Chapter Text
When the first one comes into Doctor Thompkins’ clinic, Bruce thinks it’s a fluke. Gotham was a weird city full of weird people--why would he blink twice at a guy in black and blue spandex coming in to get an unexplained bullet wound stitched up?
Correction: Gotham was a weird, violent city full of weird, unfortunately violent people.
“Don’t suppose you’ll tell me what caused this?” Bruce asks, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the din of the clinic’s busiest hours. He keeps his eyes on the stitches he’s putting in the young man’s shoulder. The guy is wearing a domino mask to cover his eyes and brow. Apparently, he’d refused to be treated until the people who’d come in before him were taken care of.
“A bullet, sir.”
“It’s Bruce,” Bruce says. “And I could have figured that one out myself, thanks. Think you could remember where and when and why that bullet became lodged inside you?”
“No can do, Doc!” The man says cheerily, completely ignoring Bruce’s wish for informality with his patients. “It’s all just such a blur, you know?”
“Uh-huh.”
His patient’s knuckles are white where he grips the edge of the cot they’ve set up outside Doctor Thompkins’ operating room. They’re smack dab in the middle of Crime Alley; they get too many patients every night, shot or stabbed or mugged and left for dead. He and Leslie have been working in a triage situation pretty much since she opened her clinic doors. Bruce suspects that being treated out in the hallway in sight of a dozen other similarly hurt patients isn’t doing this guy’s nerves any favors. He obviously would like a little anonymity.
“Should I even ask if you have insurance to cover regular check ups? I’m confident that you’ll be alright as long as we keep this clean and dressed, but I’d like you to have it looked at for a second opinion if the swelling doesn’t go down in the next few days.” Bruce replaces his tools into his medical bag, stripping off his gloves and tossing them into the biohazard can standing in the hallway against regulations. “It looks like a clean shot, but I’d rather have a second pair of eyes on it to make sure I didn’t miss any shrapnel.”
Behind him, Bruce hears another shuffle and rises from where he’s bent over the young man to sidestep a gurney that trundles by. Rose, the nurse practitioner who covers nights with Bruce, shoots him an incongruous thumbs up over the flailing body of a woman clutching her broken leg and whimpering. Bruce nods at Rose before turning back.
“Do you get a lot of people here who have insurance to cover that?” Masked Man asks skeptically. He ignores the rest of what Bruce has told him with an expertise that only comes with being young and stubborn. Bruce’s heart twists a little.
Bruce shrugs. He had little hope of getting insurance information from a man who didn’t give his name and covered his face when he came into the clinic, but he was duty-bound to try. “Not many, but professionally, I have to ask. You ever think about getting on the MW coverage system?”
The Martha Wayne Health Initiative was one of the first things Bruce was able to introduce due to the soaring stock of Wayne Enterprises when Alfred had finally coaxed him out of being a hermit in his early twenties. High health insurance coverage for Gotham’s working class while keeping premiums to a minimum was not something his board of directors liked very much, but there was more than enough in the Wayne family vaults for Bruce himself to cover the difference. Not that he’d told anyone outside the board meetings about that.
His patient puffs his cheeks out before sighing. He accepts the bottle of painkillers Bruce presses into his hand. “I really cannot deal with both a bullet hole in my shoulder and a boring conversation about health insurance at the same time, Doctor Wayne. No offense.”
Bruce grins in spite of himself. His eyes are scratchy and dry and his stomach has been protesting skipping lunch since three this afternoon and he has eight more hours before Leslie relieves him. “None taken, son. You had a hard night.”
Masked Man jerks his head a little at the nickname but smiles anyway. “So, do you think you could maybe keep my coming here quiet, or…?”
“Oh, look at that,” Bruce says, speaking loudly over his patient before he can finish his sentence. Deliberately, he picks his long-cold cup of coffee up off the floor beside the cot and pours it directly over the file Rose had handed him when she’d lead him over. The pages turn brown and illegible. “And I completely forgot to back up my computer files this morning, too. Clumsy me.”
The smile he receives is blinding. “Thanks, Doc. I owe you one.”
“You can repay me by not getting shot again,” Bruce tells him sincerely. He hates the gunshot wounds the most, always has. It’s why he’s so good at treating them.
~
Bruce comes off a 72 hour shift with little complaining. He wishes Leslie luck--she flaps a hand at him and scolds him for jinxing her--and gathers his things. He usually drives Rose home after their shifts together, unwilling to let her walk home alone, but her new girlfriend is picking her up. Bruce is banned from meeting this one because he’s “too intense” and his stare is “off-putting.”
On a whim, he swings by the diner he and his eldest frequent on his way home. Alfred used to take him here when he was little and he’d kept the tradition up when he’d adopted Dick.
Bruce waits for Cal, the elderly man who’d rather die than give up his place as the grill, to serve up a platter of eggs and bacon, leaning against the counter. The diner itself is retro style, vinyl seating in the booths and a jukebox in the corner. Dick makes fun of him for acting twenty years older than he actually is, but Bruce has always found comfort in the soft jazz that plays here and the view of Gotham’s skyline through the plate glass windows.
Bruce had taken Dick here the first night after he’d adopted him. The booth in the corner is the one they always use. Bruce can still see that tiny boy with dark, rain-wet hair plastered to his forehead sitting there. He supposes that’s what he looked like when Alfred picked him up from the police station. Dick was only a couple years older than Bruce had been. His eyes were so big. He’d cried quietly into his cocoa until Bruce slid around the booth and cradled him close.
Cal hands him the to-go bag and mumbles something grouchy and good natured. Bruce thanks him and ducks into his car before the light spring rain can get to him.
By the time he turns into Wayne Manor’s winding driveway, it’s nearly mid-morning. Alfred greets him at the door, holding an umbrella over Bruce’s head as he shucks off his coat and boots.
“No cooking for you this morning,” Bruce tells him. “I picked up enough to feed an army. Join us for breakfast.”
Alfred smiles, small and pleasant. “As you wish, Master Bruce.”
“How are things here? Good night?”
“Quiet as always, Master Bruce.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
He feels a little punch-drunk as he ascends the stairs, but not anything abnormal. He gets a little off-balance after long shifts, even all these years later. It doesn’t help that the more violent the injuries he treats, the more off-kilter he gets.
Dick’s bedroom door is cracked like it always is. He sleeps better knowing he’ll be able to hear Bruce and Alfred moving around in the night. It’s something he picked up in childhood that he’d never quite shaken. Bruce steps inside quietly, wrinkling his nose at the sweaty clothes strewn on the floor. He appreciates Dick not allowing Alfred to clean his room for him, but usually that would imply Dick was doing the cleaning instead.
Dick lies face down on his bed, blankets pushed down to his waist and sheets tangled around his ankles. One arm hangs off the bed. His hair looks like a crow has roosted there. He’s wearing long sleeves, a little warm for the season, but his son has always run cold. He gets it from Bruce.
“Rise and shine, chum,” Bruce says lowly, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. He knows the patient rattled him last night; he was around Dick’s age and build and he was in pain. Bruce never handles Dick’s pain very well. He soothes a hand over the back of Dick’s head, untangling his hair as he goes.
Dick groans and squints his one visible eye open. “Whazzat?”
“I picked up breakfast.”
Dick groans again, pushing his face further into the pillow before raising his head an inch or two. “Cal’s?”
“With an extra side of grease, just for you.”
“Mm,” Dick slurs. “’S good.”
“Hey, chum?”
“Mm.”
Dick lifts his head fully when Bruce declines to answer, squinting in the semi-darkness of his room. He props himself up on one elbow, wincing. Dick always gets stiff in the night, says it’s why he first started stretching every day.
He’s going to college soon. Bruce isn’t sure he’ll survive Dick leaving. He’s so very proud of his son.
“What?” Dick mumbles. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Bruce tells him. “I just love you.”
“Ugh,” Dick mutters. He flops back down. “Ew.”
“Gotta gross you out,” Bruce says, standing. “It’s what fathers do. Come down soon--I think I might be able to convince Alfred to actually sit down with us to eat this time.”
He’s closing the door gently behind him when Dick raises his voice from the bed. “Love you too, Dad.”
Bruce smiles.