no less. There’s a blurry round shape on the wall that Peter imagines is a clock, but he can’t get a confident reading from it. The same goes for the cell-phone Aunt May left plugged in by his bedside. It chimes every few minutes, but there’s no way he’ll be able to read the text on such a small screen.

In a word- it sucks. It’s miserable, and gross, and all Peter wants to do is get this stupid plastic tube out of his annoying throat and take a long, warm shower. On the brighter side, he won’t have to deal with the backlash from Flash’s home video for a few days. Maybe by then it will have already blown over. However unlikely, Peter is unwilling to forget that the possibility does exist.

When Aunt May comes back into the room a minute later, her concerned words do nothing to cheer him up.

“I just got off the phone with Tony Stark,” She tells him, running a hand through her soft hair, “We’re taking you back to the Avengers Compound, your doctor here keeps trying to convince me that you’re on some sort of drug or another. It’s the only explanation they’re offering for any of this. They’re refusing to even consider anything else.”

She sighs, falling heavily into the chair next to him and reaching out to grasp his hand. “You’re not taking anything, are you?” She asks hesitantly. Peter widens his eyes and shakes his head harshly, his best attempt to convey no, of course not without any actual words. May nods besides him, that hand returning to the back of her head.

“I trust you,” She says, and Peter can hear the hint of something else behind her words that makes him feel inexplicably guilty. He’s suddenly painfully aware of every single time he lied to his aunt in order to keep Spider-Man a secret. Unlike the doctor, May has every reason to distrust him. He’s disobeyed her and deceived her more times than either of them can count. And it’s not okay.

There is no silence, but the lack of communication between the two Parkers is made even more overbearing by the steady hissing and buzzing of machinery behind them. Peter can only assume that his aunt is thinking about the same things he is, it used to be so easy for him to read her mind.

“We’re just waiting for a transport team,” Is what May finally says, after minutes of nothing, “Then we can get you to somebody who’s actually competent. Okay?”

Peter nods. Okay.

…

Five hours after the nurse came in to tell May their transport would be ready within thirty minutes, Peter is finally being wheeled out of the emergency room.

On the bright side, that means he’s already been extubated and had ample time to readjust to the feeling of breathing on his own. By the time they roll him backwards into the NEMT van, little remains from the previous night’s experience besides a nasal cannula and very mildly blurry eyesight.

May, seated besides him in the van, snoozes softly. She hasn’t slept since bringing Peter to the hospital but she looks so peaceful here, snoring gently. Her face is soft in a way he hasn’t seen it since the day he came home fully suited as Spider-Man. The lines and wrinkles melt into the soft curve of skin over a round face.

Peter wants to reach out, to touch this beautifully familiar vision of love and family. He doesn’t. The risk of waking her simply would not be worth it. Instead, he looks towards the small device in his hand. If he squints now, he can make out the default text on his phone. It’s like he’s an old man, going into his settings to turn the character size up to the maximum.

It doesn’t take long for Peter to insure all two of his friends that he’s alright. They both take it with a grain of salt, he’s sure. Anybody who knows him well enough would doubt his word when it comes to his own well being. He’s the type of person to cry at a scraped knee to anybody willing to listen and then to shrug off a stab wound. He knows it and they know it.

So he sends off a couple of reassurances, a couple of happy emojis, and pulls up the local crime reports. There’s so much action Peter’s missed in Queens. He counts multiple instances of assault, battery, robbery, and theft. Everything on the list could have been avoided, had Spider-Man been following his normal routine of crime-fighting.

He knows, rationally, that there’s far too much crime in his city for him to stop it all. In fact, when it boils down, Peter’s extracurriculars barely make a dent in the criminal activity of Queens. He barely reaches a fraction of it on a good night, while people like the Daredevil in Hell’s Kitchen seem to take down drug rings on a nightly basis. Still, Peter knows better than to devalue the few people he does manage to help.

He’s overwhelmingly privileged to help his home in any way. Nights like this, where he is incapacitated and unable to interrupt petty criminals from stealing purses in back alleyways, ensure he’s aware of how few people get to do what he can.

It might just be the enlarged font, but the list seems to scroll on forever.

They’re a long ways out of the city when Peter’s fingers spasm, dropping his smartphone to the vehicle floor with an obnoxiously loud bang. He groans in frustration, but May barely shifts in her sleep and nobody on the transport team makes a move to pick it up for him.

That’s fine, Peter decides, he’s read enough anyways.