When we left off, our heroes had identified Tamara Litzinger as the last person "zapped" by the Angel from which Glenn had absorbed energy. We learned a bit about her home life as well...

And now we are going to learn a bit about what brought her to where she is.

As always, I did my best with the historical aspects. As I am neither an historian nor a health/mental health professional, you may need to bear with me! ;-) Enjoy!

NINE

It took them less than thirty-six hours to locate Tamara Litzinger. It turned out that the Doctor's hunch about her whereabouts had been correct.

The hospitals (both general service and psychiatric) in the Norwalk area would not disclose any patient information over the phone, of course, so they split into two teams, once again. This time, instead of placing importance on which members of the foursome were immune to Weeping Angels, they chose partnerships based on medical knowledge. Once more, the Doctor decided to take Glenn with him, and pair Jack with Martha.

Each facility required proof of the visiting doctors' credentials (thank goodness Jack had his own psychic paper), but that was where the similarity ended. Some would only discuss cases, not patients' names. Some would give names, but would not discuss conditions or treatments. Some had an odd distrust of the visitors' accents (which Jack was able to assuage somewhat, but to which Glenn only reacted with a confused frustration). Some allowed the visitors to see patients in their recreation room, others did not. It was a surprising lack of consistency that caused the team to have to check in with one another after every few stops, just to compare notes, change their tack, advise each other on which questions to begin asking.

At one point, the Doctor suggested, with a daunted tinge to his voice, that Tamara Litzinger might have assumed a different name in this time and place, especially if she had any awareness of what had happened to her.

"Tamara's date of birth is 18 July, 1978," he said on a speakerphone call to Martha, while he and Glenn stood in an alleyway between two skips, trying not to be seen with a mobile phone. "To build a life here, she'd have had to come up with a new birthdate, probably 1950 or so, and she might have realised at some point that it would behoove her to change her name."

"So now, she could be called anything," Jack sighed, as he and Martha hid in a supply closet of one of the hospitals.

"But that also brings up the question of, what makes us think she's still in Connecticut? Or in the United States at all? If it were me, I'd try to get home," Martha said. "Or back to Oystermouth."

"Yeah, you're not wrong, Martha," the Doctor said.

"So we have to start asking different questions," Martha said. "Have you been asking if these places have any British patients?"

"No, but I guess I'll start," the Doctor said. "Wow, that's remarkably simple – why didn't we think of that before?"

"Because life with you is rarely remarkably simple," she said. "I mean, it won't get us everything, but it's a good way to start."

In the end, Tamara was not found in any facilities in Norwalk. Exhausted, the team decided to begin searching in New Canaan, the next town over, the following morning.

And that was where they found her, at Spring Hill Hospital, a forty-acre campus of well-kept, "English-style" buildings that had once been family homes. With the right combination of poignant questions and charm, Martha and Jack were shown to an exercise room where Tamara Litzinger was showing a few fellow patients how to do Hatha yoga (in 1980's America still considered somewhat esoteric and woo-wooey). They saw her through the window in a steady Tree pose, and then decided to wait for her to finish, before speaking to her. Jack used the opportunity to slip into another closet, and call the Doctor, who vowed to be on his way, ASAP.

They had been informed that the patient's name was Louise Marchand, and that she had been here for two months, for a variety of reasons, including a delusion that she was a time-traveller. They were told that with Louise's permission, they could be given her file.

When the yoga session was over, Tamara was the last person to leave the room. Fortunately, there were no other doctors, nurses, nor orderlies in the vicinity, so when she stepped out into the hallway, Martha was able to say, "Tamara Litzinger?" without anyone hearing.

The woman stopped short. Her eyes opened wide as saucers, and she asked, "Who wants to know?"

"I'm someone who can help you," Martha answered.

"How? Are you another doctor?"

"I am a doctor – well, nearly enough – but that's not what's brought me here.

"Am I supposed to just trust you because you're British?"

"Er… no…"

"Because you should know, that actually makes it worse."

"Can we talk in there?" Martha asked, indicating the exercise room.

Tamara hesitated, while she studied both of them. Of Jack, she asked, "How about you? You're pretty. Also a doctor?"

"No," Jack replied. "I'm a guy who really just wants to get out of the hallway."

"Oh, a local," she said. Then, "Okay. Well done." And she gestured with her head that they should follow her in.

Tamara Litzinger was a bit of a heavy-set woman, a couple inches taller than Martha, with limp reddish brown hair, and glasses. She did not have on makeup now, and she had something a look of defeat about her. But from her picture, Martha knew that ordinarily, she had a bright, cheerful smile, dressed well, and as they say, cleans up nicely. Today she was wearing a lavender-coloured sweatsuit, and was carrying a pair of trainers in her hands.

There was a table with a few chairs over to the left, ten, maybe fifteen metres from the door, and they followed her across a grey and green carpeted floor to sit down.

"Tamara, my name is Martha Jones, and this is my associate, Jack Harkness," Martha began.

"Tamara," the woman mused. "Tammy, my friends call me."

"Tammy, then…"

"Tammy and Tamara are not even real."

"Not real? How so?" Martha asked.

But Tamara just laid her head against the wall, and stared.

Martha persevered. "All right, Jack and I are here to help you. We think we can get you home."

"Home!" Tamara shouted, then laughed loudly. "Where the fuck is that?"

"Bristol, England," Martha said. "In the year 2008."

Tamara smiled softly. "Oh, I see. Your technique is to go along with my delusion, to get me to open up. Very clever."

"Okay, let's come at this some other way," Martha said shifting in her chair. "Can you tell me a little bit about why you're here? Shall I call you Tamara, Tammy, or Louise?"

"You can call me Beyoncé, for all I care," said the woman.

Martha chuckled. "Beyoncé. That's funny."

"Right."

Jack chimed in, "Beyoncé… you're referring to Beyoncé Knowles."

Tamara frowned. "Yes. Have I mentioned her before? Is that name in my file or something?"

"Nah," Jack said, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. "Beyoncé is a singer in the twenty-first century who began her career with the group Destiny's Child. She's fabulous. One of the great talents of our time – I truly believe that! And at the time when you disappeared from Oystermouth, she was either dating or married to the rapper Jay-Z." He looked askance at Martha. "Are they married yet?"

"How the hell should I know?" she asked him. But then she turned to Tamara. "See? If we were just humouring you, how would we know that?"

Tamara looked at them quizzically. "I don't know."

"Although, Beyoncé, by your time, has dropped her last name, and just become one name. Like Madonna," Jack continued.

"You know about Madonna, too, eh?" Tamara asked.

"Yep - cone bra, Evita, the whole nine yards. We also know about the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the Internet Movie Database, Tony Blair, we know that Anakin Skywalker is redeemed in Return of the Jedi," Jack said. "We know about Starbucks, the iPhone, Harry Potter…"

"In fact, Harry Potter helped us find you!" Martha exclaimed.

Tamara frowned. "Piss off!"

"No, no, a concept from one of the books started a train of thought that led us to you," Martha said.

"Which one of the books?" asked Tamara.

"The Goblet of Fire," Martha answered. "Number four. But I haven't finished it! If you've read beyond that, no spoilers please!"

"I actually have read beyond that… how do you know all that stuff?" she asked.

"Because we're time-travellers, too," Martha told her. "And we can get you home."

Tamara took off her glasses and buried her head in her hands. She stayed still for a long while, and then said, voice muffled, "I committed myself. Voluntarily checked myself in here."

"Why is that?" Martha asked.

"Because I thought I'd gone barmy. Lost my grip on reality. I've got a history, you know."

"We know," Martha said, gently. "Of depression, anxiety. And of feeling, for lack of a better word, gaslit."

"Yes, exactly! Exactly!"

"But that doesn't make you barmy," Martha assured her. "Not at all. You are actually a time-traveller! All of that is real!"

"Oh, but being institutionalised was a good thing for me. In, er, 2008, that is. Actually, it was 2006 or seven. Then I get here… or now… or, whatever the fuck this is that I'm living. And… my God, I was living one kind of life in 2008, then bam, it's like I wake up and I'm in a different country, in a different bloody time! It took me ages to realise what had happened, that it was really 1980. I kept checking the newspapers for a date, and walked around like Marty McFly, looking at stuff with this ridiculous, slack-jawed look on my face, and making a total nuisance of myself…"

"Ah! We know about Marty McFly, too!" Jack exclaimed.

Tamara began to cry. "And then… and then…"

Jack moved his chair closer to her, and patted her back.

They were silent, while she cried a bit.

And during this time, the Doctor and Glenn carefully opened the door and stepped in. The nurse who had shown them in, mercifully, left.

Having newcomers in the room caused Tamara to want to collect herself. She looked at the two men intently, with suspicion, as though she was wondering what sort of messed-up thing was going to happen next.

"Tammy, these are colleagues of ours," Martha said.

The patient sniffled, wiped her eyes and nose with a tissue, and asked, "Colleagues? Colleagues in… time travel?"

"Actually, yes," Martha said, reaching up for the Doctor's hand. "Jack and I travel through time, and at this stage, we're starting to feel like old hands at it. But none of it happens without this man, the Doctor. He's the one who always knows what's going on, what to do next… we just try to help, and be as clever as we can."

The Doctor stared at, almost through Tammy Litzinger, as if studying her.

"And I'm Glenn O'Keeffe," said the half-Eternal man, with an awkward wave. "I'm only with these people because I lost my mum to a Weeping Angel in 2008, and they're trying to help me find her. And my niece. Kind of in the same boat as you, in a way."

Tammy's eyes went wide. "A Weeping Angel."

"Yes," said Glenn. "She got touched by one of them, just like you. Only it was through her computer because of e-mail…"

The Doctor interrupted, seeing the chaos this line of conversation might cause. "One thing at a time, please. Tamara, do you remember a Weeping Angel?"

"Tammy. And yes, of course," she answered, eyes still wide. "I was photographing them at Oystermouth cemetery, and I swear to you, they… they…"

"They moved about," the Doctor finished.

"Yes!" she exclaimed. "I couldn't prove it because I never saw them actually move, but I know they did, because they'd be somewhere different, or in a different position every time I turned to look! And I had photos that documented it until…"

"One of them touched you while you weren't looking, and now you're here," the Doctor finished, again.

"Yes!" she practically shouted, tears falling again.

"Yeah," the Doctor sighed. "That's how they work. How they survive. They move when you're not observing them, and displace you in time, effectively killing your present self and feeding on the energy of the time you might have had."

Tammy looked at him mistrustfully. "You're screwing with me."

"I wish we were," he shrugged. "Listen, if I screwed with people, I couldn't come up with anything half as weird as the stuff that actually happens in this universe."

"That's actually true," Martha confirmed.

The Doctor continued, "Tammy, can you really believe we're screwing with you, considering what's happened?"

"And all that we know?" Jack added. "Beyoncé? Return of the Jedi?"

"My favourite band is Coldplay," Tammy said, wiping her eyes.

"Oh, I like Sparks," Glenn said, with a smile.

"I prefer Yellow," Tammy retorted. "It speaks to me for some reason."

"I could see that," he agreed.

She sat back in her chair and sighed, looking at all of them through her longish bangs and glasses, harried, and in disbelief. "I'd begun to think it had all been a dream."

"What had, Tammy?" Martha asked.

"2008. I started to believe that my life as Tammy Litzinger was all a delusion. Or, at least, it was easier to believe that, rather than the truth. It seemed much more likely that 1980 was real life, and that my husband Jay, and my career as a photojournalist, and Oystermouth was all just a… I don't know. Not a memory, that's for sure. It had to be something else. A vision. Here, the staff call it a delusional hallucination, or some such. And if that was the case then… then… I'd definitely gone bonkers."

"But what about the rigorous honesty?" Jack asked.

"How do you know about that?" she asked.

The Doctor produced a red journal with gold polka dots out of his coat, and slid it across the table to her.

Tammy's jaw dropped. She stared at the book, and asked with a raspy voice, as her throat had gone dry, "Where did you get that?"

"In 2008," said the Doctor. "From your home, when we went to talk to Jay about your disappearance. It's sort of how we found you here."

She smiled. "I did try to be rigorously honest. I tried. I made a couple of friends whom I thought I could trust. But when I tried to tell them what I thought happened to me… well, they rightfully got scared and abandoned me. I was alone. And I realised I had no choice but to be alone. The way things were, I couldn't… I couldn't have friends or think of finding a boyfriend – not that I'd really want to, since I'm basically a widow and I'm not over that yet – and I couldn't really even talk to people at my job, except about mundane job stuff. And when I finally got here, I told the staff what I thought, and they assumed I was a nutter, and by that time, I agreed with them."

The Doctor nodded sympathetically. "We reckoned with your history, and with your policy about never lying about who you are, that…"

"I'd have been committed," she finished.

"Yeah," he whispered.

"Well, I am lying about who I am," she said. "I decided to call myself Louise when I first realised where and when I was."

"Why is that?" the Doctor asked, now deciding to sit down at the table. Glenn took a seat then as well.

"Because if it was true that I had time travelled, and I'm really someone who's been transported back in time from 2008, and it's now 1980, then I'm supposed to be two years old right now. There's a little girl in Bristol, across the pond, who's the real Tammy. Or who is also Tammy. Tamara Jean Jespers. A Tamara Jespers who is destined to grow up and eventually get here. Can't risk being pegged as her, even if she's a toddler, and her last name is different. She's got the same DNA as me, doesn't she? She's gonna be Tamara Litzinger someday, so… might as well change my name, and detach completely. Who knows what could happen if she and I are discovered? Don't wanna end up in some underground facility in Area 51 or something."

"Clever, clever," the Doctor said, with a touch of admiration.

"And if I'm mad, if I'm not who I think I am, then what does it matter? I might as well be Louise, or Melissa, or Veruca, or Beyoncé, because why not?" At this, she buried her fingers in her hair, and started to pull.

"So, who is Louise Marchand?" Martha asked. It was a skilled question that could be interpreted in a few different ways, and Tamara's answer could reveal loads about her state of mind.

"Louise Marchand? Well, once I got her established - by the way, it's so much easier to create a new identity before the internet, let me tell you! Anyway, Louise Marchand, this incarnation of me, she worked as a telephone operator for The Hour, which is the old local newspaper. But she doesn't work there anymore, because now she's here. She's friendless, family-less, and her grip on reality is tenuous. I don't know what else to tell you," Tammy answered. "Although, if you're asking what made me choose the name, it's because Louise is my mother's middle name, and my two grandmothers' maiden names are Martin and Chandler. Mar…chand. Marchand. Also, it makes me sound French."

"I see," Martha said. To her, the woman sitting before her seemed completely sane.

She and the Doctor looked at each other. There was a heavy silence, and then Tammy asked. "Is that not the answer you were looking for?"

"I wasn't sure what answer I'd get," Martha said. "But we're here to take you home, and the Doctor has a plan to get you out of here."

"Oh, no," Tammy said, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'm not going home."

"What?" Martha asked. "Why not?"

"I'm just not. I can't go back. I still don't trust my grip on reality, and if I go back, it'll be another layer of honesty that I have to quash. Just... no."

"We're helping you here, and we can help you once we get there," Martha assured her. "I, personally, am much better equipped to care for a patient, if that's what you are, in 2008 than in 1980! In 1980 I'm not even born yet! If you come back..."

Tammy merely sat with her arms crossed and shook her head. "No. No way. I'm fine here."

The Doctor and Martha stepped out into the hallway, leaving Jack and Glenn to chat with Tammy. Jack would know not to pressure her at this stage, but also not to let her get away. Glenn was learning. He might see the parallel between Jack's being in charge of him, not so long ago, and engaging in conversation so as not to let him get away… the Doctor hoped he would engage in kind.

"Well, here's something we hadn't anticipated," Martha sighed.

"Yeah," the Doctor said, squinting his eyes, looking through the narrow window at the woman in purple sweats. "It's weird. I mean… is it weird? I think it's weird. I can't tell anymore."

"I don't know," Martha said. "I suppose it would depend upon the real reasons for her wanting to stay."

"Do we try to convince her to come with us, or just leave her here? I've never had to contemplate this before," the Doctor said, a bit harried, pulling his hand down over his face.

That was when Glenn came through the door. He sighed, and said, "Tammy sent me to tell you that if you're trying to come up with a way to get her to leave here, you're wasting your time."

"Did she say why?" Martha asked.

"Not as of yet," said Glenn. "Might it have something to do with her husband?"

"That's what I'm wondering," she replied.

"Well, I mean, what can we do?" the Doctor asked, rhetorically. "I mean, we can't physically force her to get in the TARDIS with us."

"We could, but…" Glenn began.

"But we can't," the Doctor shot at him. "Come to that, we might as well materialise the TARDIS around her, but that would be the same sort of force that we don't want to use, yeah? So, if she doesn't want to go…"

"Doctor, I think I should stay with her," Martha said.

"What?"

"I think I can help her."

"You want to stay behind in 1980?" he asked. His face was awash with worry.

"Well, want is a strong word, and it wouldn't be forever," she insisted. "But you three can go rescue a few more of the Oystermouth disappearances, while my time is better spent here. You need Glenn for that job, not me."

"I need you for everything," he complained. "Especially now."

"No, you don't," she counselled. "When the Weeping Angels come to call, I'm an extra set of eyes, at best, which we don't need, because Jack and Glenn are immune. At worst, I'm a liability.

"You're not."

"I'm a superfluous bundle of potential years that can be used to feed the Angels. And, Doctor, I'm a distraction to you."

"Martha…"

"But here, I can do what I've always wanted to do, which is help people heal," she told him. "Granted, I never actually thought psychiatry was totally my thing, in spite of what I said… but psychiatry is physiology at its core, and a human body is a human body. More importantly, a person in need is a person in need."

The Doctor didn't answer right away. A heavy silence fell over them as the Doctor and Martha stared at each other expectantly, incredulously, somewhat contentiously, and Glenn watched them like a spectator at a tennis match.

Then, the Doctor said, "Glenn, will you give us a minute, please?"

This chapter could have been called, "All about Tammy," eh? I hope you find her interesting, and worth the words.

Leave me a review, let me know your thoughts! Thanks for reading!