Don had asked his students to join him in the Danger Shop, which was today programmed to look like a street in Midtown Manhattan. "It's our last class together, so I thought we'd do a practical exercise," he said. "Welcome to Manhattan. It's a lovely Friday in June, so..." He clicked a button on the remote, and the simulation started. Screaming, explosions, people running, the works. "Sounds like Dr. Banner has lost his temper again about eight blocks north of here, and..." he cupped a hand around his ear and listened. "Yeah, and Magneto is on a tear about five blocks south. Bruce can't really help it and Mr. Lensherr has a point, but it's hard on the ol' infrastructure. And the civilians...and sometimes the superheroes. You've each been supplied with a virtual version of a first aid kit that Tony Stark supplied to my students last summer," it was a field medic kit, was what it was, "so pick a direction, go find someone moddable in need of first aid assistance, and render aid to the best of your ability. Go! Shoo!"

"Let's talk about what to do if you don't recognize the problem. Your patient has a rash, but it's blue. They're not human, and their anatomy is really different. They were bitten by a radioactive spider, or their problem is caused by a magic spell. If you're unfamiliar with these issues, you may not be sure what to do, and that's okay. There's stuff even the most seasoned ER doc doesn't know.

"The first step is, obviously, not to panic. Take a deep breath. Take a moment, if you need to, and to the extent you can without endangering your patient's life. One time when I was in med school, things went badly wrong in the middle of surgery and the attending walked out of the room, scrubbed out, and then scrubbed back in and came back five minutes later and fixed the problem cool as a cucumber, because he'd taken those five minutes to gather his thoughts and figure out what to do, and that's stuck with me.

"Next, act like it's normal. I don't mean act like you know what you're doing. If your patient is lucid you can ask them all the questions you want about, 'Hey is your heart normally where a human kidney would be?' because hopefully they know better than you, but that blue rash? Don't freak out about it at your patient. It's just going to make them feel bad, and also doubt your ability to help them. Also, proceeding as you would otherwise is never the worst idea. Okay, so the rash is blue. Treat it like you would a rash that wasn't blue until you receive information that makes you change course. Radioactive spider bite? Find out how radioactive it is, obviously, and then treat it like a spider bite and, if indicated, radiation poisoning. It might not be the perfect course of action, but it'll get you farther than standing around doing nothing.

"What else do you think is important to keep in mind when the situation turns out to be not quite what you expected?" Don asked his students. "Let's discuss."

"Some people," Don said to his class, "can fly. I apologize if this is the first you're hearing of this, but it's just the way it is. Maybe they have wings, or magic, or rocket boots. Maybe they are...I believe the term is 'self-yeeting.'" Did he use that term because it annoyed Thor? Yes. "And sometimes those people fall out of the sky or they go smack into a building, because of reasons.

"Now, most of the time people who can fly seem to have some sort of inbuilt protection against the normal consequences of physics. Or body armor, for the guy with rocket boots. And that's great, because falling from great height or slamming into a solid surface at high velocity are usually, you know, very bad for a human or humanoid body. So what are you looking for when your flying friend leaves a them-shaped crater in the pavement and then doesn't get up and walk away?

( Medical talk under here! )

"There are giant lizards invading the town today," Don said, and took a sip of his Starbucks, which had accompanied him without incident on his commute through said giant lizards. Look, he was from Marvel 616 New York. He'd had way worse commutes. "So I won't keep you long. If you're new: Welcome. These things happen. First things first, introduce yourselves. Name, rank, serial number--I kid. I do want your names, though, so I can put faces to the roll, and if you could fill me in on your existing familiarity with first aid training so I know what I'm working with, that would be great.

"Now let's talk about our giant lizard friends. What sort of injuries can we expect to see from a fight with a giant lizard? Well, they've got teeth, they've got claws, so expect some scratching and biting injuries, a lot of sewing up holes. Probably tetanus shots all around. But are they venomous? How do we treat that? They might throw someone into a building or something, so you might want to look for concussions, and maybe some broken bones.

"But now let's reconsider. What if it turns out we've been going about this all wrong, and the lizards are friendly? How do we treat the giant lizards we injured before we figured that out? Discuss." He leaned back against the desk and sipped his coffee.

"Since we find ourselves on a beach...again, but different, I thought we could go over some water safety information today.

( Talk about drowning under here. )

"The subject for today came up a couple of times in my previous workshop," Don told his students, "so I thought we should talk about it, even though I really hope none of you ever have to do it on the training of one summer workshop session. Let's talk about a tracheotomy.

( Medical talk under here! )

Don was a bit out of sorts today. He'd had plans to spend the weekend finishing getting everything planned out for his class after he and Thor had spent the week off doing some hiking along the Appalachian Trail. Instead, he had somehow completely lost the weekend and Thor, after determining that fact, refused to tell him what had happened other than, 'The island did a thing.'

Very helpful, Thor. Very informative.

Flying by the seat of his pants it was!

( So your buddy just cut his hand off with his laser sword )

The students would find their teacher absent again today, although his replacement this time was not Tony Stark but rather a different Avenger.

"Good afternoon," Thor told them. "Blake--Dr. Blake is unable to join you today," because he had been struggling so badly this morning he'd decided to let Thor deal with things before he remembered it was Monday, and then Thor had insisted that he could handle it and refused to swap him back in.

That didn't mean he wasn't going to have some fun with it, though.

"I thought we would discuss today the importance of balancing one's humors."

It was almost a shame he was the only one who could hear Don's astonished, What?

"The four humors, as I am sure you all know, are blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, and an excess or deficiency of any of these can lead to illness..."

( Medical talk under the cut. )

"Let's talk about what to do if somebody's bleeding," Don told his students. "It's probably the first thing you think of when it comes to first aid, right? What is it moms tell their kids? 'Don't bother me unless somebody's bleeding.'" Did moms tell their kids that? It seemed like they did, but Don had never been a kid.

( Medical talk and talk of blood under here. )