Chapter Text
There is an eternity between her phone ringing and receiving the news. It doesn’t really register at first. Her body responds before her mind can. Her heart beats faster and harder, reverberating through her core, pulsating at the tips of her fingers. Her hands begin to shake and sweat. Her breaths become short and shallow and her ears start ringing. Her mind just clouds over for a moment, an error message, we’ll be right back.
“Ms. Danvers, are you there?” the words echo through her phone. She’s not sure, she’ll have to check with herself at a later time to make sure.
As her mind grows clearer, she becomes real again and the world around her stops being. A cliché loop of ´This can’t be happening´ worms its way into her brain, and it’s right, the earworm, this can’t be happening. This isn’t real. It’s a bad dream and this is the part where she wakes up. This is the scary part right before she wakes up, any second now she will trip and fall and wake up with a jolt. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes and, opening them again, doesn’t wake up.
“Ms. Danvers?” the voice on the other end of the line grows more concerned, the worry in the tone grounding Kara the slightest bit, enough to force her to think of a response.
She mutters a breathy, “Yeah, yeah, I’m,” then trails off because she’s not quite sure what she is at the moment. The correct answer is “in disbelief.” It feels like an auditory delay, like watching a movie in a foreign language and the subtitles are a scene late, but things begin to click into place. Lena, hospital. Lena, car. Car, accident. It’s the way one explains picture books to a new-born, hoping something will click. She gathers herself enough to speak out of necessity.
“What-which hospital?” she breathes.
“NC General,” the voice echoes back. In a world before her phone rang, that voice would’ve been reassuring. This world, however, is a strange one and she’s not sure what is what here. What she does know, the only thing, really, is where she must go, so she goes. She’s there within the blink of an eye, failing to realise she just flew across town in civilian clothing. It really doesn’t matter. She rushes through the hospital, running full-force into the front desk, nearly toppling over and receiving a particularly disgruntled look from the nurse behind it.
“Lena Luthor,” she says, out of breath but stern, “can you tell me where she is?”
“Are you family?” the nurse asks, tapping something into her keyboard.
“Yes, I mean, no, I mean, I,” Kara stutters, abandoning the thought, abandoning the whole conversation as she hears a gurney being unloaded from an ambulance and rolled into the ER accompanied by a woman’s voice saying, “Female, mid-20s, GCS 12 in the field, now down to 7, vehicular collision, ejected through windshield, BP 90 over 50, tachy 120, sats 80%, chest contusion, multiple bone fractures, open tib-fib, hypovolemic en route.” And most of it is absolute gibberish but a woman, mid-20s, in a car crash is too specific to be a coincidence and surely enough, in a flash, she’s by the gurney, and surely enough, that’s Lena. Bloody and mangled but that’s Lena.
“I know her!” Kara exclaims, matching the speed of the hospital personnel, “I know her!”
Time seems to have sped up. There’s a lot of yelling before anyone even acknowledges Kara’s presence. “Out of the way! Move!” from her left. “She’s haemorrhaging” from her right.
“You know the patient? Can you tell us her name?” a nurse responds with the stoic calm of a pre-historic boulder suspended in the middle of a raging ocean.
“Yes, yes, that’s my friend, Lena Luthor,” Kara says and blinking, flashes back. She finds herself in an immaculately decorated office, sitting side-by-side with Lena, facing a notary, ink drying in the shape of their signatures on the marble. It feels like there’s yelling coming from every direction, things that would make little sense to Kara even if she was registering words coherently. When she opens her eyes, she’s been asked a question and isn’t sure what it is, so she closes her eyes again and, without opening them, recites, “Lena Luthor, 27, blood type A+, no known allergies, takes Rozerem and iron supplements,” and opens her eyes and finally, breathes.
“I need a CT stat, call upstairs and tell them to prep an OR,” a doctor says, ignoring Kara.
“Thank you,” the nurse addresses her instead, “We need to contact her family, can you tell me anything about them?”
“No family, just me,” Kara breathes, shaking the tremors from her voice, going into crisis mode, the type of calm a firefighter feels rummaging through a burning house, “I’m her proxy. Any information, any decisions, you run it by me.”
“Alright, ma’am, and your name is?”
“Kara Danvers,” she says her last name crystal clear and then her eyes drop down. And, much like Lena, she turns pale, the realisation pouring like blood back into her consciousness, “Oh god,” she breathes, her hands beginning to shake again, “is she going to be okay?”
“I need you to step aside, ma’am,” is not the answer she wants but the answer she gets anyway, with an added, barely comforting, “we’ll let you know.”
The race comes to a standstill with Lena in an exam room, lifted onto a stretcher on the count of three, obscured from Kara by a wall of doctors and nurses. There’s a lot being said but it all bleeds into one for Kara.
“Absent breath sounds on the right, set up a chest tube,” and “Hang three bags of A positive, get those IVs up,” and, “She’s becoming cyanotic. Get me an intubation tray,” and “No obvious spinal deformities,” and “Keep giving more fluids so she doesn’t get hypothermic,” and, “Checking reflexes,” and, “Anisocoria, left pupil fixed and dilated” and, “Depressed skull fracture with a probable bleed, start Mannitol and Dilatin,” and, “Sterile drapes and Betadine,” and in a flash, Lena’s being taken away and Kara tries to follow but doesn’t get far. A door is quite literally slammed in her face and she’s left with nothing to do but wait.
She does take her glasses off just for a moment only to see Lena being swallowed by a giant CT machine and sighs. Her heart is pounding out of her chest and she feels the need to sit down. She doesn’t remember ever being this nauseous, the image of Lena bleeding out seared into her mind. She’s not sure, sorely regretting the fact that she didn’t pay much attention in high school biology, she’s not sure if humans can bleed that much and survive, and is too afraid of the answer to try and find out.
A nurse takes her aside, followed by a blur of tracking down documents in this and that registry and when everything checks out, he tells her, “While you wait, you can stay in the Family Lounge or you could visit the cafeteria or the gift shop, there’s an interfaith chapel on the first floor if you’d like to pray. I would appreciate if I could get your phone number first so we can reach you and if anything happens, we’ll let you know,” there’s more after that but Kara has already disassociated. She mumbles her phone number and brushes the nurse aside and doesn’t go to the Family Lounge or the cafeteria or the gift shop or the interfaith chapel on the first floor. She stands perfectly still and does her best to breathe.
When she closes her eyes, it’s just Lena, not looking back at her, simply lying there, motionless, her head suspended between two abrasively orange foam blocks, her chin resting snugly on top of a neck brace of yellow and blue, slivers of glass shining from her skin as the fluorescent lights bounce off of them, her hair matted to her forehead with drying blood, the cuts in her cheek hinting at more than skin-deep, the blood, the blood, the blood splattered all over her. It just keeps rewinding in her head like a broken DVD skipping and replaying the saddest scene in her favourite movie. This is the part where she always cries, and this is the part where it’s so scary she screams and this is the part where she clutches onto Lena’s hand like an anchor and this is the part where the movie is supposed to end and everything is supposed to be okay and everyone is supposed to go home laughing about it.
When she opens her eyes, Lena evaporates and a hospital appears and somehow that is worse. She needs to sit down, she needs to sit down or she will pass out, she needs to sit down like never before but there are no chairs around, the room is spinning, everything grows too loud until it explodes into a monotonous ringing in her ears, like a heart monitor flat-lining, loud enough to drown everything else out. In the monotone, the words of their last conversation flood back to her. Those cannot have been her last words to Lena. Oh Rao. Oh fuck, oh Rao. She needs to get her mind off of it or she’ll drown in the thought. She needs to move; she needs to go anywhere that isn’t here!
As she rushes through the busy hospital fruitlessly seeking something resembling sanctuary, she searches for a familiar face, hell, she’d take Lex, back from the dead, at this point, but finds none. Eventually, she finds herself in the maternity ward where pacing around is glared at but tolerated, periodically checking in on Lena who’s been moved into an OR by now, hesitant each time her hand reaches for her glasses to peer in through the walls but unable to stop. She winces each time she looks and can only tolerate the sight for a split second.
Lena’s sprawled out on an operating table, in a deeply unsightly position. She’d probably be rather upset if she wasn’t unconscious. She’s a mess. No, really, there’s blood all over her face and in that blood, there’s glass, someone really should attend to those lacerations, everyone’s rather busy trying to salvage her heart. The neurologist has been paged twice.
A part of her would be morbidly curious to see herself all splayed out like this. The circumstances are unfortunate, yes, and all the blood is unsightly but Lena has always enjoyed taking things apart to see how they work and wouldn’t this be the ultimate expression of just that?
***
The accident had been quick, like a CliffsNotes version of life. Headlights, windshield, a moment suspended mid-air followed by hitting the ground. She bounced off the first time she did, and the second, third time’s the charm. It was a momentary explosion of sounds followed by utter, prolonged silence.
She was awake for all that, awake enough to dial 911 and mutter something half-comprehensive about her whereabouts. It was a miracle her phone had survived the fall with merely a crack in the screen.
She was awake lying there by the side of the road, watching her blood stain the grass in slow-motion, illuminated by the moonlight, flickering with the reflection of the flames engulfing her car somewhere in the distance. Waiting for shock to kick in, waiting for the ambulance to arrive, for someone to fucking sedate her because shock wasn’t kicking in like it was supposed to and her leg was definitely on wrong and her chest felt like it was going to explode and she was heaving and heaving and still, it felt like she wasn’t breathing. Her head was killing her, she couldn’t move her right arm, the left one was tingling and she’d never been this tired. Her heart was flopping out of her chest like a dying fish on dry land trying to make its way back to sea. She wanted to go to sleep, she wanted to be sick, she just wanted to go home. It felt like an eternity. Finally, the ambulance arrived in a flurry of flashing lights and sirens. A paramedic, blurrier than usual, asked for her name and age.
“Lena, 27,” she said, and promptly passed out.
Everything had gone dark after that, no white light at the end of a dark tunnel, no sounds from the outside, no loved ones not lost but gone before, just darkness, still and quiet like a deep sleep. There is a moment of lucidity she could almost write off as an odd dream in which she finds herself conscious nowhere in particular with only the knowledge that this is a good place. This is a good place and she is safe here, she is loved here, and she is out of there as quickly as she arrived, plunged back into the warm embrace of the uncertainty of darkness.
***
She’s in surgery for hours which doesn’t make much of a difference to her but is agonising for Kara. When she got to the ER, it was around midnight. By the time Lena is being wheeled out of the OR on a stretcher, sunlight is seeping in through the windows, unusually abrasive on Kara’s bloodshot eyes. Her phone rings and it’s an earthquake with a magnitude greater than eight and she takes it anyway.
Lena’s in the Post-Anaesthesia Care Unit. She won’t be released to an inpatient room until her vital signs are stable, ideally not before she’s awake. The ideally, all things considered, being the thorn on that rose, though Kara will gladly let her fingers bleed if only she could see her.
In a fraction of a second, she’s outside the PACU, her glasses dangling from her fingers. She spots Lena in a bed separated from other beds on both sides by a pair of flimsy blue curtains. She’s obscured by machinery and tubes, her features mangled and in her blue hospital gown, she’s almost indistinguishable from all the other patients in the large room, especially from a distance, but Kara would recognise her anywhere. Because it’s Lena.
She wants to visit. Of course, she wants to visit immediately, she wants to be there when, if Lena wakes up. She says as much but the voice at the other end of the phone tells her visitation is limited in the PACU and that Lena is not cleared for visitation yet. Kara wants to speak to a real person; she hasn’t had the best of luck with people telling her things over the phone today. She’s told a nurse will come by to take her to talk to Lena’s doctor and it’s one of those days when just about anything might as well happen so Kara waits for the nurse and one arrives, though not nearly quickly enough. It’s the same nurse that took her phone number and told her about gift shops and cafeterias and other such utter nonsense.
Without so much as a greeting, the first thing out of Kara’s mouth is “How’s she doing?” followed shortly by, “Is she going to be okay? Is she going to wake up?”
The nurse gives her a sympathetic nod that answers none of her questions and says, “We’re doing everything in our power.”
Well, that tells Kara nothing.
“Please, I just, can’t you just tell me how she’s doing?” she asks.
“Her vitals are stabilising but she’s pending further surgery. The doctor will give you a more in-depth explanation. Please, follow me.”
He leads Kara down a hallway that is far from narrow but feels like it’s closing in on Kara from all sides anyway. Her head has not stopped spinning. The nurse takes her aside and closes the curtains to shield them from the rest of the hospital.
The doctor is a middle-aged woman with greying dark hair and crow’s-feet around her eyes. She’s holding a chart; it can only be assumed that she has been expecting Kara. She has a brief exchange with the nurse of which Kara registers little and then turns to her, looking down on her by virtue of being much taller than Kara.
“You’re Ms. Luthor’s health care agent?” she asks.
“Yes, yes, I am,” Kara replies, feeling herself shrinking down, “how is she doing? How bad is it?”
The doctor, Dr Jones if the embroidery, followed by M.D. and accompanied by the hospital logo on the other side of her chest, is any indication, gives Kara a sympathetic look and puts the chart, presumably Lena’s, down.
“You have to understand that Ms. Luthor was involved in a serious accident. She’s sustained a lot of injuries. She is stable for now—”
“What injuries?” Kara cuts her off. Kara hates cutting people off. The doctor nods in understanding.
“She had a collapsed lung which we were able to successfully treat and she should be able to breathe independently soon. Her CT scan showed what we call a temporal epidural hematoma, which means there was bleeding between the skull and the brain,”
“Oh god,” Kara mutters under her breath as the doctor continues, going once.
“She did receive treatment soon after the injury and outcomes are better for patients who receive treatment earlier on but when it comes to EDH, there is always a risk of permanent brain injury, the severity of which varies. We can’t know for sure before she wakes up–”
“But she is going to wake up?” Kara asks, though it’s more of a prayer in dialogue.
“We’re optimistic at the time but we don’t know for sure. Only time can tell,” the doctor replies, leaving a beat of silence for Kara to process the news before continuing, “Beyond that, her bowel ruptured and she’s fractured several bones, including her leg. She’s lost a lot of blood. During surgery, she went into cardiac arrest—”
“Oh god.” Going twice. The floor Kara is standing on is being lifted away, tile-by-tile. She grabs onto an empty tray for support.
“We were able to resuscitate and stop the bleeding. She is stable for now but she will be needing further surgery tending to the fractures,” a pause, “and we’re worried about her leg.”
“Worried about it?” Kara asked, her brow furrowing. That was far too gentle a phrasing to be anything good.
“It was partially dismembered in the accident and there are signs of major infection. Right now, we are looking into reconstructive surgery and waiting for the infection to improve but there is a very real possibility that we will have to amputate.”
“Oh god.” Sold.
“Now, in that case we will need your consent to perform the procedure.”
“And what if you don’t?”
“We can’t know for certain and, like I said, we are still looking at potential reconstruction currently but if it comes to that, it would be a matter of life or death.”
Deep breaths. Kara gathers herself and stands upright despite the room spinning around her. The word dismembered is echoing in her mind.
“When can I see her?” she asks.
“Ms. Luthor is just out of surgery. It’s hospital policy that patients are not cleared for visitation until an hour after surgery to allow the PACU nurses to focus on providing the best care to the patient. I assure you, she is in good hands and a nurse will let you know as soon as she’s cleared for visitation, as soon as they’ve determined that a visit is safe. In the meantime, we ask you to remain in the family waiting area. Unless you have any further questions–”
Kara doesn’t even let her finish that sentence, just waves the doctor away with a dismissive hand gesture and a defeated nod. She knows she should be thankful to the person that, in all likelihood, just brought Lena back from the dead, and by Rao, she will be if she makes it through the day but at the moment, she’s too overwhelmed to show gratitude or anything other than worry.
The nurse stays with her for another moment just to explain that visitation in the PACU is only allowed for a minuscule five minutes and she must have a PACU staff member accompanying her, packed with empty platitudes before and after each sentence. Kara doesn’t respond, just follows him wordlessly to the Family Lounge and sits down on a dusty old couch with a thud and waits.
She glares at the clock on the wall and only stops at the fear she might set fire to it by accident. The ticking is almost as unbearably loud as it is unbearably slow. It’s like the damned thing is mocking her, each metronomic beat a reminder of her own heart beating in her throat, so damnably human is her heart right now. An hour passes torturously, a nurse, different one this time, comes in to escort her to the PACU.
“Is she awake?” Kara asks.
“No, not yet.”
“When will she,” Kara begins and stops, correcting herself, “I mean, how long will it take for the anaesthesia to wear off?”
Sometimes it’s better to ask the questions you can get clear answers to instead of the ones you really want to ask.
“Couple of hours, generally no more than three.”
Kara nods. The rest of the walk is silent. It takes less than a minute. The room they enter is chock full of people and all the beeping machines attached to them create a cacophony that’d give Kara a tension headache on the best of days. The nurse leads her to Lena, lying in her hospital bed.
The curtain to her left has been drawn to expose a vacant bed by the window. There are streaks on sunlight cascading onto her pale skin through the blinds. She’s not looking good. There’s a tube down her throat, permanently parting her lips that look bluer than usual. Her head is wrapped in gauze like a last-minute low-budget Halloween costume, tied together by the cast enveloping most of her right arm up to her wrist and the bandages packed with gauze on her forehead hiding stiches. There’s no blood anymore, everything is very clean, very clinical, only a bit of bruising has been left uncovered as well as some redness underneath a cut on her cheek landmarked with surgical tape. Her hands are resting on top of the thin white blanket covering her, the left one connected to an IV drip.
Kara chokes back a gasp and, without her realising, a painful lump forms at the back of her throat. With hesitance in her fingers, she lowers her glasses just enough to take a quick look. Lena is not looking good.
There’s a tube in her chest connected to a large machine and a tube in her head connected to a different, larger machine and the largest machine of all leads to a series of electrodes attached to her chest, upper arms and legs. Kara glances at the leg the doctor mentioned. The bones in it are shattered, only vaguely held in place by a splint. Her arm has a clear split, the same can be said about her collarbone and multiple ribs, though her wrist is more of a mess.
Kara puts her glasses back on. She can’t bear to look anymore. Ignoring the beeping machines surrounding her and all the tubes and bandages, Lena looks as though she is sleeping rather peacefully. Kara tucks a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear.
“Can she hear me?” she asks the nurse.
She gets a well-intentioned shrug and a, “Couldn’t hurt to try,” in response.
“Is it,” she swallows, hard. Lena looks so fragile, there are so many lines connected to her like all the roads winding up in Rome, it looks like she’s barely being held together by all these tubes and gauze and Kara feels like an elephant in a jewellery shop, afraid one wrong move is going to bring everything crumbling down with a terrible shatter. She bites back a tear and tries again.
“Can I hold her hand, is that okay?” she asks, her eyes laser focused on the IV cannula just underneath Lena’s knuckles.
“Yes, that’s fine,” the nurse replies, “though, it doesn’t hurt to be careful.”
Kara looks at her like she’s just saved her from drowning. She takes Lena’s hand and brushes her thumb over it. It’s cold but in a familiar way. Lena’s hands are always cold, just as Kara’s are always warm.
“Hi,” she says with a weak smile. “I’m here, Lena. I’m right here. Come back to me, okay?”