Doctor Who is still not mine. I'll let you know when that changes.

December 25, 2015

Riv had come to sit with me while I was asleep, but from the looks of things he hadn't lasted long before he'd drifted off to sleep too. He always looks about five years younger asleep, and he drools a little. I wiped some of it off his chin very carefully with the sleeve of my gown.

Who wants me dead, Riv? Who did I anger?

I hadn't realized that I'd made any sound, but my friend suddenly snorted and jerked upright, awake and blinking.

"Happy Christmas," I said.

He rubbed his face and said, "Ugh. Drooling again. Happy Christmas. You feeling okay?"

"Sure. I think my heart's working again." I tried to sit up a little, but a sudden sharp pain shot through my shoulder and I swore loudly.

"Not that okay," he commented, moving my pillow so I'd be more comfortable. "Don't hurt yourself because you're so glad to see me, now."

"Get out of here. You were so glad to see me that you fell asleep."

"It's been a long day," he said. "You know it's been almost 24 hours since we tried to start that damn test, and you came and started blowing up the lab?"

Honestly, I'd lost track of time, because I'd been unconscious for most of it. "Riv, what happened? What'd you see?"

"She–you–the other one–"

"I call her Other Me," I said.

"Other You appeared out of nowhere. There was a sizzling sound, like you get when you break apart an electric current. And then, there Other You was. Started yelling as soon as she appeared; can't say I was surprised."

There was no way he didn't flinch when Other Me appeared, so I gave him a skeptical look, which he ignored. "Then she waved at me," he recalled. "There was something on her hand."

"What? Like gum?"

"No. Like writing. An equation, but so smudged I couldn't tell what it was for. Besides, I never really got the hang of all those symbols."

"You didn't see any of it?" I pressed. It could have been my time-travelling equation, or something else that would give me a clue…

"There was an x?"

Almost every physics equation ever written has an x somewhere in it. No help.

"After she hit you–and she hit you hard, Micky. Other You has a mean hook."

"And a mean gun. I can assure you it hurt. What happened then?"

He paused. "Well…she just looked around for a moment, and then Reynolds ran to the tool bench and picked up a crowbar."

"What?"

"Yeah. Other You hit him over the head before he could get in a good swing, though."

"And he didn't go to the hospital?" Seems like he should be in the other room, if Other Me hit him as hard as she hit me.

"No. And Dr. Mason had some burns from an electrical fire, but he didn't come into this hospital either. They're both alright. You're the only one that ended up on a gurney headed to surgery. They had to reconstruct part of your collarbone, did you know?"

"Yeah." Dr. Mason had been in my room today after my heart attack. He had seemed fine, and so had Dr. Reynolds.

It was almost insulting that I was the only one in a hospital bed. If I had gone back in time, I would have made sure that I took down at least two of them with me. However, it was a moot point. I wasn't ever going back in time to stop that test. And how would that affect time, I wonder? Would the test go as planned, and I'd wake up one day with a whole other life in my head? Never remembering what happened in this one at all?

Trying to find equations for that sort of thing is very difficult, and after a few seconds I stopped trying.

"After that," Riv went on, "some of the scientists looked like they were thinking about jumping you–Other You–and so she hit her wrist and vanished."

"Just like that? I can hit my wrist and travel through time? Well, looks like I've been wasting my life with all of those equations and machines!" A little bit heavy on the sarcasm there, but I figured I was allowed to criticize myself.

"She had a device. I might kill to get my hands on it." Riv's voice was low. I assumed he was being facetious.

Before I could reply, someone called out from the hall, "Hello! Sorry, don't mean to interrupt, but I heard that someone needs a doctor."

In the doorway, framed in light, was the strangest-looking man I'd ever seen.

I work with physicists, so when I say that this man looked strange, I mean that he looked very strange. He wore a jacket that looked like something straight from a few decades ago, a white shirt, suspenders with his trousers, and a blue bowtie. His hair, and there was plenty of it, black hair, was smoothed back over his head, and his eyes were light and sharp and bright.

He moved into the room like a bowtie-clad whirlwind, clapping his hands together and looking at my monitors. After him came Rory, giving me a small wave. He pointed at the man and mouthed, 'that's him.'

Riv stared at the man as though he'd never seen anything like him before.

"Well, that looks like it's in order," my visitor said. "I'm the Doctor. That's what everyone calls me."

I shook the hand he offered me. "Micky Summers. And this is my friend James Riddler."

Riv swallowed. "Actually, I was just leaving," he said. "I'll be back tomorrow, Micky. Feel better." He kissed my forehead quickly and left the room; the Doctor's eyes followed him as he left.

"Well, now, Micky," the Doctor said, turning back to me and sitting in Riv's chair with his legs crossed, "you work with time travel, don't you?"

"Do you?"

"Ah, good question," he said. "I do, actually. I work a lot with time travel."

"Are you a physicist?" I wanted to know.

"I'm a lot better than a physicist," he assured me with a gleam in his eye. "Physicists sit around and make up theories about the universe. I go out and see what the universe is really like."

This made me sit up, fast, and then lay back down quickly when my shoulder reminded me, in no uncertain terms, that it didn't want to be moved. I did not care. "You can travel through time? It really works? Forwards and backwards, either direction, as far as you like, without exploding the universe?"

"Not just time. Space too." His glance was sideways and almost sly.

This was something I had to see.

"But let's talk about you. What happened to you? Why are you in the hospital?"

I looked from him to Rory, leaning against the wall. I needed help; if I was going to trust anyone, it might as well be them. "I work for an organization called PITT," I said. "Physicists Invested in Time Travel. I'm the chief engineer, and I signed onto the project five years ago. We're trying to create an operational time machine."

"Five years? And how old are you now?"

"Twenty-five," I said. "I was recruited right out of college. Dr. Reynolds is the head of the project, and he approached me with the offer. It's decent pay, a lot of cloak-and-dagger, and it's absolutely fascinating work. Three months ago, we started testing our machine remotely–using the computer to send it forward in time a few seconds, then a few minutes, then a full hour. Last night was supposed to be our first test with a live subject–my friend Riv, the one that you met."

"Oh, it's definitely Christmas," the Doctor muttered. "So, an operational time machine with its first test, and then what happened?"

"I appeared." His eyebrows raised, and I explained, "A future version of me appeared. This older me stopped the test, apologized to me, and then pulled some sort of bomb out of her pocket and blew up part of the lab."

Both Rory and the Doctor's eyes were steady on my face. "And that isn't even the best part," I said, gaining momentum. "When I try to stop her, she pulls out a gun and breaks my collarbone! Dr. Reynolds finds a crowbar and she hits him too! And then she vanishes just like that, as though the lab's not in flames and the test isn't in a shambles and my computers aren't damaged and I'm not on the floor unconscious! Why would I do that? What would possibly make me destroy my own work?" The more I thought about it, without the painkillers clouding my mind, the angrier I got.

"Once she got here, someone tried to poison her," Rory said quietly. "They tampered with her pain medication, and she went into cardiac arrest."

The Doctor hummed. "Micky. Have you told anyone else that you've been poisoned? Your friend Riv, your boss, anyone besides us?"

Well. Now that I thought about it… "No. You two are the first."

"Why?" It was posed as a question, but the look in his eyes said that he already knew what my answer was going to be.

I hated to admit it. I still trusted Other Me. Despite the fact that she'd acted like a madwoman, I couldn't believe that I would try to destroy everything without good cause.

And if anyone was trying to kill me now, the people in PITT had the most cause. I didn't want to give any of them the heads-up that I was onto them.

I might have told Riv about it. Might have. At least, that was what I told myself. When I looked back at the Doctor, his eyes were sympathetic. He gave me a quick smile before he said, "Well, I'd like a look at this time machine of yours. Let's see if you lot have got anything right about time at last."

My equations were perfect, and I knew it, but there were more important matters. "I would show you, but I can't really get up. And I don't know where the machine is now; Dr. Reynolds told me he moved it."

The Doctor thought for a moment, his face scrunched up, and said, "Well, then, we'll just use my time machine to find your time machine. Shouldn't be too hard; how many time machines do you find wandering around anyway?" He rummaged around in a pocket–and given my previous experiences with that sort of thing, I half-expected him to draw out a gun. Instead, he pulled out a vial of some pink liquid. "Rory told me you were in a lot of pain, so this should last you until we get to the TARDIS to fix you up."

I eyed it, and then eyed him, and looked back at it again. He leaned forward.

"Micky, this is the time where you decide if you trust me or not," he said, very soberly. "I can help you, but only if you trust me and don't ask too many questions. Time gets rather cranky when things like this happen, but we can sort it out if we're very careful."

He didn't look away; he didn't blink. I reached for the liquid without really meaning to. He had those sort of eyes.

"I should warn you," I said, uncorking the vial. "I love asking questions." The pink stuff tasted terrible, but the pain started to fade almost immediately. In a few minutes, I was able to sit up.

Rory, being the good man that he is, volunteered to go distract the hospital's security while the Doctor got me out to his machine, what he called the TARDIS. "Be careful, okay?" I said. "I wouldn't want to have to bail you out of jail, and I doubt your wife would like that either."

He grimaced at the thought, and I giggled. But the Doctor's face was solemn. "We'll have bigger problems than the police to deal with if we don't get you out of here," he told me.

He had a point.

A/N: I'd like to thank Simpa007, Alikai, Time and Fate, Laughy-Taffy the Grape, and iiJoshyBoo for reviewing/alerting. You are all awesome-sauce.

There's a ton of dialogue in this chapter, and I've tried not to make it too choppy. There will be action next chapter, I promise! And more of the Doctor being the Doctor.

If you'd like, leave a review. They are wonderful things.