faith ↝ j. tartt

Three

A few hours later, training was wrapping up and the players were rushing to get inside the locker room. The cold had gone from  tolerable to nearly unbearable as time went on, and Dorothy, being the trained medical professional she was, made the decision to stay outside in her thin, short-sleeved scrubs.

Thanks to her time at Oxford, she was used to English winters. She had never been stupid enough to bear them without at least a sweatshirt. Her skin was tinged with blue and purple by the time they all got inside, and everyone within a mile radius could hear her teeth chattering.

"Are you okay, Doctor? Please be okay, we need you," Dani soliloquized, grabbing Dorothy's face in his hands as soon as she walked into the locker room.

"I'm perfectly fine, Dani, and please, call me Dorothy. Or Mac, or Tully. Whichever you like really," she blabbered on, slurring her words slightly due to her partially frozen mouth.

"Why've you got so many nicknames, bruv?" Isaac called, overhearing her exchange with Dani.

"Mac was my nickname at uni, and people growing up always called me Tully because of my dad. He was called that too, until he got all Americanized and started going exclusively by Craig," Dorothy responded, rolling her eyes fondly.

Her father was a proud Scotsman, it couldn't be denied, but the second they moved to North Carolina and he got a job as a sports agent, he embraced the new country with open arms. He worked with talented athletes across the country, helping them secure spots on the best teams and most prestigious colleges. Because of this, Dorothy was able to attend an incredible amount of games, tournaments, playoffs, and finals. She fell in love with sports from a very young age, and had her father to thank for it.

At six years old, the little girl with the thick accent was terrified of her new country. She missed Glasgow, she missed her friends, she missed the food, she missed everything. However, when her father got his job and started taking her to events, Dorothy quickly found a passion for soccer. She had been to a few matches in Scotland, but seeing it with fresh, newly American eyes lit a fire inside her. She was signed up to play two weeks after the first match she saw.

She was good. Really good. She had a handful of professional offers by the time she turned eighteen.

The problem was, Dorothy's passion for medicine far outweighed her passion for playing soccer. She had always said she was going to be a doctor when someone asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. It wasn't until a senior year heart-to-heart with her parents that she realized there was such a thing as sports medicine.

She had never cared about anything as much as she cared about sports medicine. She went to Duke on the premed track, and graduated a year early, playing on their women's soccer team throughout. When she got scouted to play in England, it made her realize how much she missed the United Kingdom. So, she applied to Oxford and got in, finishing her doctoral degree at just twenty-five years old.

And she owed it all to a Scottish-turned-American geezer named Craig.

She was comforted by the thought of him, thinking of her parents back home. She was due to call them later.

"Do you need something to keep you warm, mon ange? Or someone perhaps?" Richard called from his locker, somehow already shirtless.

"Leave her alone, Richard, lets try not to scare her off on her first day meeting us," Colin responded slapping the man to his left.

Dorothy sent a silent, humored look of gratitude to the Welshman, again reminded of her brother Eddie.

"Alright fellas, great practice today. Y'all are scheduled to- wait a second, hold on now. Why does Dorothy look like Rose at the end of Titanic, get that girl a jacket, someone! Anyway-"