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Gladys O'Reilly, resident of Gotham for 42 years this past November, looked up from making dinner. "What was that?" she asked her husband Ralph, giving the tomato sauce another stir.
"A gunshot," Ralph said, turning to the next page of the Gotham Post.
Gladys moved the spaghetti pot off the burner with a little more force than necessary. "Will you go look? That nice young man could be hurt, you know."
Ralph grumbled as he folded the newspaper and stood up, but he was worried, too. Not that he would admit it. But they saw their neighbor come and go at all hours and sometimes they saw blood or heard on the news about bad things happening to him.
Ralph carefully stuck his head out the window, then pulled it back in again quickly. "Something's wrong," he said, and ran to the door, moving as quickly as the slight lameness his left leg would allow.
* * *
Robin lay crumpled in the middle of a circle of knocked-out thugs. By the time Ralph reached the street level, though, one of the boys - they were hardly men - had regained consciousness, and picked up a gun. The light glinted off the barrel as he swung it up, ready to pump Robin's head full of lead.
Ralph was no hero, but he'd played football in college, and he'd fought in Vietnam. He took down the kid with a flying tackle that made the kid go, "Oof!" and sent the gun skittering away. While he was still struggling to regain his breath, Ralph grabbed one of the strips of cording that Robin had dropped and wrapped it around the boy's wrists, cinching it up good and tight.
He looked up. Gladys was bending over Robin, frowning as she pressed her hand against the bloody wound on his leg. "I need something to use as a tourniquet," she said, so he handed her another of the strips. She nodded. "It'll do," she said, wrapping it around Robin's leg above the wound.
It reminded Ralph of how they'd met. The field hospital, with nurses running, running, always running back and forth between their patients.
"He needs an ambulance," she said.
He nodded. "You go call one. I'd better get him inside before these guys wake up...or their friends come around."
She eyed the young man, then looked at Ralph. "Let's get him inside together," she said, hefting his arm over her shoulder. Ralph would have liked to object, but the apartment *was* up a flight, and the young man was pretty solid, especially with all that armor - and Ralph wasn't as young as he used to be.
Between them they managed to get him back to the apartment and laid him on the couch, heedless of bloodstains. "Get one of the winter blankets from the hall closet," Gladys snapped at him, "while I call an ambulance."
"No." They turned in shock to the boy. His skin was pale and clammy and covered in a sheen of sweat. His eyes were filled with pain but lucid. "No...ambulance," he said.
Gladys frowned. "You'll die if you don't get a blood transfusion, boy. At the least, you'll lose your leg if it isn't seen to soon."
Robin shook his head. "They're...they're coming," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper, before his eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed back onto the couch.
Gladys looked angry and unhappy and desperate, and Ralph remembered that look, remembered how she'd covered her fear and sorrow for every lost life with cool anger and sharp words. "Get that blanket," she said, and picked up the phone.
"What if they take off his mask?" worried Ralph, but she was already dialing.
"What if they do?" she asked matter-of-factly.
"He'll be in danger-"
"He's in danger now, Ralph." She held up a hand. "Yes, I need an ambulance sent to-"
"That won't be necessary." Both of them looked up. A lithe young man in black and blue was climbing through their window, his eyes covered in a mask much like Robin's. "I'll take him from here," he said, crossing the room and gently taking the phone from Gladys to press the 'off' button.
She glared at him. "He needs immediate medical attention!" she said.
"He'll get it," he said quietly, and bent over the boy, sparing a second to brush the dark hair out of his eyes with one blue and black gloved hand. "Oh, little brother," he whispered, almost too quietly for them to hear.
Robin stirred. "Di-...Nightwing?" he said weakly.
Nightwing carefully picked him up, hefting his weight easily before transferring him to one arm. "Let's get you to A. B is coming," he said. Ralph wondered if they were all named after letters of the alphabet. Was there a C, a D, and an E?
As he climbed out the window again, carefully pulling Robin after him, Nightwing glanced back at the two of them. "Thank you," he said sincerely. "Really...thank you."
"Of course," Gladys said brusquely. Ralph just gave him a nod.
Nightwing nodded back and climbed out onto the fire escape, then disappeared altogether as he extended a hand and swung into the night, cradling his precious burden under his left arm. Moments later they heard the sound of a powerful engine driving away.
"He'll be all right," said Gladys, but she sounded worried.
"Of course he will," said Ralph, wrapping an arm around her.
He never had gotten that blanket.
* * *
"I hope that boy's okay," said Gladys, as she had every night for the past three weeks.
"I'm sure he's fine," said Ralph, as he always did. "You know how long it can take to heal up from a gunshot wound. Wouldn't you rather he stay off that leg than see him on the street?"
"Of course," said Gladys, opening the oven door to check on the roast. "But-"
There was a tap on the window, and Ralph sat up and blinked. Putting down his paper, he limped over and opened it up, leaning out onto the fire escape. There was no one there, but an envelope was taped to the windowsill.
"What is it?" asked Gladys, peering over his shoulder.
"It's a 'thank you' note," he said, sliding the card out of its envelope. Inside was a brief, typed message, thanking them for their intervention and care, and saying that, though they probably wouldn't be seeing much of him for the next several days, he was alive and well and getting better, thanks in part to their timely assistance. It was signed simply, "Robin".
"Well," said Glady, blinking. "*What* a nice young man. I wish I knew which building he lived in so I could bake him some cookies."
Ralph grinned. "You could leave them on the fire escape with a note and maybe he'd see them."
"Oh! What a lovely idea!" Gladys said. "But..." she hesitated.
"But?"
"That solves the cookie problem. But I really want him to ask our Fiona on a date and I can't very well leave her on the fire escape...can I?" she looked thoughtful.
Ralph took the card into the kitchen and stuck it on the fridge with a magnet shaped like a bunch of cherries. "No," he said. "You can't do that!" Especially because Fiona would probably go along with the plan willingly. She'd been so disappointed that she'd missed the events of that night. "It sounds much more exciting than the movie we saw!" she'd pouted
"Oh well," Gladys sighed. "It's such a shame she wasn't here to meet him."
Ralph was privately grateful for small favors, but he just shrugged. "He was fainting, covered in blood and had a bullet in his leg," he said dryly. "Hardly the most conducive circumstances for romance."
Gladys just laughed and kissed him. "Why not? It worked for us," she pointed out.
He had to admit she was right.
~~~