Now that the school quarter's winding down, I finally have time to breathe. No Harrison in this chapter, but I promise he makes a splash in the next. Here's the next installment, and I hope to get another one out during my break :)

X X X

Two: Angiogenesis

"Scars are just another kind of memory." –M.L. Stedman

X X X

She should be going in to shock, but she wasn't.

So, she did the only thing that her mind could clearly process at that moment in time: triage.

With as clear a head she could manage, she surveyed the scene: firefighters moved around the periphery, securing the area and extinguishing flames that had sprung up from the under carriage of the SUV that had careened into the restaurant front. . .where was the SUV's driver? There were still only two paramedics that she could see, the one who had been trying to help her earlier now tending to Pete. The other hovered over an elderly man closer toward the now destroyed entrance. She didn't recognize them, but that didn't mean anything. She was more familiar with the medics that worked the districts closer to Central City Hospital, not those this far uptown.

Shoving her tangled hair out of her face, she scanned the rest of the victims. Those that could move where standing on shaky feet, holding on to each other for support. She stood up now, too, the first responders around her barely sparing her a glance.

And then she saw it – a dark pool marring the once pristine cream-colored tile caught her eye. A woman lay on the ground, a splintered chair leg protruding from her thigh through the fabric of her pants.

Wendy moved to kneel beside her, pressing her fingers to her throat in search of a pulse. The woman's eyes fluttered at the slight pressure, but didn't open. A steady ooze of dark blood dripped down her thigh to join the pool her body rested in. It couldn't be more than a liter, and it was slow. That was a good sign.

Wendy pressed her hand to the woman's thigh, applying pressure, eyes searching the area around her for something she could use as a tourniquet. The splintered wood had probably pierced a vein and not an artery, but she still needed to stem the blood flow. When she swiveled back around, something yellow caught her attention, and she remembered the scarf Nora had loaned her earlier that night.

Sliding it off, Wendy carefully lifted the woman's leg enough to snake one end of the garment underneath, making quick work of a tourniquet; the woman groaned at her ministrations. Wendy only hoped it would buy her enough time to be operated on and repair the damage.

A quick, red flash to her right made her jump, and she turned to see the city's newly minted hero at the destroyed restaurant entrance, his face hardening as he registered the chaos of the situation. She was still getting used to the fact that both her former city of residence, as well as her current one, were being watched over by masked men in leather suits. It wasn't a perk of every metropolitan city, that was for sure.

The Flash turned toward her and, when she blinked next, he was at her side. He looked between her and the bloody tourniquet that Wendy's hands were still clamped over.

"What can I do to help?" He asked her. Had she not been so disoriented from events that night, she would have been touched at the gravity of compassion she heard in his voice.

"She lacerated a femoral vein," Wendy explained, surprised to hear her own voice shaking. "Can you get her to the ER?"

The Flash nodded, one arm reaching out to cradle the woman's head, the other slipping under her knees.

"Her tourniquet!" Wendy said urgently, as he stood. "Hold it tight."

He moved to press his hand firmly against where Wendy had tied the scarf, and then was gone in a flash of red when she blinked again.

Could this night become any more surreal? The errant thought struck her as she turned away to see two firefighters lifting wreckage off of a table that had pinned the legs of two people who were struggling to move out from under it; another paramedic tending to an elderly man. She could feel the adrenaline begin subside, but then a small pair of legs from behind the wheel well of the SUV caught her eye, and she blanched, rushing forward toward the young girl.

A table cloth had been cast over her, her face obscured by it. Wendy ripped it back, checking her extremities first for any injuries. She lifted the girl's shirt to expose her stomach and saw blotchy red swelling streaked down her side. Her fingers went to her wrist next, the best place to take the pulse of a child, and held her breath as she waited for the math to work itself out in her head – it was weak and sporadic, at best: internal bleeding. She needed to be transported as soon as possible. She went to check for head trauma when her eyes finally fell on the girl's face, her strawberry blonde hair cast across her forehead as her head lolled to one side.

Paralyzed by the color of the hair, Wendy felt the memory rip itself from where she'd buried it in her mind to the forefront.

"Reese! Got another one for the ambo!"

It was a voice that sounded so far away from her, yet familiar. She turned to see the paramedic that had tried to help her earlier moving beside her, registering the girl's internal injuries and speaking into his radio.

Wendy fell back on to her knees, numbness ebbing from her chest, into her limbs and up through her head. She leaned back against the wheel of the SUV, and watched as paramedics lifted the girl onto a stretcher, carrying her away out of sight.

X X X

Barry was returning to the crash scene for a fourth time when he spotted her: the same woman who'd fashioned a tourniquet from her scarf. She sat near the SUV, seemingly oblivious to the commotion around her now, gaze out of focus on the ground.

"Barry," he heard Caitlin's voice in his ear. "They're saying the scene is clear of critical victims."

While he was relieved to hear that, he still wasn't sure it was entirely true. He walked toward the woman, and squatted in front of her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

She flinched, but didn't meet his gaze.

"Hey, are you okay?" Barry asked gently. It sounded silly even to him, but what else was he supposed to say? He wasn't very good at this kind of thing, comforting strangers in times of need. As Barry Allen, he was bumbling and awkward in run-of-the-mill social situations. As the Flash, he usually didn't have to talk very much. . .he just kind of swooped in and saved the day. And everything else seemed to just work itself out. People who knew him somehow found this quality of his endearing, and those that didn't always graced him that same look of poorly concealed confusion.

Caitlin or Felicity would know what to say to this woman. They would know how to put her at ease.

She finally looked up, her eyes focusing slowly on him, taking in his mask, his hand on her shoulder. Then her gaze drifted past him, to the subsiding chaos around them. The retreating ambulances and fire trucks. He could hear police sirens, their squad cars drawing closer in the distance.

"Would you be?" She asked, her voice brittle, barely above a whisper. "Are you?" She asked, her eyes flicking to his.

Barry felt his stomach tighten at her words, and he glanced over his shoulder. The police were nearly here. He needed to leave, and soon.

"Barry, Central City's finest will want a word or two with you if you're still there in a few minutes," Dr. Wells' voice echoed his thoughts.

He paused, his eyes going between the woman and the approaching squad cars outside the restaurant. She had her knees pulled up to her chest now, arms wrapped tightly around herself. He felt guilty leaving her – leaving anyone – in that kind of state, but he knew he didn't have a choice.

"I think that woman is going to make it because of you," Barry decided to tell her. He couldn't know for sure, she'd been whisked away to surgery when he'd arrived at the emergency room – after the attending there had gotten over their momentary shock of seeing the Flash in their midst. This had been the first time he'd delivered a victim to the hospital. Somewhere, deep down, he knew it wouldn't be the last, either.

She nodded, but didn't say anything, keeping her arms wrapped protectively around her knees.

He was beginning to understand why Oliver didn't smile as much as he did after a save.

"Barry, you need to go. . ." Caitlin urged him again.

It took him the space of three breaths to return to the lab. He slipped off his mask and collapsed into a chair next to Cisco, eyes on the ground. No one said anything for a moment, until his mentor broke the silence.

"It's different when you're not dealing with meta humans," Dr. Wells' said. "Every save isn't going to be a clean one."

Barry looked up, noting for the first time the sad looks on Caitlin and Cisco's faces. They hadn't been at the scene with him, but they'd heard everything he had. It reminded him of the night his mother was killed, that gnawing feeling of helplessness. Even now, with his abilities, he had done everything he could to minimize the damage caused by the accident tonight, but he hadn't been able to prevent it.

"You did everything you could, Barry," Cisco added quietly. He reached out to place a hand on his shoulder from where he sat.

"Thanks, Cisco," Barry replied, his eyes still downcast.

Caitlin was smiling weakly at the exchange, but a concerned frown was forming between her eyebrows. "Who were you talking with? Just before you left."

Barry leaned back in his chair, running his hands over his face, as if to scrub the images of the carnage from his mind. The vacant look of the woman who'd been helping the other victims – he recognized that look whenever he went to visit his dad at Iron Heights, or when Caitlin got lost in thought about Ronnie and the future they could've had. It hadn't been her first time seeing something that had shaken her down to her bones.

"A woman at the crash scene," he replied.

Caitlin nodded, her face softening at the exhaustion he was sure was etched on his face. "She helped you?"

The wording made Barry pause, suddenly realizing the import of her words. A civilian had helped him during a crisis and he had helped everyone at that scene as well. He could say definitively that that was a first since he'd donned the red suit.

"Yeah, she did," Barry said. "I think she had medical training. Made a tourniquet out of a scarf."

"Quick thinking," Cisco commented, his mouth pulling down into an appreciative shrug.

Barry stood, sighing deeply as he moved to leave the lab area. It had been a long night – he wanted to shower, pass out and not wake up until at least tomorrow afternoon. Good thing he didn't have work the next day.

"Barry–" Dr. Wells' voice made him glance back over his shoulder, pausing. "Good work, tonight."

X X X

"Dr. Wendy! Look! Look what my brother got me."

Wendy walked into the hospital room, already smiling at the excited look on her young patient's face. The pre-op wing of Glades Memorial was located on the eastern facing side of the hospital grounds. Early morning sunlight spilled into the room, creating a halo around the strawberry blond curls of her patient. Her elder brother stood at her bedside, his usually stoic face lightening to match the joy on his sister's. He was wearing his coveralls and bright orange shirt, probably just having gotten off shift at the work site. He had been working nights the past several weeks to help pay for their insurance bills. Wendy had known the pair for months now leading up to the surgery, and the day had finally come.

Her patient, Lainey, was waving a small wooden case in front of her, still in its plastic packaging. Wendy knew the girl had a passion for art, even at such a young age. She was to begin middle school in the fall, and had told Wendy on numerous occasions how she wanted to pick as many art classes for her electives as possible.

"A new set of oils?" Wendy asked, logging in to the computer at the girl's bedside. She wanted to double check a few stats first, and then the girl would be moved to surgery prep.

"Colored pencils!" Lainey corrected her, running her hands over the edges of the wooden art case. "Wyatt says I need to practice all types of art to become the best."

Wendy's eyes flicked to the man in question at her patient's bedside. When Lainey's case had first been referred to her, she had assumed the guardian name on all the documents was the girl's father, and was surprised to discover that it was her elder half-brother instead. Their childhoods were all too common for citizens who lived in the Glades – both having grown up in the area for their entire lives. Wyatt hadn't actually been aware that he had a sister until DHS had paid him a visit a few years ago, informing him that if he didn't adopt her, she'd end up in the system. It was a tall order for any person in their twenties to have thrust upon them, but Wyatt had risen to the challenge. Their history was in part why Wendy had agreed to take the case.

"Your brother knows what he's talking about," Wendy commented, her eyes back on the monitor, and she missed the subtle blush that rose up to color Wyatt's cheeks.

"I know," Lainey smiled confidently, looking up at Wyatt. "He's a good brother."

That elicited a chuckle from Wyatt, and he ruffled Lainey's hair in response. "Thanks, Lane. Vote of confidence from you goes a long way."

Wendy continued flipping through records and paused on Lainey's latest blood results, drawn last night when she'd begun fasting for the surgery. She frowned.

Wyatt's voice was cautious from behind her. "Something wrong–"

Wendy jolted awake, her heart dipping irregularly for a beat as she realized, every time she had this dream, that it was just that: a dream, a memory – and not a current, haunting reality. At least, not anymore. Not since she'd moved to Central City.

For a moment, Wendy didn't know where she was. The ceiling she was looking up at was painted a creamy yellow, not the stark white of her apartment. She turned on her side to stare at a big screen TV that certainly wasn't hers, and an antique glass-stained coffee table. There was a bottle of water and two white pills on a coaster on the table. Pushing herself up on her elbow, she surveyed the rest of her surroundings – and then she remembered.

She was on Nora and Elliott's couch. They had found her in the ER being treated for shock the night before, and drove her home to their apartment despite her protests. She'd taken a quick shower, going through the motions as a zombie might, and had changed into spare pajamas Nora had given her. Her clothes from last night were probably still lay in a dusty, bloody heap in the bathroom.

Sitting up, slowly, she swung her feet around to the floor and took the water and pills. They went down roughly, her throat dry. She wasn't sure if it was from the dust and smoke inhalation, or from dehydration. Probably a combination of both.

It was still dark outside, so she couldn't have slept very much. She walked into the kitchen, and saw the time in green numbers on the microwave: 6:23 AM. The thought of food made her stomach clench, and so she made her way to the bathroom, moving quietly so as not to wake Nora and Elliott.

She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, assessing, trying to push images of all the blood and broken bodies from her mind. Her hair had curled naturally from sleeping in it wet, the eyeliner she'd applied the night before smudged around its edges. Her skin was pale under the halogen lights. She leaned in close, searching her face, her neck and bare arms for any evidence of what had occurred less than twelve hours ago. She lifted the T shirt she was wearing – no bruising or cuts on her stomach. She didn't feel achy, besides a slight headache.

Leaning in closer, her eyes focused on her face, to the space just above her right eyebrow, and her breath caught. . .she was fifteen when she'd been cleated in the head during a soccer match – it was her school's championship and she'd been going all out, but so had the players on the other team. The resulting scar had been a thin, half-inch long jag through her eyebrow. No hair grew back over it, and so it had come to separate her brow over the outside corner.

It was gone now; her eyebrow was a pristine, unbroken line over her socket.

Wendy shook her head, scrubbing her hands over her face. She looked again in the mirror, but the same reflection stared back at her: her face, devoid of her scar and, now that she looked closer, the slight wrinkles she'd developed around her eyes in the last few years since entering her thirties, too. She could barely see them.

She turned quickly away from the mirror, feeling bile rise in her stomach as fear and confusion skittered through her. She ran her hands through her hair, forcing herself to breathe in and out through her nose in even, steady intakes. She had to be seeing things. Dehydration. Sleep deprivation. Post-traumatic stress disorder.

Because the alternative was much, much worse.

X X X

Jitters was weathering the tail end of its morning rush when Wendy walked in. Nora had insisted on coming with her, but she'd gently declined, reminding her that she had to be on shift in just an hour and Wendy had – on orders from their charge nurse – the next few days off. She planned to visit Pete in the hospital later, though just the thought of that made her gut clench up in fear again.

What could she possibly say to him?

"What can I get for ya?" The barista behind the register, a young man with gelled back hair, asked her. His smile seemed genuine, and though Wendy wanted to return it, she only managed a weak twitch of her lips.

"Ah–" Wendy paused, glancing up quickly at the menu. She usually order chai, but she didn't think that amount of caffeine was going to cut it today. "I'll take the Caffeinator, sixteen ounce."

The barista grabbed a cup and wrote her order in Sharpie. "That'll be five-thirty," he said.

Wendy handed a ten dollar bill to him. "Keep the change," she said, and the young man's eyes widened, thanking her again as she shuffled off to wait for her coffee order. There were a few other patrons standing near her, waiting for their orders as well. One man in a finely-tailored suit checked his watch about every twenty seconds, and another well-dressed woman with long, dark-blond hair on her cell phone, a frown marring her features. Though she was speaking quietly, Wendy could catch most of her conversation, unintentionally eavesdropping as she continued to stare at the girl behind the counter working the espresso machine with practiced ease.

"I don't know more than that, dad," the woman was saying. "DA Kessler just called me in to consult. He thinks the stash recovered in the SUVs last night is connected to that RICO case I've been working."

Wendy's shoulders tightened. She glanced furtively toward the woman, studying her appearance further. Her maroon pant suit looked expensive, her hair styled simply but elegantly in loose curls. The black cell phone she was holding looked outdated, not the usual iPhone or Samsung models she knew were so popular. Unless it was a work-issued phone. . .

"Triple nonfat cap for Laurel!" The girl called out. Her black hair was bouncing as she moved behind the counter, placing the coffee order on the to go counter.

The woman in question looked up with a smile, taking her coffee with a quiet thank you. She walked past Wendy with a steady stride, her heels clacking on the tiled floor of the café.

"I'll be fine, dad, really," she said. "I'm meeting with the detective this afternoon. . ."

Wendy watched the woman as she left the café, a heightened sense of awareness creeping through her at the woman's – Laurel's – words: stash? Drug stash? Wendy shivered at the thought. There was a reason she had never entertained the idea of law enforcement as a possible career choice.

"Sixteen ounce Caffeinator!" The girl called out.

Stepping up to collect her order, Wendy paused, a thought striking her.

The girl noted her hesitation, flashing her a quick smile. "Something else you need?" She asked.

Wendy glanced to the café entrance, then back to the girl. "Yeah, actually," she said. "I'm kind of new in town." Not a complete lie – she had only lived here a year. "I was wondering – where's the closest precinct?"

She arched an eyebrow in question, switching out mugs to steam a fresh cup of milk for another order.

"35th and Everett," she replied. She stopped her coffee-making ministrations, giving Wendy her full attention. "Everything alright?" She asked quietly, leaning forward slightly, almost conspiratorially.

Wendy was touched by the concern she heard in the girl's tone, even as the words brought to mind the same question the Flash had asked her last night.

"Yeah," Wendy said, hoping she sounded convincing. "I just – need to follow up on something."

The girl didn't seem to entirely believe her but, much to Wendy's surprise and relief, she didn't press her further. She held up a hand, as if to say hold on a moment, and disappeared into the back room behind the counter. She returned seconds later and held out a white business card for Wendy to take.

"My dad is a detective at the precinct," she told her, as Wendy took the card hesitantly. "Good luck."

Wendy found herself actually smiling now at the girl's kindness, even if her stomach had begun to form knots. She wasn't entirely sure this was going to be a good idea, but she needed to know. Last night had left her shaken, had left Pete nearly in need of a ventilator, and who knows else in critical condition. . .

She left Jitters and hailed a cab, headed for the precinct.