Well done to everyone who guessed that the David Tennant-y bit was the "Pointless, repetitious and extremely dull" from the BBC's red nose day's Comic Relief show that featured both David Tennant and Catherine Tate waaay back in 2007! Watch for giggles.
Chapter Eight
Ella and Rose
The Doctor was crouched by the beeping screens, monitors and machines, his glasses perched on his nose and his hands tracing the lines on assorted readouts. Lights winked, lines traced and Ella's heart continued to beat but there was nothing else. There was nothing else to indicate that Ella was there. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." He whispered, gently.
She should be dead.
Rose sat on the next bed over, blinking tears out of her eyes as she stared at the body of her friend – because that's what she was, just a body.
"Can you do anything?" John was sitting in the plastic chair next to Ella's bed and was watching the Doctor, who was muttering to himself, while he worked. They had been sitting in that room for the past hour and the Doctor had hardly said a word to anyone as he tried to figure out what had done this to Ella.
Rose's immediate thought had been the Pods but she'd discounted it almost immediately once she realised that John had spent just as much time around them as his wife and he was fine, snap for the Doctor. None of them were showing signs... so it had to be something else. Maybe someone didn't want them to find out what the Pods were? Maybe they were getting too close? Were they being watched? Panic struck her and she slipped off the bed and reached out a hand to touch the Doctor's shoulder.
He leapt to his feet almost immediately and turned to face her. He could see the fear in her face and he reached out to touch her cheek. "You'll be okay." He repeated. She nodded, able to read his lips but didn't move away from him and Lewis sighed, watching them both.
"Do you want me to take Rose home?" The Doctor turned to face him and Rose's face creased in confusion.
The Doctor almost snickered. "She won't go even if you tried to make her." He smiled at her baffled face, fondly.
"I think we've proved that being in Torchwood isn't safe for her. Whatever happened to Ella is happening now to Rose and... I can't... I won't let..." Lewis' hands clenched and he looked away. "Whatever, you know best."
"I do." The Doctor, while missing Lewis' sarcasm completely, smiled reassuringly at Rose before he ducked back down to examine the monitors again.
Lewis unclenched his fingers again and sat back down on one of the plastic chairs heavily. Frowning slightly, Rose stepped around the crouching Doctor and moved over to where he sat, not far from John. She tapped on his shoulder and smiled when he looked up at her.
"Don't worry about me." Her voice was strange, disjointed and unsure and Lewis scowled further. "I'm okay."
He laughed mirthlessly. "You can't hear a thing, Rose." He said, not particularly caring if she didn't catch the movement of his lips correctly. "How can you be okay?" He looked around at the collection of people near him and ground his teeth. "How can any one of us be okay?"
John and the Doctor turned their heads to face him but neither of them got up. This just made him angrier.
"How can you be so calm?" He was on his feet again and he pointed a finger at the blonde woman in the bed. If you took away the tubes and wires, you would think she simply slept because there was only peace in her face, no pain... "Ella is dying and now Rose is sick too! How can any of you be so calm?"
John didn't answer and, for a while, neither did the Doctor but eventually he stood up again and turned fully to Lewis. "You see that girl?" He pointed at Rose, who was standing, looking between the men, a lost expression on her face. Lewis glanced at Rose, almost guiltily. "She is the one who has lost her hearing, this is happening to her... and you don't see her going into hysterics, do you?"
"But we're doing nothing."
"I'm doing everything I can," the Doctor turned to face the monitors again so Rose couldn't read his lips, "and I am doing my very best to stay calm for her. Because if I break down and let her see how scared I am... then she will know that I have no idea how to help her or Ella."
"Then what use are you?"
The Doctor clenched his fists. He had a point. What use was he? The real Doctor wouldn't hesitate and would know what to do, simply because that bastard had everything. He had the T.A.R.D.I.S. He had the psychic paper. He had the sonic screwdriver. And what did this Doctor have? A pair of glasses he had pinched when the Doctor wasn't looking. If only he had his sonic screwdriver working, then maybe he could do something... figure out what was wrong.
With a jolt he realised something, something that finally made him feel that separation, which had been creeping up on him for the last few days, in full force. He resented the Doctor. He resented himself.
How peculiar.
Shaking his head, he glanced over to Ella before his eyes flicked back to the bleeping monitors. It was the first time he had seen anything like this... and without more information to go on... he was less than useless. He was... just a human. A human with a head stuffed full of Time Lord gibberish that was as much help as a chocolate teapot.
He slowly turned around and looked Lewis dead in the face. John had obviously gotten bored of the conversation and had returned to looking over Ella, holding her hand. "All I know" the Doctor began, "is that I will stop at nothing to make sure Rose is okay. There is nothing that can stop me making sure she is okay."
Lewis snorted. "You sound like you're in love with her."
"Is that a problem?"
He stared for a heartbeat, staring at the Doctor before, finally, he shrugged. "The list of all the meds that I've been giving to Ella are on that sheet on the table." He said, grabbing his coat. "None of them have made the slightest bit of difference but maybe they will on Rose... after all, we've caught it earlier this time."
"Caught it earlier? You didn't notice Ella went deaf?" The Doctor's eyes were wide.
Lewis shrugged. "She never told us. We found out when her sight went."
"Her sight." The Doctor thought for a moment and Lewis stopped near the door, watching him think. "Sound and sight... two of her senses..." He looked up at Rose who was looking over at Lewis in concern. He stepped closer to her and touched her arm and she jumped slightly at the touch. "Rose, look at me, this is important."
"What's the matter?" Lewis took a step closer and even John looked up in interest.
Rose looked alarmed. "Did you notice any changes in taste or smell or touch?" He asked her slowly and she watched his lips form the words. "Over the last few days..." She thought for a second and slowly nodded.
"Nothing tasted of anything." She said, haltingly. "The kitchen stopped smelling bad when mum was cooking."
The Doctor stared at her for a moment, thinking fast.
"Doctor?" Lewis placed down his coat.
"... oh.. OH! Of course! Her senses are failing!" John, Lewis and Rose looked at one another in confusion. "Five senses, right? Sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. All of these things that are the basis of being human, it's how we all feel the world around us, live... but take them away and what are we left with?" He pointed at Ella. "The complete inability to do anything. She can't feel so she's unable to move, she can't see or hear the world around her and the smaller senses... well they barely made a dent but it was there. Her senses disappeared one by one and now it's happening to Rose." John and Lewis turned their heads to look at the girl. "Her sense of smell, taste and hearing have all gone... leaving sight and touch... the next two to disappear."
"Why?" She asked and the Doctor was amazed that she could keep up with his rant.
"I don't know."
"Very helpful." Lewis snapped, once again reaching for his coat.
He was getting sick of Lewis' antagonism. "There isn't much in the universe that has the ability to take the senses... a couple of poisons, very few species... We're closer to finding out what is wrong than we were five minutes ago."
"...The Wire took my face." Rose said softly in that strange new way of hers. The Doctor stared and then smiled kindly. He reached out and touched her cheek.
"This is different. No one is taking anything else from you. I won't let them." She shivered against his touch and leaned into his hand, closing her eyes and reaching up to touch his skin.
"Thank you." She murmured.
Lewis rolled his eyes and elbowed the door open without so much as a goodbye.
"He'll be back soon." John murmured. "He finds it difficult to deal with people he cares about being sick. You should have seen him when Ella..." He sighed and gripped her hand.
The Doctor sat Rose back down on the bed next to Ella's and approached the man. He sat down next to him, looking at the woman.
"We had her in a different place to begin with... when she first collapsed." He said, quietly. "My brother had an empty house... one that he usually rents out... Ella fell ill just after the tenants moved out so it was perfect really. We would have stayed there but Lewis was worried about the dust so I asked if we could use this lab."
"Dust?"
John laughed mirthlessly. "He thought the dust would aggravate her condition... Completely unfounded mind because nothing has changed since she collapsed last week... she hasn't got worse and she hasn't got better."
The silence pressed on them both after that for a little while and the Doctor looked over at the other man.
"She didn't tell you?" He asked. The question had been burning in his head for the last few minutes and he knew he just had to ask, even if it dragged up bad feeling for John. The Doctor was right there with him with bad feeling.
John shrugged. "Ella has always been private. Even after we married, she barely told me anything about... well... anything. She's also extraordinarily stubborn and is always so determined to do things for herself, by herself, no matter how much stress or exhaustion it means... so she loses her hearing, why does she have to tell me?"
"But you're her husband," the Doctor frowned. The difference between Ella and John's marriage and Jackie and Pete's could not be more obvious – There are people who exist like this... They don't rely on one another, they don't share their life with one another... they allowed the other person to live in close proximity. He glanced over at Rose, his forehead creased a little. Is that what was waiting for them? Or would they be like Jackie and Pete? Maybe, just maybe, they would be something completely different... they weren't exactly a conventional couple after all.
He was actually thinking about marriage. He was getting domesticated.
"So? She didn't tell me she found out she couldn't have children until I saw her researching IVF." At the Doctor's expression, John's face cracked into a gentle, if half-hearted, smile. "We love each other Doctor. We just show it differently to how other couples might. We respect each other's privacy and support each other when we need it. Give and take... we're happy."
"I'll find out... I'll try to help your wife, John."
Smiling, John stood up and made his way to the water dispenser nearby. "You're doing it for Rose, Doctor." He picked up a cup and motioned to the girl with it. "Whatever is wrong with Ella, Rose has been infected... and that means that Rose is your first priority. Ella's just lucky you came along. Don't insult my intelligence by pretending otherwise."
"But I'll help her too."
"I know you'll try. But it will be for Rose." John nodded. He looked so tired. "Let me worry about my wife."
O
"I promised Jackie... that I'd keep you safe." The Doctor sighed and played with the slice of pizza he had in front of him. Rose was chewing out of obligation to her stomach more than anything and watching the Doctor speak with a dissatisfied grimace on her face.
"I got myself into trouble this time." She told him. "Not your fault."
He looked at her. "But it's still my responsibility to keep you safe."
"Why?"
He blinked as Rose smiled a little. He guessed that it was lucky that she could lip-read so well and dimly wondered why she had a cause to learn and how she managed to learn... a young woman with her background probably didn't have much cause to... but it didn't matter... he was glad for it. He also dimly wondered how or even if he should answer her slightly flirtatious question. It was serious, she was in danger and for the moment, there was nothing he could do to help her. He had to wait and watch her get sicker until the desperately sought-out eureka moment occurred or he managed to get his sonic screwdriver finished. He wasn't going to tell her that...
He glanced over to where Lewis and John were sat, picking over their own shared pizza nearby Ella's bed. Lewis had come back about fifteen minutes before with an apologetic expression and two pizzas, one of which he had thrown at Rose and Doctor, making the former leap about a foot in the air from her sitting position on the bed when it landed on her.
"Oh you know... because of us..." He wasn't looking at her. He seemed very interested in a piece of pineapple that was making a desperate bid for freedom.
She grinned. "And what do you call... us?" The Doctor loved seeing her smiles.
He didn't know. There was no question... he was with Rose for life now. She was... there was nothing he could say that could make it easier to understand. She was just Rose. The girl who fought through dimensions to find him again. The girl that would have said goodbye to her mother forever to stay with him. She was his. And that was all there was to it.
The Doctor just smiled and reached out to touch that rebellious but lovely lock of hair that started to swing into her eyes. "Let's just concentrate on getting you better for now." He said softly.
They were silent for a while, picking at the Hawaiian pizza that Lewis had brought them, rather than eating before Rose after having a thoughtful look on her face for the last few minutes, raised an excellent question.
"Are we going to stay here?"
The Doctor thought for a moment. "It's probably best. If I took you home without your hearing... your mother may just eat me."
"I can hardly call her though. She'll be worried." She flipped her phone open and looked at the menu as if blaming that for her sudden deafness. She perked up. "I could text her. I'll tell her I have to work overnight. I've done it before." And she hunched forward, tapping on the number pad quickly, while Doctor looked over at the brothers. They were sitting beside one another, chatting in low tones. The scientist and the doctor. If the two black rucksacks shoved in the top right hand corner of the room were anything to go by, the boys had been staying in this lab while Ella had been sick.
A lab created to look like a hospital ward. For the first time, well... properly... the Doctor checked his surroundings. It was a secret lab, a lab that only a few people had access to so they could... what? Examine people? Examine alien species? The Doctor frowned. No, that wasn't right.
Perhaps the lab was already fulfilling its use? Caring for people who couldn't be looked after by those working in a hospital? Illnesses and maladies of an unusual nature... not known by common people...
Rose jumped a little as the phone in her hand buzzed, a quick reply to the text she had not long sent and she lifted the phone up in panic, showing the Doctor the caller I.D. The Doctor winced and took the phone, giving Rose a disgruntled look.
"Use protection!" Jackie exclaimed before the Doctor was even able to open his mouth.
He grinned "Why, hello Jackie."
There was a moment of silence. "Where's Rose?" She sounded almost accusatory.
"Toilet."
"Too much information, couldn't you just have said she was somewhere else?"
"Would you have accepted that?"
There was a heartbeat of silence. "No. I suppose not."
The Doctor looked over to Rose for help but she just smiled sweetly and lay back against the pillows, the very image of I-don't-care. He narrowed his eyes at her playfully and she giggled.
"Are you going to be home in the morning then?" Jackie asked, obviously annoyed that the Doctor wasn't holding up his end of the conversation. "Pete wants to make a full english... you know he's completely stole the kitchen from me, anyone would think he didn't like my cookin'"
He ignored the fact that she was obviously fishing for compliments. "Probably not... Rose has got a lot of work to do... It's just sort of... been piled on her." When Jackie made a noise like she wanted to interject, the Doctor cut across her. "Don't worry... I'll make sure she eats and sleeps."
"You do that." She grumbled. "Oh and Doctor?"
"Yes?"
"Don't get my daughter pregnant."
He didn't really know what to say to that.
O
Thanks to:
EleanorRigby97: aww! Thank you! One of the kindest things anyone has said to me! I hope you enjoy this chapter!
MusicalDragons: Well... You'll just have to read and find out, won't you?! Lol
Lindsay: Good! So here, have another chapter!
Spiritedghost: I got all your reviews in one massive chunk and all on my phone, so when I checked it was just like HELLO REVIEWS! I loved them, and I am so so so grateful for your kind words and it made me smile from ear to ear for about two days! I want to give you a big hug! I try to make it all seem realistic (which is hard as it is Doctor Who) and the relationship between Rose and the Doctor, for Rose at least, is very human... something new to the Doctor in this case. I hoped I wasn't the only one who thought of the parallels between them and Pete and Jackie... it makes sense to me! Thank you for your review and here is the long awaited new chapter! Enjoy!
Cate Tyler: Here you go! More lovely storiness :)
BookyGurl: It's all good :) Glad you liked the chapter and Here's another one for you! Continue to review!
Bunny-chan19: Glad you enjoyed the update! Here is chapter eight and enjoy it! It gave me no end of bloody grief! Jackie is easy to write for me because she feels real. She is just... in my head and some lines come into my head that are so her that I have to put them down. I think that she needs more props because she's... Rose's mum and she raised one heck of a daughter.
JollyRoger1: I won't be giving up on this! :) I love writing it!
MidnightForever17: You got it! :D It came out completely by accident and I sat and stared at the line for a second thinking, where did that... why does that sound so familiar? Then it came out as scottish in my head and I was all... SWOOON... I go all teenagery when I think of David Tennant... I can't help it! Love your review! Thanks chicken!
Opalkitty: Ha! I'm glad you got so exited! It's the best reward knowing that people love my writing! I feel like a broken record because I say that so much, but it is beyond true! Your reviews keep my imagination alive... food for my fingertips! :) Thank you for the review and I hope you like this chapter... It was HAAARD!
