Wait For Me || John "Soap" MacTavish x OC (Call Of Duty)

4. Couldn't stop thinking about you

Yael didn't trust quiet shifts. It was a habit, almost a superstition, that had clung to her over years of service. 

If a shift went smoothly, without any major emergencies, it was clear that the worst would happen right at the end of her shift. More than just a coincidence, for her it was almost a statistical certainty. 

Every emergency worker knew how to keep that firmly in mind.

Which is why, even with a steaming mug of tea in front of her, she was drumming her short nails restlessly on the back of a biodegradable cardboard cup. In silence. 

"I'll never get used to it," Ann suddenly snorted with a laugh, her very pale lips hidden behind her coffee cup.

To Yael's questioning and distracted look, she replied with a shrug of her small shoulders and relaxed back against the chair. The white plastic squeaked slightly. 

"You surgeons are so superstitious. It's ridiculous," she mumbled again, and her thin, short fingers smoothed a rebellious curl of red hair back from her forehead. 

A grimace wrinkled her small nose and Yael shook her head.

Finding no satisfaction, the young nurse continued to sip her scalding coffee irritably, but under her light lashes, her green eyes darted about with quiet suspicion. 

Ann's disappointment was lost in the muted chatter of the almost deserted cafe. Behind them, one of the baristas was sweeping the linoleum floor with ill-concealed annoyance at a slow and steady pace.

For this reason, the vibration of Yael's phone, against the chipboard table, sounded to them like a hundred decibels. Not once, but six times. 

The doctor felt herself flush. She didn't need to turn on the screen to imagine who that flurry of messages belonged to. 

"Really?" Ann chuckled, her intense irises fixed on the dark back of the phone, as if it were enough to penetrate its secrecy. 

"Yael, either you have creditors, or you're seeing someone," she insisted with a hint of sarcasm that knotted her stomach.

She should have told her, she knew, and yet, her conviction was too fragile to be exposed to someone else's judgment. 

"Mmm," Yael mumbled in reply, a shiver running down her spine. It was obvious that wasn't enough. 

"Don't tell me... Gary again?"

Yael pursed her lips in embarrassment, as if she had been caught doing something forbidden. 

Ann considered her reaction carefully, her green eyes narrowed to slits, until a flash of understanding lit up her face, dotted with pale freckles.

"You're kidding. It's that soldier... the Scottish one with the blue eyes..." she chuckled, nodding slightly, and her tight curls took on new highlights in the diaphanous light of the LEDs on the ceiling. 

The doctor rolled her amber eyes, ready to take the good-natured derision of her friend. 

"That guy got tachycardia when you put your hands on him and you actually fell for it," Ann grinned, shrugging, and seemed satisfied, as her small fingers wrapped around the paper cup and Yael's heart did a flip. 

"Is it so strange?" she asked quietly, a sigh catching in her teeth. 

The nurse took a long sip from her cup, then smiled, looking at her through her light lashes. 

"It depends. Do you feel strange?" Ann replied calmly, almost insolently in the understanding she now had of her inner workings. 

The answer was neither yes nor no. Perhaps there wasn't even an answer to that question, but Yael didn't feel like admitting it.