A darker thought struck me.

“Is that – would that be my one phone call?  These cuffs – am I being arrested?”

Right, that whole mess.

She shook her head, “I was just offering.  I don’t know if they’re arresting you.  Only thing they said was that I was supposed to fill in the charts for the patients on this end of the room that have the red tags.”

Fair enough.

She pointed to a set of plastic tags that were clipped to the curtain rod, so that one large tag hung down on either side of it.  Was it to designate the seriousness of my injuries?  No, they hadn’t even examined me.

…

Villain tag, eh?

I drew a connection to my line of thinking from earlier – was it because I was a villain?  Did I get a mere check-in from the nurse-in-training while the heroes got actual nurses and doctors?  I hadn’t seen anyone put the tags up, but then again, I hadn’t been looking at the curtain rod right after I was stuck here.

Taylor and I are on the same page here. I like when that happens, because I’m an idiot compared to Taylor sometimes, though it does leave me with the occasional paragraphs where I can’t really say much else than “yes, that’s what I just said”.

“Do you want to call your dad?  Or try calling your friend?” the nurse-in-training offered me.

Those do sound like decent options, though (on top of lingering awkwardness between them) calling Danny does present some of the same problems as coming home injured, mainly that he’s guaranteed to ask questions that would compromise Taylor’s identity as Skitter if answered honestly.

If she was offering for me to call Tattletale, that at least meant she hadn’t seen Tattletale’s body.  That was some relief.

Oh yeah, that’s a good point.

I still think she’s soggy toast, but I suppose it doesn’t hurt to let Taylor have some hope for now. There’s been very little of that going around in this Arc, after all.

I wasn’t sure if I should take the offer.  If I called my dad, would they track the call?  Find out who I was?  Would they track down Tattletale, if she wasn’t dead or dying?

Oh yeah, I didn’t even think of that.

Although if they really wanted to find out your identity, there’s not much you could do to keep them from removing your mask. Granted, they’d still need to tie the face to a name.

Who else could I call?  Coil?  Way too many issues if they traced the call, and I wasn’t sure if Lisa had passed on word of our recent argument and/or breakup.

I seem to recall that being mentioned in passing. Must’ve been in Interlude 8 if I’m not making it up.

Grue, Regent, Bitch?  I wasn’t on their team anymore.

Doesn’t mean they’re not the ones most likely to know something about Tattle out of those you can contact.

Alright, let’s get back to the story!

I closed my eyes, tried to stop myself from imagining that they were talking about Tattletale, or my dad, or even Brian, though I was pretty sure Brian had made it out okay.

Well, at least we never heard “Grue down” from any of the armbands, but Taylor did spend a lot of time away from functioning armbands towards the end.

Even as I managed to dismiss those images from my mind, a voice in the back of my head noted that whoever was on the table was important to somebody.  So many beloved family members, friends, coworkers, gone from people’s lives.

Yep. This was not a good day.

Even by Endbringer attack standards. A good day was defined in 8.1 as a one-in-four death rate. The protectors of Brockton Bay lost over half in a single attack this time.

My heart sank.  “Have you seen Tattletale?  Have you heard if she’s dead or injured?  She wears a lavender and black costume, and there’s this eye in dark gray on the black part across her chest-”

I’m sure this was helpful for fan artists. I know her outfit has been described before, but I don’t think it was quite this clear.

Then again, I’m not good at remembering outfit descriptions.

“I’m sorry,” she hurried to the foot of the bed, hung up the clipboard.

I’m sorry?  Was that an answer – condolences – or was it a refusal to speak on the subject?

I think it might’ve been both. The most she can say without technically overstepping her boundaries further, while simultaneously apologizing for not being able to say more.

I might have made a noise, because she turned back, stopped.  I couldn’t be sure, though, over the sounds from the other nurses, doctors and patients.

“We’ve got a code!” someone screamed, just beyond the curtain.  “Need paddles!”

“Paddles are in use!”

Well, shit. I guess we’re about to get clarification on what exactly coding means in this context. It sounds like it’s the “code red” option so far.

“Then get me someone with electricity powers!  And you, resuscitate!”

Heh, nice thinking.

Seriously, rogues and how society handles having them can sometimes be more interesting than capes.

In this case, the electricity powers don’t necessarily need to be from a rogue – there are plenty of capes here, even if most are beaten half to death – but I’m thinking about the potential use of rogues in hospitals under more normal conditions.

“Yes, some heroes got hurt badly enough they wouldn’t recover, they knew they had no more income from their costume career, so suing, it was a way-” she stopped, closed her mouth deliberately, as if reminding herself to stay silent.

A way to stay afloat on the restitution money.

But what does talking to the patients have to do with that, anyway?

“You can’t tell me if my back’s broken or not?”

She shook her head, “No.”

That’s… kind of dumb, honestly.

“I won’t tell.  I won’t sue.”

“Saying that isn’t legally binding,” she frowned, again, “and It- it’s not that.  I’m just a nursing student.  I haven’t even graduated.

Nice, we’ve got her talking about herself now.

They recruited us to help meet demand, to do the paperwork and check that patients weren’t coding, so the people with experience could focus on handling the patient load.

Coding? As in trying to communicate with each other via code? Or as in “code red” and such, maybe?

I don’t have the training to diagnose you on any level, let alone your back.”

That’s fair.