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Tony was passed out in a puddle of his own blood when Steve responded to JARVIS’s SOS call. One of the suits putting pressure on the wound, but without something to absorb the blood, the metal hands were just shy of useless.
Unable to find where Tony had hidden the clean rags, Steve ripped off his shirt and tied it around the gash in Tony’s arm, it was only a shirt after all, and a fair sight cleaner than the oil-soaked fabric on the counter. The soldier scooped his friend into his arms and carried him to Banner’s lab.
Bruce barely looked up from the fridge as Steve ran through the open doors.
“How bad is it?” Bruce calmly asked as he grabbed a few small vials.
“He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Set him on the gurney.” Bruce looked over at Tony’s arm, which had already soaked through the makeshift bandage, and grabbed a second bag of blood, just to be safe.
While Bruce was sewing up Tony’s arm, Steve rinsed the blood from his arms and fetched a clean t-shirt.
“In your day that would have been your underwear, correct?” Bruce pointed a needle at Steve’s bare arms as Steve sat on a work stool near Tony’s knees.
“Yeah, times change. What’s all that you’re hooking up to him?” Steve watched carefully as Bruce gently injected a small needle into Tony’s upper arm.
“This is just a saline drip, to prevent infection and dehydration, JARVIS said he hasn’t seen Tony drink at all today. That one’s blood, JARVIS has the lab bots cleaning up the floor right now, he’s lost a lot so we’ll switch it over to this second bag once that one’s finished. This vial is morphine, just so he didn’t punch me if he woke up while I was stitching him up. And this one is the TDAP vaccine.”
“I don’t know what on earth a tea-dap is, but I understand the word vaccine.”
“The TDAP vaccine covers tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis. It was introduced about 4 years after you were frozen.”
Steve looked like a small child on Christmas morning. His eyes lit up and he was leaning forward with wonder in his eyes. “How many other vaccines were created after I was frozen?”
“Polio, measles, rubella, chicken pox, hepatitis A and B, probably a lot more that I can’t think of off the top of my head.” Bruce’s eyes rolled upward and his eyebrows furrowed as he tried to remember his school vaccination schedule.
“Can I get all those?” Steve was just about falling off his stool, he was leaning so far forward.
“You shouldn’t really need them, I mean, can you even get sick?” Bruce scratched his head. “Although even if you can’t get sick, you could still become a carrier and get some of us sick. So I guess it’s not a bad idea. You can’t get them all at once, but we should be able to set up an advanced schedule. One or two every week should have you caught up on everything by the end of the year… We should probably get Bucky and Thor caught up too.”
Bruce scrambled across the room for a notepad and pen and started taking notes. “I’ll need some blood from you all to see what you’re immune to already, and to see if Thor’s Asguardian DNA is even compatible with Midguardian vaccines and viruses. I’ll have to get JARVIS to pull up a list of all the vaccines you’ll need, their dosage requirements, which ones need to be repeated over the years, get him to order them all. I might as well get everyone’s bloodwork done, I’m sure there’s a few people who will need boosters for something or other.”
“So should I go get everyone?”
“What? Oh, yeah sure, if we get this bloodwork out the way we can start you off with TDAP today, maybe the flu, and work our way from there.” Bruce went back to his notes without even thinking about how many people were about to be lining up outside his lab.
Steve ran around rounding up Avengers left right and centre. Bucky showed as much enthusiasm as Steve, while Sam shook his head and texted Natasha to bring home a jumbo bucket of jelly beans, lollypops and cute cartoon character bandages.
Pepper shook her head at Tony as he slowly came to. Being surrounded by people he assumed they were all concerned about him, no one had the heart to tell him otherwise.
Bruce took vials of everyone’s blood in exchange for their flu and TDAP shots, two cute cartoon sticky bandages and either a lollypop or a handful of jellybeans.
Bucky took his vaccines in his legs to keep Bruce out of danger while Cap and Thor held onto his metal arm, just in case. Thor was the only one who escaped vaccines for the time being, until they could determine whether his body could even handle them, Bruce collected a very large amount of blood from the god of thunder just to make sure he could test how Thor’s blood would react when exposed to certain viruses and vaccines.
After everyone had wandered off to enjoy their candy, Bruce contemplated the vials in front of him.
“It’s been a few years since my last tetanus booster…” Bruce furrowed his brow. “I don’t think I’ve had any kind of needle since the accident.”
Bruce picked up two needles and filled them each to the correct dosage markers with either flu or tetanus vaccines. Steve and a groggy Tony watched Bruce walk over to the one wall not covered with fridges or shelves, write on the whiteboard ‘lockdown protocol’ and hit a button under the base of the whiteboard.
“Ok JARVIS, if the Big Guy shows up, you’ll lock me in, right?”
“Correct, Mr Banner. I have the ability to see and communicate with you and will be able to relay to the rest of the team when it is safe to open the door. I’ll have Pepper set up your bunk with some clean pyjamas and snacks for when you emerge from your other state, sir.”
Bruce took a few deep breaths to centre himself before jabbing the first needle into his right arm. Bruce held his breath for a second, blinked back the flicker of green, depressed the plunger and removed the needle. One down, one to go.
Steve stood nearby the whiteboard, ready to throw the wall closed if JARVIS didn’t initiate lockdown fast enough.
The second needle went smoother, possibly because he was prepared, possibly because he had more control over his right hand than his left. Not even the slightest hint of Hulking out. Bruce sat down for five minutes and got Steve to check his blood pressure before he went back to work.
Tony was finished with his blood transfusions, but was put on another bag of saline and a nutrient drip which could be administered in his own bed. Steve helped his friend to bed while promising a wobbly Tony that he'd never tell any of the girls the real reason there's a hook above his bed head, Tony tells his girls the hooks are for seasonal decorating, not IV bags.
Steve was sitting on the couch watching Sam and Clint play Mario Kart when the lights in the lounge started flashing green. JARVIS paused the game and called out over the speaker.
“Code Green, science lab. Repeat, code Green, science lab.”
Steve, Bucky and Thor bolted to Banner’s lab. Bruce was on the floor clutching his head and his eyes kept flashing green. He was struggling to fight off the change.
Thor and Bucky helped Bruce up and carried him over to where Steve had thrown open the panic room, once he was inside and the boys were clear, JARVIS locked it down. Steve neatly wrote on the whiteboard ‘lockdown protocol’ as Hulk let out a roar and beat the walls.
“JARVIS?”
“A common side effect of vaccines is a high temperature. While your teammates may be able to just take some aspirin, Mr Banner has a somewhat more complicated issue. He spiked a fever and started to change, he was trying to get to the panic room when he collapsed and I raised the alert. I should have requested he run his blood like he’s doing with Thor’s.”
“Well we now know for next time, Bruce can’t be vaccinated, it's too high risk. We’ll just have to protect him by getting vaccinated to make sure nothing gets brought into the building. I’ll go let Pepper know what happened. And then I think I’ll see if I can find a recipe for those biscuits the Australian soldiers had… What were they called?” Steve looked to Bucky, who just shrugged.
“ANZAC biscuits, sir?”
“Yes, that’s the ones! Thank you, JARVIS.”
“I’ll have a double-batch recipe on the kitchen screen for you in a moment, Captain Rogers. I’m sure Mr Banner will require the calories when he regains himself.”