Hell Bound

Five

Graham didn't have anything other than what was already in his backpack. So once we got our food, I took him back to my house. He seemed as fascinated by the house as he was by the car. And the moment I opened the front door, he immediately abandoned his quest to help me unload groceries and went right for the books.

"Oh, wow," he said as he plucked one off a shelf. "What's this one about?" I dumped the bags in the living room and returned to get the rest.

"I don't know. I've never read it. My commanding officer gave it to me last time I saw him," I told him. Then I paused at the door. "At least I think it was the last time I saw him."

"Radical." He flipped through the pages, and I headed back to the car to empty the trunk.

When I got back, he was right where I'd left him but now fully immersed in whichever book he'd picked up next. I made it two feet toward the hall with the groceries before I stopped.

The backdoor was cracked open. There was a smear of blood above the door's handle. I followed the trail that almost blended into the shadows before disappearing into the kitchen. I slowly set the bags down on the floor and slid my pink knife out of the pocket I'd made for it in my sleeve. Then I cautiously crept down the hall to find the source of the blood.

He was sitting on the kitchen floor, propped up against the counter in a pool of his own blood. His long legs were spread out lazily, and the entire left side of his body was red. His head was leaning against the counter, and his eyes were closed. If he'd heard us come in, he didn't show it. My heart leaped.

"Bucky!" I dropped my knife and rushed to his side. I fell beside him, and his eyes parted just slightly. He had one of my dishtowels pressed against his stomach, and I peeled it back to look at the wound. The towel was soaked through with blood, and there was a large chunk of metal sticking out of his abdomen.

"I didn't know where else to go," he mumbled.

"What the hell happened?" I jumped over to his other side to keep the pressure on the wound while I dug my first-aid kit out from under the sink. He lifted his right hand, stained red with sticky blood, spread out his fingers, and said one word. "Boom."

It was apparent that he'd turned his body to the side so his left arm would take the brunt of the force and block his skull. But there was blood from his head to his legs. I couldn't tell exactly what the damage was, except for the obvious bits of shrapnel and broken glass that were sticking out of his clothes and dotted across his jaw. Graham hurried down the hall and made it into the doorway before coming to an abrupt halt.

"Is everything o...," he started. But Bucky had his gun out of the holster at his side so fast I couldn't stop to explain anything. The movement was apparently causing him tremendous pain. His lip was pinched between his teeth. He was breathing hard, and his hand shook as if the gun was too heavy.

"Bucky, stop," I said, putting my hand on his arm and forcing him to lower the weapon. "He's my friend."

"Who are you?" he asked.

"My name is Graham McGuire...," he started, then looked at me with a question in his eyes. It was pointless to answer, but I did anyway.

"He was a sergeant," I told him.

"Sir," he quickly added.

"He's okay, Bucky. Put the gun down. You can't shoot my friend."

I wasn't sure if he was obeying my wishes or just couldn't hold the gun up anymore. He dropped his hand to his side. The gun thunked against the linoleum, and he went back to breathing through his teeth, clutching at the sharp piece of metal lodged in his gut.

"Help me move him to the couch," I instructed Graham.

"We should take him to a hospital," he replied, cautiously stepping toward Bucky's other side. Bucky's hand shot up and yanked the kid's jacket. He pulled him down so hard that the kid slipped in the blood and came face-to-face with Bucky's pallid face and cold eyes.

"No hospital," he growled.

"We can't take him to a hospital," I agreed. "Just help me get him up."

We both took an arm and helped Bucky onto his feet. His metal hand dug into my shoulder painfully as we tried to take the weight off his wounds. Then the two of us half dragged him down the hall, passed the abandoned grocery bags, and helped him onto the couch. Bucky was making a lot of grunting noises but seemed relieved once he got to lie down. I pushed Graham back out of the way, took off my now bloodied coat, and reached for the knife strapped to Bucky's thigh. Then I ripped it into his shirt and yanked it down, exposing the wounds and tearing the fabric away from them.

It was much worse than I expected. The pieces of shrapnel and glass had ripped holes in his clothes, almost pinning them to his chest. His skin was pocked with them. Most of the cuts could be fixed with a pair of tweezers and a few sutures, but there were a few larger chunks that could cause him to bleed out before his rapid healing could kick in. There could even be punctured organs or arteries. I turned back to Graham. He was standing on the other side of my coffee table, looking as sickly and pale as Bucky. Our dinner and groceries were long forgotten.

"Upstairs closet. In the hallway. Get some towels," I told him. He stepped back but kept his eyes on Bucky's bloody chest.

"How many?" he asked.

"All of them." He turned toward the stairs and disappeared. I looked down at Bucky and pressed my hand against the side of his face that wasn't covered in blood. He wasn't keeping his eyes open, and that was worrying me. Bucky wasn't the kind of person who let his guard down. Especially not in the presence of people he technically didn't know. "Bucky, hey. Do you know who I am?" I asked.

"I know—that you jumped in front of Stark to protect me," he muttered through clenched teeth.

"I'm going to help you, okay? The kid is going to help me. I need you to trust us. Can you do that?"

"I don't think I have a choice."

"Good. Now try to stay awake."

I finished removing the rest of his shirt from the chunks of broken glass and metal in his chest. I heard Graham back on the stairs a moment later. He hurried to my side and dropped the towels in a heap on the coffee table.

"First-aid kit in the kitchen. Can you bring it to me?" I asked. His face was still pale, and he looked about five seconds away from a panic attack, but he gave me a quick nod.

"I really think we should take him to a hospital," he said.

"We can't."

"Why not? Is he a criminal or something?" I took the knife and ripped it into the collar of Bucky's shirt. It was still attached except for the parts I'd shredded to expose his chest. I sliced the blade all the way down his sleeve until I could pull his arm out without jostling him. Even in the dim light of my living room, it gleamed. Shiny. Metal. Graham didn't answer. He had his eyes on Bucky and a look of pure terror on his face.

"We can't take him to a hospital, or they'll hurt him or kill him. Do you understand?" He gulped and nodded. "And I need you...." I took a deep breath. "Look—there are only a few things in this world that I care about. This man is one of them. I need to know that I can trust you. You can't tell anyone he's here. You can't tell anyone you've seen him. Not a stranger or a friend or even Stark. Please tell me that I can trust you?" He looked back at me and nodded.

"You can trust me, Johanna."

"Jo. We're friends now. You can call me Jo. And I need your help."

"First-aid kit. I'm on it." He turned around and disappeared down the hall.

"I don't trust him," Bucky said softly. "He could be lying." I went back to work and finished ripping the shirt off to get a better look at every injury. Luckily, the material of his pants seemed thick enough so that there weren't any deep cuts or shrapnel in his legs. At least nothing that worried me. I guessed that he went into a fetal position and used his arm to block his head. It probably saved his life. But he still ended up covered in metal and glass.

"He's just a kid," I retorted.

"You shouldn't trust him either. They're coming for you."

"I don't know anything about that because I haven't heard from them or you in months." He pinched his eyes shut again.

"You can't tell him I'm here," he said.

"Who?"

"You know who."

"You know he's looking for you, right?"

"Don't tell him. Please?"

"Fine. I won't tell him. But Stark is monitoring my house. He's going to know someone's here."

"I disabled it. Temporarily. He'll figure it out in about an hour. Don't tell him either."

"I wouldn't." Graham returned to the living room with the first-aid kit and sat it beside the towels. "Okay, here's what we need to do," I told them. "I need you to hold him down while I try to remove the shrapnel."

"I'm pretty sure I won't be able to hold him down. He's practically a cyborg," Graham said. "He could probably kill me with his pinky finger."

"Well, he's not going to do that. Right, Buck?"

Bucky answered by moving his metal hand down over the largest chunk of metal in his abdomen and yanking it right out. He let out a sound that must have been from pain, almost a grunt, and a smothered shout, and then tossed the metal to the floor. It clanked against the bookshelf on the other side of the room.

"Shit," I said as blood began to pump out of the wound. "You shouldn't have done that."

"You said you needed it out," he reminded me.

"I needed it out slowly. Towel. Towel!"

Graham jumped forward and shoved one into my hand. I climbed on top of Bucky and pressed against the wound with all my weight. He let out another smothered shout and gripped my waist with both hands. He was pinching his eyes shut and biting his lip so hard I was surprised he didn't draw blood. I knew it cost him a considerable effort not to crush my hipbone in his hand.

"I need to get in there to see how deep the wound is and make sure there's nothing left in it," I told Graham. "I need the flashlight that's in the drawer under the microwave, and I need you to turn on the overhead light—just all the lights. There should be a bottle of rubbing alcohol under the sink. I'll need that too." He bolted toward the kitchen to go find everything. "And get the lighter too! And hurry!"

"I'm trying!" he called back.

"I didn't mean to bring this on you," Bucky mumbled. "I didn't know where else to go."

"It's okay. You came to the right place." He dropped his hands from my waist, and his expression went slack. His head hit the arm of the couch. "Bucky, are you with me?" His eyes parted for just a moment.

"I'm fine. Never better in my entire life."

Graham ran back into the room, balancing everything in his hands. He dropped everything on the table, and I reached for what I'd need as he scrambled to get all the lights on.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do," I started. "I need you to hold the flashlight behind me. Try to shine it directly into the wound once I expose it and pull the skin back. Can you do that?"

"Oh shit, dude. I don't know. I think I'm going to be sick. Or have a panic attack."

"Can you hold off on that?"

"I'll try."

"I think there might be too much blood for me to get a good enough look. So I might have to do some digging. I'll need both of you to stay conscious. I'll need you to hand me supplies as I ask for them. Can you do that for me?" Graham nodded quickly and gulped.

"I'll do it. I can do it," he assured me. Or maybe he was just reassuring himself.

"Bucky, I need you to stay as still as possible, okay?" I turned back to him. He didn't answer. His eyes were closed again. I leaned forward to check his pulse. His heartbeat was too slow for someone with his metabolism, but it was steady. "Buck? Bucky?" I tapped on his cheek with my hand. "Bucky? Baby, wake up." His eyes opened, and he lifted his hand up to slide the pad of his thumb over my cheekbone. It left behind a smear of sticky blood on my skin.

"Be still. I got it. Easy job," he mumbled.

"And try to stay awake."

"Mm." He shut his eyes and dropped his hand. I took a deep breath and turned to Graham.

"Are you ready for this?" I asked.

"Shit, no," he said with a shake of his head.