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Dick leaned on the washing machine, talking to his neighbor. He knew he could afford an apartment where he didn’t share a machine with 30 people, but he enjoyed the chance to talk to his neighbors.
This particular neighbor, Sarah, had just gotten into gymnastics. She knew he liked it too, so whenever she saw him, she’d excitedly relay her latest adventures at her gym. She was going into middle school, and she was going to start competing seriously.
She animatedly explained her routine to Dick, and he gave opinions and suggestions as she went. Normally, he would be more active in the conversation, but his nighttime job had left him more drained than usual.
Someone was setting up bombs in random buildings in Blüd. There didn’t seem to be any correlation, no specific type of building they targeted more than others. There was no pattern as to days either, just that most happened at night.
Suddenly there was a loud bang and the ceiling caved in. Dick tried to grab Sarah, to try and prevent her from getting the brunt of the blow, but he was too slow. They both fell, and Dick saw Sarah’s head crack against the pavement. His right leg was pinned under stones, but he reached for her with the other.
“Sarah! Do you hear me?” He tried to get her attention. Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake. She twitched, but Dick couldn’t tell if it was conscious or not. He barely managed to grab her wrist, fumbling for a pulse. She was fading fast. Dick couldn’t see much, he couldn’t see where she was pinned, if she was bleeding anywhere but her head.
“Stay awake, okay? You have to show me your routine,” he told her. He cursed himself. He should’ve caught that bomber. “Anyone! Is there anyone around! We’re trapped!” He screamed. He needed to make noise. Maybe there were others trapped that he could attempt to help, or maybe they would be heard eventually.
It also gave him some sense of control. Something to focus on outside of the fact he was slowly losing feeling in his foot from the hundreds of pounds lying on him. “Sarah, hey, are you still with me?” He knew she was still alive. He refused to drop his hands from her pulse.
Distantly he felt pain in his hip, but he ignored that at the moment. He could practically hear Bruce in his head “civilians first.” He shouted until he choked on the dust. He was pretty sure the floor had fallen with them, but it was so sudden he wasn’t sure.
Dick realized Sarah’s pulse was gone. He pressed his forehead into the ground. “Fuck.” He let go of her wrist and decided he needed to catalogue his injuries. Headache and blurry memory of the incident, check. He could easily move and feel his hands. His right leg was able to move, but not without pain in his left. No pain in his lungs or stomach area, and none in his back.
He couldn’t move or feel his leg beyond the pain in his hip. He prayed it was due to the rock. He stopped yelling for help and instead focused on breathing. He attempted to count the seconds as he waited for something.
He wasn’t sure when he lost count, but suddenly the rubble was being lifted off him. “We found one!” He heard someone yell. He winced and tried to sit up, immediately falling back over.
What seemed to be firefighters came and grabbed him while checking Sarah’s corpse. Dick stared at her as the one trying to help him up started asking questions. He answered on autopilot.
As they pulled him out he heard one of the firefighters say, “Only one survivor? This bomber planned it out well.” Dick felt a chill go down his spine. Was it just Dick? The building would have been mostly full at the time of the attack.
His neighbors, had all of them died? How was that possible? The other firefighter started shushing the first. “Mark, don’t say that.”
Dick looked between the two. “They’re all dead?” He asked, almost astonished. He knew there was a high probability that some would die. Maybe even that most would. All of them, however, had not crossed his mind. The firefighter handed him off to an EMT.
They asked him questions he didn’t care about. They put him on a spine board despite him telling them he didn’t need it. This was such a hassle. He wished he could just call Bruce and have Leslie deal with it, but no he had to go all the way to the hospital.
They mentioned something about internal bleeding, which he supposed made sense. His head did feel very dizzy. When they got to the ER, it was an assault on all of his senses. He heard the doctors say something about a pelvic fracture before his eyes slipped shut and he fell unconscious.
When he woke up, he wished he hadn’t. It felt like his head had been stuffed with cotton then beat on like one of the batcaves punching bags. He groaned, eventually opening his eyes. Tim was in the chair at his bedside, typing on his laptop. He looked at Dick when he heard him, and he startled.
“Tim? What…” He started asking, but his sentence died out before he could fully comprehend what he was saying. His mouth felt dry, and his thoughts felt slippery.
“You have a concussion, pelvic fracture, and internal bleeding,” he recited back the diagnoses. “Bruce was here for a while, but he had some serious business to attend to. I’ve been looking into the case you were so interested in.” Tim tapped his finger idly against the laptop.
Dick took a moment to process before nodding. “Thanks for coming, Timmy.” He expected the usual scrunch of the nose that that nickname usually came with, but instead Tim just sighed.
“Get some sleep, Dick,” Tim told him. Normally he would’ve been worried about the details, but his head was spinning too much to truly care. Tim was capable, he could handle it. So he let himself rest, even if just for now.