Unexpected

Burns, Bruises, and Bandages

I was only out for a few minutes though and my eyes fluttered open to see a swaying, bobbing ceiling running by. I felt hands under my shoulders, legs, and head and groaned as the jostling and pressure made my whole body ache all the more. Clint, who had been looking forward, now glanced down at me, "It's okay, Penny, we're almost there."

I wondered where 'there' was supposed to be, but that question was answered in a minute when we got to the main intersection room with the Tesseract. Clint and the other two rushed me over to one of the medical tables where a group of five people in lab coats started flashing lights in my eyes, asking questions, and prodding at me, to see what was damaged. My head swirling and my vision and senses going in and out, everything seemed so far away, quiet, and discombobulated, I couldn't focus on what they were saying. After only a few minutes of lying on the table, I was picked up again and put in a small room where some women in white lab coats undressed me and put me in a hospital dress. Needless to say it was incredibly uncomfortable and embarrassing for them to do so, but I was too weak now to fight against them.

I was then half carried back to the table where I was propped up on the table with my legs hanging off as the lab coat people went to work on me. Immediately a young lady with a magnifying glass went to work with tweezers to pick out the glass shards in my right hand that made me gasp and cry out in pain while a middle-aged man started rubbing an ointment that both cooled and seriously stung on my burnt left hand that was all red, gray, and puffy. After that, they ran an x-ray on me to see if anything was broken, then flashed more lights in my eyes, ears, throat, and so on. They felt my arms, back, and legs to see what hurt, checked my head, and took a blood sample. All the while they spoke to me asking questions that I could barely answer and telling me that everything was going to be alright while they also spoke over each other saying scientific and medical whatnot that I probably couldn't comprehend even if I wasn't on the brink of passing out again from the pain and shock of it all. Halfway through the procedures I tilted forward and promptly vomited, causing a whole new ruckus.

In the end it turned out that I had a bad concussion, which made the doctors both seriously worried and relieved since I had blacked out earlier and one's not supposed to lose consciousness when they have a concussion lest they never wake up. I also had a large cut over my eye that was bleeding from getting knocked around and I had a huge bump growing on the back of my head from when it was hit against the fridge shelf. Dark bruises were sprouting painfully everywhere, espessially large ones on my back that made moving hurt. My wrist was not broken like I had thought, but instead had a bad sprain, and obviously my right hand was still dripping blood from all the puncture wounds from the shattered light bulb glass and my left hand was burnt red and gray and was puffing up. Also I had a sprain in my right ankle, but it wasn't too serious.

My poor hands were being wrapped up in gauzy bandages when Barton, who had been hanging back a bit, watching the procedures with his arms crossed and his face serious, stepped forward and looked me in the face. "Penny." He waited until I looked him in the eye, "What happened? What did he do to you?"

Even though his eyes had the lifeless turquoise glow of the Tesseract, the rest of his face showed worry, which seemed odd on the agent's features. It took a few moments for me to collect myself and start, but then I told him everything, from Ed entering the kitchen to his advances to our struggle in the fridge to me breaking the light bulb, the flash of energy from the electricity that had fueled my punch that had sent Ed flying across the small, freezing room into the door of the freezer. As I told Barton of that last bit, with what had seemed like superhuman strength in that punch that I now figured was simply from the adrenaline of it all, the scientists attending me started muttering amongst themselves and looking at the charts from all the do-hickies they had attached to me and all my tests. They were quickly silenced by a baleful look sent over to them by Barton.