Chapter Text
There's a lot of myths surrounding how Hospital Man came to be. If you were to ask Matt, it went a little like this:
Not too long ago there was a a regular boy who really wanted to go to nursing school. And even though the evil bible man tried to stop him, that normal boy bundled together all his powers and followed his dream.
Somewhere in between a lot of needles and disinfectant, he gained the ability to transform into the Hospital Man everyone knew today: Openhearted, kind, gentle and the ultimate final boss of scary needles or other terrifying medical devices.
In reality, it was a little less mysterious and less simple.
Early in his time as a freshman, Matt's teachers noticed how he would always sit first row despite not being one of those all knowing nerds and pinch his eyes together when he tried to read something off the board.
One day, they were practicing how to draw blood. Matt's inability to focus his eyes on something close to them, like a vein, led to him being splashed in fake blood. When Matt had cleaned himself up, the teacher took him aside.
"Pearson, you're gonna need some glasses if you don't want to kill your patients", he told Matt in a rather grumpy manner.
Matt had nodded hectically and since he was a little scared of that teacher, he made an appointment at the eye doctor the same day. A couple of weeks later, he was sitting in a doctors office waiting room together with a bunch of kids that had colorful patches on one of their eyes. Matt wanted one too. He was a little jealous.
He flipped through some magazine talking about what sofas you should definitely get for your home to be trendy. Meanwhile, Matt chewed on his lower lip as if it was gum.
"Pearson?", a door swung open and a confused doctor looked Matt up and down since most of her patients were kids.
"You can come with me", the doctor waved her hand for Matt to follow.
With shacking legs, Matt sat down on a small stool, opposite a white wall. The doctor turned on a projector, set some scary glasses-looking thing on his nose and asked him to just read what he could see. Matt's heart was racing as he tried to decipher the tiny numbers and letters in front of him. It was embarrassing how quiet and weak his voice was when he read out what he saw.
"I- uhh I really can't read any of this anymore", Matt stuttered.
"Just try", the doctor tried to encourage him but it only added more pressure to Matt. She expected him to be able to read this! So why on earth could he not get his eyes to focus.
"g?"
"no"
"uhh- could uhh be a p?"
"try again"
"a q maybe?"
"alright, we'll just stop here"
The doctor scrabbled down something on paper and typed numbers into her computer. Relieved, Matt felt like he could breath again. Well, not for long.
"Great, now we'll have to do the same thing again for your other eye"
After another round of reading out letters and then getting tortured by getting weird drops in his eyes, it was finally over. Matt left the office with a prescription for glasses. A couple of weeks later, he finally wore his them to nursing school.
Matt had noticed how his eyes felt more relaxed now but once he was starring at the whiteboards, power point presentations and delicate syringes again, he realized what a big relief they were.
Thinking back to his years in high school, every delicate task he'd failed at on the homestead, Matt wondered how much easier it would've been with glasses.
On his wedding day, it took him multiple attempts to thread the wedding ring onto Violet's finger. She had giggled nervously and ruffled through Matt's hair, calling him her favorite klutz. So much humiliation for something that could've been helped so easily.
The glasses didn't stay for too long, once they got splashed with bodily fluids a couple of times during clinicals, someone recommended Matt opt for contact lenses. They took him a while to get used to. To this day they sometimes fell out or he forgot about taking them out before going to bed.
Hospital Man being able to see was a big part of what gave him his super powers, but there was something else: he first needed to gain some confidence in himself.
One of Matt's nursing school rotations was in a children's palliative care facility. Not exactly the brightest place on earth. As on so many clinical rotations, Matt was mostly only allowed to watch from afar and hold kids hands as someone drew their blood.
Within Matt's first week there, his supervising nurse took Matt aside.
"Hey Matt, Timmy has been throwing up a lot last night. We can't give him pills because he's still nauseous. He doesn't want to get the Dexamethasone injection either but we're worried that— well you know. We have this thing we do here when kids are scared. There's this kind of medical super hero costume in our staff room and one of us dresses up and gives them their shot or medicine or whatever. You don't really have anything to do, right?"
"I don't think so, uhh, no not- not really"
"Would you do me the favor and do that really quick?"
"Sure, I can totally do that"
"You're a savior, I'll ask someone to go supervise you"
His fellow nursing students giggled upon seeing Matt with a gown thrown over his shoulders and a surgical mask with two roughly cut out holes for his eyes walk across the hallway.
Awkwardly, Matt smiled: "Hi guys!"
The only responds was more giggling.
It didn't bother Matt too much. He for once felt pretty cool.
Hospital Man's superhero suit started out a lot simpler than it was was now. It was really just the gown and mask. No gloves, no improvised "H" pinned to the front of a yellow single use protective gown.
The best part of the story was, that it worked! Matt succeeded with a bunch of curious eyes of Timmy as well as his peers watching him.
After countless clinicals of only feeling like he was standing in the way, Matt Hospital Man was useful this time. Maybe just what he needed after falling down a thousand times and wondering if it was still worth getting up.
Matt might be the clumsy guy, in the way of everyone and a bit awkward but Hospital Man was brave and the hero in every room he entered. Matt didn't pull out Hospital Man too often in his time during clinicals after this but the two or three more times were still meaningful.
Later in college Matt had read a couple of superman comics and become charmed with the idea that he was essentially just like Clark Kent with his glasses.
When he started working at St. Denis, Matt had almost forgotten about his alter ego— well, until he remembered because of the tetanus kid.
And just like that: Hospital Man was back!