Alone and tired the thirteenth incarnation of the Doctor stared from his doorway at the vast reaches of space. The blood spilled slowly out of the wound in his lower heart always keeping time with the slowing rhythm of his pulse. Around him the lights of the TARDIS were dimming. "So you're dying too, eh?" the Doctor said to his oldest companion and wistfully stroked the panels of his machine. The only reply was a continuing dim and the soft hum of a machine at work.
The wound in his heart was fatal; there could be no doubt of that. The TARDIS could only be killed if its master was dead or dying. No more regeneration, a Time Lord can only regenerate a dozen times and he had used his twelfth to defeat the last Dalek. As he gazed at the machine he thought of all the allies and companions that had accompanied him on his many travels across time and the universe. The lives lost, loves ignored and the ones who had been left behind strolled through his mind in an unending parade. 'And now," he thought, 'it's my turn.' He turned his face towards the ceiling and shouted to the empty room, "Where does a doctor go to die? Who mourns for the pallbearer? When did I lose everyone I loved?"
The questions died in the air without even an empty echo to answer the troubled soul.
The hours passed slowly.
The Doctor knew that the best way for him to die was with the rest of his species in a war that was sealed by time and forever out of reach. Of the many places he had been and the many places he had seen; where was the best to die? To be cursed with no place to call home and too many separate individuals who are family meant that dying with one would offend all the others. By having so many friends across too many planets and times, the Doctor had insured that he would die alone. Then with a grin and a morbid laugh he declared to himself, "I know where the Doctor goes to die!"
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The TARDIS landed in small corn patch and the Doctor stumbled out. As he picked himself up the small blue box with the words POLICE across the top began to shudder. The Doctor stared as the machine shook and shook and began to give of a faint sound of crying. He reached out his hand, as if to comfort the last TARDIS, and as the tip of his hand reached the hard metal, the machine gave up the ghost and died. The Doctor looked inside and saw that it was now exactly as big on the inside as it looked on the outside and that a single phone was now there in place of the TARDIS' heart. He closed the door and stared silently for a minute before turning towards his own grave.
The hospital was decaying. It had lived a full life but was now on its last leg and a "Condemned" sign hung triumphantly on the entranceway. The Doctor stumbled through the door quietly muttering to himself about his own brilliance as a newly developed fever was making him delusional. "Quite right, a hospital is the place a doctor dies if only because it is the most ironic way to go! You silly humans think irony's one of those terrible things that should stay out of morbid affairs like death and disease but really now it's the only way that anything ever comes off as dramatic. Why if it weren't for irony I might not have even picked you as a Companion. After all you were the least likely person to ever travel with me!" he exclaimed as he traveled through the halls. At last he found one white bed in pristine condition and he laid himself on it. "Nothing left to do because nothing's all I leave to you," he said very sincerely to the plaster wall.
The girl entered the hospital slowly and cautiously. She could still hear her friends shouting out encouragement and her enemies making clucking sounds behind her. Of course she had been the only one brave enough to take the dare but she couldn't point that out until she had stayed inside for a whole hour. There were rumors that the hospital was haunted, rumors that an old man wandered the halls ranting and raving about everything from time to monsters that resembled robotic men. The girl wanted to know if these rumors were true which was probably why she took the dare in the first place.
Just as she settled into a comfortable chair in the ER waiting room, she heard a sharp scream of utter terror come from the room above her. Every little girl has motherly instincts even at age seven and so the girl took off upstairs to see if she could comfort the terrorized soul. As she ran into the room she saw the old man that everyone said was a ghost lying in bed shouting and staring at her. The girl was momentarily panicked until she saw that the eyes were filmed over and his body was red with fever. She slowly approached the man as he continued yelling. "No! Katrina there has to be another way. No, no, no, no, NOOOOOO!" with the final bloodcurdling scream the film lifted from his eyes and he jerked upright before clutching the bleeding wound at his chest and falling back down.
The girl inched closer and asked, "Who was Katrina?" The man, visibly in pain and still clutching his chest, looked up at the girl and asked, "Who are you?" The girl folded her arms in the way young girls often do and retorted, "That's not fair! I asked you first."
"I suppose you did though that means very little where I come from." He paused and then began again, "Katrina was a very dear friend who traveled with me across the stars and died in order to save others. She was the first to go but her death still haunts me the most."
"So it's true then, you're the ghost who haunts the hospital. The one who speaks about time and robot armies?"
"Eh? No of course not, that was a real ghost and I got rid of him the first night I was here."
"Then how long have you been here?"
"Almost a day. I arrived last night."
"Why are you here?"
The man paused and looked into the window at the other end of the room. His eyes became cloudy and he remained this way for a few minutes before turning back to the girl and saying, "I suppose I came here to die." The girl was taken aback but quickly replied, "If you really came here to die then shouldn't you be dead by now?"
"Yes I should be dead by now but my TARDIS gave up the last of its energy to give me a few more hours to live. I'll probably die by nightfall." The girl wanted to ask what a TARDIS was but then the man began to shudder again and convulsed a few times before returning to the conversation.
"How old are you little girl?"
"Seven. But it'll be eight in a month."
"Seven's a big age, you're probably just starting to have adventures aren't you? I used to have plenty of adventures. I even travelled to faraway lands with lots and lots of different friends."
"Where are your friends? Shouldn't they be here with you?"
The man smiled at the girl and said, "Unfortunately they're all dead or they might as well be. Although some have yet to be born and others are probably alive at this point in time but I don't know what time this is because I didn't have the chance to check before I was stranded here." The girl decided that the man was probably mad but he was alone and he needed company. "I wish I could have gone on adventures with you. You seem like a very interesting man." The man looked at the girl with his soft brown eyes and said, "Maybe you can be my friend. But not just any friend. My last friend. The one to see me off."
The girl put her hand in his and asked him "Are you scared?" The man began to reply, "Me scared? I've faced fates a billion times worse! I escaped black holes and captured witches. Not to mention stopped an evil empire from taking over the galaxy about 70 times. I have no fear, I laugh in the face of fear and poke it in the eye with a pointy stick while saying, 'I bet you wish I wasn't poking you with a pointy stick.' I was the one who told FDR that we have nothing to fear but fear itself and I…" his voice trailed off as he felt the little hand squeeze his. He was silent for a moment and then began anew.
"I'm terrified. I'm alone, the last of my kind and I'm dying. I never had to fear death before because I know that I could just put it off but it always catches up to you. I've seen so many friends die and I've always felt terrible at their passing but I never really understood the fear of death until today. You can try and be brave all you want but there's one thing out there that is bigger and more terrifying than anything else and that's that there's an end and everyone is heading towards it. No amount of trickery will ever stop that." His eyes began to film over as he continued on. "The people we've loved and known are all going to be empty someday and then we're going to join them in a terrible loneliness that could never be known in life. Even space has stars to pierce the darkness but what pierces death? That final adventure, death, is the most terrifying and unavoidable prospect of life." The little girl squeezed his hand again.
He stopped.
"There's love isn't there? It doesn't matter how lonely you feel or how long you've been dead because there's always someone else who cares for you and who knows your pain. Those are the stars that shine in the space of death, your friends."
The man smiled and said, "You're right, I knew that to begin with but I wanted to hear someone else say it. My friends will be there with me because they've always been with me before." He squeezed the girl's hand and with his right hand he gave her a small metal object that was roughly the size and shape of a pencil. He said, "I want you to have this to remember me by, it's a sonic screwdriver. Bring it with you when you come and I'll know it's my last friend."
The girl asked, "Who are you?" And the man replied, "I'm the Doctor." He gave one final shudder and collapsed. The girl bent over and kissed the Doctor's forehead. As she leaned back up she said, "And I'm Katrina Donohue." Then she let go of his hand, turned around, and walked towards the exit.
As she came outside the sun was just beginning to set and the other children began to sigh with relief. "We thought the old ghost had gobbled you up, Katrina!"
"Did you see him, was he really big and scary?"
"Where you just taking so long to prove you're big and brave like me?"
Katrina replied, "I just got lost, that's all. Let's go home." She took a step towards home but then stopped. "On second thought, you guys go ahead. I think I dropped something inside." As the other children took off, Katrina walked back to the old hospital. She looked at the old doors with the "Condemned" sign and took a small white rock out of the gravel path to her right. She took the rock and crossed out the word Condemned. She smiled secretly to herself and slowly walked away to live out a rich and full life.