Teacher

"You want me to work with who?" I'm pretty sure my voice got louder at the end of the sentence. I had moved all the way across the country to work with two special amnesia patients. I hadn't been given their names, but that wasn't all that unusual. But, but Captain America and Bucky Barnes? Are you people out of your mind?

To backtrack a moment. I'm Melody Bishop. A divorced, middle-aged, former teacher turned therapist. After leading PTSD therapy groups for the VA for several years I changed my focus and started working with Dr. A., a leader in therapy for amnesia patients. His theory was that helping amnesia clients was easier if they had some place to hang what memories that did come up. Which is partly why he hired me. I know how to teach.

About a month ago, Dr. C., a well respected psychiatrist in the field of trauma induced issues contacted Dr. A. The end result was a 6-9 month contract for me in New York. To work with freaking Captain America and his best friend.

After I calmed down I realized that this could be one of the most amazing adventures of my life. Or a really God awful one. In any event, I had clients to get ready for. Besides my two celebrity clients I was also going to run two PTSD groups. Since the New York alien invasion and the Insight/Shield/Hydra disaster in D.C. there was no shortage of vets, police, and just plain folks who were freaking out.

For security reasons my sessions with the super soldiers had to take place at the Avenger's Tower. Dr. C. escorted me over for the first sessions. He was to introduce me to the guys. Pretty amazing place! I had to go through retinal and fingerprint scans, besides a good checking of my ID.

I met with Captain America first. Correction, Steve, is what he wants me to call him. He's really as big as he seems on television. Charming too. He'd love me to believe that there's nothing wrong with him. He really doesn't need to spend a couple of hours a week with me. Uh huh. And I'm not paying for a storage unit back in California every month. Not buying it, Steve.

"Look, Steve, " I paused, praying I wouldn't have to go through this every session. "An amnesia victim is someone who has a gap in his or her memory-often due to some kind of trauma. Physical or psychological. You have a 70 year gap. That's really large. And I would consider being stuck in a frozen plane rather traumatic. Your situation, frankly, isn't typical. But the fact is that you have that 70 year gap. I suspect you often feel out of place in the here and now.

'I'm pretty sure you've been trying to fill in the gaps. But I doubt it's been a systemic study. Hit and miss?" Steve had the grace to look sheepish and nod. "What I propose to do for you is to create an orderly study of what happened in the world since you fell into the ice. Not just the history. Not just the politics. We'll look at art, music, inventions, and even sports. For example, have you figured out yet that half the baseball teams you knew are elsewhere now-some of which with different names?"

"Yeah. It's confusing the heck out of me. The Brooklyn Bums in Los Angeles. A whole lot more teams-players from all over the world. How did all that happen?"

"We'll look at all that. And what happened in the movies. The invention of television. All sorts of cool, or should I say, interesting stuff. The goal is to give you an understanding of how we got to where we are now. I use my computer to give us multimedia presentations. So it's not going to be just me being a talking head. I will try to make it as interesting as possible. Is this sounding more like something you'd be interested in?

I could see that Steve was thinking about this. Then clearly another thought struck him. "Is this what you'll do for Bucky?"

"The therapy for Mr. Barnes will be similar in some ways, but very different in others. You need a way to understand this time frame. Mr. Barnes is, in many ways, closer to a classic amnesic. According to Dr. C., some of her memories are returning. We don't have any way of knowing how much of his memory he will recover. But what memories he is regaining he doesn't know what to do with. He has no memory of his past, so he doesn't know where the memories belong. I want to help him create a personal time line. So that when memories do resurface he will have some idea where they belong-where to put them. He's still going to have to deal with stuff, both good and bad, but lowering the amount of confusion will help." I paused. "Actually, creating a personal time line won't hurt you either."

Steve was being honest with me now. "You've given me a lot to think about."

"Good. Then let's start with our first lesson.." I hit the first button on my laptop. "WWII wasn't just about Europe. While you were dealing with Hydra, there was a whole other theater of war in the Pacific. Let's look at that and what happened after you crashed."

It was a good session. Steve honestly wanted to know. He was glad to hear about the Marshall Plan. The use of the Atom Bomb horrified him. Then we switched to the arts. He was sad to hear of the demise of woman's professional baseball. He and Bucky were looking forward to seeing some games when they got back. That led to a discussion about life back in the U.S. during the War and how that was going to change once the men got back. Falling back on his WWII era thinking he assumed that the women would be glad to leave the factories and to start homes and families. "Why would they be?" I asked him. "They had jobs and their own income. They had options. Limiting a woman to just being home makers is limiting what they can do."

He looked confused. "Would you want to limit the Black Widow to staying home and raising children?"

"God no! I think she'd hurt anyone who suggested it!"

"So you will need to learn how things changed to allow women freedom they didn't have in your era." I left Steve with some homework. Since he had learned some computer skills, I asked him to look up the history of what happened with baseball, American football, (and any other sport he wanted to) and art from the end of the War to around 1950. I had some info on inventions he could look up in prep of the next week as well.

"And save your questions. If I can't answer them next session, I will note them and we'll get to them eventually.

My session with Mr. Barnes was completely different. Steve escorted Barnes and Dr. C. in. Like with Steve, once Dr. C had introduced me to Barnes, he left. Steve made sure I knew that he would be outside if Bucky or I needed him. So there we sat, me and Barnes. Physically Mr. Barnes is shorter than Rogers. And not as physically imposing. Certainly no sign of any charm. He could be a poster child for the ultimate Goth. Except for the fact that his expressionless face and body posture screamed that he was deadly. He looked like he could kill me 16 different ways without even trying. Yet there was something about his eyes that gave me hope that maybe there was someone in there who was a decent human being in need of help.

I always liked a challenge. "Mr. Barnes, my name is Melody Bishop. I'm here to help you. Silence and a blank stare. Was his mind even in the room with me? "I understand that you've been having problems dealing with the memories that have been coming up."

Suddenly he was engaged in the conversation. The change was faster than I had expected. And very intense. "How can you help me? Can you make the bad memories go away and only let the good ones come?"

I wasn't going to let him intimidate me. "I can't control what memories escape from the prison of your mind, or when. What I can do is to give you a place to put them. You can create a personal time line-a chart, if you want, of everything that has happened to you in the last 70 years. And like Steve, I can help you learn how the world has gotten to where it is. And not just the political history. I can help you learn how music changed, what inventions led to the next inventions, how television changed our world, sports, you name it and we an add that information to help you become more at home in our modern world. Even if you never regain all your memories, you need to learn how to function in this time, this place. I can help you get there."

The intensity dialed back a bit. I could almost see the wheels turning in his brain. "So if I have new knowledge of what happened in the past it will help me understand where these memories go?"

"Yes." I answered. "Once you understand when the memories happened you can also place where they happened, and who is in them. And if you understand all that, you can deal with those memories. The good memories you can cherish. The bad ones you have people like Dr. C. to help you deal with them."

Almost haltingly Barnes stated, "I do not understand how I can get better. I have been a weapon, not a man. I'm not this Bucky that Steve wants me to be."

I thought a minute. This was a serious and important question. "Mr. Barnes, you are no longer a weapon. That ended when you walked away from Hydra. They mistreated you and forced you to become the Winter Soldier. That's not who you are anymore. You have started walking a road that will lead you into being a human being, a man again. No, you're not Bucky Barnes anymore. But then Steve Rogers isn't the skinny, short, asthmatic kid he used to be either. The heart of Rogers, I suspect is the same though. We all change. And because we're human, we have the ability to change if we have become what we don't want to be."

'I don't know if Bucky Barnes would have fit in very well with the world as it is now. I think James Buchanan Barnes can make a good place for himself."

"But what can I do? All I know how to do is kill!" It was an anguished cry.

I looked him in the eye. A child doesn't know how to fix a sink or build a car. They have to learn. You can learn. You get to decide what you want to do with the rest of his life. But that's a topic for another day. And that day will happen. For now, let's start with putting good stuff back in that brain of yours. OK?"

Barnes nodded. "Why do you call me Mr. Barnes?"

I smiled. We were reaching less emotional ground and Barnes was still interacting with me. So far, very good. "I will call you by whatever name you choose. Until you tell me otherwise, I will call you Mr. Barnes as a show of respect. Now, how much do you remember about WWII or anything else that has happened in the world?"

He turned sullen again. Clearly a sore point. "Nothing."

"Ok then, we'll start at the beginning. I'm going to skip a lot of details at first so please try to stay with me. Let me know if I loose you." I had the computer project a picture of the earth in the Pangaea form. "Some people think that this is how the world we live in used to look." Fast forward to show the continents moving. "This is how our world looks now. The blue is the water and the green or brown the land." I talked briefly about the hunter-gatherer societies being changed by the start of agriculture. Then briefly on to the concept of cities and group of cities.

I lost him for a few minutes about then. He reminded me of one of my veterans having a flashback. I waited quietly. One never knows where a flashback will lead a person. Eventually he came back to himself. I merely asked, "Back with us?" And when he nodded I resumed about where I had stopped. We got as far as the concept of conquest and imperialism when I stopped. Except for the flashback, he seemed to be taking it all in very intently. I suspect there was a solid intelligence under that messy, long hair.

For homework I gave him a disc with a very interactive world history text. I told him I stopped the information with the Age of Discovery (starting with Columbus). We'd look at that next. There was a brief issue with the fact that Barnes did not have computer access in the Tower unless supervised. A disembodied voice that identified itself as Jarvis informed me that a stand alone computer was being placed in Mr. Barnes room for his use. He would not be able to access the rest of the Stark computers, or the internet, but he could access the disc I game him. It's a start. I thanked Jarvis.

Barnes had been quiet for quite a while. Then suddenly, "Call me James." I'm sure my surprise showed. "While you were talking I had a memory return. I was quite young. I was in a room with other children. We sat in rows in those odd chairs with tables attached. There was a woman in charge who was teaching us. She was kind. She explained things so that everyone could understand. I think you are like her. She called me James."