Anybody recognize this chapter title? If you do, then you know what time it is :)
Chapter 13: Electrical Misfire Waiting to Happen
Steve turned a page in the book he was reading for English class when he heard his door open. "Steve, we need to talk." That certainly didn't bode well. Whenever Mom adopted that tone, she broached a topic Steve didn't want to discuss. What would it be this time?
"Sure," he replied, closing the book and standing from his desk to follow her to the kitchen, where all important discussions took place. Dad already awaited them. If both his parents were involved, this must be serious.
"What's happening?" he asked.
"Your mom and I have been thinking," Dad began, and Steve's stomach sank. He knew he wasn't going to like where this was going. "And we want to consider homeschooling you for high school."
"What?" Of all the possible difficult topics to discuss, this was the last one Steve expected. He'd had no idea that was even on the table, naively assuming he'd be going to Hudson Creek with all his friends.
"Hear us out," Mom implored.
"I don't really want to," he said matter-of-factly. "If I have any say in this, I will say no."
"Of course you have a say, but so do we, and there's a lot we have to consider."
Steve doubted they could tell him anything about starting high school that he didn't already know, but he knew he wouldn't get away with evading this conversation. "I'm listening."
"We have no way of knowing how much time you'll spend at Gravesen in the coming year, and it will be hard to keep up with your schoolwork if it's so inconsistent."
"I've managed that inconsistency so far. I can continue to manage," he avowed.
"Very well, but Hudson Creek is a much bigger school than any you've attended, and more people means more germs."
"I know how to wash my hands." He'd been practicing extra precautions when it came to germs his entire life.
"We know you do, but it's a risk we have to think about. It's also a lot bigger physically, which means a lot more walking, and your lungs are the weakest they've ever been."
"I know my limits," he insisted. "Just because I need a little extra air doesn't mean I'm an invalid."
"Of course not!"
"We never said you were an invalid," Dad assured.
"Then why are you treating me like one?"
"We're not. We're just thinking of ways to accommodate your needs."
"Have you ever asked me what my needs are?" They opened their mouths to respond, but Steve cut them off. "Don't try to tell me that you have, because you definitely haven't. You seemingly made up your minds about this already, and not until now did you even consult me."
"We haven't already made up our minds."
"Haven't you? If you haven't, then why am I having to push so hard to sway you in the other direction?" Steve's tirade had left him mildly out of breath, but it also rendered his parents speechless. They looked to each other, then at him, then back to each other before continuing.
"Tell us, then," Mom said. "What do you need?"
"I'm going to start with what I don't need. I don't need to be wrapped in cotton wool, and I don't need yet another thing to set me apart from everyone else my age. I don't need to sit at home with a private tutor or whatever while my friends go to classes together, complain about homework, get detention, and go to sports games. What I do need is to take advantage of every opportunity to be normal, because I don't know how many of those opportunities I'm going to get."
Having made his point, Steve stood and strode back to his room. If that wasn't enough to convince them to let him go, nothing would. He took three deep breaths to steady himself and called the only person he trusted to diffuse his anger.
"Steve, I was just about to call you," Bucky said urgently. "You're not going to believe what just happened."
"Likewise," Steve said.
"You go first," they both insisted. "No, you."
"Fine, I'll go," Bucky acquiesced. "My parents want to send me to private school."
"No way! My parents want to switch me to home school."
"No way!"
"Yes way. I threw everything I had to convince them otherwise, but I'm still waiting on a verdict. I just gave a passionate speech and stormed out like three minutes ago."
"What did you say?"
"Just how I need to act on opportunities to be a normal kid because I don't know how many I'll get."
"Man, that's deep. Please don't hate me for this, but I used a similar tactic."
"What did you do?"
"I told my parents I wanted to go to high school with you because I have to spend as much time with you as possible before…you know."
"Bucky, I'm not actively dying," Steve reminded him. Yes, being put on oxygen was a blow, but his decline had stalled and he was working on maintaining lung function and even regaining some of what he'd lost.
"I know, but it's hard not to worry about you one day not being there. Which is why we have to go to Hudson Creek together so you can be there to keep me and the guys in line."
"Bucky, you're going to make me cry," Steve said, eyes already burning. If his parents still decided to keep him home for school, he couldn't imagine how horrible he would feel every day knowing what he was missing out on. Fortunately, they came in mere minutes after he hung up and apologized for even considering taking that normalcy away from him. Both he and Bucky registered for classes at Hudson Creek along with all the other kids in their grade. And of course, they made sure to pick as many of the same courses as possible in the hopes their schedules would line up.
~0~
Like most eighth grade boys, they were chomping at the bit to finish the school year to have the greatest summer of all time before they started high school, when academics and activities got really serious. Steve and Bucky spent almost every single day with their friends, doing everything from playing video games, to shooting soccer balls for Bucky to practice goalkeeping, to getting lost in the city. On one memorable occasion, the five of them watched the movie Five Feet Apart, about the star-crossed love between two cystic fibrosis patients. Steve had no desire to see it, already embarrassed by how emotional he was bound to become, but Jim pestered him until he agreed. It was certainly an unlikely choice of film for a bunch of fourteen-year-old boys, but Steve figured their motivation to watch was situated mostly in teasing him.
Sure enough, he was the only one among them to cry. The movie's accuracy in portraying CF pleasantly surprised him, but predictably the conclusion and certain events in the middle affected him far more drastically than any of the others because of his life experience. Watching unearthed painful memories of Logan and Scott, but also some fond memories of ways he and Brian had devised to play together from a distance. "Forget Romeo and Juliet, this is the real star-crossed lover shit," Gabe said. Steve agreed wholeheartedly. In general, he believed the hospital was no place to kindle a romance. There were too many variables and the risk of having his heart broken was far too great. Making hospital friends was emotionally difficult enough; their struggles became his struggles and vice versa. Sometimes he wondered if it was even worth it.
~0~
Barely a few weeks into summer, Steve started to feel the symptoms of an exacerbation. He didn't want to be admitted for a tune-up, especially when his stay would encompass his birthday, but it was apparent they had no choice. His hospital suitcase stayed packed all the time now, so it didn't take long to prepare for departure. They put him in his usual room, 1217, and his parents helped with some unpacking before heading home for the evening. Steve knew this routine so well by now that he let his mind drift off while he worked.
"Is that an Uncle Sam poster?" a voice asked incredulously from the doorway. Steve startled and turned around, the poster slipping to hang crooked since he hadn't finished securing it.
"Uh…yeah," he stammered. The newcomer, a girl not much older than him wearing a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt and plaid pajama pants, waltzed in and leaned against the wall with her arms crossed.
"So you're prospective army?"
"N—No." He thought his physical appearance made it rather obvious that he could never be such a thing.
"Sucks, doesn't it?" she said knowingly.
"What does?"
"Wanting something you know you can never have."
"I guess so," Steve said warily. This girl made him uneasy; he was accustomed to boldly introducing himself to others, not the other way around. Steve decided to turn the tables and ask her, "Do you?"
"Do I what?"
"Want something you can never have," he clarified.
"I would sell my left lung on the black market for a real cup of coffee," she huffed. After giving him a cursory once-over, she continued, "But it looks like you already made a deal like that, huh?"
Steve's hand flew to the cannula across his face. He knew she was kidding, but he couldn't help but take offense at the comment. Who did she think she was approaching him so crassly? Well, they did say to fight fire with fire.
"I exchanged it for an ice cream cone, actually."
"What flavor?"
"Vanilla."
"Not worth it. I'd maybe give a kidney for vanilla, but a lung? I'd need at least fudge swirl to give that up. With sprinkles."
"You drive a hard bargain."
"Carol Danvers," she introduced. "Resident patient, former prospective Air Force Academy applicant, and electrical misfire waiting to happen."
"Steve Rogers, repeat offender," he reciprocated.
"Repeat offender? Here I was thinking I'd stumbled upon fresh meat."
"Sorry to disappoint, but this has been my second home for nearly a decade. You'd be hard pressed to find a single person here who doesn't recognize me."
"A decade? Impressive."
"Welcome to the world of the chronically ill," he shrugged. "How long have you been here?"
"Oh, about a week."
"And how long will you be staying with us?"
"As long as it takes," she sighed.
"To…?"
"To die."
"Well that's…morbid. Terminal cancer?" he asked. If that was the case she'd probably be in hospice at home or another facility, but maybe that hadn't been arranged yet.
Carol shook her head. "Heart transplant candidate."
"So you're here until they find a heart?"
"Ideally, yeah."
"But then you won't die."
"Well, I will be dead by most definitions of the word for the period between the removal of the first and the introduction of the second heart. They don't pull that sucker out still beating, you know."
"I figured. I just assumed you meant dead in a more…permanent sense, when you mentioned it the first time."
"Makes sense. I've always thought having a transplant is basically throwing Thanatos the middle finger. For a while you're missing a vital organ and you're his for the taking, but then they plop another one in and rip you from his clutches."
"Who's Thanatos?"
"Greek god of death," she explained curtly. "The malevolent being who ultimately takes us all."
"That's horrifying."
"Is it? I feel like it's better to personify it, as opposed to cowering in the face of some unknowable force."
"Carol, I hate to break it to you, but you need a hobby. You clearly have way too much time to reminisce about death."
"Is there an acceptable amount of time to spend reminiscing about death?"
"Yes. None."
"Alright. What do you do then, Rogers, to ensure you don't have time for reminiscing?"
He wavered at her use of his last name, but she said it so authoritatively, almost endearingly, that he couldn't bring himself to protest the nickname. She'd also wanted to join the military, so maybe this was her offering what little taste of it they could have.
"Well, Danvers, I like to draw," he replied. She smirked at his returning the gesture.
"You any good?"
"You tell me." He picked up his folder full of drawings he'd been about to put up on the wall and plopped it down on the bed. Carol strode over and started leafing through it. Steve watched her face carefully to gauge her reaction. Her eyebrows raised ever so slightly in the manner of someone impressed with what they saw.
"Who's this?" she asked, pulling out a drawing and turning it to show him.
Steve blanched. He hadn't even glanced at that since his last hospital stay, and the sight of it unearthed old, partially buried grief. "That's Scott," he mumbled.
"Your brother?"
Steve shook his head. "Just a friend."
"From here?"
He nodded. "Neuroblastoma patient. He—he died a few years ago."
"I'm sorry," Carol said, sounding genuinely sincere. Based on the course of this conversation, Steve hadn't been sure she was even capable of such emotion. "This drawing is pretty darn good, though. You've got talent, Rogers."
"Thanks."
"Do you draw all the friends you meet here?"
"I try to."
"Would you draw me?"
"Uh…sure." Carol sat down in one of the chairs beside the bed and looked up at him expectantly. "You mean now?" Steve questioned.
"Why not?"
"I was in the middle of unpacking."
"Your stuff's not going anywhere."
"Okay." Steve pulled out his sketchbook and a few pencils.
"A word of advice," Carol began.
"So you're an art expert now?" Steve said sardonically.
"No. This isn't about brush thickness or feathering technique. I was just going to say that you shouldn't draw what you see."
"What does that even mean?"
"Draw what you want to see," she said cryptically. Steve opened his mouth to ask for clarification, but Carol shut him down with a look. He sensed she wasn't going to offer any more words, so he just started drawing. From the first contact of his pencil with the paper, he knew exactly where he wanted to take this. Steve drew what he wanted to see, what he wished the universe had been kind enough to grant them. He glanced periodically to Carol's face for reference, and he could tell that she approved of the direction he was going. If she could make out the drawing upside down, he didn't know, but she must've seen the intention in his eyes.
She interrupted as he was about halfway finished, "Before you stupidly misinterpret anything that's going on here and inevitably make a fool of yourself, I need you to know that I'm not into guys."
The tip of Steve's pencil snapped off in his shock. He by no means was even leaning in that direction. They'd just met barely half an hour ago, for goodness' sake. "I—I wasn't suggesting anything like that," he stammered.
"I know you're not. Just covering my bases. Don't look so scared," she said with a chuckle. He shook himself and grabbed a new pencil to continue drawing. Their dynamic had stuttered with those comments, but they soon slipped back into companionable silence. There weren't many people that he could sit quietly with without it being awkward, but Carol evidently belonged to that group. When he finished, he was hesitant to show her, afraid that she wouldn't like it.
"Show me the goods," she insisted, and he ripped the page out to hand it to her. She stared at it without reacting at all for a solid thirty seconds before a grin slid onto her face. "Rogers, you've outdone yourself."
"Really?" he asked, the relief overly evident in his tone.
"Really. Somehow you even managed to make this look like my favorite fighter jet model."
"What?"
"I'm serious. You have a gift."
"Thank you. I'm glad you like it. You can keep it."
"No way. This belongs in your collection with your other Gravesen friends," she insisted, tucking the drawing neatly into the folder.
"Oh, okay." He expected her to want to keep it, but he was secretly glad she offered it to him. It was one of his best pieces to date. "Is there anyone else on the ward right now?"
"Nope. Clint left a few days ago. That's part of the reason I barged in here. I was desperate for the company of someone my own age."
"You got to meet Clint?"
"Yeah. Sweet kid. Tough, too."
"Yeah," Steve sighed. The poor kid had been coming here almost as long at Steve had, but for a disease that wasn't supposed to persist for that long.
"The Ancient One hates my guts because if I skip class she has nothing to do all day."
"What are you talking about? I'm pretty sure she teaches to an empty room anyway on days no one shows up," Steve snickered.
"You know what, you're right. I'll bet I could send a cardboard cutout of myself and she wouldn't know the difference." Once their laughter quieted, Carol stood and headed for the door, gesturing for Steve to follow. Her room stood right next door to Steve's. He knew from experience that the walls were thin enough to hear anything louder than normal conversation through them. Carol's room looked much the same as Steve's, without the airway clearance equipment that accompanied him everywhere he stayed overnight.
"I don't have cool sketches like you do, but I tried my best to make it homey," she said. Her wall was decorated with a few posters, one depicting different fighter jets and another with Fonzie from Happy Days. Besides that, the only personalization appeared to be an American flag patterned blanket folded at the foot of the bed. She invited Steve to feel it, and it proved to be the softest blanket he'd ever come into contact with.
"Wow," he muttered.
"I know, right?"
"I wish I had one of those, where'd you get it?"
"On clearance from a company that shut down shortly after I bought it."
"Why would they shut down if their product is so amazing?" he asked.
"I don't know. I'm just glad I got my hands on one before they stopped making them."
"Just saying, if this ever goes missing, I probably stole it."
"You know, burglars don't typically reveal their plans to the people they're planning to rob."
Steve rolled his eyes. He absent-mindedly ran his hand over the blanket for a little longer and then asked, "Have you seen the entire ward yet?"
"I think so. I've been to class and to the common room. Is there anything else?"
"There's a kitchen, but nobody really uses it."
"Understandable."
"It's actually a really nice kitchen. It's a pity it doesn't see much action."
"If this is your roundabout way of asking me to dinner; I already told you I'm not interested," Carol said with a sly smile.
"No!" Steve snapped, cheeks flushing bright red. He hadn't intended it like that at all.
"I'm just kidding," she assured him. "Man, you're an easy mark. But I do want to see this nice hospital kitchen, and I'd love you to show me the way."
"Oh…okay." He showed her the route to the kitchen, which really was far too nice to exist within a hospital. It looked like stepping into one of those hardware store displays, with stainless steel appliances, cherry cabinets, and elegant granite.
"This is so…incongruous," she remarked.
"Yep," Steve sighed. A couple times his mom had made him grilled cheese in this kitchen, but that was all he could remember. He felt kinda bad for it, even though he knew a kitchen couldn't experience emotions. It was a shame to let such a beautiful space sit unused for weeks at a time. "It's fully stocked, too," he pointed out. Even the pots, pans, and utensils were nicer than what he had in his own home. He'd theorized about this kitchen before and the best explanation he could come up with was that some rich food connoisseur had donated to Gravesen on the condition it be used for culinary purposes. As if the thing sick kids needed most was gourmet food.
"If you've never used it, how did you even know it was here?" Carol asked.
"I pretty much know my way around the entire hospital," he explained. "When you come here for long enough and take a lot of walks for respiratory therapy, you get to know every nook and cranny."
"Cool. Are there any secret doors?"
"Not that I've found, no," he sighed.
"Pity." She idly opened and closed doors for a few moments. "Do you show all the new patients around?"
"If I'm around to do so, then yeah. I like to give new patients tours to help them feel less like a fish out of water, you know?"
"You are quite the Boy Scout, aren't you Rogers?"
Steve shifted his weight awkwardly, unsure what she meant by that comment. He'd never joined the Boy Scouts between his lack of interest and his lack of adaptability to activities like camping. "What's that supposed to mean?" he questioned.
"Just that you're a good Samaritan and all that. You seem like the kind of guy people would want to be their neighbor when they're stuck in the hospital."
"Thanks?"
"It's a compliment," she clarified.
"Okay. It's getting close to curfew; we should probably head back."
"And he obeys curfew too! A real poster child."
"Watch it Danvers; I know where you live."
"Is that a threat? Because I'm going to be honest, it's really hard to be scared of a thirteen-year-old boy when I essentially have a ticking time bomb in my chest."
"I'm fourteen," he countered. Almost fifteen, actually, but he didn't want to reveal that he'd be spending his fifteenth birthday here in the hospital in just a few days. Right now they stood on equal footing, and he didn't want to tip those scales and turn himself into an object of pity. Before they went their separate ways, they exchanged phone numbers. Just before he turned in for the night, Steve texted Carol for the first time: a picture of his wall of drawings with the sketch of her smack dab in the middle.
She's here, folks! By this point, you've met Carol multiple times. But you haven't really met Carol until you read these next seven chapters. In all seriousness, these next few contain some of my favorite scenes out of all the prequels.