Timeline | Bucky Barnes x OC | (1)

Chapter 17- A Little Help

Clara had had experience treating gunshot wounds and taking the bullet out would unleash a torrent of blood that would almost certainly be fatal. She knew the correct steps and was prepared to carry them out, even if it meant disobeying the hospital's rules.

"You can just leave it, nurse. It's fine really, I'm not that bothered." The soldier stammered. There were a dozen soldiers surrounding him who each had their wounds being poked around in by nurses, all of them groaning, some of them screaming, in agony.

"Don't worry soldier, we'll have you cleaned up in a flash."

"If you're sure, miss."

First things first, Clara would have to clean the wound. Whatever was causing that smell needed to go. His leg was a mosaic of sand, engine grease, blood and general, unidentifiable dirt. None of his skin was visible. Clara doused a cotton ball in rubbing alcohol and began the process. Although she wouldn't be cleaning the wound yet, the soldier winced. She tightened her grip on the soldier's leg to steady him and hold him still if he were to squirm. She started a good five inches away from the wound, working around it in circles. At the first touch of the crisp alcohol, he flinched. In response, Clara's grip on his grimy leg strengthened until he relaxed again. Clara edged closer and closer to the wound. The soldier was getting more and more distressed. He twisted his neck around to avert his eyes, which were screwed up tightly anyway. Clara had barely touched the wound but it was enough to cause the poor man to sharply draw an intake of breath and make a pitiful whimpering. Quicker now, Clara stanitized the wound, applied gauze and wrapped it up tightly with a long ravel of bandage.

"There you go soldier, all sorted." Clara declared chirpily and the soldier's screwed up eyes flickered open in delighted disbelief.

"Thank's miss, you're an angel!"

"Nurse Lewis, I need you to attend Private Little in ward 17." an unknown ward sister addressed her. If it weren't for her name badge, she would have been lost in a sea of identical nurses, wearing identical uniforms, each with the same horrified look plastered on their faces that would never leave them until they day they died. N.Lewis, her name badge said. N, not C. Nurse not Clara.

Private Little was just that. He was so small and scrawny and couldn't have possibly been over sixteen years old and looked just like Steve had. If Clara could tell he was no more than a boy, then surely the registration officers could. Yet they had let him sign up anyway and now look where he was. He was half propped up in a hospital bed, leaning back on his elbows. His eyes were shut and his head lolled back. The poor thing was exhausted. Both his trouser legs had been hacked off at the knees to reveal a collection of jagged gashes down his calves. Clara could count five in total but had no idea how many were on the backs of his legs. Thankfully, the majority of them were no bigger than two inches. A particularly nasty one on his left leg extended, from the base of his ankle, beyond his knee cap and was so deep it looked like his leg was threatening to turn itself inside out. Clara walked over the the left side of the his bed and announced herself softly by clearing her throat. Private Little's eyes shot open and immediately found hers. He smiled deliriously and muttered something about what wonders morphine could do. Clara introduced herself as nurse Lewis and told him what she was going to do but none of it was going in. It was a good job really as the nurse who had told her to treat him warned her it could be gangrenous therefore at serious risk of amputation.

Once again Clara started with cleaning the blackened area around the wounds. Methodologically, she lathered cotton balls with rubbing alcohol and delicately sponged off all the trough grime. The raw scarlet of the lacerations were a stark contrast with the white of the soldiers leg. The smell, combined with the stench of the rubbing alcohol, was overpowering. The skin around the slashes were yellowing and dotted with purple bruising. Clara's training and lectures couldn't have prepared her for this. She had seen many slides of gangrenous limbs and been told many times what to do if a patient had suspected gangrene: get a doctor. Nurses weren't trained in amputation.

Clara found a doctor. It wasn't hard with all the patients in the ward, almost every single one of them needed a doctor.

"Very well, nurse. You're dismissed. Could you accompany nurse Jenkins down to ward 9."

Clara nodded and followed the nurse who came over with the doctor down to ward 9- the burns ward. Ward 9 wasn't as crowded as the other wards. Whereas the other wards Clara had been working in didn't have a single free bed and often had men lying on stretchers on the floor to accommodate everyone, ward 9 had only three patients, although you couldn't tell just from looking at them.

"These men need their burns bandaging. I'm sure you can tell why this is a two person job." The nurse said to her as they crossed the ward. They were greeted by a cacophony of whimpering and soft moaning. The soldier Clara and nurse Jenkins had to treat was entirely covered in burns. His skin had been badly burnt and was blistering and peeling all over. His face was unrecognisable. Did he leave a wife or a girlfriend behind?- Clara thought and hoped she would still see the same, once handsome man when he returned. Nurse Jenkins began unwinding a roll of bandage. The soldier was whimpering, his eyes were open but unmoving. They were wide, and staring straight up at the ceiling, yet saw nothing. As soon as nurse Jenkins started to apply the bandage, the soldier screamed in agony. It was grating and chilling, pure pain. An animalistic roar pierced the room yet no one seemed to notice. Nurse Jenkins was seemingly unaffected. Granted, she was a senior nurse and Clara was an undergraduate, but professionalism surely doesn't mute emotions. Eight years of S.H.I.E.L.D work hadn't stopped her from hearing the screams.

Reluctantly, Clara unwound a bandage and dressed his wounds, trying her best to block out the man's screaming like nurse Jenkins. It was wrong. It was wrong to not acknowledge the man's pain and it was wrong to pretend you didn't care. Nurse Jenkins must have picked up on Clara's conflicted emotions, or perhaps it was that she had already wrapped up half his body and Clara hadn't managed to do one arm. Nurse Jenkins snatched the bandage from Clara's hands and carried on wrapping up his arm herself.

"Go upstairs and make yourself useful." nurse Jenkins order, Clara was in such a state of shock that she could only nod. "Pathetic girl." She heard nurse Jenkins mutter as she walked away. Clara stopped to steal a moment in the sluice room. Sure, they washed out the bedpans there and the smell was as powerful as that of gangrene, but she needed a room with a sink because she felt that she was going to vomit.