Disclaimer: Doctor Who does not belong to me. More's the pity.

This is based one something Amy said in episode one 'The Eleventh Hour' about how in her lifetime she had to see 'four psychiatrists' who all tried to convince her the Doctor wasn't real. I've decided to do a fanfiction based on this. I want to do one chapter for each psychiatrist (so four in total), but I'll see how you respond to this first. I wrote this relatively quickly, so please be nice when it comes to reviews!

Psychiatrists

CHAPTER ONE - Psychiatrist 1

I'm in a waiting room.

Aunt Sharon is sitting next to me. She doesn't want to be here, and keeps tutting and sighing loudly as she reads her Mills and Boon novel. She's always reading those stupid books. I asked her why she read them once: she said she needed to have some excitement in her life since Uncle Billy ran off with his secretary. I just nodded along - but it wasn't like I actually cared or anything. It's not like she cares about me anyway. She pretended for a bit after Mum and Dad went away - she made me pancakes for breakfast and drew on smiley faces in chocolate syrup, she let me watch whatever I wanted to on the telly, she didn't even get cross when I broke her shiny blue vase that Uncle Billy had bought her in Greece. But now she hardly speaks to me at all; and since all of the 'raggedy Doctor' business started, she's been acting like she doesn't want me there at all.

There's a boy sat opposite me and he's definitely weird. He keeps fidgeting and scowling, and keeps kicking things and shouting at his Mum. His Mum looks like she wants to cry. I'd want to cry too if I had to live with that stupid boy. He doesn't look nice at all. Aunt Sharon stares at them over the top of her book, and smirks. She thinks she's better than them, see? Because even if she does think I'm a loony, at least I'm not kicking her and swearing at her all of the time.

There's another boy here too. He's littler than me though, he's about five or six years old. He's knelt on the floor in the kid's play area, stacking up big piles of plastic bricks. He sorts them into different colours - one pile of red bricks, one pile of blue bricks, one pile of green. He screams the place down when one of the other kids tries to add a yellow brick to the red pile. His Dad, a sad looking man with wire-rimmed glasses, tries to lift him off the floor but that only makes the boy even more crazy. He sort of goes rigid and screams and screams his lungs out: he's like a toddler throwing a tantrum. His Dad looks like he wants to cry too. Everyone looks so sad here.

But I suppose none of them ever expected their kids to be mental enough to need to see a psychiatrist.

"Amelia Pond?" The receptionist calls sweetly.

Aunt Sharon grabs me by the sleeve of my coat - she never could get used to holding my hand - and marches me towards Dr. Carmichael's door.

Dr. Carmichael is a really nice man. He has wavy black hair and blue eyes. I can tell Aunt Sharon fancies him, because she keeps smiling at him and laughing loudly at all of the stupid jokes he makes. He's not that funny.

Dr. Carmichael has a blue tie that has little pictures of smiley faces on it. The tie makes me like him a little bit, but it makes something hurt in my chest too. I bought Dad a tie like that last Christmas - it had a picture of Rudolph on it, and when you pressed Rudolph's nose it played 'Jingle Bells'. Dad had loved it and wore it all over Christmas, telling me over and over again how I was the most lovely little daughter he could ever have had in the world. My eyes sting with tears and I blink them away quickly. I'm not going to let them see me cry.

"So, Amelia." Dr. Carmichael says gently "I hear you've been having a bit of a hard time, recently."

"I suppose." I say shrugging

"She thinks her imaginary friend is real, doctor." Aunt Sharon interrupts. I scowl at her. Right then I want to kick her like that stupid boy in the waiting room who kept kicking his Mum. "She's convinced."

"Amelia-" Dr. Carmichael says kindly "Tell me about this friend."

"The Doctor, you mean?" I ask curiously. He nods quietly.

So I tell him everything. I tell him about the crack in the wall, about the raggedy Doctor, about time travelling blue boxes and giant eyes in the wall and fish custard. He nods as he listens and every now and then he writes something down on a clipboard. Aunt Sharon is looking bored and keeps sighing.

"So what does it mean then, doctor?" Aunt Sharon says slowly "Do we have to cart her off to the loony bin, or what?"

I look up sharply at that.

"No, of course not." Dr. Carmichael laughs, his face creasing up in a smile. "I just think Amelia might need someone to talk to…"

I hear them talking, but I'm not listening, not properly anyway. I hear words like "bereavement" and "grief", and "loneliness". My eyes are drawn to the picture that is tacked up behind Dr. Carmichael's head. It's a big glossy poster showing all of the planets of the solar system. The rings of Saturn. The swirling brown and reddish mass of Jupiter. The small red circle of Mars. After the Doctor left, I went to the library and took out every book I could possibly find on space. The ladies there thought it was brilliant, they thought I had a school project or something. I told them the truth - that my friend the Doctor was going to take me into space when he came back for me, which would be any day now. They smiled at that, but I know that they phoned Aunt Sharon afterwards. And then she had a chat with me that involved her sitting me on the sofa and letting me drink Coke in the lounge, and telling me that it was alright if I missed my Mum and Dad and that I could even cry if I wanted to. I stared at her as if she had three heads. Of course I missed my Mum and Dad, but I couldn't see what that had to do with anything. They were dead; they'd been in that car crash and they were dead. Everyone had told me about how they were in heaven - but who believes rubbish like that anyway? Mum and Dad are dead - because if they were in heaven they'd find a way to talk to me, and they've not yet. So they must be gone for good.

I don't remember much of the car accident. I remember us all getting into the car, me strapped into the back and swinging my legs and laughing when Dad sang along with the pop songs on the radio. I remember Mum asking me if I had remembered to bring my sunglasses and tugging at my hand fondly, with a smile that was brighter than the sun. Then everything goes hazy. I remember everything going black and when I woke up the windscreen was smashed and broken and there was blood trickling into my eyes. There was a paramedic cutting through my seatbelt and he kept saying everything would be fine when I knew they wouldn't be because Mum and Dad weren't moving, and all of the paramedics with them were shouting things like "multiple head injuries" and "collapsed lungs", like the things on those medical programs that Mum had always watched. Every time I moved I got stabbing pains up and down my right arm, and the paramedic kept telling me to stay still. I remember being put into an ambulance and crying when they said that Mum and Dad couldn't come with me, that I couldn't even go and talk to them, that I couldn't even give them a kiss goodbye. I remember all of the people at the hospital, some of them smiley, some of them sad, and some of them who didn't speak at all but just stared. I remember getting x-rays and a smiling, motherly nurse holding my hand as I had my arm put in plaster. I remember how I got a lump in my throat the size of a football that I just couldn't swallow when the policeman came into the room and told me that Mum and Dad had passed away. The nurse kept rubbing my hand and squeezing it tight, and I wanted to cry because that's what people do when someone dies but I just couldn't. I felt so confused about everything. This morning I'd had a Mum and a Dad and now I didn't have either of them. They were gone, just like that.

Then I had to talk to a counsellor, who wore his hair in a ponytail and gave me lollipops and books about bad dreams and feeling sad. Then I had to leave Scotland and live with Aunt Sharon - Nanny Jess wanted me to go and live with her, but her legs were bad, and she kept forgetting what day it was and the last time she'd seen me she'd called me Katie, which was Mum's name.

"Of course, there's nothing wrong with a child who might make up a friend if they feel a little lonely." Dr. Carmichael says suddenly, smiling gently. He turns towards me and takes my hand in his. "I know it feels like this Doctor man is real Amelia; and it's because you wanted him to be real. You wanted a nice, funny friend like him. But he's not real Amelia. It didn't happen."

The next thing I realise Dr. Carmichael is gasping and pain and Aunt Sharon is shouting at me and dragging me out of the room by my collar. I look over my shoulder and see Dr. Carmichael clutching his hand where I bit him. He's bleeding too, I smile fiendishly. That'll teach him not to say that the Doctor isn't real. Even though sometimes I can't help but think that they are right and I really am crazy. But then I remember him, and I know that even my imagination isn't good enough to make up a man like him. A time traveller with a blue box who eats fish fingers dipped in custard. Because he is real. He's the most real person I've ever known.

"I'm very disappointed in you Amelia." Aunt Sharon says as she drags me through the car park. She sends me to bed early that night and she doesn't tuck me in or talk to me at all the whole evening. But I don't care. Because when I dream I see a man in a blue box who could take me away from everything that's ever hurt me. He's always smiling, and he's always pleased to see me. And he'll come back one day.

Just you wait and see.