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

50. Family

Yael knew with mathematical precision that her regret had set in only a few hours later, her foot tapping relentlessly on the drab linoleum floor, her amber eyes darting restlessly to the monitor beside the bed.

She tried to focus on the numbers, on the slow, steady beats of Johnny's heart, on the uniform rhythm of his artificially paced breathing. And yet, she didn't truly see them.

She wondered what mad, malevolent entity could have possessed her to take on such a responsibility.

Perhaps it wasn't enough to have to cling with every fibre of her being to the statuesque, lifeless body on that bed, to feel that she was the thin line between him and the abyss. She had also wanted to witness his family's pain, to intrude on something so scandalously private it made her sick to her stomach.

Her mind worked feverishly but to no avail, her thoughts tumbling over one another, disjointed and impossible to grasp. Her desperation would be of no comfort to anyone, least of all to a family that needed to be able to cling to a hope that, quite simply, Yael did not know how to give.

A familiar weight landed on her chest, quickening her breath. She had been an idiot, but perhaps there was still time to back out.

She would call Stitches. She knew Johnny's condition; she could report it without any trouble, without emotion. It would save her from exposing an unwanted, an extremely fragile, part of herself. As if the heart handled in that operating theatre had not been the sergeant's, but her own.

The thought made her shoot up like a coiled spring. With her heart hammering in her throat, she grabbed her mobile from the metal bedside table and fled towards the exit. There was still time.

Instead, the muffled patter of footsteps just outside the airlock froze her to the spot. Light, but urgent. They sounded nothing like the lieutenant's heavy tread.

Yael swallowed the curse that had risen rebelliously to her lips, the colour draining from her cheeks as the feeling of being trapped crept through her gut.

She had a handful of seconds to regain the professionalism she had prided herself on for years, to once more become the surgeon who had remained in a theatre at the Royal Infirmary. If only she knew how.

She convinced her legs to cooperate only when three dark silhouettes appeared beyond the blinds of the observation window.

As she waited for the inevitable, her eyes squeezed shut beside the hospital bed, the memory of Johnny's laugh—explosive, rasping—reverberated inside her at a hundred decibels. It was an atrocious, bittersweet pain.

I know you'd be laughing at me, you bloody Scottish idiot.

The hiss of the automatic door filled the monotonous background drone of the machines. Beyond the metal frame, behind Captain Price's imposing figure, two figures hesitated. The air became unbreathable.

"Williams. Soap's parents," the captain croaked, stepping forward. He seemed awkward, his shoulders too broad, too tense for such an intimate moment.

He moved aside just enough to let them pass. Yael blinked, her heart pounding fast and hard. She saw them approach, but she wasn't really looking. She was afraid that if she did, she would recognise something unbearable.

"Mr MacTavish. Mrs MacTavish..." she recited mechanically, her fingers reaching blindly into the void. She didn't expect them to be grasped with such warmth, a gentle, reassuring grip that suddenly enveloped her hand.

The woman's blue eyes found hers with no escape, and her soft, kind features entered Yael's field of vision with a delicate tenacity.

"Muriel. Ma husband, Duncan," she smiled, her voice bright as she gestured to the man a step behind her, his shoulders hunched in a beige Barbour jacket, his jaw clenched beneath a neat, grey beard. He gave her a slight, grave, almost distracted nod.