Call of Duty Oneshots (Mostly Ghost)

departure | part 1

(April)

You felt it in your bones, a tiredness you could not shake. Rooted into your bone marrow, filling each porous fiber that constructed your skeleton. It weighed down your eyelashes and slumped your shoulders. Your feet shuffled as you walked, and your smile didn't quite reach your eyes.

Coffee became less of a savoring treat and more of a lifeline.

Headaches bloomed without warning. The ache lurking at the back of your head woke up with you and usually hibernated when you tucked yourself into bed with the comforter shielding any light to peek through the slits of your eyelids.

Chalking it up to the stresses of work driving you to the point of needing more of a nap during your lunch breaks rather than food, you didn't necessarily think a huge deal about it until your trousers went down a size in less than a month without trying.

Embedded in the middle of your spine rested a burning sensation that you couldn't shake no matter how much you stretched or sat down between patients. It ached after buying new shoes, and Tylenol didn't even make a dent.

Denial ran strong despite knowing better. You knew the signs and yet you suppressed the truth by telling yourself that you just needed a holiday while also attempting the tactic of persuasion: 'That could never happen to me'.

Healthy and fit, it was just the season. Shrugging off whatever that meant, you pushed through the discomfort, thinking maybe it was the extra shifts you were picking up that tampered with your body. Hardly having any time to exercise like normal, deep down you knew it wasn't that.

Without Simon around to help catch the telltale signs, gone on deployment for at least a few more weeks, your coworkers noticed the changes before the acceptance caught up to you.

"Girl, you look exhausted. How much did you sleep last night?"

"Have you eaten or drank anything today?"

"You should see a doctor, you look like shit."

They sat you down one day to check your vitals when the bags under your eyes became too dark for their liking, your usually unburdened head was not where it needed to be.

"God damn, [Y/N], 151/102," one of them hissed as they felt your forehead. "You need to take the day off. Maybe the wh-"

Their words were cut off by the freight train slamming into your eardrums, and you no longer could hear them. Only a few seconds later did your consciousness fail you.

Now on the other side of care, you woke up to an IV slipped into the crook of your arm, a blood pressure cuff kept on the opposite arm, and a gurney underneath your drowsy figure.

The same coworker who had initially tested your blood pressure sat beside you, clearly worried to the point where she'd stayed past her scheduled time. Through blurred vision, you could at least still manage to distinguish the time. You'd been out for a couple of hours, keeping her there an hour past when she needed to go.

She cut straight to the chase. "Your white cell count is high, [Y/N], and so are your lymphocytes. Did you not even notice your swollen lymph nodes? They're practically bulging out of your damn neck."

You gulped with a dry throat, more from the automatic nerves that electrified your heart to start beating faster. "No," you admitted softly, "I've just been so worn down lately that I just didn't really notice anything different."

She shook her head at you with frustration pulling her brows close together, but her tone was soothing. Probably still in nurse mode, but you appreciated it nonetheless. "Who can I call for you to pick you up? I know your boyfriend is deployed, and your parents live a ways away. I can take you home, but..."