The best part about falling into his current circumstances — being quasi-adopted by a squad of super-powered misfits that get along begrudgingly, at best — isn't the free rent in Midtown, or the stable housing with a hell of a view, or the misfits that, again, seem to like him for whatever reason.
Nah. The best part is that, for the first time in his adult life, Bob Reynolds has health insurance.
The little card sits snugly in his cheap-ass pleather wallet, his full legal name printed with a whole host of numbers and other words that Valentina dismissively waved away as "policy info, whoever you hand the card to will know what the deal is."
He looked around at his (friends? roommates? countrymen?) but they didn't seem to have a clue, either. Nice to know he isn't the only failure of an adult in the joint.
Though, he is trying to rectify that. That piece of plastic lets doctors know he's finally a member of society productive enough to move on past cursory care in the emergency room, and it's responsible for securing his first appointment with Dr. Andrea Sterman.
Bucky recommended her. He doesn't see her, personally, but he allegedly knows people (he was reticent on the details, so these "people" might be "contacts" of an unsavory type) who do. They had nothing but praises for her, which were completely in line with most of her book reviews.
Bob read through a bunch of those last night when he was Wikipedia deep-diving Dr. Sterman in a poor attempt to cure his usual 3 AM insomnia. The book was a little dramatic, but she seemed legit. And the fact that her website said she specializes in treating "enhanced individuals" also scored her some points with him.
"You trying to be a client of Andie's?"
Bob jolted so hard he almost threw the laptop out the living room window.
"Yikes, sorry." Walker entered his field of vision, hands up in a lazy show of non-aggression. It was largely negated by the full tactical gear he wore and the half-dozen firearms strapped to his person.
He jabbed a finger at Walker. "Don't snoop on me."
"Oh, come on. Yelena snoops, she's the spy."
His eyebrows rose higher.
"Okay, fine," Walker sighed. "I didn't mean to snoop. Actually, I don't know if it counts as snooping if your screen is bright enough to be a homing beacon."
By now, Bob had lived with him long enough to know when Walker was being a dick by default or a dick because he wanted a reaction. This was a dick by default situation, and that meant letting it go.
"You know Dr. Sterman?" he asked instead.
"Know is kind of a strong word. I had, like, two sessions with her before we realized it wasn't gonna work out, and I got referred somewhere else."
Bob blinked. Blinked again. "You go to therapy?"
Now, it was Walker's turn to raise his eyebrows. "I was in the Army. They make you see a shrink when you get out. It's a CYA kind of—"
"Cover your ass kind of thing for the government, to say they tried or whatever. I've been more open to it at certain points of my life than others, but now that it's part of the custody agreement, I'm seeing a shrink once a week."
That might have been the most words Walker had ever spoken at once, voluntarily, uninterrupted. "Huh."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"If you're in therapy," Bob said slowly and deliberately to telegraph that it was, in fact, a joke, "then why are you still a dick?"
Walker snorted. "I'm wired to be a dick. I have bigger problems I need to fix, so that can come secondary, if ever."
He wasn't expecting such a legitimate answer, so he redirected. "You said Dr. Sterman wasn't good?"
"No, I said she wasn't good for me," Walker corrected.
The confusion must have shown on Bob's face, because he added, "There's a difference. And, from what little I know about her, she seems like she might be good for you."
Which brings him to today, right now. The waiting room of Dr. Sterman's office. It's a sterile space, with its white walls and fluorescent bar lighting that buzzes in his ears, but it's trying to be a little more comfortable. The art on the walls looks like actual people made it, instead of random prints from the internet. His sneakers sink pleasantly into the patterned area rug.
On the end table sits a little bonsai tree surrounded by sand. A little rake rests near it. Someone else put pretty designs in the sand, so Bob doesn't touch it. That, and he doesn't trust himself not to drop it onto the floor. His hands, shoved in the sleeves of his too-big green crewneck, shake if they aren't holding something. Right now, that something is his arms. Back, before it, he used to hold them tight enough to bruise. He wonders if he can bruise anymore. Should he check? Or would that look weird when they—
He startles so badly his elbow knocks the little rake onto the floor anyway. Shit.
"Uh, yeah. That's me," he says, and then cringes because of course that's him, he's the only one in the fucking waiting room.
When he's done scrunching his whole face up in embarrassment, he opens his eyes to find a woman with brown hair and startlingly blue eyes standing in the doorway. Her mouth is curled up slightly at the corners, but it doesn't feel mean. Bob feels like he's in on the joke. It's nice.
"I'm Doctor Sterman," she says, and hang on, she's so young. He had expected her to be, like, his mom's age, or something. All the therapists he's seen for one-off psych ward stays in the past had been much older. Or maybe they felt much older because he had been much younger. Or maybe he's misremembering from the morphine and the meth, or the ket, that one notable time.
Thinking about it will give him a headache, and he really doesn't need that right now. The important thing is that Dr. Sterman is much closer to his age. She might only be a few years older than him, if that.
He feels familiarly inadequate. Here is someone with their life together, and, once again, it isn't him.
"Why don't you come on back?" she says with a warm smile. It's less clinical than the ones he has seen before, but, again, memory problems.
He wipes his sweaty palms on his pants (no stains, thank god) and follows her back without a word.
The office itself is warmer than the waiting room. Gone are the white walls; instead they're a soft green with shelves of knick-knacks all over. Near the window, which has its shades open to let in the late afternoon/early evening light, rests an armchair and end table. Dr. Sterman sits in the chair and picks up the steaming mug of… it smells like tea.
She gestures to the couch along the opposite wall. "Make yourself comfortable, however you'd like."
He perches on the edge of it. It's softer than expected, and he sinks down an inch. By his knees is one of those flexible storage cube. It's filled with a lot of brightly colored objects, most of which he doesn't recognize.
A Rubik's cube rests on top of the vivid pile. His fingers twitch toward it, but he doesn't take it. Not without asking. And right now, with how dry his mouth has gone and how difficult it is to swallow, asking feels like a herculean task.
Dr. Sterman has set down her tea in exchange for a notepad, which rests on her lap. "Mr. Reynolds, what would you like me to call you?"
He thought he put it on the intake form, but — "Bob works."
"Works?" She raises her eyebrow. He's always been jealous of people who could do that independently.
"Well, calling me 'Dr. Sterman' or 'Andrea' works, but I'd like you to call me 'Andie,' please," she says. She takes a sip of the tea, looking pleased with herself.
It makes him crack a smile. "I'd like you to call me 'Bob.'"
She makes a note of it. "Alright, Bob. I'm Andie. It's very nice to meet you. Have you ever been to therapy before?"
And just like that, the easy camaraderie they managed for, oh, about fifteen seconds, has plummeted right back to earth.
"Not voluntarily," he says, picking at the sleeve of his crewneck. He keeps his eyes on his hands, always moving, even as he hears the scratch of a pen on paper.
"Would you like to tell me about that?"
Not really, he thinks, but he just stays silent.
"Sorry, that might be too intense for a first session."
"It's fine," he lies. "It's. Um. It's kind of spotty, if I'm being honest."
"Therapy only works if you're being honest." Bob remembers that as a quote from her book highlighted on Goodreads.
"I have memory problems," he explains.
"Okay," she says, no judgment in her voice. "When did that start?"
When I started popping morphine pills like candy. "Middle school."
Dr. Sterman — no, Andie's — pen stops moving. "That's young."
Maybe it is. He wouldn't know. Bob has felt ancient his entire fucking life.
"Was there something that started it?"
"Don't you have my medical history?" he asks, hands clenched into fists.
He finally looks up. Andie looks a little apologetic.
"I usually ask for it when I'm working with enhanced individuals," she explains. "Nothing invasive. Just an overview of any abilities I should know about. I get it from whoever refers you to me, but Mr. Barnes told me that your records were—"
"Incinerated," Bob mumbles.
"That's the word he used, yes." She takes another sip of tea. "I'm guessing it's a—"
"Long story," he finishes.
"Believe it or not, I get a lot of those in my line of work."
"And we'll likely have a lot of time to get through those long stories, if you'd like."
"Point is," Andie says, "I don't have your whole medical history. I don't have any of it at all. We're going to start from scratch. So…"
He leans forward, elbows on his knees.
"Pick up that Rubik's cube you've been eyeing this whole time, and tell me what your favorite color is. Mine is purple."
And that finally, finally gets him to laugh.
Until right now, he didn't know therapists could be funny. All the ones he can remember (what a key word that is for him, remember) meeting in emergency rooms before they either brought him up to the psych ward or threw him back out on the streets were either clinical or deeply concerned. That makes sense, since he was either in for something mundane (suicide attempt) or something worrying (shit he did while high as a goddamn kite on whatever he probably sniffed out of a motel carpet). No one made jokes with him; they were either trying to get him a psych bed or were distracting him while nurses put him in restraints to stop him from clawing at the bugs he could swear were underneath his skin. The blood he dripped onto the floor was probably such a nuisance, wasn't it?
Huh. Funny how much a bit of laughter can help him remember. Maybe everyone isn't completely full of shit when they say it's the best medicine or whatever, though he still thinks morphine has it beat.
"Bob?" Andie asks, startling him out of his thoughts. Only then does he realize he stopped laughing.
He shakes his head, a physical dismissal of just how bad he wants morphine right now. "Sorry. Just was remembering something."
"No need to be sorry," she says.
He picks up the Rubik's cube before she can tell him again.
She takes another sip of her tea. She looks like she's about to say something, and he really doesn't want her asking what he remembered, so he beats her to it.
"Yellow's my favorite color."
Andie sets the mug down. "We're opposites, then."
"Complementary colors," Bob supplies immediately. "They look good next to each other."
"That sounds like an art class term. Are you an artist?"
He thinks about it for a second. Remembers none of his drawings making it onto the fridge. Recalls doing some sketches for a dealer in exchange for a baggie of… yeah, he's got no hope of remembering anything that specific.
"When I have the time and the supplies," he says with a shrug.
"Why yellow?" she asks as she writes something else down on that notepad.
Bob takes a deep breath in and focuses on unscrambling the Rubik's cube. It feels so fucking stupid, having to hold a toy like a child as he talks about his feelings. It helps more than he'd like to admit.
"You know van Gogh?" he asks, keeping his eyes trained on the cube. He's got one face done. It won't stick.
"I'm no art critic, but I'm familiar."
"He, uh, painted a lot of sunflowers. So his paintings had a lot of yellow in them. And I really like his paintings."
"Sounds like you've seen a few in person," Andie says.
He nods. "Yeah, one time I saw some."
He conveniently leaves out that he only saw a few of them when he was hopped up on meth up in Boston and managed to accidentally sneak past the security of one of the museums there at a time when they had some of van Gogh's paintings on loan. He sat on the bench, completely strung out, across from Still Life, Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers until closing time. A security guard brusquely escorted him out at closing. Gave him a shitty bagel and a decent cup of drip coffee before sending him off into the night.
"Van Gogh struggled with depression, didn't he?" Andie asks this in a way that makes it clear she damn well knows the answer. It doesn't piss Bob off nearly as much as it would when he was high. Meth made him mean, but he loved it anyway. Loves it still, maybe.
He's getting so off track.
"Yeah, he did. I guess that's why I find him so relatable." He laughs, no humor in it at all. The Rubik's cube continues to shift in his hands.
Andie, this time, doesn't smile. "Would you describe yourself as depressed?"
Surely, someone scribbled that down on a chart one of those times he woke up in the ER by the grace of some good Samaritan calling 911. Doesn't matter. If it wasn't lost in the shuffle before… it, that diagnosis/note/whatever has been incinerated with the rest of his publicly available life.
He glances at the clock near the door, in view of both him and Andie. There isn't nearly enough time left in this first session for him to get into all of that, nor does he want to. Nor does he feel like he has to, which. That absence of pressure is different. Nice. He hasn't ever felt that when talking to people who want to poke around in his brain.
So, Bob says instead, "You remember when New York got swallowed up by darkness?"
"I was out of town when it happened, but I saw it on the news," she says. "Scary stuff, but nothing the city hasn't seen before. Why?"
He snorts and sets down the now-completed Rubik's cube. "No."
Andie, to her credit, doesn't react in any big way. Her eyebrows climb up an inch or two, and she sets down the notepad in favor of draining her mug of tea like a shot of liquor.
When she finishes it, she looks at him and says, "Bob, way to bury the lede."
A ghost of a smile flickers over his face. "Is that… too much for you to deal with?"
Because he has been a lost cause. He has been dismissed numerous times before as a junkie, too fucked up to ever really be fixed. He's sober and has health insurance, now, but that might not be enough. He could be too fucked up for the best medical care in greatest city in the world (allegedly), and isn't that a thought?
"What, you being the Void?" Andie says. She tears off a new sheet on the notepad and scribbles furiously before meeting his eyes again. "No, not at all."
"Really?" Bob asks, and he hates how small his voice sounds. It makes him sound like Bobby.
"On the contrary, it's a fantastic starting point," Andie says.
There's a gleam in her eye. She looks excited. Granted, she looks excited a little in the way that Bob imagines a scientist who pins butterflies to a board would look excited, but he'll take it. No one with the title of "Doctor" has ever been excited to help him before.
He makes a mental note to thank Bucky for getting this set up and Walker for giving him a shocking confidence boost and anyone but Valentina for getting him health insurance. Because holy shit, this has gone so well.
"I, uh… okay. Yeah. Then I guess I want to get started," he says.
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