the medic

prologue.

the incident

It was another late night in the lab for Kelsey. Erskine has already retired to his SSR provided dormitory and her last assistant had cleaned his station and locked the door on his way out. For the past two weeks, this had been the normal for the doctor. She knew she was just at the cusp of something great, and that promise pushed her harder than she'd ever been pushed.

Part of it was her blind determination from when she first began practicing and experimenting with medicine. And the other part was Dr. Erskine's leap of faith in bringing her to the SSR, claiming that she was the only Yale graduate in her class who could aid him with his serum. His confidence in her ability was strikingly rare in her line of work, in her life, and she couldn't be more than thankful for him. The only other man to believe in her was her father, and she couldn't let herself disappoint.

So there she sat at near 2 o'clock in the morning, dropping her latest formula into a Petri dish of her own blood, hoping to god something would work. Kelsey's routine would be considered insane to others. Calculate, mix, prick, droplet, examine, repeat. And so with never fading dark circles, she placed a mixture of blood and serum onto a slide and put it under the microscope. Taking a deep breath and rubbing the crease between her brows, she took a peak.

"Please... please work," She thought out loud, eyes analyzing the sample carefully.

A minute passed. Two, three, and right as she was ready to pull her hair out in frustration, something moved. Her blood cells minimized and expanded, a white ring forming around the edges. She watched the damaged, oxygen deprived cells breathe and come together like watching a piece of paper rip in reverse. A high-pitched gasp left her lips, the sample which should have died was holding on, refusing to dry and changing with the same stubborn tenacity Kelsey herself possessed.

It worked.

"Fuck... oh my- what. Yes.. yes!" She pulled away, tears brimming her eyes in a rush of emotion.

It was as if everything she had been through up to that moment was worth it because she did it. Every spit and curse her way through her whole education, the scoffs and laughs of men, scholars, they were wrong.

And as Kelsey proceeded to write her findings and gather ingredients, enlarging her formula and developing more serum, she thought of the looks on their faces when she proved that she could do it. Dr. Kelsey Kane made one of the most important parts of a serum being cultivated by Erskine, Dr. Kelsey Kane made the impossible. Regeneration.

But right as she manufactured a full beaker of the formula, it all came crashing down.

Cold spilled through her blood at the sound of glass breaking and heavy boots hitting the floor coming from down the hall. Ice gripped her heart and the doctor knew exactly what that sound was. She ran to the door, ensuring it was locked and dragged a table in front of the only entrance to the lab. She had no idea how she was found, how they got their information, but Kelsey knew only one organization would be breaking in here. They left a path of desolation since Erskine left and now she would be included in that.

A tear was shed as she looked to all her materials and the beaker resting on the table in the middle of the room. She hit a red button located next to the door, the ear-splitting screech of the alarm spreading through the building. Kelsey whipped her head to the door window to see the intruder still hadn't reached the lab and so she did what she knew she had to.

Taking one last look over her files, she lit a match. The glass in the door shattered and she looked over terrified to see her own assistant staring back at her with wild eyes and a rifle in his hand.
"No harsh feelings, Dollface. But I can't let you do that." He said before releasing fire into the room.

Two bullets landed in her torso and another hit a large jar of ethanol behind her which spilled onto the floor. Kelsey let out a pained gasp, falling forward onto the table and grabbing the matchbox in front of her. Shock and pain gripped her body, her emotions swirled as she continued with her goal. She knocked everything onto the floor next to her with a sweep of her arm and body until she fell along with them. The beaker of serum broke instantly upon contact with the ground and the broken shards of glass dug into her skin when her body landed on top of them. Kelsey cried out in pain, the banging on the door from the traitor now white noise when she no longer focused on his entrance into the room.

The brunette sprawled, hands searching through the blood and glass to find the matchbox lying on the ground covered in her quickly spreading scarlet. They couldn't get that information. The serum, and especially her. Her work would change the tides of the war, and she knew just how dangerous it would be in Hydra's hands. She looked back to the door to see him halfway through a crack he had just managed to make for himself to slide through.

"No harsh feelings." She bitterly spat, dark liquid coughing up from her lips as she slid a match to ignite.

"You stupid bitch!" He screamed and she let the flame fall onto the highly flammable mixture she found herself lying in, the ethanol instantly catching fire.

The lab rapidly burst in flames, the liquid having reached through the tiles and heat burning strong enough to break jars near the floor and combust. Kelsey's cries of pain were bloodcurdling, the flames taking her body with the rest of the room until they were drowned out with an explosion.

And it was on this night in December of 1943, Dr. Kelsey Kane died for her country.