#011 Doctor Buddies
The most important part of fighting crime is the actual of fighting of the crime. You’re going to be punched and kicked and shot and stabbed and harpooned and maybe even pinched or bitten or eye gouged or moss-covered three handled family credenza’d (I don’t know, I typed “wrestling moves with ridiculously protracted and oddly specific names” into google.) A lot of these super villains are out for blood! Unless you’re one of those like absurdly strong and powerful can-literally-eat-trucks-and-might-not-even-feel-pain-nobody’s-really-sure-and-nobody-even-knows-how-to-go-about-checking superheroes you’re going to get hurt and then you’re going to need to see a doctor.
Now, you can’t just go to any doctor. Your superhero identity doesn’t technically have insurance. They are not a legal entity. It’s come up before. Please try to pay attention mate. You’re going to need to find a doctor who’s cool with stitching up trident wounds and removing silver bullets (there’s this one guy who is convinced that anybody in a costume is a secret werewolf -it’s a whole thing- he’s incredibly unreasonable,) and who is also cool with the whole mask and secret identity thing. Discretion and a thirst for justice are key. Also a medical degree. Obviously. Oh and surgical experience. And medical supplies. A sterile operating theatre? Painkillers… This should’ve been a checklist.
Finding a doctor is no simple thing. It’s not like you can just walk into your local hospital or medical school in full costume and start asking doctors if they’re down to clandestinely operate on you should you somehow possibly fall into a sewer and have to fight a giant crocodile and/or alligator (I’m not saying that both are down there. I’m just saying that I’m guessing you wouldn’t know which one you were fighting). The best way to find yourself a good secret doctor friend is to just ask all your superhero friends which doctors they see on the dl. If that turns out to be a bust either because your so called super friends want their doctors to always be available for them or these so called secret doctors are not currently in the market for more unpaying, secret, super-powered, anonymous patients, you can try saving the life of a doctor. Then they for sure owe you at least one (1) life-saving operation. Fair is fair. You can also try checking if any of the superheroes you know are secretly doctors. Your best bet is checking with the ones who have “doctor” or “nurse” or “surgeon general” in their name. Worse comes to worst, they’re not actual doctors and you can expose them as the frauds they are, earning you the respect and adoration of the medical community. Then you’ll have doctors lining up at your door to perform illicit underground surgery on you after you fall victim to a titanium-skinned-double-fisted-bone-shattering punch to the ribs.
However, if you’re the guy with titanium skin or some other supernormal physique, finding a doctor to perform life-saving surgeries on you is going to be a little trickier. You’re going to need someone who isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty, someone who can think creatively, someone with the proper medical equipment to operate on a nine-foot tall man who might be made of rocks and definitely has too many limbs (seven (7) is too many Rockblock. They are not even symmetrical come on man. How do you even buy gloves? They come in pairs? Do you always have one extra glove? Do you not have enough gloves? Do rock monsters get cold?) And a medical degree. Again, this should be obvious. This whole thing is about doctors. I am writing solely about finding someone with a medical degree. At this point you might need to publicly and officially approach the proper authorities so they can set you up with a specialist capable of tending to your special medical needs. Presumably the government has a person like that. Sorry bud, you’re just not likely to find someone who can operate on rock monsters and keep that fact quiet. I know if I could operate on rock monsters I’d brag about it. I’d probably be running a blog about that instead. “So You Operate On Rock Monsters and Don’t Keep It a Secret, How Noble of You.”
I suppose you could also just befriend a doctor in your secret identity, and then, when you inevitably get injured while running around the city picking fights with hardened criminals, you can dramatically reveal your identity to your doctor buddy, and then they’ll save you ‘cause you guys are bros. You’re going to need to make sure you befriend a doctor who’s more sentimental than they are law-abiding, if you want them to keep your identity and the fact that they operated on you a secret. So good luck with that. You might even need to befriend a bunch of doctors until you find the perfect one that falls right in the middle of the trustworthy/sentimental/law-abiding/could-probably-hold-up-under-torture venn diagram.