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When the new stables boy talked about the irony of him, out of all people, catching a cold, Leonard Snart, mayor of Central City, did not understand what he meant, and when the cold turned out a bad flu, he just didn’t care to search for a meaning, for he was now being treated by this caring, haunted blonde that checked his temperature every couple of hours with surprisingly rough fingers for a doctor.
“I’m just a clinic, Mayor Snart,” she had said once when he commented about her scarred fingertips during a fever high. “Gotta have some hobbies.”
And he supposed she did have plenty, but his mind was scrambled eggs and he couldn’t form complete sentences between consecutive sneezes.
“I bought you some chicken soup,” she said sitting by the bed and putting the bowl and spoon on the nightstand, helping him seat up. He reached out to get the bowl with trembling fingers, but she put her hand on his, made him drop them. “It’s okay, I’ve got this.”
Whenever she could, she’d avoid his eyes and he didn’t understand why. It didn’t look like she was the shy type at all, and when she did look at him…
“What haunts you, Dr. Lance?” he asked her as she fed him, and she frowned, her jaw dropping in a universal ‘what do you mean?’. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Dr. Lance smiled then, this sad smile that didn’t reach her clear blue eyes.
“Oh, I’ve seen plenty of ghosts lately, Mayor,” she confessed. “And they wish me no harm, but it’s just hard… to see them.”
He nodded understandingly and said nothing, mostly because he still tried to pick the pieces of his shambled brain. In the meantime, she helped him a few more spoons of soup. The sun was coming through the window in an angle that put a halo around her blond hair.
“This tastes good,” he said quietly. She smiled.
“You can taste again, huh?” Dr. Lance commented avoiding to look at him again. “Looks like you might be fine after all.”
Tenderly, Leonard reached out and rested a hand on her knee, only realizing what he was doing after it was already done. Under his touch, Dr. Lance tensed and some part of him warned about all of the things she must’ve been through as a woman in a man’s world, urged him to retreat, but he wanted to talk to her eye to eye and it was hard to catch her attention for long enough.
“You’re too good for this world, doctor,” he said and then cough some, covering his mouth with his free hand.
To his surprise, Dr. Lance put her hand over his and patiently waited for the coughing to be over before talking again, on her face the first genuine smile he’d seen in the whole couple of weeks she’d been around.
Two weeks… more or less, since the new stables boy arrived, and the new cook, and the mayor assistant at city hall. All of them somehow saved his life in different ways.
Should he call it coincidence?
Maybe. When this bug would finally be out of his system, when his brain doesn’t feel like loose jelly anymore, whichever came first.
At the moment, it was just him, the chicken soup and the doctor with her knowing smile.
“Who said I’m from this world?” she joked and he laughed, half a scoff, half a chuckle.
“Too good anyway,” he said and she shrugged, let go of his hand and held the spoon again, filling it with warm soup. He could see the cubes of potato and carrot fighting for space with the rice and chicken.
“Come on, Mr. Mayor, you got to build your strength to get back to work. City needs you,” she said and he nodded, noticing the blush on her cheeks, but opting to keep quiet about it, the selfish part of him wishing she would never leave.