"I could have a nurse bring you by more blankets. That is not a problem. If I had known, I would have brought them myself before coming in for the exam."
Bucky flips through her chart again, takes stock of all her medical conditions. Everything interacts with everything else and he's afraid she'll have complications.
"You'll need to rest when you go home. No going back to full time work immediately."
"So I die in bed or die in debt," she mutters, and not quietly enough for him not to hear. She deflates some more, pulling up the blanket to her chin as she thinks about what to do next. She doesn't have the luxury of rest. If anyone took her art seriously maybe she could make a little extra. Or have someone take care of her, at least financially, if she got married. But she had no prospects for either option.
Still, she's not ungrateful. "Doctor Barnes," she calls out when he turns to leave, reaching for the book on the table and taking out a loose sheet of paper tucked into the pages. She holds it out to him with a small smile, her fingers shaking a little. "Thank you."
It's a pencil sketch of him. Suddenly shy, she averts her gaze and mumbles, "I was bored."
Bucky comes back to take the sheet of paper and it stuns him for a moment. It's a well drawn likeness of him, his hair falling over his forehead as he writes in a chart. He can see the strong lines of his profile, even the elegance of his hands wrapped around the pen.
"This is far better than just being bored, Miss Rogers. This is a beautiful portrait. Do you do this all the time or just when you're in the hospital and don't have the ability to get out of bed? Because I would be willing to buy these."
"All the time," she admits, ducking her head self-consciously as she holds out the newspaper. On the empty spaces of the margins she'd drawn little portraits of the hospital staff. Not as detailed as the one she'd made of him, but nonetheless well done. It's a talent of hers.
She shakes her head at the offer of payment though, even if it would've been the answer to her financial concerns. Wasn't that what the artists of old did, find themselves patrons, rich people who paid them for making art? However: "I don't want your money." Let that be very clear. She might be poor, but she has her dignity.
And, more importantly, "It's a gift. I know it's not fancy like what you're used to, but I'm grateful for your help and I want you to have it."
"I would rather have something like this than something expensive. You spent your time on it. That's more precious than money," Bucky says, touching the lines of the drawing. It looks real, like a photograph of him, except it's softer and conveys emotion that a photograph would never convey.
"You should sell these, though. They're really good, Miss Rogers. I know plenty of people who would want to buy a portrait like this because it looks...alive."
She bites the inside of her cheek, considering. She's delighted that her talent is being recognized, and by this doctor she's taken a shine to, no less. Making money out of her art would also help with her financial problems. But she doesn't want his pity. She wants to be his equal, not a charity case.
"You don't gotta do that for me," she mumbles eventually, still unsure about how she feels about the whole thing. Maybe if he insists? That would mean he's serious, right? Not just saying stuff to make her feel better.
"Well, just think about it," Bucky says, giving her a soft smile. "Because this portrait is really good. I'm actually going to frame it in my house when I get home because I've never been given something like this before."
"I can do another one of you, if you like," she offers, blushing. He's framing it. She's never thought her drawings would catch anyone's attention, let alone be showcased in the home of someone she likes.
Then she adds, taking the plunge, "It's better if you sit for it, though. That way I can get the details right." Very smooth, Stephanie. Only just a tad bit lovestruck.
She reaches for the paperback on the table and offers it to him. She'd drawn faces on practically every blank space. Mostly people she knows or has seen around the hospital. There are several more of him in it, too.
"Well, if I sat for a portrait it would have to be after my shift is over and that might be very late for you, Miss Rogers. When I come by a little later this afternoon to check your lungs, I'll have that sketchpad and those pencils. I want to encourage this talent of yours."
For some reason he's drawn to this woman who seems to be hanging on to life with bare claws but can make things so beautiful that he feels like he shouldn't even be able to touch them. The portrait of him is better than any photograph; it aches with feeling.
"I want you to get some sleep and then I'll bring those supplies. Do we have a deal?" he asks, holding his hand out for a handshake.
"You work too hard, Doctor. Your wife must miss you a lot."
She's not seen a ring, but she just wants to make sure. Especially since he's getting her a whole sketchpad. She was just hoping for some spare paper or more newspapers for margins to doodle on.
She stares at his hand for a moment when he offers it. Yeah, no ring. "Alright, I guess," she says, shaking his hand. Her fingers are thin and rough from hard work, and she's suddenly embarrassed at having gotten her hopes up. But it's just a silly crush, right? Surely a sickly girl who might die anytime soon can be excused.
"No, I don't have a wife. Nobody at home to worry about me working too long," Bucky says, flashing her a smile. "So I can pull as many hours as I like and often do because all the other doctors are married."
He lingers around the hospital because he has nothing to go home to when he goes back to his brownstone even if it is perfectly ready for a wife and children. He had a fiancee once but that had fallen through.
"I almost got married once," he says quietly. "She didn't like the hours."
"She should've been proud of you. I would," she huffs, angry on his behalf even if it's none of her business. Realizing that she'd said all that out loud but also refusing to take any of it back, she just leans back into her pillows and brings the blanket up to her chin. "Many of us here would be quite literally dead without you."
It takes her a moment to place the irrational surge of emotion: jealousy. Not over him, specifically, but at the fact that somewhere out there was a woman who turned him down. What wouldn't someone like Stephanie Rogers give for an opportunity like that? To have a good man and a good life? It really isn't fair that others get to squander what people like her would hold so dearly in their hands.
"She doesn't know what she's missing," she mumbles bitterly.
Bucky laughs softly and shakes his head. "Oh, she was proud, but I think it was more of the diamond on her finger than of me. Women want a husband who both makes a ton of money and come home at night, Miss Rogers. Since I have the money and never come home, I only fill half the requirements."
He doesn't know why he's having such a personal conversation with a patient but he is and he is locked into it. She has a way of getting him to talk that others don't.
His explanation only makes her huffier. "Not all women," she grumbles. It's such a stupid generalization — even if she acknowledges that it would be nice if she had a husband with the means and who liked spending time with her enough to come home.
But she has to smile at his admission. "That's alright, it's making me feel better. You know, about being single and probably never ever getting married. That's your job, right? To make me feel better?" she jokes. Because she doesn't want him to stop. It's nice, to have a conversation like a normal person, instead of all the prodding and the medical talk. Or just to have a conversation at all; she's never really had visitors.
He's also... well. She likes listening to him talk. He can read the phone book and it would rivet her attention.
“I guess we can be single together, Miss Rogers. It isn’t as if I have time to meet anyone when I’m here all the time. My fiancée was someone I went to college with,” he tells her.
“I’m surprised you don’t have a guy coming around to bring you sketchpads, though. I haven’t seen anyone at all come visit you except for me and I don’t count. I don’t think that’s particularly right.”
He shouldn’t do it but he touches her hand lightly. “Don’t worry about being single for long. You’re talented and can hold one hell of a conversation. Men would be stupid not to go for that.”
The touch surprises her. He's not supposed to be doing this, is he? Or telling her that they can just be single together. Ha.
"Men do not want to spend their lives taking care of other people," she says, with bitterness in her tone. She realizes she's talking to a doctor, who does exactly that, but that's a different situation entirely. "Doesn't matter that I know how to cook, how to sew a shirt and a wound, how to please a man—" She pinks at the admission, but continues, "—when I'm sick half the time to manage that anyway. Nobody wants a woman like that for a wife."
She should pull her hand away, shouldn't she? But she doesn't want to. So she plays dumb, like he's just checking her pulse or something. Doctors do that, right?
"Sickness and health," Bucky says. He doesn't let go of her hand even though he should and he shrugs a little bit.
"I made a whole career out of taking care of sick people. When you meet the right person, it doesn't matter. You want to take care of them because you love them. If someone can't get past your health, that's not a person you want around anyway. They just want someone who cooks, cleans, and pleases them in bed without any of the important stuff. You don't want people who don't see past the shallow things."
She nods emphatically. "I hope you find your person." And she means it. He's very kind. It would be awful for someone like him to spend the rest of his life alone when he deserves to be loved and happy and cared for.
Then she shrugs. "I'm not really sure I wanna meet mine." Her gaze turns distant and her expression sad. "What's the point if I won't live long enough, anyway? I don't wanna be the reason for anyone's suffering." She wants a great big love, a grand romance, that's true, but she also knows the odds are stacked against her. Even if she did find someone who would love her despite her status and her health, she would leave him eventually, and she'd seen what death and grief does to people — like what had happened to her mother.
"No? I'm sure your person is out there waiting for you," Bucky argues back. "And they want you in spite of any challenges they have to overcome to be with you. You really want to shut the door on that? Some people would rather have a great love and lose it than never be loved."
Bucky thinks he's one of those people, actually, and decides to say so.
"I know I would. I would rather have the real thing for a little while than never get to have it."
She's quiet for a moment, pursing her lips together. Then, softly, almost as if she's embarrassed to admit it, she says, "Me too. I... I just don't wanna get my hopes up, I guess. Whenever anything nice happens to me, something worse always comes afterward."
Then she squeezes his hand. "I hope you find her, one day. Someone who loves you so much she will do anything to be with you. She'll bring you lunch when you get too busy and wait for you when you're up late because of an emergency and sing you to sleep when you're too tired." Seriously, it's not that hard. And if it were her, she'll fill his house with sketches, read him books, mend his clothes. If he can only be home for a few hours, then she'll make them count.
"Well, I'm not gonna rule it out," Bucky says. He squeezes her hand lightly. "But you shouldn't sell yourself so short, Miss Rogers. You have a lot to offer the world to just write yourself off before you get a chance to shine."
Bucky thinks so, anyway, and he wishes she wasn't so down on herself. She has medical problems, certainly, but she has a lot of value and light to bring to the world.
Well, she's blushing now. "You're very kind. I... I'll try."
She spends the next couple of hours thinking about what he'd said while sketching another portrait of him on a blank page she'd found in the book she has. It's as she imagines him at the end of his day, the top buttons of his shirt unbuttoned, holding a glass of wine as he winds down for the evening. That's what rich people are like, right?
Then, in a burst of inspiration, she adds a some more details to the background. Half a frame in the corner, since he'd said he was going to frame the sketch she'd given him. Part of a table, with a meal waiting for him. A woman's hand, her fingers slender though calloused from housework, covering his left hand, obscuring whether there is or isn't a wedding ring. She likes to think there is, just as she pretends that the woman's hand is hers.
She quickly shuts the book when he returns to the room, having forgotten that he'd said he was going to come back to bring her some paper and pencils. "Hi," she greets, suddenly shy.
Bucky comes in and while he's technically off-shift for the evening, he does give Steph a cursory look, trying to see if she looks any different than when he'd seen her this afternoon. If anything, there's more color in her face and that can only be a good thing. If he didn't know she was very ill, he'd think she was blushing.
"Your color is better, Miss Rogers," he says, flashing her a smile. "That can only mean good news. Have you been drawing this evening or am I not allowed to know?"
Maybe this is borderline flirting and he should stop but she's very easy to talk to, easier than anyone else these days.
She glances away, her blush darkening. "Don't be mad," she mumbles before handing the book on her lap to him, opened to the page with the new sketch. "I was just thinking about what you said..."
She's been thinking about him a lot more, actually, because he's nice and cute and he's said there's no one back home who might get angry that some strange woman in the hospital is drawing pictures of him. She knows she's not supposed to, since he's her doctor and all that, but she can't help it. Then again she's not supposed to pick fights either, but that hasn't stopped her before, has it? At least this time no one's getting hurt.
She watches his face, bracing herself to be berated for being weird and inappropriate and not acting like she ought to — but also curious how that might look on him, how the lines and curves on that handsome face might change. In fact, she starts to imagine how he might wear more intense emotions: anger, desire, pleasure...
Bucky is a little surprised at the portrait but only because of its intimacy. Does his face ever get soft like that or did she just imagine it? Just like he had with the portrait before, he traces a fingertip over the lines of it. It strikes him that there's a woman's hand in the portrait that's covering his own but he can't tell who it belongs to.
"This is beautiful," he says softly. "More than the other one, even. How is it that you can see me like this? I don't think anyone has ever seen right through me the way you do."
He doesn't lift his head as he says it, too fascinated by the drawing, and a lock of hair falls over his forehead.
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Bucky flips through her chart again, takes stock of all her medical conditions. Everything interacts with everything else and he's afraid she'll have complications.
"You'll need to rest when you go home. No going back to full time work immediately."
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Still, she's not ungrateful. "Doctor Barnes," she calls out when he turns to leave, reaching for the book on the table and taking out a loose sheet of paper tucked into the pages. She holds it out to him with a small smile, her fingers shaking a little. "Thank you."
It's a pencil sketch of him. Suddenly shy, she averts her gaze and mumbles, "I was bored."
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"This is far better than just being bored, Miss Rogers. This is a beautiful portrait. Do you do this all the time or just when you're in the hospital and don't have the ability to get out of bed? Because I would be willing to buy these."
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She shakes her head at the offer of payment though, even if it would've been the answer to her financial concerns. Wasn't that what the artists of old did, find themselves patrons, rich people who paid them for making art? However: "I don't want your money." Let that be very clear. She might be poor, but she has her dignity.
And, more importantly, "It's a gift. I know it's not fancy like what you're used to, but I'm grateful for your help and I want you to have it."
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"You should sell these, though. They're really good, Miss Rogers. I know plenty of people who would want to buy a portrait like this because it looks...alive."
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"You don't gotta do that for me," she mumbles eventually, still unsure about how she feels about the whole thing. Maybe if he insists? That would mean he's serious, right? Not just saying stuff to make her feel better.
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He touches it again.
"What else do you have?"
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Then she adds, taking the plunge, "It's better if you sit for it, though. That way I can get the details right." Very smooth, Stephanie. Only just a tad bit lovestruck.
She reaches for the paperback on the table and offers it to him. She'd drawn faces on practically every blank space. Mostly people she knows or has seen around the hospital. There are several more of him in it, too.
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For some reason he's drawn to this woman who seems to be hanging on to life with bare claws but can make things so beautiful that he feels like he shouldn't even be able to touch them. The portrait of him is better than any photograph; it aches with feeling.
"I want you to get some sleep and then I'll bring those supplies. Do we have a deal?" he asks, holding his hand out for a handshake.
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She's not seen a ring, but she just wants to make sure. Especially since he's getting her a whole sketchpad. She was just hoping for some spare paper or more newspapers for margins to doodle on.
She stares at his hand for a moment when he offers it. Yeah, no ring. "Alright, I guess," she says, shaking his hand. Her fingers are thin and rough from hard work, and she's suddenly embarrassed at having gotten her hopes up. But it's just a silly crush, right? Surely a sickly girl who might die anytime soon can be excused.
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He lingers around the hospital because he has nothing to go home to when he goes back to his brownstone even if it is perfectly ready for a wife and children. He had a fiancee once but that had fallen through.
"I almost got married once," he says quietly. "She didn't like the hours."
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It takes her a moment to place the irrational surge of emotion: jealousy. Not over him, specifically, but at the fact that somewhere out there was a woman who turned him down. What wouldn't someone like Stephanie Rogers give for an opportunity like that? To have a good man and a good life? It really isn't fair that others get to squander what people like her would hold so dearly in their hands.
"She doesn't know what she's missing," she mumbles bitterly.
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He doesn't know why he's having such a personal conversation with a patient but he is and he is locked into it. She has a way of getting him to talk that others don't.
"I shouldn't talk about such things."
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But she has to smile at his admission. "That's alright, it's making me feel better. You know, about being single and probably never ever getting married. That's your job, right? To make me feel better?" she jokes. Because she doesn't want him to stop. It's nice, to have a conversation like a normal person, instead of all the prodding and the medical talk. Or just to have a conversation at all; she's never really had visitors.
He's also... well. She likes listening to him talk. He can read the phone book and it would rivet her attention.
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“I’m surprised you don’t have a guy coming around to bring you sketchpads, though. I haven’t seen anyone at all come visit you except for me and I don’t count. I don’t think that’s particularly right.”
He shouldn’t do it but he touches her hand lightly. “Don’t worry about being single for long. You’re talented and can hold one hell of a conversation. Men would be stupid not to go for that.”
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"Men do not want to spend their lives taking care of other people," she says, with bitterness in her tone. She realizes she's talking to a doctor, who does exactly that, but that's a different situation entirely. "Doesn't matter that I know how to cook, how to sew a shirt and a wound, how to please a man—" She pinks at the admission, but continues, "—when I'm sick half the time to manage that anyway. Nobody wants a woman like that for a wife."
She should pull her hand away, shouldn't she? But she doesn't want to. So she plays dumb, like he's just checking her pulse or something. Doctors do that, right?
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"I made a whole career out of taking care of sick people. When you meet the right person, it doesn't matter. You want to take care of them because you love them. If someone can't get past your health, that's not a person you want around anyway. They just want someone who cooks, cleans, and pleases them in bed without any of the important stuff. You don't want people who don't see past the shallow things."
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Then she shrugs. "I'm not really sure I wanna meet mine." Her gaze turns distant and her expression sad. "What's the point if I won't live long enough, anyway? I don't wanna be the reason for anyone's suffering." She wants a great big love, a grand romance, that's true, but she also knows the odds are stacked against her. Even if she did find someone who would love her despite her status and her health, she would leave him eventually, and she'd seen what death and grief does to people — like what had happened to her mother.
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Bucky thinks he's one of those people, actually, and decides to say so.
"I know I would. I would rather have the real thing for a little while than never get to have it."
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Then she squeezes his hand. "I hope you find her, one day. Someone who loves you so much she will do anything to be with you. She'll bring you lunch when you get too busy and wait for you when you're up late because of an emergency and sing you to sleep when you're too tired." Seriously, it's not that hard. And if it were her, she'll fill his house with sketches, read him books, mend his clothes. If he can only be home for a few hours, then she'll make them count.
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Bucky thinks so, anyway, and he wishes she wasn't so down on herself. She has medical problems, certainly, but she has a lot of value and light to bring to the world.
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She spends the next couple of hours thinking about what he'd said while sketching another portrait of him on a blank page she'd found in the book she has. It's as she imagines him at the end of his day, the top buttons of his shirt unbuttoned, holding a glass of wine as he winds down for the evening. That's what rich people are like, right?
Then, in a burst of inspiration, she adds a some more details to the background. Half a frame in the corner, since he'd said he was going to frame the sketch she'd given him. Part of a table, with a meal waiting for him. A woman's hand, her fingers slender though calloused from housework, covering his left hand, obscuring whether there is or isn't a wedding ring. She likes to think there is, just as she pretends that the woman's hand is hers.
She quickly shuts the book when he returns to the room, having forgotten that he'd said he was going to come back to bring her some paper and pencils. "Hi," she greets, suddenly shy.
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"Your color is better, Miss Rogers," he says, flashing her a smile. "That can only mean good news. Have you been drawing this evening or am I not allowed to know?"
Maybe this is borderline flirting and he should stop but she's very easy to talk to, easier than anyone else these days.
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She's been thinking about him a lot more, actually, because he's nice and cute and he's said there's no one back home who might get angry that some strange woman in the hospital is drawing pictures of him. She knows she's not supposed to, since he's her doctor and all that, but she can't help it. Then again she's not supposed to pick fights either, but that hasn't stopped her before, has it? At least this time no one's getting hurt.
She watches his face, bracing herself to be berated for being weird and inappropriate and not acting like she ought to — but also curious how that might look on him, how the lines and curves on that handsome face might change. In fact, she starts to imagine how he might wear more intense emotions: anger, desire, pleasure...
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"This is beautiful," he says softly. "More than the other one, even. How is it that you can see me like this? I don't think anyone has ever seen right through me the way you do."
He doesn't lift his head as he says it, too fascinated by the drawing, and a lock of hair falls over his forehead.
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