In no time at all, John found himself sitting in his study with Joan running her fingers gently through the back of his head, checking for any injuries he might have sustained during his magnificent tumble down the stairs. Her fingertips brushed over a particularly sensitive spot, and he groaned in pain.

"Oh, stop it! I get boys causing less fuss than this." Joan admonished, picking through the last the unchecked hairs at the nape of his neck.

"I know, but it hurts." John reminded her, wincing a bit. Suddenly, the door to the infirmary flew open and Rose rushed in, her face a mask of concern and her long blonde hair coming out of her bun.

"Is he alright?" She asked, panting and out of breath. Joan frowned at her from behind John's head.

"Excuse me, Rose. It's hardly good form to enter a master's study without knocking." She said with more than a little distaste coloring her words. Rose narrowed her eyes and retreated to the door.

"Sorry, right. Yeah. Fine." She opened the door, and knocked three times. Then she quickly ran back to John's side. "But is he alright? They said you fell down the stairs, sir."

"No, it was just a…tumble, that's all." John said, trying to cover up his obvious carelessness. Rose looked up at Joan.

"Have you checked to see if he's broken anything?" Joan stiffened, rising to her full height before Rose.

"I have, and I daresay I know a lot more about it than you." Rose took a step back, remembering her job for an instant. She bowed her head.

"Sorry." Rose said, with a little more than just hurt feelings in her tone. "I'll just…tidy up your things." Rose walked to his desk slowly, kicking herself for being so bold. 'You idiot!' she thought to herself. 'You could have ruined everything!'

"I was just telling Nurse Redfern—"John's soothing voice brought her out of herself punishment. "Matron, about by dreams. They are quite remarkable tales. Um, I keep imagining that I'm someone else. And that I'm hiding." Rose looked at him cautiously. Just exactly how much of their life did he remember?

"Hiding?" Joan asked inquisitively. "In what way?"

"Um…almost every night—"He broke off, chuckling and clearly a bit nervous. "This is going to sound silly—"

"Tell me." Joan chirped, and Rose's stomach turned inside out with jealousy. John licked his lips before continuing.

"I dream, quite often, that—that I have two hearts." Rose's blood froze. If he could remember that, then what else could he remember? His regenerations? Gallifrey and the Time War? Her hands began to shake with horror as she realized that he could remember the night she told him of her feelings. The night he had walked away with fear and guilt in his eyes. Thinking back on it, Rose recalled seeing something else there, too. Something different in his fathomless eyes that she had never seen there before, something she couldn't quite identify.

"I can be the judge of that." Joan's voice grabbed Rose and roughly jerked her back to reality and out of her thoughts. "Let's find out." Joan reached into her medical bag and brought out a stethoscope. Rose's hands clenched at her sides as Joan put her hand under John's jacket and placed the stethoscope over the left side of his chest. And even though Rose sent a silent prayer to whatever gods existed in the vast universe that it wasn't true, she could have sworn that she heard John sigh contentedly and relax under Joan's touch. She listened for a few moments, and then moved it over to the right side of his chest, where it lingered for an instant.

"I can confirm the diagnosis." Joan announced, taking the stethoscope out of her ears. "Just one heart, singular." They shared a smile and Rose's single, fragile, all-too-human heart shattered into a thousand pieces.

"I have, um, written down some of these dreams in the form of fiction." John said, a slight blush playing across his cheeks. "Um…not that it would be of any interest." Joan turned and smiled at him.

"I'd be very interested." John's face lit up.

"Really?" She nodded. He stood up quickly, crossing over to his desk and picking up a small, leather bound book. "Well, I've never actually…shown it to anyone before." He opened the book to its first page and handed it to Joan.

"'The Journal of Impossible Things'" Joan read out, and then proceeded to flip through the first few pages. From Rose's position on the other side of the desk, she could make out the Doctor's familiar messy handwriting and hastily drawn pictures, and she smiled in spite of herself. 'Some things stayed the same, then.' She thought. "Just look at these creatures!" Joan exclaimed. "Such imagination!" John looked over her shoulder at the book, smiling with her at his work.

"It's become quite of a hobby." John said a grin of proud satisfaction on his face. Joan continued to turn the pages and admire his drawings.

"It's wonderful." She breathed. She turned to a page close to the middle of the book and her eye brows rose in amusement. "Quite an eye for the pretty girls." She smirked. Rose craned her neck to see which of his former companions he had drawn that had caught Joan's eye. After a few seconds of stretching she finally got what she had wanted, and the result stopped her heart. It was a drawing of her, from a year ago. He really was a gifted artist, even as a human. John looked at the drawing of Rose that Joan was pointing to. Clearly he recognized her, because his eyes went wide and he started stammering for an excuse as to why his serving maid's picture would be in his book.

"Oh, her? Oh she's….she's no one." Rose's shattered heart burst into flames. She had to turn her head away to hide the tears gathering in her eyes. "She's just a…invention. A figment of my imagination." John ran his hands worriedly through his hair, a nervous habit the Doctor had always had, and it earned Rose her reward for chancing to look again. The first of many tears fell down her face, and she quickly got a brush and pretended to be scrubbing his floor to hide her tears.

"I—I call her… I call her…" He stumbled around in his head for an answer, and finally resigned to tell Joan the truth. "Her name is Rose." He said defeatedly. Joan went rigid, and her hands gripped the book even tighter. Rose paused in her scrubbing to see if she had heard correctly.

"Well." Joan said brusquely. "That's not much of a surprise." John looked at her, eyes wide. "You told me that your parents took her in after her mother died, correct? So you have grown up with her. It's no wonder you dream about her…" Joan's voice trailed off, and Rose couldn't have been happier. She didn't know how much more of Joan's apparent hatred of her she could take before she snapped. Joan turned the page again.

"Ah! That's the box, the blue box." John said. Rose looked up, ignoring her red, puffy eyes for the moment. "It's always there, like…um…like a magic carpet!" John exclaimed, happy to be able to change the subject. "This funny little box that transports me to faraway places."

"Like a doorway?" Joan asked, once again eager to hear about his other life. John nodded, thankful that she hadn't walked out on him. She had begun to mean so much to him in these past two months.

"I sometimes wonder what life would be like if stories like this were true. If only… But, it was just a dream!" He chuckled lightly.

After the bell had rung, Rose waited until John's back was turned to run as fast as she could after Joan.

"Ma'am!" Rose shouted as she dashed after Joan. "That book—"Rose began, but Joan cut her off stuffily.

"Oh, I'll take good care of it, you don't need to worry. He did say I could read it." She reminded Rose, her eyes burning holes into Rose's face. As she turned to walk away, Rose scrambled for a reason for her not to keep it.

"But it's silly, that's all." Joan turned back around to look incredulously at Rose. "Just stories." Rose insisted, holding her hand out for the book. Joan frowned at it, and Rose slowly drew it back to her side.

"Who is he, Rose?" Rose looked at her for a minute, unsure of whether or not she should answer that question.

"I—I'm sorry?" She finally stuttered out. Joan sighed and rolled her eyes.

"It's like he's left the kettle on! Like he knows he has something important to get back to but he can't remember what." Rose laughed nervously.

"Oh, that's just him." She smiled a timid smile.

"You arrived with him, didn't you?" Rose nodded. "He found you employment here at the school. Isn't that right?" Joan interrogated. Rose nodded, going into story mode.

"Our families were close, and so we always spent time together as children. His parents took me in after…" she trailed off. Joan was such a sweet woman, and she had never done anything to Rose on purpose. But she had to stay secret, for the Doctor's sake. "After my mother died." A thought came out of Rose's mouth in the next moment before she could stop it. "We were childhood sweethearts, actually." Joan eyes widened in shock and surprise.

"And now…you're his maid?" Joan asked. Rose could tell she had gone too far with the lie. Scrambling for an excuse she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "That was before my mother passed away. When his parents took me in, I had to work as a maid in their house to pay for my schooling. H-his father didn't approve of his son falling in love with a maid, so he forbad it. Things have never been the same with us since, but he was kind enough to get me a job here. His parents are dead now too, and I have nowhere else to go." Joan lowered her eyes.

"He's never mentioned you two being childhood sweethearts to me before." Joan retorted. Rose kicked herself mentally. 'Why didn't I think of that? Of course he wouldn't have mentioned any of that. It never happened! In either life…'

"He doesn't like to talk about it…" Rose finally answered. "He told me before my mother died, that when we were of age…" Rose trailed off, and then regained the courage to finish her statement, hoping that this would be enough to keep Joan away from him until they could leave. "When we were of age, he would marry me." Rose finished, bowing her head against the tears that were coming from her wishful thinking.

"Well, in light of the fact that you can no longer be together, I would be more careful. If you don't mind my saying," Joan said harshly. "You seem a bit too familiar with him to be just his maid. Best remember your current position." And with that said, she turned on her heel and left Rose alone in the hallway.

"Yes, ma'am." Rose replied in a whisper. She walked as quickly as she could back to John's study, locked the door, and let the events of the past hour wash over her. Her ragged breaths soon turned into sobs, as the awful reality of the situation struck her. The Doctor was human and falling hard for Nurse Redfern. She was nothing to him, a serving girl, property. Maybe the Doctor had loved her, in some part of his hearts, even if it was just a little bit or as a friend. But this wasn't the Doctor. This was John Smith, and she was his maid. Nothing more.