A/N) There wasn't much I could change for the first part of the narrative for Smith and Jones, but I do promise that the next chapter there will be a lot of differences. This chapter is necessery to keep everything the same in order to set the scene up and introduce Martha to the Doctor and Rose.
Please enjoy!
Chapter One: Smith, Jones and Tyler (part one)
Martha walked in through the double doors of the Royal Hope Hospital, keeping a careful eye on the motorcycle courier that clipped her on the shoulder as he overtook her when she neared the hospital doors. He didn't even stop to apologise, only looking back at her when she had shouted at him. The courier had just stared at her – not even taking off his helmet so that she could see their face. The way he held himself made her shiver. There was something wrong with this man – he didn't seem right. The motorcycle courier turned away from her, walking hurriedly away. Martha shook her head, trying to shake off the unnerving feeling that was building in the pit of her stomach.
She made her way to the locker room where she pulled on her Doctor's coat and placed her bag in her designated locker. She pocketed her phone, putting it on silent so that she could phone her sister and sort out the mess regarding her brother's twenty-first birthday party when she had a spare few minutes. Closing the locker Martha jumped as sparks struck her hand. Odd,she thought, that shouldn't have happened.
She shrugged it off deciding to ignore the oddities that were occurring around her.
"I was all right this morning, then…Oh, I don't know, I woke up, I was all dizzy again, it was worse than when I came in."
Martha stood with the other medical students as the patient, Florence Finnegan, explained her aliments. Mr Stoker, the consultant in charge of the little group, placed his fingers on Miss Finnegan's wrist feeling for her pulse. He looked at his students expectantly.
"Pulse is slightly thready," he analysed, "let's see what Britain's finest might suggest, any ideas?" His gaze fell upon Martha's colleague. "Morgenstern?"
He looked slightly flustered at being picked on. "Uh, dizziness could be a sign of early onset diabetes."
Mr Stoker grimaced. "Hardly early onset, if you'll forgive me, Miss Finnegan, any more ideas, Swales?"
Martha's friend Julia Swales swallowed and suggested: "Could recommend a CT scan?"
"And spend all our money?" laughed Mr Stoker. "Jones?"
"We could take bloods and check for Meniere's disease," said Martha, knowing it was not the answer the consultant was looking for as soon as she suggested it.
Mr Stoker shook his head. "Or we could simply ask the patient," he turned to Miss Finnegan. "What did you have for dinner last night?"
"I had salad."
"The night before?" inquired Mr Stoker.
"Salad again."
He nodded, frowning as he turned back to his medical students. "And salad every night for the past week, contrary to my instructions. Salt deficiency, that's all. Simple, honest salt."
Martha supposed she should have known that as she studied her textbooks whenever she had the chance. The only way she would pass her exams was if she constantly studied. She followed Mr Stoker as he led them out of the female ward on floor six of the Royal Hope Hospital. She ignored what he was saying as her eyes caught sight of the same motorcycle courier that had knocked into her earlier that morning. The courier was standing beside a lift and when it opened, Martha's eyes widened as she saw another black-leather-suited person step out. They were completely identical. She held her breath as they stared at her for just a second before moving off in unison towards the ward she had just exited.
They entered the male ward, walking round the corner to the first bed. As soon as Martha caught sight of the man she stepped back, not believing her eyes. The same man that had come up to her in Chancellor Street and taken off his tie was sitting up in bed. The woman was with him too, sitting on a chair next to his bed.
"Now then, Mr Smith, a very good morning to you, and how are you today?"
"Oh, not so bad. Still a bit, y'know, bleugh."
Mr Stoker continued, now addressing the medical students. "John Smith, admitted yesterday with severe abdominal pains – Jones, why don't you see what you can find? Amaze me."
Feeling quite nervous and confused Martha moved forwards, taking her stethoscope in her hands. She decided to take the plunge and ask why, if he had been admitted yesterday, he had been running around outside this morning. "Well, it wasn't very clever running round outside, was it?"
"Sorry?" John Smith asked.
"On Chancellor Street, this morning, you came up to me and took your tie off. And you were there too," she nodded to the blonde woman. "You were wearing completely different clothes to what you are wearing now – jeans, a t-shirt and a jacket. There wasn't enough time for you to change and get here before me as you went off in another direction."
The man exchanged glances with the woman, who looked worried by Martha's admission. He looked back at her, levelling his gaze.
"Really? Why would I take my tie off?" asked John Smith sounding completely puzzled.
Martha frowned at him clearly unconvinced at his attempt to feign ignorance. "I don't know. You just did."
The man shook his head. "Not me, I was here in bed, you can ask the nurses. Rose has been here since eight o clock this morning. It can't have been us."
"That's weird, cos it looked like you. You don't by chance have identical twins do you?"
"Nope," replied John.
Martha wanted to pursue this further but realised that Mr Stoker was waiting patiently for her to carry out her examination on the patient. "Right." She placed the stethoscope to the left side of his chest.
Ba-boom-baboom-ba-boom.
The pounding of his heart sounded in her ears, but then she noticed the sound of an echo – something that shouldn't be there in a normal person….She looked up at John, who gave her a big smile. She moved the stethoscope over to the right side of his chest and found to her utter astonishment a second heartbeat. This man had two hearts! That was impossible! Maybe she was hearing things…? She swallowed, glancing up at the man who gave her the smallest of winks.
"I weep for future generations, but are you having trouble locating the heart, Miss Jones?" asked Mr Stoker, clearly fed-up with her lack of an answer to the question he had put to her.
She composed herself, trying to ignore the many questions that were floating around her head and faced Mr Stoker, giving a rather shaky answer, which she knew instinctively was not the one he was looking for. "Stomach cramps?"
He seemed disappointed in her and shook his head sadly. "That's a symptom, not a diagnosis," he looked pointedly at her before continuing, "and you rather failed basic techniques by not consulting first with the patient's chart." He leaned forward to collect the blue clipboard which held John Smith's notes and then dropped it on the bed as sparks leapt out, burning the top of his fingertips. "Oh."
"That happened to me this morning," said Martha. A few other of her fellow students muttered the same things. She noticed John Smith and the woman, Rose (?) look at each other, both frowning. There was something strange about those two.
"It is only to be expected," assured Mr Stoker. "There is a thunderstorm moving in, lightning being a form of static electricity, as first proven by… anyone?"
"Benjamin Franklin," said the patient, grinning.
"Correct."
Martha knew that Mr Stoker had been addressing his students. He always put absurd questions to them to check that they had a good calibre of general knowledge. She was pulled out of her thoughts as John Smith began to ramble in the most unconventional way.
"My mate Ben! That was a day and a half, I got rope burns off that kite, didn't I, Rose? And what made that day even worse was that I got soaked!"
"Quite…" Mr Stoker looked unnerved.
The woman, Rose elbowed the patient. "John," she said stubbornly.
He paid no notice to her. "And then, I got electrocuted!"
"Moving on," addressed Mr Stoker, but he muttered to a senior nurse, "I think a visit from Psychiatric would be advisable."
Martha looked over her shoulder and noticed the man giving her an enthused smile. He was a strange one, but there was something about him that she couldn't place her finger on. More importantly, how had no one noticed he had two hearts before? She had briefly looked at his notes when the clipboard had fallen on to his bed – there was no mention of him having two hearts. There was certainly a mystery to this John Smith and Martha Jones intended to find out.
It was during her lunch break that Martha finally decided to call her sister back and discuss the arrangements for the party. Her sister accused her of not taking the problem seriously, especially when she suggested telling Annalise that the buffet was one hundred percent carbohydrate, even though that was a lie on Martha's part – it was a sure-fire way of making Annalise refuse to turn up. Martha glanced out the window watching as heavy rain poured outside.
"What, in this weather? I'm not going out, it's pouring down," responded Martha to her sister's question of meeting up for lunch. "But anyway, I've got this plan, this is what we do…" She turned away from the window, smiled at her friend Julia, and then noticed John Smith hurrying past, conversing with the woman that had sat beside him in the ward. He threw her a look as he passed the room she stood in. She shook her head and continued to explain her plan to her sister. "We tell Dad and Annalise to get there early, about seven thirty, and we get Leo there at the same time so we can do all that birthday stuff, but we tell Mum to get there for about eight thirty, nine, and that gives me time to have a word with Annalise, and maybe I could tell her that..." She trialed off as she realised Julia was looking past her at the window. The expression on her face showed that she was in utter shock.
"What?" asked Martha.
Julia pointed, dumbfounded. "The rain."
"It's only rain," responded Martha, not looking out the window.
Then her sister asked her if she had seen the rain, and Martha turned, stopping dead as her eyes fell upon the rain. It was not trailing down the windows as it was supposed to, but was travelling upwards into the sky. She was completely gobsmacked. She moved forwards placing the palm of her hand on the window, hardly daring to believe what she was seeing. And then….
BANG!
She was flung across the room as the windows filled with solid bright light. Things tumbled from the shelves, smashing around them. She struggled to grab onto something to hold her steady but she could not get a good enough grip. A loud noise was deafening her ears and Martha briefly wondered if she was in the middle of an almighty earth-quake. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.
"What the hell was that?"
"You alright?" asked Julia, helping Martha to her feet.
"Felt like an earthquake or something…"
"Martha, it's night, but it was lunchtime," her friend stammered, fear evident in her voice.
Martha turned her attention to the window and peered out. The Earth hung in space in front of them; the hospital itself sat upon the moon. "It's not night…" confirmed Martha.
"But it's got to be, it's dark," said Julia.
"We're on the moon, we're on the bloody moon," muttered Martha.
And then all hell broke loose.
Martha tried to remain calm as she ran through the hospital swiftly followed by Julia. All around her hysteria was occurring as patients began to scream in fear of the unknown. People were sobbing, grabbing hold of the nurses and doctors, demanding to know what had happened. She rushed forward, gently pushing patients back so she could wean herself through the mass panic to get to someone in authority. Then, Florence Finnegan calmly stepped out in front of her, asking if she had seen Mr Stoker. Quickly, Martha explained that she couldn't help her and continued her journey forwards until she came to the men's ward where she rushed to the window and peered out, hands pressed to the glass.
She turned back to the panicked patients, looking round for someone in charge but unable to find anyone who wasn't worried, took matters into her own hands. "All right everyone, back to bed! We've got an emergency, but we'll sort it out. Don't worry." She looked back out the window, wonder in her eyes. "It's real…it's really real…" She reached to open the window, but Julia grabbed her arm.
"Don't! We'll lose all the air!"
Martha frowned. "The windows are not exactly air-tight. If the air was gonna get sucked out, it would've happened straight away, but it didn't, so how come?"
Suddenly, the curtains round a bed were pulled back, revealing John Smith dressed in a blue suit. Rose stood next to him. "That is a very good point! Brilliant in fact. What was your name?" he asked.
"Martha," she replied.
"And it was Jones, wasn't it?" He looked for confirmation, which Martha gave him with a quick nod of her head. "Right then, Martha Jones, question is: how are we still breathing?"
"But we can't be" muttered Julia, tears streaming down her face.
"But obviously, we are, so don't waste my time. Martha, what have we got? Is there a balcony on this floor or a verandah, or…?"
"By the patient's lounge, yeah," she replied.
"Fancy going out?" asked John Smith.
"Okay."
"We might die…" he intimidated.
"We might not," she retorted, clearly interested in pushing him as far as he could go.
"Good," his eyebrows rose in approval, and Martha got the feeling that he was auditioning her for something. "Come on. Not her," he pointed at Julia, "she'd only hold us up." He walked swiftly out the ward and Martha followed. The blonde woman nodded at her.
"I'm Rose. Rose Tyler."
"Martha Jones, though I'm sure you've gathered that."
"I did," said Rose. "You seem quite calm in a situation like this. It's not an everyday occurrence to be stranded on the moon."
"Oi! Stop dawdling!" shouted John, who had been following the signs to the Patients Lounge and was waiting, arms crossed in front of him.
"For someone with abdominal pains John seems perfectly alright," mused Martha as she jogged to reach him.
"There was nothing wrong with him in the first place," explained Rose. "And his name isn't John Smith. He's the Doctor."
Martha didn't have time to reply before they both reached the Doctor, who was standing by the doors. He reached for the handle, looking expectantly at Martha.
"Are you sure about this?"
She didn't reply so he opened the door and stepped onto the balcony. Martha found that she could still breathe. She took one gulp of air and then exhaled. "How does that work?"
"Just be glad it does," the Doctor mused, moving forwards to place his hands on the balcony and to stare out at the terrain of the moon.
Martha stood next to him on his left, with Rose on her left. It was a beautiful sight to behold – the surface of the moon. The Earth hung in silence before them and then it hit her – overwhelming grief as she thought of the family that she might not see again. It was her brother's birthday. "I've got a party tonight," she mused. "My brother's twenty-first . Oh, my mother's gonna be…" she trailed off, already knowing that it would be pointless to cry. There had to be a way out of this situation.
"You okay?" the Doctor asked, eying her.
"Yeah," she nodded, pushing down the surge of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her.
"Sure?"
"Yeah."
"Do you want to go back in?"
Martha stared at him as if he was mad. "No way! Cos…I mean, we could die any minute, but all the same…" a faint smile flickered on her face. "It's beautiful."
"You really think so?" he asked, smiling gently.
"How many people want to go to the moon? And here we are!"
"Standing in the Earthlight." He sounded quite serious and concerned about their situation. The sudden change of his voice made Martha believe that he might have a clue as to what had happened. She decided to take the plunge and ask him what he thought, however he turned the question back to her, wanting to know her own opinions as to why the hospital had been transported to the moon.
The only answer Martha could come up with was: "Extraterrestrial. It's got to be. I dunno, a few years ago that would have sounded mad, but these days...that spaceship flying into Big Ben. Christmas Day. And those Cybermen things, that battle in the sky…" she paused, remembering her cousin. "I had a cousin, Adeola. She worked at Canary Wharf. She never came home."
"I'm sorry," the Doctor whispered.
"We were there, in the battle…I lost my mother, I'll never see her again. At least now she gets to lead a normal life," said Rose, wistfully.
Martha could see the pain etched into the girl's features and she wondered what had happened. She was on the verge of asking when the Doctor prevented her.
"You made your choice, Rose, and I made mine," said the Doctor.
Martha noted that he sounded disappointed, almost sad, but there was something alien about him. "Who are you?"
"I'm the Doctor."
Martha smiled a little, despite the situation that they were in. If he was insistent that his name was 'The Doctor' she would play along with it for now. Humour him, you might say. She replied, her voice shaking a little: "Me too, if I ever pass my exams." She looked expectantly at the girl. "And you are?"
"I told you, my name's Rose. Rose Tyler. That's my proper name. The Doctor doesn't have a name – he just goes by "The Doctor"."
Martha's eyebrows rose. Who were these people? What were they doing in the hospital? "Well, I'm certainly not calling you 'Doctor'. Far as I'm concerned you have to earn that title."
He turned to regard her, brushed a hand through his hair and bent down to the floor. He picked up a loose pebble and shot her a grin. "Well, I'd better get started then. Let's have a look, what do we have here?" He threw the pebble out in front of him which impacted against an invisible shield that seemed to be erected around the hospital.
"So that's how the air is being kept in," whispered Rose in amazement.
"A force-field then?" suggested Martha, but a then a terrible thought struck her, one that would hold problems for the entire hospital if they didn't figure out something soon. "But if it's keeping the air in – then this is the only air we've got. What happens when it all runs out?"
"How many people in this hospital?" the Doctor asked urgently.
Martha shrugged. "I don't know any concrete figures – if I had to guess, about a thousand?"
The Doctor pursed his lips, his eyes wide with horror as he contemplated what would happen if the air ran out. "One thousand people all suffocating."
"Why would anyone do that?" asked Martha, horrified by his admission.
Suddenly there was a loud, humming noise coming from above. The Doctor traded glances with Martha, a grin spreading across his face. "Ask them yourself! Heads up!"
Martha watched in fascination as three tube-shaped spaceships descended onto the moon's surface. They were the size of office blocks, studded with levels of lights. The ships landed on small struts that somehow could take their weight. They landed half a mile away. Dust shot up in the air as the landing disturbed the particles that lay on the surface.
"Oh my god," whispered Rose. "Doctor, who are they?"
He stayed silent, watching with attentive eyes.
Then a landing ramp appeared and figures dressed in grey suits and heavy helmets began a march towards the entrance of the hospital. They marched in line with one another, perfectly in unison.
"Aliens, real proper aliens!" said Martha, gripping the side of the veranda tightly to steady herself.
"Doctor? What are they?" asked Rose.
"Judoon, they're Judoon," he said.
Suddenly, he grabbed Martha's hand. "Come on!"
"Where are we going?" shouted Martha in response as the Doctor pulled her along. Rose followed behind her, jogging lightly to keep up.
"To the reception," he replied, looking over his shoulder, smiling widely at her. He had the flair of adventure in his eyes. "We need to find out exactly why the Judoon have taken this hospital; it's the only way for us to get it back on Earth, to its rightful place."
With that he took off, letting go of Martha's hand. "Does he do this all the time?"
"Yeah; it is not a good idea to keep him waiting. You do not want to see him angry," replied Rose. She shivered and Martha wondered if the girl was afraid of this 'Doctor'. "Which way to the reception?"
The Doctor was out of sight and there were no signs at hand to point them in the right direction. Martha smiled lightly. "Come on, I'll show you. Just follow me."
Together, the two girls ran off down the corridor, towards the beginning of an adventure that would bind them together for life.
To be continued….
Please let me know what you think! Thank you for the reviews.
Chapter Two will continue the Smith and Jones narrative. Will hopefully be posted next week.
Until next time,
magic-doctor-writer
