Suzanne from HR
It took a very special person to run the Human Resources department for SHIELD. SHIELD's agents were literal human resources, used by Fury to do whatever they did best.
Some of them weren't, in the strictest definition, human. Some of them were human but couldn't perform basic functions like paying their rent on time or shopping for groceries. When those agents wanted to learn how to function in society, HR taught them. When they didn't or couldn't, HR took care of them, cultivated the most myopic landlords, set up checking accounts that made automatic payments and had meals and groceries delivered. Even for the most normal of SHIELD's misfit toys, HR managed cover stories and dealt with insurance agencies.
HR was Suzanne's domain and she was very good at her job. She helped people, did whatever they needed to keep going. After New York, it got hard. She spent the first three days doing triage, getting injured agents off the helicarrier, finding work crews that could pass background checks and doling out shots from the bottle in her desk drawer when she couldn't do anything else.
On the fourth day, the head of Medical came in. He looked like he hadn't slept since the attack and he sat wordlessly in her chair for ten minutes before she put a shot of espresso into his hands. "Andrew, did you need something?"
He looked around, nervously, then spoke so quietly she could barely hear him. "Agent Coulson is in my sickbay."
"Oh." She'd heard the notice come in over the emergency channel. "I thought he was dead."
"No, but he's in bad shape. We patched him up, put him on a ventilator. They said Barton was himself again, I wanted to bring him down and make some decisions but Fury shows up and demands Coulson's wedding ring, says he has to tell Barton his husband's dead." Andrew downed the shot of espresso like it was vodka but he didn't look any more alert. "An hour later, Barton shows up with Romanoff and demands to see the body."
"What did you do?" She wasn't sure how to handle this. Fury was supposed to tell he when he pulled shit like this, so she could plan contingencies.
"What could I do? I told them I'd had to cremate all the bodies." Andrew picked up the paperweight off her desk, turning it over and over in his hands. "He cried. I've done field surgery on that guy without so much as a shot of whiskey, I've never seen him cry. Romanoff dragged him out of the room and five minutes later Stark and Rogers come barging in. Stark threatens to sue me, Rogers demands we turn the remains and personal effects over to Barton. Suzanne, you have to help me. I don't have anything to give them."
"Let me talk to Fury. We'll get this straightened out." She opened Outlook on her laptop and scheduled a meeting first thing the next morning. "Fury and his long games. If Barton shows up again, send him to me."
Fury didn't show for their meeting, or the one she scheduled the next day, or the one after that. Barton never showed up at her office, which she was preversly grateful for. At this point, she probably would have taken him down to medical, Fury's plans be damned.
Andrew showed up seven days post-battle sporting a full beard and a twitch. "You've got to get Coulson out of here. He needs round the clock care and we're a trauma ward. When he wakes up he's going to need all kinds of services."
"With a death certificate on file, all his cover identities will have been terminated. He doesn't have any health insurance. I'm going to have to create a new ID from scratch."
"No time." Her email chimed and Andrew startled in his chair. "I've got him pumped full of propofol and we wrapped his face in bandages he doesn't need but we can't keep this quiet much longer. Things are going to go back to normal here pretty soon and someone is going to notice we've got him stashed."
"Okay, deep breaths. I'm going to take care of this. Get me a report of what kind of care he'll need after he leaves the carrier and I'll make sure he gets it." Suzanne glanced at her screen. The email was about recruitment and she wanted to punch her screen. She didn't care anymore. She was getting Agent Coulson out of here.
The problem was, the situation was really complicated. Agent Coulson was a Level Seven agent and he was legally dead at the moment. There were things in his head that no one below his clearance level could hear so she couldn't just stash him in any hospital.
Fury wouldn't meet with her, wouldn't let her in on whatever the hell he was doing and she couldn't wait any longer.
She made a few phone calls. The first was to American Express. The second was to the penthouse at Stark Tower. She slept the sleep of the just.