Chapter 3
Bucky had sprawled, cuddled up beside the toilet where Rogers found him. Ugh. The floor smelt a bit like taint and shit and urinal cakes, 0/10 would not recommend. The man himself had long since disappeared from the line of urinals, washed his hands and left. But the sink and counter were both dry when Bucky staggered out to them. So. Right. Captain America. Resurrected World War II costumed hero and Avenger. Sure, Bucky. Sure your childhood hero and first masturbatory fantasy was here with his big blue eyes and disappointed dad face and surprisingly gentle hands telling you he too had been a queer druggie whore as a teen. Shit, he was high.
He splashed water on his face. Dabbed at his shirt. Yeah, no. He still looked terrible.
…also his subconscious needed to seriously fucking chill.
...
There was a hand-written sign on the door. Sharpie letters on crisp, white paper in a loopy, even cursive: CLOSED.
...
Shit.
He’d missed Becca waking up. Missed the recovery room, too. By the time he’d put his shit self together enough to ask the charge nurse where she went she’d been transferred back to the Peds floor. Fuck all if he could find it. He couldn’t find his own dick right now let alone the stupid elevators in this stupid building. He wandered and sort of lost track of time. The wards were dark and silent, only the occasional buzzing of an dim overhead fluorescent bulb, and probably not good for a guy with a tentative grip on reality at the moment but it sort of reminded him of Batman: Arkham Asylum. He was looking for something. Someone? Was he hallucinating? Playing a video game? Where was he going? He pinched himself and shivered. It was creepy as fuck.
Finally he caught the dull blue of nurse’s scrubs. Oh thank G-d, a person. She turned a corner quickly and keyed open a door. Bucky followed her.
“Can I help you?” She asked sharply.
“‘M looking for Peds,” he mumbled.
“You sure?”
Bucky blinked. She was small with smooth brown skin. Her straightened hair had just enough crimp at the roots to be ethnically ambiguous. But Black or Brown or Latina or whatever, he’d followed her right into the Pyxis, and now he was face to face with a woman who was staring him down like she could kick Hulk’s ass then eat Iron Man for breakfast. Shit.
He took a shaky step back. She pursued him. “Hey, sorry. My bad.” Her eyebrows said it all. Fuck. He was a mess.
Bucky swallowed. His mouth was dry. “‘M just lost, I swear.” Then, because she must think he was really, really, shitacularly stupid, “‘m really not dumb enough to steal from a hospital, promise.”
“I hear that a lot. Usually from my co-workers.”
Bucky looked at his shoes. Scuffed the floor. “My sister had surgery. ‘M just trying to find her. ‘M sorry.”
Her expression changed. Not exactly softened, but understanding. “You’re high right now.”
Bucky snorted. “Yep.” He popped the p. He didn’t know why. It just seemed the thing to do.
She sighed. “C’mon, let’s go. You can wait it out in the ER. The cops don’t care, and I’d rather you passed out where someone can keep an eye on you than find you dead tomorrow at the bottom of a stairwell.”
“Yeah no Becca’s already used all the health insurance for her arm and they said she might lose it and maybe they took it off already I don’t know but my Mom can’t know and I just need to find Becca. I need to find her. That’s all,” he sort of word vomited at her.
“I’m going to check your vitals, okay?” She reached for his wrist, counting his pulse and breathing on her watch with a frown. Then she put two fingers against his neck. Shone a light in his eyes.
Bucky blinked. Swallowed. His mouth was really, really dry. His eyes were dry, too.
“Are you feeling dizzy?”
Bucky nodded. “’N sleepy.”
“I’ll bet. You barely have peripheral pulses so your bp’s in the shitter. You’re bradycardic and your pupils are pinprick. I see this all the time, and I’m telling you you should wait it out in the ER. I can take you down now, no questions asked. They don’t even need a name.”
He wiped his nose. Shook his head. “I just wanna find Becca.”
“Alright,” she said. “Alright. But you code on me, kid, I'm breaking your xiphoid process.”
…
Fuck life. Fuck everything. Fuck elevators in particular. There was this little jolt as the cables started up and Bucky clung to the side paneling for dear life because he was definitely fucking falling.
The nurse hummed. “You holding up?”
Bucky blinked. Of course he wasn’t falling. It was an elevator. That’s what elevators do. He flushed and pushed himself back upright. “‘M fine.”
“People who are ‘fine’ get shitfaced a party,” she said calmly, like getting shitfaced was the weather forecast or something. “Not hospital toilets when their kid sister’s in surgery.”
“Yeah,” Bucky agreed. He was a liar, and he wasn’t even good at it. Captain America knew. Now this nurse did, too.
“What are you on?”
“Heroin.”
She nodded appreciatively. “Right to the big guns, huh. How you paying for it?"
Bucky worked his jaw. “I work part time.”
She knew what that meant. Her voice softened. “You stay safe?”
“Sometimes.” It wasn't a total lie.
“You snort? Smoke?”
Bucky bit his lip. Shook his head. “’S cheaper to inject.”
“You got clean needles on you?”
Bucky shrugged his face. Fuck all if he knew or cared.
She tsked. Angled her body between him and the security camera, fishing in her pocket all the while. “Here.” She palmed him a roll of 28G needles and a long strip of alcohol wipes.
Bucky stared. “Um, shouldn’t you be…you know, yelling at me?”
She looked at him like he was an idiot. But he was high. In the hospital. Straight up telling a nurse he was shooting up. He probably was. “Would that make you quit?”
“...No?”
“Then I’ll save my breath. I can’t make you stop using, but any harm reduction is a win in my book.” It was quiet for a moment. “You live around here? There’s a needle exchange down at the community center. Three blocks away. Unlimited quantities. They do testing, give out free condoms, too.”
Bucky shook his head. “We’ve got something like that at my Temple. Community center. Thing. Tikkun fucking olam, you know?”
That seemed to amuse her. Just a bit. “Do me a favor? Think about using it.”
Bucky stared at his feet again. The rubber on his Converse was peeling way from the canvas. He frowned. These were his favorite shoes.
“You got a name, kid?”
“Bucky.”
"Claire." She clacked her teeth, gesturing to her name tag. "And you probably already read that, then again maybe you didn’t,” and she fixed him with sad, sad stare. It wasn’t pitying, just pointed and knowing as fuck. “I work down in the ER. Been there for eight years. I lose someone almost every week whether its an OD, sepsis, heart attack from infected valves…it’s like the AIDS crisis, in the end it’ll get you one way or another. My patients come back again and again until the last time, then they’re dead before the hit the door. I get a lot of DOAs. Send a lot of young people to the morgue. It’s not a good road,” she paused. Took a deep breath. “You and I both know how this could end for you.”
“Yeah.” OD, HIV. Killed by a shitty hook-up. Bucky laughed. His life was a terrible Hollywood queer cliche, and he knew it. But he was high, and life didn’t hurt right now, and he just couldn’t bring himself to care.
“Here’s your stop. Nice meeting you—but like I tell all my patients I’d really prefer not to see you again. ”
Bucky stumbled out of the car groggily. “”m not a patient.”
“Sure,” Claire said as the car began to close. “And Bucky?” Her arm snuck back through the closing doors and she glowered at him. His balls sort of shriveled. “You tamper with that little girl’s PCA, I’ll kick your ass.”
…
She shouldn’t have bothered. He never even made it to Becca's room.