Captain America Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier Steve Rogers Fan Fic - The Constant

Chapter Eleven: The Nurse - Becoming The Primary Carer

"Its not overzealousness that caused the problem," you say. "The nursing staff are running a bet. Whomever gets the most of the slop down him gets to win a weeks' supply of cigarettes. They use the same food that they have used all week. It is mouldy. Flies had been feeding of it. It is slop." You pause for effect. "When Stefan and I examined the patient after his shower, he had additional burns. Not just on his body, but on his genitals. All were from the use of the baton; his punishment for not eating the week-old food. We found he had not been cleaned, or allowed out of the bed for three days, and had spent that time lying in his own faeces and urine. They had soaked into his wounds and his bed sores. The straps were so tight that they left deep abrasions which had started to fester and restricted him from moving. He has had no pain medication for months. Not even a saline drip. The food they were feeding him was rancid and mouldy and, as I mentioned, already a week old. I am sure they told you how they spit in it to make it tastier."

They mutter at that. After all, none of them likes to think of themselves as sadists. You notice Doctor Lehmann has not said a word but is watching you closely.

Doctor Jakobs clears his throat.

"I can vouch for what Nurse Bowman is telling us. I saw the condition in which our...patient was in. I was shocked. I had never thought about what happens when he is not in with us, but this was bad. I would even go as far as to say it was torture...his condition certainly looked almost as bad as it did when I brought him here from the interrogation camp."

"Well then maybe we could agree that certain conditions are met in future..." Doctor Schmidt begins, but you interrupt him.

"That will not be enough." The room falls ominously quiet.

Tread carefully.

They did not see the file in your hand until now. You open it up, stand and hand them several sheets. If you knew there would be more than one of them you would have typed more copies. They think that you were just preparing a report because of yesterday, what they didn't know is that you have been thinking about this since you first came here. You have been putting this file together since you arrived.

"These are facts and figures I have gathered, and some recommendations that I would like to put forward."

They obviously expect you to start with a list of "Do and Don't', but instead you start with statistics.

You list James Barnes' wounds over the past months. Then you bring to their attention the problem of bed sores and enforced bed rest. The statistics show conclusively that patients take longer to heal if forced to lie down for long periods of time. Some even die.

"But this patient heals on his own." Doctor Aichinger argues.

"Yes, but how much faster would it be if he wasn't weakened by infections all of the time?" you counter.

She has just hit the jackpot but does not know it. She has their full attention.

You proceed to the figures that show the need to keep muscle tone and strength up.

The need for a proper diet. The slop they feed him in no way benefits their work.

"At the moment you have the patient eating nothing but liquidised vegetables and fruit. And it's not the freshest either; this is food that has already gone past its shelf life. I've seen them prepare it in the kitchens, most of the time it is substandard, leftovers from mealtimes. If the patient had a better diet, comprised of fresh vegetables, fruit, fish, meat, milk, then when your project is ending and you want to see the final results, his digestion, musculature, and nervous system will already be used to ordinary food. At the moment it is not. He cannot even hold proper food down. This means that parts of his body are not getting what they need. An example would be his teeth and bones, which are not getting the calcium they need. There is something in his body that keeps on repairing despite this but you need more than that to happen - you need to give it a building ground to know what to repair and where."