Chapter Text
Gravesen Hospital was supposed to be one of the best in the country. He should probably be grateful that he had the privilege to be treated here by such renowned doctors. But he could be at the finest medical facility in the universe and he'd still hate it. No sixteen-year-old could ever rejoice at the prospect of living out the foreseeable future in a hospital.
Well, it's not like he had a choice when his own heart couldn't even do its only damn job. Some mix-up in his genetic code resulted in wacky cardiac muscle cells—thanks Mom and Dad. He'd managed to stay outpatient for a bit by adhering strictly to his medication and lifestyle regimen. But regular exercise and a low-sodium diet could only get him so far when his heart was determined to retire early. And now his heart's rhythms were apparently chaotic and unpredictable enough to necessitate him being in close proximity to a resuscitation team at all hours, hence the admittance to Gravesen.
His mom was a wreck, absolutely terrified that this was the beginning of a pitifully short road to the end of his life. But he couldn't find it in himself to contemplate the possibility of death when his primary concern was uprooting his life at home and settling here in this ridiculously sterile environment filled with sick strangers. Once he knew where he stood among his peers here, maybe then he could worry about not living to see adulthood.
A nurse who introduced himself as Happy—stupid name, right? Must be a nickname, no way would a parent legally name their child after an impermanent emotion—showed him into what would be his room for God-knows-how-long. It was despairingly plain, as hospital rooms were wont to be. Luckily, he brought enough from home to make it feel less like it belonged to nobody and more like it actually belonged to him. His parents helped him unpack, and he completed the decor by lining his stuffed animals up neatly at the foot of the bed (yes, he had stuffed animals, go ahead and laugh) and slapping an AC/DC poster up on the wall. He dusted his hands together in finality and sat down on the bed—he was short of breath from light housework for God's sake! His mom hugged him goodbye, promising to come back tonight after work to check on his progress adjusting. He watched her and Dad leave with a sad detachment, wondering what sort of news he'd have to share with them when they eventually returned.
He fidgeted with the patient identification bracelet around his wrist and lost himself in his thoughts. Another nurse, this one called Peggy, entered shortly after his parents left to hook him up to the heart monitor that would become his constant companion. He took off his T-shirt and stoically allowed her to place the familiar electrodes across his chest. Though part of him hated the inconvenience, he couldn't help but appreciate that people would be notified immediately if his rhythm fell out of whack—more out of whack than his norm of 'pretty damn whack.' He didn't fidget, but sensed that Peggy was the type who would scold him for that and glare at him until he cooperated. He hoped there was at least one fun nurse here; if he spent his days with only Happy and Peggy he might get to add depression to his list of ailments.
She left promptly upon finishing her duty, leaving him once again alone with his roiling emotions. He wondered what life would be like here, as a permanent resident in a hospital and not just someone passing through until they get better. Most people came in here sick, started getting treatment for whatever-it-was, and started to get better. Some days they'd regress a little and get worse, but a team of doctors would fight back and get them moving in the right direction again. But he couldn't get better here. There was no medicine or simple in-and-out operation they could do to fix his failing heart. He was here to make sure he didn't die before his only chance of long-term survival arrived in a starkly labeled cooler. A new heart was his only way out. Too bad they didn't sell those at the hospital gift shop.
He sighed, considering taking a nap, but was roused from his thoughts by a knock on the door. "Come in," he directed, assuming it would be another nurse here to check his blood pressure or some other random routine thing. But he was surprised to find another boy about his age standing in the doorway. Was this the previous occupant of this room, here to wish him luck in his stay here? Or some hired "youth interpreter" in charge of showing people his age the ropes so that an adults wouldn't have to cope with attitude or hormonal moodiness? He considered both of these possibilities, but the oxygen cannula draped across his face and the IV pole he held beside him suggested the visitor was merely another patient here.
"I'm Steve," he introduced. "Steve Rogers."
"What are you doing here?"
"Peggy told me there was a new arrival. I thought I'd show you around and introduce you to people."
"What people?"
"The other patients here. You're not the only one confined to this hospital for the foreseeable future, you know."
"Yeah, I know." Of course there were other sick kids here, seeing as this was the pediatric residential ward of a major hospital.
"You want a tour?" Steve asked hesitantly.
"What the hell, I got nothing better to do." He followed Steve out the door and down the hallway, passing many other rooms on their way.
"I'll tell you whose room is whose on the way back; you'll probably remember better if you meet them first."
"Okay."
They crossed the entire ward, through the central nurses' station where Happy, Peggy, and some others he hadn't met yet were studying charts or talking to one another. If multiple nurses were there instead of attending to patients, it must be a slow day. Steve started their tour in a classroom, with a chalkboard—seriously, not even a whiteboard, was this the nineteen hundreds?—and tables lined up neatly in rows. It was decorated exactly like the stereotypical classrooms in movies, complete with a globe in the corner and a large bookshelf of unnecessarily thick tomes.
"This is where we do school," Steve explained. "I don't know what sort of curriculum you were doing at your school before you came here, but we just do basic stuff. Mostly English and history. They alternate classes between our age and the younger kids. The schedule's pretty irregular and enforcing attendance is impossible in a place like this, but doing something as normal as school is actually really nice."
"Cool." He didn't know what else to say. Of course attendance enforcement would be impossible. Could his teacher hold it against him if he skipped class because his stupid heart quivered itself into stopping for a bit? Did they expect him to return to class the next day with a doctor's note and an apology for missing? He chuckled to himself at the prospect.
"There's a kitchen around here," Steve continued. "We don't really use it that often because we get meals delivered to our rooms anyways and cooking requires energy most of us don't have to spare. Also, some of us don't always eat real food for one reason or another."
"You keep saying 'we' and 'us,' but I've yet to see another person who doesn't work here."
"I think they're all watching TV or something in the common room, but that's our next stop," Steve said. He started back in the direction they'd come, but turned down a different hallway. It ended in a large, comfortable-looking room filled with brightly colored couches and armchairs. The television, a large flat screen on the opposite wall, was not on, but four kids sat around a table, intensely focused on a hexagonal board littered with tiny houses. Steve headed straight for the game board. He followed, eager to meet these new people, but also dreading it.
"Hey guys, who's winning?" Steve asked.
"Quill has the most victory points at the moment, but Natasha is one turn away from taking Longest Road away from him," a boy about their own age explained. He watched the solid black face mask the boy wore move slightly as he spoke. Cancer, he could tell. It wasn't hard to figure it out given the boy's bald head and the mask indicating a possible compromised immune system.
"How do you know I am planning to take Longest Road?" a young girl with a thick Russian accent asked.
"Because you always do that when we play this game. You set up two long roads that are shorter than another player's longest, but then you connect them with a final piece and make a wall that covers the whole island."
"Sorry Bucky, but you misjudge my strategy today," Natasha said mischievously. It was her turn, so she rolled the dice and everyone took cards from the five decks beside the board. She stared at the cards in her hand for ten seconds before slamming down a card labeled 'knight' and snagging a piece of cardboard labeled 'Largest Army.' Then, she threw down five cards, two of which had wheat and three of which had rocks on them. She replaced one of her small houses with a big one and proclaimed her victory.
"You tricked us!" a tall, blonde boy complained. Probably not cancer, seeing as he had a full head of hair that cascaded even past his shoulders. Then again, not all cancer treatments caused hair loss. He studied every member of the group, unable to keep himself from guessing their illnesses. It was one of the only mentally stimulating activities one could partake in, although he figured learning the rules of this game in front of them would probably count. It seemed just complicated enough to be interesting.
"I did not trick you," Natasha insisted. "You thought I did one thing, and I did another. Not my fault."
"That still counts as tricking!
"Hey, calm down," Bucky suggested. "You shouldn't get upset, it might—"
They never heard what it might do, because the blonde boy's eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the floor with a mighty thump.
"Shit!" Steve proclaimed, rushing to his side and crouching down. "Quill, grab that pillow." The boy nodded curtly and tossed Steve a throw pillow from the nearest couch. Steve caught it expertly and gently eased in under the boy's head. Not a moment too soon, because he immediately started convulsing. The pillow prevented his head from bashing against the floor, but nothing stopped the rest of his limbs from hitting the ground seemingly as hard as possible.
"Bucky, go get one of the nurses, tell them Thor's seizing again." So that was the boy's name: Thor. Bucky stood up and started for the hall, but he didn't even make it to the doorway when a nurse walked in. He was very tall with a black beard and thick dreadlocks. His eyes were such a light amber-brown they almost looked like they were made of solid gold. He crouched down across from Steve, watching Thor's thrashing gradually slow and finally stop. Together, they rolled him to his side and waited.
"Thanks Heimdall," Steve said.
"You're welcome. Good thinking with the pillow; a few days ago he hit his head so hard he sliced his scalp open."
"Should we get him back to his room?" Natasha asked meekly. She seemed somewhat guilty for having possibly caused this.
"How long did it last?"
"Only three minutes or so," Quill replied.
"Leave him here until he wakes up, and then ask him where he wants to sleep it off," Heimdall instructed kindly. Sleep it off? A seizure seemed like a pretty dire medical emergency that constituted more than just 'sleeping it off.'
"That's it? He has a seizure, and nobody does anything beyond make sure he doesn't hit his head?" he asked, shocked.
"Thor has severe epilepsy. He seizes pretty much every day, sometimes multiple times a day," Steve explained.
"Isn't that dangerous?"
"Of course it's dangerous; that's why he's here. They're weaning him off of his old anticonvulsants because they weren't working, and then they'll attempt an experimental new drug to see if it helps him."
"I certainly hope it does. Every time I see him seize, I feel like I need a session with the Falcon," Bucky remarked.
"Who's the Falcon?"
"Dr. Wilson, he's the head of psychiatry. We call him the Falcon because of how sharply he stares at you when you have a session with him," Steve explained.
"Do you guys have nicknames for all the doctors here?"
"Almost all of them. The chief cardiologist we call the War Machine."
He gulped. He hadn't met the cardiologist in charge here yet, even though he'd be the one primarily in charge of his own health. But it didn't bode well that his primary caregiver had such a belligerent nickname. "Why is he called that?" he asked nervously.
"None of his patients leave hospital alive," Natasha said. He felt his heart skip a beat—literally, it did that all the time now, this wasn't that figurative beat-skipping that heroes in novels always describe—and wondered if the staff would get to him in time if he suffered a fear-induced cardiac arrest right here and right now. All the people in this room hadn't been trained to deal with his heart the way they clearly knew how to deal with Thor's epilepsy.
"Don't do that, Nat, you're scaring him," Steve chided.
"She's just messing with you. The name is purely ironic," Bucky explained. "He's the sweetest man you'll ever meet. Never has a bad word to say about anything or anybody."
"Oh. That's a relief."
"Anyone else whose name I need to know?"
"That nurse who just came in here? Heimdall? I'm telling you right now, you will not get away with any shenanigans while he's on duty. The man somehow sees everything no matter what room he's in or where you are," Bucky informed him.
"But if you make puppy dog eyes at him after he catches you, sometimes he'll let you off," a new voice—a young, pre-pubescent male voice—said. He turned to glance at the new arrival and had to stifle a wince. The boy looked like the human version of the abused, malnourished dogs on the ASPCA advertisements with the sad music in the background. He failed to imagine how this boy was even up and walking on legs seemingly as thin as a spider's. He looked closely at the boy's unimaginably thin wrist, noticing that his hospital bracelet had to be wrapped around twice just to be tight enough.
"That might work for you, Parker, but some of us have lost the innocent charm of being eight years old," Bucky growled.
"I'm thirteen!" the boy, evidently called Parker, countered.
"Prove it."
"My date of birth is in the database of this hospital, ask anyone who works here to check it. There's your proof."
"Still not buying it," Bucky said. Parker sighed dramatically and flopped down on the couch nearest the group. His eyes fell on Thor's still-sleeping form on the floor.
"He seize?"
"Yeah. Natasha upset him by winning at Catan."
"You guys played without me!"
"We can't wait for you every single time," Quill said. "Sometimes we get bored when you're in session."
In session. Parker must be another psych patient, then. Most likely an eating disorder, given his appearance. Parker's eyes met his, and he asked, "Who's the new guy?"
"This is…" Steve began. He and Steve realized simultaneously that their earlier name exchange had been one-sided.
"Tony Stark," he finished.