Legend's Apprentice

Accidents

I waited for Wednesday impatiently. I knew who the woman Hawkeye had been practicing with was, she was an expert archer herself and had been recruited to fill in on the Avengers for a time when Mr Barton had been dead for a bit. She told me I could call her Kate, which was nice because "New Hawkeye" was a bit cumbersome. She was maintaining a secret identity, so I wasn't sure if Kate was her actual name, but I kind of thought it was. She wasn't as patient as Mr Barton, but she was still a good teacher and had me focus on refinements to my technique, especially the release, where the bowstring is just supposed to roll off your fingertips, and how I held the bow: clenching the handle in a death grip negatively affects your aiming. She gave me a finger  sling and told me that for target shooters, the bow should practically jump out of your hand when the arrow is released. Just addressing these two issues took the whole practice, but my accuracy had improved a lot and Kate said that precision comes with practice. I felt like I'd accomplished a lot after the training, and my scores the next day jumped a lot: 26, 24, 25, 28, 29, 28. Each end scored a maximum of 30, so I had improved. Substantially. I was really liking being the best at something, even if it was just a unit in gym. I left a note for Kate thanking her for the help and reporting my scores.

I was sorry to end archery; bowling was fun but it didn't seem as interesting to me. But at the end of the archery unit, Coach told me that he was impressed and urged me to continue on my own, telling me how to get involved in archery competitions on the state level and giving me a list of area archery ranges.  After bowling, we moved into volleyball, barf. And basketball was scheduled after that, so yuck for a month. I wasn't very good with team sports.

At work, I kept my head down and focused on my tasks, always tweaking my habits for better efficiency since the other two assistants seemed to be slacking. There was more in the work queue, anyway.

Toward the end of September, I'd finished with the glassware that Thursday night and reluctantly pulled up the next few solutions to be made from the queue, notating the necessary solutes and solvents and the quantities, then pushed my cart into the storeroom. Jeff and Rick were in there too, but they were animatedly discussing a football game they'd seen. I went about my business, first stopping by the solvents, then stopping by the organics storage. I left my cart back a couple paces so I wasn't bumping into it.

It was my undoing. Rick pretended to drop back to make a pass and hit the cart, which rammed into me. I staggered a couple of steps, unable to keep my balance, and slammed into the shelving. My ankle turned and I went down, the shelving unit rocking forward and spilling some of the jars. Some of them broke and I was splashed with the solvents as the cart overturned as Rick accidentally tipped it over. And for the finale, the cord ripped out of a temporary light source; the electricians were working on improving the lighting for us and had left spotlights clipped here and there. The cord had ripped out of one and the live end dropped into the solvent mess. God, that hurt. I managed to jerk myself out of the liquid and managed to get to my feet. I was starting to feel burning and ignored the boys in favor of getting to the emergency shower in the prep room. I stripped off my clothes in a hurry and only then noted the lack of a privacy curtain. I hoped Rick the dick and his buddy stayed in the storeroom, but then forgot about them as the water hit me and I tried to keep my eyes open in the spray. Somewhere along the way my safety glasses had fallen off and stuff had splashed by my eyes. I was doing ok until I felt something slither down my back. I looked down at the drain through my swelling eyes and saw a chunk of my hair.

That's when I started to freak out. And my eyes might be irritated, but the tear ducts still worked fine.

Then the door burst open and people from the clinic swarmed into the prep lab. They washed me off with a thick soap and used a neutralizing solution, then quickly patted me dry, stuck a hospital gown on me, and sat me in a wheelchair, and I was run to the elevator, which had stayed open, and we went down to the clinic.