"Don't touch my clothes!"
Just as the school doctor brought his scissors toward Peter's back, Peter jolted up from the infirmary bed, nearly knocking over the IV stand beside it.
"Hiss-"
He immediately flopped back down, buried his face in the pillow, and let out a groan so exaggerated it sounded deliberate.
"Ow, ow, ow... easy, doctor. The school issued this lab coat, and the quality is terrible. Seriously, it was even smoking just now."
The infirmary fell silent for a moment.
The doctor's scissors stopped in midair as he looked down at the lab coat the corrosive liquid had burned through on Peter's back.
Large sections of fabric had been eaten away.
The skin beneath should have been a bloody mess.
But now, the edges of those horrifying burns had stopped bleeding. The wounds looked as though something invisible had forcibly drawn them together, leaving a fresh, dark-red sheen. Even the worst burns had begun forming thin scabs.
The doctor frowned.
"Parker, how long has it been since you were injured?"
Peter's voice was muffled by the pillow. "About... twenty minutes?"
"Twenty-two minutes," Gwen Stacy said softly from beside the bed.
Peter stiffened.
The doctor put on his gloves and was about to lift the ruined lab coat when Peter grabbed its hem.
"I don't think you need to look."
"The wounds need treatment."
"They've pretty much been treated already."
"By whom?"
"My immune system," Peter answered quickly. "It's always worked really hard."
The doctor looked up at him.
Gwen looked up at him too.
Peter fell silent for two seconds, then slowly buried his face deeper into the pillow.
"Okay, that did sound a little weird."
The doctor wasn't in the mood for jokes. He cut straight through the fabric stuck to Peter's back.
Snip.
Peter's shoulders tensed