This is going to be a long story. I don't know how long yet, but I'm up to around 9 or 10 parts written and I think it's probably only about half done. So be warned: it's going to be a fairly long ride. 
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Jill, FoLCdom's very own Dr Klein, for being so patient and helpful in response to some very strange medical queries for this story. While Jill's had quite a bit of input into this, of course all errors, assumptions and leaps of logic as far as medicine go are my responsibility.
And huge thanks also go to Kae and Y, my invaluable beta-readers, and to a whole host of IRC FoLCs, including Rach, Julie, Dave and many more, for nagging and encouraging me to get back to writing this when my motivation levels had sunk to negative. 
I'm finally writing again, and writing a long story, and it feels good - so thank you all. 
And now, on with the story. 
~ 24 Hours ~ There was someone in her apartment.
Lois sat up in bed, her heart thumping. The digital clock by her bedside said 3:15 - far too early for any neighbours to be up and about. Rolling onto her side, she groped in her nightstand drawer for the baseball bat she’d kept there ever since the fake Mr Trezewski had tried to kill her. Gripping it in one hand, she fumbled for the phone with the other.
In her haste, she was clumsy and it fell off the top of the nightstand with a clatter.
She held her breath. If the intruder had heard... But she didn’t hear any footsteps. Had she just imagined that there was someone? Maybe she’d just dreamed it...
No. There’d been the distinct sound of a door closing. And then a thud which she was sure was someone knocking against furniture. And had there been something else? A muffled curse, maybe?
No, she hadn’t imagined it. All of her instincts were telling her that she was right. And then, as if she needed confirmation, she heard a footfall outside her door.
There’d been a series of rapes in this part of the city in the last few months. In the dead of night, the rapist had broken into the homes of women living alone and overpowered them. The attacker was vicious - he’d left every one of his victims battered and bleeding, some with broken bones and internal injuries. And, so far, no-one had got a good enough look at him to be able to identify him.
“Oh, god. Oh god,” she muttered under her breath. “Okay. I can handle this.”
She climbed out of bed and started to pull on her robe. If the intruder came into her bedroom, she could hide behind the door and catch him unawares. All she needed was to get in one good blow with the bat and he’d be out of commission. Serve him right for thinking he could take on Lois Lane!
The door opened. Lois swung the bat over her shoulder, preparing to launch the strike. And then something made her cough. The smell, the vapour, was everywhere. She couldn’t get away from it. It was up her nostrils, in her mouth, making her cough, making her choke... She couldn’t breathe.
Gas. Some sort of poison gas. Lois tried to hold her breath, but the damp mist was too overpowering. She slumped to the floor, eyes blurry, unable to move. Coughs racked her body. Her chest felt as if someone had stamped on it and fire burned her throat.
A figure loomed menacingly over her. Terrified, she tried to shrink away. She was going to be raped!
She needed... to...
...fight...
...attack...
Focus!
Her limbs had turned to jelly. She was seeing double - the blurry face morphed and swam into a cartoon image.
And then he spoke. His voice came from a long way away, echoing down a tunnel. Slow, distorted.
“You’ve been a menace to society long enough, Lois Lane. No more. You’re going to die. But I’m not going to kill you yet.”
Hands were groping her arm, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t resist. Her sluggish limbs refused to obey any commands. Was he... going to rape her?
A faint pinprick grazed her arm.
“No, you’re going to spend the next day knowing that you’ve got only twenty-four hours to live. Better make up your mind quick how you want to spend your last day, reporter bitch - this time tomorrow it’ll be too late.”
A cartoonish laugh sounded. The face, far too fuzzy to see properly, swam before her. And then it was gone. In the distance, a sound echoed... a door slamming?
“Wha-? Huh?”
Groggy and stiff, Lois tried to roll over but another coughing fit hit her. Her muscles screamed in painful protest, but she forced herself to stop coughing. Think!
Had it really happened? Or just a nightmare? But... hard surface below her. On the floor. Aching all over. Throat burning. Someone
was here! Help. The phone. Had to... get... to the phone.
Dragging herself onto elbows and knees, she crawled drunkenly across the room and groped on the floor for the telephone. Instinct rather than deliberation found the number she needed. It rang.
“ ‘lo?”
“ ‘lar... Help... need hel...”
“Lois? Is that you?”
“-elp me...”
The phone slipped from her hand and everything went black.
***********
“Lois?
Lois!”
His heart beating at about six times its normal pace, Clark leapt out of bed, dropping the receiver as he reached for his clothes. The brief exchange kept replaying in his head. Her indistinct voice had asked him for help, and then there’d been a muffled thud, followed by silence.
Lois was in danger. She needed him.
Clark or Superman?
The distinction didn’t matter tonight. He was going by the fastest route possible. Clark flew to the balcony and up into the night sky.
The journey took seconds, yet there was time for dozens of horrifying images to pass through his mind. Was Lois being attacked? Had she just managed to grab for the phone, but been caught by the intruder? Had he hurt her? Killed her? That rapist had never been caught. And hadn’t Lois mentioned just the other day that she’d got another threatening letter? How many criminals had she put away who wanted to have her killed?
He had to get there in time. Lois couldn’t die...
Her window was locked. He scanned the apartment, and his heart skipped several beats as he located her lying sprawled on the floor of her bedroom, a baseball bat close to one hand and the telephone receiver clutched in the other.
Was she...? No! She couldn’t be... He couldn’t bear it if...
The painful pressure on his chest only began to ease once he focused and heard her breathing. It was shallow and uneven, but she was definitely alive. He breathed again, but it came out as a choke.
Calm down!He took a split second to look quickly around. The front door of her apartment was shut, but some furniture in the living-room looked out of place. Unless she’d been wandering around herself in the night and knocked it over, someone had definitely been in there.
He crashed through the glass and in less than a second was crouched on the floor beside his partner. “Lois? Lois, can you hear me?”
She moaned and her eyelids flickered, but she didn’t answer.
He caught at her hand and was about to speak again, but he became aware of an intrusive smell in the room. Straightening, he sniffed. It was a gas of some kind, he was sure of it. Had whoever had been here used it on her? For what purpose?
A sick feeling churning in his stomach, he made himself skim his gaze over Lois’s body. The nightdress she was wearing was bunched around her hips and her robe lay dishevelled around her shoulders. His gut clenched sickeningly. Had she...? Oh, god - that sick bastard still hadn’t been caught...
Relief slammed into him as he noticed her underwear still in place. Rape seemed unlikely. But still, what had happened to her? What had the intruder, whoever he was, done?
He bent closer to her again, squeezing her hand. She didn’t respond.
“Lois? It’s Clark. Can you wake up and talk to me? What happened?”
“...lar...” she mumbled. He sighed again in relief. She wasn’t completely unconscious. Whatever the gas was, it had mostly knocked her out, but it wasn’t as if she was sinking into a coma or dying or anything. Was it? But then, he wasn’t a doctor. He didn’t know that!
He had to get her to the emergency room. They’d be there in seconds - all he had to do was pick her up and fly straight out of the window. She needed to be examined. Even though he could see that she wasn’t badly hurt, her breathing was irregular and he just knew that vapour had to have had harmed her in some way. At the very least, she was doped. At worst, it could be poisoning her...
He sniffed again, this time making himself calm down enough to concentrate. After all, he wasn’t an idiot when it came to chemistry, and it would help if he could tell the ER doctor what he thought was in the vapour.
No, on reflection there didn’t seem to be anything poisonous. It smelt vaguely sweet... He’d smelt it before. In a medical environment, maybe...
Ether! It was ether, he was sure of it. Ether. It would knock her out, but it had no lasting effects. It wasn’t poisonous. Relief hit him once again.
In the act of scooping Lois into his arms, he paused. If the vapour wasn’t harmful, then getting Lois to hospital wasn’t as urgent. And this was a crime scene. A couple of police officers had recently told Superman pointedly that things had to be done properly at crime scenes, otherwise evidence was lost or destroyed. He didn’t just want Lois safe and well. He wanted her attacker arrested and convicted.
Forcing himself to remain composed despite the cold fear running through him, Clark disentangled the phone from Lois’s limp fingers and, resetting the connection, dialled 911. Very soon, he’d been reassured that an ambulance and the police were on their way. All he had to do was wait.
Wait. With Lois unconscious, maybe hurt. How was he supposed to do that?
That vapour still smelt pretty strong. Obviously, as long as she was in the room with it, she’d stay unconscious. Instinctively, he inhaled deeply, sucking it all into his lungs; at Super-speed, he moved to the broken window and exhaled. There. Gone. It couldn’t do her any more harm. And there was still a trace of the odour in the air, so the police would be able to detect it. He’d just tell them that he did as much as he could to ventilate the room because the smell was cloying.
And then he dropped down beside Lois to wait for the ambulance.
Waiting wasn’t something Clark was used to. Not with his abilities - with super-speed and the power of flight. And certainly never when it was someone he cared about who needed help. Someone he
loved. Someone who was sick and in pain and who whimpered whenever he spoke to her.
Waiting was crazy. He could have her at the hospital in seconds. All he had to do was scoop her up...
...and potentially destroy the crime scene, wrecking any chance of having the bastard who’d done this to her caught and proved guilty.
It was the act of moments to scan her body for injuries. No broken bones. Not even any sign of trauma to the skin. She was just barely conscious - probably the effect of the gas. Well, at least that was gone now.
He stroked her face gently, brushing her hair aside as he caressed her. She moaned once more, and a knife cut through him at the sound. Lois was hurting and all he was doing was sitting beside her. So much for Superman - he was useless!
Where was the ambulance? Torn between running down to the street to look for it and staying by Lois, he gazed at her again. She looked so fragile lying there, her face pale, her eyes shut. Still, unmoving, ghostly white... almost as if she were dead.
No! She wasn’t dead. He couldn’t start imagining things like that. She was going to be fine. As soon as the ambulance came and they got her to the hospital, she’d have that nasty stuff washed out of her system and she’d be fine. She’d wake up and tell him what had happened to scare her - who had been in her apartment - and they’d find whoever it was and what he’d wanted. And until then Superman would keep watch over her. Or she could stay with him until they were sure that she was safe. Everything would be all right again.
At last! The whine of sirens penetrated his misery. Help was here. Lois would be in good hands very soon. And everything was going to be all right.
**********
The minute hand on the wall clock jumped forward another notch. That made 99 since he’d taken up vigil in this hard moulded-plastic chair. It now declared the time to be 5:37. One more minute for the round century.
What was going on in there? Lois had been in the ER for over an hour and a half now, and he didn’t have a clue how she was or what was happening. No-one had come to talk to him. Maybe they’d even forgotten that he was there. Though twice he’d gone to ask the duty nurse on the desk for news, and he’d been instructed to wait until someone sent for him.
He had no idea how Lois was. She could be sick. She could be unconscious. She could be in a coma. She could even be dead, for all he knew. He slid his glasses down his nose again and looked through the wall, trying to find her cubicle. But once more it was useless. There was too much blocking his view, including pieces of lead belonging to X-ray apparatus. She was somewhere in there, but no matter how hard he looked he couldn’t make out which cubicle was hers.
His super-hearing was no good either. There was just too much going on. He’d tried several times to focus on Lois’s name, but he hadn’t heard ‘Lois’ or ‘Ms Lane’ mentioned once. None of the conversations he’d eavesdropped on sounded like they concerned her, either. All he could do was wait. Again.
Wait.
Did the staff have even the faintest idea how agonising it was just to be told to wait for news? Did they know what sort of things were going through his mind as he watched the clock ticking away the minutes? Did they know that every tick represented a minute of Lois’s life which could be ebbing away even as he sat here, useless? Did they know the images flashing before his eyes, of Lois on a trolley, not breathing, being worked over with a defibrillator? Lois, barely conscious, fighting for her life, calling his name, needing him with her and thinking that he didn’t care because he wasn’t there? Because he was stuck outside on this
damned uncomfortable chair, watching a clock slowly count the minutes and the hours while he was just told to
wait?
She’d looked so pitiful. So sick. She'd been unconscious again when the paramedics had got to her, and they’d put a mask over her face, hooking her up to breathing apparatus. In the ambulance, he’d held her hand and talked to her through the fifteen-minute journey to the ER, but she hadn’t responded. Hadn’t even gripped his hand. She hadn’t known he was there.
He should have flown her to the hospital himself. Stupid to be so concerned about preserving a crime scene when Lois could be dying! The ambulance had arrived before the police anyway, so she’d been wheeled out before any evidence-taking could be done. Typically, the boys in blue had arrived just as Clark was about to climb into the ambulance. Faced with a choice between staying with Lois and taking the cops up to her apartment, he’d just told them briefly what he’d found and where they should go, and then left them to it.
For all the good it had done him. After he’d given her details to the receptionist, he’d been left here to endure this living nightmare alone. And to blame himself for what he hadn’t done.
Oh, Lois, please be all right...**********
“Mr Kent?”
Finally! Clark was on his feet instantly and facing the grey-haired, white-coated man heading towards him. “Yes. How is Lois?”
His impatient question was ignored. “I’m Dr Sutton. Do you know how to contact Ms Lane’s family, Mr Kent?”
He had to think about that for a moment. He’d never met Lois’s mother, though he had a vague idea that she was a nurse... or maybe she’d been a nurse years ago. He couldn’t remember. But he had met Sam Lane, of course. The man wouldn’t be working for the same research unit any more, but a sports scientist of his fame couldn’t be hard to find. Anyway, Perry would surely know.
“I should be able to do that. But...” His heart skipped yet another beat as the probable reason for the question struck him. “Is Lois going to be all right?” He almost shouted the question.
“Well, we can’t really say that with any certainty right now.”
No!
He stared at the doctor, almost staggering with the shock. This had to be a bad dream. He had to wake up. It wasn’t just that the man had suggested Lois might be very sick. It was the calm, collected way in which he’d said it. As if he was telling Clark where the coffee-machine was.
“But it would be as well if her close friends could be ready to contact her next-of-kin. It’s not the kind of phone call that Ms Lane herself should have to make.”
The nightmare was getting more horrifying by the second. Feeling as if any ability he had to take control of the situation had slipped way beyond his reach, Clark said, “Dr Sutton, will you
please tell me what’s wrong with Lois?”
“Yes, of course.” As if he hadn’t been keeping Clark on tenterhooks through the entire conversation, the doctor continued. “Ms Lane asked me to tell you for her. She tells us that you’re her closest friend, is that right?”
Clark nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
“When she was brought in, she was very close to unconsciousness. It took some time for her to regain consciousness and to be well enough to talk to us. In the meantime, of course, we did all we could, including taking X-rays and blood samples. I believe that you thought she might have inhaled ether?”
“That, or something like it.”
“Yes, it was. At any rate, it made her woozy initially - which was undoubtedly its purpose - and then, as she remained in the room where it had been, the progressive inhalation of the vapour rendered her unconscious. We initially treated that, and it was some time before Ms Lane was able to tell us exactly what happened.”
Another nail in his coffin. Clark tried to force back the lump in his throat. It was all his fault. He should have gone with the initial instinct to have Superman fly her here. Of
course leaving her in the room where the gas was had been bad for her! Though he’d done his best to alleviate that. He’d got rid of it very quickly after arriving. She’d been breathing cleaner air almost as quickly as if he had flown her here himself.
Stop beating yourself up! It’s not helping anyone. Least of all Lois!The doctor was still speaking; Clark tried to push aside his self-castigation and listen.
“When she was able, she told us what had happened. It seems that an intruder got into her apartment and released the vapour, but - as she’s now told the police - his purpose was apparently not to steal anything. Once the ether made her too helpless to resist, he injected her with something. As yet we have no idea what it is, but there is no doubt that something has entered her bloodstream. It’s entirely possible that it’s some sort of poison, as Ms Lane claims.”
“Wait a minute...
injected her?”
None of this made sense. Why would someone inject Lois with anything? If someone wanted to harm her, why not just kill her? Unless... unless they wanted her to suffer before she died. Clark swallowed as dozens of possibilities swam in his brain. AIDS. Anthrax. Cancerous blood-cells. Smallpox. Any number of incurable, debilitating, painful viruses. Any number of illness which could kill her.
“Yes. Apparently the man told her that she was going to die. I’ve asked for a number of tests to be conducted on samples of Ms Lane’s blood, but without having any idea of what was in the hypodermic we haven’t a clue what we’re looking at. All we have to go on is what Ms Lane told us her attacker said. The timing’s highly unlikely to be that accurate if it’s true, but according to Ms Lane he told her that she has twenty-four hours to live.”
**********
...tbc
