To begin, I remind myself that the recommended treatments for memory recovery and brain healing are often based in the same thing: routine. Routine helps to stabilize the wobblers, those teetering on the brink of oblivion and those who need reassurance when stepping into the haze that's become of their memories. Right away I establish a routine with Barnes.
After that first day, I put him through a battery of tests to establish his overall physical health and his neurotransmitter levels. I need to know how his body is functioning as it will influence how his brain will respond to treatment. If the rest of the system is stressed, the treatment won't be as effective. The Tower has an entire medical wing, though I'm hesitant to question its necessity, I don't push the issue when I'm presented with pristine lab equipment and state of the art diagnostic technology. There's a few others who work there, another physician, a few nurses, and some lab support staff. One woman, Elsa, has assigned herself to see to all my needs when it comes to the tests that I run. She's a steady hand with her work and I trust her discretion. I don't need a gossip on my team.
We spend our mornings in Barnes' room, trying to piece together the things that he remembers for certain. I bring him a stack of notecards and he writes his name on one and tapes it up on the wall next to the picture of him in uniform from his file. I purposefully don't give him the one of him in cryo, thinking that that image can wait until we build him a positive and solid foundation. Other things that come up, tiny details, go on other cards and on to other places on the wall. He spends a lot of time sitting on the floor looking at his ever growing map of fragments and trying to make connections between them. I keep recording the sessions and every day he seems to be able to string together more things, but there are still large gaps between them, mostly concerning the man that I know is Steve, but is a stranger to Barnes.
"He was my friend?" He asks me one day, a bit shakily, and when I tell him yes he writes it down on a card and tapes it up. He mutters it to himself a few times, letting it cement in his mind.
We don't talk about the bad things, even though I can feel that they're right under the surface. Some mornings when I arrive I find him sitting in the corner, dark circles under his eyes, and playing our conversations over on the recorder. He's running from the darkness that comes every night and threatens to pull him back to places he would rather not go. These days I sit next time him on the floor and sip my cup of coffee that I bring and nibble on ends of toast from breakfast. We don't say much, I just let him work it out and bring himself back with his own voice and truth from the recordings.
I spend the afternoons digging into the notebooks, it's slow going as my German is rudimentary and trying to piece together someone else's trains of thought can be difficult even if you speak their language. But I am making progress nonetheless. I'm also getting used to living in the Tower, my rooms are more familiar and I am getting the hang of how communal the living spaces feel with a shared main kitchen and cafeteria for those of us working on the upper floors. I have come to know the others who live here, though I don't always interact closely with them. I still see Steve and Natasha, though she spends most of her time with the man who'd picked us up at my apartment the day I ran.
Two weeks into my stay, I am just packing gathering my bag and breakfast to head down to Barnes when Steve comes over to my usual table in the cafeteria. He has something in his arms and he's looking very excited.
"Morning, Alina," He greets me.
"Ah, Steve," I say with a little smile. "Good to see you've been keeping yourself busy." I give him a nod in recognition of his effort to give me space to work with his friend.
"Yes, Ma'm" he replies and holds his bundle out to me. "This is for you. Well, it's for Bucky, James. For both of you. I think it'll help."
"What is it?" I take what feels like a garment and a small remote control.
"It's a specially designed fabric that can deflect magnetic fields," he answers. "I don't really know how it works, Stark created it, but you turn it on with that thing and it makes magnets not stick to whatever metal is covered by the fabric."
I realize that what I'm holding is a shirt and a glove that are a knit of black fabric with a hint of metallic sheen in the weave if I hold it at the right angle. The remote is simple, and I hit a button and feel the garment almost humming in my hands. If it can deflect magnets this means one thing…
"I can give him that MRI!" I exclaim, probably more excited than I should be, but the very real prospect of seeing high definition images of the damage inside Barnes' head.
"This is great," I say and throw my arms around him, throwing him off balance for a moment. "It's really going to help. I'll let you know how it all goes but this is great." And for the first time since this began I feel really hopeful. It took some work, but an hour later I've managed to convince Barnes that the tech fabric idea has merit and that he just has to trust me.
"This is going to make it a lot easier to see what's up there," I tell him. He looks doubtful.
"Are you sure about that?" he says, his voice low and he slinks down the hallways beside me. He's still nervous whenever we leave his room to go to the lab, aware that people know who he is even if he still isn't sure. We don't run into anyone this morning though and make it to the medical wing where we meet up with Elsa who leads us back to a room with dimmed lights and the hulking MRI machine. I feel like a kid on Christmas morning, Barnes just looks sullen and unsure.
"I need you to put this on," I say and hand him the shirt and glove that Steve gave me. He rubs the material between his thumb and forefinger, measuring it's weight and heft. I don't have time to turn around before he's stripped his shirt off and thrown it onto the counter, leaving him bare-chested in the middle of the MRI lab. I'm caught off-guard by his body, even though these last weeks I could tell that he was muscular, 'stacked' even if you wanted to go that far, but to see the definition of his chest, abs, all the way down to the v of his lower stomach that disappeared beneath the waistband of his pants that are slung low on his hips catches me right in the solar plexus and for a second I don't think I can breathe, and neither would any red-blooded woman with a pair of functioning eyes for that matter.
He catches me staring at him, but instead of saying anything he just looks at me, his face a blank slate. I wonder if he's been looked at like this before, like a thing of desire instead of just a weapon.
"Sorry," I mutter quickly, turning away from him before this gets really embarrassing for me, but I know that the hot feeling in my cheeks means I'm already blushing and it's too late to worry about whether I've bruised my ego or not. He puts on the shirt and glove, covering every inch of his metal arm. I take out the remote from my bag and press the on button, noting that he looks down at his left side when I do. He must feel that same little hum I did.
I have him lie down on the table top that will slide into the machine and move back so Elsa can slide a folded towel under his head, one under his knees, and finally secures a pair of noise-blocking headphones over his ears. When she moves to fasten the head coil, or "bird cage", meant to keep his head from moving, I see his breathing start to change from a regular rise and fall of his chest to something erratic. His hands, kept resolutely by his side, are curling into fists that he's clenching repeatedly. I move quickly, sensing that he could lose control, and go to his right side. I put my hand on the middle of his chest, and find his heartbeat slamming against my palm.
"Hey," I say, trying to get his attention, but my voice must be muffled because of the headphones so I tap my palm on his chest and he looks over at me. His eyes are filled with fear and his mouth is set in a hard line like he's trying to control himself but losing the battle that rages in his reflexes.
"It's ok," I lean in close and say next to where his ear is. "I'm right here. I'm right here." I tap him again on the chest and he opens up his mouth to gasp a huge breath. His whole body is tense with anxiety and I press my forearm along his torso, my hand still on his chest and try to comfort him with the touch. I keep repeating my words, It's ok, I'm right here, and eventually his breathing seems to steady out, his muscles lose some of their rigidity, and his heart settles down. When I look back into his eyes again, their blue depths are shimmering with tears and it breaks my heart.
Despite all the power that his body possesses, his fear of the machine reduces him to little more than a shaking child underneath my touch.
"It's all right, James," I say, and it feels good to say his real name, like it eases both of us in the moment. "I'm not going anywhere." When he nods at me, I look over at Elsa who just shrugs at me and sits down at the controls of the MRI to begin. As the table top slides into the machine, my hand runs down James' chest and arm where I catch his hand as his upper body disappears into the magnetic chamber. Our fingers lace together and he keeps hold of me with such strength it's like I'm the only thing keeping him from completely falling apart.
For all the impression I'd gotten at first that he was an enemy, someone to be wary of, now I saw that he had been tortured and twisted into this hazy world of confused right and wrong, a place where he had come to expect punishment and pain from doctors and those who handled him. My mind brings up the pages from his file of the machine they'd used to wipe his memories, to send electrical pulses through his brain that were targeted at his hippocampus, meant to erase his past so they could plant a version of the truth and twist him to do their bidding. I feel sick to my stomach and have to force myself not to cry. As gut wrenching as brain trauma has been to work with, this is the worst.
It takes almost an hour to complete the scans. My arm is stretched out at a slight upward angle and even though I lose the feeling in it, I don't let go of James' hand for one second. I know what it's like inside that thing, and I can't abandon him to whatever memory took hold of him before. He needs the connection to the present to stay calm and focused. But while we're locked together like that and I'm watching his chest rise and fall, I can't lose the image of his frightened eyes staring up at me, begging me for help.
At one point I reach up with my other hand and put in on his wrist, trying to lift myself a little to get into a more comfortable position, and then eventually I lay my head on my arm which cuts off even more blood to my already numb hand. But I don't care. There's no way I can back out now or else I risk being forever haunted by those eyes. I stay where I am because he needs me.