76.
Brooklyn, New York City
June 30th, 1945
Isabel decides to take her father's advice and go back to work. The moment she walks back into the hospital to put in her application, she is met with a warm welcome. All of her old colleagues and work friends rush around her, offering condolences and asking her what it was like on the front. She's a bit overwhelmed, of course, by the loud gossiping voices and sympathetic looks and comforting pats on the arm and hugs. She just about escapes back out the doors, when a loud clearing of the throat silences everyone.
The women part like the Red Sea to reveal Gertrude behind them, looking unimpressed at them all. Gertrude was Isabel's senior nurse once Sarah was moved to the infectious diseases ward, and once Isabel became a full nurse herself, Gertrude ran the ward that Isabel worked on. She's a middle-aged woman with a usually kind face and eyes that crinkle when she smiles brightly. A new addition to her face since the last time Isabel saw her is a small rounded pair of glasses perched upon the end of her button nose.
"What kind of a welcome is this bombardment?" Gertrude asks, unimpressed. "Scat, you all have work to do."
The women mumble their apologies, some of them promising to speak to Isabel later. They scurry out of the lobby toward their assigned wards, stealing looks over their shoulders and whispering with one another as they go. Isabel barely minds that anymore. It used to bother her, but she's grown used to it.
Gertrude walks up to Isabel, her eyes crinkling at her. "Hello, Isabel," she greets kindly, pulling her in for a hug.
Isabel hugs back tightly, missing the older woman while she'd been gone. "Hi, Gert. It's been a while."
Gertrude pulls away. "It has. I assume you're here to be rehired?"
"I am," Isabel says with a small smile, holding up her resume in her hands. "I have a bit more experience than I used to."
"I don't doubt that. But there's no need for a resume. Come on, I'll get you a locker. You can start whenever you want. Technically you never actually resigned," Gertrude explains, leading Isabel through the hallways of the hospital toward their usual ward and to the break room.
"What do you mean?"
"The day before you left, an older man with a German accent came to speak to me, introduced himself as Abraham Erskine. He said that you, along with your friend, had been recruited for a project with the United States Army that would occupy your entire attention likely until the war ended. He said he couldn't tell me much else because it was classified, but that you'd be employing your medical skills, and so I didn't complain. Plus, it was war business. We can't argue with that. He asked whether I could leave a position vacant for you upon your return, and I did as I promised. There was no question about it. We've been running off casuals ever since you've been gone to fill your spot."
"You didn't have to do that," Isabel protests.
"I wanted to," Gertrude reassures, waving Isabel off. "You're a good nurse, Barnes. It would have been a shame to lose you. And from all the things we've heard about what you've been doing over there with those Howling Commandos, you deserve a bit of security at least in your career."
Gertrude stops in the break room of the ward in front of the lockers and opens the one that has always been Isabel's, revealing it to be empty, ready for Isabel's possessions.
"So, when do you want to start?"
She hands Isabel one of the nurse's caps that she'll pin to her hair. Isabel smiles down at it.
"As soon as possible. I've got a life to get back on with."
Isabel settles back into life working in the hospital relatively easily. Working the long hours of the shifts, particularly the overnight shifts, is hardly a problem for her considering how messed up her sleeping patterns have been for nearly two years. Being alert and awake for twelve or twenty-four hours at a time on a double shift is barely an effort considering some days on missions she and the Commandos were awake for days with only a few minutes scattered rest to keep them going.
And of course, nursing patients under controlled conditions seems like a piece of cake. There's no imminent danger, no barrage of bullets flying overhead, unlimited supplies of materials and medications, and the patients aren't bleeding out underneath her hands. She isn't freezing to death kneeling in the snow to patch someone up or out in the pouring rain. There's no time limit or possibility of being exposed if they talk to loud. It's almost like a breath of fresh air.
After a few weeks of working, Isabel is almost relieved to say that it feels like she never left in that she settles back in so smoothly. The uniform feels familiar, the hallways of the hospital almost like home she's walked them so many times in her life. And she easily picks back up the comradeship with the other nurses, laughing with them and listening to their gossip. Her humour may be a little darker than it had been before, but the other nurses have seen some things as well and they pick it up rather quickly. After the first day, they don't ask Isabel anything much about her experiences in the war. Isabel has a feeling Gertrude may have given them all a strict talking to.
Still, one thing that gets her down, as it had before she ever went to war herself, is that most of her patients are still men suffering from complications with their wounds from war. There's a lot of soldiers who've come home to Brooklyn but are struggling with their injuries, still needing wounds wrapped and cared for, or are having complications in the injury's healing process. There's not a lot of blood, thankfully, but there are lots of burns and amputations and infections. Isabel spends most of the day checking on scars and healing bullet holes, re-wrapping the stumps of the ends of a man's arm or leg, or checking a soldier for any signs of hearing or sight when they've had the senses taken away from them.
It isn't as satisfying work as she thought nursing used to be. The soldiers, when they're discharged, generally aren't much better off than they'd been when they came in. She can't gift them back an arm or leg or return their hearing to them. Once upon a time, before the war, children with broken arms would go home with a cast and come back eight weeks later completely healed. People came in with pneumonia and left with cleared lungs. Expecting mothers entered the hospitals with severe labour pains and left with a bundle of joy in their arms. Even if a patient left because they passed on, they were going to a better place. A lot of the returned soldiers are stuck in their own personal hells.
Isabel still finds that a little hard to deal with. But, she supposes, being home, in whatever condition, must be marginally better than still be out fighting on the front. She can attest to that herself.
Brooklyn, New York City
September 23rd, 1945
Isabel gets a right shock early one morning on her shift when she walks toward one of the small rooms of the ward to meet her next patient, who'll be in her hands until around six that evening when her shift ends. The man was brought in only a few hours ago with complications for an amputated leg, from the war, she presumes. At least her experience gives her another understanding of the men's injuries and how they attained them, as well as something else to talk with them about in the slow early hours of the morning.
Isabel picks up the man's chart off the wall outside and reads over it quickly, assessing his blood pressure and other vitals that were taken when he was first brought in, but pauses when she sees the patient's name at the top of the page. Daniel Williams.
Isabel swallows lightly. That's a name she hasn't seen or thought about for a very long time. She peers around the door and gets a glance of the familiar face, asleep in the far bed. In this setting she can't treat people she knows personally, it's a conflict of interest. But even if it wasn;t, she isn't sure she wants to treat this person at all.
Isabel puts the chart back into its slot on the wall and walks over to Gertrude at the nurse's desk. "Gert, the patient in room three–"
"Williams?" Gertrude asks, looking up from her paperwork.
"Yes. I-I can't care for him. I know him."
"I'll assign him to Kathryn. Actually, I'll just give her room three altogether. Take room two instead," Gertrude allows, not even asking questions for the conflict of interest.
"Thanks," Isabel breathes.
Isabel goes about the rest of her day, steering clear of room three. She looks after her patients, makes a few of them laugh when they look beyond despair, helps another with his lunch as he sits with two broken arms. No matter what she does, though, she's unable to get it out of her head how much of a coincidence it is that Daniel Williams ends up in the hospital she works at in Brooklyn, considering he lives in Manhattan. When she frowns about it, thinking, a smooth-talking soldier with only a left foot asks the 'doll' what's wrong and why her pretty face is frowning.
Isabel looks up at that from where she'd been staring unseeingly at his blood-pressure monitor. "Nothin'," Isabel reassures. "I was just thinking, when you get your prosthetic foot, you'd better make sure they don't give you two left feet. I'd hate to see the end of your dancin' days, soldier."
The patient barks out a genuine laugh, slapping his hand on his thigh. "You're a real crack up, Nurse Isabel."
"I try my best."
At the end of her shift and another long day, Isabel goes back to the break room to collect up her bag. She honestly can't wait to get home and just crawl into bed for a few hours undisturbed, but instead she stands there a while with the door to her locker open, thinking about the man lying only a few rooms over in his hospital bed. She carefully unpins her white cap from her hair as she thinks, throwing it into her locker. Finally, with her mind made up, Isabel shuts her locker and walks back into the hall.
She stops in the doorway to the room, and both of the curtains around the beds are drawn to prepare the patients for the night and give them some privacy. Isabel walks slowly up to the curtain around Danny's bed, taking a deep breath. She listens for a moment to make sure he isn't asleep and snoring, but then she hears the crinkle of paper as he turns a page in a book.
"Knock knock?" She says, quiet enough not to disturb the other patient in the room.
"Come in," the familiar male voice says.
Isabel finds the edge of the curtain and carefully opens it, peeking her head inside. Danny looks up where he's lying in the bed, putting his book down against his stomach, and his eyes widen slightly in recognition.
"Isabel Barnes?" He asks, voice disbelieving.
"Yeah," Isabel replies with a small, awkward chuckle. "Hi, Danny. Do you… uh, you mind if I come in?"
"Course not, take a seat," Danny says, motioning to the empty chair beside him and putting his book up on the bedside table out of the way. "It's been a while."
"Yeah, a few years," Isabel agrees. Isabel slowly walks in and sits down, feeling a little uncomfortable. She wonders whether this was really a good idea. "Not that either of us have been in the country anyway. Looks like we've both had a bit of a rough trot. Where'd you get stationed?"
"North African campaign. It was hot and sandy and hellish. I was glad to get out and get home." Isabel's eyes immediately go to Danny's legs, only a flick for not even a second, one of which ends in a stump just below his knee. Danny notices her glance and smiles sadly down at the missing limb. "Landmine. Sneaky bastards hid them everywhere beneath the sand," he says easily. "I've been home a few months now and I was just getting used to being without it. Getting up the stairs on crutches isn't easy but it's manageable. I've been in and out of hospital though. It keeps weeping and it isn't healing properly. Now, Doc says it's infected."
"I'm sorry," Isabel says, looking at the leg. "It must be painful."
"A little, but I get morphine in here so it's not so bad. When it's going well, it's good, you know?"
"Yeah. So, what are you doing in a Brooklyn hospital? I thought you'd be living it up on the Upper East Side in some fancy rehabilitation facility." Isabel notices the slight resentment in her tone which she hadn't meant to be there. She regrets it immediately and opens her mouth to apologise, but Danny continues speaking.
Danny looks away and Isabel sees something in his eyes, something like shame. "They were full. Lot of fellas are looking to recover. Seems they want the top-notch care over in Manhattan."
"Yeah, I know. All of my patients used to be little kids with broken arms, or old people succumbing to illness. Now they're young men with missing arms and gunshot wounds or gas poisoning."
"Thought you'd be used to that after working on the front?"
"I am. I just thought that when I came home from the war I'd be able to go back to doing nursing that actually made me feel like I was making a difference, doing something good. Instead, the war just followed me home again. Guess it'll take a few years to get over everything."
Isabel stops, not entirely sure why she's telling Danny all of this. She barely knows him anymore. He caused a lot of trouble between her and her friends, between her and Steve, not that he really meant to. She still feels a bit of anger boiling in her toward him, even with how long ago it had been and how much she's done since.
"Oh," Danny mumbles as though he just remembered something, looking up again, searching her eyes. "I heard about what happened to Ste– to Rogers. It's become a bit of a… legend around town."
"Yeah," Isabel agrees. "I think he's a bit of a legend everywhere. But I saw he got a monument and everything in Prospect Park. It's pretty fancy... He probably wouldn't like it," Isabel huffs out a laugh.
Danny smiles. "And you and your brother, Barnes, of course. You're pretty legendary, as well. The kids from Brooklyn who helped change the tides of the war. Though you two didn't get a memorial for your efforts."
"We didn't need one. What we did, it wasn't exactly pretty. I don't really see why we'd want one anyway," Isabel notes.
"From what I heard, you saved the world," Danny says, looking confused.
"Steve saved the world. We were just along for the ride, making sure he didn't get himself killed," Isabel says with a shrug, looking away.
"You'd follow him anywhere, wouldn't you?" Danny asks, his tone once again disbelieving and admiring.
Isabel looks up at that, her brow furrowed. "Not quite," she admits quietly. "There's one place he's gone that I'm not quite ready for yet."
"Oh…" Danny says, looking lost for words. "I-I'm sorry," he stutters as though he wishes he could burrow into the bed and hide for what he said.
"Yeah, so am I," Isabel replies with a sad smile.
Danny shifts in the bed and takes her hand gently, not forcing her to hold his hand but offering. Isabel takes it willingly, letting his touch anchor her. She must admit, she never did think she'd hold the hand of Daniel Williams again, but the world seems to push her in strange places at times.
"Look, I'm sorry about what happened between us that day," Danny says sincerely. "I didn't handle that very well. I was drunk. I had some problems back then. The war hasn't exactly helped, but I'm getting better. As soon as I left that day and calmed down, I regretted it. I went to war regretting it. Of course, when I was fighting my mind was taken up by other things, but seeing you now... I'm sorry, Isabel. It would've been selfish of me to make you stay with me when your heart wasn't in it. I know that now."
"I'm sorry it had to be that way," Isabel responds, shame in her own eyes.
"You know, I spent a real long time thinking that he was stealing you from me. But now I realise he wasn't because you were never mine to have in the first place. Don't apologise for loving someone, Isabel," Danny says firmly. "Especially not when you loved him long before you were with me, and you'll love him long after. You've got a big heart and you have a lot of love for a lot of people. But with how much you loved him, I can see how there's only limited space for other people. You're a good person. You deserved to be with someone you loved."
"Love," Isabel corrects. "Doesn't go away quite that quickly," she huffs humourously.
Danny cracks a smile in response. "Steve was a lucky man. He really was. And he was a good man. I guess that's why they chose him to become Captain America. I'm sorry I didn't see that earlier."
"It's okay," Isabel reassures. "You weren't the only one. I think that's part of what made Steve so special. No one else knew who he was, and he wasn't entirely sure of his own capabilities either. That's what made him good. He wasn't consumed by an ego or a reasoning beyond wanting to do good."
Danny nods. "It's a shame. I think, maybe, if I hadn't been such a jerk, we could have been friends. Bucky, too."
"Probably," Isabel agrees, and she means it. They likely could have been, had Danny not looked down on them all and refused to spend time with them. Perhaps if Danny's outlook had been different, it could have turned out differently for them all. Isabel and Danny wouldn't have stayed together, not if Steve was in the picture and Isabel is sure of it with her whole heart. But maybe they could've been friendly.
But it didn't, that was the cards they were all handed, and there's nothing that can be done about any of it now. Isabel looks back up at Danny, at the shame still on his features. She takes a deep breath and feels something flood away from her, some kind of guilt she hadn't realised she was holding onto when she says, "Danny, I forgive you."
Danny looks up, eyes wild with disbelief. "Really?" He asks, his voice unsure.
"Yes."
Danny still winces. "Even though I broke Steve's nose?" He asks, voice small and sheepish.
Isabel laughs at that. "Even though you broke his nose. You know, even the serum didn't fix that. It must have been a good punch."
"It was," Danny laughs. He pauses and watches her a moment, carefully. "Friends?"
Isabel huffs out a laugh. "Yeah, friends," she promises.
