Wretched Joy 22 (Patreon)

Commissioned by southmonk

Wretched Joy

Chapter 22

-VB-

Amy found herself in front of a cuffed and restrained patient.

This, unlike what most people thought about her work, was normal. Many patients were criminals and needed to be cuffed and restrained so that they wouldn’t do something stupid. Like trying to take her, her coworkers, patients, or visitors hostage. 

What she did not expect was to find herself in front of one of the most hated men in all of Brockton Bay. 

“He did what to you?”

“H-He said he had mercury in that syringe. Said he fucking made it so it can … it can slip into my skin,” Skidmark hissed out. 

Mercury poison. Lovely.

Worse, this was a murder attempt in progress, and Amy didn’t know whether or not Everyday Joe considered healing villains in and of itself an act of abiding the villain. Considering that there were hundreds if not thousands of normal people who died because they were tangential part of the Empire Eighty-Eight’s criminal activities, she wasn’t sure if she could afford to take the chance. 

Unfortunately for her, Protectorate was specifically asking her to heal Skidmark because Skidmark promised to offer information about his own gang in exchange for being healed of the otherwise fatal poisoning. 

So she was in front of Skidmark, which was unusual in and of itself, and stood there while flanked by Assault and Battery on either side of her. 

“Don’t worry, Panacea,” Battery spoke up with a smile. She had a very nice smile. “We’re here-.”

“Cumdump.”

Assault looked ready to slap Skidmark into the afterlife. It was weird seeing the usually jovial man look so firm and serious… but then again, things have been hard for the heroes lately because of what Everyday Joe did. 

As medical personnel, she was in touch with the trends of the city, so to say. It was hard to miss just how many more gangers were showing up in the hospital, either shot or beaten up. People were starting to … ignore the Unwritten Rules. The Unwritten Rules never applied to civilians in the first place, actually, now that she thought about it. Why did people think they applied to regular people? 

Oh, right. Because it was obvious up until this point that capes were monstrously powerful and inherently difficult for normal people to beat up. And this rule had extended to the minions of capes as well. 

But suddenly, there were a lot of dead or missing capes. Suddenly, there was a lot of minions who just lost the “Unwritten” protection. 

Suffice to say, Everyday Joe had caused a bit of a vigilante fever among the regular people of Brockton Bay. 

Yes, she would know. The occasional visit to the hospital morgue certainly showed her the change in trends. 

“Do I permission to heal you?” she asked tiredly. 

“Yes, fucking do it already, you pussy footing -!”

She knocked him out with a touch. 

She “heard” the heroes pause behind her, and looked at them. “What?”

“Ah. I just didn’t expect you to do that…?” Battery said lamely. 

Amy just raised an eyebrow. “Sometimes, it is best for the patient if they are incapacitated for a moment or two. Makes healing go faster.” Then she grimaced as she turned back to Skidmark. “Not that I can help him much.”

“What’s wrong?” Assault asked, though he didn’t sound too concerned about her statement. 

“Mercury’s already in his brain,” she told them. “Things are getting pretty jumbled up there already. Whatever compound he made with mercury, it’s already stripping proteins away from neurons.”

“So what does that mean…?”

“His brain cells are either popping as the cell membranes and channels are getting ripped away by mercury or getting twisted up as they are dragged along by the embedded proteins,” she replied. “In essence, it’s too late. We might have just seen Skidmark say his last words.” Then she snorted. “And his last words fit him just well, doesn’t it?”

The heroes looked a little perturbed by her matter of factly delivery of Skidmark’s condition. 

“Well, there’s nothing else I can do now,” she said as she turned around and got a pump of hand sanitizer. She may be able to kill all bacteria, fungi, protozoa, virus, and parasites, but it didn’t change the fact that she touched someone known to associate with very dirty people. For all she knew, just touching him right then might have contaminated her with fecal matter from at least a dozen…

She looked for a second and nearly gagged. 

Make that half a dozen people. Yes, Skidmark had on the back of his hand the fecal matter of half a dozen people. 

Ugh.

“Wait, there’s nothing we can do?” 

“Nope,” she replied as she walked out of the room. The heroes quickly caught up to her. “There’s literally nothing you can do unless Eidolon comes here in the next five minutes with a healing power. And since he can’t do that even for his own teammates, Skidmark is as good as dead. There are vegetables around here with neurons in a better state than Skidmark’s is. And that’s not even counting the brain damage he already had from drug use.”

They looked uncomfortable, and she nearly rolled her eyes. 

Being in a hospital meant looking at people at their lowest. In Skidmark’s case, it just happened to be both the lowest and final state of his pathetic life. 

She watched as one of the nurses walked by, stepping aside to let them go through. 

“If that is the case, then I guess we’ll go and report this to our fellow heroes,” Battery said with a nod. “Thank you for your help, Panacea.”

“Of course.”

And once they left, she turned to take care of other patients that they had pulled her away from …

From…

She stopped.

…

…

That nurse they just passed by.

She didn’t remember his face. She knew everyone in the hospital just because of how long she worked her everyday.

But she didn’t know his face.

Her eyes widened. 

She whirled around and ran down toward Skidmark’s room.

And then she barged in without knocking. 

That nurse was standing by Skidmark’s bed. 

He looked up.

“Ah. You noticed?”

“... Joe.”

He smiled. 

“Yup! That’s me,” he said with a slightly manic grin. 

She shuddered. “Get away from him.”

“Why? He’s Skidmark. The guy who drags off kids to alleys, jabs them with heroin, and make them steal their parent’s money,” he asked her and tilted his head. “Why save trash like him?”

“I’m a healer,” she spat out with a snarl. “What they did before is irrelevant while they are under my care.”

“Hmm,” he hummed before looking back at Skidmark’s face. “You know, I didn’t expect him to succumb this quickly to mercury. I was expecting him to suffer a bit more.”

She tried to sneak into the room but the moment she took a silent step, Everyday Joe snapped his head back up and looked at her. 

She froze. 

Then there was a blur. 

And blood. 

Amy froze as Skidmark’s body exploded and splattered the entire room with his blood, guts, and whatever else.

Then she panicked.

The mercury! It was -.

“Don’t worry,” Joe spoke up, snapping her out of her panic and then showed her a floating ball of mercury dangling down without any support from his hands. “I pulled it out before I made him boom.”

She took a deep breath in and let it out. Okay, she didn’t get splatter with mercury infected bodily fluid. That was … good. Good. 

Her heart started relaxing, so it wasn’t pounding in her ears anymore.

She glared up at him. “Why…?!” she hissed. “He was defenseless!”

“And?” Joe smiled. “It had to be done.”

“And now the room’s all messed up!” 

Amy blinked. Wait, did she just say that…? 

Joe looked around and actually looked a little guilty about that. “You know what? Maybe I was a little bit too zealous. I might have gotten a little angry that Skidmark didn’t suffer as long as he should have,” he replied and shrugged. 

“What-?”

He gave her a bow. 

And then he was in front of her. 

She jumped in surprise but found a hand clamped down over her shoulder as he pushed something down her chest pocket. When did he teleport?! There was no tell whatsoever! 

“Something to show my apology,” he said.

And then he was gone again.

Amy stumbled back and nearly fell down but steadied herself on the doorway. 

She looked around at all of the blood and guts and grimaced. 

“Shit.”

Then she noticed the weight on her chest and reached up to her chest pocket and pulled whatever it was that Joe had pushed down there. 

Her finger gripped something round and metallic. 

And when she pulled it out -.

Her eyes nearly bugged out. 

It was a gold coin.

And on it was a phrase. 

‘Good People Get Rewards.’

“Bastard,” she hissed even as she shoved the coin back into her pocket. “He planned this entire show.”