Clara Lewis: S.H.I.E.L.D agent, New Yorker, accidental time traveller- wait what?!
Clara thought being a S.H.I.E.L.D agent made her life as crazy as it would get. Ever since her accident in the field, she'd become a desk agent but working as Phil C...
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Bucky had been gone for four weeks and Steve was frequently disappearing, still no doubt trying to enlist. For Clara, her trying to enlist as a nurse had come to an end. She was stationed at a training hospital not too far away from Howard's which meant she could still keep living there and carry on helping him out in the lab, a task she had found increasingly more enjoyable since she had first arrived.
Bucky had been gone for four weeks and Clara had been training for three. As required by law, she would need a minimum of ten weeks training before she could be deployed. Her training kept her busy; when she wasn't in lectures, she was in demonstrations; when she wasn't in demonstrations she was in the ward; when she wasn't in the ward she was in the lab. The other girls in her ward were often complaining about how hard they were worked. God forbid if training to be a nurse kept them away from their busy nightlives and dashing boyfriends. Coming from a S.H.I.E.L.D background, Clara was no stranger to discipline. Although most of the other girls had some sort of medical background, even if that was simply knowing first aid, Clara had a level of self-control that the others lacked. She could keep going, tending the ward for the 6 hour shift that destroyed the will of the others. She could sit through their lunch and tea breaks without comparing the array of blisters on their hands. She could carry on working even when the post arrived and not scramble to see if any gentleman caller had sent her a letter.
As of yet, Bucky hadn't written. Clara told herself she wasn't worried. Like her, he would have to go through basic training and she of all people knew how hard that was. S.H.I.E.L.D basic training for the field had almost killed her. Compared to that, nurse's training was a piece of cake.
The ward sister in charge of the team reminded her an awful lot of her ex-field agent lecturer at S.H.I.E.L.D academy. Sister Foster was a fairly tall woman with natural rosy cheeks and full, unpainted lips. Much like her S.H.I.E.L.D lecturer, Sister Foster would have been caring had she been in a less disciplined profession. Everytime she passed Clara, the image of that S.H.I.E.L.D agent flashed before her eyes. God she was terrfying.
Sister Foster would station herself unseen in the ward and observe their actions as they went about their daily duties. Every morning, Clara would head straight down to the ward from breakfast and start sanitising the bedsheets. Everything had to be cleansed; the bed frames had to be sterilised, the floors had to be scrubbed clean and polished, even the doors and door frames had to be sterilised with carbolic solution.
Ward Sister Foster would always be watching from afar, occasionally looming over a girl to inspect how she was carrying out her tasks but never saying anything to them directly. She picked up on every single mistake they had ever made, no matter how small. When nurse Crawford neglected to fold up the extra blankets with their labels facing upwards, Sister Foster disappeared for less than a minute and reappeared again as if nothing had happened. At the end of that shift, the Matron, the spindley, stern faced woman who oversaw every ward in the hospital, dragged nurse Crawford from the ward by the wrists. When the poor girl came back she was in floods of tears.
Clara herself had been taken to the Matron's office and given a stern, and undeserved, talking to for not properly storing the broomstick. She still didn't know how she was supposed to put a broomstick away properly.
Everyday she would return home and be so completely worn out and morally deflated she had no time to help Howard out in the lab. Perhaps being a nurse was preventing her from getting home but she had to admit it was Stark who did all the work. For the first couple of days, Clara could get away with leaving the hospital to go and check in on Stark but as the workload piled on she just simply didn't have the time. Even Clara, a S.H.I.E.L.D agent, began to succumb to the loneliness of her breaks now that she had neither Bucky nor Steve, wherever the kid had disappeared off to, to keep her company. What kept her going was the thought that she was going to help soldiers just like them and, perhaps, see them again one day soon.
