Vertigo: Hydra's Greatest Weapon

Chapter 21

All the built-up pressure from everything that's been going on finally gets to me. In the training room, I push myself to the limits, not worrying about the pain or how tired I am. But I guess I should because here I am at the punching bag. I throw an intense punch.

"Fuck!" I curse when my knuckles crack under great pressure.

I grip my hand as painful tears fill my eyes. Now with an injury, I stop attacking the bag. Looking around me and seeing no one, I crumble against a nearby wall and lightly sob with my head between my knees to my chest. Through my cries, I hear the double doors to the training room open. I'm paralyzed. I can't even lift my head to see who just walked in. Not even ten seconds later, I know who it is.

"Callie, what's wrong?" Nat asks, quickly dropping in front of me and placing her hands on my shoulders.

I just try to shake my head to push her away.

"You can talk to me," she tries.

She positions herself next to me with a comforting arm wrapped around me. Being too upset to talk, I lean into her lightly. Her thumb gently rubs my shoulder as I try to calm myself down.

"I fucked up my hand," I finally tell her.

"How?"

I bring my hand out of my lap to expose a red, sore, bruised hand.

"That looks broken. How did you even manage-"

"I was angry. Upset. I don't know."

"Want me to take you to Bruce? He can fix you up."

"Okay," I sigh, not moving from leaning on her.

She doesn't move. She doesn't try to get up. She allows me to rest on her. Her touch is comforting, warm, and soft. I only get up when my hand begins to ache and I can't take it anymore.

"Ready to see Bruce?" Nat asks as I get up.

"Yeah."

She leads me to the medical wing of the compound where we find Bruce working on whatever med doctors do in their downtime. Hearing us walk through the doors, he turns with a warm smile.

"Nat, Cal, hi," he greets us.

"Hey," Nat smiles.

"What brings you?"

"Nat thinks I broke my hand," I tell him.

"Well, that's not good. Here, let me take a look."

He gently ushers me into a single hospital-room-looking chair with an adjustable table next to it. When sitting, he rolls up on a stool next to me with my arm resting on the table. Natasha takes a seat on the opposite side, I guess she's staying, not that I'm complaining. Bruce pulls his glasses out of his white lab coat's breast pocket.

"How'd this happen?" He asks me.

"Uh, training too hard, I guess."

"Hm," he nods, carefully examining my hand in his. I wince every now and then as he gently looks at me. "I'm going to take an x-ray. It is broken but I want to see where exactly."

He gets up from his seat and drags over a mobile device. It's crazy what these millionaire geniuses have access to. The machine ends up being an X-ray device that hovers over my hand on the table and somehow scans every inch of my forearm. A few short minutes later, Bruce is examining the screen that's attached to the mobile X-ray machine. He spins the screen on its axis to face me and starts explaining.

"Your pinky and ring fingers are what's broken. If you hit that punching bag any harder, you could have shattered the bones. It amazes me that you even have that kind of strength. It takes a lot to cause this much damage. But it's fixable. I'll give you meds and you'll need a cast. You got lucky that you don't need surgery."