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Jean doesn’t know what to do. She’s never seen this much blood in her whole life. She didn’t even know a human body had this much blood to lose. The puddle on the floor flows past his head, soaking into his curls. It reaches her shoes too, and it feels so different from stepping in a puddle of water. It’s thicker. Stickier. This guy just saved her life and now his blood is on her shoes and she doesn’t know what to do. Sara was always the one who knew what to do, and Jean just followed along.
Peter’s breathing starts to sound funny, like he’s gasping for air but isn’t getting any. There’s nothing blocking his nose or throat, so it must have something to do with the ever-expanding pool of blood. “Stop it! Peter, please! You have to be okay.” If he dies, it’ll be because of her, and that means Mom was right. She’s dangerous. She should be locked away in a cage. That bullet was meant for her.
“Peter, stop it!”
Of course, he ignores her. His eyes are closed and he’s growing paler every second. Jean doesn’t know what to do, so she does the only thing she knows she’s good at. She jumps.
She’s never jumped into someone unconscious before. There was never any fun or utility in that. At first, it’s easier than jumping into someone awake. There are no thoughts to wade through, no fighting back. Within seconds, however, it becomes nearly impossible. Occupying a dying body feels like treading water with a weighted vest on. It takes all her focus just to keep the air moving in and out.
The door bursts open and the man with the guns runs in. “Help him!” she pleads, knowing her efforts won’t be enough to save him. She can keep breathing as long as she wants, but it’s not going to matter if that blood puddle gets any bigger.
“Fuck. I knew he was just a kid. Goddammit.” He tears the sheets off the bed and rips a strip with his teeth, falling to his knees beside Peter. Jean expects a horrible mess when he rolls Peter onto his side, but she can’t even see the wound. Only the blood smeared on the back of his suit. It’s a different shade of red than the fabric. Darker. Richer. Frank finds the wound easily and packs the strip of sheet inside with his finger.
“Get his mask!” he commands.
Jean scrambles to grab it, and in the process almost loses her grip on Peter. The puddle of blood is expanding slower than before, but this doesn’t make it any easier to breathe. If anything, it’s only getting harder. There’s an immense pressure in his chest and every inhale burns like fire.
Frank finagles the mask back on and lifts Peter up like a child, one hand over the wound and the other under his knees. He starts running and shouts over his shoulder, “Go on, kid. Get out of here! I got ‘im.”
Jean doesn’t know what to do, so she listens. She runs, but she never lets go. The 33-foot rule only applies to the initial jump. Even that might not matter anymore. She suspects she’s gotten stronger. Regardless, she knows that once she’s in she can stay.
She can’t see through his closed eyes, but she can hear Frank’s heavy breathing. Can feel his arms around her–around Peter. It’s disorienting. She never wants to inhabit an unconscious person ever again, but she’s going to see this through to the end.
Distantly, she wonders what’ll happen to her if he dies while she’s still in here. Sara might know. She always understood their power better. But if she did know, she never got a chance to tell Jean.
“I need help!” Frank bellows. “Somebody help him!”
There are more voices around them now, but no faces.
“What happened, sir?”
“Holy shit, it’s Spider-Man!”
“Incoming!”
“Trauma 2’s open!”
“Is that really him?”
“Oh my God.”
“Get it together, people!”
“Sir! What happened?”
“GSW,” Frank pants. “Single shot. Long range. No exit wound. He’s already lost a lot of blood.”
“Set him down here, we’ll take care of him.”
The warmth of Frank’s arms gets replaced with a hard surface beneath her back–his back. She’s clinging so tightly to Peter’s body that the lines between him and her have grown blurry. There are hands all over him, and it’s terrifying. Peter won’t remember any of this, she knows, and that’s a small comfort. Either his last memory will be her face, or he’ll live to make more. God, she hopes it’s the latter.
“Not the mask!” Frank shouts. “It’s important to ‘im.”
“Sir, we need access in order to treat him.”
“Then I need everyone in this room sworn to secrecy!”
“Don’t you worry. We take patient confidentiality seriously.”
“I’m not tellin’ you his name.”
“That’s okay.”
“Just help him.”
“That’s what we’re doing. I need you to go wait outside.”
“Bagged him!” someone announces.
Jean realizes she no longer has to breathe. Some external force pushes air into Peter’s lungs. Still, she hangs on tight. She no longer hears Frank’s voice, just the choir of doctors and nurses.
“BP’s 65 over 34.”
“Let’s get pressure on that wound, O neg on the rapid infuser, and epi on board.”
“Are standard doses going to work on an enhanced?”
“We’ll start with standard doses and increase as necessary.”
“O neg’s up and running.”
“Diminished breath sounds on the left side.”
“Based on the location, I expect multiple rib fractures and hemopneumothorax. Possibly flail chest. Let’s get a chest x-ray. Once he’s stable, we’ll need a CT to get a better view of the damage.”
“Pressure’s tanking.”
“Push more epi.”
“He’s burning up.”
Jean can feel it. She’s shivering worse than that time her foster mom sent her to school without a winter coat and the bus was half an hour late. Her back and chest ache and there’s a fierce burning sensation somewhere near her neck.
“Temp 101.9.”
“Stop the transfusion! Switch to volume expanders.”
“What? Why?”
“Transfusion reaction.”
“But it’s O neg.”
“He’s Spider-Man. Who the hell knows what’s in his blood. Must be incompatible.”
“What are we gonna do?”
“Push the volume expanders and hope for the best.”
“60 over 29.”
“Hit him with another dose of epi.”
Jean’s heart is racing. Distantly, she can hear a series of beeps keeping pace with it. It gets faster and faster until it doesn’t sound like a heartbeat at all.
“Shit!”
“Start compressions. Charge to 200.”
An immense force presses down on his chest. And again. And again. And again. It feels like someone’s trying to squash her flat.
“Charged! Ready, clear!”
“Wait wait wait! Not clear!”
“Clear!”
“I can’t! He’s stuck!”
“What?”
“I–I can’t get him off.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Jean focuses on Peter’s hands and she feels it. His fingertips stuck against someone else’s skin. She tries to unstick, but she’s unfamiliar with these powers. She doesn’t know how. Then, someone grabs her by the wrist and yanks. Nothing changes. Peter’s fingertips remained glued to the doctor’s.
“He’s too strong.”
“Ganesh, resume compressions while we figure this out!”
“He’s unconscious, how is he sticking?”
“I don’t know, maybe it’s a reflex or something.”
Jean tries to move his hand, but the muscles won’t respond. She’s in a car with no steering wheel.
“What do we do if we can’t get him off her?”
“ECMO?”
“Patrick, you try to pull them apart.”
Another yank on the wrist.
“Here, try this. Leverage.”
Someone shoves something cold and flat beneath Peter’s fingertip. They push and push and finally the tool separates their flesh. The process repeats for the middle finger, then the ring, and finally the thumb.
“Clear!”
She feels a massive jolt through Peter’s chest. Her entire body buzzes, from top to toes.
“Still v-tach.”
“Resume compressions, then hit him again.”
“Clear!”
A second jolt.
“Charge to 300.”
The massive force returns, pressing down in a steady rhythm. Everything hurts so badly. She’s grateful for the doctor breathing for Peter because she’s not sure she could do it. Her chest is on fire. There’s a spot on her back that burns brighter than the rest, like someone jabbed her with a red hot poker.
“Clear!”
Another jolt.
“Sinus rhythm.”
“How’s his pressure looking?”
“68 over 40.”
“That’s better. Let’s get that chest x-ray.”
“Everybody step back.”
“Well, there’s the bullet.”
“Comminuted fractures of ribs four through seven. Left pneumothorax. Hey, let’s get a chest tube in!”
Someone stabs a needle in the left side of Peter’s chest. Jean can’t feel anything after that. There’s an awful sucking sound, but then the pressure in her chest starts to ease. She knows she’s going to have nightmares about this forever, but she owes Peter this much. He saved her life, the least she can do is shelter him from the trauma of saving his.
“BP?”
“72 over 43.”
“Good job, people. We’re moving in the right direction. Let’s get him to CT and page surgery. Make sure they know who they’re getting, anesthesia’s going to have a hell of a time with him.”
The bed starts moving. There are more new voices, then hands picking him up and moving him. The new surface slides backward, and she feels how enclosed the space is even without seeing it. Peter’s inside for maybe fifteen minutes before the table slides back out and they’re lifting him again.
Another voice comes into focus as they roll back to where they came from. “You want me to operate on Spider-Man?!”
“You’re the trauma surgeon on shift right now, are you not?”
“No way! Anything goes wrong, I won’t be able to show my face in this city ever again.”
“Isn’t it worse for you to refuse to try and help him?”
“Yeah, that’s way worse.”
“Holy shit, that’s Spider-Man?”
“Yes. That information does not leave this hospital.”
“But he’s, like, twenty!”
“So?”
“So, he’s been around for years. He must’ve been twelve when he started!”
“You can do the math later. Right now, you need to remove a bullet, fix four comminuted rib fractures and associated soft tissue injury.”
“Alright. Fine. Is he stable enough to go now?”
“Heartrate 99, BP 82 over 50, oxygen ninety-seven percent.”
“Yeah, we’ll take him.”
“Who’s the anesthesiologist here?”
“Needham.”
“Shit. He’s new. Is there anyone else?”
“If you can wait twenty minutes, we can get Dr Law.”
“Do that. I suspect managing doses will be particularly difficult with this patient. We need someone with more experience.”
“I’ll call him.”
Suddenly, Jean feels the pull of another consciousness in this body. Peter’s trying to wake up. She can’t let that happen. Not until he’s okay. The bullet was meant for her; she will deal with the aftermath, if only mentally. When this is all over, it’s Peter who will bear the physical scars.
Days ago, he easily threw Jean out of his head. He was strong. Stronger than anyone she’d ever encountered. Today, she easily shrugs him off. Throws him into the backseat while she keeps the wheel. The machine moves air steadily in and out of Peter’s chest. Jean convinces herself that as long as he’s breathing, everything’s gonna be okay.
“Let’s get him up to the OR. Dr Law’s on his way.”
The bed moves again. Minutes pass. They roll Peter onto his right side and snap some kind of elastic around his forehead. Jean doesn’t know what it is, but the sensation reminds her of a shower cap. The voices return, and they’re saying words she’s never heard. “Propofol” and “sevoflurane” and “titrate.” Their conversation goes on and on and on. There’s a chilly sensation in her neck, and one of the doctors gasps.
“That did nothing.”
“So what now?”
“Let me think.”
They start throwing around more big words. Jean doesn’t understand much, but she gathers that they’re walking a very fine line between performing surgery without adequate anesthesia and outright killing Peter.
“He took almost triple the epi back in the ER.”
“Every drug behaves differently.”
“This guy’s got a bullet in him we have to take out, so pick a plan and go with it. We don’t have all day.”
“Okay. Inducing now.” A pause. “I think it worked.”
“Nope, his pressure’s tanking again.”
“Shit! Can we get a crash cart in here?”
More voices join the hubbub. They shout more drug names and dosages, increase the speed they’re dumping fluid into Peter’s veins, and curse up a storm.
“This can’t be the first time he’s gotten hurt, where’s he gone every time before this? Don’t supers usually have a team for that?”
“I don’t know! He’s our problem now.”
Peter’s not a problem. She’s the problem. And Peter worked so hard to solve it.
Jean pictures the woman in his head. She can still feel her love, though she’s no longer sitting in that memory. That woman loved Peter so much. Jean cannot let him die now, not like this. If he goes, who’s gonna carry that love? Who will disseminate it to people in need? People like Jean. This city needs Peter to live. She needs him to live. Jean grits her teeth and holds on tighter.
“Okay, we’re looking better,” one of the doctors says.
“Let’s try that again. You know, this would be way easier if we had data on these kinds of people.”
“And where exactly do you plan to get that data? You gonna experiment on Spider-Man?”
Jean shudders at the thought.
“No. I’m just saying.”
“How’s it looking?”
“I think it worked that time.”
“You think?”
“Give me a second!”
“I’m gonna go scrub in. We need to get this show on the road.”
There’s another force trying to kick Jean out now. Not Peter’s consciousness, but a wave of exhaustion. Whatever those drugs are, they’re trying to shut down everything in Peter’s body. Right now, that includes her. Jean clenches her jaw and squeezes her eyes shut. She’s never had to fight this hard to take somebody before, but it’s never been this important for her to stay.
“Can we get those CT images up please?”
“Sure thing.”
“Thank you.”
“We’re gonna need my standard tools, 50 and 75mm RibLoc plates, screws, proglatin 910 Vicryl, and silk suture. Given what we’ve already dealt with, I think pain control is going to be a nightmare, so I want the cryoablation supplies.”
“On it.”
The surgery takes hours. Jean dedicates so much of her focus to maintaining her fragile hold on Peter that she can’t pay attention to anything the doctors say or do. With the drugs they gave, she can’t feel anything anyway. The only times she tunes in are when Peter’s blood pressure goes haywire again and they have to stop what they’re doing to stabilize him. She also clocks when someone pokes their head in to ask for an update they can relay to the press.
“The press? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No, sir.”
“He’s in critical condition. Now go away, we’re busy trying to fix that.”
“Understood. Thank you.”
The door closes.
“We are so fucked if this goes sideways.”
Miraculously, it doesn’t go sideways.
Before she abandoned them, Jean’s mom used to tell her and Sara about karma. How good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad. She wonders if Peter surviving this is good karma. Then again, someone as good as him never should’ve been shot in the first place.
Once they’re done, they take him to the ICU. Jean knows this because there’s a nurse talking to him like he’s awake, explaining where they are and what’s happening. She feels the effects of the drugs recede, but the machine continues to breathe for her. The nurse takes the cap off his head and starts washing the blood out of his hair.
“You poor thing,” she mutters. “They better catch whoever did this. What were they thinking, shooting at Spider-Man? It’s despicable.”
They weren’t shooting at Spider-Man. They were shooting at her.
“Maybe it wasn’t for you,” the nurse decides. “Knowing you, you were probably just protecting somebody else. God, what would this city do without you, Spider-Man?”
Go up in flames, Jean thinks.
“We’re gonna take good care of you, okay honey? Just like you take good care of us. You rest now. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
Though she knows they’re not directed at her, the words bring tears to Jean’s eyes. She almost loses her grip on Peter right then and there, but she claws it back at the last second.
There are no voices, for a little while. Just beeps and whooshes and a soft click click click. Then Frank’s voice returns.
“God, kid, I really did a number on you.”
He picks up Peter’s hand and then immediately drops it. Jean hears a quiet thump as he sits down in a nearby chair.
“You know I’ve killed a lot of people. This, though? This woulda been the first one I regret.” He laughs bitterly. “It’s not right, talking to you without gettin’ rudely interrupted. If it’s alright with you, I’m gonna sit here in silence until you’re ready to have a proper conversation.”
And he does. Jean doesn’t hear a peep out of Frank the rest of the night. Just the doctors and the nurses as they flit in and out to check on Peter. His vitals all remain stable. Apparently, his progress surprises them. They take another x-ray and marvel at the results.
“Are you sure you didn’t swap this out for a two-week postop x-ray from another patient?”
“We don’t have any other patients with those four ribs fixed.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“He’s amazing.”
Peter gets moved out of the ICU mere hours after arriving. They pull the tube out of his chest and stitch the hole shut. The one down his throat comes out too, and with it the rhythmic pressure in his lungs. Jean resumes her duty of breathing.
“Hey doc, when’s he gonna wake up?” Frank asks.
“Could be any minute now. He hasn’t had any anesthesia in a few hours, and from what I understand he burns through it faster than an ordinary human.”
Jean waits for that little tug, but it doesn’t come. She tries to wake up, but Peter’s body still won’t heed her command except to inhale and exhale. Another hour goes by, but she still feels nothing. She and Frank both start to worry.
“Let him take his time,” the doctor says. “He’s been through a lot.”
This gives Jean an idea. When Peter first let her in, she only saw the one memory. There has to be more. While she keeps half her focus on breathing, Jean goes for a stroll.
What if somebody had died tonight? Different story, right? ‘Cause that’s on you. And if you died, I feel like that’s on me.
I don't wanna go, I don't wanna go, sir, please. Please, I don't wanna go. I don't wanna go.
We won. You did it, sir. You did it.
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive.
Everything Spider-Man touches comes to ruin. And we, the innocents, are left to pick up the pieces.
I don’t love you. I don’t even know you.
None of these are right. She has to find somewhere he’d want to be.
Join me, and together...we’ll build my new Lego Death Star.
How many times do I have to say “larb” before you talk to me? You know I larb you.
Alright, kid. You’re an Avenger now.
I actually like it better broken.
Like, does it just come out of your wrists, or...does it come out of anywhere else?
Not here either. But she can sense him when before she couldn’t. She must be getting closer.
Dude, this is so exciting! We got into Midtown! This could set us up for life!
I’ll be home in time for dinner. Love you, May.
I think he’s old enough to take the subway by himself. Richard and I were doing it at ten.
That was the coolest movie ever! Are there really five more?
When are Mommy and Daddy coming to get me?
Jean expects to find him in a solidly happy memory, but this feels anything but. There’s fear and sadness and anger and confusion, but she feels him more strongly than anywhere else she’s been. She dives deeper and sees a May about ten years younger than the one that spoke to her of love and power. There’s a little boy, wearing a dinosaur T-shirt and glasses.
Sweetheart, we talked about this. Mommy and Daddy can’t come get you. You’re gonna live with me and Ben until you grow up.
Why?
Your parents passed away. That means you can’t see them or talk to them like you and me are doing right now. But you can talk about them and think about them and remember what they were like when they were alive.
But they said they’d come get me. They always come get me.
May crouches down and grabs the little boy’s hands. But they’re also Jean’s hands. And they’re also Spider-Man’s. They would if they could, baby. They love you so, so much, but sometimes bad things happen and people get taken away from us. That’s just the way of the world.
Can we take them back?
No, baby.
Can we go visit them?
No. But maybe sometimes, when you sleep, you might visit them in your dreams.
Oh. That’s the only way? I have to be sleeping?
When you’re awake, you can always think about them. However much you want. You can remember what the world looked like from up on your dad’s shoulders, or how it felt to get squished in a double hug, or how your mom’s cookies smelled.
But that’s not the same.
No, you’re right. It’s not the same. I’m so, so, sorry Peter.
If I want to, can I stay asleep and dream about Mommy and Daddy forever?
May shakes her head, fighting back tears. Jean feels her eyes burning too. Mommy and Daddy love you so much, but you know what? So do me and Ben. We want to see you and hug you too, and we can only do that when you’re awake. And as you grow up, you’re gonna meet other people who love you that you want to be awake for.
Okay. Peter hangs his head. Through his eyes, Jean sees little blue socks. She blinks, and they turn into hospital grippy socks. May’s arms wrap around her, shrouding her in safety. One moment she’s here, and the next she’s standing by. There’s no little boy anymore. A grown man tucks his bruised and bloodied face into May’s shoulder and takes a deep breath.
“Peter.”
He looks up at her. No words are exchanged, but she feels everything. His love and grief for both sets of lost parents. His graciousness for her help and his hope for her future. His acceptance of the end of this particular dream visit. He nods, and she lets go.
Somewhere on a park bench, Jean takes her last shared breath.
Somewhere in a hospital room, Peter wakes up.