#currently miserable in shoulder surgery recovery and trying to remember | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hale-13 · 3 years

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Conditioned

By Hale13

For the Summer of Whump Day 16 - Touch Starved

“Can I take a shower?” Peter blurted out, shifting uncomfortably. He felt gross from the dried sweat and the bloody residue that was left on his scalp and around his hair line felt the intense need to get cleaned - broken arm be damned.

Words: 2084, Chapters: 1/1 (Complete), Language: English

Fandoms: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)

Rating: Gen

Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark

Characters: Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Helen Cho

TW: Literally None - Just Fluff

Read on AO3 or below the line break.

“Well Peter, I see no reason why you should have to stay here any longer as long as you promise to actually rest and allow yourself to heal,” Helen said firmly but with a smile toward him and Peter nearly sagged with obvious relief.

“Oh thank god,” he said he’d, already struggling in his attempts to climb out of the MedBay bed he had been sentenced to since the day before with some help from Tony. He flinched a little as he tweaked his sore arms, moving the wrong way, but trying to keep his muscles as relaxed as possible to prevent any further damage. His recovery is going to be annoying enough as it is without making it worse.

In his most recent fight against the Shocker the night before, he had caught a direct hit on his right arm which had successfully and cleaning broken his radius and ulna in two. In his haste to get away and then catch himself on a poorly shot strand of webbing he had dislocated his left shoulder. The pain had been so stunning he had barely been able to finish webbing up Shocker and get away before the police showed up.

It probably didn’t do much to help the injuries when he had swung back to the Tower but he had been numb and delirious by that point so he probably wasn’t really thinking straight. He does remember Tony not being super impressed with him when he nearly passed out as soon as he landed.

“I’m serious about resting,” Dr. Cho warned him as she helped him settle his, still sore and recently reduced, arm into a sling. “You need to take it easy for at least another few days or you’ll risk re-injury and possibly surgery.”

“Oh that shouldn’t be a problem,” Tony said breezily. “I have no problem cuffing him to a bed if I have to.”

“Mr. Stark,” Peter whined, trying to stand and balance without using either of his arms – it was much harder than he thought it would be – and already trying to edge toward the door. Tony just quirked up an eyebrow at him.

“Your aunt, definitely against her better judgement and with an amazing amount of misplaced trust, is letting you stay here with me so you don’t get into any more trouble during your convalescence so if you could just work with me for a couple of days here that would be much appreciated,” he told Peter very pointedly with a final wave at Helen as he herded Peter toward the elevator at the end of the hall.

Peter just rolled his eyes at his mentors dramatics but allowed himself to be directed – to tell the absolute truth, his arms still hurt pretty badly and he wasn’t really looking forward to his oral painkillers (that made him sleepy and emotional) and his anti-inflammatories (that made him into a right bastard if he was being honest) and trying to convince Tony that he didn’t need either. He wasn’t super confident about his success rate with that. “Can I take a shower?” He blurted out, shifting uncomfortably. He felt gross from the dried sweat and the bloody residue that was left on his scalp and around his hair line.

“You know that you can’t get your cast wet,” Tony reminded him holding up a hand when Peter opened his mouth to interrupt. “I mean, I suppose I can wrap it in a bag or something if you really want to shower that bad.”

“Yes please,” Peter eagerly agreed. Ever since the Bite all of his senses had been more sensitive but none more so than his sense of smell and he wasn’t a particularly big fan of the fact that he could currently smell himself. It made his skin crawl and was completely disgusting.

“Alright then,” Tony nodded. “Shower first and then a movie marathon slash prescribed nap directly after. Do we have a deal then Mr. Parker?”

“Only if we can get pizza for dinner later,” Peter bartered as the elevator opened up on Tony’s floor of the compound. “With pineapple this time,” he continued with a wrinkled nose, “the olives you got last time were disgusting!”

“You have astonishingly terrible taste but yes fine. Pizza later.” Tony nodded, herding both of them into the kitchen with a single-minded determination. The Wal-Mart and cling wrap cast protection apparatus Mr. Stark rigged together left a fair amount to be desired in the looks department but was completely functional when it came to water-proofing which was good enough for Peter.

It took some skill to slip away from his mentor but Peter was soon slipping into his room, struggling to get out of the sling on his own and finally succeeding. It made him wince from the extra pain it caused but it didn’t overshadow the relief of doing it on his own. He knew his limits from previous dislocations and knew that it was crucial to not overdue it while the joint was healing or he risked the chance of re-injury and, as Dr. Cho had reminded him earlier, surgery.

With a grimace, Peter rested that arm across his stomach and used his bagged up right arm to pull his shirt over his head. He was barely able to manage it when it pulled at his sore muscles and broken bones. Maybe he should use a button down or zippered hoodie instead.

Thanks to FRIDAY (bless her seriously), the water of his shower was already running and warmed up to his preferred setting of skin melting and he was quick to turn his back into the spray and luxuriate under it for an extended time. The high pressured water felt amazing on his back and shoulders, loosening up the knots and clenched muscles and providing relief.

“You doing okay in there kid? You drown yet?” Tony asked, knocking on the door and indiscernible amount of time later and knocking Peter out of his stupor.

“I’m good!” Peter called back, hurriedly reaching out for his body wash and cloth painfully and cleaning himself up to the best of his – limited – ability. By the time he was ready to wash his hair and hairline he felt exhausted and achy despite the excellent water pressure and all the good work it and the heat had done to relieve the pain in his shoulder and back. “Fuck,” he cursed, trying to lift his arm above chest level and spectacularly failing, finding himself unable to without making his muscles seize.

Peter was pretty bendy due to his powers so he attempted a couple different contortions to reach his head before just flat out giving up, turning off the water and taking his towel off the heated towel rack installed in the bathroom (rich people – seriously). It took longer than Peter cared to admit, but he was able to dry and dress himself in sweats and a zippered hoodie. He was even able to shuck the bag off his cast with little struggle so he was feeling pretty decent when he ventured into the living room with his hair sopping wet and dripping onto his shoulders since he wasn’t able to adequately dry it. Whatever. It would dry on its own eventually.

“And what’s all this supposed to be?” Tony asked, glancing up from his phone and wrinkling his nose but not moving from where he was leaned against the counter in the kitchen. “Why are you dripping all over my floor?”

Peter fought off a blush and tried to hunch his shoulders, stopping when it hurt. “I couldn’t reach up to get my hair,” he grumbled, failing to completely push down his blush.

“I guess that explains all the blood still caked in there,” Tony hummed, leaning over to move the dampened curls around to look at the blood still matting some of his hair together and crusting up around his scalp. “Well that’s pretty easily remedied. Welcome to the salon Underoos,” Tony said, pulling over one of the barstools and setting it in front of the kitchen sink, gesturing for Peter to sit.

“Uh… what?” Peter questioned, brows furrowing in confusion.

“I’ll wash your hair for you,” Tony clarified, looking pointedly between Peter and the stool again. “Just sit down while I go and grab some things!” And, with that, he took off in the direction of the bedrooms and associated en suites.

Peter, still pretty confused but (mostly) trusting his mentor, sat down unsteadily on the stool just as Tony came back around the corner with an armful of towels, shampoo and conditioner bottles along with a wide-toothed comb and an expensive looking hair dryer. He triumphantly arranged everything on the counter next to the deep sink and wrapped one of the towels around Peter’s neck. “Lean back buddy,” Tony said, using a finger to push on the center of Peter’s forehead until he gave in and let himself be pushed back to lean back with his head in the sink.

Doing his best to ignore the weirdness of it all (weirdness was pretty common around Tony Stark after all), Peter closed his eyes and crossed his arms across his stomach as the water turned on. He tensed up a little when he felt fingers start dragging through his hair but was quick to relax and release the tension in his body under the careful massage of his mentor’s hands through his hair and the warm water cascading across his scalp. He let out a little hum of contentment.

Tony let out a soft chuckle, squirting a healthy dollop of the shampoo into his hands and lathering it up before applying it to Peter’s hair, working through the snarls and tangles with care and scrubbing the leftover blood out of the curls. Peter went nearly boneless under his ministrations and Tony would definitely be lying if he said he didn’t milk the washing and conditioning portion at least a little bit. He knew that Peter had to be feeling pretty miserable and it settled something buried deep inside him to provide just a little extra comfort.

All too soon, though, he had rinsed out the last of the conditioner leaving Peter’s hair clean and dripping as he turned off the water. Peter made no move to get up or to open his eyes, breathing deeply and seemingly on the very verge of sleep, so Tony grabbed one of the towels and started to wring the extra water out of the kid’s hair, running the towel through it cautiously. “Just need you to sit up for a second here kiddo okay? Then you can nap, scout’s honor.”

Peter grunted and grumbled but did slit his eyes open and let Tony help him sit up, swaying back and forth and little on the stool and Tony ran the towel through his hair a couple more times to really get rid of the water as much as possible. He dropped the towel on the counter in exchange for the comb and the hair dryer. He ran the comb through the mess a few times before starting the hair dryer up. Peter practically melted as the warmed air fluffed up his curls. It didn’t take long to dry at all and, by the time he was done, Peter was listing forward nearly into Tony’s chest.

“Couch or bed buddy?” Tony asked with a fond smile, running his hands through Peter’s warmed and clean hair.

“Couch,” Peter muttered, leaning into his petting and making Tony’s chest warm up. This kid… god. He ended up supporting most of Peter’s weight but was able to quickly get him lying face down on the supple cushions with his head pillowed on one of the throw pillows resting on Tony’s lap, the ratty fleece blanket Tony kept draped over they back of the couch draped over him and a heating pad resting across his healing shoulder.

“Let’s start a Star Wars marathon FRI. Volume at thirty percent,” FRIDAY was quiet as she dimmed the lights and started the movie, the familiar logo and music making Peter relax even further into the couch, completely gone. As the opening theme ended and the camera panned to the shots of Leia’s ship, he felt Mr. Stark’s hand rest on his back, digging into the knotted muscles of his back.

It maybe wasn’t ideal to mess up his arms so much but, Peter thought, he couldn’t think of a better way to spend his recovery.

#summerofwhump #summerofwhump16 #Prompt: Touch Starved #irondad #spider man #Summer of Whump 2021

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set-phasers-to-whump · 5 years

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whumptober day 6

prompt: dragged away

whumpee: kyle valenti (probably literally no one else whumps him but oh well)

fandom (figured i should probably start including this): roswell new mexico

i kinda really super hate this but at least its something right? anyway there’s a little bit of mylex bc i would fucking die for that ship ok

Losing a patient is something that most surgeons have to experience at some point. Sometimes complications arise. Sometimes they make a mistake. Sometimes, despite their best efforts, there’s just nothing that can be done.

Kyle Valenti knew what it felt like to lose a patient. He’d dealt with a lot of bad situations, and usually he managed to come to terms with the loss. Some guilt remained with him, of course, but he tried to focus on his successes. He’d saved a lot more people than he’d lost. He knew it was important to remember that, but it didn’t make dealing with the losses any easier.

Today had already been a long day, and it was only just lunchtime. Kyle had completed a risky surgery on an elderly patient, and she was currently in recovery. It was impossible to tell for sure at this stage, but it looked as though she was going to be okay. So he was currently trying to relax in the cafeteria, a task that was proving to be impossible as he was paged back into surgery.

He knew it was going to be a rough one as soon as he heard the description- “gunshot wound to the abdomen, potential organ rupture.” He and his team prepped for surgery. The victim was young-seventeen at the most, and apparently the injury had been sustained in a shootout of unclear circumstances.

Kyle hated it when the hospital received cases like this-no kid should be the victim of a gunshot wound, and yet, this wasn’t the first time he’d had to do an operation like this.

They began the surgery. It quickly became apparent that this was going to be an especially difficult one-there was, indeed, an organ rupture, not to mention a lot of blood loss.

The team, led by Kyle, worked tirelessly, trying to save the boy, whose name, they had learned, was Sam. His mother had arrived half an hour into the surgery, frantic. The hospital staff had explained that they had a team of their best surgeons doing all they could to save her son. Kyle had been asked briefly about his condition (“his mother just got here and she’s panicking. How’s it going?”).

Kyle knew how it was going. Bad. He and his team were doing absolutely everything they could, but the fact of the matter was, there was too much internal trauma. After about two hours, his heart started flatlining. Kyle had been working frantically, trying to stop the internal bleeding while avoiding causing more trauma to the boy’s organs.

At the sound of the steady beeping tone, one of the surgeons grabbed the defibrillator, and managed to restart the boy’s-Sam’s-heart. Everyone in the room breathed a sigh of relief as his heartbeat returned to the screen, faint but there. Kyle continued his precarious work-and then everything fell apart. Alarms started going off, resuscitation failed, and finally, at 3:14 p.m., after nearly three hours of desperate work, Samuel Gonzalez was pronounced dead.

Around him, Kyle’s team began cleaning up, each of them looking miserable. Kyle himself, the leader of this surgery, the one who was supposed to save this kid, couldn’t tear himself away from Sam’s body. “There has to be something…” he whispered. “I can’t...I can’t have let him die.”

He heard a wail from outside the door. Sam’s mother. He had killed her son! If he had just been better, faster, more observant! He should have done something, should have saved him! It was his fault this kid was dead, his fault, his fault…

“Doctor Valenti, you need to exit the room, please,” said a nurse from the door. He knew her-Lydia, a recent graduate of nursing school. She stepped into the room when he didn’t respond. “Kyle,” she said softly. “Come on.”

He just stood there. He couldn’t make himself move. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Lydia walked up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “You did everything you could,” she said.

“No, no, I should have...should have…”

“There was nothing else you could do for him.”

He grabbed onto the edge of the operating table. “I couldn’t save him…”

“Come on, Doctor. We have to clear the room.”

He still didn’t move. Lydia gently grabbed his arm. “Kyle.”

He still didn’t move. She walked out of the room, returning shortly thereafter with another, taller nurse in tow. “Doctor Valenti,” this nurse said, crossing her arms. “You have to leave the room.”

When he didn’t reply, she sighed and picked him up around the waist.

“No! Wait!” he yelled desperately. “Wait…” he said, pleading.

The nurse pulled him away from the table, his fingers desperately grabbing at its edges as he was peeled away. “No! No! I should have saved him...I should have saved him.”

Out in the hall, the boy’s mother was being comforted by one of the surgeons on Kyle’s team, who was reassuring her that she would be allowed to see her son soon, explaining how they had done everything they could. She was shaking, and she looked so small and so broken.

The nurse set him down as she closed the door behind her. He sunk to the ground next to the door and stared ahead blankly.

A shadow stood over him. Slowly, Kyle looked up. “You were the one in charge?” He nodded.

“They say you did everything you could.” He nodded again, numbly. She nodded back at him, then took a deep breath and opened the door. He could hear her whimper of grief as she saw her son’s body.

He sat in that hall, staring at the wall, until someone came to find him and inform him that his shift had ended. He walked to his car in a daze and somehow managed to make his way home without getting into an accident.

As he reached his door, he realised there was someone in his house. The lights were on and he could hear the muted sound of his TV playing. He found he didn’t really care too much and opened the door anyway.

Alex and Michael stood up from the couch as soon as the door opened. Kyle stood there, looking utterly devastated and empty. They shared a quick look before approaching him, enveloping him in a hug.

“Why’re you here?” he asked quietly.

“One of the nurses called me,” Alex explained. “Lydia, I think? I met her a couple weeks ago. She said you’d had a pretty bad day and asked if we’d come visit you. So here we are, of course.”

The three of them settled down on the couch, Kyle squished in between them. Alex grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch and pulled it over their laps, and Michael slid an arm over Kyle’s shoulders.

They fell asleep like that, at some point, tangled together in a pile of blankets, an old movie playing quietly on the TV. In the morning, there would be lots of stiff limbs and heavy hearts, but for now, at least, there was nothing.

i know this really fuckin sucks i hate it too im so sorry

#whumptober2019 #no.6 #dragged away #my writing #i say things #roswell new mexico #kyle valenti #emotional whump #im so sorry if you read this #i know how bad it is and i can only apologise but i gotta post something right #anyway on a brighter note i seriously love mylex so much so i wrote a lil bit of it bc !!!#i cannot be bothered to read this fucking thing one more time so if theres mistakes im sorry

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