Rosie, Keep Looking
Chapter 1
Rose gently set her and John's baby in his crib; he was finally asleep after an hour of colicky fussing that frustrated her, because even as a mother, she still couldn't give him a quick fix for the problem and return him to happy, blissful baby state again. She was very protective of her children, especially now that there were two of them.
John normally stayed up at least for a few minutes to help her, but tonight he'd come home from Torchwood with a headache and was making sure he got a full night's sleep before the next day's work. They'd been married for almost five years now, since John had barely waited a month before proposing after they'd been left together by the Doctor on Bad Wolf Bay. They'd been married almost immediately, as quickly as John could manage to pressure Jackie into getting something together. He'd insisted on having his Rose as soon as he could get her. He was as fierce in his devotion to her even now, if not more so.
It had taken work to keep their marriage thriving, as any marriage would require. But through thick and thin they'd only grown closer, and two children, a baby Tardis, and many, many alien battles later, here they were, almost in Heaven. Their flat was unique, set apart in a quaint little neighborhood on a large plot of land where they had plenty of space to themselves.
She smiled to herself as she watched her son sleeping soundly, at last. Life was almost, almost perfect. As perfect as it could get.
"Feelin' better today, babe?" Rose questioned as she dropped a kiss on John's head, on her way past the table with cereal in one hand and milk in the other. Jacqueline was spooning Fruit Loops all over her face, and the baby hadn't waken up yet. Rose was still in her bathrobe but John was showered and ready for work.
"I dunno," he remarked, sounding fairly cheerful but in the familiar tone of trying to hide something behind his demeanor. "I've been better. Hope I'm not comin' down with something; that'd be rubbish, wouldn't it?"
"That it would," Rose agreed, looking concerned. "Don't work too hard today."
When he came home that night his condition had not improved. He tried going straight to bed after dinner, but Rose made him take something first, afraid that he'd get sick if he didn't.
"Why won't Daddy play with me, Mama?" Jackie whined, very confused. They always played together after dinner, before she went to take her bath.
"Daddy's sick, lovie. You'll have to be very nice to him, and let him rest tonight."
"Again? When's he gonna get better?" the three-year-old exclaimed.
"Oh, I'm sure he'll be better tomorrow," Rose smiled down at her as she continued washing the dinner dishes. "Just be patient, Jackie."
He wasn't better the next day, or the next, so Rose finally convinced him to take off work and make a doctor visit.
"It doesn't make any sense, Rose," he protested, on his way out the door. "It's not gotten any worse, and I already know everything they're gonna say at the clinic. They're gonna read off a list of questions and ask me everything I do, and what I eat, and how long I sleep, and what I do at work, and then they're gonna tell me to take medication for depression-anxiety disorder, which we both know I don't have, and then they're gonna send me home with a prescription and I'm gonna take it to the drug store and they're gonna tell me it costs seventeen pounds a bottle plus tax, and then I'm gonna come home and be right back where we started and—I'm not even gonna think about it 'cause it makes my head hurt worse!"
Rose raised her eyebrows as he disappeared out the door. For once, she thought he could probably rival the original Doctor in the length of his ranting. Laughing, she set about getting the kids dressed for a trip to the pool, and didn't worry about her husband until all four of the family came home for lunch.
Her ease became a concern she couldn't quite name when he arrived for lunch and showed her every detail of his morning, down to the seventeen pounds plus tax for the useless pills, exactly as he had spouted off in prediction while headed out the door.
Of course, he threw the pills in the trash, since they both knew fully well they would NOT solve the problem, but in his brief rant earlier he had described every detail of the doctor visit, prescription, and price.
John brushed off her comments as coincidence, but Rose remembered the incident anyway. It was just too weird that he'd predicted everything so perfectly. Almost as perfectly as the Doctor would have.
