Who: Steve Rogers, with a brief appearance from Dr. Bruce Banner Where: A hospital room When: June 21, 2008 What: Steve is rather rudely awakened
He was awake and it was warm and for some obscure reason this pleased him.
People came and went. He was aware of them in the most peripheral of ways. They touched him, took his temperature, checked his vitals, and talked in low voices that buzzed in his ears like a hundred droning bees. He ignored them. Every muscle in his body screamed. There was no time to worry about doctors and scientists. There was only time to worry about the pain.
He tried to resist it, but he slept. It was still warm and that made it easier somehow.
He woke up to whiteness, the color of purity and sterility. It was also the color of his nightmares. "Gail?" he asked. Nurses shook their heads and went about their jobs. The doctor at the foot of his bed stared for a moment, then walked out of the room. His voice felt as though it was coming from someone else's throat. He could barely hear the words as he spoke them. It was a nauseating sensation, but he forced his muscles to cooperate.
"Please, I want to speak to Gail..."
There was an endless parade of doctors. Not one would look him in the eye. He asked them all, grasped their arms with fingers that, weakened though they were, could still hold them by the bedside. They told him he wasn't well enough yet, and he sensed the lie in their words. He started to worry. Had something happened to Gail while he was gone?
Still, he asked about her, persistent in spite of the hopelessness growing inside him. And finally, finally he was answered.
It was a slender man with glasses that told him. "Captain," he said, and there was a hitch in his voice, a hesitation. His eyes shimmered with agonized sympathy. "You can't talk to Gail right now. It's... it's been sixty years since you fell into the ocean. The ice kept you alive, but..."
He didn't want to understand, but the truth in the doctor's voice slapped him in the face. There was no escaping it. There were official damned documents, and he stared at them numbly. 2008. Gail was... God, she was eighty, if she was even still alive. He wondered if she had married someone else. He wondered if she still had the ring he'd given her.
"I'm sorry," the doctor said. "We found this in your jacket. She was very beautiful." He handed over a picture of her, just a little thing. It was wrinkled and damaged by the water, but he could still see the tilt of her eyes and the teasing curve of her lips.
"She was," Steve answered, putting the picture aside. The doctor - the nametag clipped to his jacket read Banner, Bruce - hesitated for a moment, then nodded and left the room.
Steve slept again, but this time it didn't seem so warm.