TW for depression, mental illnesses, possible self harm and eating disorders, etc.

I don't own Doctor Who (and if I did, Matt Smith would still be the Doctor) so yeah

Rose stares at the uniform white walls of my room, dirty with the oils from the many fingers and bodies that occupied this cell before her. She wonders for the umpteenth time if she could die if she hit her head hard enough on it. Of course, she thinks to herself wryly, I'm sure others have tried. Do I really want to be one of the masses?

A knock raps sharply on her door, interrupting her musings. The door opens immediately later, and Miss Tera, her least favorite nurse, stuck her head in.

"The doctor will see you now, Rosemary," she says, rather dazedly.

Rose, momentarily irked by the use of her full name, gets up rather reluctantly; she had been enjoying imaging her demise, something that she did too often to be normal, but not often enough to be alarmed by it.

As Rose follows Tera down the hall, she looks up at the ceiling and counts the drywall panels that it consists of, skipping the one with water damage; that was the unlucky one.

"Which doctor will be seeing me just now?" she asks, realizing the abnormalcy of the lack that particular bit of knowledge.

"Oh...I don't quite know, love, he just said he was 'The Doctor', not sure which one..." Tera trails off, still in that uncharacteristic dazed tone of voice.

Rose's heart leaps into her throat, rib cage expanding and lungs filling so fast it hurt. Her breath catches, and she jars to a halt. No, it couldn't be, he's too far, he doesn't know where I am, he can't see me like this...

She forces herself to keep moving, jogging a little to keep up with Miss Tera, who hasn't stopped walking. She manages, although with great difficulty, to continue breathing and keep her pace steady, fighting the urge to sprint down the hall and rattle the locked doors, demanding to see her Doctor, screaming to see his face...

After what seems to be a century, Tera unlocks the final door and directs Rose to Dr. Karwinsky's office, which is empty, as he is the weekend doctor. Rose wrenches open the door, flies into the room, her heart beating an arrhythmic tattoo into her chest, and with tears in her eyes, she sees her beloved Doctor sitting in an office chair behind the desk, his red Converses up on the wood and a smirk on his beautiful face.

"Hello. I'm the Doctor."

Rose throws herself over the desk and buries her face into the Doctor's blue suit, tears coming hot and fast.

"Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor..." She sobs into him, clutching to him as if he were the only thing anchoring her to this world. She held onto him like she should have all those years ago...

The Doctor squeezes onto her, almost painfully hard, silent contractions of grief ripping through him. They finally break apart, and Rose draws a shaky breath, half-laugh and half-sob, and leans in to kiss him.

Before she can get any closer, the Doctor gently stops her.

"Not here," he says, "not now. I want it to be real."

"What?" Rose says, voice trembling. "This is real, what do you-"

"Shh. I'll explain later, but right now you have to remember how you feel right here, right now. No matter what they do or say to you, remember me now. Promise me this, Rose, promise me this one thing. Remember."

Rose looks at him, confused and with a terrible sense of dread settling around her stomach like a lead weight.

"Doctor, you have come for me, right? You said you'd always be here, and you left. But you came back, you're back now, you're back, right, Doctor, you came back for me, right? Doctor!" Rose realizes she's screaming now at the empty chair the Doctor was so recently occupying. Or was he? She's had this dream so many times, but it seems so real now, why has he gone, why did he leave her again, why why why why whywhywhywhywhywhywhyWHYYYYYYYYYYY

Rose is screaming at the top of her lungs as orderlies seize her and fasten her to the restraining bed, strapping down the chest, wrist, leg, thigh, and forehead belts as she writhes and shrieks, screaming "DOCTOR" at the ceiling as she is wheeled down the hall and into a quiet room. She hasn't stopped screaming as they slide a needle into her vein, and she hasn't stopped screaming as she sees the white-clad form of Miss Tera looking down at her, and her screams fade into moans, then into whimpers, then into silence as the world turns dark.

Rose looks up at the drywall tiles above her, blinking back sleep. For a moment she thinks she is back in her bed, in her cell, but as she tried, and fails, to sit up, the events of last night come screeching into memory.

She snaps into full consciousness, fully aware and alert of her surroundings. She draws in breath, preparing to scream again, but then she sees Dr. Stone at the tiny window in the door.

He enters the room, clipboard in hand, and sits on the padded shelf-bed thing on the far side of the small cell.

"Hello Rosemary," he says in his annoyingly pleasant Canadian accent. "It's been a while since we've had one of these episodes, innit?"

Suddenly feeling completely and totally drained, Rose closes her eyes and merely nods.

Dr. Stone says in what Rose perceived as an attempted understanding tone, "So this Doctor character, was he here last night? I mean," he hastily added, remembering she was supposedly insane, "did you see him?"

Even though she felt his question was unworthy of a respectful and truthful reply, she grits her teeth and says yes.

She hears Stone make a mark on his clipboard.

"And are you aware that no one else saw him, including Miss Tera, who was standing in the same room as you and this, ah, Doctor fellow?"

Eyes still closed, teeth still clenched, she spits out another yes.

"Okay then." Dr. Stone says, followed by another scratch of his pen. "Miss Tyler, you do know that I'm going to have to put you on One-to-One supervision again, right?"

Rose doesn't dignify his question-statement with an answer.

"Right?" he says more forcefully.

"Abso-fucking-lutely" Rose says very carefully and very steadily.

Another mark.

"Okay, Rose, I'm going to unrestrain you, okay?" Dr. Stone says, slowly standing up. "All right, Rose?"

Rose nods, trying not to cry.

Stone notices as he's untying her. "Rose, there's no reason to be upset. This is just another little setback on your road to recovery. We'll get you on another antipsychotic, you'll talk it over with Iris, and we'll move past it, all right?"

Rose nods, tears of frustration sliding past her closed eyelids and down her flushed cheeks. He just doesn't understand, she thinks, no drug can fix me, no amount of therapy or letting go can make me forget him, nothing can fill this hole that he left behind, not Mickey, not Mum, not anyone. Not that it matters, they're all dead anyway...

Rose is silent as she follows one of the staff member down to her room. She catches a glimpse of one of the few clocks at the hospital and sees that it's past 2 am. How long have I been out...?

She turns down the hall, throwing a dirty look at the faces peering out at her from their rooms.

As she lies down on her foam mattress and thin sheets, she gives one last glance at her supervising night nurse, and turns towards the wall and curls into the fetal position and tries, vainly, to sleep.

Just as she's slipping into what's sure to be a troubled sleep, she is jarred awake by a familiar voice speaking through thick static in her ear.

She sits up suddenly, attracting alarm from her nurse, trying to decipher what is being said through the heavy buzzing in her head.

"Rose-I-stay calm-coming-you-wait-remem-got to-ROSE" She hears her name shouted again, loudly and with a note of panic that made her flinch. She'd heard voices before, many of which were the Doctor's, but this was different, this was REAL, but why couldn't she hear him, why, what?

She pressed her hands to her temples, trying to make out his words, but as the Doctor's voice grew more distorted and panicked, her pulse skyrocketed and her breathing came fast and uneven, she started shouting "Doctor, Doctor, I'm here, I can't hear you, please talk to me, DOCTOR!"

She vaguely heard her nurse calling for backup, but all she could concentrate on was the Doctor's voice, and as she felt hands on her arms pulling her back, she didn't even fight, she just had to figure out what he was trying to tell her, if she could just...

She felt the all too familiar sensation of a needle slipping into the flesh of her thigh, and with her last shreds of consciousness, she hears his voice. As load and clear as if he were right there on the floor, fading away with her, he says,

"Rose, I'm coming. Remember me!"

Then, for the second time that night (or had it been longer?), darkness overtook her and, this time, left her with a smile on her tearstained face. She knows what comes next.