AN: Longest chapter yet! Big thanks to Jael, who without knowing it at the time, taught me what a plaster was haha.
I hope you enjoy your stay in the Lausanne Memorial Hospital.
"This is me, speaking French. Cause I don't know it well enough and anyway, it'd be a lot of translations at the end."
Chapter Six
The first time Rose woke up it was only long enough to be aware of a loud humming, the acidic scent of burning and that she was cold despite the waves of heat washing over her.
Then blackness took her away again.
x
The second time, it was to the sensation of being carried. She wasn't cold anymore, but her limbs felt heavy, her chest burned and her eyes refused to open. And there were voices talking around her. They echoed in her mind. She strained to listen, though they hurt her head.
"We can't, Mickey. You know we can't." Chris! Can't what? Her thoughts were muddled, she couldn't hold onto any.
"I know. I know, okay! But she's hurt. You're hurt-"
"It's nothing. Mum's-"
"You're ankle, Chris. It's not supposed to be purple and puffy."
"I'm fine."
She was sinking again, the voices were starting to sound farther and farther away.
"Like hell you are Christian-!"
She wanted to ask what happened. Wanted to make sure her sons were okay, wanted to-
x
The third time was for longer. She was laying on her back on…hay? She struggled with her eyes, trying to pry them open; it hurt to move her head. What happened!
It was darker, evening maybe? She rolled her eyes as far as she could to look around. No, just inside somewhere.
She moved her hands experimentally. Not bad, but her fingers felt stiff.
"C-" she swallowed, tried clearing her throat. "Chris?" Her voice was low and raspy. Smoke inhalation, a voice in her mind, one that sounded like the Doctor, provided.
It all came back to her then. Her husbands funeral, the vacation, the storm, the zeppelin. The research facility. And, finally, the crash.
Somewhere in the distance a horse snuffled.
"Mickey?" Tears swam in her eyes as she tried to take a deep breath.
Coughing interrupted her halfway though, little splatters of blood peppered her chin and the hay under her cheek. Pain tore through her chest; it was enough to send her back into unconsciousness.
x
The final time she woke up, her first instinct was to panic.
She couldn't move; there was something over her mouth and a beeping coming from next to her that increased in rate. Captured? But by who…or what?
Her eyes took a minute to adjust to the light, and when they did a new kind of panic swept though her.
The walls were white with flowery wallpaper bordering the ceiling, a small television hung in the corner next to a set of windows that had their blue curtains drawn mostly shut. A soft ray of light fell across her legs, glistening, golden and new: Dawn.
A chair sat under the telly, complete with occupant. The man was curled up, awkwardly folded into-and half spilling over-its unforgiving plastic contours. His face was turned to the wall. Rose squinted but couldn't tell which of her sons it was; he was wearing unremarkable navy scrubs.
A hospital. The crash… Mickey-Chris! Oh god… No. They're alright. One is right there, not six feet from you. Breath Rose. The other is probably just in the loo…
She took a shaky breath. The thing over her mouth was a breathing mask, she realized, feeling the clean oxygen flowing into her mouth and nose. She unconsciously took a deeper breath. The beeping was her heart monitor. It was going fast; she took another deep breath to calm herself.
Panicking is only helpful when you need to start a distraction- or when you tell your mother-in-law her daughter's pregnant and that someone should declare said daughters office a historical landmark.
The Doctor had told her that when they were captured on Christmas-again-and she was worried about their unborn sons. Rose shook her head and brought her mind away from the past.
She looked over at the heart monitor: slower, better.
But a hospital.
She'd have preferred it be alien abductors.
"Oh, this is not good," her voice came out mumbled from behind the mask. The sound, however low and muffled, woke the sleeping man.
"Mum!" Rose looked over at him again, and tried to smile. Mickey. The smile dropped as he came nearer and she took in the bruises that patterned his jaw and temple, the butterfly-bandaged cut on his eyebrow. The way he was walking told her they weren't the only bruises.
It was only then, as she became more aware of her surroundings and self, that she felt the desperation and relief that emanated from her son. And finally, she felt the pain, both hers and at least mentally, his.
Where's Chris? Oh God, let him be alright. I can't lose one of my babies…
She lifted the breathing mask and asked, still somewhat hoarsely, "where's your brother?"
Mickey sat on the side of her bed. "He's getting a brace for his ankle, they wanted to x-ray it first, make sure it wasn't a hairline fracture and just a bad sprain," he said as he swept her hair away from her eyes. "He'll be moved into the room right next door when they finish him up."
"What about you? Are you alright?" She tried to sit up and look him over but ended up hissing in pain. Talking too, was starting to hurt her. She couldn't work up the saliva.
"I'm fine, Mum. Chris'll be fine. It's you we're worried about," he pushed her gently back down. "You… Mum, you're in bad shape. Real bad. I talked to the doctor-"
Roses breath hitched. Mickey didn't notice, or pretended not to.
"He said you have a grade 3 concussion." His hand gently touched a spot on her head, near the back. "There was pressure, he said, on your brain. They had to drain it." Roses hand slowly lifted to feel the spot: gauze, not hair. "They had to shave a bit off. I already bought you a scarf from the gift shop, while you were in surgery."
Rose struggled to say something, but her throat was to dry and raw. Tears swam in her eyes. Whether they were from the pain or everything that's happened, she wasn't sure.
Mickey stood and poured her some water from the ugly off-blue pitcher. He helped Rose take a few sips, which she regretted doing as it burned her throat, but it was wet and cool.
He set the cup on the bedside table and resumed his seat on the bed.
"You shouldn't have brought me here, Mick. What happens when-" a cough interrupted her.
"Shh, it's alright, Mum." He soothed her, arranged her pillows better. "We had no choice. You weren't waking up, and your breathing was… it was wheezy and wet sounding. You started coughing up blood, Mum." He paused and closed his eyes.
Rose vaguely remembered hay and coughing and pain; she cautiously took another deep breath. It didn't hurt as much. That could be the medication, though.
Mickey went on, "You had blood in your lungs. From when the cabin collapsed on you. A- A small puncture from one of your ribs. It's a small break, nothing to bad. You were still unconscious when they decided to do the surgery. They couldn't wait any longer for you to wake up. For you to be- for you to be stable."
Rose lightly toughed her chest. She was so tired. But they had to leave, they couldn't stay there. Pain washed off Mickey, and Rose saw tears in his eyes.
"It was spotty for while, Mum," he cleared his throat and put on a smile: Rose knew it was fake, that he was really shaken. "They fixed you right up, though. And we wont be here long enough for them to learn anything."
"But admitting papers, and history-" That was the big issue now.
"All forged. We've done this before, Mum. You don't have to worry about anything but getting well enough to leave." He kissed her cheek before replacing her mask. "I'm gonna go check on Chris. He should be done by now. Would have been done sooner but he wouldn't let the doctors and nurses near him until I was checked over and you were taken care of. So sleep, rest. Let it make you better." The 'it' was left unsaid, but Rose knew what-who-he meant. If only it worked that way.
Then he was out the door, and Rose was left watching a muted telly playing the news of Vitex Heirs' Holiday Horror.
She wasn't sure how long she watched the silent broadcast of the wreckage. It felt like hours.
The captions eventually told her, in French, 2 bodies were found, both dead.
The pilots, Rose thought with a pang. Roy and Esteban had been their company pilots for nearly ten years. They never asked questions about her and the twins, or about the odd things that personally happened to the family when London or Cardiff was threatened by aliens.
They were good men. I have to tell their families.
She let the tears go unchecked and silent down her cheeks as she watched, almost wishing she didn't speak French well enough to understand.
'The whereabouts of the Vitex heiress and heirs,' the captions read, 'are as yet unknown. No other bodies have been recovered from the wreckage…'
Rose hiccupped-it hurt her chest-and watched in numb, morbid, fascination until the combination of her injuries, medication and emotional trauma blissfully sent her back to sleep.
She dreamed of flowing gold and harmonized singing.
oOo
A person came in hours-days-weeks-later, walking softly but with confidence, so it was the gentle movement of the breathing mask being lifted off that woke Rose.
This time she kept her heartbeat steady, rhythmic, just like she trained herself to do. Calm deep-sleep breathing as she assessed the new variable in her unfamiliar environment.
Rose opened her eyes only when she heard a dull click of a clipboard being taken off her bed- A nurse.
She watched as the nurse checked her heart monitor then made a note on the chart. She closed her eyes again as the nurse changed the I.V. bag.
When the door snicked shut Rose opened her eyes again and stared at the ceiling. The pain had dampened to a throbbing ache that didn't actually go away. It stayed there, under her skin, in her bones; she could almost get used to it.
The ceiling was tiled and she concentrated on the spider-web cracking in one, tracing with her eyes as it curved and turned. It almost seemed to spell out words.
"A hospital, Rose. They're not alien abductors. You can drop your guard," she reassured herself, repeating it a few times in her head for good measure. But she knew her guard wouldn't be dropped. To many years of Torchwood; the training wasn't only skin deep anymore.
The ironic thing was that Rose didn't actually hate hospitals. For a while she was jittery about them- but then who wouldn't be after being trapped with cat-nun-nurses and a psychotic trampoline trying to use you as a puppet?
Nowadays she's indifferent to them at worst, and slightly awed by them at best. She saved lives from alien threats at Torchwood, but these-may she stress fully human-physicians and nurses save hundreds on practically a daily basis. They're the defenders of Earth, not her.
So what she had to do next didn't sit well with her.
She had blood taken, the plaster on her inner elbow was a dead giveaway. She couldn't let that blood be further analyzed then it no doubt already had been.
Years of quite research, volunteering blood samples every half-decade or so, hadn't yet isolated the anomaly that stopped her and the twins' ageing.
And while the possibility of the hospital finding anything was remote- Torchwood had been looking for anything unusual and hadn't found it- she still couldn't run that risk.
She'd have to destroy her sample. That meant breaking into the lab and locating it.
Rose felt the needle in her right hand and looked over at the heart monitor. First though, it meant getting out of her room.
They just changed the I.V. bag and checked on her, so she'd have a few hours. Two, maybe three.
Would they bring her breakfast? Rose thought of the burn of water going down her throat and knew the answer. No, she's more then likely she'd be on a strictly liquids diet until her throat healed. Or soup.
She could go for a bowl of cream of cheddar… and some tea. She'd kill for some tea.
Focus Rose!
She reached behind her and hit the nurse call button. It didn't take long before the same woman from before came in. Now that Rose could really look at her, she noticed she was slightly plump, in her mid thirties maybe 36, red hair and her French was accented enough to tell Rose that it wasn't her native language.
"Miss LeNonè! It's good to see you awake," she said, smiling.
"My…" Rose trailed off, wondering what her sons were on the paperwork. She covered it with a cough.
"Oh! I bet you're wondering how your cousins are, aren't you dear?" The nurse, gave her a reassuring smile and didn't wait for Rose to answer. "They're right next door. How about I tell them you're awake, hmm?" The nurse gave Rose's arm a motherly pat and swept out.
Rose laid in her bed and could only stare at the empty space the nurse used to be, her cough turned into a real one. She managed to take a sip of water just as the door opened again.
"Ah, Jeanne! You're awake!" Mickey said in French, swanning in like his father used to. Like everything was brilliant. Rose stared at her son, pressed her lips together to keep the laughter in.
Mickey closed the door behind him and laughed at the look on Rose's face. The relief that floated off of him told her that he'd been waiting for her to wake up, and maybe even worried that she wouldn't again.
"Jeanne Lennon, Mickey? Really?" Rose managed to say, though she was trying hard not to laugh.
"LeNonè, actually," Mickey corrected, but his grin, she could see, was cheeky. "We," he gestured between himself and the wall across from Rose's bed and subsequently Chris's room, "are Castor and Pollux Marceau."
Rose shook her head, amused. "Which is which?" She asked, managing to raise her bed to a more sitting position. She winced as it moved her ribs.
Mickey swept his hair out of his eyes. "I'm Castor," his said, his grin turning devious. "Chris filled out you're paperwork. I got to do ours."
Mickey made a tisking sound as he gently sat on the edge of Rose's bed. "He should know better, Mum. So it's his own fault he got a crap name."
"Bet we called him Paul though, growin' up," Rose said, already starting to swing her legs carefully over the side.
"We did- Oi, what you think you're doing?" Mickey was up and in front of her in a flash.
"I need your help, Mickey." Rose used his shoulder to help her stand. Her ribs screamed; she grit her teeth through the pain. The heart monitor cords were stretched tight. "I have to get into the lab," she waited for the dizzy head rush to pass. Her other hand reached out for the I.V. pole. "They got a sample of my blood in there- Maybe Chris's too. We can't risk it."
"I know. But why don't you let me handle it, okay?" He held her arms to keep her steady.
"I need you here, Mick. I have to do this," she took slightly deeper breath, and when it didn't cause her to cough she grinned. "One way or another we have to get out of here. Today." Her hand swept to the telly, now playing an advert for shampoo. "They're going to be looking for us harder soon. Pictures on the news, Mickey."
"The doesn't explain why you have to do it. You should be resting!" He closed his eyes. The bruise on his temple was purple and mottled on his pale skin. Rose lifted a hand to lightly run her fingers over it. His eyes opened on hers, steady and emotion-laced. "You were really hurt, Mum. The safety deployed, but not-" Roses hand slipped to cover his mouth.
"I'm fine rabbit, I have to do this," she softly said, hoping the old nickname and her desperate need would convince him. She let her hand fall to her side.
Mickey looked at her a moment longer then hung his head. "Alright Jeanne, what do I have to do?"
oOo
Rose managed to make it to the loo without getting dizzy, which prompted a victory dance in her head as she slid the I.V. needle out of her hand and put it in the sink.
A tiny piece of tissue stopped the dots of blood and Rose felt almost free again; she unconsciously scratched the places on her chest where the heart monitor's two cords had connected to her.
She'd avoided looking at herself the entire time, afraid of what she'd see, but now she forced herself to look in the mirror. What she saw she half expected, but it still caught her by surprise.
She had a small cut on her cheekbone just under her left eye, bandaged like Mickey's. Her face from jaw to cheekbone was a hazy yellow and green.
Like that fancy mustard at the Ritz
She wanted to laugh at that, needed to laugh at it, but it died in her throat. Her hand was ghosting the bruise- her left hand. She hadn't noticed until then, why hadn't she noticed!
Tears rolled down her cheeks for the second time that day as she looked at the mirror image of her bare ring finger.
Without the I.V. pole, her trip back into the room was more careful, precise. One foot in front of the other, hand on the door jam.
Mickey was lounging in her bed flipping channels, her heart monitor attached to him.
"Mickey?" Her voice wavered and hell: You're stronger then this!
Her son sat up, concerned. Rose held her hands up to keep him from fully getting up. He was half sitting, already poised to spring up, heart monitor be damned, if she was about to pass out.
"Mum? What is it? Are you alright? Do I have to call a-"
"No! No." She couldn't heart that word, not then. "D'you know where my rings are?"
Mickey let out a long breath, tense muscles relaxing under his scrubs. "Yeah." His hand reached under the navy top, slowly pulling a chain over his head. Rose was frozen by the door as it pulled free. She'd forgotten about that too.
He held it out to her and for a while she could only stare.
"This was in your pocket. They gave it to me when they were changing you into your gown for surgery. Your rings too." Mickey's soft voice broke the moment.
She slowly walked forward, hand out stretched. Her rings hung on a tarnished silver chain, clanking against an nondescript silver key.
Once it was in her hand, her fingers scrambled to get the catch open and remove the rings.
"They shouldn't…" she trailed off as the whole thing fell out of her shaking fingers and onto the bed. A sob escaped her. She shook her head, knowing Mickey was sitting up and about to help her, sooth her again. She didn't need to be soothed, she needed to get the rings away from the key.
"I have to get to the lab," she said. Taking as deep a breath as she felt save doing, she grabbed her engagement and wedding rings and slipped them on. She looked at the key again.
"It's for the other Dad's TARDIS, isn't it?" Rose closed her eyes, biting back the 'That ones not your father' that wanted to come out automatically.
"I have to get to the lab," she repeated. "They'll be checkin' on me in a few hours." She scooped up the key, clutching it in her right hand; away from her rings.
"The wardrobe, there in the corner," Mickey said after a few seconds of silence, pointing to the corner opposite the telly. "The bags we managed to save and could carry. One's yours. Should be clothes in it, if you actually packed it like I told you too for once."
She hadn't, but she let his mock-exasperated tone break the tension. Plus, she wasn't about to tell him she had never packed like he told her too, and the chances were quite good that she never would. Sensible packing wasn't a trait Mickey got from either of his parents.
She turned, walked the few steps to the wardrobe and opened the doors.
She could feel Mickey watching her, looking after her, making sure she wasn't going to break. She remembered a time when she took care of them. When she was a parent and told them what to do.
Now though, now their roles have been reversed. She wasn't very sure how she felt about that.
Her deep red bag sat off to the right, next to a worn green one stamped with Chelsea Football Club- Chris's. She remembered buying that for him when he was 16, thinking at the time 'that should be blue'. On the other side of that was a an overstuffed Armani knockoff- Mickey's. The briefcase with the Lewisham Research Facility hadn't made it.
She had to squat down to pick up her bag, her ribs making it agony to bend.
It was scratched. The faux leather had a ragged line cross the front. Her fingers traced it.
"It was stuck under part of the wall. Took a good tug to get it free," Mickey quietly said. "I looked for the briefcase from the solicitor, it was mostly empty. We never put the papers back in it after we looked though them." Rose closed her eyes in thanks. At least that meant they'd been destroyed. No chance of someone finding and reading them.
Using the wardrobe handle as leverage she stood, and was pleased when she made it back to the loo faster then the trip out had been.
Once the door was closed softly behind her, Rose dropped her bag on the counter and stared at the leather-bound journal that was peaking out from the halfway unzipped top.
She hiccupped as she grabbed it and turned on the tap. She sat on the toilet, journal hugged against her chest, and finally let herself really break down.
"I miss you Doctor," she cried quietly.
Comments are love, hospital gowns are not.
I would like some pudding, and I'm actually a Liverpool fan ^-^
