Prompt: Tales from the waiting room

NEW ARM NEW ME CORE LETS GO

I did want to do one of those 5 + 1 ideas but I'm too tired lol

The silence was almost suffocating as they waited for a doctor to give them news from the operating room. Despite the last piece of news they heard being short but sweet, that Dick was stable and they would try their best to save the arm, they still dreaded their next message. They knew that the likelihood of Dick keeping his arm as low, the fire had his skin practically falling from the bone in slabs of meat and the bones they were slipping away from were shattered perhaps beyond repair, Dick had an amazing ability to beat the odds in his favour. Maybe this would be the last time it worked out or maybe it had already been used to get him out of the fire alive. 

Bruce almost regretted not going in the ambulance and instead choosing to follow behind in his car. He didn't know why he didn't. In the moment, he'd hesitated for too long. The ambulance crew cared more about saving Dick's life than his father having a silent debate on what to do as they should. He didn't know if he could handle being in the back of the ambulance when amputation was such a real possibility. His mind was already seared with the images of finding his son in the fire. How dead he looked. How mangled his arm had been. How, even before he heard the ambulance crew talk about it, he knew that amputation was on the table. It wasn't even Dick's night. He'd done it as a favour. 

When he got to the hospital and after speaking briefly with a doctor to confirm the treatment plan, he made sure to tell the family what happened. He didn't call although he probably should've. This was one of those things you should say in person but if you couldn't, the least you could do was call. He instead sent a text to the groupchat. He kept it simple. 

Dick's in hospital. He may lose his arm. 

He added may for some hope. Who that hope was truly intended for, he didn't know. He would say it was for the others but part of him wanted to cling to the idea that this might just end in some added scars and an aversion to fire.

Jason was the first to arrive. He'd heard chatter about an apartment building on fire and went over to check it out. Although he didn't see Dick enter, he certainly saw him leave with half a dozen firemen and paramedics surrounding him as though he were a precious stone being transported. He didn't get a good look from where he stood on the rooftops but with the text Bruce sent, he knew it was bad. When he came in and saw he was first to get there, he awkwardly walked over to the furthest seat in the room and made a convincing act of reading the newspaper. 

Damian was the second. He probably would've been first had he been out tonight. Then again, if he'd been out tonight then Dick wouldn't be here. Bruce refused to imagine what would've happened had that been the case. If he'd seen Damian in the fire instead. He was closely followed by Alfred who had been the one to drive him but left in the dust in the lobby. He gave a nod to Bruce, a mutual understanding that tonight wouldn't end happily. Damian sat to the second closest to the door, beside his father. Being the people they were, they didn't share any physical affection. Just nodded to acknowledge the other.

Tim was third, Cass right behind him. They'd been patrolling close to each other all night although it seemed they should've fanned out a bit more. Steph had waited to car pool with Duke and Barbara.

So they sat together, gradually filling the room yet finding it hard to occupy the dead air with conversation. They all knew they should say something but they couldn't bring themselves to. There were plenty of times when Dick faced death, this time felt different though. Unnervingly, the fate that could end his career would be the same fate that kept him alive to see it burn. 

"How was he when you last saw him?" Barbara asked, braving the quiet. Bruce glanced to her with a look that said more than he could allow himself to voice. He didn't want to believe what he saw. The smell of cooked skin and the sight of bubbled congealed flesh were glued to the inside of his eyelids. It reminded him of finding Jason in the explosion although it wasn't the fire that killed him. It was the impact and subsequent blood loss of the wounds caused both by the debris and the crowbar. 

"Not good," he said.

"They have good doctors here," Tim reasoned.

"Good doctors can only do so much," Damian muttered gravely as if already mourning his eldest brother. The guilt was already eating him away. 

"Have some hope," Alfred advised. 

Over the years, Alfred had spent entirely too much time in hospital waiting rooms. He could probably rival some of the doctors here for time spent in the same four white walls. Not even the decor changed. He'd absently studied the same slightly pixilated photo of a lake enough times to recreate it from memory. He'd faced the possibility of someone not making it off the table too many times that he didn't know if he was losing years of his life or simply stealing some of the years they lost from getting too close to the grave. He only ever had the comfort of hope to make it through since everyone looked to him for the strength to imagine the anticipation not ending in funeral preparations. 

"Hope doesn't regrow arms," Jason joked darkly. He got a few lifeless chuckles from the other occupants. 

He honestly didn't know if Dick could handle losing his arm. Through acrobatics and being Nightwing, Dick kept the memory of his parents alive. It was one thing to grieve a death but another thing entirely to mourn the death of a legacy. Jason didn't want to stick around to see if the acrobat could take it but he knew he had to. They had a fragile bong but a bond all the same. He liked that bond as much as he pretended not to. It was nice to have something from his childhood remain even if it was tainted by his death and his actions after resurrection. 

"I'll make him a new arm," Tim declared. 

He wasn't one for making do with a situation as it was. There was always something that could be done to make it better. To find some sort of silver lining. He'd stay up the countless sleepless nights it would take to learn the field of biomechanics in order to make a new arm for his brother. Dick would've done the same in his own capacity. He would joke through it all in a fruitless attempt to keep a smile on his face and it would somehow work. It was only fair.

"He'd like that," Barbara replied, giving him a comforting squeeze of the shoulder. He gave her a limp smile that she mirrored. 

She supposed now would be the time when she could put into use all she had learned when she was paralyzed. It wasn't the same but it was close enough that she could offer some wisdom to help him see the light at the end of the tunnel. She could also repay some of the debt she owed for all the support he gave her through that time. She could now view what it was like from the other side, watching someone go through painful physio and wake up every morning hoping this time they would wake to find it had all been some terrible tactile nightmare.

"It would help with the press," Bruce agreed. 

"What're we going to tell them? They'll be on us like bloodhounds," Tim asked. Journalists in Gotham, at least the ones who made it their business to be in the Wayne's business, weren't particularly critical but they wouldn't buy everything. They needed something to feed them that wouldn't have them connecting the dots of two famous people losing the same arm on the same day at the same time. 

"Maybe he never had his left arm," Steph offered with a tone only low-rate conspiracy YouTubers used when they spoke about the earth being flat. 

"It's sad that some of them might actually believe that," Jason muttered. They somehow didn't connect that he was Red Hood after the resurrection. Hell, they didn't guess that he was Robin despite them both dying at the same time.

"We could say it was a motorbike accident," Duke suggested. He'd been quiet so far, feeling too out of place to weigh in. He didn't know if he'd earned the right to be waiting alongside the same people who'd known Dick for years. Then again, he wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now. "Fake the report, crash the car."

"I bagsie crashing the car," Steph announced, raising her hand. Cass brought it back down and offered her own. "Oh, you think that you can crash a car better than me?" She nodded proudly.

"Whatever story we come up with, we should do so sooner rather than later. Master Dick doesn't need to worry over this," Alfred concluded.

"Maybe we should include him. It would take his mind off the injuries," Damian commented.

"He doesn't need the stress," Bruce argued. "I'll handle it. Clark has some connections here, we'll feed them a story and wait to confirm whatever rumours come from there."

"What about Bludhaven?" the youngest asked. 

"We'll take it in turns," Bruce responded without skipping a beat. Clearly, he was more comfortable with planning cover stories rather than contemplating what was to come. "By now, word would've spread that he's been involved in a fire. They can assume what they like when they see us."

"Family of John Doe?" a doctor called as he entered the room. Of course, he knew who he had been operating on. Everyone in the room did. They were just kind enough to play pretend and smart enough to comply with the NDA that came with treating heroes. Over time, working on a hero had become something of a badge of honour. This particular doctor had worked on almost all of them by now. If it was a badge of honour then he'd be a decorated veteran. 

They all gave him their full attention. Most would wither under their combined gaze but he maintained his professional exterior. 

"As I explained to you prior, we did everything we could to save what was left of his arm. When he came in, his hand was already under necrosis. Once we got the X-rays and got a look at what we were dealing with we decided it would be better to amputate at the shoulder. His bones were shattered beyond repair and his skin was too far gone. Most of the arm was dead or dying. Keeping it would only harbour infection and unnecessary skin grafts," he explained. 

"Fuck," Jason whispered.

"His left side has been burned but we think it'll take skin grafts nicely. We'll begin that process once he's woken up from surgery and had some time to adjust as the process is quite painful. His vitals are steady but we'll have to keep an eye on his lungs since he inhaled a significant amount of smoke."

"Can we see him?" Barbara asked.

"You can but I'll advise you now to take some time to prepare yourselves." There wasn't enough time in the world.