oh captain! my captain! | barnes

needle

What followed was, in the simplest form, a hellish blur.

Steve had taken Bucky inside, generously carrying the limp body of her lover. She somehow managed to follow, the dams in her eyes could not stop the rivers that forced forward.

Doctors immediately took action on the famous, late super soldier. They aided the Captain in putting Bucky on a stretcher, but they wheeled him away from the two.

She extended her right arm hopelessly towards him and held her weak, and broken, left hand on her throbbing heart. She felt every palpation of it in her ears and throat.

"Miss Rolf? Miss Rolf, come with me," it was a young female doctor. She assisted the quiet soldier to a side room.

The doctor helped her to sit on an elevated bed, "You can lay down if you wish."

Audrey quietly laid back on the sterile mattress and looked blankly at the ceiling panels. She wiped her eyes. The red dust was most likely an ugly, smeared mess all over her face.

"So you're a winter solider," the doctor began, and reached for Audrey's crippled left hand. Audrey pulled away instinctively, causing pain to shoot through her wrist and arm and up to her shoulder.

"Let me help you, I have no desire to harm you. If you leave your hand to heal itself, it will heal in a warped manor and cause you further pain, Miss Rolf."

"Sorry."

"It's alright," the doctor said, Audrey sat up and watched the doctor as she felt around the broken hand for specific break points.

She pressed lightly, bringing little pain.

"How do you know Mister Barnes?"

"We met before the war."

"I've read about him, and so that must mean you're-"

"90-some years old," Audrey paused, watching the red head closely, "yeah."

The doctor didn't look up, but instead began making a cast for the hand.

"How did he die?"

"Which time?" Audrey was being serious, but the doctor chuckled dryly. "The first time, he fell off a mountain-side freight car - according to Steve, and this time, I did it."

The doctor looked at her finally, "It happens."

"What does? Killing the only person that brings you to life?" she pursed her lips, "It's a sick world if that's normal." She looked deep into the doctor's eyes.

"I meant accidents happen," the doctor watched her task once more.

"But it wasn't an accident; I was bred to do it, I was wired to hate him, I was destined to kill him. I just hope those doctors are destined to bring him back."

The mold had dried and the lady cracked it apart and began the final cast.

When it was done, it was placed on the soldier's hand and a sling was given to her to support it.

She got off the bed, straightened her clothes and held her head high. Her lip quivered before she bit the inside of her cheek to steady it.

"Thank you doctor," she said before leaving without a response. Audrey walked herself to the waiting room and sat down next to the suited Steve Rogers.

He'd taken off his mask.

A child had stopped playing with an office toy, and looked between the two superhumans.

"Mom," the boy looked to his tired and ill mother, "Mommy, they're superheroes."

She bit hard on the inside of her cheek and looked at her lap to avoid both glares from the patients and tears of her own. She saw Steve look at her, from the corner of her eye. She looked at her folded, balmy hands.

'Superheroes'

Meanwhile, Bucky Barnes's dead body was being operated on in an ER room down the hall.

Three doctors focused on three separate tasks: a heartbeat, blood loss, and brain damage.

The final doctor was relieved in finding there was no brain damage what-so-ever. But the second was not so lucky.

Bucky had lost a whopping thirty pints of blood, he experienced a hemorrhage.

"He'll be gone forever if he's out of blood, we need a donor," the second said. But the first, the heartbeat doctor, said simply:

"We need a heartbeat first though, to pump the blood."

"But the heart can't pump blood if there isn't any," the second argued. And they concurred they would need a donor.

The third, lucky doctor was sent to ask out of the two super soldiers for one donor.

He stood in that fateful waiting room, "He needs blood; we need a donor."

"I'll do it," Steve offered heroically.

"No, you won't. This is my fault and I need to face it. Besides, the serum you have in your veins could negatively affect him," she said simply.

"But you've already with-stained an injury, let me help. He's my friend."

"He's the love of my life, draw my blood doctor," she went in front of the doctor, beyond the authorized personnel only doors. The scrawny male doctor struggled to keep up with her. She paused abruptly:

"Where are we going?"

"Over here," he took her to an empty room and had her injected with a needle and withdrew blood.

The two doctors left with Bucky focused now on damaged tissue, and his collapsed heart.

Back in the blood room, they finished and he disappeared. The female doctor Audrey'd been with previously, entered.

"They just transferred the blood," she said simply. "Do you believe you're a hero yet?"

"No. But I feel less like of a villain."

The doctor handed her a glass of water and a pack of cookies, to replenish the nutrients lost in the exchange.

"Do you know how he's doing?"

"I'm not allowed in the specific ER rooms, I'm a pediatrician. I usually work with kids in the other wing, but I heard and I had to help. I had to meet you," she watched the tough soldier eat the cookies one by one. She dusted the crumbs off her fingers and took a long sip of water.

"I'm not that special. And I'm not a hero like that kid thinks I am. I want to be, trust me, I do. Bucky used to say I bring the hero out of him. But how can that be true? How can a monster remove someone else's monster? I think our monsters - our demons, just play well together."

Audrey looked at the small doctor in purple scrubs, "Focus on Bucky, do whatever you can to help him." She stood and walked to the door and turned to face her once more, "I'll be okay when he's alive and well."