Bart tried to say something encouraging when Wally told him to hang on, but words weren't really connecting into coherent sentences in his brain. Every step Wally took jostled his leg which was accompanied by a very particular kind of pain that was clustered around his knee and yet somehow skipped the entire middle portion of his body to stab him inside his skull. Bart didn't know if that was normal, or if his body was just trying to block out as much pain as possible.
He thought he probably passed out a couple times, but it never lasted more than a few nanoseconds-- a whole second at most.
"'m ..'kay" He managed, trying to reassure The Flash that he'd be okay, but most of his attention was focused on holding his knee and trying to stay quiet.
Which got a lot harder when they put him on a gurney, and tried to look at his knee.
His hands were stuck to his leg by clotted blood. Bart clenched his jaw tight, gritting his teeth and held his breath as he pulled his hands off his leg, fighting against the pain the whole time. There was no skin over it yet, but there was a large scab, puckered and bulging where pieces of bone or shot from the shotgun round had been sealed into his leg. Even shreds of his costume were half lost in the half-healed wound. Worse still, with the way he'd clutched his knee when he fell and didn't release it until now, it was impossible for him to straighten his leg. As much as he demanded that his body do it, there was no longer a joint there to comply.
Bart was still sitting up, supporting himself with sticky hands on the back of the gurney, but one of the nurses pushed on his shoulder, urging him to lay down.
"You don't need to see this, son." The man said quietly.
Reluctantly complying, Bart lay back and turned his head to watch the doctor leave to talk to Wally. The pain had lessened now that the wound had put itself together all wrong, but at least it was together. Something got all knotty inside his stomach when he watched Wally dash off. Was he going to come back? It's not like he, or anyone else, had any use for a lame speedster.
The doctor came back in and explained that Wally had gone to get a surgeon, and that they were going to prep him for surgery so that when the doctor came, he could get to work.
"We'll need to cut away your costume on the left leg and sanitize the area." The doctor sat down heavily on a rolling stool, and set a sympathetic hand on the boy's shoulder, "We're going to need to open the wound again to try to prep it for surgery. We're also going to need to try to get any shrapnel or debris out before the surgeon starts working. Your metabolism is incredibly fast, so the anesthesiologist is concerned that any anesthesia we administer won't last long enough to make a difference... and with how quickly you heal, we're going to have to keep..."
Bart didn't actually hear the rest. He knew what the doctor was trying to warn him of. Every time a tendon or muscle or piece of sinus or skin or whatever was in knees started to grow back, they were going to cut it. They were going to keep breaking and cutting and poking and tearing to keep the wound open until the doctor could fix it.
He felt ashamed to think it, but that particular moment- all alone in the hospital room and about to have his knee broken again and again- all Bart wanted in the world was his mother.
His hands clamped down on either side of the metal table and he dropped his head back to stare up at the flourescent lights on the ceiling. "Okay."
"Are you ready for this, K.F.?" The doctor asked, trying to stay as upbeat as possible.
"Yeah." Bart said, mentally preparing himself for every agonizing second.
There was no preparing though, and the best Bart could do was turn his head to the side and keep his jaw locked together and his eyes squeezed shut. He promised himself he wasn't going to yell and he wasn't going to cry.