White light. It was nearly blinding, like the sun trying to break through a scrim of clouds on a winter day. It wasn't the sun however, that nearly blinded Janie and her fellow students before they even got to the autopsy room, it was the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling above their heads.
The air smelled sterile, like a lot of rubbing alcohol and frozen air. Freezers always had a distinct scent to them, but there was something rubbery down here too. Janie couldn't quite put her finger on it at first, but when her eyes caught sight of twelve human-sized, black bags, she realized what that distinct, curious odor was.
Body bags.
It was cold inside the mortuary, but the bright green uniform she wore on top of her clothes offered a little bit of warmth, allowing warm air to circulate between the tunic and her deep blue henley.
Several black plastic bags lined the walls on either side of her. Janie watched her professor grab a hold of one of the gurneys and followed him while he pushed it - and the bag with it - towards another room, through a door with a pneumatic hinge. He pushed the gurney towards the middle of it and stopped it, before pushing his glasses up on his nose and looking around at his student body.
Without saying a word, two of them grabbed the body. One by the shoulders and one by the calves, they hoisted him or her - they couldn't tell yet, but they would in a second - up onto a new table, one with a drain by the dead person's feet and a scale dangling from the ceiling near their head. It's made out of metal completely. Surely if any of them were to lie down on the table, they would begin to shiver almost immediately, but not this person. This person wouldn't shiver even if you dropped them off on the South Pole in nothing but their birthday suit.
"Sign this for me," The professor said, "Remember to bear down hard. It's three copies."
Janie watched while one of her fellow students signed the paperwork. He was wearing the same tunic and his hair was hidden behind a carelessly worn surgical cap. Janie shivered, but not from being cold. The atmosphere in the room felt even colder than the freezers that lined the walls. Probably because the dead people didn't talk. They didn't do much of anything, really.
"What's the story, Janie?" The professor asked her, all eyes - nine pairs - now turned to her.
"Uh," She coughed, "Male, 57 years of age. Found him on the twelfth floor of the Hearst Tower. They were doing some interior decorating on that floor, moving some of the desks around, and re-carpeting some of the offices, so it was mostly deserted. He's probably been there all weekend. Presumable heart attack, he's got the age and weight for it."
"Do you want to do the pericardial cut?" He asked her with one of his grey eyebrows raised.
"Do you want me to?" She replied, biting her tongue.
The professor smiled behind his mask, "Yes, most of us have had the chance earlier in the semester, but since you only just came back, I figured it would be best if you took the opportunity."
"Alright," Janie said slowly, "Scissors?"
Janie took the scissors out of the professor's hand and cut the air with them. Then, she slowly began to cut open the man's clothes with her heart thumping inside her chest. The poor man was wearing an expensive suit - either Armani or Dior, she couldn't tell - but he wouldn't be needing it anymore anyway. Materialism really didn't exist after death. Not enough people realized that.
Then, he gave her a new pair of scissors, with long, sharp edges and fat finger holes.
Janie swallowed hard. This is what she wanted, right? What she had come in here for? Years of studying hard to get into a good school, doing volunteer work on the weekends, and don't forget all of the letters she had to write, by God, the letters and the application process, not to mention the psychological evaluations left and right.
The lower blade would slide through this man's gut like butter, then up the bundle of nerves at the solar plexus and into the weave of muscle and tendon above it into the sternum. Everything that once allowed this man to live his life would be exposed to the class to see.
Out of the corner of her eye, Janie could see two students quietly talking to each other. She couldn't hear them, but she had no doubt in her mind they were talking about her. She'd been the talk of the town and even though people had stopped asking her questions and telling her 'how sorry they are' to her face, they still whispered and stared when they thought she wasn't looking.
With shaky hands, Janie lowered herself towards the body. The temperature in the room seemed to have risen suddenly because she noticed tiny beads of sweat running down her back and sitting on top of her upper lip. Hot spurts of breath flew against the surgical mask that hid most of her face and Janie's hands shook considerably. She could feel several pairs of eyes burning holes into her back and let out a nervous cough.
"Are you okay?" The professor asked, his head slightly tilted and his full attention on her.
"I'm sorry," Janie squeaked, "Can I have a moment?"
He nodded, before taking the scissors out of her hands and motioning toward the door. It took all of Janie's strength to ignore her fellow students, whose pitiful eyes followed her while she stormed out of the morgue with her bag slung across her shoulder and her scrubs hidden beneath her winter coat.
That was the last time she would ever set foot in another mortuary alive.
Janie sat on the steps in front of her old apartment building two weeks later. Small flakes of snow began to accumulate in her hair and stuck to her forehead, but the cold air that circulated around her face didn't phase her.
People left and right passed her by wearing thick, heavy coats, hiding their faces in wool scarves and hats to keep the snow at bay. Cars drove passed at slow, careful paces. They slipped along the ice, tires barely managing to grip the slippery layer of slush atop the concrete.
Janie had her lower lip between her teeth and bit down on it. She stayed on the steps for what felt like ages, or at least until the last little bit of winter sun that had been in the sky began to dissipate beyond the skyscrapers. Her stomach grumbled in protest, but she paid it no mind.
When the door behind her suddenly slammed shut, Janie finally broke out of the nearly two-hour trance she'd found herself in. She shot up, nearly slipping on the steps that would lead to the place where it happened. A short, stocky old man slowly passed her, only giving her a side-eye look as he stomped carefully down the steps holding a wooden cane in his left hand and an empty tote bag in his right. She should probably introduce herself to him, considering he was one of her neighbors, but she hadn't found it in her to go door to door yet. Besides, in New York, nobody really gave a shit who lived where.
She let out a breath she'd been holding in, watching her breath fog up in front of her eyes when they finally focused on a person standing across the street from where she sat. He was peering inside an antique shop window, carefully inspecting what appeared to be lampshades from the 1970s. An uneasy feeling crept over her as if his presence could harm her in some way.
Her brain screamed at her to simply turn around and leave, but her feet were nailed to the ground, glued to the pavement.
The muscles in her jaw and fingers cramped up when she tried to find her balance. Her synapses were doing jumping jacks as was her heart, which hammered so quickly inside her chest that she thought it would punch a hole straight through it.
People that passed her by walked around her in a wide arch to try and stay as far away from her as possible. They offered pitiful glances, but nobody asked her what was wrong. Nobody stopped to see if she was okay, nobody even tried to see what was going on. Tension grew inside her face and fingertips and soon, a sensation of pins and needles overtook her extremities.
'Not again,' She thought to herself.
A firm grip on her forearm pulled Janie out of her erratic thought pattern. Her eyes shot up, fright consuming every cell in her body.
Pale blue eyes, framed by furrowed brows looked down at her. The creases on Steve's forehead exposed his worry and the thin line in which his lips were pursed magnified it. Janie saw the tension in him and felt it inside herself as well, tingling even more now in her face and the tips of her toes as well.
Steve began to speak. Janie deducted this because his lips moved and she could see the pearly white teeth behind them, but she didn't hear any words escaping his mouth. She only felt the grip around her arm and his presence, big and tall, hovering over her, invading her personal space. He was a dominant force, one not to be taken lightly.
He wasn't wearing the Captain America suit - thank God - because doing so would have no doubt brought more attention to them than either of them wanted, even though people still recognized him without the vibranium shield and white star punched on his chest. She almost laughed at the thought of seeing him strolling the streets in his superhero costume. Outfit? Suit.
"Hey listen to me," Steve muttered strictly, "stop it."
Janie tried to pry herself out of Steve's iron grip, but he wouldn't let go. She didn't know why she even tried to get out of his arms, because she could feel his muscles through his crewneck tense.
"Come on, stop," Steve let go of her arm and instead, wrapped his fingers tightly around her shoulders, "Nobody's going to hurt you. I got you."
He thought she was going to push him away again, but she didn't. Instead, he suddenly felt the girl trembling beneath him as heavy sobs racked through her.
Steve awkwardly nodded toward the people that rushed by him while he continued to shield the girl from their staring eyes. None of them dared to ask for Steve's autograph, but it didn't take long before some of them began to take pictures and videos of Captain America and someone they assumed to be his insane girlfriend.
When the car he'd called finally pulled up in front of the apartment complex, Steve quickly coaxed Janie into the backseat. He took a seat beside her and told the driver where to go, an address Janie neither recognized nor questioned or remembered. The drive itself felt long because of the shared silence between the three people inside the vehicle, while in reality, it took less than fifteen minutes to drive from Janie's apartment to Steve's.
The girl continued to stay silent, even after the man that had saved her life once led her gently inside his apartment, shutting the door behind him once he was sure nobody had followed them there. People did that sometimes. He'd moved twice in less than six months because of it.
He sat her down on the couch and turned on the way too-large Smart-TV Tony told him to buy while he went into his kitchen to fetch the two of them something to drink.
"Do you think I'm crazy?"
Steve nearly knocked over a stack of empty beer bottles on the kitchen counter when her voice suddenly rang through his kitchen, startling him straight out of his thoughts.
His eyes shot up toward the sound. She stood in the open doorway, her hands crossed over her stomach and her brow furrowed.
He sighed, offering her a can of coke before he opened a bottle of blue Gatorade for himself. They sure as hell didn't have this stuff in the forties.
"No," he said, "Do you believe me when I say that?"
"No," was her answer.
"Didn't expect you to. Drink that," he motioned towards the icy drink in her clammy hands, "You could use some sugar. You look pale."
Janie looked down at the aluminum in her hands and cracked it open at once, drowning half of its contents in one gulp. She hadn't realized how thirsty she really was until the cold liquid hit her throat and the temperature woke her up out of her daze.
"Don't drink too fast," Steve told her, "Might upset your stomach."
"Why did you bring me here?" Janie asked, setting down the can of coke on the small dining table.
"I had to remove you from that situation." He replied honestly.
"No I mean, why here? In your apartment, I mean." Janie asked shyly.
"I didn't know where else to go," Steve admitted, "We drew quite a crowd. I didn't want any of those people to know where you live. I have a lot of fans. They get... intense, at times."
"I guess," Janie said, "thanks. You didn't have to."
He replied almost too quickly, "I wanted to."
She smiled at that.
***
Janie sank down in the bathtub, allowing the warmth of the water to block out the sound of Steve's television through the closed door. She wished the tub would expand so she could actually go swimming in it like she used to do every Wednesday after school at their local swimming pool.
Small drops of water leaked from the faucet at Janie's feet. The young woman quietly watched them fall into the soapy bubbles and disappear into the vast body of water she was in, counting them as they went.
The relationship between her and Steve was still strained. Two days after she shoved him out of her apartment, a note with his phone number appeared under her door. She'd taken it, and programmed it into her phone without any intention to call. She tried to forget about him, but it seemed impossible with his face being plastered all over the news. Everywhere she went, she was reminded of him. Ben&Jerry's named a fucking flavor of ice cream after him (it was good, too).
When the first panic attack crept up on her, she'd taken her shaky fingers and dialed his number out of sheer desperation. She didn't know who else to call. Frankly, she didn't expect him to actually answer the phone. He picked up on the second ring, talked her through what was happening inside her body. Helped her rationalize it until she was able to get her breathing back under control. They didn't speak of what happened inside her apartment since.
She watched him laying on the couch. Steve had his full attention on the show playing on TV, so engrossed in what the characters were saying he didn't hear her approaching him from the bathroom.
Steve had given her a pair of clean sweatpants and his smallest white t-shirt, but in the end, the damn thing still fit like a dress and the pants wouldn't even stay up on Janie's hips, so she decided to just ditch them.
With her hair still slightly damp, she slowly walked towards the couch. Steve looked up and immediately sat up straight, a dry cough emitting from the back of his throat while he padded the cushion beside him. He really had been too invested in his show to hear her coming out of his bathroom.
"I didn't mean to startle you," Janie said quietly.
"It's okay, don't worry about it. Ever since Tony practically ordered me to get Netflix I've been a little too invested in some of the things on it." He admitted with a smile.
"Like Bates Motel?" Janie asked, motioning towards the screen.
"You've seen it?"
"Well yeah, of course. It's a good show."
Steve sighed, "I'll put something on you haven't seen."