Fic: Otherness
Title Otherness
Fandom Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures
Pairings Gen, but can be read as Eight/Fitz. Implied, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Doctor/Romana
Rating/warnings PG. Angst.
Spoilers None. Knowing bout the Earth arc helps, and there are vague foreshadowing of events in Adventuress of Henrietta Street, but it by no means a spoiler.
Word-count 5487
Summary Having been stranded on Earth the past twenty years without a purpose, the Doctor decides to help when the Spanish flu starts spreading, but trying to blend in among humans prompts realisations about himself.
Author’s notes I wanted to write something about the fact that even if the Doctor forgets his identity after The Ancestor Cell, he seems to retain all other kinds of knowledge. There are so many parts of the Doctor’s development during the century he spends on Earth which aren’t covered in canon, so I always enjoy exploring that.
Sleep was the closest the Doctor came to remembering. The first few years, it was as if he did not dream at all, but he always woke to the sense of having witnessed something beyond the physical world. After some years, he started becoming more aware of his dreams. He did not exactly remember them when he woke up - they slipped away very fast - but he was aware of words, people, worlds. He understood none of it, as though it was all in a language he did not speak.
When he was awake, he knew very little about himself. He did not know his place of birth, the identity of his parents, or his name. All he knew was that sobriquet ‘the Doctor’. It sounded affected, but he was comfortable with it. For a long time, he had told himself that no one could lack those things. They must come back to him eventually. He hoped - even expected - that sometime soon, some woman would catch sight of him in the street and rush to him, calling him her husband. Some little child might recognise its lost father in him. Some man might suddenly embrace him and announce that he was his brother, whom they had thought to be dead.
But it never happened. Twenty years had passed since he woke up in that train compartment, and if he had had children, they would have grown up. If he had had a wife, she would have shed her mourning for him. If he had had a lover, he would be forgotten. He doubted that any of those people had ever existed. He had kept no friends throughout those twenty years, but he could observe the passage of time in other ways. Buildings which he had seen erected were soon in need of repair. Public figures who had been at the height of their careers around the turn of the century had faded into obscurity or become venerable figures in the background. Technology which had been new and fascinating back then was now commonplace. But when the Doctor looked in the mirror, the same face which he had seen there twenty years ago stared back. How old did he look? Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, perhaps forty? He had found it difficult to judge people’s age at first, as though he expected there to be lots of different kinds of people who aged at different rates, but after two decades, he was becoming better at it. If he was correct, he should be in his late fifties by now, but there were no new lines in his face and no grey hairs in his locks.
Despite knowing so little about himself, he knew much more about the world around him. He lived with a constant sense of déjà vu. He knew at once that the war would not be over by Christmas. For every battle reported, he knew the place-name, he could draw the front-line on a map, he could give the number of fallen, all before he finished reading the newspaper article. The first time he picked up a collection of Siegfried Sassoon’s poems, he realised he knew them all off by heart. Some of his knowledge was so specific that he became briefly convinced that this of all things must have been what he had been doing before he lost his memory. He had been an engineer - no, a linguist - an anthropologist - a chemist - a physician. Almost every day, new knowledge was springing into his mind, but it was never of the kind he wanted. None of it was ever about him.
Twenty years of wondering and waiting, and all he was certain of was the cruelty of the world. The bloodshed of war was barely over, and still people kept dying, if by illness instead of violence. Was this not the kind of thing he had fought against? For a brief moment, he thought he remembered something, a semblance of a forgotten ethos, but it slipped away. He was so used to this that he went back to reading his newspaper, when his eyes fell on a discrete advertisement. A hospital in the adjacent town required a new doctor. It did not say, but he guessed that the man being replaced had caught the Spanish flu. He stared at it, then said to himself, ‘they need a doctor, and I am the Doctor. The definite article, you might say.’ He smiled, wondering if he had ever said it to anyone before. Idly, he played with the idea of applying for the post. Then, simultaneously, he realised two things: firstly, that it was ridiculous, because though he knew plenty about medicine, he had no qualifications or even identity papers; and secondly, that he was going to apply and get the position anyway.
It only took him a day to forge the papers he needed. He picked out his most sober waistcoat and looked himself in the small mirror hanging on the wall. Mournfully, he stroked his shoulder-length hair. He considered calling the whole thing off, but reminded himself that his hair would grow. Still he took his time, cutting each lock carefully just below his ears. It was still longer than men usually wore their hair, but he would not like it shorter. Already his head felt uncomfortably light. He gave his newly-shorn locks a final shake, pulled on his frock-coat and picked up his bundle of identity papers, degree certificates and military records in order to leave. The same evening, he moved his box and his few belongings close to the hospital, bought a new somber suit and set to work.
After a few days, the Doctor had decided that he disliked routine. However, he did not mind the work itself. It made a difference to people’s life, however small it was. The Doctor realised he liked people. Sometimes they were dull and narrow-minded and uninspiring, but surprisingly often, there was something so wonderful about their ordinariness that they seemed to defy explanation as much as he did. He saw now that he had allowed himself to grow too insular. It had been years since had had a proper discussion with another person. It had not happened since he had lived with Mary Minnett. Now, he revelled in looking into the lives of ordinary people.
The hospital itself was small, little more than a cottage hospital. There were only three doctors - himself, Dr Wengrow and Dr Peterson. Wengrow was young and blonde, friendly but a little distant. From eyeing through his file when left alone in Peterson’s office, he knew that Wengrow had been an army doctor at virtually every larger battle on the West Front. He guessed that Wengrow’s reasons for working here were much like his own. Peterson, by contrast, was in his fifties, a bull of a man with a greying moustache and a fearsome temper. Naturally, he had been in the forces as well, but stationed at a hospital in London. The Doctor had the impression that he found the routines of broken legs and Spanish flu dull, but in Wengrow he could sense quite the opposite. He shared the younger man’s marvel at ordinary peacetime lives. Yes, they ended, but not in shrapnel and gas, and unlike the lives of soldiers, they also started. Once he had been called out to assist in a complicated delivery, which had ultimately gone well. When he returned to the hospital, giddy with relief, he had locked himself in a storage room and wept. Long after he had cried all the tears he had, and he knew he should get back, he stayed there, sitting on the floor, and wondered whether he had children, and, if so, whether they were alive. Perhaps he had paced and bit his fingernails outside the bedroom, like the father he had seen today. He tried to imagine it, and wish forth a memory, but he could not.
The hospital gave him some kind of context, but he still felt as if he stood outside it all. Sometime he had the impression of being like a displaced traveller in a foreign country, uncertain of the correct protocol. Ideas of propriety, for example, seemed very strange to him. Thankfully, he turned out to be good at adapting to conventions he previously had no idea of. He let people assume that there was nothing strange in his past or with his mind, playing the role of the polite doctor. Anything else would take too much explaining. In fact, he did not know if he could explain it. In all his travels and his readings, he had never found a society where he sensed a strong sense of belonging. His reasons for staying in Britain was simply that he had his earliest memories here, and thought that he might be native to this country, but he felt no greater affinity to its customs and people than to those of Cambodia or France or Guatemala or the Congo. Whereever he went, he was equally lost, yet he often seemed aware of their customs and their beliefs, and he always knew the language. In twenty years, he had still not found a language he did not understand, with the exception of the one he dreamt in.
That Thursday when he had his realisation was just like the last Thursday, and the Thursday before that, simply a continuation of routine. In the morning, he met with Wengrow and Peterson and discussed the night nurses’ reports. Then he manned the surgery, as it was his day to do so. Varicose ulcers, asthma and bad backs filled up the rest of the morning. By noon, a nurse fetched him and lead him to the nurses’ lodge, where one of the nurses, a girl of nineteen, was sitting in a corner with her wimple removed, together with an older colleague who was holding her shaking hand. Her face was chalk-white apart from two spots on her cheeks which were red from fever. The Doctor could have diagnosed her standing in the doorway. Still, he sat with her and chatted, and looked her over. It was without a doubt the Spanish flu. He sent her home, and promised that someone would come to see her in the evening. The older nurse who had sat with her volunteered to walk her home. He gave her leave to do so, and left the room to pace the corridors.
It was not surprising that those who worked with the sick fell ill with the flu. After all, they were exposed to it more than most. In his time at the hospital, he had seen more people die from the Spanish flu than from anything else. Why had he not fallen ill himself? he wondered as he passed through the same corridor for the third time. Naturally there was no guarantee of catching anything. Some people might be lucky, and others might even be immune. But he had not had a cold for twenty years. That was simply wrong. Why had he never thought of this before? The only thing reminiscent of ill-health he had experienced was that very occasionally, he felt a twinge in the right side of his chest, but it never lasted very long.
In the afternoon, he did the rounds. He felt unusually dispirited, but tried not to let it show. Halfway through the first ward, however, he found the next bed hidden between two screens. That was never a good sign. When he stepped in, he found a nurse sitting by the bedside. She rose at the sight of him, and stepped closer.
‘Nurse Lacey?’
‘Mr Johnson, Doctor Smith,’ she whispered, making it sound almost like an introduction. ‘He took a turn to the worse in the morning. Dr Peterson told me to stay with him, but he’s just been getting worse...’
The Doctor nodded in understanding and stepped closer to look at the man in the bed. He was in his early thirties, and in other circumstances, he would have been handsome. But now he was drenched in sweat and even paler than the sick nurse had been. His lips trembled and his eyes were tightly shut, as if in pain.
‘Has his wife been told?’ He recalled Mrs Johnson, a petite lady with cracked hands and a concerned face, quite vividly.
‘No, Doctor.’ He straightened up and looked at the patient, trying to find some sign that his first impression was wrong. There was none.
‘Send for her. As quick as you can.’ Nurse Lacey nodded and rushed off to summon the dying man’s wife. The Doctor turned to follow her out from the screens, but at the entrance, he turned and looked back at the patient.
And at once, he remembered. The face he recalled was not much like Mr Johnson’s, but the dark hair and something around the mouth had reminded him. He saw the features floating in front of him: the grey eyes, the long nose, the grin, the unruly hair. The Doctor was used by now to sometimes remember random faces, but this was new, because in a flash of understanding, he knew who this was. He reached into his inner pocket and touched the folded piece of paper there. Could it be...? Yes, it was. Fitz!
The realisation knocked the air out of him. It made his head spin, and then the spinning turned into pain. The face was fading, and the more he tried to keep it in his mind, the more it hurt. He must have moved, because suddenly he felt himself knocking into something, and someone grabbing his arm.
‘Doctor Smith? What’s wrong, sir?’ He opened his eyes. He was not even aware that he had closed them. The ward seemed to spin and tilt. A nurse was standing at his side, holding onto his elbow, as if trying to support him. He tried to remember her name, but as he stared into her face, he could not recall it. All he could think of was how strange she looked. It was not just her individual features. There was something about her physiology which was unlike his. Alien.
He felt himself swaying on his feet again. Her grip around his elbow tightened.
‘Come with me now, Doctor Smith,’ she said under her breath and started leading him away. He walked, uncertain with every step whether he would fall or not. Distantly, he wondered whose that laboured breathing and those sobs were, and then realised that they were his own. She lead him into the ward sister’s office and made him sit down. By then, he had closed his eyes again and tried to remember the face he had seen. It was no good. All he remembered now was Mr Johnson, dying in his bed. In the memory, he seemed distorted, unlike anything familiar. The Doctor covered his face with his hands, and felt tears on his cheeks. He felt the ache in his heart again.
Presently, the door opened, and as though from a long way away, he could hear voices. He had not registered the nurse leaving until now, when she came back, accompanied by someone else.
‘Tell me again.’
‘He was in the ward, sir, and then suddenly... he just went to pieces, doctor. Ended up like that, you see.’
Someone approached. Chair legs rasped against the floor. A hand settled on his shoulder.
‘Smith, old man, what’s wrong?’
The Doctor seemed unable to move quickly. He lowered his hands slowly, and looked up. Dr Wengrow was sitting opposite him, watching him with concern in his eyes. But his eyes were wrong. They looked nothing like his eyes did. The same word as he had thought of before appeared to him. Alien. With sudden clarity, he was very aware of being physiologically unlike him. When Wengrow opened his mouth and spoke, repeating his question, he realised that his teeth were not at all like his. When he briefly touched his hand, all the Doctor noticed was how very warm his skin was. He looked at his own hands, turning them several times, and touching his cheeks. Over the past few months, he had apologised to nervous patients about his cold hands. Now he realised that it was not just his hands. What was his core temperature? Thirty-four centigrades? Thirty-two? Much lower than what others were.
‘But it’s not possible,’ he whispered.
‘What’s not possible?’ Wengrow asked. ‘Talk to me, tell me what’s happened.’ The Doctor shook his head. He dared not explain about the face he thought he had remembered, or the note he carried with him, or that he had just realised that he was uncompromisingly other from the rest of them. Somehow, he had always known it, but never understood it. He put his hand to his chest, where it hurt. He had always been aware that it was his heart that hurt, and he could feel it beating, even through his waistcoat and his white coat, but when he moved his hand to his left side, he still felt a heart-beat, because there was a heart there too. All this time listening to people’s single hearts, without reflecting on the fact that he alone had two!
In the meantime, Wengrow had turned to the nurse who had lead him in.
‘What was he doing when this happened?’
‘He was with Mr Johnson...’
‘And what’s with Mr Johnson...?’
‘Influenza, sir. Doctor Smith told Nurse Lacey to call for Mrs Johnson, because there’s nothing we can do for Mr Johnson...’
Wengrow turned back at him and sighed.
‘Is that it?’ he asked. The Doctor stared at him, not understanding him. ‘It’s not your fault, you know that. We can’t always save our patients... Doctor Smith, are you listening? Can you hear me? Doctor Smith?’ He was not listening. Not fitting in was one thing, but being this different... How was it possible? He was scared of what his own senses were telling him, and what his own mind knew. He found no way of expressing it, but simply mouthed wordlessly, looking for a way to put it into words.
A harsh voice broke the anticipating silence.
‘What the hell’s going on here?’
Wengrow jumped to his feet, startled. The sudden voice even made the Doctor look around. Peterson was standing in the doorway, commanding the small space.
‘It’s Doctor Smith, sir,’ Wengrow explained stumbling over his words. ‘He’s not well...’
‘What’s the matter with him?’ Peterson asked, sounding unimpressed. The Doctor thought that he probably wanted him simply to get on with his tasks. Part of him wished for that, to go back to that dull routine which he silently disliked, and pretend that he was like everyone else...
‘He was with a patient, and then almost collapsed in the middle of the ward...’ Peterson strode into the room to stand beside Wengrow.
‘Get a grip, man! People are dying out there.’ Wengrow cleared his throat delicately.
‘With all due respect, sir, I think that might be the problem...’
‘Tosh! He’s seen worse things. Someone dying from influenza shouldn’t turn his stomach. He was at the Somme, for God’s sake.’
‘No,’ the Doctor murmured. He had not been at the Somme (even though if he concentrated, he knew what the field hospitals looked like, and smelled like, but he could not say how...)
Above him, the two physicians continued to argue. Wengrow, always so deferential, grew annoyed.
‘Perhaps a subtler approach would be better, Doctor Peterson?’ He sat down and put his hand over the Doctor’s. ‘Doctor Smith, what’s the matter?’ The Doctor looked up, into his eye.
‘You wouldn’t understand.’ Wengrow’s eyes were older than his face, but young in comparison to his.
‘I would,’ he said, sounding certain. ‘I was there too.’
‘I wasn’t,’ the Doctor said.
Wengrow frowned, and glanced up at his colleague, seeking advice.
‘What do you mean, old chap?’
‘I wasn’t at the Somme.’ Suddenly he could not stand lying anymore. It was all a lie - the records, the cut hair, the doctor’s coat. He wanted to be rid of it.
‘Of course you were, John,’ Wengrow said, putting a little too much emphasis on his first name, as he usually did not call him by it.
‘No. I made it up.’
Wengrow directed his next question at Peterson.
‘Is he delusional?’ he asked under his breath.
‘Don’t be silly, man,’ Peterson said gruffly, addressing the Doctor. ‘We have your service record.’ The Doctor shook his head again. He wanted to explain that it was a forgery, that he had never done those things or taken those degrees. Yet he felt unable to speak any more than a sentence at a time. It was as if the realisation was clogging up his mind. He did not know what to deal with first, what he could tell him and what he dared tell them. He was still trembling, and even if he was aware that it was just the overwhelming emotions causing it, he felt as if he could not breathe properly. His chest still hurt, although dully, quite unlike it did when he had his twinges. He put his hand against his sternum, hoping the sensation would make it hurt less, but it made no great difference. However, Wengrow noticed the gesture. In an illogical moment, he thought he could imagine what Wengrow was thinking - if his chest hurt, was it psychosomatic or actually somatic? Vaguely, the Doctor was aware of him talking, saying calming but unimportant things, as he reached out and placed his fingers on his wrist.
He jerked back his hand as if he had been burnt. Then quickly he took the grip again and felt his pulse properly.
‘Good Lord...’ he murmured. ‘Doctor Smith, I think... I’m afraid there might be something wrong with your heart. Your pulse, I can’t even count it...’
The Doctor watched him, and felt how some part deep inside himself made a decision. He needed to escape this situation, and not have to answer any questions. On later reflection, another way out would have been better, but all his body could think of doing to get him out of the situation was to keel over, fall off his chair, and lose consciousness.
***
The Doctor dreamed. He was standing in a vast hall, where domes and vaults interweaved over his head. The place seemed like an architectural impossibility, but in the dream, he did not find it strange, but perfectly ordinary. It even felt familiar. High up on the inner wall ran a gallery, with a stair leading up to it. The Doctor stood by its foot, his head thrown back as he looked up the hundreds - thousands? - of steps which rose high above him. He had thought at first that he was the only living thing inside this structure, but now a shape emerged from the gallery and started descending towards him.
It was a woman, her blonde hair spilling around her neck, constrained only by her high ceremonial collar. She was dressed in red robes, which enveloped her slight form and transformed it into something tall and regal. Sticking out of the wide sleeves, her hands looked like small flowers at this distance, closed upon each other. The robes trailed behind her as she descended. With every step, the train seemed to grow, following her feet like a trail of blood. Her beautiful face was closed, with no smile to offer him. Her form filled him with awe. Her being was more than human, more than mortal, and the things she ruled over was more than a place. No wonder that her very being seemed to consist metaphors. And yet he knew her so well. He was certain that once, he had loved her.
But she was no longer the woman he had travelled with. Now, she was terrifying, a queen of war, not a lover of peace. Her ageless eyes pierced him, and she moved down towards him, ready to pronounce his punishment for what he had done. She spoke the language which he always dreamed in, and now, caught up in the act of dreaming, he thought he understood her words.
The dream snapped. The next moment, the Doctor was awake, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. It took him a while to remember that he had been awake between now and fainting in the ward nurse’s office. In fact, he had only been unconscious for about half a minute. When he had woken up, both Wengrow and Peterson had been leaning over him, looking surprised and alarmed. The Doctor had wanted to simply get up, apologise for causing such a stir and go back to his rounds, but he was still feeling weak with panic. When he attempted to explain that he was actually fine, all he could produce were disjointed clauses which made little sense. He resigned to letting the nurse fix his tie and help him out of his white coat, while the two physicians discussed what the best course of action would be. Finally, Wengrow and the nurse had taken him upstairs to one of the private rooms and put him to bed. He had tried to object, but Wengrow explained that he was confused and should not tax himself. After some time, the Doctor realised that it would be easiest to obey. His wish to go back to his duties was gone now. He never wanted to don that white coat and claim he was someone he knew he was not ever again. All he truly wanted was to get downstairs and see Mr Johnson again before he died, in the hope that he would once again remember Fitz’s face. It was horrible, treating a dying man only as a catalyst, but he found he did not care. That man had had an entire life. The Doctor might have sprung into existence twenty years ago with no past before that, for all he knew. The only real argument against it was the note, so it was not so strange that he valued the few clues it gave him. He just wanted one memory for comfort.
Now, awake for a second time, he was suddenly certain that the man who had sparked the reminiscence was dead. Slowly, he sat up. He could see dim gaslight outside the window, so it must be evening, even night. It had been early afternoon when he collapsed, which meant he must have slept for hours. Had he fallen asleep on his own accord, or had he been sedated? He was not certain. All he could remember for sure was trying to convince Wengrow that he had in fact forged his papers, that he had never served in the army, and that his entire life-story, from his parents Sydney and Verity to his letters of recommendation, was made up. Wengrow seemed not to know whether to be more concerned about these supposed delusions or the heart condition he was convinced his colleague had. It had been a tedious discussion, as his interlocutor would not believe him. Finally he had finally stopped arguing and let him fuss over him in peace.
‘Doctor Smith - how good to see you awake.’ The Doctor was pulled back to reality, and realised that he was not alone in the room. Nurse Lacey had been sitting by the door, and was now on her feet, approaching.
‘Is Mr Johnson dead?’ he asked. Nurse Lacey smiled sadly.
‘I’m afraid so, sir. He died only an hour after you sent me to tell his wife.’
The Doctor shifted on the bed, stretching his legs, and then threw off the covers.
‘Did she get here in time?’ Nurse Lacey took the covers from his hand.
‘Yes, she did, thank God. But you need to stay in bed, Doctor.’ Unceremonially, she took him under the knee already out of the bed and forced him back onto it. She was remarkably strong.
‘I don’t see why,’ he admitted. She did not answer immediately, but made him lie back and took his pulse instead.
‘Because you’re not well. You need to rest. There’s a specialist coming down from London tomorrow to look at you.’
‘A specialist?’ the Doctor repeated. ‘What kind?’
‘A heart specialist, naturally.’
‘So I’m not being committed to a mental institution,’ he said, feeling that that at least was something. The nurse snorted and fixed him with a stern look.
‘Don’t you joke about such things, sir. Now, I’m getting Doctor Wengrow. He decided to stay until you woke up. You just stay there in bed, and we’ll be back in just a minute.’
He did not move as he watched her go, but as soon as the door clicked, he sat up again. That mention of a heart specialist had given him an odd sense of déjà vu. He could not remember why, but he was suddenly convinced that this situation would end up very dangerous. It would do more harm than good. He knew, as if it had happened before, that if this heart specialist got to examine him, it might led to his death.
The Doctor looked towards the door and listened. There were no footsteps in the stairs yet, but they were bound to come soon. He got out of bed and moved quietly towards the chair where his clothes had been left. Quickly, he dressed, his previous slowness in the face of realisation gone. There was no time to put on his shoes - he left them on the floor, and crossed to the window. He was only on the first floor, and the pavement underneath was deserted. When he opened the window and looked down, he saw that there was no light coming from the windows below. Once again, the Doctor stopped and listened. Now he heard the creak of the stairs, and the sound of approaching voices. If he was going to escape, he had to do so now. He clambered onto the window-sill, so that he was sitting on it, and swung his legs a few times. He felt like he was about to leap from a swing. His fingers tightened around the window-sill. His body tensed. Time was running out - the footsteps were coming closer. He pushed off, and fell.
The fall itself was wondrous. For the briefest of moments, he felt unchained. Then he hit the ground, hip and shoulder colliding first. It was painful, but he was unhurt. As he got to his feet, he looked up at the window. Light was spilling out of it. Any moment now, they would come in and find him missing, and as soon as they saw the open window... He ran.
The Doctor’s lodgings were not very far away from the hospital, but now he kept to the smaller alleys in case they were following him. He knew he could not linger in his room either. As he ran, he tried to form a plan. The only thing he knew for sure was that he needed to disappear, from the hospital and from this town. He would go away, but where he did not know, but it had to be tonight.
His keys were thankfully in his pocket. Well inside, he spared the room only the briefest of glimpses before crossing to the desk and writing a letter for his landlady. In it, he apologised for his sudden disappearance, claiming that he had been called away on urgent family business. He also asked that his possessions be sent to London. This letter, along with enough money to cover the transportation and next month’s rent, remained on the desk. The Doctor donned his velvet coat and stuffed what he thought he would need for his flight into a bag; a fresh shirt and socks, his embroidered waistcoat, a few books, his earnings which he had saved and finally his atlas. His landlady would have to pack the rest. It would not take her much time - he did not have many possessions. The only one he truly cared about was the box, the strange doorless cabinet which he had always had with him. He lingered by it, his hands against its side as if hoping to feel some life in it. Finally, he pressed his lips against the wood briefly, and then left the room and the house. As he walked towards towards the train station, he hoped that there would be a train he could board, which would eventually take him to London. If there were none, he would walk out of town, or maybe steal a bicycle. He would head to the capital, and from there, go abroad. Why linger on one tiny island, when the world was so big? As he walked, he took out his atlas and opened it at random.
Fandom Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures
Pairings Gen, but can be read as Eight/Fitz. Implied, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Doctor/Romana
Rating/warnings PG. Angst.
Spoilers None. Knowing bout the Earth arc helps, and there are vague foreshadowing of events in Adventuress of Henrietta Street, but it by no means a spoiler.
Word-count 5487
Summary Having been stranded on Earth the past twenty years without a purpose, the Doctor decides to help when the Spanish flu starts spreading, but trying to blend in among humans prompts realisations about himself.
Author’s notes I wanted to write something about the fact that even if the Doctor forgets his identity after The Ancestor Cell, he seems to retain all other kinds of knowledge. There are so many parts of the Doctor’s development during the century he spends on Earth which aren’t covered in canon, so I always enjoy exploring that.
Sleep was the closest the Doctor came to remembering. The first few years, it was as if he did not dream at all, but he always woke to the sense of having witnessed something beyond the physical world. After some years, he started becoming more aware of his dreams. He did not exactly remember them when he woke up - they slipped away very fast - but he was aware of words, people, worlds. He understood none of it, as though it was all in a language he did not speak.
When he was awake, he knew very little about himself. He did not know his place of birth, the identity of his parents, or his name. All he knew was that sobriquet ‘the Doctor’. It sounded affected, but he was comfortable with it. For a long time, he had told himself that no one could lack those things. They must come back to him eventually. He hoped - even expected - that sometime soon, some woman would catch sight of him in the street and rush to him, calling him her husband. Some little child might recognise its lost father in him. Some man might suddenly embrace him and announce that he was his brother, whom they had thought to be dead.
But it never happened. Twenty years had passed since he woke up in that train compartment, and if he had had children, they would have grown up. If he had had a wife, she would have shed her mourning for him. If he had had a lover, he would be forgotten. He doubted that any of those people had ever existed. He had kept no friends throughout those twenty years, but he could observe the passage of time in other ways. Buildings which he had seen erected were soon in need of repair. Public figures who had been at the height of their careers around the turn of the century had faded into obscurity or become venerable figures in the background. Technology which had been new and fascinating back then was now commonplace. But when the Doctor looked in the mirror, the same face which he had seen there twenty years ago stared back. How old did he look? Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, perhaps forty? He had found it difficult to judge people’s age at first, as though he expected there to be lots of different kinds of people who aged at different rates, but after two decades, he was becoming better at it. If he was correct, he should be in his late fifties by now, but there were no new lines in his face and no grey hairs in his locks.
Despite knowing so little about himself, he knew much more about the world around him. He lived with a constant sense of déjà vu. He knew at once that the war would not be over by Christmas. For every battle reported, he knew the place-name, he could draw the front-line on a map, he could give the number of fallen, all before he finished reading the newspaper article. The first time he picked up a collection of Siegfried Sassoon’s poems, he realised he knew them all off by heart. Some of his knowledge was so specific that he became briefly convinced that this of all things must have been what he had been doing before he lost his memory. He had been an engineer - no, a linguist - an anthropologist - a chemist - a physician. Almost every day, new knowledge was springing into his mind, but it was never of the kind he wanted. None of it was ever about him.
Twenty years of wondering and waiting, and all he was certain of was the cruelty of the world. The bloodshed of war was barely over, and still people kept dying, if by illness instead of violence. Was this not the kind of thing he had fought against? For a brief moment, he thought he remembered something, a semblance of a forgotten ethos, but it slipped away. He was so used to this that he went back to reading his newspaper, when his eyes fell on a discrete advertisement. A hospital in the adjacent town required a new doctor. It did not say, but he guessed that the man being replaced had caught the Spanish flu. He stared at it, then said to himself, ‘they need a doctor, and I am the Doctor. The definite article, you might say.’ He smiled, wondering if he had ever said it to anyone before. Idly, he played with the idea of applying for the post. Then, simultaneously, he realised two things: firstly, that it was ridiculous, because though he knew plenty about medicine, he had no qualifications or even identity papers; and secondly, that he was going to apply and get the position anyway.
It only took him a day to forge the papers he needed. He picked out his most sober waistcoat and looked himself in the small mirror hanging on the wall. Mournfully, he stroked his shoulder-length hair. He considered calling the whole thing off, but reminded himself that his hair would grow. Still he took his time, cutting each lock carefully just below his ears. It was still longer than men usually wore their hair, but he would not like it shorter. Already his head felt uncomfortably light. He gave his newly-shorn locks a final shake, pulled on his frock-coat and picked up his bundle of identity papers, degree certificates and military records in order to leave. The same evening, he moved his box and his few belongings close to the hospital, bought a new somber suit and set to work.
After a few days, the Doctor had decided that he disliked routine. However, he did not mind the work itself. It made a difference to people’s life, however small it was. The Doctor realised he liked people. Sometimes they were dull and narrow-minded and uninspiring, but surprisingly often, there was something so wonderful about their ordinariness that they seemed to defy explanation as much as he did. He saw now that he had allowed himself to grow too insular. It had been years since had had a proper discussion with another person. It had not happened since he had lived with Mary Minnett. Now, he revelled in looking into the lives of ordinary people.
The hospital itself was small, little more than a cottage hospital. There were only three doctors - himself, Dr Wengrow and Dr Peterson. Wengrow was young and blonde, friendly but a little distant. From eyeing through his file when left alone in Peterson’s office, he knew that Wengrow had been an army doctor at virtually every larger battle on the West Front. He guessed that Wengrow’s reasons for working here were much like his own. Peterson, by contrast, was in his fifties, a bull of a man with a greying moustache and a fearsome temper. Naturally, he had been in the forces as well, but stationed at a hospital in London. The Doctor had the impression that he found the routines of broken legs and Spanish flu dull, but in Wengrow he could sense quite the opposite. He shared the younger man’s marvel at ordinary peacetime lives. Yes, they ended, but not in shrapnel and gas, and unlike the lives of soldiers, they also started. Once he had been called out to assist in a complicated delivery, which had ultimately gone well. When he returned to the hospital, giddy with relief, he had locked himself in a storage room and wept. Long after he had cried all the tears he had, and he knew he should get back, he stayed there, sitting on the floor, and wondered whether he had children, and, if so, whether they were alive. Perhaps he had paced and bit his fingernails outside the bedroom, like the father he had seen today. He tried to imagine it, and wish forth a memory, but he could not.
The hospital gave him some kind of context, but he still felt as if he stood outside it all. Sometime he had the impression of being like a displaced traveller in a foreign country, uncertain of the correct protocol. Ideas of propriety, for example, seemed very strange to him. Thankfully, he turned out to be good at adapting to conventions he previously had no idea of. He let people assume that there was nothing strange in his past or with his mind, playing the role of the polite doctor. Anything else would take too much explaining. In fact, he did not know if he could explain it. In all his travels and his readings, he had never found a society where he sensed a strong sense of belonging. His reasons for staying in Britain was simply that he had his earliest memories here, and thought that he might be native to this country, but he felt no greater affinity to its customs and people than to those of Cambodia or France or Guatemala or the Congo. Whereever he went, he was equally lost, yet he often seemed aware of their customs and their beliefs, and he always knew the language. In twenty years, he had still not found a language he did not understand, with the exception of the one he dreamt in.
That Thursday when he had his realisation was just like the last Thursday, and the Thursday before that, simply a continuation of routine. In the morning, he met with Wengrow and Peterson and discussed the night nurses’ reports. Then he manned the surgery, as it was his day to do so. Varicose ulcers, asthma and bad backs filled up the rest of the morning. By noon, a nurse fetched him and lead him to the nurses’ lodge, where one of the nurses, a girl of nineteen, was sitting in a corner with her wimple removed, together with an older colleague who was holding her shaking hand. Her face was chalk-white apart from two spots on her cheeks which were red from fever. The Doctor could have diagnosed her standing in the doorway. Still, he sat with her and chatted, and looked her over. It was without a doubt the Spanish flu. He sent her home, and promised that someone would come to see her in the evening. The older nurse who had sat with her volunteered to walk her home. He gave her leave to do so, and left the room to pace the corridors.
It was not surprising that those who worked with the sick fell ill with the flu. After all, they were exposed to it more than most. In his time at the hospital, he had seen more people die from the Spanish flu than from anything else. Why had he not fallen ill himself? he wondered as he passed through the same corridor for the third time. Naturally there was no guarantee of catching anything. Some people might be lucky, and others might even be immune. But he had not had a cold for twenty years. That was simply wrong. Why had he never thought of this before? The only thing reminiscent of ill-health he had experienced was that very occasionally, he felt a twinge in the right side of his chest, but it never lasted very long.
In the afternoon, he did the rounds. He felt unusually dispirited, but tried not to let it show. Halfway through the first ward, however, he found the next bed hidden between two screens. That was never a good sign. When he stepped in, he found a nurse sitting by the bedside. She rose at the sight of him, and stepped closer.
‘Nurse Lacey?’
‘Mr Johnson, Doctor Smith,’ she whispered, making it sound almost like an introduction. ‘He took a turn to the worse in the morning. Dr Peterson told me to stay with him, but he’s just been getting worse...’
The Doctor nodded in understanding and stepped closer to look at the man in the bed. He was in his early thirties, and in other circumstances, he would have been handsome. But now he was drenched in sweat and even paler than the sick nurse had been. His lips trembled and his eyes were tightly shut, as if in pain.
‘Has his wife been told?’ He recalled Mrs Johnson, a petite lady with cracked hands and a concerned face, quite vividly.
‘No, Doctor.’ He straightened up and looked at the patient, trying to find some sign that his first impression was wrong. There was none.
‘Send for her. As quick as you can.’ Nurse Lacey nodded and rushed off to summon the dying man’s wife. The Doctor turned to follow her out from the screens, but at the entrance, he turned and looked back at the patient.
And at once, he remembered. The face he recalled was not much like Mr Johnson’s, but the dark hair and something around the mouth had reminded him. He saw the features floating in front of him: the grey eyes, the long nose, the grin, the unruly hair. The Doctor was used by now to sometimes remember random faces, but this was new, because in a flash of understanding, he knew who this was. He reached into his inner pocket and touched the folded piece of paper there. Could it be...? Yes, it was. Fitz!
The realisation knocked the air out of him. It made his head spin, and then the spinning turned into pain. The face was fading, and the more he tried to keep it in his mind, the more it hurt. He must have moved, because suddenly he felt himself knocking into something, and someone grabbing his arm.
‘Doctor Smith? What’s wrong, sir?’ He opened his eyes. He was not even aware that he had closed them. The ward seemed to spin and tilt. A nurse was standing at his side, holding onto his elbow, as if trying to support him. He tried to remember her name, but as he stared into her face, he could not recall it. All he could think of was how strange she looked. It was not just her individual features. There was something about her physiology which was unlike his. Alien.
He felt himself swaying on his feet again. Her grip around his elbow tightened.
‘Come with me now, Doctor Smith,’ she said under her breath and started leading him away. He walked, uncertain with every step whether he would fall or not. Distantly, he wondered whose that laboured breathing and those sobs were, and then realised that they were his own. She lead him into the ward sister’s office and made him sit down. By then, he had closed his eyes again and tried to remember the face he had seen. It was no good. All he remembered now was Mr Johnson, dying in his bed. In the memory, he seemed distorted, unlike anything familiar. The Doctor covered his face with his hands, and felt tears on his cheeks. He felt the ache in his heart again.
Presently, the door opened, and as though from a long way away, he could hear voices. He had not registered the nurse leaving until now, when she came back, accompanied by someone else.
‘Tell me again.’
‘He was in the ward, sir, and then suddenly... he just went to pieces, doctor. Ended up like that, you see.’
Someone approached. Chair legs rasped against the floor. A hand settled on his shoulder.
‘Smith, old man, what’s wrong?’
The Doctor seemed unable to move quickly. He lowered his hands slowly, and looked up. Dr Wengrow was sitting opposite him, watching him with concern in his eyes. But his eyes were wrong. They looked nothing like his eyes did. The same word as he had thought of before appeared to him. Alien. With sudden clarity, he was very aware of being physiologically unlike him. When Wengrow opened his mouth and spoke, repeating his question, he realised that his teeth were not at all like his. When he briefly touched his hand, all the Doctor noticed was how very warm his skin was. He looked at his own hands, turning them several times, and touching his cheeks. Over the past few months, he had apologised to nervous patients about his cold hands. Now he realised that it was not just his hands. What was his core temperature? Thirty-four centigrades? Thirty-two? Much lower than what others were.
‘But it’s not possible,’ he whispered.
‘What’s not possible?’ Wengrow asked. ‘Talk to me, tell me what’s happened.’ The Doctor shook his head. He dared not explain about the face he thought he had remembered, or the note he carried with him, or that he had just realised that he was uncompromisingly other from the rest of them. Somehow, he had always known it, but never understood it. He put his hand to his chest, where it hurt. He had always been aware that it was his heart that hurt, and he could feel it beating, even through his waistcoat and his white coat, but when he moved his hand to his left side, he still felt a heart-beat, because there was a heart there too. All this time listening to people’s single hearts, without reflecting on the fact that he alone had two!
In the meantime, Wengrow had turned to the nurse who had lead him in.
‘What was he doing when this happened?’
‘He was with Mr Johnson...’
‘And what’s with Mr Johnson...?’
‘Influenza, sir. Doctor Smith told Nurse Lacey to call for Mrs Johnson, because there’s nothing we can do for Mr Johnson...’
Wengrow turned back at him and sighed.
‘Is that it?’ he asked. The Doctor stared at him, not understanding him. ‘It’s not your fault, you know that. We can’t always save our patients... Doctor Smith, are you listening? Can you hear me? Doctor Smith?’ He was not listening. Not fitting in was one thing, but being this different... How was it possible? He was scared of what his own senses were telling him, and what his own mind knew. He found no way of expressing it, but simply mouthed wordlessly, looking for a way to put it into words.
A harsh voice broke the anticipating silence.
‘What the hell’s going on here?’
Wengrow jumped to his feet, startled. The sudden voice even made the Doctor look around. Peterson was standing in the doorway, commanding the small space.
‘It’s Doctor Smith, sir,’ Wengrow explained stumbling over his words. ‘He’s not well...’
‘What’s the matter with him?’ Peterson asked, sounding unimpressed. The Doctor thought that he probably wanted him simply to get on with his tasks. Part of him wished for that, to go back to that dull routine which he silently disliked, and pretend that he was like everyone else...
‘He was with a patient, and then almost collapsed in the middle of the ward...’ Peterson strode into the room to stand beside Wengrow.
‘Get a grip, man! People are dying out there.’ Wengrow cleared his throat delicately.
‘With all due respect, sir, I think that might be the problem...’
‘Tosh! He’s seen worse things. Someone dying from influenza shouldn’t turn his stomach. He was at the Somme, for God’s sake.’
‘No,’ the Doctor murmured. He had not been at the Somme (even though if he concentrated, he knew what the field hospitals looked like, and smelled like, but he could not say how...)
Above him, the two physicians continued to argue. Wengrow, always so deferential, grew annoyed.
‘Perhaps a subtler approach would be better, Doctor Peterson?’ He sat down and put his hand over the Doctor’s. ‘Doctor Smith, what’s the matter?’ The Doctor looked up, into his eye.
‘You wouldn’t understand.’ Wengrow’s eyes were older than his face, but young in comparison to his.
‘I would,’ he said, sounding certain. ‘I was there too.’
‘I wasn’t,’ the Doctor said.
Wengrow frowned, and glanced up at his colleague, seeking advice.
‘What do you mean, old chap?’
‘I wasn’t at the Somme.’ Suddenly he could not stand lying anymore. It was all a lie - the records, the cut hair, the doctor’s coat. He wanted to be rid of it.
‘Of course you were, John,’ Wengrow said, putting a little too much emphasis on his first name, as he usually did not call him by it.
‘No. I made it up.’
Wengrow directed his next question at Peterson.
‘Is he delusional?’ he asked under his breath.
‘Don’t be silly, man,’ Peterson said gruffly, addressing the Doctor. ‘We have your service record.’ The Doctor shook his head again. He wanted to explain that it was a forgery, that he had never done those things or taken those degrees. Yet he felt unable to speak any more than a sentence at a time. It was as if the realisation was clogging up his mind. He did not know what to deal with first, what he could tell him and what he dared tell them. He was still trembling, and even if he was aware that it was just the overwhelming emotions causing it, he felt as if he could not breathe properly. His chest still hurt, although dully, quite unlike it did when he had his twinges. He put his hand against his sternum, hoping the sensation would make it hurt less, but it made no great difference. However, Wengrow noticed the gesture. In an illogical moment, he thought he could imagine what Wengrow was thinking - if his chest hurt, was it psychosomatic or actually somatic? Vaguely, the Doctor was aware of him talking, saying calming but unimportant things, as he reached out and placed his fingers on his wrist.
He jerked back his hand as if he had been burnt. Then quickly he took the grip again and felt his pulse properly.
‘Good Lord...’ he murmured. ‘Doctor Smith, I think... I’m afraid there might be something wrong with your heart. Your pulse, I can’t even count it...’
The Doctor watched him, and felt how some part deep inside himself made a decision. He needed to escape this situation, and not have to answer any questions. On later reflection, another way out would have been better, but all his body could think of doing to get him out of the situation was to keel over, fall off his chair, and lose consciousness.
***
The Doctor dreamed. He was standing in a vast hall, where domes and vaults interweaved over his head. The place seemed like an architectural impossibility, but in the dream, he did not find it strange, but perfectly ordinary. It even felt familiar. High up on the inner wall ran a gallery, with a stair leading up to it. The Doctor stood by its foot, his head thrown back as he looked up the hundreds - thousands? - of steps which rose high above him. He had thought at first that he was the only living thing inside this structure, but now a shape emerged from the gallery and started descending towards him.
It was a woman, her blonde hair spilling around her neck, constrained only by her high ceremonial collar. She was dressed in red robes, which enveloped her slight form and transformed it into something tall and regal. Sticking out of the wide sleeves, her hands looked like small flowers at this distance, closed upon each other. The robes trailed behind her as she descended. With every step, the train seemed to grow, following her feet like a trail of blood. Her beautiful face was closed, with no smile to offer him. Her form filled him with awe. Her being was more than human, more than mortal, and the things she ruled over was more than a place. No wonder that her very being seemed to consist metaphors. And yet he knew her so well. He was certain that once, he had loved her.
But she was no longer the woman he had travelled with. Now, she was terrifying, a queen of war, not a lover of peace. Her ageless eyes pierced him, and she moved down towards him, ready to pronounce his punishment for what he had done. She spoke the language which he always dreamed in, and now, caught up in the act of dreaming, he thought he understood her words.
The dream snapped. The next moment, the Doctor was awake, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. It took him a while to remember that he had been awake between now and fainting in the ward nurse’s office. In fact, he had only been unconscious for about half a minute. When he had woken up, both Wengrow and Peterson had been leaning over him, looking surprised and alarmed. The Doctor had wanted to simply get up, apologise for causing such a stir and go back to his rounds, but he was still feeling weak with panic. When he attempted to explain that he was actually fine, all he could produce were disjointed clauses which made little sense. He resigned to letting the nurse fix his tie and help him out of his white coat, while the two physicians discussed what the best course of action would be. Finally, Wengrow and the nurse had taken him upstairs to one of the private rooms and put him to bed. He had tried to object, but Wengrow explained that he was confused and should not tax himself. After some time, the Doctor realised that it would be easiest to obey. His wish to go back to his duties was gone now. He never wanted to don that white coat and claim he was someone he knew he was not ever again. All he truly wanted was to get downstairs and see Mr Johnson again before he died, in the hope that he would once again remember Fitz’s face. It was horrible, treating a dying man only as a catalyst, but he found he did not care. That man had had an entire life. The Doctor might have sprung into existence twenty years ago with no past before that, for all he knew. The only real argument against it was the note, so it was not so strange that he valued the few clues it gave him. He just wanted one memory for comfort.
Now, awake for a second time, he was suddenly certain that the man who had sparked the reminiscence was dead. Slowly, he sat up. He could see dim gaslight outside the window, so it must be evening, even night. It had been early afternoon when he collapsed, which meant he must have slept for hours. Had he fallen asleep on his own accord, or had he been sedated? He was not certain. All he could remember for sure was trying to convince Wengrow that he had in fact forged his papers, that he had never served in the army, and that his entire life-story, from his parents Sydney and Verity to his letters of recommendation, was made up. Wengrow seemed not to know whether to be more concerned about these supposed delusions or the heart condition he was convinced his colleague had. It had been a tedious discussion, as his interlocutor would not believe him. Finally he had finally stopped arguing and let him fuss over him in peace.
‘Doctor Smith - how good to see you awake.’ The Doctor was pulled back to reality, and realised that he was not alone in the room. Nurse Lacey had been sitting by the door, and was now on her feet, approaching.
‘Is Mr Johnson dead?’ he asked. Nurse Lacey smiled sadly.
‘I’m afraid so, sir. He died only an hour after you sent me to tell his wife.’
The Doctor shifted on the bed, stretching his legs, and then threw off the covers.
‘Did she get here in time?’ Nurse Lacey took the covers from his hand.
‘Yes, she did, thank God. But you need to stay in bed, Doctor.’ Unceremonially, she took him under the knee already out of the bed and forced him back onto it. She was remarkably strong.
‘I don’t see why,’ he admitted. She did not answer immediately, but made him lie back and took his pulse instead.
‘Because you’re not well. You need to rest. There’s a specialist coming down from London tomorrow to look at you.’
‘A specialist?’ the Doctor repeated. ‘What kind?’
‘A heart specialist, naturally.’
‘So I’m not being committed to a mental institution,’ he said, feeling that that at least was something. The nurse snorted and fixed him with a stern look.
‘Don’t you joke about such things, sir. Now, I’m getting Doctor Wengrow. He decided to stay until you woke up. You just stay there in bed, and we’ll be back in just a minute.’
He did not move as he watched her go, but as soon as the door clicked, he sat up again. That mention of a heart specialist had given him an odd sense of déjà vu. He could not remember why, but he was suddenly convinced that this situation would end up very dangerous. It would do more harm than good. He knew, as if it had happened before, that if this heart specialist got to examine him, it might led to his death.
The Doctor looked towards the door and listened. There were no footsteps in the stairs yet, but they were bound to come soon. He got out of bed and moved quietly towards the chair where his clothes had been left. Quickly, he dressed, his previous slowness in the face of realisation gone. There was no time to put on his shoes - he left them on the floor, and crossed to the window. He was only on the first floor, and the pavement underneath was deserted. When he opened the window and looked down, he saw that there was no light coming from the windows below. Once again, the Doctor stopped and listened. Now he heard the creak of the stairs, and the sound of approaching voices. If he was going to escape, he had to do so now. He clambered onto the window-sill, so that he was sitting on it, and swung his legs a few times. He felt like he was about to leap from a swing. His fingers tightened around the window-sill. His body tensed. Time was running out - the footsteps were coming closer. He pushed off, and fell.
The fall itself was wondrous. For the briefest of moments, he felt unchained. Then he hit the ground, hip and shoulder colliding first. It was painful, but he was unhurt. As he got to his feet, he looked up at the window. Light was spilling out of it. Any moment now, they would come in and find him missing, and as soon as they saw the open window... He ran.
The Doctor’s lodgings were not very far away from the hospital, but now he kept to the smaller alleys in case they were following him. He knew he could not linger in his room either. As he ran, he tried to form a plan. The only thing he knew for sure was that he needed to disappear, from the hospital and from this town. He would go away, but where he did not know, but it had to be tonight.
His keys were thankfully in his pocket. Well inside, he spared the room only the briefest of glimpses before crossing to the desk and writing a letter for his landlady. In it, he apologised for his sudden disappearance, claiming that he had been called away on urgent family business. He also asked that his possessions be sent to London. This letter, along with enough money to cover the transportation and next month’s rent, remained on the desk. The Doctor donned his velvet coat and stuffed what he thought he would need for his flight into a bag; a fresh shirt and socks, his embroidered waistcoat, a few books, his earnings which he had saved and finally his atlas. His landlady would have to pack the rest. It would not take her much time - he did not have many possessions. The only one he truly cared about was the box, the strange doorless cabinet which he had always had with him. He lingered by it, his hands against its side as if hoping to feel some life in it. Finally, he pressed his lips against the wood briefly, and then left the room and the house. As he walked towards towards the train station, he hoped that there would be a train he could board, which would eventually take him to London. If there were none, he would walk out of town, or maybe steal a bicycle. He would head to the capital, and from there, go abroad. Why linger on one tiny island, when the world was so big? As he walked, he took out his atlas and opened it at random.