Competent Medical Professional
I'm not so convinced about the solidity of the ending, but despite that, this story is still a serious competitor for my favourite of everything I wrote for fandom_stockings this year. :)
Title: Competent Medical Professional [AO3]
Fandom: Doctor Who
Wordcount: ~1,000
Rating: G
Summary: This isn’t even the weirdest day Rory’s had this week.
Notes/Disclaimers: Originally posted here, for curuchamion. I don't own Doctor Who, I'm earning no money.
“Have to go,” the Doctor says hurriedly, talking right over Rory’s protests. “Lots to do, got to get that dechronogiser back and someone’s got to mind her while I’m gone, I’m just, I’m just going to nip out and see to that, I’ll be back, and, er, yes, sure you’ll do just fine! Goodbye!”
The TARDIS door slams shut behind his hasty departure, and Rory tries not to panic.
Okay. He can do this. No reason he can’t do this. He’s Rory Williams, Competent Medical Professional. He changes bedpans. He deciphers charts. He placates irate octogenarians. He deals with Dr. Ramsden on a day-to-day bases and very seldom resorts to swearing, which privately Rory thinks ought to earn him some kind of a medal. Before the Doctor showed up he saw weird and disgusting and frightening and miraculous every single day without needing a TARDIS at all, thank-you very much, and he can handle this.
In his arms, Amy wails unhappily.
Oh, god, why won’t she stop crying? He’d warmed her up some of the almost-milk from Bantha Six, he’d checked her improvised diaper - an experience currently topping his list of “things I hope my girlfriend forgets about after we re-age her” - bounced her about and murmured nonsense in her ear and even burped her, and then he’d kind of wished he’d had his scrubs on because puke washed right out of scrubs but his sweater was probably never going to be the same, and she still won’t stop crying.
Now he’s sitting here, wild-eyed and half deaf, desperately trying to remember everything his mother ever said about crying babies.
Rub a little whiskey on her gums? He’s pretty sure that’s not a medically sound strategy, but he’s desperate enough to try it, if only they had any alcohol beyond the mildly hallucinogenic stuff Amy discovered at the market on the meteorite because frankly he’s not yet convinced that stuff is even safe for human consumption, full stop, much less small children.
Take her for a drive? He’s not ruling out the possibility that there’s an old car hidden somewhere in the depth of the TARDIS, but even if he could find one he’s not sure there’d be anywhere to drive it to, and since they’re still parked on the planet of the irate tentacle creatures, there’s no way he’s getting out of the TARDIS to go hunt for a car or, you know, a road.
Set her down on the clothes dryer? The Doctor uses some kind of a sonic thing to wash their clothes - of course he does, he uses some kind of sonic thing to do bloody everything - and since it doesn’t get the clothes wet, they never have to be dried. So that’s -
- wait. The whole point of the dryer was the vibrations and the white noise, yeah? His eyes gravitate towards an exposed bit of wiring on the far wall on the control room. One of the panels on the control consul had been vibrating and making a funny noise for the past few weeks, and the Doctor had finally fixed it... by fiddling around with those wires there...
Before he can talk himself out of it, Rory sets Amy down, walks over the wiring, grabs a handful, and pulls.
Sparks fly, and the panel immediately begins to tremble and hum, so obligingly that Rory can’t help but wonder if the TARDIS is just as close to the end of her rope as he is. He gives he gives her an absentminded pat and a mental apology, then goes to fetch his girlfriend.
It works. It works, and when she finally drifts off to sleep, Rory is so relieved he almost wants to start crying himself. God. He doesn’t know how Amy’s aunt did it, raising her without any help. The baby to parent ratio really ought to be 1:2. Or maybe 1:3. 1:4 would not, he thinks in a vague sort of way, be pushing the bounds of reasonable.
The TARDIS door swing open, and the Doctor comes bustling in. “Right, I think I’ve figured out how we can-” the Doctor turns around, and his jaw drops. “What’ve you done to her!” And Rory is confused for a moment, because Amy is just fine, thank-you, but the Doctor rushes right past her and starts cooing over the circuitry that Rory mangled to un-fix the control panel.
His mouth opens and closes a few times before he manages, “I’m terribly sorry if I hurt your baby, Doctor, but my baby - er, girlfriend - can’t be put to rights with a screwdriver! And she was crying!”
“Oh,” says the Doctor, clearly distracted by the need the croon over the TARDIS’s mangled wiring, “actually, she can be.”
“...wait, what?”
“Can be fixed with a screwdriver,” he answers, pulling loose one of the little widgets which Rory had particularly mangled, and making an anguished face. “It turns out that setting number six ought to collapse the wave fluctuation and age her right back up to - what now?” he asks, confused, because Rory has started laughing, and now that he’s begun, he can’t seem to stop.
So his girlfriend got de-aged by a bunch of tentacly aliens, and then he broke a time machine to get her to sleep, and then it turns out that the cure is a magical high-tech screwdriver wielded by a madman with a box who is also, by the way, an alien? Sure. Why not.
It wasn’t even the weirdest day he’d had this week. crossposted from Dreamwidth |
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Title: Competent Medical Professional [AO3]
Fandom: Doctor Who
Wordcount: ~1,000
Rating: G
Summary: This isn’t even the weirdest day Rory’s had this week.
Notes/Disclaimers: Originally posted here, for curuchamion. I don't own Doctor Who, I'm earning no money.
“Have to go,” the Doctor says hurriedly, talking right over Rory’s protests. “Lots to do, got to get that dechronogiser back and someone’s got to mind her while I’m gone, I’m just, I’m just going to nip out and see to that, I’ll be back, and, er, yes, sure you’ll do just fine! Goodbye!”
The TARDIS door slams shut behind his hasty departure, and Rory tries not to panic.
Okay. He can do this. No reason he can’t do this. He’s Rory Williams, Competent Medical Professional. He changes bedpans. He deciphers charts. He placates irate octogenarians. He deals with Dr. Ramsden on a day-to-day bases and very seldom resorts to swearing, which privately Rory thinks ought to earn him some kind of a medal. Before the Doctor showed up he saw weird and disgusting and frightening and miraculous every single day without needing a TARDIS at all, thank-you very much, and he can handle this.
In his arms, Amy wails unhappily.
Oh, god, why won’t she stop crying? He’d warmed her up some of the almost-milk from Bantha Six, he’d checked her improvised diaper - an experience currently topping his list of “things I hope my girlfriend forgets about after we re-age her” - bounced her about and murmured nonsense in her ear and even burped her, and then he’d kind of wished he’d had his scrubs on because puke washed right out of scrubs but his sweater was probably never going to be the same, and she still won’t stop crying.
Now he’s sitting here, wild-eyed and half deaf, desperately trying to remember everything his mother ever said about crying babies.
Rub a little whiskey on her gums? He’s pretty sure that’s not a medically sound strategy, but he’s desperate enough to try it, if only they had any alcohol beyond the mildly hallucinogenic stuff Amy discovered at the market on the meteorite because frankly he’s not yet convinced that stuff is even safe for human consumption, full stop, much less small children.
Take her for a drive? He’s not ruling out the possibility that there’s an old car hidden somewhere in the depth of the TARDIS, but even if he could find one he’s not sure there’d be anywhere to drive it to, and since they’re still parked on the planet of the irate tentacle creatures, there’s no way he’s getting out of the TARDIS to go hunt for a car or, you know, a road.
Set her down on the clothes dryer? The Doctor uses some kind of a sonic thing to wash their clothes - of course he does, he uses some kind of sonic thing to do bloody everything - and since it doesn’t get the clothes wet, they never have to be dried. So that’s -
- wait. The whole point of the dryer was the vibrations and the white noise, yeah? His eyes gravitate towards an exposed bit of wiring on the far wall on the control room. One of the panels on the control consul had been vibrating and making a funny noise for the past few weeks, and the Doctor had finally fixed it... by fiddling around with those wires there...
Before he can talk himself out of it, Rory sets Amy down, walks over the wiring, grabs a handful, and pulls.
Sparks fly, and the panel immediately begins to tremble and hum, so obligingly that Rory can’t help but wonder if the TARDIS is just as close to the end of her rope as he is. He gives he gives her an absentminded pat and a mental apology, then goes to fetch his girlfriend.
It works. It works, and when she finally drifts off to sleep, Rory is so relieved he almost wants to start crying himself. God. He doesn’t know how Amy’s aunt did it, raising her without any help. The baby to parent ratio really ought to be 1:2. Or maybe 1:3. 1:4 would not, he thinks in a vague sort of way, be pushing the bounds of reasonable.
The TARDIS door swing open, and the Doctor comes bustling in. “Right, I think I’ve figured out how we can-” the Doctor turns around, and his jaw drops. “What’ve you done to her!” And Rory is confused for a moment, because Amy is just fine, thank-you, but the Doctor rushes right past her and starts cooing over the circuitry that Rory mangled to un-fix the control panel.
His mouth opens and closes a few times before he manages, “I’m terribly sorry if I hurt your baby, Doctor, but my baby - er, girlfriend - can’t be put to rights with a screwdriver! And she was crying!”
“Oh,” says the Doctor, clearly distracted by the need the croon over the TARDIS’s mangled wiring, “actually, she can be.”
“...wait, what?”
“Can be fixed with a screwdriver,” he answers, pulling loose one of the little widgets which Rory had particularly mangled, and making an anguished face. “It turns out that setting number six ought to collapse the wave fluctuation and age her right back up to - what now?” he asks, confused, because Rory has started laughing, and now that he’s begun, he can’t seem to stop.
So his girlfriend got de-aged by a bunch of tentacly aliens, and then he broke a time machine to get her to sleep, and then it turns out that the cure is a magical high-tech screwdriver wielded by a madman with a box who is also, by the way, an alien? Sure. Why not.
It wasn’t even the weirdest day he’d had this week. crossposted from Dreamwidth |
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