There was little that would get to him, but then there was little that would even remove the stony look from his face. Jamie Noble had finally accepted his fate.
Donna tutted his demeanor, but wisely avoided the subject of Martha and any hospital gossip. She even downplayed her recent engagement. But the gaudy ring set upon her long fingers was unmistakable. And, it served to remind Jamie of where his matrimonial drives originated.
"I'm genuinely happy for you Donna, I don't see why you wouldn't want to shout through the entire office about it." He asked,
Donna shrugged as if it was no big deal, but Jamie knew it was a big deal for her. He knew because it was a big deal for him. "It is a big deal Donna, why didn't you want me to know about you and Gregory? What,. You think I am going to fire you over a marriage? Donna haven't you figured out that you have a job here as long as you want one?" he offered her an honest grin, to which she returned and nodded.
"Good deal Egg, cuz I need three weeks off for the wedding and honeymoon." She smiled and gave him a hug. "She loves you Egg, give her some time."
After three weeks and dodged meetings, Jamie figured time was unnecessary. Martha had made it clear that she was not interested, and Jamie respected that. "So where is Gregory taking you for your honeymoon anyway?"
His attempt to change the subject was met with a stern look and a very motherly finger waggle. "Don't you go wallowing around in your own shit Egg." Donna warned. "If she aint gonna marry you, then you go right out and find a girl who will. You aint getting any younger, and Lord knows the women willing to put up with you are few and far between.'
"Oi!" Jamie smiled hugging back. "Its ok Donna, I think this is where I need to be. Saving lives, fighting the good fight, and all that rot." His brave smile did not fool her, but she did not push it.
"All the same Egg, it will stop hurting. I ever tell you about this bloke I had, Lance was his name. Left me for an Amazon. Tall she was, I think he was afraid to not marry her.'
Jamie's face broke into an honest all out grin. "Oh yes, Lance, the fellow with a penchant for pushy women."
"Oi, watch it Needle Boy or I'll have your taxes so kinked up you will be in litigation in the afterlife."
He smiled as he returned to his work and planned a three week holiday of his own. Some time off would heal some of the still raw and seeping wounds.
He found himself looking forward to both Donna's wedding and the time off.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"You're going where for three weeks?" Pete nearly spit his beer across the bar.
They had stopped into their favorite pub after the game that Jamie had coached. His team lost, horribly, but the boys played hard, and had more fun that the winners. He felt that deserved a treat.
After each boy had gone home, Pete met him for pints and darts. Jackie didn't mind a night out every now and again, as long as he came home only half wasted, and he took her out the next time.
"I am going to spend my vacation helping others in Africa. I think I need a little time off and this is both a holiday and a working break. There are plenty of surgeries that need to be performed by a brilliant neurosurgeon, and I am doing them all for free. "
Pete nodded, "do you need anything? I mean I would love to offer medical supplies or to sponsor you."
"Good, cause that is what I signed you up for. Just give me a blank check and I will handle the rest."
Pete chuckled and slapped Jamie on the back. "You are probably the only person on this entire planet I would turn over a blank check to."
Jamie sipped his beer and looked past Pete. "There is that other thing I need you to look after Pete." He hissed.
"Done." Pete agreed.
Donna had decided that he needed to be an usher in her wedding. Jamie on the other hand attempted everything including out and out bribery to bail out of the obligation. "No way Stick Boy." Donna punctuated each word with a jab to his chest. "You aint getting out of this, I aint gonna let you sit around moonin' and mopin'. This way, at least until I leave next Friday, I can keep an eye on ya, yeah? So now you have to be at the rehearsals, and the parties, and all that. No ducking out."
"Donna,"
"No way Egg, sides, there is going to be plenty of pretty unattached young ladies there who may be happy to have a skinny streak of nothing for an Egg Headed husband"
"Donna-OW! Stop ok, ok!" He pulled himself out of range of her skewers (about a mile away if truth be told) "If you promise to never again come near me with those death sticks, I will be there."
Donna made wiggly spikes with her fingers and giggled as Jamie ducked and ran into the other part of the office. "Ten o'clock tomorrow Space boy," she shouted after him as she grabbed her things to go home. "And you'd better wear something that doesn't have a clever saying sprawled across it."
"Oi, I am clever!' he shouted from a safe distance, adding, "And I'll wear what I like!"
"I'll be sure to give those instructions at the mortuary!"
"Oi!"
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The wedding went off without a hitch, and Jamie was glad for the distraction. He actually took a sabbatical, turning his patients over to the less than capable hands of Dr. Morgenstern. It would be two months before he came back to his offices. He promised to pay Donna for her time off, and he knew she would not mind the extra time to acclimate to married life.
It was however, not so easy once she discovered where he was off to. "You've got nothing to prove to anyone Egg. You are a good man on your own; you don't need to live in no one's shadow."
If he did not already consider her his mother in many ways, he would have fallen at her feet at that moment and begged for her to adopt him. In one breath, she had said everything to him that he ever needed to be told, from the moment of his tragic birth, he was made to be this person, Jamie Noble, Doctor, friend, and a man onto himself. "He grabbed her into the fiercest hug he had ever given anyone in his short life. Her wedding dress swished around him and she grinned at his display of affection.
"Gawd Egg, I keep tellin' ya to save that for the single ladies, you dope!" But she wiped the tears from her face none the less as he told her he loved her and hoped she had an amazing time in Cancun.
"But not too amazing, yeah?" he smirked." I don't have a maternity leave policy in place."
"Go on you. Just jealous is all. If I wanted two years off you would still have a job for me. You sod."
He smiled, nodded, and waved as the limo drove off into the future.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
It must be noted that traveling to another country is nothing as easy as they make it seem in pictures. Jamie was annoyed that he could not merely pop into the TARDIS, set coordinates, and fly there on his own.
He had to wait, fill out forms, file forms, produce bodily fluids, and turn his head and cough.
Admittedly not his favorite part of the trip, not by any stretch of the imagination.
When he finally made it to the actual plane trip day, he only took his doctor's bag, his sonic and his old duffle bag. Jamie considered this luxuriant, since many of his memories recall having nothing more than the clothes on his back and his sonic.
But this was different.
Jamie did not go to Africa to become Thomas Arthur Milligan, nor did he go to prove anything to Martha Marie Jones. Jamie Noble went to Africa to prove something to himself.
The country was not Zimbabwe; he landed in Kenya, in the midst of an economic down turn for a people barely making their way out of a famine that had plagued the country for over a decade.
The hospital was situated in the capital of the country, well staffed, but vastly underfunded. Jamie merely wanted to do some good, something that yielded nothing but a tingle where his second heart never was.
The nurse took him around to his patients. Mostly brain tumors, but there were quite a few head trauma and catastrophic injuries as well as disease of the brain that left the staff there in bewilderment.
He saw them all, from the moment he got there, he set his bag down and began making his rounds. He was given free reign after his tour and began to use his sonic whenever he was sure to be alone. He did not stop at the neurological cases; he looked in on whomever they would allow, and even snuck into a few they were not aware of.
Jamie refused the offer of living in the home of the chief of surgery, he opted instead to sleep in the back of the kitchen, there was a small closet there that the doctors often used between long shifts. Jamie was happy in the cramped little space; he only slept four hours at a time, rising up in the middle of the night to wander the halls of the old rickety hospital.
He would make his way down to the maternity ward sometimes, and in the first week it was his favorite place to visit. Standing in the small room where the nurses cared for the newborns, watching them breathe with new life and new lungs renewed his spirit. He realized that life was too short, at least the life he was given, and he was both blessed and robbed of a life that was now his to lead.
He often stood in an out of the way corner, or sometimes offered to help with either a delivery or basic neonatal care. The nurses giggled at the strange white doctor who made such a fuss over the little ones. He had dreamed of having children especially with Martha. He was now convinced that that is something that was not to ever happen.
And in some odd way, he became both aware of his loneliness, and ok with changing that for something different.
It was in the midnight raids that he met Margaret.