Chapter Text
Lena should’ve known to expect nothing but complete and utter chaos when she booked on for her shift.
She's barely four months out of the gate from finishing her fellowship and getting board-certified as a specialist major trauma surgeon, but despite having years of experience on the ER floor and having seen a lot of it before, being an attending really was a whole different ballgame. In the three hours she’s been here so far, she’s pulled a piece of Lego out of a kid’s nasal cavity, helped ortho with a standard closed reduction of a radial fracture and to top it off, she’s sewn up two minor stab wounds. Yes, they were related – brothers – and ‘no doc, we weren’t pretending to be Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride’ , to which Lena had her answer and promptly told both boys to get rid of the swords and fess up the damages done to their parents' house before they returned home from vacation.
She’s approaching hour eight of twelve on her shift now, having just managed to sneak away long enough to get a quick snack from the vending machine and drain the contents of her water bottle before being paged for an incoming gunshot victim. She is running in the next breath, sprinting down the hallway taking a right, narrowly avoiding an orderly pushing a wheelchair, turning to apologise to the man before she continues her run towards the ER.
National City Pres is a level one trauma center and it's also the leading teaching hospital in the state, so naturally a lot of the more severe of cases are diverted here if time allows so that the patients have the best care available. With their state-of-the-art trauma rooms, they had everything they needed to perform a full surgery right there if it was necessary, plus a brand spanking new imaging suite down the hall that prioritised their trauma patients.
She bursts through the doors and rushes into Trauma One, barely grabbing a pair of gloves before slipping on a blood-soaked t-shirt and lands flat on her ass in front of her colleagues and obviously, her patient.
“Holy shit Doc,” One of her residents, Dr Nal rushes to help her off the floor. “Are you alright?!”
Lena brushes herself off, ignoring the fact that her scrubs are now likely decorated with a nice, bloodied mark and jumps into action.
“I’m fine, uh- what do we have here?” Lena says, hands gloved and already sterilising the patients arm to get IV access, which she has before her resident starts reeling off the information.
“Fire Captain Kara Danvers, 29-year-old female sustained a GSW to the left thigh. Missed the femoral but she’s lost a fair amount of blood. She was blue-lighted in by her sister, who’s a cop. They managed to stop the bleeding at the scene.”
Lena functions well under stress and in panic, bypassing all natural instincts to run and instead dives into the adrenaline rush to perform to the best of her abilities and save her patients. She doesn’t have to think about what she’s doing because it’s second nature and thankfully, it looks like whoever had been with her in the aftermath had the forethought to cut off her turnout-pants and undergarments, so Lena’s got full access to the wound already.
“Captain Danvers, I’m Doctor Luthor but you can call me Lena. Can you tell me what happened?” Lena asks, having to leverage herself onto the gurney to get a better angle to see the wound on the inside of the woman’s thigh.
“We were caught in crossfire whilst attending a fire and rescue, I think I was the only one hit.” Captain Danvers barely has the breath in her to tell Lena what happened, wincing and letting out a sharp groan as Lena pulls the gauze away from her thigh to check the wound.
“We might need to get you up to an OR to get this bullet out Captain,”
“Please-” Captain Danvers squeezes her eyes shut, her voice coming out slurred and slow. “Can you at least call me Kara, Doc? Oh God wait, I think I'm gonna pass out-”
Lena bites back her laughter. She knows she shouldn’t behave in such a manner considering how serious the situation is, but Captain Kara, even in her woozy and bloodied state, is quite amusing. The pain meds have finally kicked in and Kara doesn’t pass out thankfully, she’s just a little bit high and dizzy from the blood loss.
The rush of the room fades quickly when it becomes clear that the captain is going to be okay, and Dr Nal soon returns with blood to transfuse to Kara. Lena manages to have a brief word with the captain’s sister, Alex and receives more information on what actually transpired and led to the trip to the ER.
“So, Captain-” Lena starts.
“Kara.”
Lena chuckles quietly, “Sorry, Kara , your sister tells me you jumped in front of your lieutenant?”
Kara’s silence lasts a few beats before she’s reeling off excuses and her sister is arguing them back.
“In my defence-”
“You’re an idiot!”
Lena let it go on for a few more moments, finding the bickering between siblings rather funny until Kara threatens to get up off the gurney and prove to Alex that she is just fine .
“Oh, come on, it’s really not that bad!” Kara then says, poking at the gauze covered wound and yelps out in pain. Lena bites down hard on her tongue so that she doesn’t burst out laughing.
“As a board-certified trauma surgeon, I would like to say that I heavily disagree with that statement Captain Danvers. And judging by your reaction to that little poke, I'd be inclined to say you might also disagree.” Lena only raises her eyebrow at Kara before she ceases her arguments, grumbling when Alex finishes it off with an I told you so.
“So, Doc, what’s next?” Alex asks. Lena notes the way she is leant up against the wall, unfazed by the amount of blood covering her arms and hands and that tells Lena quickly that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to Kara.
“Well, I shall need some scans of her lower extremities to see how deep the projectile is and where exactly it’s situated and then I shall be able to tell you more Officer Danvers.” Lena offers her a smile and Alex seems happy with the response. Kara on the other hand, is quite happy about the fact that she is being ignored right now, head tilted back staring at the ceiling with a big goofy grin on her face.
“She gets like that on morphine, also watch your ass-” Alex nods towards Lena’s lower body. “You’ve got her blood all over you.”
Lena’s hum is noncommittal as she clicks the brakes of the gurney off and wheels Kara down the hall to the imagery suite. She gets into a lead apron and makes sure the captain is comfortable and takes the chance to talk to Kara whilst the tech is busy behind the screen taking the X-rays.
“What made you want to be a fire captain?” Lena asks.
Kara’s head lulls her way, still donning that silly grin and she sighs. “Hmm, I love helping people. Didn't wanna be a cop like Alex an’ I'm too dumb to be a doc like you, firefighter was the last obvious choice Doc.”
“I highly doubt that you’re dumb, you made captain before thirty. Says enough don’t you think?”
“I was 27, but yeah I guess.” Kara attempts to shrug but fails miserably, her eyelids slowly fluttering open and close as the x-ray machine clicks away, and Lena offers her a warm smile.
“Why’d you jump in front of your lieutenant?” Lena then asks, realising she’s probably probing too deep into personal, but figures Kara would say something if she didn’t want to share.
“She saved my life a year or so back. Got trapped, almost died.”
Lena feels her heart plummet into her stomach.
She remembers hearing about it on the news, National City’s youngest fire captain who had to be resuscitated by her team in the field.
Kara groans quietly then and Lena panics, rushing to check her bandages for any bleeding. She feels so many things right then, sadness that Kara suffered the way she did back then and again now, but mostly she’s in complete awe of the captain and her bravery. Lena could only aspire to be like Kara Danvers on any good day. Yet here Kara is, doing it every day without question and even with a gunshot wound to her thigh, she is still smiling.
“M’okay Doc, I’ll live, I always do y’know.” Kara giggles, her eyes opening wide when she sees Lena’s expression. “What’s wrong?”
“You put your life on the line every single day, you almost died , and you still manage to find a reason to pull yourself out of bed every morning to do the job? After all that ?”
“Well, who else is gonna carry the beautiful women outta house fires every day? Or save cute kitties stuck in trees! Oh gosh that’s my favourite part of the job-”
Lena’s sadness is quickly overwhelmed by laughter, doubling over at Kara’s drug-fuelled giggles and they don’t even realise that the radiologist has finished and is packing the images into a beige folder for Lena until she walks over to pull the machine away and prepares to help Lena move Kara back onto the gurney.
*
By the time they are situated back into a room, a private one this time so that Kara can get examined and fixed up without nosy people walking by getting a look in, Alex is nowhere to be found. Kara tells her she’s probably been called back to the precinct to start writing up the reports and she will most likely have checked in back at the firehouse also. Kara expects any minute for her comrades to turn up and cause some chaos of their own.
“Shift ends in 10, wanna make a bet how quick the first one is to arrive?” Kara says as Lena pokes at her wound again.
“I reckon we’ve got 15 at most, and I think they’ll be fighting to get through the door to see if you’re okay.”
The images show that Kara is incredibly lucky, and the bullet hasn’t gone deep enough to warrant surgery. Lena could see the base of the bullet quite clearly, now she’s flushed the wound with saline again and injected some local anaesthetic into the surrounding muscle and tissue.
“Had you not been running when this hit you, and also wearing your turnouts, you’d probably be dead.” Lena says as she’s preparing to pull the projectile out of Kara’s thigh. The captain makes a squeaking sound, followed by a rushed exhale as Lena goes in with a pair of forceps, quickly securing her hold on the bullet and then slowly pulls it out.
Kara doesn’t take a breath and neither does Lena until the metal-on-metal clank is heard from the bullet being dropped into the tray and Lena puts pressure on the wound to stop any bleeding caused by its removal.
“How’re you feeling Cap?” Lena asks, pulling back the gauze to see that thankfully, Kara isn’t bleeding.
“A-Okay doc, you’ve got gentle hands you know-” Kara’s relieved sigh is cut off by a little gasp when she realises what she just said.
“That’s the best compliment I've had all year.” Lena grins smugly. “Being a trauma surgeon doesn’t always allow for being gentle unfortunately.”
Kara hums contemplatively, tilting her head as she watches Lena start to thoroughly clean her wound. “Is it wrong for me to want to know more about you?”
“Hmm, I guess not. Ask me whatever you want-” Lena shrugs with the side that isn’t controlling the delicate motions of cleaning and glances up at Kara. “Within reason of course.”
Kara's grin is missed but the little excited shiver isn’t, Lena can’t help but laugh.
“Okay so I've been dying to know, how old are you?” Kara rushes out, “I’m not even kidding when I thought you’ve gotta be early twenties, mid at a push, but I thought surgeons had like over a decade of school-”
“I’m 26.”
“What?!”
“Fast tracked high-school and med school, I started my trauma fellowship early too.” Lena reveals, much to Kara’s shock. “Being a child prodigy and filthy rich has helped obviously.”
“Oh my god, you’re that Luthor?!” Kara blurts out, her palm smacking herself square in the forehead not a second later. “My cousin is best friends with your brother. Clark Kent?”
Lena bursts into a loud laugh and pulls away from the bedside.
“Well, isn’t that a small world. I never would’ve put two and two together-” Lena looks up abruptly, staring into Kara’s wide eyes. “You know Lex has a massive crush on Clark, right?”
Before either of them could comment on what was said, they’re falling into another fit of laughter just in time for Alex, followed by Kara’s team to make themselves known.
“I thought she was on her deathbed-” One of the male firefighter's points to Kara who’s almost curled up in a ball because she’s laughing so much, and Lena has to peel her gloves off to wipe her eyes.
“The drugs have made her loopy.” Alex explains with a gesture of her hand near her temple.
By the time they’ve composed themselves, Lena is introduced to Kara’s team from Station 48. She is thrilled by the fact that the women outnumber the men on their team, she already knows Kara is the reason for that. She meets Sara first, Kara’s lieutenant and the woman responsible for saving Kara’s life a year ago. Lena has to physically force herself not to get up from her seat and hug the firefighter because despite the unfortunate circumstances they’ve met under today, she has essentially made it possible for her to know this wonderful specimen of a human that is Captain Kara Danvers.
There is then Lucy, Sam and Kate to wrap up the women on the team before she is introduced to the men. J’onn, Jimmy and Winn bring up the rear of the group with grateful smiles to see their captain is alive, well and cracking jokes with her comrades.
“As lovely as it is to meet all of you, I really must get your brave Captain stitched up so she can go home to rest.” Lena says, politely trying to clear the room so that she can focus long enough to put Kara back together again.
“You heard the doc, clear out- I'll see you later.” Kara says and her team let out a raucous cheer as they all try and go through the door at the same time to leave.
“So, I thought you guys normally got residents to stitch your patients up-” Kara says as Lena ties off a stitch. “Because I can’t help but feel privileged right now, maybe even a little bit special to have such talented hands putting me back together again.”
Lena looks up at her with a raised brow. “If that’s your attempt at flirting with me Captain, you’re going to have to do a heck of a better job at it considering I’ve got my finger in your thigh.”
Kara chokes on her laugh.
“I do my fair share of scut around here. We don’t have trauma patients coming in every hour of the day, so I've got to make myself useful somewhere.”
“So stitching people up is like a little side-hobby then.” Kara smirks. Lena is so easy to tease, and Kara just wants to see her smile 24/7. Is that such a crime?
“Well, I have gotten quite good at it. I guess I could class it as a hobby since I do find it rather therapeutic,” Lena trails off as she finishes stitching the first layer together. It's a longer process for deeper wounds such as Kara’s but it’s nothing Lena hasn’t done a hundred times before.
“We’re all qualified EMTs at Station 48, but I think I draw the line at stitching somebody up.”
As if to further her point, Kara peers down to take a better look at the half-stitched hole in her thigh and heaves.
“You’re not gonna vomit on me, are you?” Lena carefully shifts out of the way and picks up a cardboard bowl from the instrument trolley.
“Nope, I've got a stomach of steel. Just don’t like my own injuries, y’know?”
Lena laughs quietly, shaking her head as she gets back to work, placing the bowl beside Kara just incase it sets her nausea off again. Kara hums a tune to herself as Lena finishes off another layer of sutures, completely unaware of the fact that she’s flexing her thighs in between Lena touching the injured one.
“I can see that you’re strong, but you don’t need to test the integrity of my stitches by flexing your muscles Supergirl.” Lena chuckles, poking the uninjured one.
Kara guffaws, apologising if she’s made the job any harder but admits she didn’t realise she was doing it.
“Can I take another hit at flirting with you instead Doc? I need to distract myself somehow.” Kara sighs mournfully, making Lena laugh yet again. Lena thinks to herself that she’s never laughed so much in one shift here at the hospital, it was all far too serious for any comedic conversations to go further than a few lines.
“If it’ll make you feel better Captain, go ahead.”
“I’m literally sat here with my butt hanging out while being stitched up, anything will make me feel better at this point.”
Lena had been more focused at the urgency of dealing with the gunshot wound to realise that Kara was indeed sat there in her bright pink panties on show for everyone to see. She was half draped with a sterile drape that had a hole cut out for access to the wound, but since it was located on the inside of her thigh, her positioning didn’t help at all in trying to hide her lack of clothing.
“Oh god Kara, I'm so sorry!” Lena can feel the burning in her cheeks intensify.
“Lena, you’ve still got my blood on your ass so I think we can call it even.”
Lena then does something really cute thing that has Kara gasping for air. She scrunches up her nose and turns her head to the side, the pretty pink blush disappearing under her scrub top. Kara decides at once that she loves it, her severe crush on Lena is only going to be fixed by asking her out for dinner.
“Hey so uhm-” Kara says, fiddling with the edge of the drape across her leg. “Uh, how long is this gonna take?”
“Am I boring you that much Captain?” Lena’s half-cocked grin makes Kara’s heart race and her nerves swirl in her belly.
“God no, not at all. You're uh- you're really pretty an- and I'm being an idiot right now oh my god-” Kara internally scolds herself, inhaling heavily through her nose with a little shake of her head. Had Kara been paying any attention, she would have noticed that Lena was almost done with her sutures and perhaps she wouldn’t have embarrassed herself any further on this wild trip to the ER.
But Kara outdoes herself always.
“Look Lena, I think you’re absolutely beautiful and you just saved my life, so I don’t think it’s wrong in thinking that I owe you at least a drink to say thanks, maybe even dinner somewhere?” Kara rushes, just as Lena has tied off the last stitch and placed the forceps into the metal dish where the removed bullet still resides.
“Oh Kara, I'm flattered but-”
Kara sits bolt upright on the bed. “I know there’s rules against dating patients but technically I'm not your patient once I leave this hospital, right?”
Lena ponders the request for a few moments, watching Kara squirm on the spot.
“It’s highly unprofessional of me to accept any form of gift or payment for my services, you do know that don’t you?”
“Oh, give over Doc.”
It makes Lena laugh, the desperation in her eyes is adorable, but Lena couldn’t deny the fact that she had a bit of a crush on Captain Danvers too.
“I’ll accept, but I have some conditions.”
“Yes of course,”
“No more heroics Supergirl, I don’t think my heart will be able to afford stitching up a bigger wound than this today.”
Kara squeezes her eyes shut and makes a tiny little squeal before she’s nodding furiously to accept Lena’s conditions.
“Drinks and a nice walk somewhere, or is that too much for you to handle Captain?”
Kara scoffs, a cocky grin plastering across her mouth. “Oh you just wait and see what I've got planned.”
**
Alex arrives to pick Kara up just as Lena is signing her paperwork. They are all cleaned up now, Kara is no longer sat in her bright pink panties and Lena thankfully has swapped her bloodstained scrubs out for a nice clean pair to finish out the rest of her shift in. Her bandaged thigh is starting to throb, but she is grateful when Alex says she will run down to the pharmacy before they leave to pick up her prescriptions.
It gives Kara the chance to say goodbye to her doctor, standing on wobbly legs to move into a wheelchair but not before she demands a hug.
“I’m a very huggable person Doc and you’ve had one hell of a shift.” Kara says, her arms open in waiting for Lena to give in to the demand.
“Yes, and you were the cause of it.” Lena rolls her eyes but relents, leaning into Kara’s embrace and all but melts against her. Like this, Lena can feel how muscular and strong Kara really is. Beneath her breath-taking beauty is a beast of a physique that Lena wouldn’t mind getting a closer, unobscured look at in future. She also makes a mental note that this hug has made her feel safer and warmer than any other she’s had, but she puts that down to the fact that Kara towers above her by at least 4 inches, if not more.
She didn’t expect the captain to be so tall and it’s no surprise that she tries to fight Lena’s order to sit in the wheelchair so that she can leave the hospital.
“Lena, I am perfectly capable-”
“Get in the chair Captain or I'll be giving my number to your Lieutenant instead.”
Kara looks at her in shock, “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.”
Kara huffs quietly to herself and turns on unsteady feet to carefully park her ass in the wheelchair.
“See-” Lena leans over Kara’s shoulder, placing the card with her phone number on into the palm of Kara’s hand and whispers into her ear. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Kara visibly shudders at how close Lena is and kicks herself for not being a better state to kiss the ever-loving fuck out of the doctor, right goddamn now.
She can’t wait 2 weeks for her wound to heal, she just can’t.
“So, I'll pick you up next week?” Kara says as Lena clicks off the brakes on the wheelchair, hearing a burst of laughter from behind her as she’s wheeled out of the room.
“Don’t push your luck, Captain.”