When Steve saved her, he didn't think he would grow so attached. When Steve left her, she didn't think she'd survive.
(AU themes)
Steve x OC. Eventual Bucky X OC.
18+.
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White light. It was nearly blinding, like the sun trying to break through a scrim of clouds on a winter day. It wasn't the sun however, that nearly blinded Janie and her fellow students before they even got to the autopsy room, it was the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling above their heads.
The air smelled sterile, like a lot of rubbing alcohol and frozen air. Freezers always had a distinct scent to them, but there was something rubbery down here too. Janie couldn't quite put her finger on it at first, but when her eyes caught sight of twelve human-sized, black bags, she realized what that distinct, curious odor was.
Body bags.
It was cold inside the mortuary, but the bright green uniform she wore on top of her clothes offered a little bit of warmth, allowing warm air to circulate between the tunic and her deep blue henley.
Several black plastic bags lined the walls on either side of her. Janie watched her professor grab a hold of one of the gurneys and followed him while he pushed it - and the bag with it - towards another room, through a door with a pneumatic hinge. He pushed the gurney towards the middle of it and stopped it, before pushing his glasses up on his nose and looking around at his student body.
Without saying a word, two of them grabbed the body. One by the shoulders and one by the calves, they hoisted him or her - they couldn't tell yet, but they would in a second - up onto a new table, one with a drain by the dead person's feet and a scale dangling from the ceiling near their head. It's made out of metal completely. Surely if any of them were to lie down on the table, they would begin to shiver almost immediately, but not this person. This person wouldn't shiver even if you dropped them off on the South Pole in nothing but their birthday suit.
"Sign this for me," The professor said, "Remember to bear down hard. It's three copies."
Janie watched while one of her fellow students signed the paperwork. He was wearing the same tunic and his hair was hidden behind a carelessly worn surgical cap. Janie shivered, but not from being cold. The atmosphere in the room felt even colder than the freezers that lined the walls. Probably because the dead people didn't talk. They didn't do much of anything, really.
"What's the story, Janie?" The professor asked her, all eyes - nine pairs - now turned to her.
"Uh," She coughed, "Male, 57 years of age. Found him on the twelfth floor of the Hearst Tower. They were doing some interior decorating on that floor, moving some of the desks around, and re-carpeting some of the offices, so it was mostly deserted. He's probably been there all weekend. Presumable heart attack, he's got the age and weight for it."
"Do you want to do the pericardial cut?" He asked her with one of his grey eyebrows raised.
"Do you want me to?" She replied, biting her tongue.
The professor smiled behind his mask, "Yes, most of us have had the chance earlier in the semester, but since you only just came back, I figured it would be best if you took the opportunity."
