It Feels Like A Tear In My Heart, Like A Part Of Me Missing…And I Just Can't Feel It…I've Tried And I've Tried…
Everyone expects him to roll with the punches. He’s Captain America. He’s a symbol to the nation. He’s a superhero. There are movies made about him, and comic books, and trading cards.
He’s Captain America and he can handle anything.
It’s Steve Rogers who’s the problem.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time at the nursing home. I’ve been doing some volunteer work there and visiting Peggy.” Steve said.
“Hm,” Dr. Underwood just stared at him.
“I’ve also visited the Smithsonian. They have a Captain America exhibit, but with a pair of glasses and a hoodie no one recognizes me,” Steve continues.
“Hm,”
“I’ve been doing a lot of work for Shield. Missions and such.”
“Hm,”
“And I work out. Shield has a gym, and I’ve been jogging,”
“Hm,”
“Shield helped me find an apartment, so I’m not living at headquarters anymore,”
“Hm,”
“Things are good,”
“Hm,”
“Really,”
“Hm,”
There was a long pause. Steve stared at Dr. Underwood, and she stared back, coolly, not blinking.
Dr. Underwood is a woman in her fifties. She keeps her dark brown hair in a high ponytail. She doesn’t wear makeup. She doesn’t wear skirts or jewelry. But she seems to be extremely fond of watches, wearing a different one every time they meet. And she used to be an agent of Shield for 30 something years before retiring from the field.
Now she’s his therapist.
Dr. Underwood continued to stare and Steve could hear her watch ticking as the seconds flew by.
Steve looked away first.
“I’m not depressed,” Steve finally said, defensively, hands clenching into fists.
“You jumped out of a plane,” Dr. Underwood stated, calmly, hands folded in her lap, “Without a parachute,”
Steve’s brows furrowed and he gritted his teeth.
“Grabbing a parachute would’ve wasted time, and we were passing the location,” Steve explained and Dr. Underwood nodded.
“But the other agents had time to grab their parachutes and they all made it onto the boat, without any trouble at all,” Dr. Underwood stated.
Steve stayed stubbornly silent.
Dr. Underwood sighed, reaching towards the table to grab the clipboard.
“Okay, you’re not depressed,” Dr. Underwood replied, giving him a placating smile, “How are you adjusting?”
“I’m fine,” Steve said, forcing a smile.
“Are you happy?” Dr. Underwood questioned, and Steve’s smile slipped, “Interesting,”
“I’m not depressed,” Steve repeated, knowing where this was going, “Captain America doesn’t get depressed,”
“Captain America isn’t here,” Dr. Underwood said, raising an eyebrow, “Now, I have an assignment for Steve Rogers,”
Steve hated her assignments. After four months of this, there was always a new assignment for him. Mostly it involved notebooks. Dr. Underwood had given him a look of notebooks.
A orange notebook called his ‘Stress log’, a purple one for ‘His daily activates’, A blue one for when he didn’t sleep called a ‘Sleep Log’, a little note book for ‘Thing to do’ that people around him suggested he check out.
Except for the Things to do notebook, the others were empty.
Steve waited for her to pull out another one.
Here’s journal. I want you write down your thoughts at the end of every day. What’s changed? What’s stayed the same? How do you feel about that?
“I want you to find one thing that makes you happy about 21st century,” she said, much to Steve’s surprise.
“What?” he questioned.
“One thing that makes you happy,” she said, leaning closer, “Something that brings you pleasure and makes you happy that you made it too the future to see it,”
Steve stayed quiet.
“Anyway, let’s move on,” Dr. Underwood stated, looking at her clipboard, “We were talking about your friend…James?”
“Bucky,” Steve replied, softly, “He liked to be called Bucky,”
He hated therapy.
Steve rode his motorcycle back around the city, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling that therapy brought. It wasn’t always like that. But talking about Bucky in therapy always made him wonder what the doctor was going to pry out of him.
The sun eventually sets and he goes back to his apartment.
He walked up the stairs, ignoring the elevator, and let himself into his apartment. It was a nice apartment, but it wasn’t home.
Home was a military issue hat hanging on the wall. Home was no visible windows to the outside, with only one window at the end. Home was a bathtub in the kitchen, that they used as a table. Home was a closet-sized room with a toilet, and a sink. Home was a door with a deadbolt lock on the side wall that leads to the communal hallway. Home was more books than kitchen utensils. Home was his drawings pinned to the wall. Home was an easel. Home was a single bed for two bodies.
Home was Bucky.
Steve sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands.
Home was gone.
He looked around his apartment.
His walls were the same ugly pale green they were before he moved in. There were two book shelf one with baskets, and his dishes, the other with 20 History books about the years he missed while he was in the ice, Never Surrender: A Soldier’s Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom by Lieutenant General William G. Boykin, The Art of War by Sun Tzu, A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, All The President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, Dispatches by Michael Herr, Madam President: Shattering the Last Glass Ceiling by Eleanor Clift and Tom Brazaitis, George H.W. Bush by Timothy Naftali, Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss, The Night Stalkers: Top Secret Missions of the US Army’s Special Operations Aviation Regiment by Michael J. Durant, Steven Hartov, and Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Johnson, The Second World War: An Illustrated History of WWII, Sir John Hammerton (editor)—two volumes out of the ten-volume series published by Trident Press (1999-2000).
He had a record player, with record from the 1940’s. A chair, a few pictures on the wall, etc.
He wondered who Shield had hired to decorate his apartment.
Steve took of his jacket, and headed to take a shower.
“What are your plans for the rest of the day, Mr. Rogers?” Steve said, copying his therapist tone.
He rolled his eyes.
“I’m going to take a shower, order take out, and read a book about what the world did while I was frozen, with the television playing in the background,” he said, aloud, turning on the shower.
“Will that make you happy?” he asked.
Steve
His eyes snapped open and around expecting to see Bucky. But there was no one there. Steve shook his head and stepped into the shower, turning the water from hot to cold, imagining he could refreeze himself if he tried hard enough.
Maybe this time they would leave him be.