John Smith walked down the long hall to the closed room at the end. A white-clad man stood beside the door and gave him a nod.
"She's being a bit moodier today, Dr. Smith," the man's deep voice growled. "If she tries anything, just give me a holler."
"Will do, Marcus," John said. "But I doubt I'll need your services. She's never shown aggression toward me."
"If you say so," the burly man shrugged as he opened the door for the doctor. John gave him another nod as a thank you before walking slowly into the room. It was a small room, but a decent size for the patients that stayed at the ward. Two comfy chairs sat in the center of the area, facing each other with a side table beside each. A bed—more of a cot really—lay against the wall to the right of the chairs, and on the left side was a window seat under a large, but barred, window.
His patient was sitting there. She didn't acknowledge his presence when he walked in and seated himself on one of the chairs. Instead, she continued to stare out of the window with an unreadable expression on her face. John was used to this. She always loved staring out that window; out into the world she wished she could return to. John was a patient man. He'd wait until she was ready before beginning their session.
Pulling out his spectacles from his coat pocket, he put them on slowly and looked down to his little leather-bound journal in his hands—his patient log and notes. He began flipping through the pages until he turned to her comments. Of all of his patients, hers had always been the most interesting to him. She had a created a whole world of her own, and more than that actually. Other worlds and universes even. She told him that she was a traveler, a time traveler, from the past—the year 2005—and that she traveled the universe, visiting different worlds and time periods with her friend in this magical, bigger on the inside, blue box. And she described everything so… beautifully, and with absolute clarity. She sounded so sure of what she saw, and sometimes he wished he could believe her.
But he knew he never could. There were many contradicting and unbelievable factors, but the one that stood out the most was him. She said he was her friend—the traveler, the alien, with two hearts and a time machine—t he TARDIS she called it—and a man who was over nine hundred years old. And that was impossible. John Smith wasn't a traveler, didn't have two hearts, most certainly did not have a TARDIS, and was not that old. He wasn't even her friend, she couldn't be his. She was his patient, and he was her psychiatrist. Dr. John Smith, not "the Doctor"as she called him. Her world wasn't real; it only existed in her imagination.
A soft voice brought him out of his thoughts, "I'm not… I'm not crazy, Doctor."
John took of his glasses and turned to the window. She wouldn't look at him still, but stared down at her feet as she hugged her knees. He could see tear stains down her cheeks.
"No," John said gently. "You're not crazy, Rose Tyler. You just have a beautiful imagination."