A/N: New chapter! Hope you enjoy! Still dark, it's actually the first of this type of fic that i've published, so please review and let me know what you think! just to reiterate: only the plot is mine, everything else belongs to other people! and WARNING: DARK IMAGERY AND NON CONSENSUAL SITUATION!!
The Doctor took Rose's head gently in his hands, running his fingers carefully over her skull. He felt the split in her scalp over a large bump just above her left ear, and another just behind her right temple. There was a smaller lump on the back of her head where he assumed she had hit her head on the ground at some point, as the skin was abraded and filled with little pieces of gravel and dirt.
He laid her head gently back against the pillow and picked up a pen light, checked her pupil reactions. Her face was one big bruise, puffy and various shades of purple and blue. Her pupils were, as he had suspected, sluggish and slightly different sizes, betraying her concussion.
He put the pen light in his pocket and moved his hands down, carefully feeling her neck, sighing in relief when he confirmed what he had felt in the alley – no spinal damage. Of course, he was going to have to take scans to confirm all of this, but for now, it would do.
He took down a pair of scissors and carefully cut up one sleeve of Rose's blouse through the collar, then the other, lifting the stained, torn cloth gently away from her body. He scowled when he saw the bruising on her ribs, but quickly schooled his face back to loving concern. He glanced up at Rose, who was watching him, her eyes glazed, the medicine whistle held firmly between her lips.
He smiled gently at her, trying to convey all his love and promises to take care of her in that one expression. Looking back down he ghosted his fingers gently over the swelling, so lightly, and he could feel the breaks. Not just cracked ribs, but fully broken ones, several of them slightly displaced.
He lowered his hand to her abdomen, gently palpating. Seeing the bruises and knowing she had been hit with enough force to break ribs had him worried about the very real possibility that she had internal injuries. She stiffened suddenly, flinching away from his gently probing fingers, and he immediately apologized.
"Sorry, Rose, sorry, I know it hurts," he said, gently brushing a lock of hair back from her face. "I have to," he told her, his eyes conveying how much he hated this, hated hurting her, hated that it was necessary. "If something is wrong and I don't find it, it could kill you, all right?" he held her gaze with his. He returned to the area, carefully palpating it before moving on to the next quadrant.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he found only tenderness, no rigidity or guarding, although he knew that that could simply mean a slower forming injury.
He could see that, apart from bruising and abrasions, her legs were fine, and he gently removed the last remains of her torn skirt.
She shivered, and he pulled a blanket from the warmer on the wall, tucking it gently around her.
"Rose, I'm going to run some scans now," he told her, waiting until she acknowledged his words.
He pulled the scanner around the bed and positioned it carefully, then carefully adjusted the settings. It buzzed, then various screens lit up. He turned it so he could stand where he could see her and read the screens at the same time.
The results scrolled across the screen, faster than any human eye would have been able to follow, and the Doctor frowned fiercely.
She did have four broken ribs, two of them displaced, a cracked cheek bone and a hairline fracture to the skull. There was no apparent intra-cranial bleeding though, for which he was grateful. He turned his attention to the scan of her internal organs and frowned. There was some fluid collecting in Morrison's pouch, around her liver, that he would need to keep an eye on but that may well correct itself.
She had a severe concussion from repeated blows to the head, which was what concerned him the most at the moment. He turned to the cabinets and started pulling out medications. There was one check he had left to do, the one he didn't want to, but it was necessary. He didn't want to do it while she was conscious, but he couldn't knock her out until he had taken care of the concussion.
"Rose, I've got to set your ribs before I can do anything else. I've got some medicine that will help them heal faster, in about a week instead of four or five, but that's not going to help if they aren't healing right. I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, but this is going to hurt."
Rose swallowed hard and nodded her acceptance. She winced at the pain this caused in her head and started to close her eyes.
Seeing her lids start to lower, the Doctor brought a gentle hand to her cheek. "Rose, you can't fall asleep right now, I need you to stay awake. You've got a concussion, you mustn't fall asleep right now, understand?" She stared at him, her eyes slightly glazed, then gave the tiniest nod possible.
The Doctor grabbed one of the smaller pieces of equipment, similar in shape to the sonic screwdriver and held it up where Rose could see it. "This will help with the bruising and the swelling, it won't heal it completely but it will speed the healing up dramatically. What I wouldn't give for some nanogenes," he muttered under his breath. "If I speed up the healing too much it can actually kill you, because your body doesn't have the resources necessary to fuel the healing." He kept speaking, flowing from topic to topic randomly as his hands worked.
Rose stiffened at the pain in her chest and struggled to control her breathing. The Doctor was talking, and she latched onto the sound of his voice like a drowning man would grab hold of a rope. He wasn't making much sense, but she wasn't sure if that was what he was saying or her own inability to understand.
Rose had locked her eyes on his face, and didn't seem to be paying any attention to what his hands were doing, which the Doctor thought was probably a good thing. He finished healing the bruising and laid his hand carefully over the area, feeling the ribs pressed unnaturally against the skin. Carefully, oh, so carefully, he applied pressure at just the right place and angle to shift them back where they belonged, his other hand holding Rose's shoulder firmly against the bed to keep her from fighting him.
Rose cried out at the pain blooming in her chest, and instinctively tried to move away from the Doctor's cold fingers. He held her pinned on the bed with one hand while the other pressed against her ribs. Suddenly he released the pressure on her ribs, and most of the pain from them stopped. She took a slow breath, and was startled to taste tears on her lips. The Doctor grabbed a tissue and gently wiped them away.
"I'm sorry, but it had to be done," he told her gently. He picked up the medicine whistle, which had fallen beside her head when she yelled, and placed it back at her lips.
"Thank you," Rose whispered, eyes swimming with more tears. She breathed in short, jagged gasps, and the tears ran from the corners of her eyes and disappeared into her hair at her temples, now that she wasn't thrashing her head to try and escape the pain. The Doctor cupped her cheek gently, smoothing the tears away with his thumb, then turned slightly and grabbed an IV kit.
"This will speed up the healing of your ribs, and your skull, and this one will take care of the concussion," he told her softly as he swabbed her arm and gently inserted the syringe. He also hung a bag of saline and a pack of morphine on a slow drip. He had avoided it earlier because he was worried about it making her drowsy, but she couldn't keep using the penthrane for much longer without risking the side affects.
Taking up the tool he had used to reduce the bruises and swelling on her ribs, he turned it carefully on her abdomen, then her legs and her arms. He came to her face and head last, the whole time keeping up his meaningless prattle. "You don't need this anymore," he told Rose, taking the whistle gently from between her lips. "I put up some morphine, it should have kicked in enough now."
"It has," she whispered softly. She could feel herself shaking slightly, whether she was shivering from the cold or from nerves she wasn't sure. The Doctor was running his tool over her face, frowning slightly in concentration even as he kept up an even, smooth flow of nonsense. He held the tool over one side of her head, then over the other. "I have to clean the back of your head before I can do anything else," he told her softly.
"Okay," Rose replied, her trust and acceptance tearing the Doctor's hearts. This was his fault, he had let her go out where he thought it was safe when he should have known it wasn't, he had lost track of time and not checked on her earlier.
Rose lay quietly and tried to stop the tears that ran from her eyes. She felt so dirty, and stupid. This was all her fault, she had been asking for it, wandering through such a bad area of the town. She had brought this on herself. She gave a slight gasp at the sting of the antiseptic the Doctor was using to clean her head, but forced herself to relax.
Once he had treated everything else, the Doctor sat down beside her, taking one of her hands, with its chipped and torn nails, in his. "Rose," he spoke softly, his tone completely serious. The medicine was working and her head was clearing of the fog that had clouded her mind. She focused on him, slightly nervous with how serious he was being. "I'm sorry, but I have to know. Did he use a condom?"
Rose swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly dry. She thought back, and suddenly she wasn't in the medbay, she was in alleyway and the man was on top of her, his hands pinning her down as his hot breath filled her nostrils and he slammed himself into her again and again. She screamed, but couldn't get any noise out around his hand. She tried to bite him, the pull her arms free, to kick but she couldn't. She screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
