Repercussions (9/55)
May. 8th, 2008 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberfocus
Banner by Megz33
Chapter Nine: The Hospital Ship
I pace the halls for hours, my nerves shot, while I wait for news on my father’s condition. The Doctor has tried reassuring me, but his too tender words confuse me, reminding me that he isn’t acting the way he used to and I so desperately don’t want to think about that.
I think I hurt his feelings, but if anyone should recognize the need to pace it should be him. He withdraws from me and goes to comfort my mother, just another reminder that something is not right with him. Before he wouldn’t have gotten within arms reach of my mother, let alone have an arm around her and let her sleep on his shoulder when exhaustion wins out.
So many thoughts circle frantically in my mind. My father is dying. My Doctor is gone. I don’t know who this man that looks like him is, but I am more and more firmly convinced that my Doctor truly had fallen into the Void and died. Which means that I had, too. I am in some hellish afterlife. I have to be. But…in a hellish afterlife where the Doctor looks at me like I am his taste of heaven? How is this possible?
On and on I circle around it, so scared of everything, him, me, the situation that brought my father to death’s door. The more I pace the more tightly I coil, ready to spring out and attack at the least provocation. I need something to fight. I am spoiling for it.
But all of that disappears when the alien medic walks through the double doors. “My father?” I cry out.
He looks at me, great warmth in his yellow eyes. “He has survived the process of cybernetic removal. He will live. He will recover.” I throw my arms around the medic, feel his hesitation before he hugs me back gently with two of his appendages. I have forgotten that not all life forms are as demonstrative as humans, but I can tell from his expression when I pull back that he is used to such outpourings of joy or grief from various species.
“Can we see him?”
“Soon. He’s in recovery. When he wakes you may see him. He should wake in one cycle.” He points to the wall unit that counts down the local time. A cycle, the Doctor has told me, is roughly equivalent to ninety minutes.
I go to wake my mother and tell her the good news. The Doctor gives us some time alone and then I go to find him. “Thank you,” I tell him. “For bringing us here. For saving my father’s life.”
“Anything for you, Rose, you know that,” he tells me.
But I hadn't known that. “When this is all over, Doctor, we have to talk.”
So many thoughts circle frantically in my mind. My father is dying. My Doctor is gone. I don’t know who this man that looks like him is, but I am more and more firmly convinced that my Doctor truly had fallen into the Void and died. Which means that I had, too. I am in some hellish afterlife. I have to be. But…in a hellish afterlife where the Doctor looks at me like I am his taste of heaven? How is this possible?
On and on I circle around it, so scared of everything, him, me, the situation that brought my father to death’s door. The more I pace the more tightly I coil, ready to spring out and attack at the least provocation. I need something to fight. I am spoiling for it.
But all of that disappears when the alien medic walks through the double doors. “My father?” I cry out.
He looks at me, great warmth in his yellow eyes. “He has survived the process of cybernetic removal. He will live. He will recover.” I throw my arms around the medic, feel his hesitation before he hugs me back gently with two of his appendages. I have forgotten that not all life forms are as demonstrative as humans, but I can tell from his expression when I pull back that he is used to such outpourings of joy or grief from various species.
“Can we see him?”
“Soon. He’s in recovery. When he wakes you may see him. He should wake in one cycle.” He points to the wall unit that counts down the local time. A cycle, the Doctor has told me, is roughly equivalent to ninety minutes.
I go to wake my mother and tell her the good news. The Doctor gives us some time alone and then I go to find him. “Thank you,” I tell him. “For bringing us here. For saving my father’s life.”
“Anything for you, Rose, you know that,” he tells me.
But I hadn't known that. “When this is all over, Doctor, we have to talk.”
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Date: 2008-05-11 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-15 12:10 pm (UTC)