I don't know where I am.
Darkness surrounded her, and in the distance a siren screamed. She had the faintest sense of the earth shaking beneath her. The ground was cold and she fought to stand, but something had immobilised her completely.
I don't know where I am.
She couldn't even tell if her eyes were open. A cold sweat coated her skin as she felt the panic begin to swell in the pit of her stomach. She opened her mouth to scream, to cry out for help, but her voice was nowhere to be found. Her breath quickened and her chest heaved as the fear seized her. Hot tears welled up in her eyes; she was convinced she was trapped. She'd been left to die.
I don't know where I am.
A bright light appeared from nowhere, blinding her even through eyelids shut tight. Suddenly she was surrounded by muffled voices; they seemed so far away that she had to wonder if they were real at all. A pang of sharp pain, then numbness, plunged her back into darkness, silence.
It was days before she woke, with a pain in her head that bled out into her entire body. She couldn't move her right arm - a thick plaster cast extended from her palm to her shoulder; another encased her right ankle. Her ribs and back ached, sending a shockwave of pain through her with every breath.
The room was blinding white, the fluorescent light above the bed combined with the smell of disinfectant serving only to worsen the pain in her head. She was certain that the pressure behind her eyes would make her head explode. Machines whirred and beeped around her; her head throbbed along with the pace of the heart monitor. Several wires and tubes protruded from the top of her free hand and wrist and others dotted her chest with white stickers. Her skin was clammy; her fringe was slicked to her forehead with icy sweat.
The sound of the heart monitor as its pace quickened sent the doctor hurrying from the nurses' station.
"Miss Oswald," she said softly, watching Clara wince at the sound of her voice. "I'm Dr. Song. Do you know where you are?"
She gave the slightest shake of her head, a strange, strangled noise leaving her throat.
"Torchwood Hospital, sweetie. Do you remember what happened to you?"
"N-no," she finally managed, barely audible. The fear and confusion in her eyes resembled that of a trapped animal.
"You walked off a six-story building, sweetie. You're lucky to be alive. The snow and the angle you landed were all that saved you. Few walk away from that something like that."
Clara's eyes widened, but immediately snapped shut again at the painful flood of fluorescent light. She didn't remember a thing.
Dr. Song took the chart that hung from the foot of my bed, making note of the readings on the machines, and on the pitiful sight of her patient, watching her chest heave, her face drawn in agony. Clara whimpered, begging softly for water, and it was obvious to Dr. Song that this was no time for questions; she certainly wasn't leaving anytime soon. She'd get her answers soon enough.
Several days passed before Dr. Song decided that Clara was strong and coherent enough to speak to her. It saddened her to see the shame written on her father's face when he visited - which he did only once, while his daughter slept. It was now that Clara needed him most, yet he couldn't bring himself to speak to her. Fortunately, however, Dr. Song had had a word with him; their conversation gave her quite a bit of insight into what caused her fall.
Clara was looking in a small mirror, running her hand over a line of stitches that extended nearly all the way across her scalp when Dr. Song entered the room. Her eyebrows were knitted in confusion and fear; she hadn't quite been able to process what had happened to her yet.
"Good afternoon," Dr. Song gave her a kind, tentative smile. "Do you remember me?"
"Dr. Song," Clara said after a moment. "I'm in hospital. I fell."
"You did. Can you tell me why you did that?"
Her eyes glazed over with fear and doubt. She bit her lip, struggling to find the words.
"I... I was sad," she managed, her voice almost too soft for Dr. Song to hear.
She nodded sympathetically. "Your father told us you were quite confused as well."
Clara regarded her suspiciously, unsure of what she meant. She knew exactly what had been happening, what had caused her to jump. Still, the thought of her father being here made her heart sink. He was ashamed of her, she knew. Maybe, she thought, she should be ashamed of herself, too.
"I wasn't confused. It was the only way to get away," she insisted.
"Away from what, sweetie?"
"From Him. He was watching. Always watching. He wouldn't even let me sleep. Something terrible was going to happen - I was supposed to stop it, but I just didn't know how. I was born to save someone I've never even met."
It was Dr. Song's turn to be confused. It was obvious that Clara was still actively psychotic, and the mind had always been something that was just out of the doctor's depth.
"That must be very frightening for you, sweetie," she replied, nodding her
"I think we can help you, sweetie," she told Clara with a reassuring smile, pausing at the foot of the bed to make note of the readings on the monitors on her way out.
"I'm going to need a psych eval for Miss Oswald in C315 done straight away," she told the charge nurse upon her return to the nurses' station.
Jenny frowned at the sad concern on Dr. Song's face as she spoke. She left the report she'd been typing to immediately phone the ward several floors above them. It had been quite a while since they'd encountered a case like Clara Oswald's.
He knocked softly before entering. The sound of his white nurses' shoes squeaking against the tile stirred Clara from her book; it was nearly impossible for her to concentrate on it, anyway.
"Morning, Miss... Oswald, is it?" He was an awkward thing, giving her a friendly yet anxious smile as he fiddled with the file in his hands. "I'm Rory. I'm a psychiatric nurse. Well, I'm actually uh, working on becoming a psychiatrist myself but, anyway, yeah. I work upstairs." He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the floor. Clara decided he must be new.
She eyed him cautiously, without a word. She never knew who to trust anymore.
"Dr. Song thought I should come and, uh, say hello. Talk about some things."
Still she didn't speak, didn't move. She looked out the window, away from him. She had no interest in talking.
"So I understand you had an... eh, accident? Can you tell me about that?" Rory sat down in the chair in the corner, flipping open the folder and taking out a pen. He looked at her intently and smiled, doing his best to put her at ease; she was shaking and she looked close to tears. He made a note of it.
She sighed heavily, hesitating. She was much too tired and in far too much pain to deal with that.
"I was sad," she said. "It was the only way I could get away from them, and I think it was the only way I could have saved him." Clara bit her lip. She couldn't get herself to look him in the eye. She knew that she sounded completely and utterly mad, but then again she didn't really expect anyone to understand.
"Sorry, but who's that exactly?"
"I... all I really know is that he's called The Doctor. And he's in danger. I was born to save him."
He nodded, raising his eyebrows as he scribbled something down. Clara bit her lip and wondered nervously what he could be writing.
"And how's that?"
"I-I don't know," she stammered. "There was a man in my dream. The same man I'm meant to save, but with a different face. So many different faces. But one was strange. So much darker, so much more frightening. He never spoke but something about him was wrong. That's how I knew."
"And this man is the Doctor?"
"Yes."
"Do you only see him while you sleep?" He looked at her expectedly, carefully watching the way she fiddled with her bedsheets, her eyes looking everywhere but at him.
"No, he's always there. He'll give me a sign when it's time for me to help him. But he tells me other things too."
"Is he talking to you right now?" he tried to catch her eye. "Now I've noticed you looking around, almost like you're checking for something. Can I ask you what's happening at those times?"
"Yeah, he's talking. I'm trying to figure out where I am."
"And do you hear him like he's here in the room, like I'm talking to you right now? Like, uh, are you hearing him with your ears or in your brain?"
"Yeah, in my ears," her eyebrows knitted and she shifted uneasily, very visibly nervous. She almost looked like she was afraid to tell him. "He's talking to me like you are."
He nodded, continuing to make notes as quickly as possible.
"Can you tell me what he's saying to you?"
"I'm really not supposed to," she said sadly. "Secrets are very important."
"Well, maybe, um, if you share just this one secret with me I can help you." He had absolutely no idea how to go about this. It was only his second week in the hospital, and this conversation was something completely new to him.
"I'm not actually on like, Earth right now. I jumped because that was the only way into his timestream, and this is where I'm supposed to find him. But I don't really know where I am. I don't think I was supposed to end up here, and I'm running out of time."
"That must be very frightening for you," he said sympathetically.
"There's so much screaming. I'm afraid I'll be next - I can't save him, I can't even find him," Clara was close to tears now, half in fear for her life, half in desperation. She needed him to believe her. Someone had to help her.
"You don't feel safe, do you, Miss Oswald?"
"No," she said sadly, her voice quivering. "I wanted to help him, but I also wanted to get away. I didn't want to wake up. I was supposed to die." she whimpered.
"Your life for his, yeah?"
She sniffed and rubbed at her eyes. "Sort of. I've died before - I've seen it, felt it. It's the only way," she sobbed.
"Oh I don't think that's so," he told her gently. He didn't really know what else to say.
Rory snapped the file shut and tapped it with his pen, and the noise made Clara jump. He probably should have made a note of that as well. Clara would probably have to be further evaluated before they could diagnose anything, but she was very clearly psychotic. Paranoid schizophrenia, he guessed - he'd paid attention in abnormal psych at university, and it certainly made sense. The paranoid and grandiose delusions, the sense that something was out to get her, and the belief that she was destined to be a hero, along with her unchanging sad and fearful demeanour and her unwillingness to speak was more than enough proof.
"Well, Miss Oswald," he said cautiously, hoping to reassure her. "I think we can keep you safe here, if you let us."
Her brow furrowed and she swallowed thickly. Her mouth was suddenly dry and she found it hard to breathe.
"If I let you?"
"Dr. Song told me you'd be with us for quite a while, given your condition, and, uh, I think it might be best if you, uh, spend some time with us. You know. Upstairs. Tennant Centre for Behavioural Health."
He hated to have to do this to her; it was plain to see how much this terrified her. But Rory had felt the call to help people since he was very young, and he'd never felt a call so intense.
"You think I'm mad," she whimpered. "I promise I'm not. I just need to get better and go home."
"Well, I, uh, think you might get better much faster with us."
"I can't," she cried, and Rory was suddenly embarrassed. He was certain they could hear her out in the corridor.
"Miss, I'm afraid I can't give you a choice. You're at risk of hurting yourself or someone else. That's why Dr. Song called me down here; she's quite worried about you."
It terrified Clara - her whole life she'd grown up hearing stories of the crazies locked up at Royal Leadworth Hospital. There was no way she was one of them; she could never fit in with them. She was perfectly fine; they just couldn't understand that she was special.
"Just come up and see. You'll have a seventy-two hour evaluation period, and after that you can make an appeal."
She sighed. There was no way out of this one; she'd just have to prove it to them herself. That'd be easy, she was certain. She nodded sadly, keeping her eyes on her hand, still grasping the sheet for dear life.
"Okay," she whispered.
He gave her his best smile. It was for the best.
"I'll be right back with a bit of paperwork. A bed's just opened up so we can wheel you upstairs straight away." She'd gone white as a ghost, so he stood and awkwardly put a hand on her shoulder. He was trying to comfort her, reassure her, but she flinched away from his touch and tried to keep the tears from spilling down her cheeks.
He didn't know what else to say; he feared he'd only make it worse. So many people were brought to the ward kicking and screaming, and it was one of the saddest, hardest things Rory ever had to witness. He hoped he'd get over that in time. He gave her a quick nod before turning on his heel and walking, head bowed, eyes locked on his shoes, down the corridor.
A/N: My first stab at an AU, as well as a longer story. I've been at this since round 4am, and I'm hoping to have the next chapter up within the next few days. I've rated this M for the time being, given there's a possibility of things becoming slightly violent and/or sexual. I'd really, really love to hear what you guys think of this, so reviews would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading! - Sylvia