Out of everything, this is what was going to kill him. Bucky let out a sigh as he looked at the various x-rays and MRI scans on the monitors in front of him. Even he could see the progression of what was happening to his heart, and it wasn’t like he was a trained medical professional. This was really it. After getting his arm blown off, brainwashed by the Russians, and the attempt Sin and countless others have had on his life, heart failure was what was going to kill him. It was laughable, honestly.
Bucky turned to face the door as the doctor he’d been seeing quickly slipped into the room.
“You know, I’m going around sneaking about trying to see you without anyone else knowing—risking my job for you,” she let out a sigh, “But you copied my ID card and accessed my files—”
“Actually, they’re my medical files, and I promise, you’re the only one that noticed that I was accessing your case files while you were in a different part of the hospital. I’m not an idiot, and I’m a highly trained spy.”
He was taking a risk going to a SHIELD hospital to get checked, but this was the easiest place for him to access all of his medical information—especially the information about his dosage of the Infinity Formula. That being said, he did feel bad that he was making this SHIELD doctor sneak around when they’d only met by chance when he was forced to come to this hospital to get some stitches taken care of. But Doctor Thompson didn’t shy away from his request and had even gotten the cardiologist to help and keep everything lowkey.
“Well, Doctor Howard is with another patient right now, but he gave me his report to relay to you.”
Bucky drew in a deep breath. Based on what he could tell, he had a feeling what he was about to be told, but that didn’t help his nerves about the whole situation. It was easy to run into a fight knowing the odds are stacked against you, at least you have some control of how things will go, but this...he had no control over this.
“The rate that your heart is deteriorating is, fortunately, not increasing, but it’s obviously not getting any better. And as you know, we don’t have the means to be able to fix what is happening...not without serious intervention.”
“Surgery? On what exactly? It’s not like you can repair what’s happening with simple surgery, right?”
“A heart transplant,” Doctor Howard slipped into the room, closing and locking the door behind him. “Sorry I’m late. We had an emergency come in, so I had to take care of that.”
“A heart transplant isn’t lowkey.”
“Any kind of surgery isn’t lowkey,” Doctor Thompson interjected. “You had to know it might eventually come to this.”
Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose as he thought this through. He didn’t have time for this.
“I knew this was going to be a dead end.”
“You need my name to put it on a transplant list. I can’t have that,” the soldier paused, “Thank you both for everything...if I change my mind, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Great,” he thought, the night air whipping around him as he rode his bike to his safehouse. “Back to square one.”
What was he expecting? Some other miracle result? Nick Fury didn’t have any more formula on tap to give, and any leads he tried to follow about what kind of experiments the Russians did on him were all dead ends. He was hoping someone in Department X might have some clue as to how some of their experiments on longevity went. Bucky knew from Nat they had something that worked, but it seems like they were never too keen on giving it to him—at least, he hadn’t found any evidence that they had.
Bucky pulled into his garage and turned off his bike. So this was it then, he was living out his last days unless some miracle came through and saved his life, or some villain ended it first.
