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The Doctor stretched out his arm in desperation, the fateful switch only centimeters away. Unless I deactivate the antimatter cannon, the Daleks will reopen the Medusa Cascade and conquer every universe in existence, was the one urgent thought on his mind.
He began to feel faint, and all at once, everything went black.
The Time Lord didn't know how much time had passed. He opened his eyes to behold a pale green wall that hadn't been there before, and a glassy light fixture. Where in Rassilon's name am I? he wondered.
"You're awake," uttered a sweet, familiar voice. "How are you feeling?"
Startled, he turned his head. There were the tangled blond locks of the girl he had expected to never see again. "R-Rose?" he stammered.
"Good morning, handsome," said Rose Tyler, who was wearing a voluptuous nightie and a smile.
I'm dreaming, he thought. "I'm dreaming," he said aloud.
"Then it's a good dream," said Rose in a sultry tone.
The Doctor, charging out of the bed, discovered that he was clad in naught but a set of blue pyjamas. "Bloody hell!" he exclaimed. "I can't fight the Daleks dressed like this!"
Plaintive sobs greeted his ears. "Oh, John, no," said Rose miserably. "You were doing so well, and now you've gone back to ranting about Daleks and monsters and blue boxes."
The Doctor struggled to rein in his outrage. "I don't know what game you're playing," he said, "but you know as well as I do that the Daleks are, at this moment, preparing to invade the entire…"
"I'm calling the doctor," said Rose, wrapping her fingers around the mobile phone on the nightstand.
"I'm the Doctor," said the Time Lord insistently.
"No, I am," said the concerned-looking man with a white beard and glasses, ten minutes later. "And when I tell you to stay on your medications, you should heed my advice."
The Doctor shot him an incredulous glare. "Medications? You make it sound like I'm sick."
"Sick is exactly what you are," said the physician. "You're suffering from paranoid schizophrenia with delusions of grandeur. You claim, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, to be a 900-year-old humanoid alien from the planet Gallifrey."
"But I am a 900-year-old…"
"John," said the old man sternly, "put your fingers on your wrist and you'll see that you're as human as anybody else on this planet. You know how to find your wrist, don't you?"
"This is absurd," said the Doctor. Seconds later, as he followed the stranger's directions, he felt a wave of consternation. "One pulse…?"
The doctor nodded. "One pulse, one heart," he said matter-of-factly.
A pair of warm, dainty hands stroked the Doctor's shoulders. "Come back to me, John," Rose urged him. "You're all alone, out there in space. You need a soulmate. You need me."
"This is some sort of Dalek trick," muttered the Doctor. "I'll break out of this illusion, and I'll stop you."
"Now why would you want to do that?" said the bearded man. "You and Rose have such good chemistry together. Why waste your time saving the universe from the bogeymen, when you can find perfect happiness in her arms?"
"I'll tell you why," said the Doctor. "First of all, Rose and I come from two different worlds, so we'd both have to overcome some significant hurdles in order to function as a couple. Second, Rose already has a half-human copy of me, one that will age at the normal human rate."
"But he's not you, sweetie," said Rose. "You're the one who's meant to be with me forever. It's destiny. You're not thinking of running away in your blue box with that French slut Reinette, are you?"
"She is not a slut," said the Doctor indignantly.
"Anybody who comes between you and me is a slut," said Rose with an air of menace.
"This has all been very amusing," said the Doctor, standing quickly, "but I've got a universe to save. Tally-ho."
"I'm afraid your days of saving the universe are over," said the old man, gesturing to a pair of younger men in white suits.
"Be gentle with him," said Rose. "Don't damage his gorgeous, sexy body."
As the uniformed men fastened a straitjacket around the Doctor's body, a cool, cybernetic mind watched the scene unfold in a long-forgotten room. I kept trying to tell him that he and Rose were meant to be, thought the TARDIS. Maybe now he'll listen.
THE END