It happens to her more and more often now.
She'll just be standing there, whether it's on a sidewalk in the park or beside her car. A snippet of someone's conversation reaches her. It's usually not much, just a word or two. But that word is enough to make her feel empty.
It makes her feel as if something is missing from her life. Not missing as in there's more she needs to be doing or something she needs to find, but missing as in literally missing. It's as if there was something or someone in her life and now it's gone.
She has nothing to legitimise the feeling, nothing to prove that it's real. She's searched her memories and has found nothing awry, nothing truly missing. So why does she feel as if there's a piece of her that's gone?
Certain discordant words from conversations feel like they should ring a bell, like she should remember them, but she doesn't. Simple words like time and rose stir her mind and create ripples that make her feel as if surely those words are important.
But they aren't. They're just words that lead to flickers of empty memories, memories that never existed in the first place. The words aren't important at all. They're not unusual. They're not special.
Rather like me, she thinks bitterly.
Donna Noble, she knows, isn't special. She isn't unusual and she has nothing to distinguish her from anyone else. If she were to vanish off the face of the earth, the only person to mourn her would be her grandfather and Shaun. (She knows in her heart that even her mother wouldn't be too upset. Her mother wouldn't mind not having to look after her failure of a daughter, the grown woman who still has no steady career and who lives at home.)
Does no one else feel the same way? Does nobody else feel as if they aren't special and don't matter at all? Does nobody else wonder if it's even worth it, worth going through the motions every bloody day when really there's no one in the world who cares if they live or die? Or is it just her?
She has no way of knowing, so she keeps it all hidden. She buries it under a mask of bravado and confidence and noise, not letting anyone get close enough to truly see her. If they see her like she truly is, they'll see how worthless she is and leave her. They'll see that even her boisterous personality is face and underneath it is a scared little girl, wanting to be different but not knowing how. They'll see and they'll laugh and she couldn't bear that. At least right now she's a failure with friends. She doesn't particularly want to be a failure without friends.
She pretends every day that she's happy. She pretends that nothing's wrong and that she's fine with simply being a temp for the rest of her life. She pretends that she hasn't considered ending it all and that she's fine with being a normal, un-special human being.
The whispers, she knows, are the only things that keep her going. The whispers of an imaginary life well-lived, a life where everything matters, where she matters. An imaginary life where she actually does things and goes out and changes the world.
She longs to be like that, but she doesn't know how. She wants to do something, to be more than just Donna-the-Temp or Donna-the-Failure, but everything she thinks of is impossible.
Save somebody. How? It's not like she can just waltz up on a would-be murderer and say Hey there, wouldja mind leaving the poor girl alone? Oh, and it would be lovely if you'd just get rid of that large knife you have there and go find a nice career that doesn't involve gutting innocent young women. Like a solicitor or a greengrocer something. Ta, mate. Cheers, have a nice evening.
Make a difference. Again, how? Save the earth from air pollution? Invent a way to recycle Styrofoam and plastic? Save a species from slavery? (A species? Where did that come from?)
Some days the whispers are louder than others. Some days she feels like she really might be more than the temp she is. Some days she feels like she may actually be important.
It just makes it worse when she realises she has nothing to back that feeling up with, when she realises that she really is just a temp and that her life is going abso-bloody-lutely nowhere.
She's on the phone when it all changes. She's once again being told that she's a failure and that she needs to do something with her life (it's oddly refreshing to have it coming from someone other than her mum) when the words appear.
"Honestly, Donna, you got t'do somethin' with your life! Go back to uni or somethin'!"
"And what, exactly, would I do at uni?"
"I dunno, become a doctor? Ha, that'd be a laugh! Doctor Donna!"
The words should be familiar, she knows. They should have an impact on her and they should be important.
But they're not. Not yet.
"S'not a bad idea," she muses. "I could get a loan or somethin', go back and actually do somethin' with my life besides temping. Doctor Donna. I like the sound of that."
She makes her way through the rest of the conversation, not particularly paying attention. As soon as she hangs up the phone, she sits down at the table and closes her eyes, thinking hard.
Why should the words be familiar? Why should she know them? Doctor Donna. It's not exactly a concept she's considered before. She hasn't ever thought about being a doctor, so there's no way that the words would ring a bell like they do.
Well, an imaginary bell. She can't actually locate the memory in her mind, so she has to assume it's nothing. But she wants it to be something. She wants to be special, to not be a failure anymore. She makes the decision in that moment.
She'll make the words important. She'll make them worth something and she'll make herself worth something. She'll go back to uni and become Doctor Donna and finally make her mum and Granddad and Shaun proud. She'll stop feeling ashamed of herself and she'll finally be important.
Saving lives, healing people. That's special. Maybe if she does special things, then she'll be sort of special.
It's a start, at least.