AN: Not mine, no money, no sue.
We couldn't breathe, we were running out of air… a colleague of mine gave me the last oxygen tank. Martha, M-Martha Jones… and sh-she died.
- Turn Left
Colleague of Mine
"Morning, Oliver."
He pulled at his cuffs nervously, his coat feeling new and odd. "Hi, Swales… on rounds this morning too?"
The young woman also looked uncomfortable in her crisp white coat. "We've got Stoker."
Oliver groaned. People like Stoker were the reason the white coats felt like a pretence. He wore his like battle-armour, the students wore them like a costume still. "He's got it in for me," he said mournfully.
"He's got it in for everybody," Swales said acerbically. "I think he hates students."
"Maybe he's just tired of teaching," Oliver mused. Swales snorted.
"You don't believe that, Morgenstern," she pointed out.
"Nah, guess not," he mumbled. Swales pushed past him through the front doors.
Oliver Morgenstern leaned on the bars outside the wheelchair ramp, watching people scurry all over the parking lot like ants, a flurry of red and white outside the ER as usual.
"I want to be a doctor," he reminded himself. "I want to be a doctor, I want to be a doctor, I want to be a doctor."
It didn't really feel like he meant it, though.
Rounds were an exercise in humiliation, as usual. Stoker had an exasperated air as he mercilessly pointed out the uselessness of their suggestions. Even Jones got a serve — though just about everyone got a dose of Stoker's disappointment around the salt-deficient patient.
Oliver slumped further into his cafeteria chair, pushing despondently at his overcooked peas. He'd already eaten the portions he liked — the potato, the meat, the yoghurt cup — and left over were the bits he could remember from cooling boarding school dinners; the peas, the carrot, cooked to the consistency of mush.
"Gross," Jones commented as she sat down opposite him, plonking her tray down on the formica surface.
"No wonder patients all complain," Oliver agreed. "It's like baby food."
"You're only making it worse," she pointed out. Oliver envied her.
"Don't know what could possible make it worse," he said, and she waved her fork at his tray.
"Smushing it around like that, 'course you're making it worse," she grinned at him to take the sting off her words. "Oh god, how bad was it with Stoker this morning? That man, I swear, he makes me feel about…" she held her fingers apart, "this tall, honestly."
Oliver noticed that she had pretty fingers. He grunted in affirmation.
"Wouldn't be so bad if he occasionally noticed how hard we were trying," she added.
Oliver wondered how hard he was trying. "Guess so."
"He's probably just trying to make us better doctors," she finished, with the air of someone who had made up their mind. She shoveled a forkful of potato into her mouth with slightly more force than necessary.
Oliver watched her for a beat, before hearing his own voice say, "you don't really believe that."
Jones paused, and sighed. "No, not really."
He nudged her. "Neither do I."
Her smile made him want to be a better doctor.
"We're on the moon," Swales hiccupped. She was working herself into hysterics. "On the moon, on the bloody moon!"
"Breathe, Julia," Jones ordered, her own voice tight with disbelief and barely-restrained panic. "Hang on, though, how are we breathing? The windows…"
Oliver glanced at the old windows. "Not exactly air-tight," he finished. Jones nodded.
"So how come all the air hasn't been sucked out? The windows should have blown out immediately," she mused.
"Very glad they didn't," Oliver's voice was high with tension.
"On the bloody moon!" Swales moaned.
"Julia!" Jones snapped. "Not really helping, thanks!"
"So what's keeping the air in?" Oliver took two steps towards the window, which sent Swales cowering under the kitchenette table. "Oh for god's sake, I'm just going to look!" he erupted at the terrified woman, his fear finding release in anger.
"Stop it, both of you," Jones said crisply. "Morgenstern, don't open that window, I'll… I'm going to the balcony by the patient's lounge."
"You can't!" Swales gasped. "Martha, you'll die if you go out there!"
Jones' eyes flicked up to Oliver's. "Might not," she said softly, and her tone was slightly inviting.
I want to be a doctor. "I'm coming too," he heard himself say.
Swales gave a strangled shriek and pushed herself further under the kitchenette table. "You're both mad," she moaned in terror.
Jones stared unseeing at Swales for a beat, before turning on her heel. "Come on," she said.
Oliver fell in behind her, his heart thudding painfully in his ears. The familiar corridors were full of panicking people, their faces a rictus of horror, mouths open in soundless screams. Jones pushed her way through to the patient's lounge, where the double doors to the balcony stood waiting greedily to Oliver's frightened eyes. Jones barely even paused, but pushed them open. Oliver took a breath reflexively, and held it.
Jones walked slowly out on to the balcony, her shoulders slack in wonder. Oliver stared in trepidation as her hands dropped heavily on the railing. Her dark eyes were glossy with awe.
"There's air," she said finally, her voice hitching. "You can come out now."
Oliver let go of the breath he had still been holding. His legs wobbled precariously as he took the hesitant steps to join her at the railing. "That's…"
"Home. All the way down there," she confirmed. "Isn't it beautiful?"
"Isn't it far away," he added, and he was sure his voice was generally lower than that. Still, he had to admit, it wasbeautiful. "You can see it glow," he said in surprise.
"What?" Jones was looking at him now, her eyebrows quirked.
"You know, in all those pictures of the world from the Apollo missions and the satellites and that, you can see it glow. The Earth. But you think it's not really real, because that's just too big, that's just too space-opera, you can't see it glow when you're down there. But it does," he hastened to explain.
"The earthglow," she mused.
"It's brighter than the moon ever was," he smiled a little.
She smiled too, watching their planet hang in the darkness, before her eyebrows creased. "What's that?"
"What?"
"That!" And she pointed.
"It's okay! Really, all they want to do is shine this light into your eyes!" Oliver yelled over the crowds of people shrieking in terror. "Look!" He held up his marked hand. "Just do what they say!"
The Space Rhino who had escorted him into the waiting room poked him in the back again with the butt of the gun. He scowled. "You are frightening them," he hissed.
"Irrelevant," the Space-Rhino grunted. "They are to obey. Their mental state is none of our concern."
"Let me calm them down. Please?" Oliver begged. "It will make things easier for you, after all, and then you can send us home…"
"Carry on," the Space-Rhino finally said after seemingly consulting with the members of its kind.
"Thank you, thank you so much," Oliver gabbled breathlessly, before standing on one of the waiting-room chairs. "Everyone, can I have your attention!" he yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth.
"You insane, mate?" one man roared over the continuing pandemonium. Oliver gritted his teeth.
"NOW!" he yelled, and the crowd fell gradually silent, with the hitching breaths of a pregnant woman the only sound in the room.
"Right," Oliver swallowed. "These Rhino-things, they're after an escaped prisoner. They just want to make sure that we're all human — this prisoner is a shape-shifter, apparently. They shine a light at you, and it says what species you are, and then they mark your hand." He held up his hand, displaying the large black cross on the back. "That's all! Just do as they say, then we all go home."
"Bunch of bull-" the man who had yelled before began, but Oliver's glare cut through him so fast, the rest of his sentence was lost.
"I am going to be a doctor," Oliver said heatedly. "Do you honestly think I would propose any course of action that would lead people to harm?"
The man leapt upon the sentence. "So you're not actually a doctor, yet, eh? Taking orders from students, not bloody likely," he sneered.
"It's take orders from students, or die," said Oliver simply, and turned back to the Space-Rhino. "Catalogue them, and let us go," he ordered.
The aliens began to move through the room, lighting the faces of the frightened people in that eerie blue light, before crossing the back of their hand. As they were doing exactly as Oliver had said they would, most people started to calm down slightly, submitting passively to the scan. However, when one Space-Rhino got up to the man who had argued with Oliver, he smashed a vase over its head.
In the ensuing silence, all the fear that had dissipated returned with terrifying speed.
"Witness the crime," the Space-Rhino grated. "Charge: physical assault. Plea: guilty. Sentence: execution."
"No!" Oliver yelled, but it was lost amongst the screams as the man was vaporised to nothing.
There was a pitiful little pile of dirty white ash on the waiting room floor. Oliver crouched down by it, his body shaking, and when he raised his face his eyes were wet. "You didn't have to do that," he managed, his voice breaking with anger.
"Justice is swift."
Jones caught up with him after he'd ushered the next lot to be catalogued through. "Stoker is dead," she muttered in his ear.
He fumbled for the right response. "How?" he finally managed.
"I think it's the thing they're looking for," she said, keeping her voice low and nodding at the Space-Rhinos. "It's our salt-deficient patient."
"Miss Finnegan?" he blurted.
She nodded slowly. "It sucked his blood out of him," she gulped, and he could feel her outrage and disgust. "Like he was a juice-box," she added in a sickened tone.
"Oh god," Oliver fought his stomach. "A vampire?"
"Something like that," she nodded. He saw her swallow hard, the muscles in her throat convulsing, epiglottis, larynx, hyoid, cricopharyngeus muscle. "I closed his eyes."
"Good," he found himself nodding. "Good."
"We need to tell them," she nodded at the Space-Rhinos. "Then they'll send us back home."
"Right. Hang on, I'm getting to know their leader a bit," he deadpanned. Jones choked a laugh.
"Look at us, would you," she managed. "Morgenstern and Jones."
"Under the circumstances, you can probably call me Oliver," he said distractedly, grabbing her hand and weaving amongst the milling crowds towards the leader of the aliens.
"Martha," she said, and when he glanced back at her, she had a small smile playing about her lips, the one that made him wish he was a better doctor. "Nice to meet you at last."
"Likewise." And he smiled back.
"No air, no air, no air," he muttered in shock.
"Goddamn you!" Martha yelled at the departing Space-Rhinos. "Send us back! Send us back this minute!" She screamed in frustration and kicked the wall.
"Martha, what do we do?" he implored her. "What do we do? There are a thousand people in this hospital!"
"I know!" she yelled back. "This is your fault!" This was directed at the thin ships rising into the endless night.
"Air, air, air," Oliver mumbled, before staggering over towards the ED. "They'll have air!" he pointed.
"Right!" she breathed. "Distribute it…"
"You first," Oliver insisted, but she waved him away.
"Others need it more than me," she said sternly. "Let's get it out there, 'kay?"
Arm in arm, they ferried canister after canister from the ED. Eventually, nurses and doctors gathered to operate them for the less mobile patients. Oliver caught a glimpse of Swale, her face still the picture of terror, but her hands competent as she arranged a mask over a child's face.
Martha's breathing was growing hoarse, but she would not stop. "Gotta… keep going," she shook her head when he told her to stop and take air for herself. "Not just… yet."
Oliver was growing light-headed, but he forced himself to take the canisters from Martha, pass them to the waiting hands. "Got to…"
"Last one," Martha croaked, falling against him with the grey cylinder clasped in her arms. "You first."
The oxygen made him even more light-headed, the rush into his starved system hitting him like a drug. Martha giggled hoarsely at the face he pulled. "Headspin," he managed. "You now."
She held the mask to her face and he released the valve. "Better?"
She nodded, her eyes closing slightly. He shifted slightly so that her prone form rested against his shoulder.
"Now what, do you suppose?" he muttered to himself. "Do they send us home, or leave us here?"
"Got to… go... home," Martha mumbled, her head lolling forward.
Oliver nodded dully. "Home," he echoed. He pulled at the air-tank again, but the gauge read empty.
Martha made a noise he'd heard in the senior's wing twice before.
Much, much later, Doctor Oliver Morgenstern, relocated to the refugee camp in Birmingham, would look at the full moon with a faraway expression.
If anyone asked him what he was thinking about, he would answer, "The earthglow."
~FIN~