Chapter Text
Jess knows something is wrong the moment she arrives for her night shift at Gotham East.
The ER is too quiet. Much, much too quiet. The teen in 4-B is doing well enough after her accidental OD, and since she refused further treatment, she’s likely going to be released within the hour. The middle-aged man who arrived at the beginning of her shift isn’t staying long: they’re rushing him off to surgery ASAP to remove his burst appendix. The newly diagnosed Type I diabetic from 3-C is stable and awaiting a hospital admission to the pedi unit. The MVA case in 1-D is waiting for collection by the police with nothing but a broken wrist, twisted fender, and pending DUI charge to show for the unfortunate choices he made.
All in all, she walks into what, to most, looks like a standard night in a standard ER.
Assuming Gotham East had a standard ER.
The other technicians laugh when Jess mutters sullenly about the slow night. Inactivity and boredom always ignites her temper in a way she can’t help but loathe, and the weird vibes she’s catching aren’t helping matters at all.
(She’s very, very alone in that).
The nurses give her pitying looks. The MDs pay her no mind. They all brush her off when she snaps at them for their tasteless jokes and uncanny calm, and they ignore her twitchy paranoia with smug nonchalance as they balance their meager workload with phone games, salty snacks from the breakroom, and gossip about the cute, freshly-hired anesthesiologist in the OR.
Jess is accustomed to the dismissive treatment, and she tries not to let it bother her. She’s one of the youngest emergency room technicians there, after all. Hell, she may even be one of the least experienced. She’s well aware she’ll need to claw her way up the rungs of this ladder, just as she had all the others, and she’ll do it in direct defiance of everyone who doubts her and everything that stands in her way.
Let it be known the Narrows never raised a quitter.
Inexperience and fresh-faced enthusiasm aside, she knows Gotham. She grew up here, right in the heart of the Narrows. She knows how the city operates, how its people live, how every moment of calm only portends a new, unnatural, and potentially psychotic storm.
True Gothamites rarely have the luxury of sheltering from those storms, and only the strong or the lucky make it out of the flood alive.
The evening creeps steadily into the witching hours, and still, there are no signs of fear toxin, Joker venom, or raving lunatics high on Poison Ivy’s aphrodisiacs. No bloodied and beaten thugs lying across their front steps, left in an unceremonious pile by Gotham’s caped crusaders. No bombs wrapped in gaudy paper to disguise the threat within.
Nothing.
The others think the downpour that started three hours into their shift is enough to keep the crazies at bay. Even Batman wouldn’t be caught dead out in this weather, Jonah argues.
(Jonah commutes from Bristol. Jonah doesn’t know shit).
Jess’ unease only mounts whenever she has a moment to pass by the near-vacant waiting room. She stares out into the wet night, skin crawling with anticipation. A few passing headlights illuminate the streaked glass of the ER doors, and the streetlamps are just bright enough to shed distorted, fractured light onto the ground, casting an all-too-eerie sheen across the parking lot. The shadows are too long out there, the sky murky like the water left in a painter’s overused rinse cup. Even the thunder and wind are... off, sounding as though they’re emerging from deep within the recesses of the earth rather than whipping in from the sky above.
A young man with several broken fingers and a mild concussion arrives at midnight. His sparring partner comes in mere minutes later with similar injuries and a bruised nose. Jonah needs to call security when the second man sees the first in the waiting room. Jess laughs for the first time that night when Dr. Hernandez hears the commotion, raises a perfectly plucked brow, and clucks, “Men don’t know how to throw a halfway decent punch these days, do they?”
Their humor is short-lived. An elderly man arrives by ambulance at 0054 who, unfortunately, succumbs to an acute myocardial infarction and passes at 0301. His wife is with him at the bedside.
Needless to say, Jess doesn’t have time to think about the sky breaking open or the tense electricity in the air. She doesn’t have time to see the single flash of purple-tinged lightning arching and bending like skeletal fingers over Gotham City. She’s busy enough as it is: taking vitals, helping talk down the bar brawlers, assisting with wound care, and then responding to a code. She won’t say she falls prey to a false sense of security, but she does allow herself the dutiful distraction and sharp, singular focus that steady, intense work in the ER provides.
It’s hard—God, is it hard—but she thrives here, in this place where compassion for her patients meets survival instinct, where stress and adrenaline become exhilarating weapons of competence and clarity. Old promises feel as fresh as the day she made them, back on that sagging, cracked stoop outside her parents’ apartment building, where her future lay in shambles at her feet. The memory of those promises fuels and supports her, bolsters her and reminds her why she’s doing what she’s doing. Why she’s here, where Death tiptoes like a thief between breaths of life.
The death they have that night is hard. They’re all hard, but it isn’t Jess’s first. She doesn’t have a direct hand in helping with the arrangements, so once the code is over, she takes a moment to breathe...and goes back to work. Two irate wives sit in the waiting room, ready to drag their husbands out by the ears once they’re discharged. She’ll settle her disappointed, guilty conscience and the crippling sadness in her chest later, when she’s alone.
All things considered, it isn’t surprising Jess snaps like an overstretched rubber band when everything really goes to hell.
It’s nearly 0500 when manic blue and red light spills into the ER from the ambulance bay. Gurney wheels squeak and screech through the door, accompanied by a crescendoing cacophony of thunder and rain, of voices and alarms. The tension in the air mounts, a disorienting energy absent from the AMI case not even two hours earlier amassing into an electrifying panic.
Cops race in, following directly on the EMTs' heels.
Their faces are pale, severe and emotionless, and time slows as Jess drops the paperwork in her hands and sprints to assist her team, her attention focused solely on their young patient so she can make her own snapshot assessment.
The first thing she notices is the suit. Odd to find a teenager in a suit, sure. Odder still that he was found wearing it out and about at this ungodly hour.
But that isn’t even the oddest part.
It’s the state of the suit. The EMTs had shorn it down the center for access to his chest, which is only to be expected, but besides that, it’s filthy, sodden with rainwater and caked with mud and what Jess can only assume is old blood. She can’t even discern the original color of the shirt beneath the suit jacket. Said jacket’s right sleeve is nearly torn off at the shoulder. The hems of his pants are ruined and tattered at the ankles, and at the wrists—
Oh. God. His fingers.
They’re torn to shreds.
Jess fights bile as she realizes what she should have noticed first and foremost: he’s injured. Badly. Angry burns and deep purple contusions mottle his exposed skin. Or, at least, what she can see of it. A morbid painting of blood and grime takes precedence, so it’s impossible to tell if they’re also dealing with lacerations, punctures, or God knows what else. His face is swollen and—
Jess freezes. Dr. Hernandez barks an order, but it flies over her head. She’s only half-aware of the fact Jonah’s dragging her dead weight out of the way. She’s not breathing, horror compounding into a mass that threatens to choke her from the inside out.
There is a dead boy in her ER, and he’s staring right at her.
He shifts underneath the wires and tape and straps holding him stable on the gurney. His chest rises and quakes with a rattling breath. He blinks.
Jess stumbles away from Jonah, hands flying to cover the strangled gasp escaping her mouth. Her colleague curses under his breath and tries to call for help. The noise in the room crescendos, but none of it makes any sense. It's a disjointed circus tune of voices, their pitch and tempo overlapping in such a chaotic jumble they’re utterly indistinguishable from one another.
Fingers suddenly snap in her vision, and there’s a hand on her arm. Honestly, she doesn’t notice Jonah is trying to lead her further away from the patient, not until she resists and feels the pressure of his hand around her arm tighten.
“Jess! Jess! ” Jonah’s voice breaks through the din. He sounds angry, tone sharp and demanding, but his mask of calm defies logic.
This whole situation defies logic.
It takes all of her concentration to pull herself out of her inner spiral, instead latching onto the EMT who’s giving Dr. Hernandez his handoff report. His voice filters through her mind like noise coming at her from a distance, both sluggish and echoing, echoing, echoing.
Her mind races as she breaks down the case, trying to find the truth in this madhouse of impossibility.
“Male. Mid-to-late teens. ‘John Doe,’” the EMT calls him.
But that’s not right. Jess knows this boy.
Once, this boy sat with her on that broken curb across from their shared apartment complex in the heart of Crime Alley. He saw her crying, saw her stuff scattered around her, torn scraps of paper from treasured journals and ruined clothes all bunched up and laying like discarded trash in the gutter.
This boy was the one who asked what happened. And why.
“...found wandering the streets, visibly injured and in a state of disarray...”
When she curled her legs to her chest on that cracked stoop and told him a gay girl wasn’t worth shit to anyone, not even those who were supposed to love her and support her, he stared at her with fire in his eyes and said, on no uncertain terms, “That’s stupid.”
His eyes are glazed and vacant now.
This was the boy who sat with her as she wiped her tears, incredulous and unable to formulate a response. Because, really, what does one say to the weird Alley kid who just called her out so spectacularly?
“I hope you’re not thinking about doing anything stupid,” he said to her in that arrogant, matter-of-fact you’re-a-dummy-but-I-will-overlook-it-this-once tone all kids seem to have mastered by the time they’re toddlers.
She remembers how she almost laughed. Because she had been thinking about doing a number of stupid things. Because what else could she do? What other options did she have? She’d been kicked out, cut off, totally abandoned. No food, no money, no prospects. Nothing. No one to call. Nothing to call with.
She was fifteen. She was an Alley kid. And she’d already been out on that stoop for hours, suffering catcallers and jeering disdain from men and women alike.
The sun was sinking below the horizon, and she’d been no closer to deciding what to do.
Or how to do it.
But then her punk ass neighbor from across the hall with the sticky fingers and the drug addict mom sat with her. And because he sat with her, he also bore witness to her crumbling at the reminder of her hopeless situation, and he scowled at her. This weirdo eight-year-old child’s scowl carried as much heat as his eyes did, and instead of making her retreat further; instead of making her fall even further into the pit of desolation she was drowning in; instead of lashing out and cussing him out, she...caught some of its spark.
It didn’t make sense then, but it ignited something deep within her chest.
(Later, she would credit that scowl for being the life-raft she needed to keep her head above water).
He’s not scowling now. His lips twist into a grimace of pain.
“Hey,” he had said, poking her like the annoying brat he was. His expression was too old for his face. “Promise me.”
“Only if you promise me,” she shot right back at him without thinking. It was child’s logic, utterly nonsensical and spontaneous, but they were children then, weren’t they? She had no idea what she was promising, no idea as to the layers upon layers she was building into the promise she was about to make. She didn’t even know what she was asking him to promise in return.
But it didn’t matter. At that moment, it was enough.
The boy considered her proposal, nodded, and set his jaw. “Fair deal.”
He spit into his hand and offered it to Jess, who, in a fit of delirious amusement and renewed hope, laughed.
“We Alley kids are better than they think we are,” he said with a confident grin.
“You better believe we are,” Jess agreed, spitting into her hand and sealing the oath with a handshake.
“...blunt force trauma to the chest, the extremities, the face and head...”
After their handshake, the boy had offered her the name of someone he heard could help her get back on her feet. All above the board. Legal. And, most of all, trustworthy .
She believed him, and once he was called in by his mom, she watched him go, took a deep breath, and stood up from that broken curb.
She didn’t turn back, and she didn’t see him again.
(Not until a half-decade later, during a Wayne Foundation event at which she was receiving a scholarship that would put her through her emergency response certification courses and exams. He didn’t recognize her. But she recognized him.
She learned his name that day, and she watched him and Bruce Wayne from a distance, overcome with emotion and unable to act on it, not even when the man himself stood before her with Jason at his side, commending her for her dreams and the service she would provide the community with the help of his generosity.
It seemed to her as though Jason Todd was as good as his word, and she left the event knowing, in her heart of hearts, everything was as it should be. That very night, she prayed for the first time since she was fifteen, thanking God for allowing the intersection of Jason’s life with her own).
“...numerous broken bones and suspected fractures. Flash burns covering up to sixty-percent of his body...”
Jess doesn’t comprehend the rest of the report. The boy’s vital signs shouldn’t be what they are. He shouldn’t be “awake but not oriented.” He shouldn’t have a GCS of 9. He shouldn’t be able to respond physically or verbally. He shouldn’t be at risk of coding right in front of her.
Jason Todd died in an explosion six months ago.
The last time she saw him, his face was plastered all over the news. They showed a candid of him standing with none other than—
Jason’s mouth suddenly moves, lips forming a single name.
Bruce.
Reality crashes with deafening finalty.
There’s no denying it now.
Jonah and Nicole are still trying to pull Jess away from the scene. One of the cops hovers nearby, keeping a watchful, distrustful eye on her.
“That’s Jason Todd,” she gasps, the words tripping over themselves as she watches the rest of the team drive Jason’s gurney away. The cop’s head whips to her, and he follows at a brisk pace as Jonah and Nicole yank her into an empty patient room. After she’s forcibly sat down on the examination bench, she rambles, “I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but that is Jason Todd.”
Nicole has a glass of water in her hand, and at the name of the famous dead boy, she spills some of it onto Jess’s lap. Jess stares at the wet spot on her scrubs, temper frothing to the surface when she realizes the cop is murmuring something in undertone to the nurse about security.
“I’m not crazy,” she hisses. To the cop, she says, “And you shouldn’t be in here.”
The detective’s expression is blank. She doesn’t want to know what he’s thinking about her reaction to the undead child in their ER.
“Am I a suspect here?” Jess asks anyway. When he doesn’t buckle under her glare, she crosses her arms and mutters, “Un-fucking-believable.”
“Jess, no one is accusing you of anything, but you need to get checked out,” Jonah says very, very calmly from her side, and he looks at Nicole, who brandishes a blood pressure cuff. “We believe you had a panic attack. Let us help you.”
“You’re not listening to me!” Jess protests.
“Please cooperate here, Jess,” Nicole murmurs, attempting to put the cuff around her arm.
Jess pushes the nurse away. “You’re not listening to me,” she repeats. “That’s no John Doe. That is Jason Todd.”
“Bruce Wayne’s boy?” the detective asks abruptly from where he’s stood, his tone funny and pinched. When Jess gives him an aggressive nod, the detective’s frown deepens, disconcerted lines marring his forehead and the edges of his mouth.
“Jess...” Jonah says. He gives Nicole a significant look over Jess’s shoulder. “That’s not possible, you know that, right?”
“Don’t you dare call for a psych consult,” Jess spits at Nicole, who is making the motions of doing just that. “Or draw up the Ativan. I’m not losing it. I know what happened to him. Everyone in Gotham knows. But I know him. He was a neighbor, a long time ago, before Wayne took him in. He...”
Saved my life.
Her right thumb finds the semicolon tattooed on her left wrist.
“He was calling for Bruce,” Jess says, pinning the detective with what she knows are desperate, waterlogged eyes. “You heard it, didn’t you?”
The man looks like he’s about to be sick, his pallid skin glistening with a sudden, chilled sweat. His mouth pops open, then closes. The revelation on his face is enough of an answer.
“We had no idea,” he whispers. “We thought...”
“What other Bruce would he be calling for?!” Jess demands, rising to her feet despite Nicole’s protests. “It’s him, I swear to you! Call it in!”
“Holy shit,” the cop says, taking a few unsteady steps backward. “He said...It was the one question he could answer before—” His fingers scramble for the phone at his waist. “Excuse me.”
He darts out from behind the curtain, pressing his phone to his ear and racing toward his partner. He turns around just once to order all three of them to stay there and don’t move.
The moment he’s gone, Jess slumps back on the examination bed, the frantic energy leaving her body like the air from an abruptly popped balloon. After running a hand down her tear-streaked face, she huffs a humorless, incredulous laugh.
“Holy shit,” Jonah echoes, his tone numb. “What the hell just happened?”
What happened? Good question. But she hopes—prays—that maybe, just maybe, she was able to pay back that scowling wise-ass kid, who, to this day, had no idea just how much he altered the course of her life by simply sitting on the curb with her.
Maybe, just maybe, she was able to alter his, too.