Worry
Jessie was seated a chair in front of Dr. Anderson’s desk, across from him, feeling like she was in the principal’s office. After she was checked out by the on-site infirmary and they confirmed that she was unharmed, the older doctor marched her right down to his office.
“Dr. Alexander, would you care to explain to me what exactly happened?”
She didn’t even know where to start. What was she supposed to say? ‘Sorry, one of my usual patients wasn’t in my class and you wouldn’t tell me what was going on, so I went go ask him myself’?
“Look, I was just worried,” she pleaded.
Charlie huffed out a dry laugh at her statement.
“Oh, okay, you were worried. That’s perfectly justifiable for you to be near someone who is borderline unstable and was physically violent towards you,” he scolded.
“He’s not unstable! And he certainly wasn’t violent towards me.” Jessie defended.
Dr. Anderson gave her a look that said ‘enlighten me.’
“He was protecting me. I went down to his room after session, and a prison riot broke out. That other guy, Rumlow, cornered him and attacked him.”
Jessie looked down to her lap as she recalled the events. Surely, she hadn’t missed something where she’d set Bucky off, right? Everything that happened was overstimulating for anyone, and Rumlow was pushing him.
“James Barnes isn’t exactly the protective type, Jessie. That’s part of the reason he wasn’t included in today’s session.”
This confused her.
“What do you mean? What would that have anything to do with why he wasn’t in session?”
Dr. Anderson let out a defeated sigh.
“James has been involved in other violent activities this week. His punishment was revoking his extracurriculars, including your art therapy sessions. He’s been warned about this kind of behavior, he knows better. And Brock Rumlow is newer to the facility, Mr. Barnes isn’t.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Charlie. This isn’t like him at all.”
“He’s a prisoner, Jessie. He’s been through hell. Sometimes, men like James don’t come back from that and they build walls up around themselves. It’s nothing personal, it’s just James,” he explained.
“Bucky,” Dr. Alexander corrected.
Her tone of voice caught his attention. The older doctor was in the middle of organizing the mentioned inmate’s file while they talked, but this made him pause.
“Come again?”
The young woman cleared her throat before she spoke again.
“His name is Bucky. That’s… what he told me,” she said firmly.
Dr. Anderson leaned back in his chair. There was a look on his face that led her to believe that he knew more than he wanted her to know.
“Well, that is certainly an interesting advancement, Dr. Alexander,” he started.
The older man went on to explain where the name Bucky comes from, according to his file. They didn’t know much about the man’s past, but one can assume that the nickname is a derivative of his middle name, Buchanan. Jessie felt her lip curl upward at the mention of the name. It was older, very classy. She liked to think that it was passed down from generation to generation.
“Do you know why he’s in this facility?”
Jessie put her hand up, stopping him from continuing.
“That’s his story to share, I don’t need to know that right now. This goes for any of them. Unless one of the inmates I’m working with is a danger to me, which you informed me that none of them are, I don’t need to know.” She explained.
“I just think you need to be careful, Dr. Alexander. None of the men you’ve visited regularly are particularly dangerous, but everyone has a breaking point. Don’t be too trusting in here.”
Her mind went back to the day in the art room, where Bucky looked so startled and gripped the pencil in his hand like it was a weapon. Dr. Anderson didn’t see him up close that day, and he wasn’t there during Rumlow’s attack. He didn’t see what she saw.
Him. Dr. Anderson didn’t see him.
Jessie refused to see Bucky as just another incarcerated man. She didn’t see any of the men she’d spent time with at Metropolitan Corrections Facility as just inmates. They were real people, with real feelings. They had real backstories, and she was determined to know his.
—
It was two days later when Jessie found out that Bucky had still been punished for the Rumlow attack in his room. She was again sitting in Dr. Anderson’s office, but this time, without feeling like she was in trouble.
“He’s been in solitary confinement? For what reason?” She demanded.
The older doctor explained that the facility has a no-fighting policy, one that Bucky had been reminded of before. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“Forgive my boldness, Dr. Anderson, but did you miss the part where I told you that Bucky was protecting me? Rumlow showed up during the fighting and started poking at him.”
Dr. Anderson let out a sigh.
“I understand that this situation is less than ideal, Dr. Alexander, but we have to maintain rules around here. If we don’t, situations like those fights will happen all the time.”
The more she learned about the facility, the more it felt like a public high school. The bully never gets punished for picking on the other kids, but the one time the victim stands up for themselves, they get in trouble.
“I want to see him,” she deadpanned.
After a few minutes of back-and-forth, Charlie relented and took Jessie to a part of the facility that she hadn’t seen. The corridor leading to the solitary confinement wing was creepier than the rest of the building, being poorly lit and eerily quiet. If you listened closely, you could hear whispers of chit-chat coming from other parts of the facility.
Finally, they arrived at another room that was separated from the rest of the hall. They’d walked past a few closed metal doors - she assumed that these are the solitary living quarters. The room had a table with a few chairs, and a sullen figure occupying one of them. She recognized that chin-length brown hair anywhere. She had the urge to run to the middle of the room, to get to him quicker, but she stifled the feeling. Obviously, it would’ve been inappropriate.
The sounds of their footsteps didn’t phase him. He was looking down at the table, where his hands lay. They were cuffed. Why the hell was he cuffed? She wondered just how many staff had been in here today, or if he even knew that she was coming to see him.
“Bucky…,” she nearly whispered, hating to see him like this.
His head shot up at the sound of her voice. His stoic eyes relaxed at the sight of her and he let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Both doctors sat down at the table, sitting across from him.
“How are you holding up?” Jessie asked.
He looked at her for a moment, but said nothing. Dr. Anderson, among other staff, had noticed that he reverted back to his silent ways since the incident. They also noticed that it wasn’t until Jessie started becoming a frequent visitor at the facility that he actually spoke to others, rather than grunts and grumbles.
Jessie looked down at the cuffed wrists before her. She huffed out a frustrated sigh.
“Are these really necessary?” She asked, looking at Dr. Anderson.
When he didn’t answer her, she turned towards the hallway they’d come from, and called to the guards that were posted there. She repeated her question and continued calling to them until one of them came to unlock the cuffs.
When the second bracelet clicked, releasing his wrists, he lifted his hands and rubbed the raw spots where the metal tried digging into his flesh. Bucky met Dr. Alexander’s gaze with a thankful look, but again said nothing. As they sat there playing the quiet game, Jessie decided to go out on a limb. She turned to her older colleague once more to ask a favor.
“Could you give me a moment with him, please?”
Dr. Anderson looked at her incredulously, but she persisted. As she maintained eye contact with the other doctor, in an attempt to show that she wasn’t backing down, Bucky was also giving her a look. The only difference between the two men was that he was looking at her with curiosity.
After what felt like eons, the older man gave in. He let out a defeated sigh and got up from his chair, and gave the young woman a stern look. Bucky wondered what that meant. He watched as the psychiatrist walked away, stopping to talk to the guards for a brief moment and turning back to look at the two one more time. Once Jessie was sure that Dr. Anderson was out of earshot, she felt more at ease.
“You don’t trust him, do you?” She asked.
He finally pried his gaze away from the hallway and focused on her. His lip quirked into a ghost of a smile, so small that she would’ve missed it if she wasn’t paying attention. That was enough to answer her question. She let out a sigh and dropped the professional persona a bit.
“Bucky, I’m so sorry that they did this to you. I-I feel like I’m at fault, you shouldn’t even be here,” she pleaded.
He shook his head, returning his gaze to the table.
“It’s not your fault.”
His voice was an interesting combination of gravely, but not hoarse. Strong, but not intimidating. Not around her, at least. She gave him a confused look.
“Rumlow…,” he started. He shook his head again, starting over. He looked up at her again, letting out a sigh of his own. “I didn’t want you to see me like that. I don’t want anyone to see me like that, but…”
Not you. He couldn’t finish his statement.
Jessie’s heart hurt at the image of him feeling this way. She didn’t know what his past was, but she had a feeling that he was used to people viewing him in an evil light. She searched his eyes for an unknown answer, hoping that a millisecond of their eye contact would make things clear for her. As she tiptoed the verge of being lost in cool, blue-tinted thought, Dr. Anderson made his way back to the table where the pair was sitting.
“Dr. Alexander, thank you for your time today. If you’ll follow me, I just need a quick word with you about the upcoming week,” he said, dismissing her from the room.
She was shocked by his bluntness, especially in front of one of the facility residents. She glanced up at him with a look that was a mixture of irritation and disappointment. Still, the young woman got up from her chair and moved to follow her colleague out of the room. She looked at the man before her one more time before leaving.
“I’ll see you soon, Bucky.”
He didn’t respond, but something in him shifted. Out of any of the visiting professionals they’ve had at the facility, none of them had really paid him much attention. He was very quiet, and he knew that. It was intentional. He didn’t really feel like giving them a reason to want to dissect his brain, anymore than most therapists and psychologists already did.
—
As the two doctors made their way back down the corridor to the resident psychiatrist’s office, Jessie’s mind was filled with a million thoughts. She felt that her visit with Bucky was cut short, and she didn’t like that thought.
As they arrived to the office, Dr. Anderson allowed his younger colleague to go first and he followed, moving the door to close it, but leaving it ajar. He sat down at his desk chair with a sigh.
“Ms. Jessie, I think it may be best for you to distance yourself from the… interaction you experienced here.” He stated.
This stunned her. Was she also being punished for what had happened in the commons area the other day? Granted, it is her fault that she was in Bucky’s room. Regardless of what he says, she still felt a bit of guilt any time she remembered that he was stuck in solitary confinement.
“What do you mean?” She asked.
“I mean, I think you’re more shaken up about the incident than you may think. Your actions… worry me, Jessie. I just feel that it would be best to step back from the facility for a while. It’s nothing permanent, just a week or so. I’m more than happy to reach out after this grace period and we can get you an official schedule on the books.”
Jessie looked down at her lap. She didn’t think she was that bothered by the incident, and the way her colleague was speaking made her think that he was hinting that she may be traumatized. She felt that this was a bit of a stretch from the truth.
Still, she let out a sigh. Working at the prison was a good opportunity for her, and she didn’t want to overstay her welcome by pushing back. She nodded in understanding and stood up from her chair. Dr. Anderson mirrored her actions and bid her farewell as she exited the office.