Here's the next part, which I meant to put up Friday, but, best made plans, huh? I did put up a Lord of the Rings oneshot if anyone wants to check that out.
And, please enjoy my personalized version of New Earth!
Part Two - Safe and Warm
"What are you doing?" I asked, looking over the railing at the Doctor, who sat on the swing, going back and forth slowly. He appeared to be deep in thought and I wondered if it was wise to interrupt him.
I waited a moment to see if he'd say anything but the Doctor only continued to swing. Turning away, I went to go back to my room.
"(f/n)."
I jumped, startled, before turning back to see the Doctor climbing up the stairs.
"Yeah?"
"I was just thinking...what would you do to get rid of...to get rid of this?" He gingerly reached forth and ran his thumb gently over the scar dominating nearly half my face.
"Get rid of it?" I raised an eyebrow, startled.
"Yes...it...you'd...never mind." The Doctor's hand fell and he trudged off down the hall.
My fingers reached up and slowly traced the scared ridge where the Doctor had placed his thumb.
It tingled.
I watched him go, pressing my hand to my cheek.
"Doctor?"
He turned back and glanced at me.
"Yes, (f/n)?"
"What did...? What exactly did you have in mind?"
The Doctor grinned and I smiled nervously as he ran back to me. He threw his arms around my shoulders and hugged me before letting go and rushing to the console.
"Doctor...?" I looked at him questioningly. Despite having traveled with him for nearly a month, the Doctor still baffled me ninety percent of the time
Even if I were to travel with the Doctor in the TARDIS for a hundred years, he'd probably still surprise me.
"(f/n), there's a magnificent, spectacular hospital and they can make you look like a supermodel!" He explained excitedly, dancing around the TARDIS controls.
"But I don't-"
The Doctor smiled fondly at me. "They're not. They could, but all I want them to do is help you." The Doctor smiled gently and placed his free hand once more on my scared face.
My cheeks burned with an internal fire and I hoped to God he couldn't see it.
"Why do you want them to help me so much?" I asked once he moved away back to the console and my face felt somewhat more normal.
What is wrong with me?
"You are an amazing and kind person, (f/n)," the Doctor told me as the engines made their customary VWOORP noise.
"Doctor, I let you buy weird books and eat fish custard at sporting events, that hardly makes me..."
"Oh shush (f/n)! Let me do something nice for you!" The Doctor cut me off. He grabbed my hand and dragged me to the TARDIS doors.
"Where are we?" I asked as he began to open them.
"We are in Houston 200 in New Earth," he Doctor explained.
"Houston 200? New Earth?" I questioned as we stepped out into the 'Texas' air.
"Well, in the year five billion, the Earth blew up, you know, sun expansion and all, and as soon as it was gone, the human race set out and found the place. Thus New Earth was christened," the Doctor explained as the overwhelming scent of barbeque and fried chicken invaded my nostrils.
"And they're best hospital is in...Houston 200?" I asked, clutching the Doctor's hand tighter as we walked under flying cars and between two hundred story futuristic skyscrapers.
"Actually it was originally in New New York."
"New New York?"
"Well, actually, it was New New New New New New New-"
"Doctor."
The Gallifreyan smiled sheepishly and I rolled my eyes.
"Let's just say there are over a dozen 'New York's' in the universe in this millennia alone," the Doctor said, turning us off the main sidewalk. "But, as I was saying, their best hospital was originally in New New York and was run by cat nurses."
Sometimes I really worry about the Doctor.
"I went there once with a former companion - she was fantastic but she uh, anyway - turns out the cat nurses were doing things rather illegally so Rose - that was her name, you see - and I stopped them," the Doctor continued.
I nodded, letting go of his hand and wrapping both my arms around his left arm. There were way too many people - human-esque and outright alien - for my comfort. The Doctor smiled at me and I squeezed his arm tighter.
"Then what happened?" I asked as we approached a large, silvery grey building at least seventy stories in height.
"I came back around a hundred years later linear time with another companion, Martha - remind me to introduce you - and we discovered that this patch drug called 'Bliss' had mutated and wiped out most of the surface population. Long story short, Martha and I along with an old friend, the Face of Boe, saved all of the survivors who had hither to been driving rather slowly and uninformed on the motorway below the city. That was, oh, some two hundred sixty years ago? They opened the Houston Hospital of Healing Hope and it has a much better reputation and health record than the New New York hospital," the Doctor concluded as we entered the great reception area. He reached over and tapped my shoulder before pointing off towards a fairly large window display. "And they have a shop! A big shop! I love a little shop in a hospital but this is just fantastic! Isn't it, (f/n)?"
I smiled softly at him and patted his arm. The Doctor was getting far too excited. Before I know it, he'll be the one in the emergency room!
"Doctor."
"Yes, (f/n)?"
"You're rambling again."
"Sorry, (f/n)," the Doctor apologized as we stepped up to the sign in desk.
"Welcome to the Quad H Hospital, how might I be of service?" The receptionist asked. My eyes widened when I realized she was a lizard woman.
The Doctor seemed not to either care or notice as he smiled at her, his green eyes twinkling. "I would like to check Miss (f/n) (l/n) into the Anatomy Reconstruction and Redesign ward."
That sounded like a bunch of painful and fancy words to me.
The lizard receptionist looked at me. "Are you Miss (f/n) (l/n)?" She asked. My name sounded rather strange on her flicking forked tongue.
Cool.
"Yes Ma'am," I nodded and the Doctor smiled approvingly.
Dear lord, the boy loves smiling. You would think that I gave him free ice cream the way he smiles at me all the time.
The lizard receptionist pulled out two futuristic iPads and strange stylus pen things from a drawer and held them up.
"Good, good! Just sign here!" She handed me one and gestured toward the little line at the bottom of the screen. "And you," here she turned to the Doctor, "Sir, I need you to sign here as the one who checked her in and as the one who will be the primary care giver during recovery!"
"Recovery?" I questioned, becoming unsure. I lowered the pen after scrawling my name across the line.
"Oh yes, dear, depending on the surgery you're having done, recovery could last from two days to a fortnight," the lizard receptionist explained as I handed back my iPad/Data Pad thing. "And of course there will be a follow up checkup at the end of the designated recovery time to make sure everything went perfectly well."
I nodded slowly. That all makes sense...
"When can the surgery take place?" The Doctor asked, handing back his iPad/Data Pad. I glanced around his side to see 'Theta Sigma' in squiggly letters.
Typical medical personnel handwriting!
But with a ten year old twist...
He just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
"As soon as you'd like, Sir. We have fifteen standard duty ARR doctors working the ward. The soonest we can get you in is..." She checked her own iPad/Data Pad before looking back up and smiling, "...In three hours."
"Oh excellent, that is perfect! Thank you! We will be back in two and a half hours!" The Doctor rambled, dragging me towards the not-little hospital shop.
"Doctor...you don't need more...stuff!" I yelped as he pulled me inside the large gift shop.
"Oh, on contra, Miss (l/n)! This isn't for me! You need stuff to entertain you while we're here!"
I raised an eyebrow as he pulled me to the forefront of a large stuffed animal display.
Eighty percent of these animals make no sense to me.
"Doctor...just bring me a book from the TARDIS library and I'll be fine," I said gently, placing a hand on the hyperactive alien's shoulder.
He shook his head. "Oh, (f/n)! You haven't been to the hospital until you've been to a New Earth hospital and been properly taken care of!"
"It sounds more like a health spa the way you keep going on about it," I told him pointedly, crossing my arms.
"Well..."
"Doctor."
"They do have a health spa on the third floor!"
"Good grief!" I shook my head, but smiled nonetheless.
The Doctor gave me a crooked smile before adjusting his bright red bowtie and striding off toward the movies.
Actually, they were more like microchips and each microchip held up to one hundred movies in its core.
I think I like the future...
"What do you want? The Harry Potter collection, the Greatest Sea Movies of the 20th - 50th Centuries, the-"
"I'll take the (similar/movie/genre/title) collection." I said, cutting the Doctor off. I pointed to a shelf out of reach and he plucked the microchip case from amongst its brethren.
The Doctor examined it before handing it to me, shrugging. Before I could speak, he dragged me off to another part of the store to examine hospital gowns.
"Why do I need a hospital gown from the shop? Don't they just...give you one?" I asked, staring at the pink and the brown gowns the Doctor was holding in front of me.
"That was so three hundred million years ago, (f/n)!" The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Now, which one do you want? I rather like the TARDIS blue one..."
"I'll take the, uh, the (gown/color) one," I gestured to the desired article on the rack (some things never change) and the Doctor grabbed it.
After that, the Doctor pulled me along to the counter and paid for the movie microchip and the hospital gown (the sonic screwdriver still fascinates me even after seeing it used a few times, but why he needed to use it on a credit card...). Once I had my bag, the Doctor pulled me through the Quad H hospital ground floor to a cafe.
There, the Doctor gave me coffee (Andromeda Coco blend) and Texas Sweetbread toast.
"I thought you weren't supposed to eat in the twelve hours before surgery," I inquired, nibbling my toast.
"That used to be true, (f/n), but now they just give you a sedative that converts the food to oxygen which then seeps into your lungs during the surgery. They actually recommend eating so the oxygen lasts longer before they are required to hook you up to the breathing tubes. The sedative also reverses any effects on your body that the food might make that would hinder the procedure. Really, they've come quite far in the ways of medical operations.," the Doctor added, wrapping up his lengthy explanation.
How he remembers all this stuff is beyond me.
By the time we had finished eating, an hour was already up. I vaguely wondered what we'd do for the next hour and a half as the Doctor pulled me through to an elevator.
Well, actually, it was more of a platform with rails that went up to the roof and you could see out over downtown Houston 200 from inside it.
But yeah, it was an elevator.
The Doctor insisted that we go to the top, or the one hundred twenty seventh floor if you counted the basement and the roof as their own floors. The ride up the elevator platform was intimidating and awesome at the same time. The city stretched out in front of us as we ascended and in the distance I saw a giant lake near the edge of downtown Houston 200.
"I don't recall there being a lake like that around the Houston in America at home," I said, glancing at the Doctor, who was looking out over the city.
"Well, you know, (f/n), not everything can be geographically correct," he chuckled as the elevator platform slowed to a gentle stop and he opened the Plexiglas door.
Well, it looked like Plexiglas, but it probably wasn't Plexiglas.
"What's it called?" I asked as we approached the safety rails around the roof perimeter. On the other aide, hover crafts stood on standby, just like the helicopters at the hospitals on the old Earth.
That's so weird...two Earths.
"The lake? I believe it's called the New Ponchartrain water reserve." The Doctor replied thoughtfully.
"Really? I'd have thought it'd be between New Baton Rouge and New New New Orleans or something," I shrugged, puzzled.
"Seriously, (f/n)? Not everything on New Earth is New - whatever - it - was - on - the - old - Earth," the Doctor said, bopping my head playfully. "It's actually Deuxième Baton Rouge."
"What's that mean?" I asked with a sneaking suspicion.
"Its 'Second Red Stick' in French. I never said they were creative." He slung a tweed covered arm around my shoulders and I glanced at it before looking back at his pale face. "There's actually a large canyon called the Drainpipe of the South between the two cities. They call New Orleans 'Orli Jr.' Here.
"'Orli Jr.'...?"
"Yep," the Doctor nodded.
"You know, when I first met you, like, last month, I thought you were smoking something whacky," I confessed.
"Gee, thanks, (f/n)."
"Oh shush! Anyway, I now know you are as sober as a baby giraffe but these people, the people who name all this stuff here, they have to be on something heavy or something."
"They may or they may not. I don't think I want to know," the Doctor shrugged before tightening his arm around my shoulders. "Do you?"
"Hmm? Oh, no, I don't think I want to know either," I shook my head. His arm was very warm.
After several minutes of companionable silence, the Doctor removed his arm and I shuddered involuntarily.
"C'mon, (f/n), it's nearly time for you to get ready for the presurgical operation prep!"
"The what now?" I asked, wide eyed as the Doctor took my hand and dragged me back to the elevator platform.
"The stuff they have to do before they take you back to surgery!" He explained with an unnatural giddiness as he punched in the number for the ground floor on the weird, holographic touch screen.
The future is very odd.
Some thirty minutes later, I was sitting on a plush chair in my (gown/color) hospital gown. They were actually more comfortable than the ones from the 21st century but this was, like, oh gosh, the mollionth century or something or other.
There was way too much math involved in time travel.
The Doctor had been escorted out (some rules still apply even after millions and millions of years) and the medical doctors, a humanoid with silvery pink scales around her eyes and a long necked, green alien, came in.
"So, sweetie," the Lady Doctor with the scales said, "Your friend brought you here to have your face restored, rejuvenated, and redone, correct?"
"Eh, yes Ma'am," I nodded, shifting nervously in the chair.
"We will be cutting out the deformity and replenishing the proper skin cells," the long necked Doctor informed to his associate.
"Cutting...?"
"Alright sweetie," the Lady Doctor said, pulling out a strange cylinder filled with a greyish purple liquid and a button. "Give me your hand please." She took my hand and placed the smooth end of the cylinder on my palm before pressing the button.
A sharp, throbbing pain radiated from my hand and gradually pulsed throughout my body. When it reached my stomach, the pleasant fullness it had from eating disappeared into a bubble of...of air that floated...up...to my, to my lungs and...
The Doctor never said it would make me so sleepy...
"(f/n)...(f/n)...wake up!"
"Meh, whosatalkentoma?"
There was a chuckle and somewhere in my mind it registered as familiar.
"(f/n), the surgery is over, you need to wake up now."
"Hmm?" I opened an eye before squeezing it shut moments later. The lights in the room were far too bright.
There was a soft whirring noise and from behind my eye lids I saw the room getting darker.
The sonic screwdriver...
"Hm, Doctor?" I mumbled, opening my eye a little to peak into the dimly lit room.
The Doctor's shadow appeared over me and I forced both eyes open. The smile on his face was dazzling.
"Wow, (f/n)...you look..."
"It's okay if it didn't work, Doctor, I don't-"
"But it did work, (f/n)! You look...lovely...even with bandages on your head."
I couldn't quite tell in the low light but it looked like the Doctor's cheeks had darkened a few shades.
"I know I've never been hideous, Doctor, but you don't have to blush like a school girl with a crush."
"(f/n)!"
Yep, fixed him.
"Are we done here?"
"Yes..."
"Can we ever go back to the TARDIS?"
"Yes..."
"When do we have to come back for the follow-up?"
"Ye...uh, a week from tomorrow," the Doctor smiled sheepishly as I sat up and gave him an exaggerated eye roll.
"Excellent!" I said, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. Before I could get to my feet, though, the Doctor placed a hand on both my shoulders and pulled me gently back to the pillow.
"They want you to stay overnight," he explained when I glared at him. "That's why we got the movies from downstairs, remember?"
Oh...
"M'kay, get on up."
"What?" The Doctor gave me a funny little look, with a glimmer of confusion in his eyes, as I scooted to the side of the hospital bed and patted the free space next to me.
"I'm not watching (movie/title) by myself. S'much better with a pal!"
"A pal?" The Doctor raised an eyebrow, but sat done in the allotted spot anyway.
"Yeah...you an' me...pals, buds, Compadres...you know," I yawned as the large flat screen on the shiny, blue wall flickered on.
"Stuff?"
"Stuff."
"Do you want to know how your surgery went before we start this movie and you fall asleep on my shoulder before the first half hour is up?" The Doctor asked, shifted in his spot to look at me.
"Sure..." I yawned.
M'sleepy...
"They successfully removed all the scar tissue and regenerated your face to look like it did when you were nineteen - they have a special program for that - and now we're just waiting for the cells to fully settle and attach themselves to the rest of your face." I nestled into his shoulder as he continued talking. So warm... "I have to give you an antibiotic every three hours for ten days."
"M'kay."
"(f/n)."
"Hmhmm?"
"Pleasant dreams."
We sat in silence as the movie started on the wall.
"Doctor?"
"Yes, (f/n)?"
"Thanks for helping me."
"You're welcome, (f/n)," the Doctor whispered, brushing a hand over my head, straightening my messed up (h/c) hair in a sloppy fashion.
Those motions quickly sent me to asleep.
Safe and warm.