amberfocus | You're What?: Chapter Eleven

Chapter 10: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/76758.html

Complications

When the Doctor poked his head back into the infirmary again Rose was sleeping. With a sigh of relief he set the bouquet of flowers—not roses—down on the table next to her bed. Rose had made a rather negative comment once about blokes with no imagination thinking she’d roll over for a dozen roses, like they were the first to ever make the connection between the flower and her name. Not that he expected Rose to roll over for him. But he hoped he at least would earn a point or two for using lilies, freesias, delphiniums and gladiolus. If she didn’t hurl the vase at his head when she woke up, that is.

He very gently checked her pulse and changed the IV bag and then went over to the centrifuge and removed the blood vials, prepared slides and began studying them under the microscope. He was very unhappy with what he found, though he had to consult with one of the medical texts to be sure. When he had he put his head in his hands. How could he have missed it?

He was lucky he’d caught it now before Rose had gone into ketosis. It was bad enough on it’s own without adding in the side effects. He’d caught it at dehydration and metabolic imbalance, but not because he’d been paying attention. Because Jack had been. He scooted across the room and set one of his machines to mixing the correct medication for her condition.

His neglect of Rose had been damaging enough to her emotionally, but the fact that he’d put her in jeopardy physically settled like a rock in his stomach. He stood up and walked over to his…the young woman. With infinite slowness he reached out and laid a hand over her belly, his fingers settling over the little swelling that was his son. It was the first time he’d touched her there and the little spark of life inside her was like a beacon that made him ache. Like his mother, the babe was sound asleep and he allowed himself to see into her womb, into the fetus growing there long enough to reassure himself that the boy was perfectly fine. It was just Rose who was in trouble. But at least it was correctable trouble.

He pulled his hand away from her abdomen and realized he was going to have to wake Rose to get her started on the proper cure for her condition, but while it was still mixing he needed to tell her what was going on and seek a few more answers. Gently he stroked a few loose blond strands back from her face. Her eyes fluttered open and in that first moment between sleeping and waking there was such tenderness in her eyes as she looked up at him that it made his hearts skip beats. But then remembrance came into her gaze and a veil flashed down, hardening her expression.

Before she could say anything about his touching her he said, “I’ve found out what’s wrong with you Rose and I need to treat it.” He sat down in the chair next to her bed. "You have a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum. It’s a rare complication of human pregnancies, but not quite as rare in cross-species ones. I need to ask you a few questions to see how far things have gone.”

“Okay.”

“Are you having difficulty with daily activities?” he asked.

“It’s been hard to concentrate enough to do most things. Jack’s taken over all the cooking if you hadn’t noticed because I keep losing my focus,” Rose said.

“What about an altered sense of taste?”

“Everything is…sharper? Stronger? When it doesn’t taste like cardboard or metal, that is,” she admitted.

“Sensitivity of your brain to motion?” he wondered.

“Like dizziness?” she asked.

“No, like if you see something spinning really fast, does it upset your equilibrium?” he explained.

“Not so I’d notice. But I do have dizziness. Have done for a week or so now.”

“You’re further into the illness than I thought. Damn it. I should have been on the lookout for this, but I was rather occupied being an arse.”

The corner of Rose’s mouth twitched, but she held her expression firm. “No arguments from me,” she said.

“I deserved that,” he said. Rose gave a slight tilt of her head in agreement. “You’re having an immune response to the foreign nature of the fetus. Even though you have adapted in many ways to carrying a Gallifreyan child, your body still recognizes it as not human, as an invader, and it’s trying to make you so sick that you can’t retain enough nourishment to maintain the pregnancy.”

Rose looked scared. “I could lose him?” she asked. Her hands went protectively to her belly.

“It’s one of the few ways you could, but I won’t let it happen,” he said. “I can fix it.”

She studied his face. “Are you sure you want to?” she asked softly. “Wouldn’t it--?”

“No, Rose!” The panic in that thought startled him. “No. I don’t want you to lose the baby. I don’t.” He reached for her hand, pulled himself back. “I…Rose, I’ve been so stupid. If I’d been paying attention I would have caught this a month ago. But it was so hard to look at you--.”

“Oh, well, I’m sorry,” she snarked. “Didn’t mean to hurt your eyes with my ugly self.”

“Rose!” he said sharply. “You are not ugly. And that’s not what I meant. I meant it was hard for me to look at you knowing you weren’t mine anymore.”

“Well, whose fault is that? I’m not the one who walked away, am I? I’m not the one who shoved me off on someone else.” Her voice was calm as he met her steady gaze.

“I know it’s my fault,” he said.

“Good.”

“And you’re beautiful,” he blurted.

“For a human,” she said bitterly.

“For anyone. Rose, I’m sorry if I made you feel anything less than that. Ever. I really panicked when you told me you were pregnant. I didn’t know how to deal with it and then you were hurt and then…I thought I knew what was right for you and it wasn’t me,” he said.

She remained silent, her eyes on his face, confusion and frustration warring within her. “Why did you change your mind?” she finally asked.

“About what?” he asked.

Her fingers twisted in the thin cotton blanket. “About wanting me to stay here to raise my—our—son?”

His stomach clenched. He was afraid to tell her the truth, afraid that she’d see it not as him changing his mind and wanting her and the baby, but as his only means of preventing a horrific future. But if he lied to her now and she found out, it would seal her fate away from his forever.

“I met you,” he said simply.

“What do you mean?”

“I met the you in this time line, Rose. It’s 2021 here and for some reason you are living in Cardiff. And…life wasn’t good to you,” he said.

Rose frowned at him. “Was Jack…?”

“Jack died when the baby was five. So did…so did our son,” he said bluntly. There was simply no way to soften such news.

Rose gasped and reached out blindly for his hand. He gave it to her. “What…what happened? Why didn’t he regenerate?”

“She said it was some kind of explosion. And there wasn’t enough of him, of…of Charlie…left to regenerate. Oh, Rose, he died. Our son died.” The Doctor’s voice broke. “Because of me.”

The Doctor buried his face against her side and she bit her lip hard before pulling her hand free from his and resting it on the back of his head. “I was thinking about naming him after Charles Dickens,” she said softly.

He looked up at her then and she saw tears in his eyes though they didn’t overflow. “You did,” he said. She nodded.

“If we stop this from happening, won’t it damage the time lines?” she asked him.

“Some things are set, other things, not so much. I’ve looked and it’s something it’s safe to change and even if it wasn’t, Rose, I’d do it anyway and damn the consequences,” he said hastily.

“Doctor!” she gasped shocked.

“He’s our son, Rose. And I…I want him.”

“You do?”

“I do. And I want you to. I want you back, Rose. If you’ll have me.”

The naked emotion on his face twisted at her heart. “I’ll…I’ll stay on the TARDIS, for Charlie’s sake. I’ll raise the child with you,” she said. “But Doctor, I’m not sure I’ll ever trust you enough to take you back. I’m not sure I can.”

“Don’t you feel anything for me still, Rose?” he asked remembering what he’d overheard her telling Jack.

“I feel a lot of things,” she answered honestly. “But quite frankly most of them right now aren’t very good.”

“She said, the other Rose, she said she was still in love with me after all these years,” the Doctor told her.

“I don’t doubt that,” Rose said. “It’s not a question of that, Doctor. It’s a question of trust. If I can’t trust you, if I can’t feel safe with you, then the only thing left between us is our son.”

“I broke her, Rose. I don’t want to do that to you,” he said.

“It’s a little late for that,” she said softly. “You already did.”

“Please don’t say that,” he said his eyes wide and entreating.

Rose rested her hand over her heart. “But it’s the truth. It still hurts, in here. You made me feel unwanted. You made me feel stupid. You made me feel like I was nothing to you, Doctor. And I still feel it. You did all that to me, Doctor and I don’t even know why. Maybe…maybe if you could tell me why…”

The Doctor looked at her for a long moment trying to overcome centuries of secrecy. “Rose, I…you wouldn’t understand.”

“Because I’m just a stupid ape?” she asked bitterly.

“You’re not,” he said harshly cursing himself for ever using that phrase around Rose or on her for that matter. “I’ve never once thought you were stupid.”

“Yet, you’ve called me it.”

“I know.” He looked down. “In anger, in fear because you’d risked your life, but never did I mean it.”

“Then why do you think I wouldn’t understand?”

“It’s not just you,” he said. “I don’t think anyone would understand.”

Rose set her jaw stubbornly and narrowed her eyes. “If you want any hope of fixing this, Doctor, then you’re going to have to. Try me.”

“Do you love me, Rose?” he asked her. She stared at him for several seconds before opening her mouth. “Please,” he interrupted, “the truth.”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “As much as I wish I didn’t, I love you.”

“I hope you can still say that when I’m done.”

“You’re going to tell me?” she asked in surprise.

“I’m going to try.” His eyes were shattered when he looked back at her. Her natural empathy rose to the surface and she took his hand and nodded at him. Drawing strength from her touch, he steeled himself and began to speak.

Chapter 12: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/79124.html