DW Fic - Simmer Dim (13/18)
Title - Simmer Dim (13/18)
Author - joely_jo
Characters - Ten/Rose, Mickey, OCs
Rating - R (for language and adult content)
Summary - With the events of Doomsday just a distant memory, Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith make a discovery that they cannot leave alone. But what they find will take Rose on a journey she never expected. Will she come to terms with what she’s faced with, or will the carefully constructed life she’s built for herself come crashing down?
Author’s Notes -
I confess to a little recycling with this fic. The idea for this story actually began with the fic I wrote for the OSK Summer Lovin’ Ficathon, The Storm Inside, which in turn was inspired by watching the episodes Human Nature and Family of Blood. I thought it would be interesting to look at what happened to Rose post-Doomsday, but also to try to portray what I perceive to be the unconditional attraction between the Doctor and Rose. I swore I was going to scale down my DW writing after Myths and Legends, but here we are again… It’s another long one, so I hope you enjoy it!
Many thanks to my betas sensiblecatand most especially aibhinnwithout whose reassurance I may never have worked up the guts to post this.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen (long, but unlucky for some!)
He hated the smell of hospitals. The harsh, acrid stench of disinfectant and death made his blood turn cold and reminded him of the futility with which humans grasped onto their tiny existences. How fragile everything was. He’d avoided anything medical his entire life, tending to himself rather than turning to doctors and nurses to fix him, and now here he was, of his own accord. He paced through the doors of Accident and Emergency, side-stepping little old women and screaming children to make a line for the main desk. “Greg Garriock,” he demanded to the nurse who was standing behind the desk. “Where is he?”
“I’m sorry, sir, you’re going to have to sit down and wait your turn,” she replied. She barely looked up from the charts she was sorting as she said the words. He simmered a moment, fox-trotting on the spot. “Why don’t you have a seat in the triage area and I’ll be with you just as soon as I can, okay?”
“I don’t want to sit down!” he exclaimed. “I want to know where he is! It’s a straightforward question, now answer it!”
The A&E fell silent and all heads turned to look at him. The nurse moved around the desk and grabbed him by the arm. “Now, just you listen here,” she hissed. “I’m busy, my colleagues are busy, everyone here is busy. There are a dozen patients waiting to be seen right now and I’m not going to drop everything just to tend to you. Now, you either sit down over there or I call security and have them remove you, do you understand me?”
Smith glared at her, but backed down. He stomped to the triage area and sat in one of the flimsy plastic chairs. He turned back to look at the desk. The nurse who’d shouted at him was moving a slow and faltering elderly man along the corridor now, encouraging him to put one foot in front of the other with eternal patience. Smith scowled - there was no way he’d ever have been able to do anything in the medical profession.
The nurse passed him by, not even affording him a glance, and he sighed, his eyes flitting restlessly over the signs by the lifts. He read them off in his head: Day Surgery, Rehab, Renal, Intensive Care, Maternity, Medicine. With another glance at the desk, then a quick double-check of the corridor, he slid to his feet and moved towards the stairs. He walked the first ten steps slowly and casually, as if he was going somewhere he had been a hundred times before, then, as he realised he’d reached the first landing without anyone yelling for him to stop, sped up.
The rest of the steps passed in a blur and he darted onto the floor marked Intensive Care. Mercifully, the corridor was empty. He looked left and right. The corridor was long, with several doors coming off it at intermittent points, and was bisected at the far end by another corridor. Grey light streamed in through tinted windows and he heard muffled voices and the distant chatter of a television that was on a little too loud.
He headed down, glancing into the separate rooms as he went, looking for Garriock’s face. After a moment, he saw him and what he saw made him freeze and nearly cry out in anguish. His friend was lying in a hospital bed, invaded by tubes and wires, and as still as a corpse. His face was black and blue, swollen almost beyond recognition, and his eyes were taped closed. Smith pushed his way through the swing door and went to the bedside, staring in disbelief. Machines bleeped monotonously on the sidelines. It was worse than he’d imagined. He didn’t have much in the way of medical knowledge, but he knew enough to know that the tube leading down his friend’s throat was not good news.
“Oh, Greg, what did they do to you?” he breathed.
He was so absorbed in Garriock’s plight that he didn’t hear the door open and a nurse walk in. “Hello,” she said, making him jump. “Are you Mr. Garriock’s family?”
Smith looked around. “I, er… no… I’m… I’m his best friend. I was just told what happened.”
“Oh, right, well then, you might be able to tell us why we can’t reach Mr. Garriock’s family…” She moved towards him, then bent to check the readouts on the machines and adjust the IV.
“His parents’ farm has no phone line,” Smith replied dumbly. He stared. “What’s ha… what’s wrong with him?”
The nurse stopped what she was doing and looked up at him with sympathetic eyes. “Your friend arrived at the hospital with a severe head injury, what is known as a subdural haematoma, which is when blood collects in the tissues of the brain. He went into emergency surgery and the doctors have stopped the major bleeding in his brain, but there is understandably still some swelling and general cerebral trauma. We’ve induced a coma to allow it time to heal itself.”
“Is he going to wake up?”
“He will,” the nurse replied, “in time. When his brain is ready to, he will.” She paused and walked around to the other side of the bed. “Would you like me to get you a drink, Mr…?”
“Smith,” he said. “And no, I’m fine.” He swallowed. “I think I’ll just sit for a while, thanks.”
****
She found him by a combination of begging and putting on her Torchwood persona. The doctors and nurses in the Gilbert Bain Hospital were, variously, taken aback or swept up in the act and it wasn’t long before she found her way to the Intensive Care ward and, from there, to Garriock’s room. Of course, Smith was sitting by his bedside, staring guilt-drunk at his friend’s face, but looked up when she entered.
“Hey,” she greeted. It always felt wrong to talk at normal volume in the hospital and she lowered her tone to just above a whisper. “How is he?”
Smith blinked and blew out a long breath. “They’ve induced a coma. He’s got something called a subdural haematoma.”
Rose looked towards the man in the bed. She’d spoken all of a couple of dozen words to Garriock that night in the Thule, but by means of his obvious importance to Smith, she felt connected somehow. Using the knowledge she’d picked up when she or her colleagues had been injured out in the field, Rose flipped through the chart at the end of the bed. Though some of it was incomprehensible, she was able to determine that Garriock was stable but poorly, and that his blood pressure and heart rate were normal. She turned to look at Smith. “He’s going to be okay,” she told him.
Smith nodded numbly and Rose was reminded once again of how much he could look like a lost little boy. Had she always thought that? The Doctor had often been full of too much bravado and arrogance - was this quality something that had always been there, beneath the surface, or was it simply a feature of this man? She went to him and gave his shoulder a light squeeze. He turned his face towards hers and she studied his dark, expressive eyes. He said nothing.
His head sank again and a quivering breath rushed out of him. “It’s not your fault,” she told him quietly.
Smith’s face was agonised and he nodded again, as if words were too complicated for him to master at that moment. Rose crouched down beside him and took his hand in hers. “It’s been hours now,” she whispered. “Come on, let’s go back. You need to eat and get some rest.”
“I’m not hungry,” grunted Smith.
“Then at least come and get some rest. You’re no good to anyone if you stay here and wear yourself out. They’ll ring you the minute he wakes up.”
Rose fought back the burn of anger that grew in her stomach. She didn’t completely understand the culture on these islands, but it was obvious that friendship was almost as thick as blood. She was angry that two thugs had hurt this man for what seemed, to her, to be a completely innocent act. But, more than that, she was angry that what they’d done had spoilt the re-emerging relationship between the Doctor and her. He looked up at her, then back to his friend, torn. Finally, she took his hand and he allowed her to pull him to his feet.
She took him back to his simple cottage. Making him tea seemed like a good idea, but when she handed the steaming mug to him he set it back down on the counter, pulled out a chair and sank down onto it. He pressed the balls of his hands into his eyes and drew in a faltering breath. He was sliding away from her again, she thought, as she watched him. He was like a pot waiting to boil, anger and grief and guilt bubbling along all his surfaces, and right now the last thing on his mind was the possibility that he might be someone other than who he thought he was.
“I’ve got to reach his Mum and Dad,” he murmured, rubbing his hands over his face.
“The hospital will do that.”
She moved in front of him and was shocked when he grabbed her roughly by the waist and pulled her into him, pressing his forehead into her stomach. A huge wracking sob broke free and Rose froze. She’d seen grown men cry before, but never with quite so much emotion. She placed her hands on his head and rubbed his hair. “Why does everything have to be so evil?” he asked.
There was no answer to that. There had never been any answer to that.
“It’ll be okay,” Rose told him. “Everything will be okay.”
He stood suddenly and took her face in his hands and kissed her fiercely. “I need you,” he breathed into her mouth.
****
Why she was still here, he had no idea. If their places had been reversed, he would have left long ago. In fact, he wondered whether he’d have come to find her at all. It was far easier to simply walk away from things than it was to confront them head on. But she hadn’t walked away. And she was still here. Her faith in him was absolute and he felt humbled by it. He wondered what it felt like to believe in someone that completely; he’d never needed or trusted anyone in his life beyond the minimum, and yet here she was, still believing, still hoping. What had he done to earn her devotion?
Just this morning he’d thought that some of it was starting to make sense and that some of the pieces were beginning to fit together. But now everything was changed and he wasn’t sure he knew how to change it back. He kissed her deeply, hoping to assuage some of the confusion.
Her lips were like crushed silk and he felt himself falling into oblivion, their hands slipping apart with every second. He made to halt the slide. “Rose, come upstairs with me.”
She nodded and he led her back to his bedroom. He stripped off his clothes, then turned back the sheets and slid between them, beckoning her to follow. Slowly, Rose shed her own clothes. His eyes roved over her nakedness. She lay down next to him, facing him, but still on the opposite pillow, and sighed.
For the first time he saw how tired she looked. Her brown eyes carried so much experience, so much hurt that, for a moment, his own troubles seemed insignificant. He reached out and traced his forefinger along her outline, smiling as she shivered. A question that had played on his mind since the night before pushed itself forward. “Are you happy, Rose?” he asked.
She frowned. “Right now?” Her voice was low.
“Right now. Back then. With me. With him.” He shrugged at the confusion in his words.
“I’m happy,” she said simply. “But I’m scared.”
His hand had reached her jawline and he trailed along it to touch the plush ripeness of her lips. There was no need to elaborate further. Fear did funny things to people. “I’m scared too,” admitted Smith.
And with that, he rolled to cover her with his body, kissing her with the same urgency he’d felt before, in the kitchen. It was all too much. He wanted to stop the world so he could have time to evaluate what had happened to him, but he knew, as he felt her hands sliding across his back, he knew that time would not stop for him or her or anyone else. He heard her sigh and moan and he slipped down her body, wanting to think that they were just a man and a woman who had found each other for a while. He kissed her stomach, then pressed her legs apart. There was a storm inside him and he needed a port to shelter in and for now, making love to her would have to do.
So he treasured her, tore a shattering climax from her and, after she’d fallen asleep in his arms, told her he loved her.
****
Sometime in the night he woke to the sound of shouting in the street below. It took him a minute to orient himself and to recognise the voice.
It was Melissa.
He quickly rolled out of bed, threw on his jeans and shirt, and vaulted down the stairs, swinging open the front door just as she was about to open her mouth and bellow again. “Will you shut up?” he ordered. “You’ll wake the whole neighbourhood.”
“I don’t care.”
She was drunk, he realised as she swayed on the spot and stared at him with shifting eyes. He darted back into the house and pushed his feet into his boots. “Well, I do, so will you keep your mouth shut?” he hissed. Melissa did as she was told. “Now, you better have a good reason for waking me up at two-thirty in the morning…”
She grabbed him by the loose fronts of his shirt and hung on a little too hard, making him drop down to her level. She leaned into him, breathing vodka fumes across his face, then whispered, “They’re leavin’.”
He frowned, uncomprehending. “Who’s leaving?”
“Cartwright and MacDonald. They’re…” She paused and looked around at the empty street. It was already half-light and pretty soon, the sun would be up. “They’re loadin’ up Cartwright’s boat. They’re gunna make a run for it ‘efore the police c’n grab ‘em.” Her words were slurred and punctuated by frequent drawings of breath.
Smith’s eyes widened. “You’re joking?”
“They’ll be outta this town ‘efore the sun comes up,” she added. “An’ they won’t be comin’ back.”
He looked at Melissa, then back to the still open door of his cottage, then finally up at the rising sun. He took her by the arm. “Melissa,” he said firmly. “Go home. Drink at least two pints of water then go to bed. I’m going down to the harbour and I’m going to stop them.” His voice hardened again. “I’ll make sure they pay for what they did to Greg.”
****
His feet thumped on the ground hard, the loudest sound in the still-quiet and sleeping town, as he rounded the corner and entered the harbour. The lights from Cartwright’s boat shone out across the water and he darted towards it. His blood was on fire.
“Cartwright!” he yelled. “Get your fucking arse out here, now!”
His voice echoed harshly out across the water, not really sounding like his own. There was no response. He shouted again, “Cartwright! MacDonald! Get out here!”
Suddenly, there was movement aboard the little trawler and the contrasting forms of Garriock’s attackers loomed into sight. Cartwright was a typical fisherman thug, built like an ox and bearing the sort of upper body strength that cast fear into the hearts of most men. MacDonald, on the other hand, was thin but sinewy - a flyweight if he was put in the ring - and bore the expression of someone who was royally pissed off.
They climbed down the gangplank from the boat and moved towards Smith. Cartwright cracked his knuckles. There was a colourful bruise down his left cheek and Smith took heart that at least one of Garriock’s blows must have connected. “What are you whingin’ about, Smith?” he mocked. “You’ve taken a long while to come to set the record straight. What’s been holding you up? Wee woman need a fuckin’?”
Smith’s face burned and his fists curled. He held himself back by sheer force of will. “I don’t want to hurt you, Cartwright, but God help me, if you leave this town I will hunt you down and kill you myself. You’re going to pay for what you did to Greg.”
Cartwright’s laugh was foul. “Oh, really? The scrawny king o’ the seas is gonna drop his moral standards to lay his fists into me? How interesting.”
The three men moved towards each other, like thunderclouds cleaving together, the lightning imminent. Cartwright’s swagger kept up until he was right up to Smith’s chin. He stood only an inch taller, but his sheer size of body mass was intimidating enough on its own. Smith swallowed and steeled himself. His body tightened in response. “You make me laugh, Smith,” he sneered. “When I think of the state you were in when you showed up in this town, I suppose I should have guessed that you were running away from something.” His mouth twitched into a nasty smile. “Seems to me like your past has caught up with you. So, if you ask me, you deserve everything you get.”
“Well, I’m not asking you…”
And Smith swung his fist upwards. It connected with the underside of Cartwright’s chin with a solid thump, and the big man stumbled backwards at the impact. He recovered himself, growled deep in his throat, then launched himself at Smith like a wild dog.
A second later and fists were pummelling. Cartwright was joined by MacDonald and the two of them laid into Smith, who fought back like he was possessed. A blow landed on Smith’s cheek and he felt the skin beneath his eye split and begin to pour with blood. He hollered and shoved Cartwright backwards, throwing his centre of balance off and sending him spinning to the ground. His head flung backwards with the force of the impact and hit the concrete with a sound thunk. He fell motionless and limp, like a rag doll cast away by an angry child, unconscious. MacDonald launched himself towards Smith, but Smith landed a right hook onto his nose, grinning at the satisfying crunch of bone as MacDonald’s nose broke. He watched as the thin man backed off, cursing colourfully, and brought his hand up to his injured nose.
“Y’ fuckin’ prick, Smith!” he yelled. “Y’ just broke ma bloody nose!”
Smith said nothing; he was so winded it would have been impossible to say anything even if he’d tried. He backed away, panting. “The police are on their way, boys,” he gasped after a moment. “You’ve got about five minutes of freedom left.” He glanced at the prone body of Cartwright.
MacDonald ripped the sleeve of his shirt and tore a strip off it, using it to plug the flow of blood from his nose. In the distance, the sound of sirens began to echo and Smith turned and started to walk away. He wasn’t about to stick around to find out what happened when the police got here. Trailing his feet slightly, he had got no more than a dozen strides away when MacDonald yelled out, his voice thick with blood, “You can walk away now, Smith, but there’s one thing tha’s certain… The minute you turn your back again, I’ll get that precious woman o’ yours, and Garriock along with her. And this time, they’ll be nothing left to take to hospital.”
Smith froze. Instinct instructed him to turn around and lay MacDonald out alongside his pal, but another part, a part that was inherently stronger, told him to just walk away. The police were on their way and Melissa had already informed them of the crimes MacDonald and Cartwright had committed. There was no doubt of what they would do when they found the two men on the dock and their fate was as good as sealed. He wavered between the two choices, then, with some serious self-discipline, shook his head and continued to walk away, even as the sirens became louder.
****
Quite how he got back to the door of his cottage, Smith didn’t know. His body had begun to shut down with every step he’d walked away from the quayside and it was now aching beyond all comprehension. He was too old for this kind of thing, he thought. The blood was still trickling down his cheek and it had soaked his collar and the right side of his shirt in a sticky red mess; he knew damn well that he would have an impressive bruise already beginning to form.
His hand reached out and opened the door, which had blown closed once again, then stumbled into the kitchen, not bothering to switch on the lights. He grabbed a wad of tissues and pressed them up against his wound, hoping to stem the flow of blood. A hiss slipped out of his mouth at the sting of placing pressure on the cut and he sank into one of the kitchen chairs, closing his eyes.
He began to drift into semi-consciousness once he was sat, but a set of tentative footsteps descending the stairs drew his attention. Rose. He’d almost forgotten she was here.
She appeared in the doorway to the kitchen looking endearingly sleep-ridden, her eyes bleary and her hair messed up at the back, reminding him of just what they done before they’d fallen asleep. “What happened to you?” she gasped. “Where’ve you been?”
He ignored her. He didn’t feel like explaining the whole thing to her; she wouldn’t understand no matter how long he spent going through it. Life on these islands was not like life in the rest of the country. And if you had never lived here, you could never hope to understand it.
“John?” she prompted again, her voice laden with concern. She moved towards him and he saw her eyes fill with horror as she took in his damaged face. “You’ve been in a fight.”
He pursed his lips, but the movement made another twinge zip through him and he turned away. She seemed to read his reluctance to speak, so she took the blood-soaked tissues from him and threw them in the bin. She peeled his shirt off him, dropped it in the sink, then grabbed a clean dishcloth from the cupboard underneath. She ran it through warm water then began to clean him up with impossibly gentle touches.
Smith tried not to look at her as she worked, but most of all, tried not to listen to the little voice in the back of his head that chanted at him in MacDonald’s cold-blooded wheezing tone. He should have just knocked the wee rat out, because, he now realised, there was every chance that as soon as he’d turned the corner, MacDonald had got on his boat and scarpered before the police had got there, leaving Cartwright to take the fall for him.
She had wiped all the dried and congealing blood from his face and neck and was beginning to examine the cut on his cheekbone. “It’s not broken,” she told him in a quiet voice. “But it’s going to need some stitches. We have to go to the hospital.”
“No,” he replied.
“I can’t…”
“No stitches. No hospital. No doctors.”
Rose shook her head. “John, this isn’t going to seal up on its own: it’s too deep.”
Closing his eyes, Smith jerked his arm towards one of the kitchen cupboards. “There are butterfly strips in there, in the green first aid box. Use them.”
Rose stared at him reluctantly, then edged to the cupboard and took out the first aid box. She opened it and tipped its contents on the tabletop, selecting half a dozen butterfly strips and a large piece of sterile dressing. “Okay,” she agreed. “Hold still.” She padded the wound again with the damp cloth, then with methodical slowness applied all six butterfly strips, sealing the wound closed. Finally, she laid the dressing over the top of her work and pressed it down gently.
Smith dared to look at her as she leaned back to examine him. She was so beautiful, even with her messy hair and make-up free skin. For the first time he realised that she was wearing one of his own t-shirts and it was so big that it fell to her mid-thighs. Visions of her tiny body in the hands of Finn MacDonald filled his mind and he knew then what he must do.
She had to go. She had to leave this place and him and go away, because it was too dangerous for her to stay. But in the same breath, he knew that she wouldn’t understand him if he tried to reason with her, if he told her she had to leave for her own safety. He’d seen enough of her in the last couple of days to know that Rose Tyler was not the sort of girl who shied away from dangerous situations. She met them head on, no matter what, and she would see this situation as no different.
There was only one thing to do. He had to make her leave.
His heart crunched in on itself at the realisation. He had just begun to feel things for her that he’d felt for no other and now he was going to have to perform the ultimate act of cruelty - he was going to have to convince her that he didn’t love her.
She reached up and caressed his face, smiling softly. He turned his head away from her and stood up, stepping backwards, needing some space to stop himself from backing down from his task. “I’m going to bed,” he said.
“Okay,” she replied and reached for his hand.
“Alone.”
Rose’s eyes stared, uncomprehending. “You want me to sleep on the sofa?” she asked.
He swallowed. “No, I want you to go. Go and leave me alone.” He fixed her with his hardest stare, but even that wasn’t resistant to the confused brightness of her brown eyes. He shook his head. “I don’t know what I was doing… I’m not this man you think I am, this ‘doctor’. I’m John Smith and I was born right here in this town and this town is where I’m staying. Everything I am is here. It’s where I should be… not… not off gallivanting with you. I have responsibilities and… and a life here.” He paused only to draw breath, knowing that if he stopped he would never get started again. “I’ve mislead you. Made you think that I feel something for you that I don’t… I’m sorry.”
Her eyes filled with tears as he finished and she stared at him, the shock registering on her face like someone had just slapped her soundly. “But… John… you…” Her voice was weak and quavering. “What we did… That wasn’t just me. I know it; you felt it as well.”
“No,” he said, not trusting himself to say anything more.
“What about your dreams?” she asked, desperation growing in her tone.
“They were just dreams,” he replied. “Pointless dreams probably caused by my overactive imagination. I’m not this man you think I am. This is my life.” He paused and saw her opening her mouth to object again. This was it, he thought. He had to go in for the kill now. “THIS is my life!” he yelled.
His heart, which had threatened to break right the way through his speech now shattered into pieces at the sight of her tear-streaked face. Unable to trust himself, knowing he was threads away from backing down and sweeping her into his arms, he began to walk away. “Please go,” he said as he turned. “Don’t ask me any more questions. Please… just go.”
For a moment, he thought she was going to refuse. He heard her intake of breath. But then, as if she was fighting back that very response, she whispered, “If this is what you want… Let me get my things.”
She pushed past him, not looking at his face, and a minute later, returned dressed in her own clothes. She stood in the hallway, one hand on the door handle. Summoning considerable strength, she straightened her spine and fixed him with a graceful, firm stare. For the first time since that night in the Thule, she addressed him by the name she claimed was his. “Doctor, I don’t understand completely what you’re saying to me, but I know this… when you’re ready, I’ll be waiting.”
And with that, she opened the door and walked out of his life.
To be continued...
Author - joely_jo
Characters - Ten/Rose, Mickey, OCs
Rating - R (for language and adult content)
Summary - With the events of Doomsday just a distant memory, Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith make a discovery that they cannot leave alone. But what they find will take Rose on a journey she never expected. Will she come to terms with what she’s faced with, or will the carefully constructed life she’s built for herself come crashing down?
Author’s Notes -
I confess to a little recycling with this fic. The idea for this story actually began with the fic I wrote for the OSK Summer Lovin’ Ficathon, The Storm Inside, which in turn was inspired by watching the episodes Human Nature and Family of Blood. I thought it would be interesting to look at what happened to Rose post-Doomsday, but also to try to portray what I perceive to be the unconditional attraction between the Doctor and Rose. I swore I was going to scale down my DW writing after Myths and Legends, but here we are again… It’s another long one, so I hope you enjoy it!
Many thanks to my betas sensiblecatand most especially aibhinnwithout whose reassurance I may never have worked up the guts to post this.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen (long, but unlucky for some!)
He hated the smell of hospitals. The harsh, acrid stench of disinfectant and death made his blood turn cold and reminded him of the futility with which humans grasped onto their tiny existences. How fragile everything was. He’d avoided anything medical his entire life, tending to himself rather than turning to doctors and nurses to fix him, and now here he was, of his own accord. He paced through the doors of Accident and Emergency, side-stepping little old women and screaming children to make a line for the main desk. “Greg Garriock,” he demanded to the nurse who was standing behind the desk. “Where is he?”
“I’m sorry, sir, you’re going to have to sit down and wait your turn,” she replied. She barely looked up from the charts she was sorting as she said the words. He simmered a moment, fox-trotting on the spot. “Why don’t you have a seat in the triage area and I’ll be with you just as soon as I can, okay?”
“I don’t want to sit down!” he exclaimed. “I want to know where he is! It’s a straightforward question, now answer it!”
The A&E fell silent and all heads turned to look at him. The nurse moved around the desk and grabbed him by the arm. “Now, just you listen here,” she hissed. “I’m busy, my colleagues are busy, everyone here is busy. There are a dozen patients waiting to be seen right now and I’m not going to drop everything just to tend to you. Now, you either sit down over there or I call security and have them remove you, do you understand me?”
Smith glared at her, but backed down. He stomped to the triage area and sat in one of the flimsy plastic chairs. He turned back to look at the desk. The nurse who’d shouted at him was moving a slow and faltering elderly man along the corridor now, encouraging him to put one foot in front of the other with eternal patience. Smith scowled - there was no way he’d ever have been able to do anything in the medical profession.
The nurse passed him by, not even affording him a glance, and he sighed, his eyes flitting restlessly over the signs by the lifts. He read them off in his head: Day Surgery, Rehab, Renal, Intensive Care, Maternity, Medicine. With another glance at the desk, then a quick double-check of the corridor, he slid to his feet and moved towards the stairs. He walked the first ten steps slowly and casually, as if he was going somewhere he had been a hundred times before, then, as he realised he’d reached the first landing without anyone yelling for him to stop, sped up.
The rest of the steps passed in a blur and he darted onto the floor marked Intensive Care. Mercifully, the corridor was empty. He looked left and right. The corridor was long, with several doors coming off it at intermittent points, and was bisected at the far end by another corridor. Grey light streamed in through tinted windows and he heard muffled voices and the distant chatter of a television that was on a little too loud.
He headed down, glancing into the separate rooms as he went, looking for Garriock’s face. After a moment, he saw him and what he saw made him freeze and nearly cry out in anguish. His friend was lying in a hospital bed, invaded by tubes and wires, and as still as a corpse. His face was black and blue, swollen almost beyond recognition, and his eyes were taped closed. Smith pushed his way through the swing door and went to the bedside, staring in disbelief. Machines bleeped monotonously on the sidelines. It was worse than he’d imagined. He didn’t have much in the way of medical knowledge, but he knew enough to know that the tube leading down his friend’s throat was not good news.
“Oh, Greg, what did they do to you?” he breathed.
He was so absorbed in Garriock’s plight that he didn’t hear the door open and a nurse walk in. “Hello,” she said, making him jump. “Are you Mr. Garriock’s family?”
Smith looked around. “I, er… no… I’m… I’m his best friend. I was just told what happened.”
“Oh, right, well then, you might be able to tell us why we can’t reach Mr. Garriock’s family…” She moved towards him, then bent to check the readouts on the machines and adjust the IV.
“His parents’ farm has no phone line,” Smith replied dumbly. He stared. “What’s ha… what’s wrong with him?”
The nurse stopped what she was doing and looked up at him with sympathetic eyes. “Your friend arrived at the hospital with a severe head injury, what is known as a subdural haematoma, which is when blood collects in the tissues of the brain. He went into emergency surgery and the doctors have stopped the major bleeding in his brain, but there is understandably still some swelling and general cerebral trauma. We’ve induced a coma to allow it time to heal itself.”
“Is he going to wake up?”
“He will,” the nurse replied, “in time. When his brain is ready to, he will.” She paused and walked around to the other side of the bed. “Would you like me to get you a drink, Mr…?”
“Smith,” he said. “And no, I’m fine.” He swallowed. “I think I’ll just sit for a while, thanks.”
****
She found him by a combination of begging and putting on her Torchwood persona. The doctors and nurses in the Gilbert Bain Hospital were, variously, taken aback or swept up in the act and it wasn’t long before she found her way to the Intensive Care ward and, from there, to Garriock’s room. Of course, Smith was sitting by his bedside, staring guilt-drunk at his friend’s face, but looked up when she entered.
“Hey,” she greeted. It always felt wrong to talk at normal volume in the hospital and she lowered her tone to just above a whisper. “How is he?”
Smith blinked and blew out a long breath. “They’ve induced a coma. He’s got something called a subdural haematoma.”
Rose looked towards the man in the bed. She’d spoken all of a couple of dozen words to Garriock that night in the Thule, but by means of his obvious importance to Smith, she felt connected somehow. Using the knowledge she’d picked up when she or her colleagues had been injured out in the field, Rose flipped through the chart at the end of the bed. Though some of it was incomprehensible, she was able to determine that Garriock was stable but poorly, and that his blood pressure and heart rate were normal. She turned to look at Smith. “He’s going to be okay,” she told him.
Smith nodded numbly and Rose was reminded once again of how much he could look like a lost little boy. Had she always thought that? The Doctor had often been full of too much bravado and arrogance - was this quality something that had always been there, beneath the surface, or was it simply a feature of this man? She went to him and gave his shoulder a light squeeze. He turned his face towards hers and she studied his dark, expressive eyes. He said nothing.
His head sank again and a quivering breath rushed out of him. “It’s not your fault,” she told him quietly.
Smith’s face was agonised and he nodded again, as if words were too complicated for him to master at that moment. Rose crouched down beside him and took his hand in hers. “It’s been hours now,” she whispered. “Come on, let’s go back. You need to eat and get some rest.”
“I’m not hungry,” grunted Smith.
“Then at least come and get some rest. You’re no good to anyone if you stay here and wear yourself out. They’ll ring you the minute he wakes up.”
Rose fought back the burn of anger that grew in her stomach. She didn’t completely understand the culture on these islands, but it was obvious that friendship was almost as thick as blood. She was angry that two thugs had hurt this man for what seemed, to her, to be a completely innocent act. But, more than that, she was angry that what they’d done had spoilt the re-emerging relationship between the Doctor and her. He looked up at her, then back to his friend, torn. Finally, she took his hand and he allowed her to pull him to his feet.
She took him back to his simple cottage. Making him tea seemed like a good idea, but when she handed the steaming mug to him he set it back down on the counter, pulled out a chair and sank down onto it. He pressed the balls of his hands into his eyes and drew in a faltering breath. He was sliding away from her again, she thought, as she watched him. He was like a pot waiting to boil, anger and grief and guilt bubbling along all his surfaces, and right now the last thing on his mind was the possibility that he might be someone other than who he thought he was.
“I’ve got to reach his Mum and Dad,” he murmured, rubbing his hands over his face.
“The hospital will do that.”
She moved in front of him and was shocked when he grabbed her roughly by the waist and pulled her into him, pressing his forehead into her stomach. A huge wracking sob broke free and Rose froze. She’d seen grown men cry before, but never with quite so much emotion. She placed her hands on his head and rubbed his hair. “Why does everything have to be so evil?” he asked.
There was no answer to that. There had never been any answer to that.
“It’ll be okay,” Rose told him. “Everything will be okay.”
He stood suddenly and took her face in his hands and kissed her fiercely. “I need you,” he breathed into her mouth.
****
Why she was still here, he had no idea. If their places had been reversed, he would have left long ago. In fact, he wondered whether he’d have come to find her at all. It was far easier to simply walk away from things than it was to confront them head on. But she hadn’t walked away. And she was still here. Her faith in him was absolute and he felt humbled by it. He wondered what it felt like to believe in someone that completely; he’d never needed or trusted anyone in his life beyond the minimum, and yet here she was, still believing, still hoping. What had he done to earn her devotion?
Just this morning he’d thought that some of it was starting to make sense and that some of the pieces were beginning to fit together. But now everything was changed and he wasn’t sure he knew how to change it back. He kissed her deeply, hoping to assuage some of the confusion.
Her lips were like crushed silk and he felt himself falling into oblivion, their hands slipping apart with every second. He made to halt the slide. “Rose, come upstairs with me.”
She nodded and he led her back to his bedroom. He stripped off his clothes, then turned back the sheets and slid between them, beckoning her to follow. Slowly, Rose shed her own clothes. His eyes roved over her nakedness. She lay down next to him, facing him, but still on the opposite pillow, and sighed.
For the first time he saw how tired she looked. Her brown eyes carried so much experience, so much hurt that, for a moment, his own troubles seemed insignificant. He reached out and traced his forefinger along her outline, smiling as she shivered. A question that had played on his mind since the night before pushed itself forward. “Are you happy, Rose?” he asked.
She frowned. “Right now?” Her voice was low.
“Right now. Back then. With me. With him.” He shrugged at the confusion in his words.
“I’m happy,” she said simply. “But I’m scared.”
His hand had reached her jawline and he trailed along it to touch the plush ripeness of her lips. There was no need to elaborate further. Fear did funny things to people. “I’m scared too,” admitted Smith.
And with that, he rolled to cover her with his body, kissing her with the same urgency he’d felt before, in the kitchen. It was all too much. He wanted to stop the world so he could have time to evaluate what had happened to him, but he knew, as he felt her hands sliding across his back, he knew that time would not stop for him or her or anyone else. He heard her sigh and moan and he slipped down her body, wanting to think that they were just a man and a woman who had found each other for a while. He kissed her stomach, then pressed her legs apart. There was a storm inside him and he needed a port to shelter in and for now, making love to her would have to do.
So he treasured her, tore a shattering climax from her and, after she’d fallen asleep in his arms, told her he loved her.
****
Sometime in the night he woke to the sound of shouting in the street below. It took him a minute to orient himself and to recognise the voice.
It was Melissa.
He quickly rolled out of bed, threw on his jeans and shirt, and vaulted down the stairs, swinging open the front door just as she was about to open her mouth and bellow again. “Will you shut up?” he ordered. “You’ll wake the whole neighbourhood.”
“I don’t care.”
She was drunk, he realised as she swayed on the spot and stared at him with shifting eyes. He darted back into the house and pushed his feet into his boots. “Well, I do, so will you keep your mouth shut?” he hissed. Melissa did as she was told. “Now, you better have a good reason for waking me up at two-thirty in the morning…”
She grabbed him by the loose fronts of his shirt and hung on a little too hard, making him drop down to her level. She leaned into him, breathing vodka fumes across his face, then whispered, “They’re leavin’.”
He frowned, uncomprehending. “Who’s leaving?”
“Cartwright and MacDonald. They’re…” She paused and looked around at the empty street. It was already half-light and pretty soon, the sun would be up. “They’re loadin’ up Cartwright’s boat. They’re gunna make a run for it ‘efore the police c’n grab ‘em.” Her words were slurred and punctuated by frequent drawings of breath.
Smith’s eyes widened. “You’re joking?”
“They’ll be outta this town ‘efore the sun comes up,” she added. “An’ they won’t be comin’ back.”
He looked at Melissa, then back to the still open door of his cottage, then finally up at the rising sun. He took her by the arm. “Melissa,” he said firmly. “Go home. Drink at least two pints of water then go to bed. I’m going down to the harbour and I’m going to stop them.” His voice hardened again. “I’ll make sure they pay for what they did to Greg.”
****
His feet thumped on the ground hard, the loudest sound in the still-quiet and sleeping town, as he rounded the corner and entered the harbour. The lights from Cartwright’s boat shone out across the water and he darted towards it. His blood was on fire.
“Cartwright!” he yelled. “Get your fucking arse out here, now!”
His voice echoed harshly out across the water, not really sounding like his own. There was no response. He shouted again, “Cartwright! MacDonald! Get out here!”
Suddenly, there was movement aboard the little trawler and the contrasting forms of Garriock’s attackers loomed into sight. Cartwright was a typical fisherman thug, built like an ox and bearing the sort of upper body strength that cast fear into the hearts of most men. MacDonald, on the other hand, was thin but sinewy - a flyweight if he was put in the ring - and bore the expression of someone who was royally pissed off.
They climbed down the gangplank from the boat and moved towards Smith. Cartwright cracked his knuckles. There was a colourful bruise down his left cheek and Smith took heart that at least one of Garriock’s blows must have connected. “What are you whingin’ about, Smith?” he mocked. “You’ve taken a long while to come to set the record straight. What’s been holding you up? Wee woman need a fuckin’?”
Smith’s face burned and his fists curled. He held himself back by sheer force of will. “I don’t want to hurt you, Cartwright, but God help me, if you leave this town I will hunt you down and kill you myself. You’re going to pay for what you did to Greg.”
Cartwright’s laugh was foul. “Oh, really? The scrawny king o’ the seas is gonna drop his moral standards to lay his fists into me? How interesting.”
The three men moved towards each other, like thunderclouds cleaving together, the lightning imminent. Cartwright’s swagger kept up until he was right up to Smith’s chin. He stood only an inch taller, but his sheer size of body mass was intimidating enough on its own. Smith swallowed and steeled himself. His body tightened in response. “You make me laugh, Smith,” he sneered. “When I think of the state you were in when you showed up in this town, I suppose I should have guessed that you were running away from something.” His mouth twitched into a nasty smile. “Seems to me like your past has caught up with you. So, if you ask me, you deserve everything you get.”
“Well, I’m not asking you…”
And Smith swung his fist upwards. It connected with the underside of Cartwright’s chin with a solid thump, and the big man stumbled backwards at the impact. He recovered himself, growled deep in his throat, then launched himself at Smith like a wild dog.
A second later and fists were pummelling. Cartwright was joined by MacDonald and the two of them laid into Smith, who fought back like he was possessed. A blow landed on Smith’s cheek and he felt the skin beneath his eye split and begin to pour with blood. He hollered and shoved Cartwright backwards, throwing his centre of balance off and sending him spinning to the ground. His head flung backwards with the force of the impact and hit the concrete with a sound thunk. He fell motionless and limp, like a rag doll cast away by an angry child, unconscious. MacDonald launched himself towards Smith, but Smith landed a right hook onto his nose, grinning at the satisfying crunch of bone as MacDonald’s nose broke. He watched as the thin man backed off, cursing colourfully, and brought his hand up to his injured nose.
“Y’ fuckin’ prick, Smith!” he yelled. “Y’ just broke ma bloody nose!”
Smith said nothing; he was so winded it would have been impossible to say anything even if he’d tried. He backed away, panting. “The police are on their way, boys,” he gasped after a moment. “You’ve got about five minutes of freedom left.” He glanced at the prone body of Cartwright.
MacDonald ripped the sleeve of his shirt and tore a strip off it, using it to plug the flow of blood from his nose. In the distance, the sound of sirens began to echo and Smith turned and started to walk away. He wasn’t about to stick around to find out what happened when the police got here. Trailing his feet slightly, he had got no more than a dozen strides away when MacDonald yelled out, his voice thick with blood, “You can walk away now, Smith, but there’s one thing tha’s certain… The minute you turn your back again, I’ll get that precious woman o’ yours, and Garriock along with her. And this time, they’ll be nothing left to take to hospital.”
Smith froze. Instinct instructed him to turn around and lay MacDonald out alongside his pal, but another part, a part that was inherently stronger, told him to just walk away. The police were on their way and Melissa had already informed them of the crimes MacDonald and Cartwright had committed. There was no doubt of what they would do when they found the two men on the dock and their fate was as good as sealed. He wavered between the two choices, then, with some serious self-discipline, shook his head and continued to walk away, even as the sirens became louder.
****
Quite how he got back to the door of his cottage, Smith didn’t know. His body had begun to shut down with every step he’d walked away from the quayside and it was now aching beyond all comprehension. He was too old for this kind of thing, he thought. The blood was still trickling down his cheek and it had soaked his collar and the right side of his shirt in a sticky red mess; he knew damn well that he would have an impressive bruise already beginning to form.
His hand reached out and opened the door, which had blown closed once again, then stumbled into the kitchen, not bothering to switch on the lights. He grabbed a wad of tissues and pressed them up against his wound, hoping to stem the flow of blood. A hiss slipped out of his mouth at the sting of placing pressure on the cut and he sank into one of the kitchen chairs, closing his eyes.
He began to drift into semi-consciousness once he was sat, but a set of tentative footsteps descending the stairs drew his attention. Rose. He’d almost forgotten she was here.
She appeared in the doorway to the kitchen looking endearingly sleep-ridden, her eyes bleary and her hair messed up at the back, reminding him of just what they done before they’d fallen asleep. “What happened to you?” she gasped. “Where’ve you been?”
He ignored her. He didn’t feel like explaining the whole thing to her; she wouldn’t understand no matter how long he spent going through it. Life on these islands was not like life in the rest of the country. And if you had never lived here, you could never hope to understand it.
“John?” she prompted again, her voice laden with concern. She moved towards him and he saw her eyes fill with horror as she took in his damaged face. “You’ve been in a fight.”
He pursed his lips, but the movement made another twinge zip through him and he turned away. She seemed to read his reluctance to speak, so she took the blood-soaked tissues from him and threw them in the bin. She peeled his shirt off him, dropped it in the sink, then grabbed a clean dishcloth from the cupboard underneath. She ran it through warm water then began to clean him up with impossibly gentle touches.
Smith tried not to look at her as she worked, but most of all, tried not to listen to the little voice in the back of his head that chanted at him in MacDonald’s cold-blooded wheezing tone. He should have just knocked the wee rat out, because, he now realised, there was every chance that as soon as he’d turned the corner, MacDonald had got on his boat and scarpered before the police had got there, leaving Cartwright to take the fall for him.
She had wiped all the dried and congealing blood from his face and neck and was beginning to examine the cut on his cheekbone. “It’s not broken,” she told him in a quiet voice. “But it’s going to need some stitches. We have to go to the hospital.”
“No,” he replied.
“I can’t…”
“No stitches. No hospital. No doctors.”
Rose shook her head. “John, this isn’t going to seal up on its own: it’s too deep.”
Closing his eyes, Smith jerked his arm towards one of the kitchen cupboards. “There are butterfly strips in there, in the green first aid box. Use them.”
Rose stared at him reluctantly, then edged to the cupboard and took out the first aid box. She opened it and tipped its contents on the tabletop, selecting half a dozen butterfly strips and a large piece of sterile dressing. “Okay,” she agreed. “Hold still.” She padded the wound again with the damp cloth, then with methodical slowness applied all six butterfly strips, sealing the wound closed. Finally, she laid the dressing over the top of her work and pressed it down gently.
Smith dared to look at her as she leaned back to examine him. She was so beautiful, even with her messy hair and make-up free skin. For the first time he realised that she was wearing one of his own t-shirts and it was so big that it fell to her mid-thighs. Visions of her tiny body in the hands of Finn MacDonald filled his mind and he knew then what he must do.
She had to go. She had to leave this place and him and go away, because it was too dangerous for her to stay. But in the same breath, he knew that she wouldn’t understand him if he tried to reason with her, if he told her she had to leave for her own safety. He’d seen enough of her in the last couple of days to know that Rose Tyler was not the sort of girl who shied away from dangerous situations. She met them head on, no matter what, and she would see this situation as no different.
There was only one thing to do. He had to make her leave.
His heart crunched in on itself at the realisation. He had just begun to feel things for her that he’d felt for no other and now he was going to have to perform the ultimate act of cruelty - he was going to have to convince her that he didn’t love her.
She reached up and caressed his face, smiling softly. He turned his head away from her and stood up, stepping backwards, needing some space to stop himself from backing down from his task. “I’m going to bed,” he said.
“Okay,” she replied and reached for his hand.
“Alone.”
Rose’s eyes stared, uncomprehending. “You want me to sleep on the sofa?” she asked.
He swallowed. “No, I want you to go. Go and leave me alone.” He fixed her with his hardest stare, but even that wasn’t resistant to the confused brightness of her brown eyes. He shook his head. “I don’t know what I was doing… I’m not this man you think I am, this ‘doctor’. I’m John Smith and I was born right here in this town and this town is where I’m staying. Everything I am is here. It’s where I should be… not… not off gallivanting with you. I have responsibilities and… and a life here.” He paused only to draw breath, knowing that if he stopped he would never get started again. “I’ve mislead you. Made you think that I feel something for you that I don’t… I’m sorry.”
Her eyes filled with tears as he finished and she stared at him, the shock registering on her face like someone had just slapped her soundly. “But… John… you…” Her voice was weak and quavering. “What we did… That wasn’t just me. I know it; you felt it as well.”
“No,” he said, not trusting himself to say anything more.
“What about your dreams?” she asked, desperation growing in her tone.
“They were just dreams,” he replied. “Pointless dreams probably caused by my overactive imagination. I’m not this man you think I am. This is my life.” He paused and saw her opening her mouth to object again. This was it, he thought. He had to go in for the kill now. “THIS is my life!” he yelled.
His heart, which had threatened to break right the way through his speech now shattered into pieces at the sight of her tear-streaked face. Unable to trust himself, knowing he was threads away from backing down and sweeping her into his arms, he began to walk away. “Please go,” he said as he turned. “Don’t ask me any more questions. Please… just go.”
For a moment, he thought she was going to refuse. He heard her intake of breath. But then, as if she was fighting back that very response, she whispered, “If this is what you want… Let me get my things.”
She pushed past him, not looking at his face, and a minute later, returned dressed in her own clothes. She stood in the hallway, one hand on the door handle. Summoning considerable strength, she straightened her spine and fixed him with a graceful, firm stare. For the first time since that night in the Thule, she addressed him by the name she claimed was his. “Doctor, I don’t understand completely what you’re saying to me, but I know this… when you’re ready, I’ll be waiting.”
And with that, she opened the door and walked out of his life.
To be continued...