funny how a heart shatters all at once.
This fic came about in a weird way. It was about 4AM and I could sleep and I couldn't lie down (because of this stupid cough) and for some unknown reason, my mind wondered to "Oh, I wonder how Martha decided that she wanted to be a doctor?". Lo and behold, #6 was formed. I wrote down odd words in my Tinkerbell notebook that I could write from and then (without any warning) other random facts popped into my head. I wrote them down and this is what happened.
Concrit is always welcome as is pointing out typing errors because this is unbated and most likely riddled with typos.
15 (+1) Facts About Martha Jones
DW Fic. Martha-centric Gen. 1465 words.
1)
Her mother went into labour while she was washing the dishes.
2)
On the night she was born it was raining outside but it wasn’t cold. She was a month too early and had to spend two weeks in incubation.
Clive was at the pub after work when he got the news. He didn’t go straight to the hospital; instead he went to an all-night supermarket and bought a bunch of flowers for £10 (lilies and roses because they’re Francine’s favourites).
By the time he got there his little girl was already born and inside a plastic box where he couldn’t hold her.
He didn’t leave her side until 3 days later when the doctors made him.
3)
Her Grandmother on her dad’s side died when she was too young to remember (lung cancer from smoking too much), but she had a photograph on her bedside table and every night, that was the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes to sleep.
In the picture, her Grandmother’s smiling wide at the camera (like she wasn’t sick at all) and holding the tiny baby in her arms like she’s the most precious thing in the universe.
(She still talks to her sometimes before she goes to sleep. She still hopes that she can hear her.)
4)
When Leo was born, Martha made her daddy take her down to the little shop at the front of the hospital. She spent half an hour studying each item for sale before deciding on what she wanted to buy (with her own pocket money of course).
It was a small toy frog that was just a bit bigger than her hand. She named it Ben and gave it to the tiny baby (that still had a wrinkled face, kind of like a squashed tomato) that was in her mummy’s arms.
(She knows for a fact that Leo still has the frog and still refers to it as Ben.)
5)
Her best friend when she was small was called Rosie (she can’t remember her surname anymore). She moved away before they entered Year 4 and now Martha can’t even remember her face clearly (Rosie has become a smudge of brown hair and freckles across the landscape of her childhood memories).
But she does remember lying on the grass in Rosie’s back garden (bigger than her own), looking up at the sky and asking, “Do you think the world will end while we’re still in it?”
Rosie didn’t know.
6)
Martha Jones wanted to be a doctor ever since she was 7 years old.
Her favourite auntie (the one that always smelt like comfort and slipped her liquorice laces under the table even though her mum didn’t like them) was in a car crash.
The hospital corridor smelt too clean and the lights overhead made her eyes hurt. Her mother wouldn't stop bouncing her leg up and down and Tish wouldn’t look away from a spot on the wall opposite her.
Then there was a (too) loud beeping coming from the room with her auntie inside (the causualty room she learns later) and the doctors seem to be moving with a hard edge of desperation.
The sound of cracking (bones) exploded against the beeping and through the window she can see a woman with her hands inside her auntie’s chest. There’s blood up to the woman’s elbows and everyone in the room is talking in mumbled, rushed sentences.
Her auntie didn’t die.
Her mother took them all to visit every day. Leo always sat on the pillow next to her head, and Tish sat on a chair next to the bed, holding on to her hand until her knuckles turned white. Martha sat on the floor at the end of the bed, staring at the words and charts that hung there on a clipboard.
The doctor (her name was Catherine and she a scar that ran the length of her face on the left side) showed her what each piece of information on the chart meant and why it was important.
When her auntie was released from the hospital a month later, Catherine gave Martha her very own stethoscope.
She still keeps it in a box under her bed.
7)
When she was 12, Martha broke her arm (radius) by falling down the stairs. She had been trying out her new heels for the first time and lost her footing.
She put them on again the next day.
8)
She got a D in English (once) when she was in Year 9 (ever since then, she’s never got anything but As).
9)
Her first kiss happened when she was 14.
Her friend Susanne was having house party and she went along (even if she didn’t really want to). She wore her new purple coloured top (because everyone said she looked so nice in purple) and jeans. The music was too loud and all night she sat in the corner and waited to go home.
She had liked James Waterhouse for the better part of year. He had the most perfect smile she’d ever seen and long brown hair that flopped into his eyes every time he moved his head. He came and sat down next to her, a slightly unfocused look in his eyes (she chose to ignore it).
When he kissed her it was messy and nothing like she had imagined. His hand that was resting on her knee felt uncomfortable and he was too warm pressed against her. When they broke apart he smiled goofily at her and walked off. She didn’t follow him out of the room.
They never spoke again.
10)
Tish and Martha hated each other until they were 16 and 17. Even they don’t know why.
11)
Two months into her first term at college a red Ford hit her best friend Andrew while she was standing on the other side of the road. The world moved in slow motion as he lay there on the ground and he didn’t move.
She doesn’t remember moving to his side but she does remember pressing her hands down onto his chest and telling him that he wasn’t going to die, not now. She breathed into him and prayed (to a God that she wasn’t even sure existed) that it wouldn’t end. Not like this.
The doctors said that she saved his life that day.
12)
She lost her virginity when she was 18. She was at a club with her friends and she was pretending to be drunker than she really was.
She woke up in the morning still wearing the same top as the night before. She left before he woke up and left a note on his pillow that simply read, “M.”
She never did learn his name. (He had a mole on his back, just below the T6 vertebra.)
13)
She knew about Annalise before anyone else in her family did.
14)
She only caught her mum crying once.
She couldn’t sleep in the run up to exams and went downstairs to make a drink. Her mum was sitting in the living room watching Forrest Gump and crying, her left hand gripping a cushion so hard that her nails had ripped the fabric.
Martha didn’t even say anything. She walked straight into the kitchen and made tea. (In the mug that Tish, Leo and herself had made her for Mother’s Day when they were younger. It had 3 little stick people - two girls and boy - and a big stick person stood next to them. The words “Best Mum In The World” were written out in green block capitals.) All she did was sit with her until she fell asleep, her mascara smeared across her cheeks.
In the background Hanna Hall is saying, “Dear God, make me a bird. So I could fly far. Far, far away from here.”
The world suddenly felt too small and too huge all at the same time.
15)
The first night in her new flat, Martha made a ham sandwich. It was just like any other sandwich she had ever had her life, except this time it was her bread and her meat and she was eating it inside her flat.
It’s still the best thing she’s ever tasted.
16)
Every time she says the word “home” a little, wooden blue box (so much bigger on the inside, all that power) flashes involuntarily across her thoughts. And she can’t help remembering the way it hummed when she stroked the walls (it didn’t even feel strange to do that somehow).
She remembers how the sight of that ship was the only thing that kept her going through those months stuck in 1913 and made her feel like she wasn’t as alone as she really was.
Sometimes, she misses the TARDIS so much that it aches (almost more than she misses The Doctor).
Concrit is always welcome as is pointing out typing errors because this is unbated and most likely riddled with typos.
15 (+1) Facts About Martha Jones
DW Fic. Martha-centric Gen. 1465 words.
1)
Her mother went into labour while she was washing the dishes.
2)
On the night she was born it was raining outside but it wasn’t cold. She was a month too early and had to spend two weeks in incubation.
Clive was at the pub after work when he got the news. He didn’t go straight to the hospital; instead he went to an all-night supermarket and bought a bunch of flowers for £10 (lilies and roses because they’re Francine’s favourites).
By the time he got there his little girl was already born and inside a plastic box where he couldn’t hold her.
He didn’t leave her side until 3 days later when the doctors made him.
3)
Her Grandmother on her dad’s side died when she was too young to remember (lung cancer from smoking too much), but she had a photograph on her bedside table and every night, that was the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes to sleep.
In the picture, her Grandmother’s smiling wide at the camera (like she wasn’t sick at all) and holding the tiny baby in her arms like she’s the most precious thing in the universe.
(She still talks to her sometimes before she goes to sleep. She still hopes that she can hear her.)
4)
When Leo was born, Martha made her daddy take her down to the little shop at the front of the hospital. She spent half an hour studying each item for sale before deciding on what she wanted to buy (with her own pocket money of course).
It was a small toy frog that was just a bit bigger than her hand. She named it Ben and gave it to the tiny baby (that still had a wrinkled face, kind of like a squashed tomato) that was in her mummy’s arms.
(She knows for a fact that Leo still has the frog and still refers to it as Ben.)
5)
Her best friend when she was small was called Rosie (she can’t remember her surname anymore). She moved away before they entered Year 4 and now Martha can’t even remember her face clearly (Rosie has become a smudge of brown hair and freckles across the landscape of her childhood memories).
But she does remember lying on the grass in Rosie’s back garden (bigger than her own), looking up at the sky and asking, “Do you think the world will end while we’re still in it?”
Rosie didn’t know.
6)
Martha Jones wanted to be a doctor ever since she was 7 years old.
Her favourite auntie (the one that always smelt like comfort and slipped her liquorice laces under the table even though her mum didn’t like them) was in a car crash.
The hospital corridor smelt too clean and the lights overhead made her eyes hurt. Her mother wouldn't stop bouncing her leg up and down and Tish wouldn’t look away from a spot on the wall opposite her.
Then there was a (too) loud beeping coming from the room with her auntie inside (the causualty room she learns later) and the doctors seem to be moving with a hard edge of desperation.
The sound of cracking (bones) exploded against the beeping and through the window she can see a woman with her hands inside her auntie’s chest. There’s blood up to the woman’s elbows and everyone in the room is talking in mumbled, rushed sentences.
Her auntie didn’t die.
Her mother took them all to visit every day. Leo always sat on the pillow next to her head, and Tish sat on a chair next to the bed, holding on to her hand until her knuckles turned white. Martha sat on the floor at the end of the bed, staring at the words and charts that hung there on a clipboard.
The doctor (her name was Catherine and she a scar that ran the length of her face on the left side) showed her what each piece of information on the chart meant and why it was important.
When her auntie was released from the hospital a month later, Catherine gave Martha her very own stethoscope.
She still keeps it in a box under her bed.
7)
When she was 12, Martha broke her arm (radius) by falling down the stairs. She had been trying out her new heels for the first time and lost her footing.
She put them on again the next day.
8)
She got a D in English (once) when she was in Year 9 (ever since then, she’s never got anything but As).
9)
Her first kiss happened when she was 14.
Her friend Susanne was having house party and she went along (even if she didn’t really want to). She wore her new purple coloured top (because everyone said she looked so nice in purple) and jeans. The music was too loud and all night she sat in the corner and waited to go home.
She had liked James Waterhouse for the better part of year. He had the most perfect smile she’d ever seen and long brown hair that flopped into his eyes every time he moved his head. He came and sat down next to her, a slightly unfocused look in his eyes (she chose to ignore it).
When he kissed her it was messy and nothing like she had imagined. His hand that was resting on her knee felt uncomfortable and he was too warm pressed against her. When they broke apart he smiled goofily at her and walked off. She didn’t follow him out of the room.
They never spoke again.
10)
Tish and Martha hated each other until they were 16 and 17. Even they don’t know why.
11)
Two months into her first term at college a red Ford hit her best friend Andrew while she was standing on the other side of the road. The world moved in slow motion as he lay there on the ground and he didn’t move.
She doesn’t remember moving to his side but she does remember pressing her hands down onto his chest and telling him that he wasn’t going to die, not now. She breathed into him and prayed (to a God that she wasn’t even sure existed) that it wouldn’t end. Not like this.
The doctors said that she saved his life that day.
12)
She lost her virginity when she was 18. She was at a club with her friends and she was pretending to be drunker than she really was.
She woke up in the morning still wearing the same top as the night before. She left before he woke up and left a note on his pillow that simply read, “M.”
She never did learn his name. (He had a mole on his back, just below the T6 vertebra.)
13)
She knew about Annalise before anyone else in her family did.
14)
She only caught her mum crying once.
She couldn’t sleep in the run up to exams and went downstairs to make a drink. Her mum was sitting in the living room watching Forrest Gump and crying, her left hand gripping a cushion so hard that her nails had ripped the fabric.
Martha didn’t even say anything. She walked straight into the kitchen and made tea. (In the mug that Tish, Leo and herself had made her for Mother’s Day when they were younger. It had 3 little stick people - two girls and boy - and a big stick person stood next to them. The words “Best Mum In The World” were written out in green block capitals.) All she did was sit with her until she fell asleep, her mascara smeared across her cheeks.
In the background Hanna Hall is saying, “Dear God, make me a bird. So I could fly far. Far, far away from here.”
The world suddenly felt too small and too huge all at the same time.
15)
The first night in her new flat, Martha made a ham sandwich. It was just like any other sandwich she had ever had her life, except this time it was her bread and her meat and she was eating it inside her flat.
It’s still the best thing she’s ever tasted.
16)
Every time she says the word “home” a little, wooden blue box (so much bigger on the inside, all that power) flashes involuntarily across her thoughts. And she can’t help remembering the way it hummed when she stroked the walls (it didn’t even feel strange to do that somehow).
She remembers how the sight of that ship was the only thing that kept her going through those months stuck in 1913 and made her feel like she wasn’t as alone as she really was.
Sometimes, she misses the TARDIS so much that it aches (almost more than she misses The Doctor).