SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT
By the time anyone remembered to check Mickey's vitals, he was gone.
During the day, he had wandered about the hospital a bit, playing the same daft, wide-eyed character who had "heard rumours" about the hospital on the moon. Not surprisingly, most of the patients hadn't been here when it happened, but plenty of the custodians, service crew, foodservice workers, not to mention doctors and nurses, had been. And they all had the same story to tell. Raining upwards. Earthquake, then bright light. Blimey, we're on the moon. Militant rhinos scanning people. Running out of oxygen.
The only thing that varied was the end of the story. Some had passed out from the oxygen deficiency, some had not. Those who had not, they reported more upwards rain on the moon, and another bright light. The same description of events unfolded, everyone seemed to remember, but no-one seemed actually to know anything. This course of action was much like squeezing water from a stone.
And so he left. He didn't bother to check out, he just left. No one tried to stop him, the staff barely noticed.
He wasn't sure where he could go to get more intel. Briefly, he considered teleporting back to that arrogant bastard Randall to find out, but the thought of talking to that man again so soon did not sit well. In addition, he knew that the more he used the teleportation device, the greater the chances for cellular dispersal. He decided he needed to find a place to gather his thoughts and decide on a battle plan.
He went around the corner and saw an inviting, not-too-crowded tavern from across the street.
Tish was roughly the same size as Martha, and that meant pretty flippin' small. Therefore, Martha had never quite understood how on Earth it was that Tish could drink twice as much. As Martha was hitting the halfway mark on her first glass, Tish was approximately in the same place on her second, and was busy contemplating a third.
Just in time, the barman brought over two glasses of the same, explaining that the two gents at the corner table sent them over. The "two gents" were good-looking enough, and looked to be about their age, but they only smiled and waved politely, and showed no inclination toward coming over to chat up the Jones girls. Both girls quietly assumed the boys would eventually make their way over – Tish hoped, Martha dreaded.
The girls thanked he barman. Tish asked, "So where were we?"
"Brighton."
"Right. So we get to the hotel, and he hasn't even made a reservation! He said he had the whole thing planned, but all he'd done was googled 'hotels in Brighton' and hoped for the best! I mean... ugh!" she said, downing the rest of her second drink. She slid the third over and placed it in front of her.
"Sorry," Martha said without feeling, without really looking at Tish.
"Martha, are you all right?"
"Yeah."
"Really, you can talk to me. That's why we came out tonight."
"Yeah."
Tish paused and searched her sister's face. "Martha, I'm getting married to Gordon Brown and we're going to live in Kuala Lumpur, is that all right?"
"Yeah."
Tish reached across the table and cradled Martha's chin between her thumb and forefinger. She turned Martha's face upwards so that she could meet her eyes.
Martha blinked a few times and, this time honestly, muttered "Sorry." She sat back in her chair and took a sip from her drink, followed by a heavy sigh.
"Is there anything I can do?" asked Tish.
"Not really," Martha told her. "I just miss him, you know? I thought I would feel better with a bit of separation, but... no such luck. And then today... there was this man... Mr. Smith..."
"What about him?"
How could Martha explain the overwhelming sense of déjà vu she'd felt when she'd been introduced to Mr. Smith this morning? Not just his name, but the circumstances. Some of Mrs. Brams' words had been verbatim the same as when Mr. Stoker had introduced the other Mr. Smith. And then he'd asked about the Judoon Platoon on the Moon... she had chills.
"Nothing."
"Was he cute?"
"Yeah, I suppose," Martha answered with no feeling.
Tish smiled teasingly. "Another tall skinny white bloke with mad hair?"
"No," Martha said. She seemed to be staring off into space. "A black man, average height, very nice build, with skin like coffee and cream. A determined-looking mouth, angular eyebrows and eyes that understand more than they let on."
Tish was taken aback. "Wow. Sounds like you took a pretty close look!"
Martha continued to stare for so long that Tish finally turned. A man matching Martha's description was standing in the doorway. He scanned the crowd, and finally crossed to the bar.
"My God! Is that him?" Tish asked her.
"Yeah," Martha said, snapping out of her stupor. "It is."
"Well, he is cute! Go say hello."
"No, no, I can't do that," Martha protested.
"Why not? It's like kismet that he's here!"
Martha recalled some words that she'd actually said to the Doctor a while back, and now she applied them to herself. "Ever heard of rebound?"
"So what? It's not like you're going to marry the guy. Just go and say hello!"
"Tish, I don't want to, okay?"
But before Martha could stop her, she had called out, "Mr. Smith!" and then turned her head away so quickly that when Mr. Smith looked over, it very clearly looked as though Martha had done it. Smoothly, Tish glided away and sat down at the table with the two young men who had bought their drinks.
Martha smiled shyly and waved, and to her surprise, the man started to walk over, drink in hand. He sat down across from her, and smiled easily, saying "Hello there."
"Hi," she said, less at ease.
"I'm Mickey," he told her. "You don't have to keep calling me Mr. Smith."
"Martha," she replied. They shook hands.
"Nice to meet you, Martha."
"So," she asked, looking at him a bit sideways. "How are those stomach cramps faring?"
"Oh, fine. They went away."
"I see."
After a beat, they both began to speak. "Listen," they said in unison.
They both giggled a bit, and Martha said, "You first."
"All right. Um, I know I said this before, but I want to say it again. I'm very, very sorry for whatever it is that I did to make you so uncomfortable this afternoon."
Martha sighed. "I don't think it was anything you did, Mickey. It's just been a hard week. Hard year, if you want to know the truth."
"Really? I'm sorry to hear that. You looked sort of..." he hesitated. "...well, almost frightened before."
"No, no. It's just that you reminded me of someone then. Not now, just then. Not frightened," she assured him, taking sip of her drink. "Just... heartbroken, that's all."
Whoa, nelly. Did I really just say that to a total stranger? she asked herself.
"That's all?" Mickey asked incredulously. "The words that's all should never come after the word heartbroken. Heartbreak is serious business, Martha. You should treat it like any other affliction. Come on, you're in medical school, you should know this stuff."
He was being just a bit whimsical, but with a totally straight face, and she found it kind of charming.
"So now pretend I'm the doctor," he told her, in the same whimsical fashion. Somehow, she found this particular line much less charming. An unpleasant wave of surprised, embarrassed heat rushed over her.
"Oh Mickey," she said, leaning back in her chair. "If only you knew what you were asking of me."
He chuckled a bit. "Yeah, none of the women in my life seem to find that one very funny."
"Pardon?" she asked.
"Nothing. I'm just sayin'... if you're the afflicted, and I'm the one treating you, then I would ask you questions like..." he put his chin between his thumb and forefinger in mock-thought. "How long have you been noticing the symptoms, Miss Jones?"
She was charmed again, and she grinned. "You really want to know? I mean, this is quite a large can of worms."
He leaned forward. "Yes, I really want to know."
"All right. One week," she told him.
"One week?" he exclaimed. "Well then, what was all that about a hard year? I assumed that meant you'd been dealing with the break-up for a twelvemonth."
"Well," she sighed. "Really, I've been dealing with never really being together for a twelvemonth."
"How do you mean?" he asked, genuinely concerned.
"I fancied him," she told him, trying to sound nonchalant and failing. "Well, really I was head over heels for him. And he was fond of me... but he'd had this... companion. A while back."
"An old girlfriend?" he asked.
"Sort of. And he made no secret of the fact that he would have stayed with her forever, and that I was no kind of replacement. But they got separated by circumstances, and there was no hope of them getting back together, so... I was what he had to settle for."
Mickey was aghast. "Whoa," he said, nearly gasping. "Boy, do I hear that."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. But I'm way stupider than you. Wanna know why?"
"Why?"
"Cause I got the same exact story to tell, but I'm still with her."
Martha smiled sympathetically. She would never judge him for that. If Mickey felt about his girlfriend the way Martha had felt, well then, she completely understood why he would put up with being second best.
"You're not stupid," she assured him. "You're in love."
"Sometimes I can't tell the difference."
"So what's your story?"
"Met her a few years ago and we hit it off, you know? Things were going fine, and then she met this bloke, and suddenly... it was like I didn't exist. She would take off for months at a time and I'd not hear from her until she needed a favour. One time, she made me drive all the way up to Cardiff to bring her passport."
"And you did it," Martha said, still smiling with sympathy.
"And I did it," Mickey told her. "And then when she and this bloke finally got split up for good, about a year ago, oh, it was tears and recriminations for months."
"Months?"
"Months. She cried for about sixty days solid, and I tried to comfort her. I told her I'd be there for her, I told her I'd never leave, but it wasn't good enough because I wasn't him. And there isn't a bloody thing I can do about that."
Mickey's description sounded so much like her own feelings, she almost burst into tears on the spot.
"Do you feel like sometimes she's looking through you, not at you?" she asked him.
"All the time," he said. "Sometimes I feel like looking behind me to see if he's there. Did he ever let his guard down and begin to tell a story, and then stop short because he just can't go there?" He said the last part of the phrase with mock-drama.
"Oh God!" she exclaimed. "More times than I can count! It was like living with a ghost!"
"Yes. That's exactly what it's like," Mickey mumbled, pained. "Ugh, it's torture. Really is sometimes."
"For a long time, I thought I'd be able to live with it forever because I loved him so much. Even if he never came round, I thought, I'll stay with him until the end," she told him, now staring into her empty glass.
"But eventually, you began to resent every silence and every empty space," he said, staring into his own.
"And every time he..." she almost said saved my life, but stopped herself. "...did a favor for me or gave me a gift, part of me wondered if he was just doing it to fill a space, or if he really felt I was worth it."
Bitterly, Mickey confessed, "I don't have to tell you when I wonder if she's doing it just to fill a space."
This took Martha by surprise, and she backed down a bit. Like Tish, Mickey seemed to be exceptionally good at putting things into perspective. All those times Martha had wished she could be with him, insisted to herself that if she could make love to him just once, it would make her happy, solve all her problems... she was now glad the opportunity had never arisen. She now knew that she'd have spent the whole time wondering what and who was really on his mind.
She now wondered if she actually had it better than Mickey and this girl he couldn't leave.
She looked at the empty glasses on the table and realised that they'd both been drowning their sorrows. This was bad. Bad for the body, bad for the spirit. She decided to slip back into the role of caretaker.
"Don't you need to go back to her now, Mickey?" she asked him.
He looked up, a bit surprised. "Oh, well, actually," he sputtered. "I'm sort of out-of-town at the moment. She's... someplace else."
"Where are you staying?" Martha asked.
Mickey was sure that it was an innocent question, but it still seemed dangerous to him. He mentally chastised himself for even thinking that way, and set himself back in line by improvising, "The Jeffries House, off Baker Street."
"Do you mind if I ring you there?" she wondered.
What the hell was she doing asking a question like that? What, did she only like men who were clearly smitten with someone else? Was she that much a glutton for punishment? But she knew that Tish had been right – she wasn't going to marry the guy, she wasn't looking for long-term, so why not have coffee together sometime? She told herself she deserved a bit of happiness, and so did Mickey. They could be number-one in each others' lives for a bit, if they could only be number-two in other people's. But only for a bit.
He almost told her not to call, but he was weak. He decided he didn't mind so much being weak. "I'd like that," he told her. "I'm in room 18."
Martha stood. "Well then," she near-whispered, holding her hand out to him. "I think we should say good night now."
He stood as well. He shook her hand while searching her eyes, and then said, "Good night, Martha Jones."
She smiled. "Good night, Mickey."
She left the tavern, waving to Tish.