Yesterday, Foul Play and I burned one of David Merc's international clothing shipping centers to a crisp, in the hopes of destroying every last ounce of profit anyone might salvage from it. The storage establishment is situated among ordinary businesses and skyscrapers, on the side of a normally busy street.

This morning, two city buses became uncontrollable and they both crashed violently, not only into the already charred building, but into one another. The sheer amount of injured citizens warranted for the larger proportion of Gotham General Hospital's ambulance service to be deployed on-site.

Furthermore, the police department reared its meddling head into our affairs. While some of the officers were dispatched to appease the angered crowd of people who take this road to get to work, namely, which is functioning as well as anyone would expect, the others are here to investigate. Amidst the wounded, there appears to be multiple criminals, and medical technicians from Squad 76 reported that they found illicit substances scattered in the ashen wreckage of the clothing hangar. These two facts understandably summoned enough cops to fill one public bus. As always, rare are those who are not thoughtlessly interfering with our medical duties. 

In the deafening cacophony of mingling sirens and alarms of remotely every sort known to humanity, I am hurriedly weaving a path from one patient to another. Harsh or suffering voices, inside my head or spoken, string the unbelievable quantity of noise together, to fit the devastating visual.

I am easing a knocked out teenager from behind the steering wheel of his badly painted car, as his young sister bawls even louder than the noise made by the heartless, braindead drivers who are honking at us. As though I am going to stop aiding these children and suddenly decide to drive a clearly ruined car out of their way.

"IS HE DE-E-E-E-EAAAAAD?!" the small girl sobs and screams, sniffling loudly afterwards.

I gently lie her brother down on the cement, pulling up his crumpled T-shirt to witness the damage to his rib cage; the poor boy's security belt was cut, which I noticed instantly when I pried the car door open. Whether that happened during the accident or prior to it is unknown. The important part is that he slammed chest first into the steering wheel and that shards from his windshield indented his young face. The bruising is deep and disturbing, the skin is riddled with clumps and dark purple crevices.

I hastily cover the injury to protect the girl's innocence.

The teenage boy is breathing, above all things. Feebly, but still.

I activate my radio. "This is Tanza Aguayo speaking. I have... Someone who needs an ambulance. Over."

I could not bring myself to announce the child's sibling like a subject in front of her. 16-year-old male, car accident victim, compromised rib cage.

The little girl is struggling to take off her backpack. He was probably driving her to school when... I ignore the knot in my throat, watching her decisively drop her sparkly princess backpack on the ground to produce a resealable plastic bag from it. It contains browning apple slices. She fiddles with the opening, mumbling something, then it slips out of her small hands.

I kneel down to her level faster than the plastic bag can land on the concrete. Crying and shaking, her head is turned down toward the asphalt road.

"Is... Is... Is he..? Ishegonnabeokayplease?!" she wails.

My communication device crackles, preceding a familiar voice, "Copy. Colin Levine here. 76-1 is leaving at 09 hours. Will you get here in time? Over."

I shove the speaker key into activation.

"Affirmative. Over and out."

I instinctively pick up the child's schoolbag, handing it to her along with a question of my own.

"Are you hurt? I can help you, too."

"I... I'm okay," she replies quietly.

Curling one of her young fists, maybe half the size of mine, around the nearest strap of her colorful bag, she lifts her face. Her wide tearful eyes meet my focused gaze, and gruesome agony claws at the inside of my stomach.

A large piece of glass is embedded in her cheekbone, and the left side of her head is cribbled with blue, purple and red marks from burst veins. Her left under eye is sagging and paler than her skin tone, and a blood red stain is spreading in the white of her eye.

A feeling between throwing up and erupting into untamed sobs paralyzes me for a full second. I smile forcefully, the entirety of our surroundings fading into a thumping at the bottom of my eardrums.

"Good." I come close to vomiting instead of letting out the word. I briskly hold out my hand. "Let's get you and your brother to the hospital, okay?"

"Thank you, miss."

Her gratitude stabs me fifty times in every corner of my body, and I welcome her tiny, trembling, sweaty hand inside my callused palm.

I have never cared less about getting misgendered in my life.

~

Feverishly drinking from my water bottle, I am half-listening to the message transmitted by my walkie-talkie.

"... assistance, please! Over."

I can do this. I can do anything. I have forgotten all about nausea, fainting... I am ready.

I automatically grab my contraption. "This is Tanza Aguayo. Copy. I'm coming to find you. Over and out."

I rush out of the sheltered alcove I was concealing myself in to breathe for... I glance at my watch. A 39-second break. Luckily for me, Maximilian has a recognizable head of reddish blond hair. Unluckily for me, everything in a radius of three miles is sprayed with red or is a literal puddle of blood.

After two minutes of roaming urgently around the area, I spot my coworker, beyond the gaping tear created by the buses in the shipping facility's facade. I stride to his help, assessing the situation. An older woman is lying on her back in a spread of burned debris, with a seared shelf fallen over her right leg.

"Tanza! Thank God, you're here..! We have to lift this off her leg, can you do that? The two of us should be enough."

My eyes scan the darkness of the building.

"Don't thank Them just yet... This shelf is held down by another one that fell across the bottom of it, over there. Go and get the fire department, they'll have the tools to help you. I'll stay with your patient."

The young man scurries away to follow my guidance.

By reading the woman's mind, I learn that she has peed herself, and her embarrassment is great, despite this reaction not being too unusual considering the trauma her body endured. The victim is relieved that I am not speaking to her, so I remain silently attentive to her thoughts.

"Hey, you, over there!" a police officer hollers at me.

To spare the aged individual an increase in shame, I move away from her and into the street.

"Yeah? Can I help you?"

Stroking his long gray mustache, the man nods strongly. "Yes, yes. Come here!"

He motions at me to walk beside him toward a cop who is gesticulating angrily in the distance, standing above a man in handcuffs, on his knees.

"Ah, great!" The first cop's partner impatiently exclaims. "You mind helping us understand your amigo, there?"

I stay unfazed, both aghast as the realization of what he is asking me makes its way into my brain and unfortunately unsurprised.

Should've guessed.

I scoff, politely educating them. "He is not my friend. I can see if he speaks Spanish, though."

I turn to the Latino man. Having read all three of their minds, I know he does, and that the two buffoons with badges did not bother to find out before calling me over. The assumption that I speak Spanish is equally as stupid as the assumption that he does, but I did not believe it would be a clever use of my time to explain that to the law enforcers.

The civilian's shaved head is sprinkled with blood, presumably not his own since there are no visible external wounds near the splotches and the placement is also indicative of this.

"Hello, sir. Do you speak Spanish?" I calmly ask, hoping he cooperates at least minimally.

The numerous tattoos on his skin are not the most encouraging sign, but his thoughts revealed a certain stability and intelligence. Even without my newly acquired abilities, it would be far too ironic of me to judge a book by its cover.

"What do you think?" he answers, bored.

I pivot to look at the policeman who led me here, tilting my head as an invitation to indicate what I need to...

"Ask him if he worked there," aggressively commands his companion.

I reluctantly play along, wishing for this interrogation to end quickly. I steer the process in the right direction to let the officers learn what I know from the gangster's inner dialogue, leading to his arrest.

In short, he was a member of Bane's gang, until six months ago. A knee injury took him out of the criminal world, but he recently was accepted as a dispensable goon by a lesser group of unlawful individuals. He was on his way to rob a nearby jewelry depot when the buses crashed and interrupted his plans.

I knew he would not escape jail, but I provided the cops with the knowledge that he is a mere thief and had no part in the deaths of those who did not survive the "accident". According to the mustached officer's reflections, premeditation could have had a hand in this catastrophic event.

I am not in disagreement with this conjecture, however Gotham's villains are known to make a spectacle of their crimes. A lack of motive for unrivalled violence is inconsequential, I am more baffled by the lack of a calling card. I do not doubt that if this occurrence was not coincidental, the culprit will arise. It is the natural order of things, is it not? What merit can a rebellious being collect without a reputation? There is no gain nor fear attributed to the nameless.