Chapter Text
Bruce is walking towards the cave entrance hidden behind the old grandfather clock when the phone in his pocket rings and freezes him mid-step. A quick look on his screen tells him it's an unfamiliar number, though the many zeros inform him it might be some kind of corporation. He frowns, because only the people closest to him are supposed to have this number and those he has for sure saved in his contacts.
“This is Bruce Wayne speaking,” he answers because he was raised to be polite, even when strangers call his private phone number, and they must have some reason after having gotten this exact number. It’s supposed to be private, and hidden from phone sellers after all. If not, his security really needs another throughout work over. Perhaps he can even ask Tim, make it a bonding session.
“Hello, Mr. Wayne, I’m calling from Blüdhaven Central Hospital,” a female voice, a younger woman, going by the sound and badly concealed uncertainty, says.
Bruce feels his heart rate pick up as words he has feared hearing since Dick moved to that awful city fills his ears. All thoughts about Tim and security disappear. He almost misses the rest of what the woman is saying as worst-case scenarios take over his mind and the kind of panic he only ever gets over his children starts filling him.
He manages to understand the most important info though.
Richard was in an accident. Hit by a car, three days ago.
Three. Days.
Three days has his son laid in a hospital bed with no one he knows around him. Completely alone. All while Bruce has been working. While he's been going out on patrol with Damian and had dinner with Tim. He even met Jason yesterday, for a brief cup of take-out coffee under the pretense of talking about suspects on a mafia murder case.
When he questions why he wasn’t notified earlier, why no one thought to call Richard’s father as they brought him in, the nurse explains that his son arrived with no ID. No one had declared him missing, not before earlier today. They had no idea who he was, and Richard had been in no state to tell them. He’s been pretty much unconscious since he arrived, only awake for brief confused moments, and he still is in very much the same way.
Three days and no one had declared him missing before today. God. It feels like all of Bruce’s failures concerning his children have built up to this moment.
A sound catches his attention and he looks up to find Alfred standing in the doorway, one hand gripping the wooden door frame and looking alarmed. Bruce has no idea how much of the conversation the older man has heard, but he is in no doubt seeing the worry Bruce knows is showing in his face and deducting his own conclusions based on that.
The nurse continues talking, not seeming to care if Bruce is actually listening or not, and he finds himself unable to catch all the information she is providing him with.
In the end, she tells him that they will call him right up if Richard’s condition changes. When Bruce hangs up, it is with a promise that he will be there as soon as possible, that there will be no need to call, and is met with a swift “goodbye” and a dial tone.
“What has happened, sir?” Alfred asks. His voice is calm but Bruce knows better. When their eyes meet, he can see the turmoil in the man’s eyes.
“Dick was hit by a car, three days ago. He’s in the hospital, in Blüdhaven. I have to go,” Bruce explains, already moving towards the front door and reaching for his coat. He pats the left pocket on it to make sure the keys to his preferred civilian car is there. He would like nothing more than to speed to Blüd in the fastest car he owns; the batmobile, but he can’t.
This isn’t a vigilante problem, it’s not Batman’s partner Nightwing who’s been hurt, but Bruce’s very much civilian son. Richard, Dick, Ric, whatever he wants to call himself, and there is no room for Batman right now.
“I will stay here and wait for master Damian’s return from school. Can I trust you to call everyone to let them know what’s going on?” Even if Alfred makes it sound like a question, Bruce knows it’s a command. The butler is all too familiar with how quick Bruce is to neglect other duties when dire situations come up, in fact, Bruce is pretty sure the older man knows all of his quirks and faults.
One of them being how his one-sided focus has a habit of taking control when he's put under enough stress, especially when something has happened with one of his children.
Alfred is of course right. Bruce will have to call the others and tell them Dick is in the hospital, he can’t deny that. As if the teens haven’t already been through enough pain and worry about their older brother.
And god. He’s going to have to call Barbara too.
-
Bruce feels exhausted before he even enters the hospital. He has spent the whole drive from Gotham to Blüdhaven calling his children and informing them of what's happened to Dick. The only word he can think of to describe the drive is draining. It feels like he has used up his emotion-quota for the day, maybe for the whole week, but he knows that there will be too much more once he enters the hospital.
The kids reacted with different levels of concern and anger, all of which Bruce had to be very careful about his responses too. He still feels like he messed up. He’s not sure he'll ever learn how to use the right words in the right situations when talking to them.
Tim had been finishing his day at WE when Bruce called him. He too had sounded afraid as Bruce explained, even if he was obviously trying to conceal his emotions. He had asked Tim to inform others who he thought should know, besides Jason, Barbara, and Damian, who Bruce didn’t have the heart to force Tim to deal with.
Bruce had no idea what Jason had been doing when he called him, the boy hadn’t said. His second oldest hadn't said anything about if he would be visiting Dick either. Actually, he hadn't said much at all, not that that was anything else than expected. Jason had only told Bruce to make sure "Dickhead doesn't get himself killed again," before hanging up.
Barbara had been the best at concealing her feelings when informed, even more so than Tim. Bruce assumed he could chalk it up to all her training, she's been at it for almost as long as Dick, and been through her fair share of grief. There had still been a wobble to her voice, of course, filled with a little uncertainty and a promise that she would join him in Blüd as soon as possible. Dick was one of her dearest friends after all, the two had once upon a time been as close as two peas in a pod.
Damian had only returned to the manor minutes ago when Bruce called, which was the main reason the youngest was last on his call list. He hadn’t wanted to catch him off guard at school, with all his peers close around. Of course, Damian had already understood something was wrong by the look on Alfred’s face. The fear in his son's voice had been clear as day when Bruce had told him about the accident, before it had been replaced by anger when his youngest heard how much time had gone by since the accident and since Bruce was informed. The young boy had sworn his wrath on the whole of Blüdhaven it seemed before Bruce got around to hanging up.
Some of them, most likely both Tim and Damian, would already be making their way to Blüdhaven now. Barbara might be on her way too, Bruce wouldn’t be surprised if she showed up together with the boys. They had a way of gathering together.
Alfred, of course, would be arriving soon too. He’d have to drive Damian as Bruce had very precisely stated that the boy was not to grab his Robin cycle and travel alone to the neighbouring city. Perhaps Tim would be joining them, if he didn’t feel like driving alone. Plus, the teenager sometimes liked using public transport on his travels to and from work, so he might not have brought his car today.
Even if Alfred didn't have to drive the boys, Bruce is sure the older man would come either way. Alfred raised Dick as much as Bruce did, he sees Dick as his grandson just like Bruce sees Dick as his son. Just as it was so many years ago, when the manor only ever hosted three, they’re all still family.
Bruce has to show his ID and wait for seconds that feels much too long before the receptionists say it checks out that he’s in Dick’s list of emergency contacts, and it's only then that she calls on a nurse to lead him to where he’ll meet Dick's doctor and then see his son.
The nurse and the doctor are going to inform him further on Richard’s condition, the receptionists explain when Bruce inquires about it as they wait. His voice might be too impatient for an adult billionaire, but he doesn't care. He needs to know if Dick will be alright, and he is not a very patient man when he doesn’t want to be. Instead of answering, she hands him a clipboard and has him fill out what’s missing of Dick’s information.
To his surprise, there’s quite a lot already filled out; by whom, he has no idea. Maybe they found it online after they figured out who he is, but even that sounds a little sketchy. Bruce will have to check it out later, once he has the time to sit down.
The nurse who arrives to meet him after agonizing minutes waiting as he quickly finished filling out the form, is a sweet young woman dressed in light blue. Her hair is tightened in a tight knot behind her head, and her smile is open and honest. Bruce feels relieved when she seems much more ready to answer his questions than the woman behind the counter, who they leave glaring at their backs.
Bruce might not have accepted her answer about not being allowed to give patient info and pressed a little more than necessary, but he finds that he doesn’t care about it at all.
This new nurse sounds like the one he spoke to on the phone, but he isn’t completely sure. His thoughts under the call had been too chaotic, and not calm enough to pick up every detail. All his usual detective abilities seem to have shortcutted the moment he heard about the accident.
The nurse talks on and on as they walk through the white hallways with grey linoleum floors. She continues to do so as they take the elevator up five floors, and when they step out of it to continue down a new hall. He desperately tries to soak it all up, to file it away in his brain.
A doctor in a pristine white coat meets them on this new floor they’ve arrived at. She is looking at them through her round glasses with a clipboard in her hand.
"Mr. Wayne, I assume?" the doctor asks as she reaches out a hand towards Bruce.
He nods as he shakes the doctor's hand, "Yes, I'm Richard's father."
"It's nice to finally meet you, I’m happy that you managed to arrive here so fast after hearing. My name is Nicole Plantagenet and I'm your son's primary doctor. If you’ll follow me, I'll inform you further on Mr. Grayson's injuries."
The nurse follows them as they continue down the new hallway, taking a left turn at a crossroad. The doctor talks the whole way there, and Bruce thinks his brain might soon get filled up with all they have to say about Dick. He again finds himself wondering how they know so much about Dick, and about his former.. condition. They can’t possibly have had the time to get the files from Gotham, he knows from experience how slow the paperwork is there.
He quickly turns into the conversation again as Plantagenet explains that his son's accident was very serious, but he had been lucky. Almost so that it was hard to believe, Plantagenet explains. The paramedics who arrived first at the scene had been very capable and done everything right. The medical team had seen the very prominent scar on the side of Richards' still almost bald head. It had given them some clues about possible recent head trauma, so they had been able to take extra precautions, which Bruce was relieved to hear about. It was one of the worries that had popped up in his head as he drove, and which Tim had inquired about when they spoke.
“It should relieve you to know that, even if his head took a hit and he’s got a concussion, we are not expecting any further trauma to the brain. The MRI we took shows no swelling or bleeding, but we’ll do another one once he wakes properly up just in case. He hasn’t been completely awake yet, so we can’t say for sure, but we have a very positive outlook for his recovery.”
There is a pit churning in Bruce’s stomach. Concussion. No further brain trauma. They think. They can’t even say for sure yet. Bruce doesn’t know if the family can do the whole ordeal over again. Worst-case scenarios are filling his head at an alarming rate again, and he has to work harder than usual to keep his cool.
The doctors continue listing injuries. Both Dick’s left arm and leg is broken from where the car hit. He’s also sustained scarring and burn marks from the impact with the ground, and his ribs have been badly bruised.
"Richard should be very thankful they weren’t smashed to pieces, or broken. They could have punctured his lungs," Plantagenet informs before continuing. They also had to fix some small internal bleeding, which was the reason he had to be operated on so shortly after arrival, she tells him. None of his organs had been permanently injured. Bruce files all the information into his brain for later, so he knows what to repeat when the kids ask. He’ll have to put it in Dick’s medical records in the cave at some point too. Maybe he can hack the hospital records, and copy paste some from there.
The doctor and the nurse stop so sudden that Bruce walks a few more steps before realizing they've reached their destination, too lost in his own thoughts filled with worry. The nurse smiles a little amused at him as he retreats his steps. If he were a different man, he might’ve been infuriated by that, but there is no time to think about that now.
They've come to a stop in front of a white door with the number 513 plastered in black writing on it.
“You ready to see him?” the doctor asks, studying him over her glasses. Bruce nods, feeling a longing to make sure that Dick is still breathing, still with them.
The nurse opens the door for them and goes first inside. Bruce follows suit with the doctor behind him, his best brave-face on and trying to prepare himself for what he will see, even as fear creeps into his spine.