The One That Got Away

Chapter 1: I Can Do This All Day

When Charlie Mathews met the love of her life, she was 25. Her parents had tried to convince her to get married from the day she turned 21 but she never caved.

Charlie was the kind of girl that believed in true love and soulmates and that's why she had no intention whatsoever to marry someone just because her parents told her to, she wanted to wait for the perfect man to come along and once she met him, she knew she had made the right decision.

The day she met James ''Bucky'' Barnes is the day her whole world was turned upside down. He was the whole reason she knew what the true meaning of love was, and the reason she found out what true heartbreak felt like.

When you are young and in love you think you have all the time in the world, which would be true if there wasn't a war happening around the world, and that any man could be called to the front lines to fight for their country. Bucky ended up being one of them and, sadly, would be part of the fallen ones.

Charlie liked to keep to herself. Her dad had gotten her a job as a secretary for a small clinic near where they lived and she loved her job. She never knew what the day was going to bring, who she was going to meet and what she would have to do.

When she first started working, her main job was to answer the phones, schedule appointments and write down everything the nurses or doctors told her to in their patients' files. She had learned a lot by doing that, whenever there was some down time she would read the files and charts and try to learn as much as possible.

Charlie had loved school, she loved to learn and read about everything she didn't know. Still to this day whenever she wasn't working, she would be at the public library searching for new books to read or at the bookstore buying more books.

She would always get books for her birthdays or for Christmas and she would get as excited as if it was the first book she had ever gotten. Her dad had built shelves for her room when he saw the piles of books that were lying around on the floor, he kept adding to it and after a while, an entire wall of her room was taken by the shelves.

Working at the clinic was something that scared her at first, she had never had an emergency in her life and she didn't know how she would react to seeing people bleeding, in pain or even seeing bones that should normally be under the skin and not poking through it but she never was one to shy away from a challenge and she decided to, at least try it before deciding she didn't want to do it.

She was glad she had listened to her guts because she absolutely loved her job and she wouldn't want to be doing anything else. Everyone that worked at the clinic would agree that Charlie was the perfect addition to their team.

She was nice and always smiling to everyone she met, she had a way with patients, always putting them at ease. If there was a situation that required a lighter, softer approach they knew that Charlie was the one they needed and every time, she got the job done.

Everyone was on edge because of the war. The uncertainty was weighting on everyone's shoulders, no one knew what they would wake up to, who would be drafted to go and almost every day on her way to work, Charlie saw a family hugging their sons, their brothers while shedding tears not knowing when and if they were going to see them again. No matter how many times she saw it happened, it broke her heart the same every single time.

She didn't want to think about how she would feel being in their place, having to say goodbye to someone she loved not knowing if she would ever be able to see them again.

It was relatively calm at work when the head-nurse offered to teach Charlie a few things about minor injuries and how to take care of them. She jumped on the opportunity and every time she had some down time, she would go to the nurse's office to watch and practice new things.