A/N: Okedoke. This is pretty close to an SI but, again, I'm not making Gris me. Just taking personal experience. I was sitting at work, doing essentially what is going on in this chapter, and decided that this could make a nice jumping board for an American companion. So. Yeah. And yes, I do hate myself a little.

EXTRA NOTE: Her name has been changed to Griselda Vrone (all you new readers...that won't matter). Although! If you can guess whose name her name is an anagram of, I'll give you a guest appearance! Please only message me your guess as to not ruin the surprise.

Disclaimer: Doctor Who stuff isn't mine. Record Keepers I don't think, doesn't exist in this capacity and if it does it wasn't on purpose.


It was one of those days, just like every other day. I walked into work a 7:43 and organized my desk while I waited for it to be 7:45. I then went and made my oatmeal before I settled in to start reading the medical records of this or that patient. I did that until 9am, when the phone lines opened and it was time for me to start calling.

My job was a pretty nondescript job. The company I worked for was great, but how much fun can you have a monotonous desk job that, essentially, equated to calling doctors' offices all day and occasionally taking a break to look over medical records. I was a back-up analyst so I did it in my "free" time, but my sole purpose was to coerce the offices into listening to what I had to say. I wasn't selling anything, but you'd think I was trying to buy their first born child half of the time.

It was a pretty regular day – smoke break at 9:15, then at 11. Lunch at 12:30, chatting with the girls while we smoked away the last twenty minutes of our lunch. Back to the calling grind. It hadn't been a bad day; no crazies had responded to me yet, no one had decided to tell me that I was the scum of the Earth, and no one threatened to call journalists because they thought I was doing something illegal.

Until I reached one of the many cleaning sites. This meant we had just received the information from the insurance company and then had to call the offices to make sure we had the right information. We got some pretty wonky information from the insurance companies sometimes; weird names, wrong names, P.O. boxes, 999 numbers. You name it, I've seen it.

The one thing I hadn't seen, but didn't think anything of, was seeing the site name as The Doctor. There was no actual provider listed, but the clinic was listed as The Doctor and there was this really bizarre number. I figured it was Hawaii or something, because I don't call them very often and sometimes you'll get like offshore numbers for the international doctors that gave up their cellphone numbers to the insurance company. That was all the information we had received. Basically, I had one try – if this number didn't lead me to the right place, I'd trash the information and send it back to the insurance company. They expected a lot out of us. I imagined searching "The Doctor" wouldn't yield a whole lot of helpful results so I didn't really bother. Sometimes you can search John Smith MD and get a decent hit, but this was basically useless.

So I took a swig of coffee before pressing in the numbers and dialing it, my headset firming on my head like a trashy headband.

The ring was weird, but that happened sometimes. Sort of echo-y. Probably a bad connected.

"Hello?" A voice, distinctly British and quite male, answered. He sounded very, very…confused.

"H-hello, my name is Griselda Vrone and I'm calling from Record Keepers. I'm looking for information regarding The Doctor. Is this the correct phone number?"

"Well..uhh…yes, yes I s'pose it is. You said Gris, right?"

"Right. And, sir, might I have your name for documentation?"

"The Doctor."

"You mean you're the doctor at this practice? Might I by chance have a last name."

"I don't-…uh. Smith. John Smith."

Great, a joker. Who was really named John Smith? Come on, at least be original if you're going to mess around with me.

"Thank you, Dr. Smith. I am just calling to confirm some information regarding your practice. I just want to let you know that this call may be recorded for quality and training purposes."

"May be or is?"

"Is. Is this a problem? I can call you from an open line, if you would prefer."

He laughed a little, an odd little chuckle, "No, uhh, no that's fine. What…uhh, what can I do for you, Gris?"

"Is the name of your practice The Doctor?"

"You could say that."

Really? Really? This was going to be one of those calls.

"All right. And what is the address?"

"I…it's a moving clinic, so to speak."

"Do you have a place that you receive mail?"

"No, not as such."

"And is this the best phone number?"

"Yes. It…uhh. How did you get this number, if I you don't mind my asking?"

"Of course not, sir. I would love to answer any questions you have," I smiled into the phone, making sure to sound far less bore or annoyed than I might have actually been. "The insurance company passes on the information they are given on their billing notices."

"Insurance?" He mimicked before saying, "Well…is it on a piece of paper or in your computer?"

"A computer, sir," I responded, raising an eyebrow as I stared at the screen in front of me. Who used paper like that. "And sir, do you have a fax machine?"

"It's…not…working right now, sorry. And you can just call me the Doctor, don't need to bother with formalities like 'sir'."

"Okay, thanks. And. Uh, that's fine. Would you be willing to take down my information so that you might call me back when you have a fax machine or a mailing address?"

"I..uhh..don't know why not," was his response and there was a little bit of rustling, shifting, and then he said, "All right, then."

I gave him our 800 number and my extension. Afterwards, he asked if I had a more direct line and I told him that extension would go right to my desk.

I asked him a few more questions, to which I received increasingly bizarre answers, before I thanked him for his time.

"And Griselda?" he said before I got a chance to say good-bye.

"Yes, Doctor?"

"You may want to run."

Click.