John Smith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dreamtofbeing) wrote2009-06-22 08:03 am
dreamtofbeing) wrote2009-06-22 08:03 am
Entry tags:
Fic: Insurance
6,500 words--in a crisis, the Doctor forgets that he's human and vulnerable.
This is set in a verse where the Doctor is rooming with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gothgivenpowers in a flat in Washington, D.C.. I wrote this a while ago and never posted it. Thanks to mind_the_tardis for looking it over and letting me borrow her OC. The fic was inspired by a prompt from daphnie_1.
The Doctor knows he's being stupid, but old habits die hard. When the man at the counter, instead of paying for his cigarettes, pulls a gun and shouts for everyone to get down on the floor right now, the Doctor doesn't. He stays where he is, in the aisle with the breakfast cereal, no more than eight feet from the shopper-turned-robber.
"I said, get the fuck down on the floor!"
The man is afraid, the Doctor can see it in his wide eyes and flared nostrils and the glint of perspiration on his forehead. The Doctor knows how the man must be feeling, too; shaky and short of breath, out of control and not knowing what to do next, to fight, or to make a run for it.
Slowly, very slowly, the Doctor puts his shopping basket down. "You don't want to do this."
The gun swings around. Suddenly, the Doctor can see the muzzle, the small, round hole of the barrel. He can't help flinching. Stupid. Stupid body giving him away.
"Don't try and play the hero. Down, on the ground, now!"
The Doctor raises his hands in a gesture of peace--look, no guns, never any guns, a universal gesture. He can feel his heart beating in his chest, a steady pulse that has sped up now, the single organ beating so fast he can feel the rhythm in the big vessels in his neck. He knows the man with the gun must be feeling the same.
"Joe," he says, stealing a glance at the badge pinned to the front of the man's white polo shirt. "Joe, you work at the petrol station down the road, right?"
Surprise joins the anger and fear on Joe's face. "How the fuck did you--" He interrupts himself and, without looking, tears the badge from his chest. It falls to the floor with a clatter. "Last warning, buddy. Down, or I'll make you."
For a very brief moment, the Doctor considers doing what Joe says. A minute ago, he was sure that Joe wouldn't shoot anyone, but now, looking into the man's eyes, his conviction wavers. This man might just be panicked enough to actually pull the trigger.
That's why the Doctor doesn't do what he says. Joe needs to be stopped before that happens.
"You don't want to do this, Joe. Think about it, what do you think--"
He doesn't get any further than that. He can see Joe's finger tighten, and immediately drops to his knees. He's not quite fast enough, though. There's a deafening noise, and something hits his shoulder, hard, the impact driving him back against the shelves. Cereal boxes fall on top of and to the floor around him, one bursting open and spilling corn flakes over dirty while tiles.
The pain takes a few moments to register. The Doctor's ears are ringing, his vision is blurred from the abrupt movement, and then, suddenly, there's an excruciating stab of pain in his shoulder, exploding outwards through his left arm and torso. He gasps, his right hand going to his shoulder automatically and finding warm, sticky wetness.
"Anyone move and I'll shoot every fucking single one of you fuckers, you hear me? Now go get me the fucking money right now!"
Blood. His blood. He can smell it. Corn flakes crunch and get crushed as he tries to move and stops when it makes the pain in his shoulder multiply.
Joe is still yelling, his voice loud and harsh and panicked. The Doctor can hear him, but he can't see much. The angle is all wrong. Warmth is squelching under the fingers of his right hand, and the Doctor can feel his shirt getting wet and sticky. He raises his hand to his eyes, and yes. Blood. Red and thick and all over his fingers and that's not right, he shouldn't be bleeding so much. The wound should be closing; he should be feeling the tingle of an on-setting regeneration. But of course he wouldn't. He can't regenerate. He's human.
He could be dying right now.
"Hey." The word doesn't come out quite as strongly as intended. "Hey, I think I need--"
"Shut up!" Joe is hoarse from shouting so much. "Shut the fuck up or I'll shoot you again, do you want me to shoot you again? Because I fucking will if you don't shut the fuck up!"
No. No, he doesn't want Joe to shoot him again, he's already been shot once and he could be dying. There's pain, a whole lot of it; it's making his head swim. The Doctor tries to find the wound with his right hand, tries to press down and stop the blood flow; humans only have five litres of blood and he's bleeding a lot, he can tell from the warmth and the wetness and the way everything seems to smell of blood. He needs to stop bleeding. He needs to stop bleeding, or he'll die.
He's scared.
Joe is shouting some more. He's shouting, and using the word "fuck" a lot, and really, there's no need, people can hear you. Even the Doctor can, despite the noise in his ears which is the blood that's still in his body, pounding away, a quick hammering indicating his heartbeat, and it's too fast. His heart is beating too fast and pumping the blood out of his body even more quickly.
"Stop." It's just a whisper; he doesn't want to get shot again. "Stop, please stop, don't, please, I don't want to die."
The sounds around him blur into a wall of noise. No voices, no people, just a drone, and the bright lights overhead on the ceiling that he's staring at. He wants this to stop, right now. He wants to heal, to regenerate, to be able to do something, but there's nothing he can do except lie here and bleed. So much blood. He closes his eyes against the brightness.
He's not sure what happens after this. He knows there's noise, and talking, and then there's more noise and more talking and then the brightness is blocked out by a big shadow that must be a person.
"I'm bleeding," he says, trying to focus. "I'm bleeding, can you help me?"
"Sure, buddy." The voice is calm and friendly. It's not Joe. "Sure, I'll help you. Don't worry, you'll be fine. We'll get you to a hospital."
The Doctor doesn't like hospitals. He says as much, and the voice who is not Joe laughs. "Yeah, buddy, most people don't."
Then the paramedic--because that's what he must be, a remote part of the Doctor's brain concludes --does something to the Doctor's shoulder that hurts a whole lot, and the Doctor hisses and closes his eyes again. The noise around him goes back to being just a wall of sound, until there's a prick in his arm and even the sound fades, leaving him to wonder if this is what it feels like to lose consciousness as a human.
-###-
He comes around a couple of times. The first time he's in a small space that shakes a whole lot and must be the ambulance. The paramedic who talked to him before is there; the Doctor recognizes the voice. He's a big man, the paramedic, and the Doctor thinks that his palms would probably feel warm and sweaty, except they don't because he's wearing gloves. The lights in the ambulance are as bright as the lights in the shop, and the pain in his shoulder is--not gone, but moving away. Everything is moving away. It's all slipping down a long tunnel, until it's gone and there's only blackness.
The second time he's awake for a bit longer. He's in the emergency room, lying on a table with people and nurses and doctors and medical instruments all around him. It smells like hospital; he still doesn't like hospitals, he never did, he can't help it. He wishes the paramedic were here, the Doctor knew him, knew his voice. Someone's bending down over him, but his glasses are gone, so he can't see who it is.
"What's your name, sir? Can you tell me your name?"
He's the--he's--no, he can't. He's the Doctor, but lying here on this table, scared and hurting and probably still bleeding and maybe still dying, the name sounds wrong. He's not the doctor, he's the patient. He closes his eyes.
"Sir? Sir, I need a name, please. Stay with me, come on. I need a name."
"John." He doesn't think about it before he says it. "I'm John, John Smith."
"Thank you, sir. Do you--"
"What's your name?" He's opened his eyes again and finds that when he squints, he can make out her face, at least a little. She looks surprised.
"I'm Janice. I'm a nurse here. You're going to be fine, John, I just need to take your details. Is there anyone we can contact?"
Contact? What for? He just looks up at the fuzzy image of her face. His shoulder hurts, and the blood in his ears is still making a whole lot of noise, but at least that means that there's still blood in his body. "I'm not dead."
"No, John, you were never going to die. You're fine. We just need your details. Is there someone we can call for you? Do you have any family?"
"No. Lu." Not family, but Lu is his friend. "You could call Lu, please call Lu."
"We can do that, John. What's Lu's full name?"
"He's Lu." No, that's not right. "Luduan. His name is Luduan."
"Does he have a last name?"
The Doctor never asked. "I don't know. He's Lu. He reads cards."
Then Janice disappears, and there's more noise and people. Someone is talking about getting him up to OR 3, and someone else puts a pen into his right hand and tells him to sign something.
Then the table starts moving, and not very long after that, he loses consciousness again. He knows now what that feels like when you're human.
-###-
He doesn't wake up again until he's in recovery. Of course, when he blinks open his eyes, he doesn't know he's in recovery, not until a nurse--not Janice; this is a male nurse--shows up next to his bed and tells him so. Ben--that's his name--also says that everything went just fine and that the Doctor was lucky and is going to be alright.
The Doctor thinks that in hospitals, you do get told that a lot.
He's not exactly fully aware of what's going on, but he doesn't fade out again. The world's there, around him, an almost soothing mixture of voices and electronic beeps and bleeps and the blurry white ceiling and mint-green sheets. Again, the lights are very bright. The Doctor supposes it makes sense for the lights to be bright in a hospital. People need to be able to see what they're doing, after all.
He's not in pain. They must have given him something, painkillers of some sort, and yes, there's an IV, he's only noticing it now. It's hanging on a stand next to his bed, and although he can't see where the tube is going, it's reasonable to assume it's going into a needle in his arm. This is how they do this kind of thing here, right? IV, needle, and he's remembering the last time he was in a human hospital. It's not a good memory.
"We called Lu for you, John."
That's Ben again. The Doctor turns his head to look at him. Ben is a young man, no older than twenty-eight years at the most, with dark hair. The Doctor can't really make out his face--his glasses are still gone--but he thinks Ben is smiling, so he answers with one of his own.
"Thank you. How--" He blinks. He's not sure what he meant to ask, but something's not right about this.
Ben seems to know what he means. "You said he reads cards. Took the ER guys a while to figure out what you meant, but after that, he was easy enough to find. His agency's in the phone book."
"Right." Yes, that was it. And Ben's explanation makes sense. The Doctor nods.
"He's out of town, though, apparently." Ben's doing something to the IV tube, and there's a sharp pain in the Doctor's arm that makes him draw in a breath through his teeth. Ben's fingers brush against his hand. "Sorry. It's stuck again, don't want you running out of happy juice. Anyway, he said he's going to be here as soon as possible, but it'll be a couple of hours still."
Lu's coming, that's good. Humans have a way of making things so complicated, and the Doctor's sure there will be a lot of papers and forms to fill out for this. Lu will be able to help with that. "What time is it?"
"What time?" Ben sounds surprised. "Eleven-thirty. We just had a shift change. I'll be here all night."
Three hours. A little more than that, actually. The Doctor left for the shop around eight, and he checked the watch on the shop's counter at around quarter past. "I thought it was later."
"Don't worry about it. Get some rest, I think you could use it. The cops will want to talk to you in the morning."
"What about?"
"The shooting," Ben says. "You do remember what happened, right?"
The shooting. Joe. Yes. Right. "Yes. Sorry. I remember. I got shot." He pauses. "In the shoulder."
"Yes. Well, actually, you got winged, but--wait, has no-one told you what happened yet?"
Ben sounds concerned all of a sudden. The Doctor blinks. "I know what happened. I got shot. There was a lot of blood." He remembers that. The blood, and the thought that he was going to die.
"You did get shot, but the bullet just winged you." Ben has stopped fiddling with the IV now and is leaning on the edge of the Doctor's bed. His hands are making the mattress dip. "It went pretty deep, tore open a vein, which is why you lost quite a lot of blood. But it never actually hit properly."
It takes the Doctor a couple of moments to process this. It didn't hit properly? He thinks it did; he can remember the loud bang of the gunshot, the way it made his ears ring, and the blood, slick and slippery under his fingers. "I wasn't going to die?"
"You were never going to die, John. The paramedics were there in time; you were never in any danger of dying."
The words are reassuring, but Ben is using a tone the Doctor knows only too well. He's used it himself often enough when he wanted to calm people, wanted them to believe this little white lie he was telling them so they would stop making things even worse by being scared. Is Ben lying to him?
He doesn't get a chance to ask. Ben pats his hand again and tells him to get some rest now, and walks away before the Doctor can formulate the question. He almost calls him back. Were you lying to me? Was I dying? Am I maybe still dying? It's possible. Humans are so fragile.
The Doctor doesn't, though. He's not sure why; maybe he doesn't dare to. Maybe he doesn't really want to know. He closes his eyes and decides to follow Ben's advice. Not two minutes later, he's asleep.
-###-
This time, waking up is different. First of all, it's dark. No bright lights blinding him anymore, but no lights at all creating a dim blurry darkness around him. Also, this time there's pain. It's lodged firmly in his left shoulder and trails all the way down his arm to his fingertips and back towards his neck and upwards, sneaking underneath his hair. It spikes when he moves, and he makes an involuntary sound.
There's a shuffling noise somewhere in the greyness around him. "Doctor? Hey, you awake?"
The Doctor lies still for a moment. He's not sure where he is, or when he is. But that voice just now sounded familiar. "Lu?"
A shape appears, darker against the dark background. "Yeah, it's me. Hey, Doctor."
There are some more small clattering noises, and then there's light. The Doctor squeezes his eyes shut against the sudden brightness and turns his head away.
"Sorry. It's like RFK Stadium in here, with the lights."
"What time is it?" He can't see anything, and it's not because of the lights. The Doctor reaches out with his right hand--the one that doesn't hurt--and feels on what must be the nightstand for his glasses. His fingers trail over a phone, and brush against something that's cool and a little moist and feels like a water glass, before he can feel the warm, dry skin of Lu's hand brushing against his and pressing the edged plastic frame of his glasses into his palm.
"Here. The nurse gave them to me. It's--just after two in the morning."
The Doctor slips the glasses on and blinks as the world shifts into focus. He's not in recovery anymore. Instead, he's in a normal hospital room, in the bed next to the window. Most of the room is in darkness, but by the light of the bedside lamp, he can see Lu looking down at him.
"Hey there," Lu says again. "How're you feeling?"
The Doctor doesn't answer immediately; he's not sure how he's feeling. His throat is dry, and his shoulder hurts, and there's a pounding headache right behind his eyes. "Why are you here, Lu?" That sounds a lot more unfriendly than he meant it, so he adds, "It's the middle of the night. You should be at home."
Lu smiles a little. "No, actually, I should be up in Darnestown."
"What?"
"Darnestown, the Renn Fair. Never mind, though; I was barely making the gas money, anyway. What happened, Doctor?" Lu's tone changes, it's suddenly urgent, concerned. "They just told me you got shot; what the hell were you doing?"
"I--" What was he doing? His thoughts are slow, sluggish. All he can remember is Joe, and the gun, and the blood, and the-- "Cornflakes. I was buying cornflakes."
"You got shot buying cornflakes?"
"We were out."
Lu makes a sound that the Doctor isn't sure is a snort or a sigh. "You could have gone in the morning."
"I didn't know I was going to get shot."
"No, that's not-- never mind."
The Doctor blinks, his eyelids protesting the motion. He's tired, he wants to go back to sleep, but his shoulder is hurting. He tries to shift a little, but it only makes the pain spike. He clenches his teeth until it subsides again.
"Hey, you okay? I can get a nurse, if you need anything."
The Doctor shakes his head. " 'm fine." He swallows. "You should go home, Lu." It's the middle of the night, and really, he's okay. He just needs to go back to sleep.
"Are you sure?" Lu sounds unconvinced. "I really don't mind staying a little longer."
"I'm fine." His eyelids have shut by now. He's thinking about adding something more, but speaking seems like too much effort right now.
"Okay," he hears Lu say. He can feel fingers brushing against his temple, and then there's a tug on his right ear as Lu pulls off his glasses. "I'll be back in the morning with a change of clothes. Is there anything you want me to bring with me?"
The Doctor doesn't think so. He can't think of anything that he would want, except-- "Fred," he says, not opening his eyes.
Lu's chuckle sounds far away, as if he were on the other end of a phone line. "I doubt she'd approve."
That's true. Fred wouldn't like the hospital. The Doctor can sympathize. He thinks about telling Lu this, but he falls asleep before he can do so.
-###-
The morning brings nothing that would heighten the Doctor's appreciation for hospitals. He wakes up very early to a nurse changing his IV, and the pain in his shoulder and back won't let him go back to sleep. He decides that getting up might at least fix the pain in his back. He finds that it does, but he also finds that standing upright makes his head spin and the picture in front of his eyes go blurry and shrink to a tunnel. He loses track of time for a few moments, only to find himself sitting on a chair that someone seems to have quickly pulled up next to his bed, a nurse frowning down at him and asking what he was thinking, simply getting up on his own like that. He says he didn't realize he wasn't supposed to. She tells him to ring the bell next time, it's what it's there for.
He skips breakfast--the food looks all right, but he's not hungry--and ends up having nothing at all to do. He asks one of the nurses for a book--any book would do, he's bored enough to read anything--and is given an 800-page romance novel about a woman ending up in the Scottish Highlands in the past. By page 40, the Doctor can tell that the author has never actually been to that era in the Highlands. When Lu shows up, the Doctor is on page 250, and very glad to be able to put the book aside.
"I just grabbed the books that were lying on your bedside table," Lu answers when the Doctor asks him whether he brought anything to read.
"Good. Thanks." The Doctor nods, satisfied. Those should do; he can't remember any of them containing tall brawny highlanders.
Lu also brought some clothes--t-shirts, hoodies and sweat pants, mostly, but anything's better than the hospital gowns with the slit up the back--and a toiletry bag containing a tooth brush and various other items. He makes the Doctor sit at the small table opposite the bed while he puts the stuff away. The Doctor protests, but he's actually glad to be able to sit down.
The nurse's assistant, when she comes in to pick up his untouched breakfast tray, frowns at him and tells him that if he wants to be walking around again so quickly, he needs to keep his strength up and eat. Lu, when he hears her, starts frowning at the Doctor as well. The Doctor suggests wandering down to the cafeteria, but the nurse's assistant--her name is Beatrix--tells him not to overdo it. So he ends up keeping the yogurt from the breakfast tray and getting a cup of tea from the machine in the corridor. It makes Lu stop frowning, but he's still not entirely happy.
"You're skinny enough as it is."
The Doctor glances over the rim of his mug. "It's not that bad. And I do eat. I just don't gain weight."
"You know, most people would be glad about that."
They talk for a while--about nothing in particular, mainly Lu recounting tales about fellow patients and incompetent doctors from when he was hospitalized after a back injury--until the Doctor's answers get shorter and shorter and he finds himself taking longer than usual to process what Lu is saying. After a while, Lu interrupts himself in the middle of a story.
"Hey, Doctor. You look tired. I think you need to get some rest."
The Doctor shakes his head; it's the middle of the day. Lu reaches out and pats the back of his hand. "It's okay. You're meant to sleep. It's the only way you'll heal up."
The Doctor blinks a couple of times. "Is it true that nobody likes hospitals?"
"Probably." Lu shrugs. "Except doctors, I'm not so sure about them. Why? Who said that?"
"The paramedic."
Lu seems somewhat confused by that, but he doesn't ask any further. Instead, he more or less shoos the Doctor back into bed. It doesn't sit well with the Doctor, going back to bed three hours after he got up, but his shoulder is throbbing painfully, and he has a headache that's sitting right behind his eyes and is making focussing almost impossible. As soon as he's lying down, one of the nurses hooks him up to an IV, and Lu tells him he'll be back tomorrow and the Doctor should make sure he takes care of himself.
Before he falls asleep, the Doctor thinks that the last two days must be the most he's slept in all his life.
-###-
They keep him in the hospital for three more nights. On the afternoon of the first day, the police finally send someone to talk to him--a short, stocky officer with bristly red hair and a habit of constantly pulling on his earlobe. His name is McCarroll, and he's somewhat consternated when the Doctor can't show him any ID. The Doctor has one, at home, he and Lu took care of that when it became clear that he would need one, but he hasn't quite formed the habit yet of carrying it around with him.
"So your name is John Smith."
The Doctor nods, yes.
"Didn't know that was an actual name. Bet you get a lot of jokes about that."
The Doctor frowns, puzzled. "Not really. Why would I?"
McCarroll raises his eyebrows at him and then shakes his head. "Never mind."
McCarroll makes him recount the events of the robbery. The Doctor is disturbed by how little he remembers. How many other people were there? What time was it exactly? What kind of gun was the robber using? What kind of demands did he have? The Doctor doesn't have an answer for any of these questions. But McCarroll seems to think that perfectly normal; he just nods and now and again jots something down on the form that's lying on the table in front of him.
When they're done, McCarroll tells him that most of this is a formality, anyway, since they already arrested the perpetrator--Joe, the Doctor thinks; his name is Joe--but the Doctor may have to appear in court, anyway. The Doctor nods, even though the thought of sitting down in a witness stand and pointing fingers makes him uncomfortable. Joe was scared, and no-one got hurt--except the Doctor, of course, but he'll live. He's not sure a trial would be very effective, or fair. But that's not his call.
The rest of his time in the hospital is mind-numbingly uneventful. He starts sleeping less, and only ends up spending more time bored out of his mind. There is very little to do in a hospital. Aside from spending time talking to Lu, who usually comes to visit in the afternoon, the Doctor reads three books while he's there, makes the acquaintance of the complete staff and most of the patients on his ward, and spends a good two hours watching daytime television one afternoon before he decides that this is probably the most boring activity this place has on offer. He tries to go exploring, but when on the second day, he ends up greying out and almost fainting in the staircase, the nurses impose a ban on him leaving the ward. He sticks to it. He's learned fairly quickly that it's a good idea to listen to the nurses.
On day three, the last of his IV meds are switched to pills, and the doctor responsible for his case--a Doctor Grant--tells him that there's nothing the Doctor can do now but get a lot of rest and take it easy, and that he's sure he'd rather do that at home than here. The Doctor thinks that Doctor Grant is a wise man, and goes to pack his things--with help from the nurse's assistant named Beatrix, since his left arm is still immobilized in a sling--and calls Lu to ask him to pick him up whenever he has a free minute to do so.
The Doctor spends the time he's waiting for Lu on making a mental list of things he wants to do when he gets home, which starts with "have a PB&J sandwich"--something he's been sorely missing those last three days; hospital food is far too healthy, as far as he is concerned--and includes "say hi to Fred" and "get your laundry done". When he does get home, though, all he wants to do is sleep. It puzzles him how sitting in a car can tire him out, but it did. It also turned the thought of having something to eat from a good idea into a very unappealing one.
Lu tells him it's perfectly normal; he's still healing, after all. If he's tired, he should go to bed; Lu will take care of the laundry. He has to do his own, anyway. It doesn't sit well with the Doctor--he's home now, not in the hospital anymore; he shouldn't be sleeping in the middle of the day--but Lu insists, so in the end, the Doctor agrees to take a nap. First, he does say hi to Fred, though, who hops off the couch and follows him into the bedroom, curling up next to his pillow. He smiles and takes a couple of moments to pet her, scratching her between her ears and tickling her under the chin. He missed you, too.
-###-
When the Doctor wakes up, it's just after ten at night, and he's starving. Also, his shoulder hurts. He finds the little box of pills they gave him in the hospital and wanders into the kitchen. Up to six pills a day as needed, that had been Doctor Grant's instruction, so the Doctor takes two now. Times like these, he wishes he had ended up in the 67th century, where pain medication has an immediate effect that holds for as long as it's needed. He makes himself a sandwich and then goes into the living room, where Lu is watching one of those movies he likes, in which the good guys as well as the villains have big guns and wear a lot of leather and the Doctor keeps getting confused as to which side each character is on. Nos is sleeping on the floor at Lu's feet, and Fred is curled up in an armchair. All three look up when the Doctor walks in.
"Oh hey." Lu pauses the DVD. "I thought you were out for the night."
The Doctor shakes his head, a mouthful of peanut butter sticking his teeth together and making it hard to talk. He swallows and carefully steps over Nos before he sits down on the sofa as well. "You should've woken me up. I'll never be able to go to sleep later."
Lu shrugs and grins. "We could do an all-night Underworld marathon."
"An all-night Underworld--oh right. The movie." The Doctor throws the TV a sceptic glance, where a busty woman dressed in a tight leather outfit is pointing a sword at a rough-looking man dressed in something not quite as tight, but also leather.
Lu snorts. "Don't worry, I wouldn't do that to you."
Fred uncurls from her sleeping position and gets to her feet, stretching extensively before she slinks off the armchair and wanders over to the couch.
Lu smiles. "She missed you the last couple of days."
The Doctor gives Lu a raised eyebrow while trying to keep his sandwich out of Fred's reach. "Are you sure she didn't just miss the food?"
"That's how cats are." Lu reaches over to pull Fred away from the sandwich and into his lap. As he does so, his hand accidentally brushes against the Doctor's elbow, jostling his injured arm. It's the lightest of touches, but it still sends a sharp stab breaking through the thin layer of numbness that the pills coated over the pain, and the Doctor sucks in a hiss of breath.
Lu immediately pulls back. "Shit, I'm sorry, are you--"
"It's fine," the Doctor says quickly. He's a little embarrassed; it wasn't even that bad, the pain just startled him. "It's fine, don't worry about it."
Lu sits back, letting go of Fred who, put out by the confusion, hops off the sofa and trots off out of the room. Nos just looks back and forth between Lu and the Doctor, and the Doctor clicks his tongue soothingly. Everything's fine.
"I talked to Bernard the other day." The Doctor turns his head, but Lu isn't looking at him. "The shop-owner, you know. Went down to see how he was doing."
The words are conversational, but there's a tension in Lu's tone that the Doctor can't quite place. "Is he okay?"
"He's just fine. Might actually get some money out of this. Insurance fine print, don't ask me."
That's a very strange thought, the Doctor decides. It was a robbery; the people affected by a crime like that getting money out of it makes little sense to him. But he can tell it's not what Lu wants to talk about.
"He told me what happened." Lu looks around, his eyebrows drawn together in a frown that seems almost--worried? "You were confronting the guy."
"I was--who? Joe?" The Doctor shakes his head. "I wasn't confronting him. I just told him to think about what he was doing."
"You told the guy with the gun to think about what he was doing."
"Well--yes." Shouldn't he have? Someone had to.
Lu sighs and looks away again.
The Doctor watches him, worried. "What's wrong, Lu?"
"You don't--" Lu shakes his head. "You don't tell the guy with the gun to think about what he's doing. You don't say anything. When the guy with the gun tells you to get down, you get down." Now Lu does meet the Doctor's eyes, but despite his tone bordering on angry, he really just looks worried. "You could have gotten yourself hurt. You did get yourself hurt. You could have gotten yourself killed."
Silence follows Lu's words. The Doctor turns away, fixing his eyes on the TV screen.
"I know," he says after a moment. "I--"
He doesn't know how to talk about this. He doesn't even know how to think about it, how to remember lying on the floor of the shop, the metallic smell of blood in his nose and slick, warm wetness on his fingers. Every time he does, the memories get swept away immediately by--something else. Anything else.
Lu eyes are on him now, the Doctor can feel it even though he's still avoiding looking around. "I thought I was dying." His tone is flat in his own ears. "I know I wasn't, of course. But I thought I was."
Another stretch of silence; then Lu shifts on the couch. "You were scared. That's normal, everyone would--"
"I've died before." He looks down, scratching at a sideburn with his good hand. "I have, I've even been shot before. I know what dying feels like." He thought he knew. Now he does look at Lu, who is watching him with his eyebrows drawn together. "It was different, Lu. Everything felt completely different."
"Different how?"
The Doctor shakes his head. "More--" He can't describe it. The blood, the bright lights, the dirty white tiles and the spilled cereal--it was all so... "There. More real."
Lu's expression isn't puzzled now, it's contemplative. "Death is pretty real when you're human."
"I wasn't dying, though."
"But you thought you were."
"Yes, but-- why?" That's what he can't understand. He knows what dying feels like, why did he think he was when he wasn't?
Lu takes a moment before he answers, absentmindedly fingering his ear project. "They told me in the hospital that you lost a lot of blood."
The Doctor nods; they told him that, too. On the first couple of days, he was given blood tranfusions, red plastic bags, shiny with moisture and a big 0 + logo on the labels.
"The bullet didn’t touch anything important," Lu continues. "You were always going to be fine, as long as someone was there to help. And they were, right?"
"But... I could have died." The words almost catch in his throat, which is suddenly very dry. "If no-one had helped me, I could have--I would have died."
Lu doesn't answer. Instead, he shifts closer, coming to sit right next to the Doctor's uninjured side. The Doctor watches him, and Lu catches the Doctor's eyes with his own.
"You would have. But that's why we have those kind of things. Emergency services, ambulances, hospitals. It's, well, insurance. Making certain that help is there when we need it."
Lu is speaking with intent, and the Doctor thinks he knows what he means. It's easy to die as a human, really easy, but less so when you're not alone. You have to make sure you're not alone.
The Doctor doesn't answer, and he doesn't look at Lu, not even when Lu puts a hand on his good shoulder, squeezing gently.
"Hey," Lu says eventually. "Hey, you're okay. You're home now. They wouldn't have let you go if you weren't going to be okay."
"Yeah." The Doctor nods slowly. "Yeah, I'm okay."
Lu's hand stays on his shoulder for another moment, then Lu pats him on the back, twice, briefly, and gets to his feet. "Popcorn."
"What?"
"Popcorn, and Star Wars." Lu nods decisively. "The first one. You like the first one best, right? I'll make the popcorn, you find the DVD."
And he's off towards the kitchen, Nos scrambling to his feet and following him. The Doctor stays where he is for a moment, scratching the back of his neck. He doesn't really feel like popcorn right now, or Star Wars, but--maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe this is what you do when you're human. And he won't be able to sleep any time soon, anyway.
So he gets up and wanders over to the shelf with the DVDs. Star Wars, the first one. He scans the row of boxes until he finds the one he wants--a colourful cover with a silver banner on top saying "limited edition" and two autographs scribbled across it. Lu told him who they were from, but the Doctor forgot.
He turns the box in his hand, and the corners of his lips turn upwards in a small smile. Maybe Lu's right. Even if this isn't what he wants right now, it might just be what he needs.
This is set in a verse where the Doctor is rooming with
gothgivenpowers in a flat in Washington, D.C.. I wrote this a while ago and never posted it. Thanks to mind_the_tardis for looking it over and letting me borrow her OC. The fic was inspired by a prompt from daphnie_1.The Doctor knows he's being stupid, but old habits die hard. When the man at the counter, instead of paying for his cigarettes, pulls a gun and shouts for everyone to get down on the floor right now, the Doctor doesn't. He stays where he is, in the aisle with the breakfast cereal, no more than eight feet from the shopper-turned-robber.
"I said, get the fuck down on the floor!"
The man is afraid, the Doctor can see it in his wide eyes and flared nostrils and the glint of perspiration on his forehead. The Doctor knows how the man must be feeling, too; shaky and short of breath, out of control and not knowing what to do next, to fight, or to make a run for it.
Slowly, very slowly, the Doctor puts his shopping basket down. "You don't want to do this."
The gun swings around. Suddenly, the Doctor can see the muzzle, the small, round hole of the barrel. He can't help flinching. Stupid. Stupid body giving him away.
"Don't try and play the hero. Down, on the ground, now!"
The Doctor raises his hands in a gesture of peace--look, no guns, never any guns, a universal gesture. He can feel his heart beating in his chest, a steady pulse that has sped up now, the single organ beating so fast he can feel the rhythm in the big vessels in his neck. He knows the man with the gun must be feeling the same.
"Joe," he says, stealing a glance at the badge pinned to the front of the man's white polo shirt. "Joe, you work at the petrol station down the road, right?"
Surprise joins the anger and fear on Joe's face. "How the fuck did you--" He interrupts himself and, without looking, tears the badge from his chest. It falls to the floor with a clatter. "Last warning, buddy. Down, or I'll make you."
For a very brief moment, the Doctor considers doing what Joe says. A minute ago, he was sure that Joe wouldn't shoot anyone, but now, looking into the man's eyes, his conviction wavers. This man might just be panicked enough to actually pull the trigger.
That's why the Doctor doesn't do what he says. Joe needs to be stopped before that happens.
"You don't want to do this, Joe. Think about it, what do you think--"
He doesn't get any further than that. He can see Joe's finger tighten, and immediately drops to his knees. He's not quite fast enough, though. There's a deafening noise, and something hits his shoulder, hard, the impact driving him back against the shelves. Cereal boxes fall on top of and to the floor around him, one bursting open and spilling corn flakes over dirty while tiles.
The pain takes a few moments to register. The Doctor's ears are ringing, his vision is blurred from the abrupt movement, and then, suddenly, there's an excruciating stab of pain in his shoulder, exploding outwards through his left arm and torso. He gasps, his right hand going to his shoulder automatically and finding warm, sticky wetness.
"Anyone move and I'll shoot every fucking single one of you fuckers, you hear me? Now go get me the fucking money right now!"
Blood. His blood. He can smell it. Corn flakes crunch and get crushed as he tries to move and stops when it makes the pain in his shoulder multiply.
Joe is still yelling, his voice loud and harsh and panicked. The Doctor can hear him, but he can't see much. The angle is all wrong. Warmth is squelching under the fingers of his right hand, and the Doctor can feel his shirt getting wet and sticky. He raises his hand to his eyes, and yes. Blood. Red and thick and all over his fingers and that's not right, he shouldn't be bleeding so much. The wound should be closing; he should be feeling the tingle of an on-setting regeneration. But of course he wouldn't. He can't regenerate. He's human.
He could be dying right now.
"Hey." The word doesn't come out quite as strongly as intended. "Hey, I think I need--"
"Shut up!" Joe is hoarse from shouting so much. "Shut the fuck up or I'll shoot you again, do you want me to shoot you again? Because I fucking will if you don't shut the fuck up!"
No. No, he doesn't want Joe to shoot him again, he's already been shot once and he could be dying. There's pain, a whole lot of it; it's making his head swim. The Doctor tries to find the wound with his right hand, tries to press down and stop the blood flow; humans only have five litres of blood and he's bleeding a lot, he can tell from the warmth and the wetness and the way everything seems to smell of blood. He needs to stop bleeding. He needs to stop bleeding, or he'll die.
He's scared.
Joe is shouting some more. He's shouting, and using the word "fuck" a lot, and really, there's no need, people can hear you. Even the Doctor can, despite the noise in his ears which is the blood that's still in his body, pounding away, a quick hammering indicating his heartbeat, and it's too fast. His heart is beating too fast and pumping the blood out of his body even more quickly.
"Stop." It's just a whisper; he doesn't want to get shot again. "Stop, please stop, don't, please, I don't want to die."
The sounds around him blur into a wall of noise. No voices, no people, just a drone, and the bright lights overhead on the ceiling that he's staring at. He wants this to stop, right now. He wants to heal, to regenerate, to be able to do something, but there's nothing he can do except lie here and bleed. So much blood. He closes his eyes against the brightness.
He's not sure what happens after this. He knows there's noise, and talking, and then there's more noise and more talking and then the brightness is blocked out by a big shadow that must be a person.
"I'm bleeding," he says, trying to focus. "I'm bleeding, can you help me?"
"Sure, buddy." The voice is calm and friendly. It's not Joe. "Sure, I'll help you. Don't worry, you'll be fine. We'll get you to a hospital."
The Doctor doesn't like hospitals. He says as much, and the voice who is not Joe laughs. "Yeah, buddy, most people don't."
Then the paramedic--because that's what he must be, a remote part of the Doctor's brain concludes --does something to the Doctor's shoulder that hurts a whole lot, and the Doctor hisses and closes his eyes again. The noise around him goes back to being just a wall of sound, until there's a prick in his arm and even the sound fades, leaving him to wonder if this is what it feels like to lose consciousness as a human.
He comes around a couple of times. The first time he's in a small space that shakes a whole lot and must be the ambulance. The paramedic who talked to him before is there; the Doctor recognizes the voice. He's a big man, the paramedic, and the Doctor thinks that his palms would probably feel warm and sweaty, except they don't because he's wearing gloves. The lights in the ambulance are as bright as the lights in the shop, and the pain in his shoulder is--not gone, but moving away. Everything is moving away. It's all slipping down a long tunnel, until it's gone and there's only blackness.
The second time he's awake for a bit longer. He's in the emergency room, lying on a table with people and nurses and doctors and medical instruments all around him. It smells like hospital; he still doesn't like hospitals, he never did, he can't help it. He wishes the paramedic were here, the Doctor knew him, knew his voice. Someone's bending down over him, but his glasses are gone, so he can't see who it is.
"What's your name, sir? Can you tell me your name?"
He's the--he's--no, he can't. He's the Doctor, but lying here on this table, scared and hurting and probably still bleeding and maybe still dying, the name sounds wrong. He's not the doctor, he's the patient. He closes his eyes.
"Sir? Sir, I need a name, please. Stay with me, come on. I need a name."
"John." He doesn't think about it before he says it. "I'm John, John Smith."
"Thank you, sir. Do you--"
"What's your name?" He's opened his eyes again and finds that when he squints, he can make out her face, at least a little. She looks surprised.
"I'm Janice. I'm a nurse here. You're going to be fine, John, I just need to take your details. Is there anyone we can contact?"
Contact? What for? He just looks up at the fuzzy image of her face. His shoulder hurts, and the blood in his ears is still making a whole lot of noise, but at least that means that there's still blood in his body. "I'm not dead."
"No, John, you were never going to die. You're fine. We just need your details. Is there someone we can call for you? Do you have any family?"
"No. Lu." Not family, but Lu is his friend. "You could call Lu, please call Lu."
"We can do that, John. What's Lu's full name?"
"He's Lu." No, that's not right. "Luduan. His name is Luduan."
"Does he have a last name?"
The Doctor never asked. "I don't know. He's Lu. He reads cards."
Then Janice disappears, and there's more noise and people. Someone is talking about getting him up to OR 3, and someone else puts a pen into his right hand and tells him to sign something.
Then the table starts moving, and not very long after that, he loses consciousness again. He knows now what that feels like when you're human.
He doesn't wake up again until he's in recovery. Of course, when he blinks open his eyes, he doesn't know he's in recovery, not until a nurse--not Janice; this is a male nurse--shows up next to his bed and tells him so. Ben--that's his name--also says that everything went just fine and that the Doctor was lucky and is going to be alright.
The Doctor thinks that in hospitals, you do get told that a lot.
He's not exactly fully aware of what's going on, but he doesn't fade out again. The world's there, around him, an almost soothing mixture of voices and electronic beeps and bleeps and the blurry white ceiling and mint-green sheets. Again, the lights are very bright. The Doctor supposes it makes sense for the lights to be bright in a hospital. People need to be able to see what they're doing, after all.
He's not in pain. They must have given him something, painkillers of some sort, and yes, there's an IV, he's only noticing it now. It's hanging on a stand next to his bed, and although he can't see where the tube is going, it's reasonable to assume it's going into a needle in his arm. This is how they do this kind of thing here, right? IV, needle, and he's remembering the last time he was in a human hospital. It's not a good memory.
"We called Lu for you, John."
That's Ben again. The Doctor turns his head to look at him. Ben is a young man, no older than twenty-eight years at the most, with dark hair. The Doctor can't really make out his face--his glasses are still gone--but he thinks Ben is smiling, so he answers with one of his own.
"Thank you. How--" He blinks. He's not sure what he meant to ask, but something's not right about this.
Ben seems to know what he means. "You said he reads cards. Took the ER guys a while to figure out what you meant, but after that, he was easy enough to find. His agency's in the phone book."
"Right." Yes, that was it. And Ben's explanation makes sense. The Doctor nods.
"He's out of town, though, apparently." Ben's doing something to the IV tube, and there's a sharp pain in the Doctor's arm that makes him draw in a breath through his teeth. Ben's fingers brush against his hand. "Sorry. It's stuck again, don't want you running out of happy juice. Anyway, he said he's going to be here as soon as possible, but it'll be a couple of hours still."
Lu's coming, that's good. Humans have a way of making things so complicated, and the Doctor's sure there will be a lot of papers and forms to fill out for this. Lu will be able to help with that. "What time is it?"
"What time?" Ben sounds surprised. "Eleven-thirty. We just had a shift change. I'll be here all night."
Three hours. A little more than that, actually. The Doctor left for the shop around eight, and he checked the watch on the shop's counter at around quarter past. "I thought it was later."
"Don't worry about it. Get some rest, I think you could use it. The cops will want to talk to you in the morning."
"What about?"
"The shooting," Ben says. "You do remember what happened, right?"
The shooting. Joe. Yes. Right. "Yes. Sorry. I remember. I got shot." He pauses. "In the shoulder."
"Yes. Well, actually, you got winged, but--wait, has no-one told you what happened yet?"
Ben sounds concerned all of a sudden. The Doctor blinks. "I know what happened. I got shot. There was a lot of blood." He remembers that. The blood, and the thought that he was going to die.
"You did get shot, but the bullet just winged you." Ben has stopped fiddling with the IV now and is leaning on the edge of the Doctor's bed. His hands are making the mattress dip. "It went pretty deep, tore open a vein, which is why you lost quite a lot of blood. But it never actually hit properly."
It takes the Doctor a couple of moments to process this. It didn't hit properly? He thinks it did; he can remember the loud bang of the gunshot, the way it made his ears ring, and the blood, slick and slippery under his fingers. "I wasn't going to die?"
"You were never going to die, John. The paramedics were there in time; you were never in any danger of dying."
The words are reassuring, but Ben is using a tone the Doctor knows only too well. He's used it himself often enough when he wanted to calm people, wanted them to believe this little white lie he was telling them so they would stop making things even worse by being scared. Is Ben lying to him?
He doesn't get a chance to ask. Ben pats his hand again and tells him to get some rest now, and walks away before the Doctor can formulate the question. He almost calls him back. Were you lying to me? Was I dying? Am I maybe still dying? It's possible. Humans are so fragile.
The Doctor doesn't, though. He's not sure why; maybe he doesn't dare to. Maybe he doesn't really want to know. He closes his eyes and decides to follow Ben's advice. Not two minutes later, he's asleep.
This time, waking up is different. First of all, it's dark. No bright lights blinding him anymore, but no lights at all creating a dim blurry darkness around him. Also, this time there's pain. It's lodged firmly in his left shoulder and trails all the way down his arm to his fingertips and back towards his neck and upwards, sneaking underneath his hair. It spikes when he moves, and he makes an involuntary sound.
There's a shuffling noise somewhere in the greyness around him. "Doctor? Hey, you awake?"
The Doctor lies still for a moment. He's not sure where he is, or when he is. But that voice just now sounded familiar. "Lu?"
A shape appears, darker against the dark background. "Yeah, it's me. Hey, Doctor."
There are some more small clattering noises, and then there's light. The Doctor squeezes his eyes shut against the sudden brightness and turns his head away.
"Sorry. It's like RFK Stadium in here, with the lights."
"What time is it?" He can't see anything, and it's not because of the lights. The Doctor reaches out with his right hand--the one that doesn't hurt--and feels on what must be the nightstand for his glasses. His fingers trail over a phone, and brush against something that's cool and a little moist and feels like a water glass, before he can feel the warm, dry skin of Lu's hand brushing against his and pressing the edged plastic frame of his glasses into his palm.
"Here. The nurse gave them to me. It's--just after two in the morning."
The Doctor slips the glasses on and blinks as the world shifts into focus. He's not in recovery anymore. Instead, he's in a normal hospital room, in the bed next to the window. Most of the room is in darkness, but by the light of the bedside lamp, he can see Lu looking down at him.
"Hey there," Lu says again. "How're you feeling?"
The Doctor doesn't answer immediately; he's not sure how he's feeling. His throat is dry, and his shoulder hurts, and there's a pounding headache right behind his eyes. "Why are you here, Lu?" That sounds a lot more unfriendly than he meant it, so he adds, "It's the middle of the night. You should be at home."
Lu smiles a little. "No, actually, I should be up in Darnestown."
"What?"
"Darnestown, the Renn Fair. Never mind, though; I was barely making the gas money, anyway. What happened, Doctor?" Lu's tone changes, it's suddenly urgent, concerned. "They just told me you got shot; what the hell were you doing?"
"I--" What was he doing? His thoughts are slow, sluggish. All he can remember is Joe, and the gun, and the blood, and the-- "Cornflakes. I was buying cornflakes."
"You got shot buying cornflakes?"
"We were out."
Lu makes a sound that the Doctor isn't sure is a snort or a sigh. "You could have gone in the morning."
"I didn't know I was going to get shot."
"No, that's not-- never mind."
The Doctor blinks, his eyelids protesting the motion. He's tired, he wants to go back to sleep, but his shoulder is hurting. He tries to shift a little, but it only makes the pain spike. He clenches his teeth until it subsides again.
"Hey, you okay? I can get a nurse, if you need anything."
The Doctor shakes his head. " 'm fine." He swallows. "You should go home, Lu." It's the middle of the night, and really, he's okay. He just needs to go back to sleep.
"Are you sure?" Lu sounds unconvinced. "I really don't mind staying a little longer."
"I'm fine." His eyelids have shut by now. He's thinking about adding something more, but speaking seems like too much effort right now.
"Okay," he hears Lu say. He can feel fingers brushing against his temple, and then there's a tug on his right ear as Lu pulls off his glasses. "I'll be back in the morning with a change of clothes. Is there anything you want me to bring with me?"
The Doctor doesn't think so. He can't think of anything that he would want, except-- "Fred," he says, not opening his eyes.
Lu's chuckle sounds far away, as if he were on the other end of a phone line. "I doubt she'd approve."
That's true. Fred wouldn't like the hospital. The Doctor can sympathize. He thinks about telling Lu this, but he falls asleep before he can do so.
The morning brings nothing that would heighten the Doctor's appreciation for hospitals. He wakes up very early to a nurse changing his IV, and the pain in his shoulder and back won't let him go back to sleep. He decides that getting up might at least fix the pain in his back. He finds that it does, but he also finds that standing upright makes his head spin and the picture in front of his eyes go blurry and shrink to a tunnel. He loses track of time for a few moments, only to find himself sitting on a chair that someone seems to have quickly pulled up next to his bed, a nurse frowning down at him and asking what he was thinking, simply getting up on his own like that. He says he didn't realize he wasn't supposed to. She tells him to ring the bell next time, it's what it's there for.
He skips breakfast--the food looks all right, but he's not hungry--and ends up having nothing at all to do. He asks one of the nurses for a book--any book would do, he's bored enough to read anything--and is given an 800-page romance novel about a woman ending up in the Scottish Highlands in the past. By page 40, the Doctor can tell that the author has never actually been to that era in the Highlands. When Lu shows up, the Doctor is on page 250, and very glad to be able to put the book aside.
"I just grabbed the books that were lying on your bedside table," Lu answers when the Doctor asks him whether he brought anything to read.
"Good. Thanks." The Doctor nods, satisfied. Those should do; he can't remember any of them containing tall brawny highlanders.
Lu also brought some clothes--t-shirts, hoodies and sweat pants, mostly, but anything's better than the hospital gowns with the slit up the back--and a toiletry bag containing a tooth brush and various other items. He makes the Doctor sit at the small table opposite the bed while he puts the stuff away. The Doctor protests, but he's actually glad to be able to sit down.
The nurse's assistant, when she comes in to pick up his untouched breakfast tray, frowns at him and tells him that if he wants to be walking around again so quickly, he needs to keep his strength up and eat. Lu, when he hears her, starts frowning at the Doctor as well. The Doctor suggests wandering down to the cafeteria, but the nurse's assistant--her name is Beatrix--tells him not to overdo it. So he ends up keeping the yogurt from the breakfast tray and getting a cup of tea from the machine in the corridor. It makes Lu stop frowning, but he's still not entirely happy.
"You're skinny enough as it is."
The Doctor glances over the rim of his mug. "It's not that bad. And I do eat. I just don't gain weight."
"You know, most people would be glad about that."
They talk for a while--about nothing in particular, mainly Lu recounting tales about fellow patients and incompetent doctors from when he was hospitalized after a back injury--until the Doctor's answers get shorter and shorter and he finds himself taking longer than usual to process what Lu is saying. After a while, Lu interrupts himself in the middle of a story.
"Hey, Doctor. You look tired. I think you need to get some rest."
The Doctor shakes his head; it's the middle of the day. Lu reaches out and pats the back of his hand. "It's okay. You're meant to sleep. It's the only way you'll heal up."
The Doctor blinks a couple of times. "Is it true that nobody likes hospitals?"
"Probably." Lu shrugs. "Except doctors, I'm not so sure about them. Why? Who said that?"
"The paramedic."
Lu seems somewhat confused by that, but he doesn't ask any further. Instead, he more or less shoos the Doctor back into bed. It doesn't sit well with the Doctor, going back to bed three hours after he got up, but his shoulder is throbbing painfully, and he has a headache that's sitting right behind his eyes and is making focussing almost impossible. As soon as he's lying down, one of the nurses hooks him up to an IV, and Lu tells him he'll be back tomorrow and the Doctor should make sure he takes care of himself.
Before he falls asleep, the Doctor thinks that the last two days must be the most he's slept in all his life.
They keep him in the hospital for three more nights. On the afternoon of the first day, the police finally send someone to talk to him--a short, stocky officer with bristly red hair and a habit of constantly pulling on his earlobe. His name is McCarroll, and he's somewhat consternated when the Doctor can't show him any ID. The Doctor has one, at home, he and Lu took care of that when it became clear that he would need one, but he hasn't quite formed the habit yet of carrying it around with him.
"So your name is John Smith."
The Doctor nods, yes.
"Didn't know that was an actual name. Bet you get a lot of jokes about that."
The Doctor frowns, puzzled. "Not really. Why would I?"
McCarroll raises his eyebrows at him and then shakes his head. "Never mind."
McCarroll makes him recount the events of the robbery. The Doctor is disturbed by how little he remembers. How many other people were there? What time was it exactly? What kind of gun was the robber using? What kind of demands did he have? The Doctor doesn't have an answer for any of these questions. But McCarroll seems to think that perfectly normal; he just nods and now and again jots something down on the form that's lying on the table in front of him.
When they're done, McCarroll tells him that most of this is a formality, anyway, since they already arrested the perpetrator--Joe, the Doctor thinks; his name is Joe--but the Doctor may have to appear in court, anyway. The Doctor nods, even though the thought of sitting down in a witness stand and pointing fingers makes him uncomfortable. Joe was scared, and no-one got hurt--except the Doctor, of course, but he'll live. He's not sure a trial would be very effective, or fair. But that's not his call.
The rest of his time in the hospital is mind-numbingly uneventful. He starts sleeping less, and only ends up spending more time bored out of his mind. There is very little to do in a hospital. Aside from spending time talking to Lu, who usually comes to visit in the afternoon, the Doctor reads three books while he's there, makes the acquaintance of the complete staff and most of the patients on his ward, and spends a good two hours watching daytime television one afternoon before he decides that this is probably the most boring activity this place has on offer. He tries to go exploring, but when on the second day, he ends up greying out and almost fainting in the staircase, the nurses impose a ban on him leaving the ward. He sticks to it. He's learned fairly quickly that it's a good idea to listen to the nurses.
On day three, the last of his IV meds are switched to pills, and the doctor responsible for his case--a Doctor Grant--tells him that there's nothing the Doctor can do now but get a lot of rest and take it easy, and that he's sure he'd rather do that at home than here. The Doctor thinks that Doctor Grant is a wise man, and goes to pack his things--with help from the nurse's assistant named Beatrix, since his left arm is still immobilized in a sling--and calls Lu to ask him to pick him up whenever he has a free minute to do so.
The Doctor spends the time he's waiting for Lu on making a mental list of things he wants to do when he gets home, which starts with "have a PB&J sandwich"--something he's been sorely missing those last three days; hospital food is far too healthy, as far as he is concerned--and includes "say hi to Fred" and "get your laundry done". When he does get home, though, all he wants to do is sleep. It puzzles him how sitting in a car can tire him out, but it did. It also turned the thought of having something to eat from a good idea into a very unappealing one.
Lu tells him it's perfectly normal; he's still healing, after all. If he's tired, he should go to bed; Lu will take care of the laundry. He has to do his own, anyway. It doesn't sit well with the Doctor--he's home now, not in the hospital anymore; he shouldn't be sleeping in the middle of the day--but Lu insists, so in the end, the Doctor agrees to take a nap. First, he does say hi to Fred, though, who hops off the couch and follows him into the bedroom, curling up next to his pillow. He smiles and takes a couple of moments to pet her, scratching her between her ears and tickling her under the chin. He missed you, too.
When the Doctor wakes up, it's just after ten at night, and he's starving. Also, his shoulder hurts. He finds the little box of pills they gave him in the hospital and wanders into the kitchen. Up to six pills a day as needed, that had been Doctor Grant's instruction, so the Doctor takes two now. Times like these, he wishes he had ended up in the 67th century, where pain medication has an immediate effect that holds for as long as it's needed. He makes himself a sandwich and then goes into the living room, where Lu is watching one of those movies he likes, in which the good guys as well as the villains have big guns and wear a lot of leather and the Doctor keeps getting confused as to which side each character is on. Nos is sleeping on the floor at Lu's feet, and Fred is curled up in an armchair. All three look up when the Doctor walks in.
"Oh hey." Lu pauses the DVD. "I thought you were out for the night."
The Doctor shakes his head, a mouthful of peanut butter sticking his teeth together and making it hard to talk. He swallows and carefully steps over Nos before he sits down on the sofa as well. "You should've woken me up. I'll never be able to go to sleep later."
Lu shrugs and grins. "We could do an all-night Underworld marathon."
"An all-night Underworld--oh right. The movie." The Doctor throws the TV a sceptic glance, where a busty woman dressed in a tight leather outfit is pointing a sword at a rough-looking man dressed in something not quite as tight, but also leather.
Lu snorts. "Don't worry, I wouldn't do that to you."
Fred uncurls from her sleeping position and gets to her feet, stretching extensively before she slinks off the armchair and wanders over to the couch.
Lu smiles. "She missed you the last couple of days."
The Doctor gives Lu a raised eyebrow while trying to keep his sandwich out of Fred's reach. "Are you sure she didn't just miss the food?"
"That's how cats are." Lu reaches over to pull Fred away from the sandwich and into his lap. As he does so, his hand accidentally brushes against the Doctor's elbow, jostling his injured arm. It's the lightest of touches, but it still sends a sharp stab breaking through the thin layer of numbness that the pills coated over the pain, and the Doctor sucks in a hiss of breath.
Lu immediately pulls back. "Shit, I'm sorry, are you--"
"It's fine," the Doctor says quickly. He's a little embarrassed; it wasn't even that bad, the pain just startled him. "It's fine, don't worry about it."
Lu sits back, letting go of Fred who, put out by the confusion, hops off the sofa and trots off out of the room. Nos just looks back and forth between Lu and the Doctor, and the Doctor clicks his tongue soothingly. Everything's fine.
"I talked to Bernard the other day." The Doctor turns his head, but Lu isn't looking at him. "The shop-owner, you know. Went down to see how he was doing."
The words are conversational, but there's a tension in Lu's tone that the Doctor can't quite place. "Is he okay?"
"He's just fine. Might actually get some money out of this. Insurance fine print, don't ask me."
That's a very strange thought, the Doctor decides. It was a robbery; the people affected by a crime like that getting money out of it makes little sense to him. But he can tell it's not what Lu wants to talk about.
"He told me what happened." Lu looks around, his eyebrows drawn together in a frown that seems almost--worried? "You were confronting the guy."
"I was--who? Joe?" The Doctor shakes his head. "I wasn't confronting him. I just told him to think about what he was doing."
"You told the guy with the gun to think about what he was doing."
"Well--yes." Shouldn't he have? Someone had to.
Lu sighs and looks away again.
The Doctor watches him, worried. "What's wrong, Lu?"
"You don't--" Lu shakes his head. "You don't tell the guy with the gun to think about what he's doing. You don't say anything. When the guy with the gun tells you to get down, you get down." Now Lu does meet the Doctor's eyes, but despite his tone bordering on angry, he really just looks worried. "You could have gotten yourself hurt. You did get yourself hurt. You could have gotten yourself killed."
Silence follows Lu's words. The Doctor turns away, fixing his eyes on the TV screen.
"I know," he says after a moment. "I--"
He doesn't know how to talk about this. He doesn't even know how to think about it, how to remember lying on the floor of the shop, the metallic smell of blood in his nose and slick, warm wetness on his fingers. Every time he does, the memories get swept away immediately by--something else. Anything else.
Lu eyes are on him now, the Doctor can feel it even though he's still avoiding looking around. "I thought I was dying." His tone is flat in his own ears. "I know I wasn't, of course. But I thought I was."
Another stretch of silence; then Lu shifts on the couch. "You were scared. That's normal, everyone would--"
"I've died before." He looks down, scratching at a sideburn with his good hand. "I have, I've even been shot before. I know what dying feels like." He thought he knew. Now he does look at Lu, who is watching him with his eyebrows drawn together. "It was different, Lu. Everything felt completely different."
"Different how?"
The Doctor shakes his head. "More--" He can't describe it. The blood, the bright lights, the dirty white tiles and the spilled cereal--it was all so... "There. More real."
Lu's expression isn't puzzled now, it's contemplative. "Death is pretty real when you're human."
"I wasn't dying, though."
"But you thought you were."
"Yes, but-- why?" That's what he can't understand. He knows what dying feels like, why did he think he was when he wasn't?
Lu takes a moment before he answers, absentmindedly fingering his ear project. "They told me in the hospital that you lost a lot of blood."
The Doctor nods; they told him that, too. On the first couple of days, he was given blood tranfusions, red plastic bags, shiny with moisture and a big 0 + logo on the labels.
"The bullet didn’t touch anything important," Lu continues. "You were always going to be fine, as long as someone was there to help. And they were, right?"
"But... I could have died." The words almost catch in his throat, which is suddenly very dry. "If no-one had helped me, I could have--I would have died."
Lu doesn't answer. Instead, he shifts closer, coming to sit right next to the Doctor's uninjured side. The Doctor watches him, and Lu catches the Doctor's eyes with his own.
"You would have. But that's why we have those kind of things. Emergency services, ambulances, hospitals. It's, well, insurance. Making certain that help is there when we need it."
Lu is speaking with intent, and the Doctor thinks he knows what he means. It's easy to die as a human, really easy, but less so when you're not alone. You have to make sure you're not alone.
The Doctor doesn't answer, and he doesn't look at Lu, not even when Lu puts a hand on his good shoulder, squeezing gently.
"Hey," Lu says eventually. "Hey, you're okay. You're home now. They wouldn't have let you go if you weren't going to be okay."
"Yeah." The Doctor nods slowly. "Yeah, I'm okay."
Lu's hand stays on his shoulder for another moment, then Lu pats him on the back, twice, briefly, and gets to his feet. "Popcorn."
"What?"
"Popcorn, and Star Wars." Lu nods decisively. "The first one. You like the first one best, right? I'll make the popcorn, you find the DVD."
And he's off towards the kitchen, Nos scrambling to his feet and following him. The Doctor stays where he is for a moment, scratching the back of his neck. He doesn't really feel like popcorn right now, or Star Wars, but--maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe this is what you do when you're human. And he won't be able to sleep any time soon, anyway.
So he gets up and wanders over to the shelf with the DVDs. Star Wars, the first one. He scans the row of boxes until he finds the one he wants--a colourful cover with a silver banner on top saying "limited edition" and two autographs scribbled across it. Lu told him who they were from, but the Doctor forgot.
He turns the box in his hand, and the corners of his lips turn upwards in a small smile. Maybe Lu's right. Even if this isn't what he wants right now, it might just be what he needs.