Fic: alphabet part 1

Tags: hurt/comfort, rose tyler, doctor who, tenth doctor, alphabet of ills, allergies

A is for Allergies

Title: A is for Allergies (1/26)

Author: EvelynCarver

Rating: PG (K)

Summary: The Doctor loves chips, but sometimes chips don't love Rose, at least, that's what her stomach has been communicating.

Disclaimer: Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

"This is awesome." Rose Tyler smiled at the man sitting on the other side of the café table as if they hadn't spent the day dashing in and out of a jail and running for their lives. It had also been 200 years ago and on a different planet. But now it was gone and they were having a meal. She'd lost track of what ever meal it was, but it was good.

The Doctor was a bit more intent on his chips that he was to Rose. He hadn't been in the mood to go back to Earth, so they were on one of the colonies from the five billion time period. After all, humans carried the same traditions and food with them and then he got to show Rose yet another world, where maybe, this time, they would have a quiet meal and meander back to the TARDIS, rather than dash for their lives.

Rose was finishing up her plate of chips, they lost their crispiness and delightfulness a few pieces in and she was ready to head back. "Doctor, do want these?" She motioned to her plate, "I'm finished." She wanted to ask to go back, so she could rest a bit and get some sleep. It had been a long day, or maybe even two days.

"Hmm." The Doctor continued to slowly eat his chips, taking some off of her plate every few bites. He licked his lips and sucked some of the salt off his thumb before gathering up their plates and depositing in the box behind their table.

"Right then Rose. Shall we go?"

She couldn't have stood up faster. Rose smiled and pulled her sweater on, heading towards the door, walking just a bit faster than the Doctor, hoping he'd catch on and hurry up a bit. But he remained clueless to her want for speed and they walked back to the TARDIS, him pointing out all the little bits and trinkets and her being non-committal and trying to hurry things along.

It was all Rose could do to stop herself from breathing a sigh of relief when the familiar blue box came into sight. Still, she waited it out until the Doctor locked the door behind them and hung up his coat and stopped at the door out of the console room. "Rose, I'm going to the kitchen, you want anything?"

Rose shook her head and climbed the stairs to the door. "Nah, I'm going to bed, it's late you know." She yawned and gave her head a shake to clear the cobwebs that were cluttering her brain again. "I'll see you in the morning."

The Doctor nodded and turned left, heading down the corridor. Rose turned right, hoping her room was in the same place that it had been last time she'd gone there. Everything just kept moving around and she was a bit too tired to go searching for her bed.

But for whatever reason the TARDIS was being friendly and her room was just where she remembered leaving it last and her bed looked just as comfortable and welcoming as it always had after a long day. It didn't take her long to shuck off her clothes and pull on shorts and a tank top before turning off the lights and climbing into her bed.

And then she lay there, waiting to sleep, for the exhaustion to really and actually catch up with her for once and for all. It wasn't happening. She closed her eyes and breathed slowly and deeply through her nose, thinking about sheep and then trying not to think about anything. Rose tossed and turned, lying on her side, balling up her pillow and rearranging her blankets twice. She turned over onto her stomach.

Rose gasped and rolled over, sitting up and clutching her stomach with both hands in an instant. The sudden and painful throbbing had taken her by surprise and she took a few deep breathes, getting everything back under control. She pulled up her tank top, slowly; somehow the fabric seemed to help the pain.

There was nothing on her skin. No bruises, no quills or rashes, just absolutely nothing. She eased herself off her bed and walked across the room to her bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub, waiting for the pain to decline give her a moment's respite. But as the pain began to recede, her stomach cramped and she felt bile rising in her throat.

Glad that she was already in the bathroom; Rose leaned over the toilet, clutching the porcelain base with both hands and holding on for dear life. The vomiting passed and she leaned back, breathing heavily and tasting stomach acid and something spoiled in her mouth.

The sink was there and she cupped her hands and swallowed a mouthful of water before bending back over the toilet as her stomach tried to reject itself from her body once again. It ended just as suddenly as it had begun and Rose was left half hanging in the toilet breathing heavily. She spit and closed the lid before flushing it all away.

It took her longer than she would have liked to stand up again. Rose leaned against the sink and washed her hands before cupping some more water up and bringing it to her mouth. It stung her throat going done, but it was sweet as anything she'd ever had. She took a few more swallows before lowering her body back down to the floor.

Her stomach tightened and cramped and Rose curled into a ball on the tile floor as she waited for it all to pass. For once she actually wished that she was still at home, in the Powell Estates working in a shop and living with her mother. Then this would be easier. Her mum would know what to do, and her mum would know that she was sick. She always did.

Rose didn't realise that she'd never turned the lights on until the walls slowly started to glow. That she was used to, the Doctor had explained it once. Something about mimicking the circadian rhythms of Earth days and sun patterns to make it easier for humans to eat and sleep and function. But that would mean that she'd been in the bathroom, vomiting and sitting on the toilet in stages, the entire night. She couldn't remember what time it had been when she'd laid down the night before, but she didn't know what time it was now either.

She willed the time away, waiting for her stomach to settle and for her throat to stop stinging and burning after each swallow of water. The glow grew around her and it seemed like only minutes ago she'd been in darkness. And the light, it meant that it was breakfast time.

Rose chose not to meet the Doctor for breakfast in the kitchen that morning. And the lack of movement from the TARDIS indicated that he hadn't brought them somewhere else to enjoy a native breakfast. Rose still wasn't sure what to think of the man. He was always different and he scared and fascinated her in equal parts. Still, she wanted her mum and to be left alone, she didn't need him begging her to go off on one of his harebrained adventures today.

The quiet tap on the door of her room didn't carry through the closed door of the bathroom and Rose had her eyes closed and was resting her head on the cool tile floor. She couldn't remember when she'd gone from having a stomach ache to her body feeling like it was going to explode and her head crushing her brain.

Even the not-so-quiet tap of the Doctor's knuckles on the door of her room didn't catch her attention. Rose was too busy breathing deeply through her nose, trying to stop the catch in her throat from turning into another bout of vomiting. Her stomach was empty and all she brought up was bile, but she still didn't feel right. She was still throwing up; mostly whatever water she managed to swallow, but sometimes chunks of what she imagined to be her stomach.

The Doctor opened the door to Rose's room as quietly as he could, his eyes scanned her bed, hoping that his friend was simply sleeping deeply and hadn't heard him. Images flashed through his head, Rose had been exhausted, she'd slipped and fallen in the bath or she'd done something incredibly stupid and was lost somewhere inside the TARDIS, or worse, she'd left the TARDIS for some reason and was wondering the Human colony. There were worse places for her to be on her own, but that didn't calm his mind.

Rose raised her head up off the tile floor, for a moment she'd thought that she'd heard footsteps, someone out in her room. But it wouldn't be her mum and the Doctor never came into her room, as far as she knew. She sighed and put her head back on the floor, wishing that her headache had calmed just a little bit.

A sigh caught the Doctor's sensitive hearing. He crossed Rose's floor in quick strides and knocked on the door to the bathroom, not trying to be quiet this time. If she was there, he wanted to talk to her and see her, alive and well. "Rose, are you in there? I've been looking for you." The Doctor let his hand fall back to his side as he waited for her response.

With a mental rant about Time Lords and spaceships in her head, Rose slowly sat up and then got to her feet. "I'm all right Doctor. Be out in a minute." Rose glanced at her appearance in the mirror and shuddered. She looked like death warmed over, pale with dark circles around her eyes and some of her hair was dry and crusty with vomit that didn't quite make it into the toilet bowl.

Rose turned the handle on the sink and stuck her face under the stream of cold water. She shook her head vigorously, regretting it seconds later as the pounding in her head worsened and scrubbing the old makeup and tiredness off her face with a towel. She looked plain and ill, but it was mostly the lack of makeup, at least, that was what she was telling herself.

The Doctor stepped back as Rose opened the door and stepped out into the full light of her bedroom. He looked at her and then glanced up and down her body, wondering how much blood she would have had to have lost to become that pale and frail after the vitality she'd had the night before.

"Rose, are you all right? You look a bit, like a corpse." The Doctor looked at her face again, the pain in her eyes and the tense muscles in her neck and shoulders. If it wasn't for the fact that she was standing, he might have thought that she was dead.

Rose nodded, not trusting her voice for a moment. "Just a bit tired still." She gasped as the words came out, as not much more than a whisper. Her throat was raw and the words aggravated it and her hand flew to her throat, massaging the outside, as if that would soothe the pain on the inside. Her eyes moved to the Doctor, wondering if he'd believe her.

One glance told her that there was no chance of that.

The Doctor helped her to her bed and he sat next to her, one of his cool hands finding her wrist and gripping it, the other snaked around her shoulders and came to rest on her fore head. Rose sighed, this time in release, in giving up and let him touch her.

It wasn't so different, she'd been injured before and he'd always been polite and professional. Different from his usual energetic self, sometimes Rose thought that he might have actually been a doctor, a proper doctor at some point.

"Right then." The Doctor released her wrist, but kept his arm around her shoulders. "Come on then, let's get you sorted out."

Rose staggered to her feet; it was still hard to move around, every step since pain shooting through her stomach and her head. "Where are we going?" She mumbled, whenever she got hurt he could help her out just fine in the console room and once in the kitchen when she sliced into her thumb cutting vegetables.

"Just walk Rose, we'll be there in a moment, and the TARDIS isn't going to make you go far." He guided her out of her room and into the hall and then right into the room next door.

The walls were harsh white and her eyes took a moment to refocus and she wasn't turning her head to look around, still, it looked like a proper doctor's office, or a hospital. For a moment Rose felt frozen, she felt awful, but she'd never really considered that there was something really wrong with her; it was just a stomach bug, or the flu. Something like that. She hadn't been to a doctor in ages and this was beginning to make her feel nervous.

The Doctor helped her into the room and onto the examination couch at the centre of the room. He said something that she didn't catch and stepped over to the counters.

Rose looked at her legs dangling over the edge of the couch and up at the Doctor. Maybe he really was a doctor; maybe he'd forget about this and just bring her home. But nope, he was stepping back to her side, a plethora of instruments in his hands. Her vision was a bit blurry, but she would've sworn that he looked concerned and she'd never seen that expression on his face before.

She waited as he ran a few devices over her body, pausing a moment at her stomach, her head and her throat. Some of them whirred and others beeped, it seemed to Rose that this was much better than anytime she'd been to see a doctor before. He was quiet and considerate and he didn't insist on touching the bits of her that hurt.

Finally he coaxed one arm off her stomach and showed her a small silver tube that vaguely resembled a syringe, just without the needle. He held it to her arm and when pulled it away a moment later Rose was surprised to see the bead of blood on her arm, but the Doctor wiped it away with a small cool cloth and the skin on her arm was as unblemished and unbroken as it had been before he'd taken his sample.

"Just a minute now." He said softly, placing a hand on her shoulder for the briefest second before moving to one of the larger machines on the side and emptying the blood sample into the receiving tray. Rose watched as he put on his glasses to examine the readout, it was in the same odd swirly characters that he had on the readouts in the console room.

When the machine`s screen stopped sending out symbols, the Doctor gripped the counter with both hands for a second before hurrying around the room and returning to her side with another armload of devices and things that she didn`t she`d be able to identify even if her eyes weren`t clouded and aching.

Rose took the pills he offered her and at his demand finished off the liquid he gave her to swallow them with. It wasn`t water or milk, but it was thick and sweet and tangy, and it coated her throat as it made its way into her stomach and unlike the water she`d drank earlier, this didn`t feel at all like it was going to come back up.

He offered her a hot water bottle for her stomach and she slid it between onto her shirt and under her folded arms, amazed at the difference the heat was making, especially with the drugs kicking in and she could just feel the tension and pain leeching out of her body. Her next breath didn`t pull at the muscles in her torso and she slid off the examination couch.

The Doctor took her hand and glanced at her face for a moment, "Come on, we'll get you back in bed and I'll dig up something for you to eat. Anything you want?"

Rose shook her head; she was feeling better, but not that much better. Her stomach still churned and the thought of food was not a particularly good one.

Once she was comfortably situated back in bed. The Doctor had insisted on taking her hot water bottle and refilling it in the bathroom sink. He presented it to her and fussed with the blankets on her bed for a moment, as if he wasn't quite ready to leave yet.

"Doctor, I'm all right now. I feel fine. You can go." Rose said, intending to sound comforting and thankful for what he'd done and that he could get back to doing the things that he wanted now, instead it came out a bit harsher than that and her tone made it sound as if she was ordering him to leave. She instantly regretted her words.

He looked at her for a moment, his face crestfallen and his eyes sad before nodding and walking out the door of her bedroom, pulling it mostly shut behind him, almost glancing at her over his shoulder as he left the room.

Rose slid down on her bed, staring at the ceiling as she waited for the pain to return or for her mind to release her from guilt and let her slip into a blissful and restful sleep.

The next thought that crossed her mind was that it wasn't dark and hadn't it been dark when she'd gone to sleep? Rose propped herself up on her elbows. Across the room, on the comfy chair that she usually used to pile her dirty laundry on, the Doctor sat, staring at her, his fingers steepled in front of his chest.

"I'm sorry."

Rose wasn't sure which of them started first, but they both finished around the same time, him looking directly at her and she lowering her eyes, ashamed at her earlier behaviour.

The Doctor waited a moment before continuing. "It's my fault you got sick. I wasn't thinking and that planet that I took you for chips, those chips weren't normal. They're made with special ingredients native to the planet, something in the salt and I didn't think about exposing a 21st century human to a compound like that. And then I didn't even realise you were ill. I'm so sorry."

"No, I'm the one who is sorry." Rose sat up, and pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. "I was horrid to you and all you ever want to do is help. Please forgive me for the stupid things I said last night. I really didn't mean it."

The Doctor got off his chair and walked slowly across the floor to sit down at the foot of her bed. "Fine then, let's move on and where do you want to go next?" The serious expression was off his face and replaced with his usual brilliant smile.

Rose groaned. "One more day off, either that or a beach resort, or a shopping centre. But not one of the ones that has a plastic people as manikins, I've seen enough of those to last me a lifetime." She grinned as the Doctor got to his feet and winked to her as he crossed the threshold to her room.

"Console room in 5 minutes."

Rose was already moving towards the shower when she called back over her shoulder, "Going to need at least 20."

END