Chapter 10

"Martha Jones?" the Doctor said, raising an eyebrow and giving her a onceover. "You don't happen to be a doctor, do you? By the way, I'm the Doctor, lovely to meet you."

"Wait, you're a doctor? I haven't seen you around. D'you work here?"

"No, no—the Doctor, and I believe I asked you a question first, Ms. Jones, if you may-"

"It's Dr. Jones, thank you," she cut him off in a rather clipped tone.

"So you are a doctor."

"Almost…I'm a student here, a resident."

"Well then, Martha Jones, student and imminent practitioner of medicine, how do you feel about breaking about breaking…" he paused and ran some numbers through his head, "about four local laws, two international laws, seven system statues, and fiftyish galactic ordinances?"

::

Rose was now lying on a hospital bed in the eastern most ward of the hospital, the part that was technically being remodeled, only the funding hadn't yet come through and no work had begun, so it looked like a fully functional hospital wing that had decided to close up shop for the weekend.

Martha had originally insisted on admitting them, getting them a proper room with proper doctors, but the Doctor had to insist, regardless of Rose's growing discomfort, that they had to be a bit more furtive about the whole affair.

"Are you mad?" Martha had said. "I can't just lead you to a secret broom cupboard and deliver a baby. Why so many secrets, anyway? Are you two criminals?" Martha stepped back a few paces looking at them warily.

"It depends on who you ask, honestly. Generally, yes. But we aren't the bad guys."

"I don't understand why you can't just go through front doors like everyone else."

"Doctor!" Rose had yelled. "Doctor, you need to call mum. Hurry!" She groaned as another contraction took over. She was quite close now, and they didn't seem to have much time to stand around in outside discussing the various reasons people had or had not imprisoned him throughout his life.

"Here's the deal, Martha: Rose is my wife, and together we travel through time and space in this, well, this box, it's actually very sophisticated technology, really. Anyway, she's from your present but I'm a nine hundred-year-old Time Lord—lots of details, none of us left you see, just me, but that's a story for another time. The point is, well not really the point, but a very important detail, you see, is that I have two hearts and I can't die, not really, because I regenerate, and our baby—our child also has two hearts. We were going to give birth in a hospital on Mars about six hundred years in your future, but the place had been overrun with giant slugs, you understand, and we couldn't possibly get involved without endangering the baby, so we came here, playing everything a little improvisationally, I suppose, but we can't exactly give birth in a regular hospital because your doctors simply won't understand how a baby is surviving with two hearts without having to expose ourselves. Marthacanyoupleasehelpus?" The last few words came out so hurriedly that they were practically mashed together, and he was so winded from speaking that he his respiratory bypass had kicked in towards the end of his speech.

Martha looked at him with wide eyes, but they were not entirely those of disbelief. She stepped forward towards him.

"Can I?" she said, reaching her hand out.

Realizing what she meant, he nodded, albeit a little impatiently, and she placed her hand on his chest.

"You weren't kidding!" she gasped, jumping back.

Rose shrieked in pain from behind them.

"Please, Martha, can you please help us?"

Martha's eyes flitted quickly between Rose and the Doctor. By the looks of it, Rose was deep into labor and if they waited any longer, she might end up giving birth in her wheelchair. As if coming out of a stupor, Martha simply nodded, and they took off into the hospital to find an inconspicuous place, while garnering odd looks from patients and nurses alike from the wooden wheelchair and the writhing woman within it.

::

Jackie Tyler walked into her daughter's hospital room to find Martha at the end of Rose's bed and the Doctor holding Rose's hand, both looking down nervously at Martha.

"She's nine centimeters," Martha said to the Doctor, who was stroking Rose's hair with his free hand.

"Mum!" called Rose, seeing her mother standing in the doorway. Jackie immediately ran over to her daughter's side opposite the Doctor.

"What the bloody hell is this?" Jackie asked, outraged. "I thought there were supposed to be people inside hospitals! And who is this-" she paused, looking for the appropriately offensive word, "—this girl playing doctor?"

Martha looked up at this woman who had just barged in without any ado, and then back to the Doctor, who looked rather exasperated.

"Dr. Jones, this is Jackie Tyler, my…mother-in-law…a soon-to-be grandmother, and current raiser of hell."

Martha nodded curtly and returned to her work. It was too late to administer an epidural, so she was working on setting up the heart monitors for Rose and the baby.

"Oi, don't give me that cheek, Doctor. Honestly, calling me at the last second—I'd've thought you'd forgotten about me. First the wedding, now this. Really, Doctor, I know you said she was a month early, and that you had no idea there would be those giant snail things or whatever, but I ought to hit you up-"

She cut herself off at the sound coming from across the room. While a sound completely foreign to her, she recognized it immediately—the quick, fluttering rhythm of a double heartbeat.

"Hold on, I'm trying to turn the sound off. That sound will get annoying after a while, believe me," Martha said, prodding various buttons on the machine.

"No!" they all seemed to say in unison. "Not yet," the Doctor continued.

"So that's it? That's the sound of my grandbaby?"

The Doctor looked over at Jackie Tyler and saw something that he'd only seen a couple of times before. Underneath all of her coarseness, her stubbornness, and her desire to make sure the Doctor was always brought down a few pegs, she was just a mum, and almost a grandmum—and now just as he and Rose had been since the first ultrasound, she had become completely captivated by sound of life coming from the monitor.

"A whole month early," Jackie said, her smile fading as she realized the severity of the situation. She looked down at Rose, who was concentrating on controlling her breathing.

"It'll be okay, Jackie. I can feel it." He wasn't sure if he could feel it, but he wanted to believe it. He needed to believe that everything was going to be all right.

Rose held onto her mother's hand tightly as Martha slipped on another examination glove.

"Ten centimeters," she said, heaving in a deep breath. Best probably not to tell them that this was the first time she'd ever delivered a baby by herself. To be honest, she was a little surprised at herself for risking her job like she was. If anybody found out what she was doing, she'd likely not only be out of a job, but she would have to say goodbye to her medical career, and she wouldn't be surprised if she were sued by the hospital. It would have been one thing if she had assisted in a waiting room birth—when labor was coming on so quickly that there was no time to get the mother admitted, and the baby ended up being delivered in the middle of the waiting room. But this was different. She'd brought them up to this part of the hospital without anyone's knowledge, and she would be responsible for anything that went wrong. She wasn't even officially a doctor doctor yet, just a resident. And she didn't even want to think about the intergalactic laws the Doctor had talked about, if they were even real, but still, who knew what she was getting herself into? Somehow, though, she knew that everything would be okay, or perhaps she just hoped it would. In either case, it was definitely an adventure.

"Rose, we're going to have to get you ready to push," Martha said. Rose nodded through her preoccupation with the tail end of her last contraction.

Martha looked up at Jackie and the Doctor. "On her next contraction, she's going to start pushing, okay? I need you to help her count. We'll count to ten. Rose," she turned back to Rose, "you're going to need to push through the whole count, then we'll take a short break and do it again." Rose nodded impatiently.

"Oh, God, it's coming. The next contraction-" Rose groaned loudly as the next contraction washed over her.

"Push!" Martha practically bellowed.

Rose squeezed the Doctor's hand so hard it was actually starting to hurt, but then he caught Jackie's eye, who knew exactly what he was thinking, and seemed to communicate with simply a well-penciled, raised eyebrow, Deal with it, stupid alien. You're not the one forcing a human out of your body. He looked down sheepishly, and began to count.

Rose screamed as she bore down, and Jackie helped Rose to prop herself up on her elbows.

"Excellent, Rose," Martha said as the Doctor hit ten. "Okay, again."

Rose inhaled and pushed again, working with her contraction to move the baby forward. The part of her that still had an ounce of coherent thought left was wondering how on Earth any of this was fair, why it had to feel like she was passing a bowling ball through a straw, and why men couldn't do this instead, because it was a pretty miserable thing to deal with.

She pushed again, a cry ripping through her lips. She could vaguely hear Martha down below, encouraging her and telling her to push more, to push harder. Her mother was by her side, running her fingers over her back, but she only barely registered the sensation.

But then she felt the Doctor's hand, which was grasped tightly within hers. She was holding on so hard she could feel his double pulse in his fingers. Perhaps she ought to let up, she thought, but she didn't think she could. Holding his hand was the one thing that had gotten her through her worst moments, and this was no exception. As Rose's hand had helped him heal his heart's open wounds when they first met, his was now helping Rose ground herself beyond the pain. The pain wasn't something she could simply stop feeling, but his hand—tight, determined, and his thumb now rubbing circles on the back of her hand—helped her to remember that it would soon be over, that she could do this.

"It's crowning!" Martha exclaimed. Rose grasped the Doctor's hand even harder, and it was all the Doctor could do not to whimper in pain.

Rose heard Martha say something to the Doctor, and he leaned down to Rose's ear.

"Martha says I can come see if I'd like. We're so close, Rose," he kissed her forehead. "But I'm going to need my hand back. I'll just be a few seconds."

Rose reluctantly loosed his hand, which caused her to tighten her grip on Jackie's even more. Jackie winced, and Rose caught the Doctor giving Jackie a pointed stare, which Rose was unaware said I told you.

"Oh, Rose, this…this is brilliant," the Doctor said. His voice was full of awe edging on disbelief, and a warm feeling suffused through Rose's body, dulling the pain minutely—he was looking at it; he was getting the first glance at their child.

"No, it can't be," the Doctor said.

"What?!" Rose was worried now.

"It's…it's the hair. I can see the hair. Rose, our baby…no…where's the justice in that! It don't believe it…Rose, our baby is gin-"

Before he could finish his sentence, Martha began to speak again.

"Okay, Rose, I'm going to need to you to give me one more big push, and I think I can do the rest down here."

"You think?!" Rose barked, but only because she was exhaling a breath she didn't know she'd been holding.

"Just one more big push," Martha repeated, ignoring Rose's jibe.

The Doctor returned to Rose's side and he grabbed her hand, holding it snuggly, and he began to count very softly in her ear, at the start of her next contraction.

Rose pushed with all her might, yelling so loudly she thought they might hear her down in A&E. But in a swift moment, the pressure stopped, the Doctor was saying something in her ear, he was grinning widely, Martha was holding something in her arms, something that was crying and crying loudly.

Time seemed to slow town. Perhaps it did, but she was sure the Doctor would assure her later that it did not. She looked over to her mother, whose eyes were spilled over with tears, and then at the Doctor, who wore a look of such profound happiness that she could have looked at it forever, but just then somebody was holding something towards her. Rose's world suddenly refocused, and time sped up back to normal. She smiled reflexively as she realized what was being offered, and she held out her arms—not just wanting, but needing.

Her eyes, too, began to fill with tears.

She was holding her child. Hers, theirs, and nothing else mattered in that moment. They had made this together. She felt such a powerful surge of love—of pure, unconditional love—that she didn't seem to hear somebody (whoever it was) mention something about it being a girl.

To be continued!

Please review!

A/N: Fear not, there are still more chapters to come! Thanks for reading so far; I really appreciate ALL of your support. Also, here's a shameless plug for another story I'm writing (if you're interested) called Until the Wind Changes. It's a Mary Poppins origin fic set in the Harry Potter universe during and after WWI. You can find it on my Author Page. I promise that's the only plug I'll ever do.