This is an alternate version of Chapter 27 ("I can't walk."), with a different injury. And like Chapter 27, it's a lot shorter than most of the others.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.
WORD COUNT: 539
None of them saw it coming. For all that they had scores of enemies wanting to take out the Avengers, they hadn't expected those enemies to have the balls to fly up in a pair of helicopters and start firing on the Tower.
Darcy was in the lab when it happened. More specifically, she was just approaching a lab that had a lot of volatile chemicals in the fume hood, and she was close enough to get blown off her feet when they exploded. She crashed into the wall headfirst, getting knocked out instantly.
Bucky didn't find out about his girlfriend's injury until after the fight was over, and then he was forced to sit through a debriefing before he was finally allowed to go to her side.
It was then that he got the bad news. She was in a coma, which she stayed in for three days. She had a depressed skull fracture, which caused some bleeding in the brain, but the surgeons were able to stop it and save her life.
When she woke up, she had a killer headache, and was prone to migraines afterwards, but was otherwise okay.
Or so they thought.
The first time she'd collapsed and started seizing, she'd been in the common kitchen, trying to perfect her mother's homemade lasagna recipe (her baking was perfection, but she struggled with pasta dishes). Clint had been in there, just grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, and had caught her before she'd hit the floor.
After she suffered a second seizure, the Tower doctors diagnosed Darcy with Post-Traumatic Epilepsy, and prescribed her some antiepileptic drugs. But the drugs did not completely eliminate the seizures, so one doctor also recommended that she get a therapy dog. Since Bucky's own therapist had suggested the same thing of him for his PTSD, Darcy insisted they both get their dogs together.
Darcy got a golden lab she named 'BJ' (Baker Junior, named for one of the dogs she rescued from the Puente Antiguo pet shop). Bucky wound up with a German Shepherd called Isolde. It took some extra work, finding two dogs that were not only up for the job, but were able to get along while living in close quarters.
While Isolde was trained to calm Bucky down when he was anxious and prevent panic attacks, BJ could alert others when Darcy had a seizure, pull her to a safer area if necessary (there was one time when she collapsed just as she was starting to cross the street, and he'd dragged her back onto the sidewalk), and help her 'wake up' after a seizure.
Both dogs marked a major turning point in the couple's life. They went everywhere their owners went, and fit into life in the Tower.
One night, Bucky and Darcy were enjoying a lazy night in with their dogs. Darcy was rubbing BJ's belly when she noticed a small drawstring bag tied to his collar. "What's that you got there, buddy?" she cooed, glancing up at Bucky curiously. When he shrugged, she detached the bag from the collar and tugged it open.
Inside was a beautiful diamond ring.
Here's to all the service dogs out there, who do wonders for their humans every day.
PTE, or Post-Traumatic Epilepsy, is a form of epilepsy caused, as the name suggests, by traumatic brain injuries. I Googled a lot of different types and causes of seizures. On a happier note, I finally figured out why I sometimes jerk awake while falling asleep (it's called a hypnic jerk, a kind of brief myoclonic seizure not linked to epilepsy).
Next time, on 'Whumptober 2018: WinterShock': Caregiver. This one's already written, so it'll be up less than twelve hours from now.
