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“She’s been through more hell than you’ll ever know. But that’s what gives her beauty an edge…You can’t touch a woman who can wear pain like the grandest of diamonds around her neck.” (Alfa c)
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The bullets had torn through her ribs and into her left lung. She had still been awake and talking by the time they had come back in from the mission. Two bullets center mass and she was still conscious.
He shook his head, even thinking about it now.
He didn’t understand, medically, how she was so calm. Nothing seemed to phase her, not even the fact that the she was bleeding out in seat of a Quinjet. May had even flown the rest of the team home before the blood had started to seep into her lungs.
Lincoln leaned over to check the exit wound. Coulson accidentally startled awake. He was still holding onto one of his Deputy’s hands, their fingers intertwined.
“Sorry,” Lincoln murmured, his voice was quiet, apologetic.
He shook his head and ran a hand over his face before asking, “how is she?”
“She’s holding steady. Still unconscious as you can see. But she’s breathing on her own again which is pretty good news for these kinds of injuries.” His eyes found the monitor. His gaze held on her resting heartbeat of 40, still of unnaturally low.
He could venture why, of course—he had seen her work before. The way she was able to move at an almost impossible speed. The range of her flexibility. The precision of her attacks.
“Director Coulson?”
He looked exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot and ugly, dark circles made his skin look even paler in the midnight. Lincoln hesitated before continuing. He was surprised when they asked him onto her surgery at all. He and Agent May didn’t have the best track record, but Coulson had quieted her protest with words he didn’t catch.
“You’re listed as one of her next-of-kin…”
“We were partners out of the Academy.” Coulson sounded confused and Lincoln rushed to continue.
“Do you think Agent May would mind if I took an ultrasound of her heart?”
Coulson eyebrows contracted immediately. “Do you think there’s something wrong with her heart?” The panic was clear in his eyes.
“Oh—no, I just have never seen someone…” oh this was going to sound stupid, “someone with such a low resting heart rate.”
He hesitated for the briefest of a moment.
“No, I think it’d be okay.”
He was swift and silent with the equipment. As he ran the ultrasound wand over her skin, he was surprised by what he found. The organ was slightly larger than he expected. There was medical studies that supported the theory that Olympic athletes exhibited slightly larger than normal hearts with low resting heart rates, but Agent May was tiny to begin with and her heart was exquisite.
He watched the heart beat and pause on the monitor. Focusing on his own pulse, he could feel his beating almost twice as fast as the injured woman’s.
“What are you looking for?” There was a curiosity in Coulson’s voice that he hadn’t heard from the man before.
Lincoln’s eyes jumped up to meet his face. “I just wanted to see her heart beat. Agent May has a very low average heart rate.”
He turned to look at his boss only to find him as mesmerized by the organ as he was.
“Is that bad?”
His head began to shake before the question had finished coming from the Director’s mouth. “No it’s actually a good thing in theory. It’s just a sign of her athleticism. It’s common in Olympic swimmers, gymnasts, that sort of thing. I picked it up on the monitor.”
It was like each heartbeat she gave could be her last. As if she was somehow convincing her heart to beat again and again in the time between contractions. He understood the type of dedication, pain, endurance that it took to train a body, an organ to be in that pristine of shape. But what about the pain that stayed?
Daisy had mentioned parts of her training with May before Afterlife. Of her quiet and beautiful S.O. who was always fearlessly present for their team. He had been surprised to hear of someone else, most especially a non-Inhuman, working as an impromptu-transitioner. It was the closest any human had come to understanding how to control the change, the pain, the fear.
Coulson had excused himself to take a phone call; someone called ‘Maria’ as he was putting away the equipment and logging back onto the computer.
Lincoln’s eyebrows contracted slightly as he clicked on the document flagged in May's file. The document was clear, filed about six years ago; signed off by one of the SHIELD medical officers. He wasn’t entirely surprised to find their name censored out.
A DNR.
He swallowed thickly feeling the bile at the back of his throat rise uncomfortably and glanced back at the woman lying in the bed.
He had just saved the life of a woman who didn’t want to be saved.
He didn’t mention the document to anyone else until the next day when Simmons fluttered into the room to check on May’s status. She was chattering about something he couldn’t really focus on, not with the DNR weighing on his mind.
“Agent Simmons?”
“Lincoln?”
He hesitated before, “did you know that Agent May has a Do Not Resuscitate form on file?”
Simmons immediately avoided his gaze. The air of cheerful chattering was suddenly gone and her pleasant smile dissipated.
“Yes…I came across it while we were on the Bus.” She sighed heavily and busied herself by checking the tubes connected to May’s IV. “But when I asked Coulson about it, he ordered me to ignore it.”
Lincoln’s eyes narrowed.
“You do know that if we were in a real hospital that you wouldn’t be allowed to operate on her.”
“Yes, but here,” she hesitated, before turning to face him with iron in her gaze, “here we need her too much.”