Summary: When Peter’s ear infection gets a little out of hand, Tony and Morgan have slightly different ideas of how to help.
Word count: 1,874
Genre: Sickfic, domestic fluff, Whump Lite™
A/N: Thanks to @xxx-cat-xxx for beta-reading and ideas <3
Link to read on Ao3
Peter wakes to the sound of quiet whimpering.
It takes a few seconds for his groggy brain to register where he is, but the warm glow of the bunny-shaped night light on the opposite wall illuminating the Arendelle toy castle and the pile of stuffed animals on the floor gives it away. He’s in Morgan’s room. Morgan, who insisted on getting a bunk bed for her sixth birthday so that she and Peter could have sleepovers whenever he came to visit.
Morgan, who is clearly in the midst of a nightmare.
“Mo...” Peter whispers hoarsely. There are a few more quiet, pained whimpers. “Mo,” he tries again, louder. His left ear is throbbing and it’s ridiculously stuffy in this room—he’s actually sweating. Kicking the tangled bed covers off of himself, he lifts a hand to tap the wooden bed frame over his head. She stirs. “Morgan, wake u-up.” His voice cracks on the last word.
Morgan sits up in her bunk. “Yeah?” she asks drowsily. She leans over the edge of bed to look at him, strands of her long hair falling in her face. “What is it?”
She doesn’t seem particularly upset, which Peter finds strange. “Did… did you have a b-bad dream?” he asks.
In the dim light of the room, he can just make out her curious expression. “I don’t think so.” She swings her legs over the side of the bed and shimmies backwards down the ladder. “Did you?”
“Wh-What?” His ear is ringing, the pain feeling almost bone-deep. There’s another whimper, barely audible.
“You’re crying,” she says simply, perching herself on the edge of his bed. Her brow knits together. “Are you sad?”
Peter wipes the back of his hand roughly across his face and finds it’s wet with tears. It takes a second for his addled brain to realize that she’s right, and then an instant wave of self-consciousness washes over him as he looks into the eyes of the frowning six-year-old. “No, sorry, ‘m fine.” He pushes himself up on his elbows, hurriedly brushing the tears away.
Morgan’s eyes go wide. “You’re bleeding!” she gasps.
“Huh?” Peter follows her horrified gaze down to the pillow he’s been using. It’s covered in something dark and sticky. Alarmed, he lifts a shaky hand to his throbbing ear and feels more liquid trickling down. “Oh – um – wow, uh...”
“I’m getting Daddy!” Morgan declares, jumping up from the mattress and spinning on her heel. “Hang on!”
“Wait, no, don’t freak him—”
But she’s already out of the room.
“...out.” With a small groan, Peter carefully sits the rest of the way up and flips the lamp on. The pastel lilac pillowcase is stained with a mixture of blood and yellowish fluid. Grimacing, he grabs some tissues from the box on Morgan’s dresser and dabs them carefully at his dripping ear, hissing sharply at the stabbing pain it causes.
Within a minute, Morgan is back, dragging the hand of a disheveled but surprisingly alert-looking Tony in after her. “See? He’s crying and bleeding out of his ears!” she blurts.
“Just one ear,” Peter corrects, lowering the tissue down to look at the fresh blood and pus on it. “Gross...”
Tony rolls his eyes. “Oh, well in that case I’ll just go back to bed—you’re perfectly fine.” He moves over to the bed, Morgan following close behind. “Anything you wanna share with the class? You take any good hits to the noggin’ recently? Blow something up?”
Peter shakes his head as much as he dares, which only increases the ringing sensation. “No, nothing like that,” he mutters. He wishes this was something cool and Spider-Man related, but he’s pretty sure it’s just his patented Parker Luck™. “Ear started hurting a couple days ago,” he admits. “Thought it would go away.”
Tony pulls out his phone and flips on the flashlight. “Can I see it?”
“Yeah,” Peter says, wincing. He bites his lower lip and does his best to keep as still as possible as Tony peers into his ear with the light.
“What does it look like?” Morgan asks curiously.
“Ugly as hell...” Tony mutters. He flicks the light off and turns to Peter. “Pretty sure you ruptured your eardrum, kiddo.”
“Ah.” The pain seems to ramp up with the confirmation. That checks out. Certainly feels like someone just bored a hole through his ear. He can feel the fluid dripping out down his cheek.
Tony must notice it too because he grimaces and pulls a couple more tissues out of the box to hand him. “You know, if you weren’t feeling well, you could have told us that when you got here,” he points out. “Instead of waiting until”—he glances at his lock screen—“3:37 in the morning.”
Peter manages a small smirk. “Gotta keep you on your toes. You know, now that you’re retired and all...”
Looking very unamused, Tony extends a hand and helps pull Peter up to standing. The movement only increases the throbbing in his ear and Peter squeezes his eyes shut tightly against a wave of dizziness.
“Alright?” Tony checks, still gripping his arm tightly.
“Yeah,” Peter breathes, the ringing growing louder. “Sorry. Just... really hurts.”
“He can have some of my medicine,” Morgan offers in a slightly hushed voice. “The one Mommy gives me when my ears hurt.”
Tony lets out a short laugh. “That’s nice of you, sweetie, but I don’t think grape-flavored Children’s Motrin is gonna cut it here.” He gestures up to the top bunk. “Why don’t you hop back up there and try to sleep some more while I go get Peter fixed up?”
Morgan sticks her lip out in a pout. “But I’m not tired now.”
Instant guilt comes over Peter at having woken her up, but Tony doesn’t miss a beat.
“Nope, you are, you just forgot,” he says knowingly. He lets go of Peter’s arm for a second to scoop the now quietly giggling six-year-old up and deposit her on the top bunk. “Count some sheep, kid,” he advises, flipping off the lamp and snagging Peter’s ruined pillow to toss in the laundry.
With Morgan situated, Tony guides Peter out of the bedroom and down the stairs. He leaves Peter to clean up in the bathroom before heading to the kitchen in search of some kind of painkiller that might work on an enhanced metabolism.
Eventually, Tony returns with a bottle of Tylenol-Codeine, a glass of water, and an apologetic look. “It’s the strongest stuff we’ve got here. Might take the edge off at least.”
Peter murmurs his thanks and takes the pills, mostly to humor him. They both know it’s a lost cause. He can burn through a dose of morphine in less than ten minutes; there’s no way over-the-counter meds are going to do anything.
“First thing in the morning, I’ll take you to see Bruce,” Tony promises. “We’ll get you on some antibiotics and something better for the pain.”
Peter just hums in response.
Tony sighs. “We can try a heating pad,” he suggests. “That helps Morgan sometimes.”
“Sure.” Peter shrugs, listless. He’ll do anything at this point to make his ear stop aching.
Tony locates the heating pad and gets Peter set up on the chaise section of the couch under a blanket with the heating pad resting on the pillow under his ear. It helps marginally, which is slightly more than Peter can say for the pills.
“Sorry, kiddo. If only you’d known me in the nineties,” Tony says with a sad chuckle. “Could’ve tried all kinds of stuff on you.”
Peter lets out a short, empty laugh. “Yeah, too bad. Sure May would’ve loved that…”
Tony settles down onto the other end of the couch and flips on the TV for distraction. After a bit of channel flipping, he picks a period war drama about a badass sea captain fighting during the Napoleonic Wars, starring Russell Crowe.
(It was that or “My Strange Addiction” on TLC, and neither of them felt like watching a woman eat a couch).
Peter doesn’t exactly sleep, but he closes his eyes and drifts in and out while the movie plays low in the background. He’s kind of queasy—probably a combination of the otherwise useless drugs and the low grade fever he’s pretty sure he’s got going—but it’s nothing too awful. At least the sounds of cannons firing and battles being waged on screen drown out the incessant ringing in his head.
He isn’t sure how much time passes before a new voice joins the mix in a stage-whisper:
“Are they gonna cut his arm off?”
Peter’s eyes snap open. He sees Tony dozing on the other end of the sofa, so he sits up a little straighter and turns around to look at the staircase behind him. Sure enough, Morgan is sitting on the fourth step from the bottom, just high enough to see over the couch to the TV.
“I thought you went back to bed,” Peter whispers.
Morgan shrugs. “Counting sheep is boring.” She stands up and tiptoes down the rest of the stairs and into the living room. “Are they gonna cut his arm off?” she repeats.
Peter looks back at the movie. The ship’s doctor is in the midst of a rather intense amputation scene on a young boy’s infected arm. “Yeah, looks like it,” he says through a wince. He should probably change the channel to something more child-friendly, but Tony’s got the remote balanced on his knee and he’s all the way on the other end of the sofa. Oh well.
Morgan nods at the screen, looking impressed. Then she looks back to Peter. “Does your ear still hurt a lot?”
“Nah, it’s not so bad,” Peter lies. “No need to cut it off or anything.” He scoots over on the cushion a bit. “You wanna sit here with me?”
“Yeah.” She nods and hops up onto the couch beside him, snuggling against his right side. “Did Daddy give you medicine?” she inquires.
“Yeah, he did,” Peter assures.
She nods approvingly. “And did he give you the heater thingy?”
Peter lifts the heating pad up slightly for her to see. “Yep.”
“Good.” She nods again. “And cuddles?”
“Eh…” His gaze drifting to his quietly snoring mentor, Peter smirks a bit. “I think I’m getting too old for those.”
“Everybody needs cuddles,” she says knowingly. Scooting a little closer to him, she wraps her arms around his waist. “See?”
A small smile creeps across Peter’s lips. “Yeah, I see.”
They sit there for a moment, Peter doing his best to focus on the steady pressure of the six-year-old’s gentle squeeze rather than the thumping in his head. It’s almost peaceful.
“Either that, or you need a stick,” Morgan pipes up, breaking the spell.
Peter’s brow furrows. “A stick?”
“To bite down on,” she explains, pointing at the TV. “Like the boy in the movie.”
Peter blinks, then shifts his gaze sideways to the little girl watching nineteenth-century field surgery technique with genuine interest.
“It’s so he doesn’t scream,” she informs.
Peter holds out his hand. “Just give me the remote, Mo.”
X
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If you enjoyed this story, you might also like: Adventures at the Stark Lake House
Sarah asked:
Hi Auntie! I have a quick question I hope you can help with. My character is being held hostage and, to prove a point to the people watching, the bad guy shoots a handgun past him a few inches away from his ear. I assume that this would hurt a lot but I was also wondering what the short term and long term effects/hearing damage would be. Thanks for all you do and I hope the fellowship is going well :)
Thank you so much! The fellowship is going wonderfully.
So guns are extremely loud. Loud enough to cause temporary, and possibly permanent, hearing loss.
The prime effect of hearing a firearm at short distance, especially in an enclosed space, is tinnitus, a ringing in the ear. That ringing can last minutes or hours. In a situation like this, I would imagine that the character might not be able to hear their interrogator’s questions, may ask them to repeat them, or appear dazed.
It’s possible for this to actually rupture the eardrum. I haven’t been able to find any specific data on how loud something has to be to cause tympanic rupture (closest I can find is about 165dB; most handguns seem to fire in the 140-160 range, but I wouldn’t call it unrealistic to have this happen anyway), but loud noises can definitely cause it. The closer the shot, the more likely this is.
Also, if they’re close enough to the muzzle of the gun, it’s possible for the rapidly-expanding cloud of hot gas to cause burns to the ear or the side of the head.
If the tympanic membrane ruptures, they may bleed a little bit from the ear, and they may even require surgery to repair the membrane. More typically, your character should heal in a couple of months, but they may have significant hearing loss on that side that only gradually returns.
I think @scripttorture would be happy if I added this: torture doesn’t produce accurate information, in large part because fear impacts and degrades memory (both recall and formation). This is pretty clearly a form of torture.
So to recap: by doing this, your torturer is doing themselves harm (your character may be too stressed to remember anything, and they may be unable to actually hear the questions.) They may have burns, they may be bleeding from the ear, and they may need surgery down the road to repair a ruptured eardrum.
Hope this helps!
xoxo, Aunt Scripty
[disclaimer]
[Patreon: Where the Questions Flow like…. Something Flowy]
Happy New Year and welcome back to Mangled Mondays, where every Monday we talk about another facet of maiming, mangling, mauling, and mistreating your main characters — and all of their friends.
Today we’ll be talking about Ruptured Eardrums. For the rest of the Mangled Mondays series, [click here].
Ruptured Eardrum
Lethality Index
1
What Is It?
A ruptured eardrum is exactly what it says on the tin: an eardrum that’s burst.
The eardrum, or tympanic membrane, is a thin layer of tissue between the ear canal itself and the middle ear, where we begin to process sound. It protects the sensitive inner ear from damage.
When it’s ruptured, the eardrum can no longer effectively transmit clear sound to the inner ear. The character may hear a significant ringing sound, and may lose some or all hearing in the ear for some time.
Clinical Signs:
Blood or clear fluid draining from the ears.
With otoscope: visible tear or rupture of the tympanic membrane.
Symptoms:
Severe pain before and during rupture; may be painless afterward.
Hearing loss (partial or complete).
Buzzing or ringing sound in the ear; may hear whistling when sneezing or blowing the nose after the tear.
How Does It Happen?
There are two main causes of tympanic rupture.
The first is direct trauma. This is typically inadvertent, when the character digs too deep with a Q-tip, though because we are authors and thus inherently evil, it’s also possible for this to be a deliberate attack or form of torture by a villain using anything from a Q-tip or toothpick to the tip of a thin knife or scalpel.
The second cause is pressure. Severe ear infections can build up enough pressure to rupture the membrane – this is exceedingly painful – but other forms of excess pressure can cause it too. Rapid ascent from a dive is a plausible cause; . and, especially when added to the increased pressure resulting from ear or sinus infection or congestion, so is rapid altitude change on a flight or in an elevator. Pressure injuries are known as barotrauma.
Barotrauma can also be a side effect of an explosion, where pressure builds up quickly enough to rupture the eardrum. This is known as a primary blast injury, because the injury is from the pressure wave (as opposed to the shrapnel, the character being thrown, or subsequent trauma from causes related to the explosion).
Immediate Treatment
Immediate care for a ruptured tympanic membrane is supportive; that is, the symptoms are cared for, but not the injury itself. If there’s dirt or debris in the ear, characters might flush it out with saline solution (salt water).
Definitive Treatment
Surgery / Hospitalization
Tympanic ruptures are typically left to heal on their own. Extreme ruptures can be repaired with a piece of paper surgically attached to the eardrum, which provides a scaffold for the eardrum to heal on. This procedure is outpatient and the character will be awake for it, but the ear will be well anesthetized.
In the Austere Environment
There is nothing to be done. The ear will heal on its own.
The Rocky Road to Recovery
Capabilities Retained
Cognition and limb motion are unaffected. Vision is unaffected.
Disabilities: Temporary
Characters may experience trouble with balance during healing. Hearing loss is significant but often not complete, and is temporary. Speech may be slightly uncoordinated and louder because of the character’s difficulty hearing their own speech.
Disabilities: Permanent
Depending on the circumstances, the character may experience some permanent hearing loss.
Features of Recovery: Hospital Stay
N/A.
Features of Recovery: PT/OT
N/A.
The New Normal
The eardrum will heal in about 2 weeks, and the character’s hearing will be restored, either completely or partially.
Future Risks
Your character will be at elevated risk for future tympanic rupture.
Total Recovery Time (Typical)
2 weeks
Sensory
Sights
Blood, or clear fluid similar to mucus, coming from the character’s ear(s).
Smells
None.
Sounds
Affected character may hear a loud bang, and may continue to hear whining, buzzing, or ringing in their ears.
The character may hear a whistling sound while blowing their nose or sneezing.
Medslang
The tympanic membrane is often referred to as the TM.
A TM rupture might also be known as a perforation or a TM perf.
Key Points
Tympanic rupture produces ringing in, and draining of blood or fluid from, from, the ears.
Characters will have partial or complete hearing loss.
Hearing should be regained as the eardrum heals, about 2 weeks, but some loss may persist indefinitely.
xoxo, Aunt Scripty
[disclaimer]
This post is an excerpt from Blood on the Page Volume One: A Writer’s Compendium of Injuries. The book details thirty-one injuries with which to maim, mangle, and maul your characters, as well as nine indispensable articles of Wound Wisdom covering everything from burn stages to suture selection.
Print and digital editions are available on [Amazon], and digital editions are available [everywhere else].
Injury Profiles: Ruptured Eardrum was originally published on ScriptMedicBlog.com
The old line about not sticking anything in your ear smaller than your elbow is there for good reason. A ruptured eardrum can result from something as simple as being too aggressive with a Q-tip when trying to clean ear wax. Eardrums can also become ruptured due to scuba diving or flying due to barotrauma, which happens when the barometric pressure outside the ear is different from the pressure…
A lot of shit has happened. A LOT of shit, and I can't talk about it. Even though I'd be "anonymous" I still can't. After my sister broke her her I got a really bad ear infection in my right ear and my left ear began to hurt like hell too. My right eardrum ruptured and it didn't start feeling better until yesterday. My pain was so bad that I iterally wanted to get hit by a bus. I felt bad for having to cancel plans with one of my good friends, we'll call her Gena, but I'll try to make it up to her This isn't even the tip of the iceberg of what has happened. My family and I went to go see finding Dory. It was really good but tbh I was expecting more. I loved it, but it could have been better. Almost every problem had a solution to it and everything seemed to NE happening all at once. Too fast paced for me. It's hard being around my family now. I love my family so much. They will never know how much I love them. But I can't look at certain people right now and probably won't be able to for a long time.
Two days ago I woke up to an earache. I don’t know why, but I guess it’s because it was a bit chilly and I slept on my right side all night? I haven’t been around loud noises or listen to anything at max volume. The earache wasn’t painful, it just ached. It felt like a person pressing down on a bruise sometimes.
I figured it will pass the next day, but when I woke up my ear was clogged up (and no pain at all). I have had it clogged up before, such as when I was sick months ago (or went swimming two or three years ago), but this time it was a bit different because it muffled out the sounds. It’s a bit spooky to a not hear clearly on my right ear. Whispers or softly spoken words and sounds are barely audible to me.
I don’t think it’s an infection, so I may have ruptured an eardrum because there’s some evidence for it. Either way, I won’t be getting my hearing back until it’s healed. From what I heard it may take up to 6-8 weeks (or a month or two depending on how bad it is, if there’s an infection and so on). It’s times like this that I wish there was free health care so that I can just go to the doctor to make sure there’s nothing else wrong.
