faith ↝ j. tartt

One

When Dorothy's alarm went off at six, she could have sworn she had died in her sleep and gone to hell. She was hot and sweaty, with her phone vibrating loudly centimeters from her head. Outside of her window, she heard the drilling of a jackhammer pounding away at the pavement. Her head was spinning and her ears were ringing, and as she stood up, her legs dissolved into pins and needles.

Her second day was shaping up to be even worse than her first.

She clumsily put on her scrubs, thanking her 2 AM self for laying them out. She was bound to catch the tube in thirty minutes, so she rushed to braid her hair and make herself look presentable. 

Dorothy learned early on in med school that she wasn't taken seriously because of the way she looked. It got worse when she took a position in the Premiere League, where she was always the youngest medic on duty, and usually the only woman. People always assumed she was an airhead, or only cared about her appearance, or only worked in the Premiere League because she wanted to be close to the footballers. 

She tried to never let it bother her, so she put on a tough front. She adopted the nickname Mac freshman year at Oxford, thinking it was more masculine than her given name. She never talked about her social life while with her colleagues to avoid coming off as another twenty-something partier. She didn't let herself indulge in things like romance, so she could feel successful and happy independent of anyone else. 

But her appearance was something she never let herself change. It brought her comfort to spend a bit of her morning styling her hair and doing her makeup, no matter how brief that bit of morning was. She meticulously planned outfits for whenever she wasn't required to be in uniform. She was aware of the fact that her appearance was likely what caused most of the assumptions, but she didn't care.

Once her hair and makeup was done, Dorothy rushed to grab a quick breakfast and feed her cat, Robbie. He was named after her favorite Scottish footballer, Andrew Robertson of Liverpool F.C.  She had gotten to meet him the previous season, and she could say with full confidence that was the loveliest footballer she had ever treated. Dorothy made a mental note to not tell her new coworkers at Richmond that she had a pet named after a player from another club.

She made it to the tube station just in time, and boarded the train with her notebook in hand. As she went over her notes from the day prior, Dorothy realized that she was in better shape than she thought. She knew  the majority of these footballers from last season, seeing as she had treated half of them at one point or another. She had at least watched them play a handful of times. 

While on the tube, she tried to come up with new ways to remember each of the players.

Sam Obisanya. The classy, sassy, underdog. 
Dani Rojas. Beautiful hair. Contagious smile. Fútbol is life.
Colin Hughes. Looks just like her brother back home. Weak ankles.

With only a few transfers and recruits to worry about, Dorothy realized that she wasn't in over her head like she previously thought. She had let the stress and pressure of her first day psych her out, when truly, she had no reason to be this overwhelmed. 

As she scanned her mental catalog of Richmond, there seemed to be a missing piece. When she thought of the club, she thought of Jamie Tartt. 

Last season, he was one of the few players that completely avoided medics. Whenever he was hurt, he forced himself to walk it off and continue playing. It stressed Dorothy and all of the other medics out to no end, especially because of the frequency of his dives. She remembered when Manchester City called him back from Richmond. She remembered their last match of the season. She remembered her heart breaking for Richmond when Jamie scored against them, leaving them to be relegated.