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It was not an entirely new occurrence, him being covered in blood after a long battle. It may, however, be the first time he wished he missed.
The sticky copper scented liquid all but became a second skin to him, warm at first then cold and crusty until he eventually washed it off, readying the canvas for another masterpiece. Since becoming The Punisher, Frank did just that - he punished those who deserved it. But this time, the person at the end of his bullet didn’t.
The kid’s blood had seeped past his vest, through shirt and coated down his pants in some spots, too. The smell, one he was familiar with, stung his nose this time. An unfamiliar sensation and one he hated. Oh, how he hated it.
When Frank crossed the threshold of that lab after realizing what he had done, mind racing but focused on his objective, he tried to prepare himself for what lay just beyond. His bullet, his actions, created a scene he would never be able to purge from his memory, no matter how hard he tried.
The kid - he didn’t even know the kid’s name - was laying in a growing pool of blood, eyes closed and head cocked to the side. Was he even breathing? Frank quickly cleared the rest of the room, and noticed the DODC guy was nowhere in sight, before he strode over to the girl kneeling by the kid’s side.
“Get away from him,” Frank said, taking aim at her head with his pistol. “I said back the hell up!”
Frank was about to just shoot the girl and be done with it, when he noticed the slight rise of the young man’s chest. God, he was so… young. “Kid?”
“You need to get him to a hospital,” the girl said through gritted teeth and shaky breaths. “Before-”
“Before what?” Frank stepped closer, gun still aimed high while he looked at the kid on the floor. “Before you take New York hostage with your mind tricks again?”
“Before he dies,” the girl said. She looked up at Frank, pained eyes focused on the gun before turning back to the kid. She took a slow breath and said, “I can help him for a while, but he needs a doctor.”
“What the hell are you talking about, help him? Huh? Just back the hell up and leave before this bullet finds its target,”
The girl wavered on the ground.
So did the kid.
The red puddle continued to grow.
“I’m helping him, breathing for him,” the girl said without looking at Frank. “I’ve got a good hold now, but it won’t mean anything if he continues to bleed out like this,”
“What the fu-”
“Peter is dying!” the girl screamed. “He’s dying! He took that bullet for me and now he’s dying and I’m trying to help him hold on but I-I can’t hold him forever.”
Frank took a step back as some items shot around the room, narrowly missing him before they crashed against the walls and floor. He looked down at the kid, at Peter, and holstered his weapon. Without a word he knelt down and scooped Peter into his arms, trying to not think about the way blood continued to seep out of the hole in his back.
Without a word, he started toward the stairs, ignoring the magic ninjas stuck in webs as he descended and exited the building. Frank had but a moment to wonder how he was going to get Peter into the van when the side door slid open with some unseen force. He looked over his shoulder, caught a glimpse of the girl peering through a broken window down at him.
Peter’s mask appeared next, just floating next to him like it was a normal Tuesday. That mask was far from Frank’s mind at the moment. How had they come this far from Staten Island? “Yeah, you saved my life, kid. Now, I’m gonna help save yours.”
With a nod of thanks, Frank, as gently as he could, set Peter on the floor of the van and carefully pulled the mask over his face. Double checking that he was still breathing, or that the girl was still breathing for him?, Frank jogged to the driver's seat before setting course toward the hospital.
Due to the chaos in the city, it took thirty minutes to reach the emergency bay doors of Bellevue Hospital. Those thirty minutes were some of the longest of Frank’s life.
He had to take detours, drive on sidewalks, and dodge civilians as he sped toward the help Peter desperately required. He laid on the horn and even considered shooting a grenade into the air to scare the people out of his way.
But he didn’t.
The kid wouldn’t appreciate that.
Peter wouldn’t appreciate that.
“Just keep breathing for me, kid,” Frank muttered as he looked over his shoulder at the too-still man, not convinced that Peter could hear him. “I’ve got you, just keep breathing.”
By the time Frank reached the hospital, he couldn’t hear Peter breathing anymore.
It was low, but there, for the first 29 minutes of the drive. A wheezing sound he’d heard on the battlefield too many times. But he was breathing, that’s what mattered. The girl was still doing her magic mind voodoo, so Frank didn’t panic and just kept driving.
It happened at minute thirty, right when he saw the hospital. Frank blaired the horn as he rounded the corner to get the attention of the doctors and nurses and whomever the kid needed to save his life - that was he we couldn’t hear Peter breathing any more.
Parking haphazardly and all but throwing the side door open to retrieve Peter from the floor, Frank yelled for help. He walked into the hospital with Peter limp in his arms, the kid's blood soaking through his clothes and dripping onto the floor with each step he took.
A nurse, or maybe it was a doctor he didn’t really care at that point, appeared with a gurney and with their help Frank set Peter down. Frank began barking orders as Peter was wheeled away, telling them what the wound was, how long it had been since the shot. Well, at least, for the wound he knew about. They seemed to ignore him and take note of his words at the same time before they began wheeling Peter away. Frank attempted to follow them, to get answers, but was stopped short.
“Hey-” Frank started after them as they ran toward a set of heavy doors.
“We’ve got him,” a woman said, effectively stopping him with a firm hand on his chest.
Frank watched from afar, through the windows and past the people that milled around them, at the staff as they began cutting the suit away. The first cut was down Peter’s chest to remove this top portion of the suit, right through the spider symbol. Then his gloves and sleeves were removed as the staff attached wires and hooked up monitors and machines. There seemed to be a discussion about the mask that ended just as soon as it started and the shield that protected Peter’s anonymity was discarded with the rest of his clothes.
Frank grew tense as watched the scene unfold beyond his reach. He tried to… do what? Murder the very people who were working to save the web-heads life? “You can’t. You don’t know-”
The nurse who stopped him from going to Peter’s side, who stopped him from physically preventing others from removing that mask, looked at Frank and said, “I know who you are, and I know what you can do. And I promise you, no one will find out who Spider-Man is. I promise you,” Without another word, the nurse left Frank there, alone, in the hall as the sounds of machines beeping and people yelling faded until all he could hear was the rushing of blood in his ears.
In the hours that passed, Frank was left alone. He washed Peter’s blood from his hands and arms until his limbs tingled from the pressure of scrubbing. He would wait to dump the clothes he wore until he was sure of the kid’s condition.
If people saw him, especially while he was in the waiting room the nurses ushered him to, they gave him a wide berth, not intent on crossing the Punisher’s path if they could help themselves. A security guard, or maybe it was one of NYPD’s finest, walked by and briefly made eye contact with Frank. The next second, the officer was gone. At some point, he found himself seated in a waiting room chair, a cold cup of really bad coffee rested off to the side, untouched.
Evening had fallen and the sound of the city beginning to pick up the pieces slowly changed over to something else.
Frank noticed it when he went for a quick walk to stretch his legs. It was just a few people at first, some teens dressed in red and blue Spider-Man garb. They stood there by the front doors, out of the way as they seemingly struggled with where they should go. With a shake of his head, Frank went back to the waiting room.
He must have zoned out because Frank did not notice the doctor standing off to the side until the woman cleared her throat.
“You brought Spider-Man in,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.
Frank stood, nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I did. How is he? He gonna be alright?”
The doctor looked over her shoulder, as if waiting for someone to jump out and grab her to keep her from speaking. “We obviously don’t know who he is, and that’s how it will stay.” she began. “And since you brought him in… Some of his wounds are more severe than others. The gunshot wound itself was catastrophic,”
The doctor went on to tell Frank about the various injuries Peter suffered, from the minor scrapes and bruises to the stab wound - the kid was stabbed too?, Frank thought - to, finally, the damage the .50 caliber bullet did and its subsequent blood loss.
“If he was human… there would be no way he’d survive. Maybe it’s his powers, or something else, but a bullet that size should have torn him apart.” the doctor paused, wiped a stray tear from her eye. “Normally, with someone with such serious injuries, we’d keep them in the ICU. But these are far from normal time. We’re getting him settled into a private room now, away from prying eyes. I’ll have a nurse come grab you when we’re done.”
“Yeah, okay, okay,” Frank nodded his understanding, then offered his hand, which the doctor shook. “Thanks, doc. Really,”
Frank impatiently waited for a nurse to come and show him to Peter’s room. First three minutes passed, then ten. When it reached 26 minutes, Frank headed toward the nurses station in order to get an update and location. One way or another.
He was a few yards away from speaking his mind when a nurse appeared in his path. “We’ve got him settled in a room.” was all he said before turning and leading Frank down a long hall.
When Frank first set foot in Peter’s room, he didn’t want to believe his eyes. The kid, somehow, looked younger than before. His brown curls laid wet against his forehead and the bruises on his face were already starting to change color beneath the cuts. A mask rested over his nose and mouth, easing precious oxygen into his deprived lungs. Was the girl still helping with that, he wondered?
Pulling a chair up to the side of the bed, Frank settled in for the long haul. He knew enough medical mumbo jumbo, having been in the hospital plenty of times himself over the years, to understand just how rough Peter had it. These next few hours, even for Spider-Man, would tell the rest of the story.
“Let me tell you somethin’, kid,” Frank started as he sat back in the seat, eyeing the Spider-Man mask and gloves that rested on the foot of the bed. “You pull through this, and you can bring up that Staten Island bull as many times as you want. But you gotta pull through, okay? Okay.”
When he got no response from Peter, not even a witty quip, he crossed his arms and took guard, waiting for his new friend to wake up and protecting him from any harm that dared to come his way.
FIN