Fic: Close Call (6/8)
Title: Close Call (6/8)
Author: shining_moment
Characters/Pairing: Doctor, Donna, Martha
Rating: G
Summary: “I’m not sure what to say to that. I don’t know whether you want me to agree or disagree and at the moment I don’t think I have the energy to try and figure it out.”
Disclaimer: The BBC owns it all.
Donna wakes up because there seems to be a cat scratching at her arm and it‘s annoying her. Oh, but wait, she doesn’t have a cat so it must be the Doctor doing the scratching, bored because she’s asleep and trying, in his own unique way, to wake her up. She waves her hand in what she hopes is some kind of obvious sign that she wants him to stop it, to let her sleep just for a little while longer, but the scratching continues and she murmurs, slightly irritably, “Doctor…”
The voice that whispers back to her isn’t the Doctor’s though, it’s Martha’s,
“Sorry Donna, I’ll be done in a second.”
Donna opens her eyes because, even exhausted, she’s curious about what exactly Martha will be done with in a second. She looks down just as the last of whatever she’s being given slides into the cannula in her arm before looking back up at Martha.
“I didn’t mean to wake you, you can go back to sleep, it’s ok.”
“It’s fine,” she mumbles hoarsely, “Awake now.”
“Nothing to worry about but your temperature is a touch higher than we’d like so I’ve changed your antibiotics, see if we can bring it down again.”
Martha sits down beside the bed and that’s when Donna notices that the Doctor isn’t there, that he doesn’t appear to be in the room at all and she glances towards the door before looking back at Martha and gesturing towards the water jug on the stand beside the bed.
“Could I-?”
Martha pours Donna a glass and hands it to her, waiting for her to take a few mouthfuls before taking it back and putting it back next to the jug. Donna smiles gratefully,
“Thanks. I hope you’ve sent him for a shower. As funny as he thinks that t-shirt is, he probably shouldn’t just keep wearing it until it actually climbs off his back.”
“I told him if he didn’t go and wash soon, there was a chance the fumes would set you back in your recovery,” Martha grins triumphantly, “That got him moving.”
Donna smirks at her before her expression turns to one of concern, “He’s been here constantly, hasn’t he?”
Martha nods and Donna can’t quite read her distant look as she replies,
“He wouldn’t leave for a second, said he left you in the medical bay for two minutes to go and set the co-ordinates to get here and that’s when you stopped breathing.”
“So as well as blaming himself that I got shot in the first place, now the daft bugger’s got it into his head that if he walks out of the room again I might kick the bucket,” Donna sighs.
“When he called to tell me what had happened, he-” Martha pauses, remembering the desperation, the panic in his voice, “He was frantic, terrified of losing you.”
“Terrified of having to break it to my mother, more like it.”
Martha knows Donna’s making an attempt to play down the Doctor’s fear so that she doesn’t have to think about what a close call this was but Martha will never forget the sound of his voice on the phone, the look on his face when he arrived, clutching Donna to him so urgently and she really doesn’t know how he would have coped if Donna hadn’t made it.
“You obviously mean an awful lot to him, Donna. It‘s good, I‘m glad he has someone he cares for so deeply, I really am,” she stands abruptly and walks over to the window, staring blankly out at the street below, leaving a slightly baffled Donna behind her.
“I’m not sure what to say to that. I don’t know whether you want me to agree or disagree and at the moment I don’t think I have the energy to try and figure it out.”
There are few seconds of uncomfortable silence before Martha turns back to the bed, suddenly embarrassed at her petulant tone, “Oh Donna, I’m sorry, you must think I’m a complete cow.”
Donna’s voice is unusually small with more than a hint of confusion,
“Of course not. Listen, I'm sorry if you feel like I’ve somehow swooped in and taken your place but I-”
“No, I don’t, I really don’t, that’s not it.”
“Then what is it Martha? It might be the pain killers mushing my brain a bit but I don’t quite know what this is all about.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t believe you’re lying here recovering from being shot and I’ve got the nerve to start with this.”
Donna sighs impatiently, if without her usual force, “Never mind that. I’ll let you know if I need pain killers, you just say whatever it is you need to say.”
Martha sighs and feels suddenly like a child taking out her tantrum on completely the wrong person, “It’s nothing to do with feeling like you’ve taken my place, not at all. I had the most amazing time with the Doctor and, even with all the awful stuff, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything but I wouldn’t want to go back either. I’m happy now, really happy. I think it’s more that…well, I see the way he needs you, the way he came so close to falling apart when he thought he’d lost you-”
“And you think that means you weren’t important to him?”
She nods, feeling silly hearing Donna voice what she‘s been thinking, really silly, “I suppose so, yes, that is how it feels, like he only took me along for the ride because you said no, because I just happened to be there at the time.”
“Oh, you’ve got it so wrong Martha. Yeah, I hope I do mean something to him because he means a hell of a lot to me but you’re miles off target if you think you didn’t matter to him. He very nearly changed his mind about letting me go with him because of you, because of how awful he felt about the way he treated you, what happened to your family,“ Martha smiles wryly and Donna raises her eyebrows curiously, “What?”
“I feel like an idiot now, that’s all. I feel like I just threw a bit of a tantrum only for you to just tell it exactly like it is. All wise there, from your hospital bed.”
“It’s an age thing,” Donna grins faintly, “Eventually you realise there’s no point in going round the houses when it’s easier just to say whatever it is that needs to be said. You wait, ten years down the line, you’ll be exactly like me.”
Martha grins back at her, “I can think of worse things. I’ve said it before but I really can see why he likes you.”
“Glad to hear it. Makes me a bit less worried that I might wake up and find you hovering over me with a pillow.”
“Donna!”
“I‘m having you on,” Donna grimaces slightly and closes her eyes until whatever pain she was in seems to pass, “God, I feel like all I do is sleep. It won’t be like this forever, will it?”
“It’s only been just over a week, it is going to take a bit of time. Providing we get your temperature down, you’ll get out of here tomorrow but you’re going to have to take things easy for a while and you probably will need to sleep a bit more than usual. The sling’s going to make things a bit tricky too, you’ll need to let the Doctor help you with so many little things that you took for granted before.”
“Oh God, he’ll never master the hair straighteners, I’m going to look like a scarecrow!”
“Oh I don’t know, you’ve seen the effort he puts into his own hair. I’d say he’s more familiar with the world of hairdressing than he lets on.”
#
The next time Donna wakes up there’s no sign of a cat or anything else scratching her arm, just the Doctor sitting back in the chair beside the bed, grinning at her and, she notices, wearing his familiar brown pinstripes again. She tries to sit up but it hurts so she abandons the effort, sighing in frustration,
“What are you grinning at, sunshine?”
“I got you something.”
“Oh yeah? I thought you were just going to shower and get changed.”
He stands up as if to prove that he did indeed change before reaching down under his chair, pulling out a box and sitting back down with it on his lap.
“I did shower and change but on the way back I saw these and had to get myself a pair,” he lifts one leg and waves his foot excitedly in the vague direction of her face, showing off a brand new pair of cream Converse with a bright blue ‘D’ emblazoned across the side.
“Well, they’re very nice but, unless you’re under the impression that I’ve suddenly fallen in love with your feet, how is that something for me?”
“Patience, Donna, is a virtue.”
“I’ve been lying here for a week, I think I’ve used up any patience I might have had.”
“Alright, alright, here-” he puts the box on the bed close enough for her to be able to remove the lid without having to sit up any further.
She pulls out one cream Converse, then another, this pair in her size and identically decorated with a big ‘D’ but in a bright glittery pink rather than the blue of his. She looks up at him, sitting there so obviously delighted with his own choice and she can’t help grinning back at him,
“You got us matching Converse? You’re mad, you are.”
“Don’t you like them?” his smile falters a little and a hint of disappointment crosses his face.
“Just because I think you’re mad doesn’t mean I don’t like them,” she holds one up in front of her and smiles, “I love them.”
“Brilliant,” the grin is back in place, “So, how are you feeling?”
“Well, I didn’t die while you were gone so that’s a good sign-”
“Donna…”
“Sorry, not funny, I know. I don’t know how I feel really, if you want the truth. One minute I feel ok, good even, then the next I feel like someone dropped a tray of bricks on me. Oh, and Martha says I’m running a temperature so they’ve changed my antibiotics to try and get it down again.”
“How high a temperature? What caused it? Is she happy that these antibiotics will do the trick?!”
“Calm down alien boy, it’s just a little bit higher than it should be, that’s all and as long as the antibiotics kick in, I’m out of here tomorrow.”
“Good, that’s good,” his face brightens again but hers drops slightly and he notices right away, “What’s wrong? You’re not worrying about leaving here, are you? They wouldn’t discharge you if you weren’t ok to go.”
“It’s not that, I know they wouldn’t let me out before I’m ready. I just wonder if- well, if maybe I’d be better off going to my mum’s just until I’m fit enough to run around again and all that stuff.”
“Oh," he pauses, just long enough to pout, "Well, is that what you want?”
The Doctor looks so forlorn that she instantly feels terrible for even suggesting it and she reaches out to put her hand on his arm, “No, of course it isn’t what I want but I don’t want to drive you mad with my arm in a flippin’ sling, not being able to do anything-”
“Donna, you won’t drive me mad,” he notices her raised eyebrows, “Alright so you might drive me a tiny bit mad but you can just think of it as payback for all those times I’ve driven you mad, ok?”
“You do know you‘re going to have to do pretty much everything for me for a little while, don’t you? Tie the shoelaces on those lovely new Converse, do my hair, help me get dressed, carry all the shopping, not wake me just because you‘re bored and want company…”
The Doctor grins at her, “Yep.”
“Well, as long as you’re ok with all that then yeah, we can think of it as payback,” she looks at the Converse again and smiles, “Thanks.”
The Doctor doesn't reply, just grins a little bit wider.
Author: shining_moment
Characters/Pairing: Doctor, Donna, Martha
Rating: G
Summary: “I’m not sure what to say to that. I don’t know whether you want me to agree or disagree and at the moment I don’t think I have the energy to try and figure it out.”
Disclaimer: The BBC owns it all.
Donna wakes up because there seems to be a cat scratching at her arm and it‘s annoying her. Oh, but wait, she doesn’t have a cat so it must be the Doctor doing the scratching, bored because she’s asleep and trying, in his own unique way, to wake her up. She waves her hand in what she hopes is some kind of obvious sign that she wants him to stop it, to let her sleep just for a little while longer, but the scratching continues and she murmurs, slightly irritably, “Doctor…”
The voice that whispers back to her isn’t the Doctor’s though, it’s Martha’s,
“Sorry Donna, I’ll be done in a second.”
Donna opens her eyes because, even exhausted, she’s curious about what exactly Martha will be done with in a second. She looks down just as the last of whatever she’s being given slides into the cannula in her arm before looking back up at Martha.
“I didn’t mean to wake you, you can go back to sleep, it’s ok.”
“It’s fine,” she mumbles hoarsely, “Awake now.”
“Nothing to worry about but your temperature is a touch higher than we’d like so I’ve changed your antibiotics, see if we can bring it down again.”
Martha sits down beside the bed and that’s when Donna notices that the Doctor isn’t there, that he doesn’t appear to be in the room at all and she glances towards the door before looking back at Martha and gesturing towards the water jug on the stand beside the bed.
“Could I-?”
Martha pours Donna a glass and hands it to her, waiting for her to take a few mouthfuls before taking it back and putting it back next to the jug. Donna smiles gratefully,
“Thanks. I hope you’ve sent him for a shower. As funny as he thinks that t-shirt is, he probably shouldn’t just keep wearing it until it actually climbs off his back.”
“I told him if he didn’t go and wash soon, there was a chance the fumes would set you back in your recovery,” Martha grins triumphantly, “That got him moving.”
Donna smirks at her before her expression turns to one of concern, “He’s been here constantly, hasn’t he?”
Martha nods and Donna can’t quite read her distant look as she replies,
“He wouldn’t leave for a second, said he left you in the medical bay for two minutes to go and set the co-ordinates to get here and that’s when you stopped breathing.”
“So as well as blaming himself that I got shot in the first place, now the daft bugger’s got it into his head that if he walks out of the room again I might kick the bucket,” Donna sighs.
“When he called to tell me what had happened, he-” Martha pauses, remembering the desperation, the panic in his voice, “He was frantic, terrified of losing you.”
“Terrified of having to break it to my mother, more like it.”
Martha knows Donna’s making an attempt to play down the Doctor’s fear so that she doesn’t have to think about what a close call this was but Martha will never forget the sound of his voice on the phone, the look on his face when he arrived, clutching Donna to him so urgently and she really doesn’t know how he would have coped if Donna hadn’t made it.
“You obviously mean an awful lot to him, Donna. It‘s good, I‘m glad he has someone he cares for so deeply, I really am,” she stands abruptly and walks over to the window, staring blankly out at the street below, leaving a slightly baffled Donna behind her.
“I’m not sure what to say to that. I don’t know whether you want me to agree or disagree and at the moment I don’t think I have the energy to try and figure it out.”
There are few seconds of uncomfortable silence before Martha turns back to the bed, suddenly embarrassed at her petulant tone, “Oh Donna, I’m sorry, you must think I’m a complete cow.”
Donna’s voice is unusually small with more than a hint of confusion,
“Of course not. Listen, I'm sorry if you feel like I’ve somehow swooped in and taken your place but I-”
“No, I don’t, I really don’t, that’s not it.”
“Then what is it Martha? It might be the pain killers mushing my brain a bit but I don’t quite know what this is all about.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t believe you’re lying here recovering from being shot and I’ve got the nerve to start with this.”
Donna sighs impatiently, if without her usual force, “Never mind that. I’ll let you know if I need pain killers, you just say whatever it is you need to say.”
Martha sighs and feels suddenly like a child taking out her tantrum on completely the wrong person, “It’s nothing to do with feeling like you’ve taken my place, not at all. I had the most amazing time with the Doctor and, even with all the awful stuff, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything but I wouldn’t want to go back either. I’m happy now, really happy. I think it’s more that…well, I see the way he needs you, the way he came so close to falling apart when he thought he’d lost you-”
“And you think that means you weren’t important to him?”
She nods, feeling silly hearing Donna voice what she‘s been thinking, really silly, “I suppose so, yes, that is how it feels, like he only took me along for the ride because you said no, because I just happened to be there at the time.”
“Oh, you’ve got it so wrong Martha. Yeah, I hope I do mean something to him because he means a hell of a lot to me but you’re miles off target if you think you didn’t matter to him. He very nearly changed his mind about letting me go with him because of you, because of how awful he felt about the way he treated you, what happened to your family,“ Martha smiles wryly and Donna raises her eyebrows curiously, “What?”
“I feel like an idiot now, that’s all. I feel like I just threw a bit of a tantrum only for you to just tell it exactly like it is. All wise there, from your hospital bed.”
“It’s an age thing,” Donna grins faintly, “Eventually you realise there’s no point in going round the houses when it’s easier just to say whatever it is that needs to be said. You wait, ten years down the line, you’ll be exactly like me.”
Martha grins back at her, “I can think of worse things. I’ve said it before but I really can see why he likes you.”
“Glad to hear it. Makes me a bit less worried that I might wake up and find you hovering over me with a pillow.”
“Donna!”
“I‘m having you on,” Donna grimaces slightly and closes her eyes until whatever pain she was in seems to pass, “God, I feel like all I do is sleep. It won’t be like this forever, will it?”
“It’s only been just over a week, it is going to take a bit of time. Providing we get your temperature down, you’ll get out of here tomorrow but you’re going to have to take things easy for a while and you probably will need to sleep a bit more than usual. The sling’s going to make things a bit tricky too, you’ll need to let the Doctor help you with so many little things that you took for granted before.”
“Oh God, he’ll never master the hair straighteners, I’m going to look like a scarecrow!”
“Oh I don’t know, you’ve seen the effort he puts into his own hair. I’d say he’s more familiar with the world of hairdressing than he lets on.”
#
The next time Donna wakes up there’s no sign of a cat or anything else scratching her arm, just the Doctor sitting back in the chair beside the bed, grinning at her and, she notices, wearing his familiar brown pinstripes again. She tries to sit up but it hurts so she abandons the effort, sighing in frustration,
“What are you grinning at, sunshine?”
“I got you something.”
“Oh yeah? I thought you were just going to shower and get changed.”
He stands up as if to prove that he did indeed change before reaching down under his chair, pulling out a box and sitting back down with it on his lap.
“I did shower and change but on the way back I saw these and had to get myself a pair,” he lifts one leg and waves his foot excitedly in the vague direction of her face, showing off a brand new pair of cream Converse with a bright blue ‘D’ emblazoned across the side.
“Well, they’re very nice but, unless you’re under the impression that I’ve suddenly fallen in love with your feet, how is that something for me?”
“Patience, Donna, is a virtue.”
“I’ve been lying here for a week, I think I’ve used up any patience I might have had.”
“Alright, alright, here-” he puts the box on the bed close enough for her to be able to remove the lid without having to sit up any further.
She pulls out one cream Converse, then another, this pair in her size and identically decorated with a big ‘D’ but in a bright glittery pink rather than the blue of his. She looks up at him, sitting there so obviously delighted with his own choice and she can’t help grinning back at him,
“You got us matching Converse? You’re mad, you are.”
“Don’t you like them?” his smile falters a little and a hint of disappointment crosses his face.
“Just because I think you’re mad doesn’t mean I don’t like them,” she holds one up in front of her and smiles, “I love them.”
“Brilliant,” the grin is back in place, “So, how are you feeling?”
“Well, I didn’t die while you were gone so that’s a good sign-”
“Donna…”
“Sorry, not funny, I know. I don’t know how I feel really, if you want the truth. One minute I feel ok, good even, then the next I feel like someone dropped a tray of bricks on me. Oh, and Martha says I’m running a temperature so they’ve changed my antibiotics to try and get it down again.”
“How high a temperature? What caused it? Is she happy that these antibiotics will do the trick?!”
“Calm down alien boy, it’s just a little bit higher than it should be, that’s all and as long as the antibiotics kick in, I’m out of here tomorrow.”
“Good, that’s good,” his face brightens again but hers drops slightly and he notices right away, “What’s wrong? You’re not worrying about leaving here, are you? They wouldn’t discharge you if you weren’t ok to go.”
“It’s not that, I know they wouldn’t let me out before I’m ready. I just wonder if- well, if maybe I’d be better off going to my mum’s just until I’m fit enough to run around again and all that stuff.”
“Oh," he pauses, just long enough to pout, "Well, is that what you want?”
The Doctor looks so forlorn that she instantly feels terrible for even suggesting it and she reaches out to put her hand on his arm, “No, of course it isn’t what I want but I don’t want to drive you mad with my arm in a flippin’ sling, not being able to do anything-”
“Donna, you won’t drive me mad,” he notices her raised eyebrows, “Alright so you might drive me a tiny bit mad but you can just think of it as payback for all those times I’ve driven you mad, ok?”
“You do know you‘re going to have to do pretty much everything for me for a little while, don’t you? Tie the shoelaces on those lovely new Converse, do my hair, help me get dressed, carry all the shopping, not wake me just because you‘re bored and want company…”
The Doctor grins at her, “Yep.”
“Well, as long as you’re ok with all that then yeah, we can think of it as payback,” she looks at the Converse again and smiles, “Thanks.”
The Doctor doesn't reply, just grins a little bit wider.