#And that too- THE DOCTOR LET YASMIN GO

[master-missysversion]

Unpopular opinion but I think i wouldve taken about 10 more hugs + one instance of hand holding over a thasmin kiss

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

whump episode of all time look at this poor baby

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

David Tennant interview at the British LGBT Awards, June 2024 (x)

Int: You being an ally to the community isn't something new. You've been doing it, but recently you've obviously really stepped up for trans and non-binary people in a time that's so, so needed. What made you do that?

David: I don't know that I feel like I've done anything that I wouldn't just sort of be normally doing. I mean, it's for me it's just common sense that there's there should be any suggestion that people aren't allowed to live the life they want to live and and to be who they want to be with and to express themselves wholeheartedly. I mean, as long as you aren't hurting anybody else, everybody else just needs to fucking butt out. I don't really understand why...

Int: ...it's controversial.

David: Yeah, there is and the thing... the thing, if there's something that's particularly sobering and depressing, it's that certain debates are being weaponized by certain elements of the political class, often for no... it seems it's not ideological so much as opportunistic. And I just think that's pretty disgusting, really.

Int: I couldn't agree more. What message would you like to send out to trans youth?

David: Please don't feel like you're not loved and that you're not accepted and that you're not... you know, most people in the world are good and kind and just want you to be able to be who you are. Most people in the world don't really care. I mean... you know what I mean?

Int: We're all narcissistic.

David: Exactly. Everyone's so self obsessed that really, the sort of noise that comes from a certain area of the press and of the political class is... it's a minority. It really is. And please don't let that make you feel diminished or dissuaded or discouraged, because, you know, you just... you have to be allowed to be yourself, and you are, and you are yourself and you must thrive and flourish, and we're all here for it.

Int: Amazing. I think, yeah, it's so important .I think sometimes it feels like there's so many people, but it is a minority. It's such a minority.

David: It's a tiny bunch of little whinging fuckers that are on the wrong side of history and they'll all go away soon.

Int: Like what happened with gay people 20 years ago.

David: When I was a kid, when I was a kid, exactly. You know, I was at school when Clause 28 came in and it all felt like being gay was something to be terrified of. And gay men in particular were demonised as paedophiles and now that just feels historic and ludicrous and, I mean, I don't see all those... all those battles aren't won, but we're in a very, very different place. And I feel like.I feel like history is on a progressive trajectory and it might get knocked sideways now and again by people for all sorts of reasons, which are often quite selfish and quite, as I say, not coming from a place of any sort of genuine belief system, but other than a place of opportunism. And that's something that we... I hope that in 20 years time, we're talking about, you know, these culture wars as something of the past.

Int: I believe we will. I'm a huge Doctor Who fan, so.

David: Oh, good, me too!

Int: You are my Doctor.

David: Oh, thank you very much.

Int: But recently, obviously, you came back for the 60th anniversary and you got to work with Yasmin Finney.

David: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Int: What was it like working with her?

David: Oh, she's brilliant. She's fantastic. Yeah. And she's in the show again now, she's back in it, so that's fantastic to see. She's lovely, talented, cool as a cucumber, articulate, brilliant. I learned a lot from her as an actor and also as someone who, you know, who's become a sort of de facto activist just because of who she is and where she is, and she becomes a sort of symbol of hope, and she's wonderful.

[specialmedicalcentre]

Kezia's Anesthesia

The operating table was harder than she thought it would be. They look padded in the photos, Kezia thought.

She sat on the end of the black vinyl table, legs uncomfortably hanging over the edge. It was smaller than she imagined it would be, too. How was she going to fit? The gown they put her in was loosely draped over her, and she was acutely aware of it being open in the back. All she wore were her panties. The room smelled of…plastic? Maybe rubber. Everything felt alien to her.

"We're almost ready, Kezia," Nurse Farah touched her gently on the shoulder. "How are you doing?" She smiled. It was hard to see anything besides her eyes, as she was dressed for surgery with a mask and pink cap on.

Kezia shrugged her shoulders. "Okay, I guess." She tried to smile back, and her lip quivered a little. Her heart was pounding.

"Dr. Kim will be here any moment, and then we'll get started."

Kezia watched Nurse Farah continue to bustle around the room, getting things ready. She was gathering things that Kezia had no idea about. Despite the fact that it was all supposed to be for her comfort, Kezia felt nothing but anxiety at everything she saw. Wires, tubes, bags…ideas swirled in her head.

The other nurse - Kezia didn't know her name - turned on a machine up on a stand that had wires attached to it. It beeped and the nurse started typing things into it. She saw her name flash by.

Kezia L.; F, 25; 55kg; non-paced; Adult w/EKG…

She took a deep breath, and her body erupted in goosebumps.

"Yasmin?" Nurse Farah called quietly to the second nurse, and now Kezia knew her name. "Set up for SpO2 and BIS as well."

Nurse Yasmin nodded as she pressed buttons on the machine. "Got it, ok." Subtly, and for the briefest moment, Nurse Yasmin glanced over at Kezia.

Kezia was lost in her thoughts, watching Nurse Farah arranging a long, clear tube, when the door to the OR opened with a sudden sound. She turned to see a compact, slender woman enter dressed in green scrubs. Kezia was struck by how she immediately seemed to command the room. She strode right over to the table.

"Hello, Kezia," she said, but obviously didn't extend her gloved hand. "I'm Dr. Kim, and I'll be your anesthesiologist today. Ready to take a nap?" Her curt grin barely showed behind her mask. She had beautiful eyes; light brown, with long eyelashes.

"Hi." Kezia said. She had trouble getting anything else out. "…I…" She stammered.

"Don't be nervous, Kezia, we'll take great care of you. It'll be easy - all you have to do is sleep." Dr. Kim turned to Nurse Farah, briefly. "We ready?"

Farah nodded. "All set, Doctor."

"Great, let's go."

The room seemed to shift into action at Dr. Kim's word. Nurse Yasmin begain collecting wires and hoses near the machines and Nurse Farah came to Kezia. "Let's get you laying down, honey. Just scootch back a little…there, that's it. Now lay back - here, your head goes right on this cushion." Kezia, guided by Farah, found herself laying back on the operating table, her legs still dangling. The vinyl was a cold shock against her backside, which was bare except for her panties. She stirred in response. "Oh, is it cold?" Farah smiled. "It'll warm up quickly. Now your legs, here we go."

Before Kezia could respond, the nurse deftly adjusted something, and two padded legrests were swung into place. Oh, that's how that works, Kezia realized. They jutted out in slightly angled directions from the table, and were the same color as the table vinyl. Farah helped Kezia lift her legs and get them onto the rests. Soon Kezia was laid out flat, her legs slightly spread on the padded legrests. She was surprised - it wasn't as uncomfortable as it had been. Maybe it was meant to lie on, not sit on?

As Kezia was getting settled into place, Dr. Kim moved to the wall behind her where a touchscreen allowed her to bring up Kezia's case. "Okay, Kezia, so you're here because of persistent cholecystitis, is that right?"

Kezia was busying herself with trying to settle into position. She unsuccessfully tried to look up behind her, over her right shoulder. "Um…what?"

"You're having gall-bladder surgery today, is that right?" Dr. Kim clarified.

"Y-yes, that's right." Kezia spoke to the ceiling, unable to turn her head to see Dr. Kim. Her head was cradled in a weird little foam cushion. She felt awkward.

Kezia heard Dr. Kim tapping on the screen. "And how are you feeling today? Any discomfort, any issues?"

Kezia tried to think clearly. "No, but…I had pain yesterday. None today."

To the side, Kezia saw Nurse Yasmin approach her with a blue something in her hands. She spoke softly. "Hi, Kezia, I'm just going to put this cap on to keep your hair secure, ok? It might feel a bit crinkly." Yasmin stretched the elastic headband of the bouffant cap over Kezia's hair as Kezia shifted her head to let her fix it in place. The material crinkled audibly as she lowered her head back on the contoured head cushion. The look on Kezia's face caught Yasmin's attention. She smiled down at Kezia. "Oh, that’s just the cap making that sound, sweetie. You won't notice after a while."

The cap started out cool against Kezia's forehead but began to warm right away.

Dr. Kim continued. "Abdominal pain? Or, somewhere else? Any trouble breathing? " Her questions were rapid.

"No…uh, abdominal. Like, here," she touched her left side, under her breast. And no, breathing is…ok." Almost unconsciously, Kezia took a deep breath for effect. The cap crinkled in her ears.

"Mmm-hmm. Okay, no allergies to meds I can see…" Dr. Kim trailed off. "You've recently complained of intestinal discomfort, any diarrhea recently?"

Kezia blushed. God. "Oh. Ah, yesterday. Yeah, some…diarrhea." She didn't know where this was going, and she couldn't help blushing.

"Farah," Dr. Kim spoke in a different tone. "I think we should prep for flatus bag if we can do that."

As Farah spoke, Kezia turned her head to the left to see her. "Ok. Want to start without first?"

"Yes, that's fine." Kezia had no idea what they were talking about.

"Kezia," Dr. Kim leaned in enough for Kezia to see her directly overhead. "Do you have any questions for me?"

Kezia tried to clear her throat, and all she managed was a squeak. "I've…never…you know, gone under before. The, the mask, it's kinda - I dunno." Kezia heard the nurses moving around. "…needles make me really nervous." She managed, finally. Her heart was pounding, and she could swear they could hear it in her voice.

"I understand." Dr. Kim nodded, and looked up briefly at the nurses. We'll take this one step at a time, ok?" Kezia felt herself nodding. "Let’s start with something easy — let's get the pulseox on you so I can see your oxygen levels." Again, Dr. Kim looked up.

Kezia heard Nurse Farah. "Yas, go ahead and start." Nurse Yasmin was standing to Kezia's right side; behind her was an array of machines and readouts, all with wires and tubes attached.

"Kezia," Yasmin reached behind her, picking up a small something with a wire attached. Touching Kezia's hand, she said "I'm going to put this on your finger, ok? It doesn't hurt - just a little squeeze." Kezia held up her hand at Yasmin's gentle touch, and a white plastic clip squeezed her finger. It glowed with a weird red light. Just as she lowered her hand, a soft beeping sound came from somewhere to her right - it was in time with her pounding heart. And it sounded fast.

"98, HR 85." Yasmin said.

"Mm-hmm, thank you." Dr. Kim responded. Kezia heard her tapping on the touchscreen. "Can you also prep IV, please?"

Yasmin appeared to look over at Farah, who was on Kezia's other, left side. She looked back down at Kezia. "Kezia, sweetie, I'm going to get you set up with an IV. It'll be quick, ok?" Kezia nodded. "Okay. First I'm going to…"

"Gown first." Nurse Farah gently interrupted. "Kezia, let me get your arms out of this, okay, honey? That'll make tings easier. Here we go." Nurse Farah helped slip the gown off Kezia's arms, deftly unclipping and replacing the pulseox monitor. Instinctively, Kezia drew her hands in to cover her breasts. "Here, let's cover you for a bit." Nurse Farah arranged the gown as a sort of sheet, covering up Kezia's chest and leaving her arms free. "There we are."

Nurse Yasmin smiled; she had turned away from the table to grab a small tray. "Okay, right! First, just let me put this one here…" Awkwardly, Nurse Yasmin wrapped a soft blue strap around Kezia's right arm, tightening it uncomfortably. "Just want to find a vein, sweetie." She palpated Kezia's forearm a bit. Despite her fear, Kezia couldn't help but watch. "Great," Yasmin said, seemingly satisfied. "Now, I'm just going to swab you with alcohol first. A little cold." Yasmin pressed firmly on the skin of Kezia's arm, wiping several times. In her other hand, she held a long tube that Kezia couldn't see. "Okay, Kezia, just a little pinch now, okay? Here we go. Deep breath."

Kezia tried to look at the ceiling. There was a light there, and some other things hanging over the table…"Ow!" She yelped. She was surprised to find that she almost felt she was about to cry. There was a sharp pain and a longer, searing burn as Yasmin inserted the IV cannula.

"All done." Still pressing down on the site, Yasmin started to apply medical tape, securing a short tube to Kezia's arm. She covered the IV site with a clear bandage and connected a clear tube to it that dangled off the table. "Just leave this still, sweetie." Yasmin unstrapped the blue tourniquet from Kezia's arm and turned away, busying herself with something else. Kezia stared at the IV site, where a clear tube exited the tape, and several other thicker tubes of different colors dangled.

Nurse Farah saw her staring. "All good, Kezia?"

Kezia looked to her left, where Farah was standing. She had a blue package in her hand. "It's…it's my first IV. So weird."

Farah smiled. "I'm sure a lot of this is new, honey. You're doing great. Isn't she, Dr. Kim?" Farah looked up to the anesthesiologist, who was still tapping away on the digital chart.

"She certainly is." Dr. Kim didn't sound as enthusiastic as Nurse Farah, Kezia thought. Maybe she was in a hurry. "Farah, BP, please."

Farah moved toward Kezia. "Right here. Okay, Kezia, let me put this on you." She unrolled the package in her hand to reveal a bright blue long blood pressure duff attached to a hose. "You know this, right? Just a BP cuff. Here, lift your arm for me, honey." Farah deftly slipped the cuff under Kezia's arm and, pulling it snug, flattened the cuff to the velcro strip. She smoothed it firmly on Kezia's arm and routed the hose underneath. "There; just relax and let the cuff do the work." She smiled again. The cuff was a distinct feeling on her arm; odd, but not unfamiliar. She felt it brush against her breast. "Yas, could you…" Farah trailed off.

"Hmm?" Yasmin looked across Kezia at Farah. "Oh! Of course." Turning to the bright screen behind her, Yas touched part of it and the cuff stirred into life. With a distinct whirring from somewhere, Kezia felt the cuff tighten around her arm. She couldn't fight the urge to lift her arm up.

"Oh, honey, just relax it, ok?" Farah gently guided Kezia's arm back down onto the table as the cuff continued to inflate. "There."

"Mmph." Kezia grunted involuntarily. She could hear the velcro straining as the cuff reached its limit.

"Too tight?" Farah asked. Kezia nodded, staring at the distended cuff. Her arm felt swollen. "It might be the first time, honey. But you're a healthy girl and that should relax over time." The cuff began to deflate, in steps, clicking and hissing as it released her. She felt the blood rush back into her arm as something on her right beeeeeped. For the first time, Kezia saw her pulse jumping on the screen, a little blue line pulsing with every blip of the monitor. Below that line a pair of big numbers appeared.

"131/90." Farah said, out loud, to the room.

Kezia heard Dr. Kim from behind her. She was sitting down, now; her voice was closer to Kezia's head. "Let's give her a bit. Kezia, try to relax. Deep breaths. You're doing great. Farah, let's get the EKG going. Resp as well, please."

"On the way." Farah said, curtly. "Okay, Kezia, now we're going to get you set up on the EKG. Ever have one of those?" Kezia shook her head, her anxiety building. With the BP cuff, the IV, and the pulseox, she already felt like a medical experiment. She couldn't imagine any more. "Well, I'm going to place some stickers on your chest so we can see what your heart is doing. Okay? Just a few little pads. Now…I'm going to have to remove this for now, honey." Farah motioned to the hospital gown that was still partially covering Kezia's chest.

"Umm…why?" Kezia was getting a stomachache.

"Honey, the EKG goes on your chest. Don't worry, now, it's just for a minute, okay?" Farah touched Kezia on her bare shoulder.

"O…okay." Kezia managed. Farah gently lifted the gown, bundling it up as she lifted it off Kezia's body. Kezia felt the air of the OR wash over her chest and abdomen; as her toplessness flashed into view, she closed her eyes. She still had on the panties she dressed in this morning, but she felt completely exposed.

"Yas," Farah asked. "Can you hand me the EKG, please?" Kezia opened her eyes. Yasmin dangled a loose set of wires across Kezia's body. At the end of each wire was a white square patch. "These are the electrodes, honey." Farah held one up for Kezia to see: a soft square sticker with a wire snapped onto it. Kezia watched as Farah peeled the backing off one. "Here," she said. "I'm going to stick this one down on your shoulder." She pressed the electrode to the skin of Kezia's shoulder, just above the BP cuff. It was cold, almost as if it was wet - but it wasn't. It stuck there, Farah rubbing it down in brisk circles. It felt weird, and Kezia was keenly aware of the wire pulling against her skin as Farah arranged the rest of them.

In about a minute, Kezia had electrodes all across her chest, under her breast, and just above her pantyline. They felt like extra layers of skin, and she felt the cold wires draped across her body. She was almost too terrified to speak. "There we go, Kezia, you look great. See? You can watch your heart beat." Farah pointed across her body to the vitals monitor, where Yas was pressing buttons. Kezia saw three green lines jumping and pulsing across the screen; they made little spikes as the electronic sounds of her pulse echoed in the room.

It was fascinating. Just to punctuate the moment, the bp cuff whirred into life again, startling Kezia.

"It's okay, honey - it's going to do this every five minutes." Kezia audibly moaned as the cuff squeezed her. After an eternity, another beeeeep.

"There we go. 127/85." Farah said, the distinct sound of satisfaction in her voice. "Coming down."

"Good," Dr. Kim spoke up from behind Kezia. "How's her EKG?"

Farah rattled off numbers that made Kezia dizzy to listen to. “HR 82. No PVCs, looks good. ST segment normal, QT…360.”

"Ok, I think we're ready to go." Dr. Kim said, finally.

Kezia breathed carefully, feeling the electrodes tug at her skin all over. She was acutely aware of her body and the things that they had attached to her. "Am…I ok, Farah?" Her voice caught in her throat. She was embarrassed that a tear fell from the corner of her eye; she felt it roll back behind her neck, lost in the rustling plastic of the bouffant cap.

Farah leaned over and touched her arm, right where the BP cuff ended. Her hand was warm. "You're doing great. We're almost there." She winked, then looked across Kezia at Yasmin. "Hand me the BIS, would you, Yas?"

Nurse Yasmin produced another thing connected to a wire; this one looked like a long piece of thick tape with lines and shapes all over it. Farah peeled off the backing, and Kezia realized it was another thing they were going to stick on her. "What's that?" She asked. She held her body very still.

Farah held it up for her to see. "This is called the BIS sensor, honey. It tells us how deep you're sleeping." She moved towards Kezia's face. "I'm just going to press this riiiiight on your forehead." And she did, rubbing it lightly just above Kezia's brow. She could feel it when she wrinkled her nose, and the weirdness combined with the rustling of the bouffant cap, which was starting to feel warm and humid against the skin of her scalp.

Something beeped. "BIS 99." Farah said.

"Okay, Kezia," Dr. Kim spoke from Kezia's blind spot. "We're going to start with sedation now. Are you ready?"

Kezia could see Farah smiling at her. She took a deep breath, and after a moment's delay, she answered. "Okay…I'm ready."

"I'm going to put a mask over your nose and mouth, and this will just be some oxygen for now, ok?" Kezia saw Dr. Kim's hand lowering a black mask with a surprisingly thick hose attached. There was an overwhelming scent of rubber, and then the mask was on her before she could think of protesting. The edge was a soft seal against her face and a cool breeze seemed to fill her nose and mouth. It was utterly alien, and she could feel everything attached to her body. Just as a test, she wiggled her fingers and tensed her muscles. She felt the cuff, the electrodes, the wires…

"Breathe normally, honey," Farah said, watching the monitors. "Resps 20. Deep and slow, Kezia. You got this."

Kezia tried to slow her breathing. Something beeped to her right, and her cuff inflated again. "129/85." Farah said, when it was done.

"Still ok." Dr. Kim said. "Kezia, now we're going to put some medication into your IV, ok? Just something to make you feel relaxed. You might feel warm up your arm as it goes in." At her right, Kezia could see over the edge of the mask that Yasmin had a syringe of something. She felt the nurse press against her IV site, and then there was a burning feeling - but just for a moment. Her arm felt warm.

"It's warm." Kezia said, under the mask, but it came out almost unintelligible. Now her chest was warm, too.

"You're doing great, Kezia." Dr. Kim said. "BP, please." There was a beep and her cuff inflated again. Kezia felt weird, detached. The cuff wasn't as tight as it shoudl have been. She started to feel heavy.

"123/75." Someone said.

"That's the midazolam, we'll watch that. Fent is next. How are you doing, Kezia?" Was that Dr. Kim talking?

"…kaaaay. Mmm." The mask started to smell sweet. That was weird.

"Fent going in." Maybe that was Yasmin. Kezia felt a brisk cold rush in her arm, then her head spun. "Getting a BP." Whirr. Squeeze. Beeeep. "115/68 now."

"Ok, let's watch that. Should come up a bit." Then something she didn't really catch. "…okay, you can cath her now."

"Kezia, honey, I'm just going to remove your panties now, ok?" Farah was right at her left ear. Kezia felt like she was on the table with her, she sounded so close. "We need to put in a catheter to make you comfortable, ok?"

Kezia wasn't sure how to argue, she felt light-headed and she couldn't really focus. But she wanted to scream. She thought she shook her head but she wasn't sure. "ohhh…no, naaaa…" she trailed off.

"Just relax, Kezia, deep breaths." Dr. Kim was still there? Kezia felt the mask press a little firmer. Kezia's eyes swirled around the room.

From somewhere way below her, Kezia heard Farah. "Okay, Yas, Foley please? Thanks. Watch her legs." Louder, she said, "I'm removing them, honey, here we go." Kezia felt the cool room air on her crotch, and her panties slipping down her legs. She couldn't fight. Her legs were lifted slightly, the nurses bending them at the knees.

There was a shuffle of sensations connected only by the place they were occurring, just in the region of Kezia's pelvis. Cool wipes, soft fabric, gloved hands…then the abrupt piercing weirdness of something going inside her.

"Aaaaaa." Was all Kezia could manage.

"Almost there, Kezia, you're doing great." More quietly, "…okay, balloon up, we're in."

Kezia felt like she was peeing, and she moaned softly in sedated panic. The cuff again, and a beep.

"122/83. Looks great. BIS 71."

"Okay, last of the meds now, Kezia, you'll be sleeping soon." Someone touched her gently on the forehead, almost like they were brushing her eyelids. Were her eyes closed or open? She couldn't really tell.

"Prop going in - go slow, Yasmin." Kezia's ears started to ring, and she felt her cheeks flushing. She breathed slowly, methodically. The machines beeped and whirred, the cuff squeezed, and her pee ran down a tube and into a bag.

As she was winking out, she thought she heard one last thing. "…sanitary…rectal tube…okay, roll her…"

=====

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[simvanie]

7 Sins Legacy - generation 5 (gluttony)

Yasmine: Hey... I decided to drop by again to check on you while I have my break. How are you holding up? Temperance: I'm... managing. I hate that the last thing we did was argue over the phone- I wish that I just told him that I love him...

Yasmine: Oh Temperance... Don't be too hard on yourself. He knows that you love him. You couldn't know that this would happen. Temperance: It's been almost two days since I found him and everything since then feels so surreal... I wish I could just stay here-

-But I need to take care of the twins. They need their routine so I have to be there for them... Also thank you for bringing them some toys. Yasmine: Of course! We have more than enough in the children's ward. Just let me know if you need me to bring some more.

Temperance: Are there any new notes from his doctor? Yasmine: ...It says he hasn't made any progress overnight, but he also didn't get worse, which is good. And his vitals are still stable. Temperance: Do you know more? About... his condition?

Yasmine: This does sometimes happen. In Gulshan's case his excessive food consumption, his drinking and smoking addictions, working too much, stress, and not getting enough sleep all added up to his body shutting down... Which caused him fall into a coma.

-It's his body telling him that it can't go on like this any longer. It's very important that he changes his lifestye if he wakes up, otherwise it can happen again... And then the chance that he'll wake up is going to be smaller and smaller every time that happens.

Temperance: You said if he wakes up. Do you know what his chance of waking up is? ....And what if... what if he doesn't? Yasmine: I wish I knew, but the only thing we can do is just wait. Just try not to think too much about if he doesn't-

-I believe in my brother and have good hope that he'll pull through. I know he loves you. A lot. and I refuse to believe that he'll give up on that-

*alarm beeping*

Yasmine: That's my sign to go. One of my patients needs me-

-I'll drop by later if you're still here. And of course you can always ask any doctor to bring me here if you need me. Temperance: Thank you Yasmine. I really appreciate you. Yasmine: Of course! Anything to help.

[teacupsandcyanide]

I adore Billie and think she would play the Doctor very well but I am not remotely a fan of the idea of her actually being the Doctor. I want the show to go forwards, not backwards. From what I’ve read online about the production issues impacting the end of this season and from the way that “introducing Billie Piper” didn’t have “as the Doctor” on the end, I’m hopeful that it is just a horrendous “buying time with nostalgia bait” thing and an easy casting choice strategy. I can see them thinking “hey the 60th did well, let’s do that again”.

So playing within those terms: if you’re going to buy time with a nostalgia bait special, and it absolutely has to be nostalgia bait, at least make it even across the board and don’t just focus on your favourite white girl who has already returned multiple times and had more shoutouts than any other companion. Do some justice to others, particularly those who had less time and were under-utilised during their run.

For example: We find out quickly that the Doctor hasn’t regenerated with Rose’s face, what’s happened is that - due to him fucking about shooting regeneration energy into the console - the Doctor and the TARDIS have body-swapped. The TARDIS now has free reign of the Doctor’s body while it’s still in the first fifteen hours of its regeneration cycle, and it’s put on its Bad Wolf face because remember who was involved the last time someone fucked about with the console and the endless energy stored within? (Fun Who fact! Artron energy is supposed to be very similar or possibly even the same thing to regeneration energy.)

The TARDIS has some agenda of her own, possibly she wants to find Susan because 1) she’s gotten sick of waiting for the Doctor to do that 2) she misses her 3) she’s staging an intervention. So the TARDIS goes on a rollicking adventure piloting the TARDIS-which-is-now-the-Doctor, who is stuck inside the console or in some symbolic nether space as the kind of consciousness a TARDIS usually is. They don’t even have a face yet. (Possibly at some point three-quarters through they get to the point where they realise it’s impossible to fix the situation and extricate themself if they don’t even have face, so they focus really hard and … end up with Idris’s face temporarily.)

The TARDIS isn’t too bothered about the Doctor’s struggles because as far as she’s concerned they’re safely tucked away and she gets to be the thief for once. She reckons it can’t be that hard to be the Doctor. She gets herself a little companion - alright, she kidnaps someone. Her chameleon circuit is also working way better than it has in years - oh wait. No. The body isn’t supposed to do that, is it?

The body has changed again to take on a face that also once tirelessly searched for a missing Time Lady. It’s turned into Yasmin Khan. The problem is, you see, that over the centuries the TARDIS got a bit too used to taking on interfaces of past inhabitants to argue with, comfort, direct, or bitch out people, usually the Doctor. That, coupled with the natural instincts to adapt and camouflage to a new setting, means that she keeps turning into whichever companion has the most relevant skillset. She isn’t really them, she’s the TARDIS, but she’s wearing their faces, and because she has the memory of the TARDIS and that includes memories of the people she had a telepathic link with, she has access to their memories up until their last trip in the TARDIS.

When she needs to bandage a wound she becomes Belinda. When information needs to be sought out and obtained she becomes Bill Potts. When video game know how is needed, she turns into Ryan. She spends a lot of time as Bill, Yaz, and Martha, because when you’re trying to find someone Yaz will organise you and keep you focused (Clara will also come in clutch with the post-it notes), Bill will ask questions without putting people on guard, and Martha is kind of a Swiss Army knife of usefulness because she knows medical care, knows how to use weapons and navigate sci-fi MacGuffins, is intelligent and never gives up hope on a goal. Take it further back and you can have whatever Classic Who companions never got the spotlight they deserved or simply didn’t get as much time and are often forgotten. Because the TARDIS hasn’t forgotten them. The TARDIS remembers all of them. Meanwhile, companion of the day is just doing their best to keep up.

While the Doctor is trying to navigate who they could possibly turn into this time but having to do so in a space where identity as a concept doesn’t really exist, the TARDIS is dealing with flashing through all these different identities and being pulled every which way. She realises why it’s so hard to focus on the goal of finding Susan, because the harder she tries to go back the more distracted she gets - because here’s the thing, memories are never just memory. The longer she spends as one face, the more she gets wrapped up in the story of that face and the more she cares about the unresolved threads. She only has their memories up until their last trip, and their stories kept going without her. They stepped outside her before they lived their happy ending, so she has no memory of it.

And we realise that this was never just about Susan, it’s about the fact that the TARDIS never gets any choice in who goes and who stays and for how long, all she can do is sit back and watch, and she never gets to say goodbye. She goes from being psychically connected to these people to suddenly never seeing them again, and Belinda’s particularly abrupt departure right after catching a glimpse of Susan in the Doctor’s mind was the final straw.

This is the point where her little kidnapped companion, someone entirely new, is able to help her simply by being themself. Bonus points if said kidnapped companion has been treated so far like a bit of a second class citizen because the TARDIS has been so focused on finding Susan. But they do something that no other companion in the TARDIS’s memory can do or would think to do, and the TARDIS realises that the past is not the way forward, the future is. New life, new people, new friends. She has always known this and believed this, even and especially when the Doctor couldn’t. She’s just like them, she can’t stop herself from opening her doors to new strays.

So the TARDIS gives up the search and does what’s really important: she sends a goodbye message. Not on behalf of the Doctor, just for her, to any past companion who might happen to stumble across it. And to do that, she takes on the face that never got to properly say goodbye or have goodbye said to her: Susan.

Then she swaps bodies back and the Doctor is able to settle into whatever new body they settle on. Possibilities: the kidnapped companion either dies in action or is cool with being photocopied, and the TARDIS suggests their face or is wearing their face when the Doctor gets the reins back, and the Doctor either chooses to roll with it or is stuck with it due to being bad at trying on bodies during regeneration the way Romana did. Or the Doctor just has an entirely new face and now they also have a companion who was the TARDIS’s companion first and is mainly interested in sticking around to stay near her. Either way the emphasis is on heading forwards with entirely new things and accepting that you will never feel ready to let the old things you love go.

Biggest problem with all of this: I would write it as a fanfic but never as an actual episode. Apart from breaking its own Aesop, it would heinous to watch as a viewer who wasn’t intimately familiar with every character flashing onscreen. There’s no way to actually do it that does even-handed justice to Classic companions too because there’s just too many of them. This is just my suggestion trying to follow the prompt of “if you absolutely had to do a big nostalgia bait episode and this was the lead-in you were given, what would you do?” What I would actually do is Not Fucking This; I’d have Fifteen regenerate into literally anyone except a character we’ve already seen a lot of.

[leikeliscomet]

Who's Afraid of Tenmartha?

Chapter 2 - Bad Girls Club

The Doctor isn’t a good person.

I don’t say this to say I don’t like the Doctor but to say their morals aren’t as squeaky clean as how the fandom and sometimes the show make out. They’ve destroyed dalek and cyberfleets, neglected companions, manipulated people and even killed before. Pre and post-Time War, the Doctor’s always been a timey wimey disaster. And yet, we love them all the same. Characters don’t have to be morally good in order to be likeable and in fact, it’s fully possible to enjoy a character and/or piece of media with morally grey representations and without that being a reflection of your own morals too. The Doctor isn’t the only character in the problematic fave section for a lot of fandoms. People can’t get enough of the Master and Missy. There’s Tommy Shelby of Peaky Blinders, Five Hargreeves of The Umbrella Academy, James from TEOTFW, the Roy family of Succession and even the fans who unironically stan Homelander from The Boys. Fandoms love bad boys. Always have and always will. But the concept of what’s problematic vs what’s morally grey is selective. And when you notice how selective this is, qwhite a pattern emerges. As addressed in Chapter 1, what fandom and society considers acceptable romance doesn’t exist in a vacuum and neither does its ideas of acceptable moral codes and when it’s time for them to break.

The sapphire trope/angry Black woman trope is another archetype of Black women. The sapphire is irrationally angry, controlling and dominant. This trope rebranded as the angry Black woman trope, with plenty of sass and finger snapping to go around. This trope isn’t just Black woman who’s angry, but a Black woman who’s angry for no real reason. Her fury is unjustified and something the audience makes fun of or is intimidated by. She’s the antithesis of the white, pure, Christian woman, who’s quiet and respectful. She is loud and disrespectful. She has low and poor moral character. When it came to the Fugitive Doctor, a lot of people were quick to clutch pearls at her gun despite the fact she never used it. She was called one of the most violent incarnations for her self-defence against the Judoon when, again, the Doctor has always used some form of violence, especially in self-defence. Plus the fact she never killed anyone as Gat used the gun on herself despite Fugitive telling her not to. In many other fandoms in TV and film, morally grey Black women are rarely given grace by their respective fandoms and make it into the problematic fave stan section. Harper Stern of Industry instantly comes to mind. The bank of Pierpoint is toxic and corrupt to the very core, yet, the Industry fandom sees her as uniquely evil and conveniently has more grace for Yasmin and Rob, despite their own manipulative antics. Uma from Disney Descendants is treated as uniquely the cruellest whilst protagonist Mal is the baddie with a heart of gold, even though it’s a film franchise about literal villains. From my old RWBY days, there were plenty of posts and videos making fun of Emerald for following around Cinder like a lost puppy as if she wasn’t a victim of Cinder’s abuse, carrying out her villainous orders in exchange for an escape from poverty. Even if Martha Jones was written as a morally grey character, written as jealous and aggressive as fans think she is, I very much doubt fandom would be able to handle it. 

The Doctor Who fandom isn’t shy when it comes to toxic and problematic shipping, let alone supporting its #messyfaves. Whilst Tenmartha is the only ship where misogynoir plays a role in the dynamic, you can make the too-problematic-for-shipping-purposes argument about any Doctor pairing. Twelve and Clara consistently manipulate and betray each other. River was psychologically conditioned to become obsessed with the Doctor since birth and the main reason they got married was to fix the universe, not out of love. Thirteen was closed off from Yaz and didn’t let her in until it was too late. Ten and Rose were insensitive to the death and destruction that happened around them leading to the creation of Torchwood and the Battle of Canary Wharf, causing the deaths of hundreds. ElevenAmy means Amy cheating on her husband Rory. The Master is a whole murderer and abused Lucy Saxon. And yet, Tenmartha holds the crown of ‘most problematic’ out of all of these. This begs the question of why Martha isn’t allowed to have her toxic ship moment. Why does she always deserve ‘better’ than moral complexity? Martha is always held to a higher moral standard than any other companion in this show. When Rose is jealous it’s because she’s just 19, but when Martha is jealous she’s trying to replace Rose’s spot in the TARDIS. When Clara challenges the Doctor she’s the greatest companion in Doctor Who and a feminist blueprint or something, but Martha is entitled and whiny. When Donna snaps at the Doctor she’s funny, loud and brash but Martha pulling up a chair makes her aggressive and annoying. When Captain Jack is openly flirtatious he’s breaking barriers in queer representation and normalising attraction but Martha is a creep overstepping Ten’s boundaries. When Amy literally rubs herself on the Doctor’s body it’s only because she’s scared of her marriage but Martha simply being sexually attracted to the Doctor makes her perverted. River Song is sexually liberated but Martha Jones is a predator. Every other companion is messy and that’s why they’re loved, but Martha’s ‘mess’ of having a crush is what’s holding her back. I used to think Martha’s crush was a flaw that held her back from being a better companion, but as I’ve gotten older I had to stop and think why. Was her crush a flaw or were we just conditioned to see it as one because the ‘ideal woman’ for Ten according to RTD1 was Rose Tyler and Rose Tyler alone? Joan Redfern, Madame de Pompadour, Queen Elizabeth I, Lady Christina, River Song and Astrid Peth all hold the sin of crushing on Ten but this attraction is acceptable because it falls into the standard of acceptable romance; white masculine man, white feminine woman.

Romantic attraction to someone isn’t inherently wrong. How a person or character acts because of their attraction is what we can attach moral value to. For example, if a character starts to manipulate people to get their love interest, acts dismissive towards other characters to get with their love interest or considers themselves as more valuable than their love interest’s current or past partners, then we could logically make the argument for Martha’s crush being a moral bad. But Martha never did any of this. She was rightfully upset with being compared to Rose, but she never fought to replace her, called herself better than her or forced Ten to choose her instead. She stopped flirting and sucked it up and was even happy when Ten and Rose reunited. But because of tropes like the sapphire and low moral assumptions attached to Black women, Martha is seen as more morally bad than she actually was. Every discussion about Martha involves the constant lament of how she could have been a good companion and could’ve been a good character if it wasn’t for her flaw of romantic attraction. She must repent from the sin of liking the Tenth doctor and her penance is moving on with another man whether it be Tom Milligan or Mickey Smith. Only when she moves on from Ten, like her role in Torchwood and her engagement in series 4, is she then clean. Let women be messy and toxic. Just not if they’re Black. And not if they’re Martha Jones.

Moral codes and love intersect because due to amatonormativity, the idea that romance is a necessity to give characters purpose because romance is ‘intrinsic’ to the human experience, it’s common to see how romance is used as a way to establish humanity and morals in TV/Film. It’s usually a binary of a loving, romantic hero and an unromantic, cold villain. Doctor Who reinforces this heavily in RTD1 and Moffat Who as loss of romantic love tends to correlate with a character’s loss of morals and humanity, especially the Doctor’s. Ten’s bad boy antics in series 3 are justified as a result of his loss of Rose. He murders the Racnoss children in The Runaway Bride and we’re taught this is the extreme of what happens when Rose is gone from the Doctor’s life. Contrast this with the Christmas special we got post-Martha. In Voyage of the Damned, Ten’s living his best life on the Titanic and gets lipsed by another young, perky blonde called Astrid Peth. He’s rightfully upset about losing Astrid, he’s upset at the dutty capitalist antics of Max Capricorn and he hates Rickston Slade (but let’s be real, who didn’t?). But in terms of pain for Martha, he seems pretty much okay. Unlike Rose or Donna, Martha’s absence isn’t given the big dramatic loss as her white peers but is simplified by Donna’s ‘that Martha did you some good’. Whilst Martha does leave an impact on Ten’s life and it is a positive one, RTD didn’t pull out the big stops for her like he did the others. Look at the 60th specials. Rose’s psyche is imprinted in the Doctor’s brain now apparently so Rose Noble names herself after her. Donna’s back, memories and all and gets her own David Tennant to keep at home. And nothing for Martha Jones! Not even a vague name drop. Across three whole episodes. She wasn’t traumatised or loved enough to get a single line apparently. I wrote a year ago that Martha was a threat to the ideal romance of RTD1 and so she became collateral damage for the sake of Tenrose. I still stand by this. Tenrosers glorify Ten’s angst fully aware it’s at Martha’s expense because it’s an acceptable price to pay for the sake of their love. The moral complexity of Tenrose is earned because the ends justify the means. Martha is considered undesirable so she’s undeserving of love but also moral complexity. She’s romantically undesirable and so, morally impure and undeserving of grace and nuance in her character. She’s now just the bitter Black rebound. From the lens of misogynoir and the disposable Black girlfriend trope, Black women as collateral damage for shipping is justified by wider fandom as an extension of the Black woman as a ‘stage’ in white men’s romantic development. She had to be collateral to develop Ten’s moral greyness with an acceptable target to take aim and to reaffirm Rose as the ideal, desirable woman of this m/f dynamic worth causing harm for. And as long as the Doctor Who fandom was well-fed, what was the problem? Why stop the machine from running because one of the cogs complained? Love hurts, after all.

On the other hand, there’s moments in Tenmartha’s defence that feed into misogynoir but in a different way. As addressed in Chapter 1, BWWM isn’t a fix-all solution to the poor representations of Black women in romance. Whilst Tenmartha is praised for being an entertaining toxic ship, the toxicity of Tenmartha is one-sided as Ten is predominantly the instigator of their problems, contrary to RTD1 popular belief and that of RTD stans. He chose to bring up Rose constantly aka ‘Rose would know’ and ‘Not that you’re replacing her!’, he called Martha a novice, he held her knickers despite saying he wasn’t interested, he hugged her then told her off for it, he’s the reason she ended up in 1913 (John Smith notwithstanding) and yet Martha having a crush is considered just as bad or worse than any of Ten’s actions. Ten’s actions can be justified because he misses Rose, he’s grieving, he’s just a smol bean having a tough time in the TARDIS. But Martha? Bitter, jealous and non-Rose. She just doesn’t get it. The Tenth Doctor is morally grey, but Martha Jones is problematic. Along with the historic mistreatment of Black women in representations of romance, specifically, the idea of a disposable Black woman who exists for a non-Black usually white man character’s growth before he returns to his white female endgame, it’s hard for me to see Martha getting treated like this and see this solely as the spice for a toxic ship or fodder for it’s non-Black shippers. I can’t see misogynoir as toxic and messy shipping material. 

Constant comments that are sometimes used to defend Tenmartha like ‘well it’s not like Martha was abused’ and ‘well it’s not like Martha died’ rub me the wrong way because Black women’s pain is consistently minimised and seen as irrelevant, largely due to the strong Black woman trope or the disposable Black girlfriend trope. When Eleven said he felt grief for Martha, the Doctor Who fandom never knew why. She’s got her life and Mickey what could she be upset about? Martha was negatively compared to her predecessor, was left to fend for herself against racism and murderous aliens in 1913, she walked the Earth in a hellish year across wastelands and countries collapsed from genocide, her family was imprisoned and tortured and she can’t say anything about the last two because the hellish year in question doesn’t even exist anymore. No, Martha Jones didn’t get an easy ride. No, Martha Jones not being domestically abused by Ten doesn’t mean there was 100% nothing wrong with the way he treated her. And no, Martha Jones didn’t need to die to experience ‘real’ suffering. Even then where cases Black women actually do die like Bill Potts, that’s minimised too. There’s loads of jokes about the massive gap in Bill’s chest plus any commentary on why Bill had to go through such extreme trauma is easily brushed off as a necessary evil for the sake of her getting with Heather. Grace was killed off right at the start of Chibnall Who to give Graham a storyline. The mistreatment of Black women is considered minor compared to what is major and when Black women’s mistreatment is major, it’s always seen as minor anyway.

How morals and ethics are applied to our faves doesn’t exist in a vacuum. In two ways I’m torn on Tenmartha. On one hand, I can’t get behind the misogynoir needed in order to make it so ‘fun’ and messy. In that sense, Martha, but also Black women as a collective, deserve better than to be punching bags and disposable love interests to feed the character development of white characters. But on the other hand, morally grey mess is what draws me to these characters and I won’t act like every character dynamic I personally like is 100% healthy. If we’re all getting behind our flawed girlbosses then why must Martha be the woman of virtue? Why does Tenmartha have to be pure in a fandom that loves its toxic little ships? The easy middle ground here is that Tenmartha doesn’t have to be either. There’s a third option between nonexistence and Martha getting the short end of the stick. This brings me to the final question - can an ‘ethical’ Tenmartha exist?

<- Chapter 1 Chapter 3 ->

[storiesbyjes2g]

3.128 Fired

We arrived at home late that night loaded down with more gifts than the nursery could hold. If we received one more thing, we'd have to start a warehouse in the empty bedroom. We got so much stuff, we could probably support six more babies, heh. Baby girl could use a different towel every day of the week for the rest of her childhood. We had enough shampoo and lotion to last the rest of her life, it seemed like. If one day she entered a nobody loves me phase, I'll be sure to remind her of this scene.

Sophia had never been a busybody and always took a more relaxed approach to life, but I was glad to see her following the doctor's orders. She spent a lot of time on our balcony, rocking in the chair early morning, thinking about whatever expecting mothers think about. Sometimes I'd catch her reading on the couch. Seeing her take the warning seriously made me feel good about leaving her alone for a few hours to visit Maira. I thought about it in the shower, and visiting her before the baby was born was the move. Who knew when I'd be able to spend quality time with her after that.

Like I always, I began our conversation with an apology, but she didn't fault me, of course. She said it wouldn't have been right for me to neglect all my guests to hang with her all afternoon. That was true, but I still didn't like that she was alone all day. She assured me that she was okay, so I asked about her brother.

"He died in a fire," she said.

"Oh, gosh! I'm so sorry, Maira."

I never liked him, but he didn't deserve to die like that.

"Knowing he's not here anymore is its own challenge, but what makes it worse is when I think about the fire, I often think about us."

I swallowed a few times because I knew exactly where she was going, and it made me nervous.

"I think about how you held me when you realized I was okay and what we both felt."

I couldn't move or even blink and sat there, holding my breath, hoping she wasn't about to pull a Yasmine on me. Finding good friends had been a long journey, and I felt like I had a nice inner circle now. I didn't want to lose Maira because of her feelings for me. I also didn't need her digging things back up because I had worked hard to let that go.

"Sometimes I think about that moment and I wish I would have given in," she continued. "We could have tried to see if we would work. I imagine myself married to you and pregnant with your baby. My parents would finally be proud of me."

I wanted to stop her from talking so she wouldn't say something that would ruin our friendship, but I was frozen. This was a mistake. I wanted to be a better friend, but we couldn't be alone together anymore.

"All of that is nice to think about," she continued, "but I would be miserable. And you would get fed up with me. We wouldn't be friends anymore. Life turned out exactly how it was supposed to, and I wouldn't change a thing. I like how we are, and I like my life. It's just lonely sometimes, and I wonder if I'm missing out on something."

I exhaled the breath I held and blinked, finally. I could keep my friend. As uncomfortable as that was to hear, I loved that we were able to be that honest with each other. That's true friendship right there.

"Everyone has their own opinions about what you should be doing with your life, so I don't think there's a right or wrong answer for that," I said. "I think as long as you're happy with your life, no one else's opinion matters."

"Yeah. You're right. That's what I say to myself. But you know how it is."

"Yeah. It's a battlefield up there."

"Seriously."

"So...there's no one you're interested in right now?" I asked, trying to pivot the conversation...and maybe be a tiny bit nosy.

"No, and it's all your fault. You ruined me!"

"Me? How??"

"You set the bar way too high! No one else can measure up!"

"Oh please. I'm sure there's plenty of guys out there who are way better catches than me."

"I assure you, there aren't."

"I don't believe that for a second. Ooh, I should set you up with my friend Justin."

"That guy who comes to all your parties? He's kinda cute. What's up with him?"

"He's a landscaper and lives in San Myshuno. He comes from a big family just like you and is a good man...a bit older than us, but at least he won't bother you about children."

"Oh-my-Watcher you're trying to set me up with an OLD man??"

"He's not that old...I think."

"You are officially fired from matchmaking, thank you!"

I missed our banter. It felt good to laugh with her again. Hopefully, she would let someone into her life soon. She didn't need a man, but it was obvious she wanted some kind of companionship, and I was not the man for the job. Besides, she deserved to be loved and cherished, and I wanted to see her happy for once.

"The baby will be here in a couple of days, huh?" she asked.

"Sure will. I can't wait to meet her."

"So, is this the first of many, or..."

I sighed, realizing this would be the first time I admitted this out loud.

"She might be it for us. At least if we want more, we'll have to adopt."

"Whaaat?"

"Yeah. We went through a lot to get her. Sophia says she doesn't want to do it again."

"Are you cool with adoption?"

"Oh yeah, totally. You know Sophia's adopted, right?"

"Really? I don't think I knew that. It's funny...I've known her almost my whole life, but I've never really known her until now."

Was it bad that I often forgot she and Rashidah were sisters? They rarely spoke of each other, and Sophia and Rashidah seemed closer than the sisters.

"Yeah, she is," I said. "And she's got quite a story. But yeah... We're both open to it, but actually doing it is another story."

"Well, whatever happens, I'm glad you two are finally getting your family. I can't wait to meet your kid!"

"Oh yeah? I thought you didn't like children."

"I never said that! I don't want my own children; I love the auntie life! I think my first order of business will be teaching her forbidden words!"

"Oh Watcher. Here we go."

[thelonelyshore-if]

How would the Ro's react to finding out Mc is hiding their injurie? 👀

Very fun question, let's go!! Answers below the cut.

Beck: "Fuck, are you okay? You should have told me sooner--we need to get you to a hospital or something!" Beck is decent at keeping her cool during an emergency, and blood and wounds don't bother her. That being said, she's scared of MC dying or being badly injured, and that would make her panic.

Croft: "Come on, why hide it? I can help. Come here--let's fix this mess" Croft doesn't really panic, but seeing MC hurt would unsettle them. They'd do what they could to tend to MC's wounds and help to the best of their ability, lecturing them all the while.

Jay: "That doesn't look good...but it's okay. I'm here. I'll bandage that up, and then we can get you to the hospital. Hold tight. I'll take care of you." Jay would be right there ready to help. They'd straight up carry MC to safety if necessary. As part of their S&R training they know first aid, so they'd patch MC up as much as they could. They'd do their best to comfort MC all the while.

Perri: "Uhhh that d-doesn't look too good. Are you, like...okay??" Perri's voice would hitch up, They aren't great with blood or injuries, at all. Even worse because it's MC. They'd honestly have a panic attack ngl. Especially because they couldn't figure out why MC was hiding it.

Ravi: "It isn't wise, hiding your injuries. What happens if you drop dead and nobody knows the issue? You need to actually think." He'd lecture the MC, all the while he'd pull them to the side and check out their wounds. He knows when wounds are serious, and he'd do what he could to help. Ravi would be incredibly calm--almost to the point of coldness--but you could hear the worry laced into his words.

Yasmin: "You think you're being brave, huh? It's cute, but you're being stupid. Give me a second and I'll put you back together." She spent a few years studying to be a doctor. She's not an expert, but she can do simple first aid. She'd be chiding and playful, trying to be lighthearted about it. All the while she'd be incredibly focused on making sure the MC is alright.

[sarandipitywrites]

Snippet Sunday

this sounds fun, so here we go! have some alchemical fuckery with Vy from Spark Signature:

Kettle: boiling. Cinnamon, hibiscus, and mugwort: crushed. Blood: muddled into the herbs. Vy pours it all into an Erlenmeyer and sets a one-minute hourglass. It’s neon red by the time it’s done; electric blood. Spark and thunder.

They lie down on their bed, the flask on the small table beside it. The sheets are soft, smelling faintly of dried lavender and chamomile. Batting down another wave of gratitude, Vy takes a deep breath, lets it out, and drinks the potion in a single swallow.

They’ve known about Spark sight for a long time—found it on a forum once, ran the calculations again and again until they were sure they’d gotten all the components down to the perfect ratio—but, considering the fact that life as a bartender doesn’t put them in contact with many corpses, they’ve never had cause to actually drink the stuff. Grisly implications notwithstanding, the flavor alone makes them want to go back to that.

Once the heady floral notes pass their olfactory receptors, the spice hits. Cinnamon and bitterness, earthy in a way that makes their nose scrunch. Then that passes, too, and they’re left with fruity, toe-curling tartness. The sensation lifts them up, off the blankets, over the mattress, through the ceiling and into the atmosphere. Then it lets go, and they’re falling into black.

When they open their eyes, the world is deeper—stranger. But this Vy doesn’t gawk at the way they can focus on the FMA office or the pedestrians milling in front of it at will; for this Vy, depth perception is normal. Which means that they can’t be Vy anymore.

They’re Doctor Hayden Poole, and they’re late.

Spark Signature taglist (ask to be added or removed): @leah-yasmin-writes, @unrepentantcheeseaddict, @ceph-the-ghost-writer, @mundanemoongirl

[quietwingsinthesky]

hi i think your fics are very cool! idk if its too early to send this but for the hurt/comfort prompts, could i request something with the master and yaz in the swap au?

hello anon i love you forever for this. fic be upon thee.

There's a question Yaz got asked a lot in the weeks after she ran away and came home.

Do you feel you are a danger to yourself or others?

So she knows, intimately, that it's a question meant to be lied to. The answer is always no, if you want help, if you don't want to scare anyone, if you want to be treated as a person.

She imagines asking the Doctor, "Are you a danger to yourself or others?"

And she imagines how easily he would lie, "No, Yaz, I wouldn't hurt a fly."

The Doctor hisses sharp under his breath as he snaps his hand away from the console. She knows he's cursing at the TARDIS, whether she understands the language he's using or not.

"Shocked you again?" Yaz says, and the Doctor jumps from her, hand on his laser screwdriver faster than she can blink. Her feet move faster than her head, stumbling back behind the safety of one of the arching columns. She doesn't hear the sizzling energy of him shooting at her. Graham's had closer calls than that. She lets out a breath, her heart racing, and peeks back around the column. The Doctor's eyes are dark and sharp, darting around where she'd been until he finally spots her and the screwdriver falls slowly to his side. "Sorry. I thought you knew I was there."

"I should put bells on all three of you," he mutters. His gaze tilts back to the console, eyes narrowing, and he pounces on the controls like he can take them by surprise. They visibly spark under his hand. He stumbles back, yelling in pain as the TARDIS ignores him, and Yaz darts forward to grab him by the shoulder. Fresh burns curl around his palms. He jerks under her grip like he's going to try a third time, but she keeps him still until his head snaps towards her, lip curled around her name, "Yasmin!"

"You want to keep having a domestic with your ship, or do you want to do something about this?" She gestures at his hands, careful not to brush them. He looks long and hard at the TARDIS console before relenting, though he pulls himself free to march his way down the hallway. Yaz follows, in time to reach the medical room a few seconds after him and stop him from grabbing things himself. "No, just tell me what you need, and I'll get it." She's familiar enough with this place. His bedside manner might be terrible, but he's patched the three of them back up before. She tries not to think about how many times he's had to, but they all came out of it fine, in the end. She barely even still gets little twinges in her stomach where she was gutted once. "Let me doctor you, Doctor."

She expects a smile, at least. She gets one, but the moment between lingers too long.

"Fine," he says. "Those two bottles and some bandages. I don't want to have to look at it." The bottles click against each other in Yaz's hand.

"Squeamish?" she asks.

"Bad memories," he says, darkly.

She could push. She could keep asking.

She doesn't.

"This might sting," Yaz says, less because she knows it will and more because she has a little sister and that's the sort of thing you're meant to say when you're about to rub ointment on a wound to keep someone from squirming. The Doctor's palms are blistering, the worst of it charred black. She doesn't flinch from the sight. She rests the back of his hand in hers as she spreads the ointment out across his palm in even strokes, covering every inch of the burns. She coats his fingers in it gently, working her way up and between them.

The Doctor isn't looking at his burns. He's looking at her. She keeps her head down and her gaze fixed. Her cheeks can't be burning as obviously as they feel like they are.

"You'd think with all the times it's attacked you or thrown us off-course, you'd find another ship." Yaz lifts his other hand in hers. He's always warmer than her, and that's harder to ignore when she has to keep touching him. She tries to focus on the burns, the way they disrupt the soft skin of his palms. Softly, she thinks she can feel his heartbeats through the back of his wrist. "Unless it's unique. You never said."

"She is," he answers before directing the next few words at the ceiling, "or else I would have scrapped her!"

The TARDIS does not respond.

"Yeah, that's… probably why it tries to kill you," Yaz says. The Doctor scoffs, but it rounds around a smile. She's not sure if she put it there or if he just feels like surviving his own ship's murder attempts is a victory.

"She belonged to my friend," he says after a few minutes, as Yaz is wiping her hands clean to bandage him up. The burns are fading before Yaz's eyes, but he asked her to cover them up and she does. She winds the bandage around his palm again and again. "You would have been so impressed with him." Yaz isn't sure she's ever heard the Doctor sound that way, entirely unadulterated affection. She's so used to every word out of his mouth feeling like it might bite someone.

"Where is he?" Yaz dares to ask. It's a poor decision. The Doctor's soft expression slams shut.

"Dead. Exactly how he wanted to be. Fighting a good fight far away from me." He takes his hands away from Yaz. For a moment, he admires her handiwork. Yaz holds her breath, waiting. She feels ridiculous for doing so, and yet. "Thank you." He says it like it hurts to get out of his throat, and she hoards it close to her chest all the more for that.

"Maybe leave the ship be for tonight?" Yaz says. "You could… stay for dinner?"

"No," he dismisses. "She'll learn to obey me, whether she wants to or not." With that, he stalks out of the room. Yaz sighs quietly, but that's about what she expected.

[goblins-shitty-soapbox]

My initial thoughts on The Reality War

Ok, I think I've calmed down enough to sit down and write down my thoughts a bit more coherently. I'm not gonna be rating it, exactly, as I feel like I need to give it a rewatch to really judge it for what it is, and I dont have the time right now.

Anyways, spoilers ahead.

Belinda was gearing up to be one of my favorite companions of the NewWho era. I loved the idea of a companion who doubted the Doctor, who maybe pushed back against some of the things that seemed normal to us. It would've made for such an interesting dynamic. But then they barely did anything with her. She was relevant for, like, four out of the eight episodes she was in. She was practically absent for an entire episode in favor of Ruby Sunday, and then in the finale, she was literally shelved from the climax in favor of Ruby AGAIN. That's not even bringing up the fact that she's suddenly a mother now. No prior buildup on her even being interested in having children. She just has one now, and that's treated as a good ending for her. It's just... ugh. Honestly, I could complain so much about THAT, but my thoughts are still too jumbled up, and I think other people will be able to discuss that aspect a lot more clearly than I can. But man... it really feels like the POC companions in this show are constantly shit on by the narrative, huh?

Omega felt so fucking underwhelming. He's brought up as this big, looming threat, only to eat the Rani, and then let himself be pushed back into the gate. Like... really? That's it? The fucking dog had more of an impact than Omega.

Speaking of the Rani, I'm genuinely so upset that Archie Panjabi was killed off. No offense to Anita Dobson, I do think she's genuinely a good actress, she just... doesn't feel like the Rani. This entire time, she's only felt like the Rani's underling. If they couldn't keep Archie Panjabi around for whatever reason, we could've had the chance for Anita Dobson's Rani to maybe turn on Archie Panjabi, as it SEEMED like they were building up to, and really establish herself as a proper Rani of her own. Instead, Archie's Rani gets eaten, Anita's Rani does a one-liner, and then fucks off. Super disappointing.

I'm not gonna comment too much on The Doctor's whole deal before the regeneration. I do think that I need to go back and rewatch Seasons 1 and 2 to really grasp how his arc was handled. I do think that Ncuti Gatwa was a fantastic Doctor, and I'm sad to see him go.

Still need to fully watch Chibnal's era, so i can't say much on Jodie Whittaker's appearance or portrayal. I am, at least, glad that fans of Yasmin x The Doctor are getting their crumbs.

Billie Piper. Billie... fucking... Piper. To say that this was unexpected is an understatement. We've had actors who appeared in Doctor Who prior to them taking on the role of The Doctor. But this is the first time that said actor was a companion. I'm... not sure how to feel about this. While I'm excited to see what Billie Piper brings in store for the character, I can't help but be concerned that Doctor Who is eating itself with its own nostalgia. While I didn't enjoy Series 11 all that much, I do at least respect it for trying to do something new rather than pull from old enemies or episodes. RTD2 has felt like its been trying to be RTD1 again, when that's not what the show needs.

Now, despite my... many problems with this episode, I'm not gonna use it as an excuse to judge this era as a whole. I've seen some people claiming RTD2 to be the worst era of Doctor Who ever, and tbh, I do think that's a bit of a kneejerk response. I've been around long enough in the fandom to remember when Steven Moffat was considered the worst thing to ever happen to Doctor Who, and now I just saw a poll where (at the time of posting this), Moffat is considered the most WELL-LIKED showrunner. It's not an indicator of what the entire fandom thinks, of course. Only 30 people voted on it, and most of the people who voted were probably fresh off of watching the finale. What I'm trying to say here is that the current showrunner is ALWAYS considered the worst showrunner. Me, personally, my experience with RTD2 has been generally positive. The non finale episodes have been pretty consistently good or great. To be honest, I would consider the finale episodes to be the only real duds. But I would like to rewatch both seasons to really judge the era fairly, free of any twists and surprises.

Anyways, those are my thoughts. The fandom's kind of on fire now, and I do hope things calm down soon. We don't need to hear the 300th "Doctor Who is dead" claim this week over a bad season finale.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

still thinking about yaz travelling with 10 so heres what i have so far:

she runs into him in london coming out of an interview for unit or smth, a couple of months after potd. for him it's in the gap between waters of mars and end of time. hes So Messed Up and yaz is like oh i know this. this is familiar. this might not be my doctor but,,,,this is my doctor

hes like oh what year is this? i was aiming for- and shes like dont ask me i keep getting it mixed up too. and hes like thats a bit of a strange thing to say, do we know each other? you seem familiar. shes like yes we've met

she surmises he doesnt have company bc hes all high on ginger and not trying to hide it. then shes like youre not flying like this, can i take you anywhere bc this is a fucking tardis and a fucking doctor available to her and how many more times is she gonna get this opportunity? never? once, and she has to wait for it 40 more years? no way is she just gonna walk past and go home. shes gonna do what shes always done and buy herself a little more time

she lets herself into the tardis, too sure of herself for him to really do anything abt it, as she asks "where did you say you were going?" he closes the doors "eternity"

"eternity?" she looks at him "is that a euphemism"

"it's a planet. in the larger magellanic cloud. thought maybe i should check up. sorry but who are you, exactly?"

shes like yes. um. yasmin khan. im a friend. as she stares at the tardis in wonder like the first time she walked in. and the tardis lights up bc she doesnt care about linear time and she loves yaz. so yaz starts putting in coordinates. she has to search for some of the controls bc the console is different but it's not too bad

"well thats great to hear, yasmin khan. can never have enough of those"

"larger magellanic cloud" she says looking at the navigation on one of the screens. "dyou ever think it's maybe a bit weird to name things in space after colonists?"

"well depends whos doing the naming. we dont call it that"

"no? what do timelords call it"

"and seeing as it were human colonists who settled there, maybe the name fits"

"there goes my faith in humanity" and she pulls the takeoff lever

the flight is bumpy as ever and when muscle memory fails her three times in a row shes like oh my god WHERE is your conceptual geometer and instead of pointing it out to her he just walks over and adjusts it and the way he does it is so familiar she has to blink hard a couple times

they might or might not end up on eternity but they certainly run promptly into trouble. yaz is a bit mysterious to him, a bit suspicious maybe because she wont answer any question directly but shes able to anticipate him so well that teamwork is pretty much seamless and theyre both running away from something so their motives line up and their need for something fun and exciting and distracting to happen too and also hes lonely and despite the way she basically hijacked his tardis he likes yaz bc of course he does

they match up timelines while hiding from guards, whispering about 1969 and weeping angels and "oh THATS why i dont remember, two doctors in the same place same time" and he figures out yaz travelled with future him

yaz drops a "she" and hes like "she??" and shes like oh shit should i not have said that and hes like no it's fine. and then hes like "does it suit me?" and she does Not manage to blink the tears away at that one

"is it something i said?" and then the guards spot them and hes like "RUN"

the ease with which he takes her hand as they run is lovely and horrible at the same time. she lets herself be dragged along while she thinks about the way 13 shook them off almost any time any of them touched her

a week & 8 planets in and shes been held by him more than shes been held by 13

they become buddies in like the way that you can sometimes become buddies with the younger sibling of your best friend or something. hes probably too heartbroken and messed up to develop a real crush but it's still yaz right? you know the way 10 kisses claras hand in the day of the doctor? that vibe. and yaz, with the benefit of.........foresight? hindforesight? picks up that vibe here that she couldnt with 13. bc 10 is young and a fountain of emotion compared to 13

my yaz is pretty firmly a lesbian so even if she was gonna get over the like very recent heartbreak and younger sibling vibes then still nothing was gonna happen here but theyre also both not in a place where they could cope with another heartbreak like that so like,,,,,,they both know, and they both know that they both know, but they dont need anything more so it just kinda makes them better buddies. sometimes youre a little bit in love with your friend in a way you dont want to act on. just another thing to bond over

and for yaz it's maybe a little bit healing to get 10s adoration like that

at some point the fact of meeting in the wrong order also comes up of course. yaz is like it's a little bit complicated, i dont know what i can say and 10 is like meh follow your instincts, youve got good ones i can tell. and if theres really something you shouldnt say i'll stop you

yaz is like does that happen a lot, as a time traveller i mean, meeting people in the wrong order? and 10 is like [THINKING ABOUT RIVER] "from time to time"

i just think theres a lot of potential for fun with the two of them. both of them running from the inevitable. not wanting to lose who they are, wanting more time as this version of themselves

yaz will learn so much about the doctor that retroactively contextualises a lot of 13, which i think could help in getting a little bit of closure. and theres so much river echoes sort of going in both ways. yaz flying the tardis with 10 because she learnt with 13, river later flying with 11

i also think seeing the way 10 is about his principles compared to how 13 was would be interesting. she would see a lot of the ways the doctor has grown up. yaz got to see so much of 12 in 13s trauma but she never got to see how 12 learnt and grew to become the 13 she loved. i think it would be special to see 10. see how they used to be. and also slap him on the fingers sometimes when he needs it

i dont know how to end it yet because that will just be more tragedy. 10 still ends up in end of time. yaz still ends up home. but maybe they can help each other a little bit in the time inbetween, even if the end theyre running from still comes to them both

[alwayzraven]

Kardeşlerim Ep 129

Seval called the police and told them that she killed someone. They brought her to the police station to interrogate her. Seval said that she tried to get Gokhan to the car but he woke up and tried to strangle her so she hit him with a rock to defend herself and that’s how he died. The police asked her if she buried him alone and she said that she did. Berk called Aybike and told her that he got a call from the police. They told him that they found his father's body and that Seval was the one who killed him. He was on his way to the police station with Ayla and Elif.

They did a one-month time jump.

Yasmin was avoiding Berk for a month at school. Berk told her that she doesn’t need to avoid him because of what her mom did. He told her that his father tried to kill his mother and then Aybike so anyone would've done the same thing as Seval. Aybike didn't tell him the truth. I am guessing the writers are trying to “create” some drama using this in the future but it doesn’t make sense because Berk knows that his father tried to kill Aybike and Yasmin saved her. Plus, he told Aybike that he was scared that his dad died not because he loved him but because he was worried that she would be arrested.

Berk and Aybike took Umutcan to the doctor so he could get vaccinated. Berk was able to distract him so he doesn’t cry when he sees the needle. After that, Berk and Aybike took Umutcan somewhere by the sea. Berk was playing with Umutcan. He told Aybike that the weather was getting cold so they should dress him in something warm. Aybike was going to make umutcan wear a jacket but Berk told her that he will do it. Aybike watched as Berk dressed Umutcan.

Berk told her that they should go to the stationery store and buy supplies so they can make kites with Umutcan and fly them. Aybike said that it was a great idea but that she had never made one before. Berk told her that he knows how to make one. When he was in primary school, they had a “father’s day”. It was a day where fathers of students would come to school to do an activity with their children. The activity was making a kite together however, Resul didn’t come because he was busy working. Berk said that he was sad because his dad didn’t come but then he saw that his mother came. Berk said that they made the most beautiful kite that day.

Aybike looked at him playing with Umutcan and said:” You’re going to be a great father”

Berk:”Are you sure? because I have never experienced a father's love before."

Aybike:”I am sure. I am very sure of it. You will be the kind of father you dreamt of having.”

Berk said that he thought about what kind of father he would be in the future. He said that he would never lie to his kids and he is not going to be a workaholic. He said that he would spend his time with his kids and that he is going to love them with all of his heart.

Aybike:”Wait, when you say “kids”, how many?”

Berk:”I mean, maybe 4, maybe 5 but look even if we have 5 children, none of them will cause you any difficulties. I will look after all of them and they are going to be well behaved. I promise you”

Aybike:”5?”

Berk:”Yes, 5, Aybike. Okay, for you, 3 (as in he will settle for 3 kids instead of 5)”

Aybike:”3?”

Berk:”Yes, 3. My lucky number is 3, by the way”

Aybike:”Okay, then let's have children according to your lucky number.”

Berk:”Yes, let’s. What’s your lucky number?”

Aybike:”1”

Berk:”It’s not 1, don’t lie.”

Aybike:”2, okay, a girl and a boy”

Berk:”What’s the difference between 2 and 3?”

Aybike:”No Berk, 3 is too much”

Berk:”Five!”

I don’t know how he went from 5 to 3 then back to 5 again 😂 Why do the men on Kardeslerim always want to have a football team of children. I think Doruk wanted 5 children too. The scenes with Umutcan were cute but I think the fans were sick and tired of the lack of scenes for Ayber in the last couple of episodes that they don’t care anymore.

Apart from the 3 min Ayber scene with Umutcan, the rest of the episode was boring af. I can’t wait for S5.

[shadowkira]

Fluff 13 for Thasmin please?

Thasmin (Fluff - Prompt 13) - “I didn't mean to say that but yeah, I love you.” (Thanks for the prompt!!)

—

Yaz slid her arms into her jacket, smiling softly to herself as the Doctor puttered around the console behind her.

“Alright, weekend with the Khans and I'll swing back to pick you up Monday at noon?”

Yaz nodded, this was always her least favorite part. It was important to go home and visit her family from time to time but the TARDIS had become her home away from home.

Brown eyes turned to watch the Doctor, her tongue was peeking out the side of her mouth in concentration as she piloted her beloved ship. The thin, familiar line creased her brow as she focused on her task.

With no work to return to, instead she planned on catching up with her sister and helping her parents with what she could around the house. Maybe she'd help her dad with whatever recipe he was workshopping at the moment.

A fond warmth blossomed in her chest as she watched the Doctor put the finishing touches on the coordinates for their journey back to Earth.

It was a feeling she recognized but tried adamantly to not linger on.

Before too long, a familiar whirring interrupted Yaz’s thoughts as they touched down on Earth.

Yaz shouldered her bag, a light blush darkening her cheek as she smiled at the Doctor.

The blonde was rolling back and forth from flat footed to the balls of her feet, her cheeks puffed out adorably. “Well, this is you…”

“This is me.” Yaz agreed, her smile widening. “I'll see you in a few days, Doctor. Love you.”

Time seemed to slow, appropriate for the TARDIS, in hindsight. Yaz felt her heart jump into her throat as she realized what exactly it was that she had just said.

She spun around, her own wide eyes meeting the other woman's.

People told their friends they loved them all the time, she could pass this off as an Earth norm she could-

Yaz swallowed thickly, the Doctor's cheeks were no longer puffed out. A blush had darkened her pale cheeks and her eyebrows had shot up toward her hairline.

“Uhm, I mean…” Yaz started, the words tapering off as she floundered for something to say. Finally she heaved a sign, tightening her grip on the strap of her bag. “I didn't mean to day that but yeah, I love you.”

She smiled, it was a shy thing but genuine nonetheless.

The Doctor blinked owlishly at her for a moment as she processed the information. After a moment, she took a few steps forward to close the distance between them.

“Yasmin Khan, when I come to pick you up Monday make sure you pack something nice to wear.”

“Doctor?” Yaz questioned, not bothering to hide the surprise from her voice.

“We're going on a date!” The Doctor supplied usefully, nodding to herself with satisfaction.

Yaz felt her blush deepen as she watched the other woman walk toward the console conspiratorially, mumbling to herself as she went.

Dan was never going to let her live this down.

[storiesbyjes2g]

3.104 Concerns

I woke up thinking about how bummed Sophia was about not being able to go to the beach in Tartosa. I mean, I was too, but it seemed to hit her especially hard. No one else I knew loved the water more than her—not even Yasmine, who declared herself a "water baby." I got a brilliant idea in the shower that was sure to make Sophia happy and presented it to her at breakfast.

"Let's go to the lake in San Sequoia. We can invite my dad and Alessia and make a family day of it."

Her eyes were as bright as Winterfest lights, and I gave myself a pat on the back.

"Yeeees, that's a great idea! Wait, your sister is still here?"

"Yeah. Apparently she's not going back. She wasn't as happy over there as she thought she'd be." I snorted at a new thought. "Plus, she probably met some loser here."

"Luca!"

"What? She's not exactly in the market for quality men right now."

"Still. You haven't met him yet and already labeled him a loser. It isn't nice."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Stop!"

I chuckled and reached for the phone to inform Dad about my plan, but he advised against it. A thunderstorm plagued the area, so once again, the weather dashed our beach plans. But Dad countered and suggested a family movie day instead, so we all braved the storm and headed to Anchorpoint Wharf.

I thought the movie was funny, but Sophia said it bored her, which surprised me, seeing as she was the token goofball of the two of us.

After the movie, we hung out at Dad's house for a bit. Alessia caught us up in her life, and just as I suspected, she had met someone; I knew her so well. Apparently, they met at our party. They were at the bar and noticed they were both doing the exact same thing. She had this weird ritual she did in restaurants where she wiped down glasses, utensils, plates, and whatever her mouth or food touched. He was doing it too, and they locked eyes. The way she talked about this dude was different. Usually, she didn't care to get to know the poor fellas on this roster, and we never got any details about them. But her tone was so giddy it intrigued me. Could he be the one to break down her wall? I knew my dad hoped so. He really wanted to walk her down the aisle.

I realized we hadn't heard from Sophia in a while, so I turned around to check on her. She had droopy eyes and a frown, and everything inside me wanted to panic. But she wouldn't want me to do that in front of them. When I found an appropriate place to make our exit, I took it and ushered her and the dogs back home. Once we made it inside, we settled in the office to talk. It seemed like all our important talks occurred in there recently.

"What's wrong?" I asked. "Are you feeling alright? What can I do??"

She shifted in her seat and looked everywhere except in my eyes, alarming me even more.

"I, umm... I'm concerned."

"About Alessia?"

"About getting pregnant."

My throat tightened, and I swallowed a few times to keep it open.

"Oh..."

Her confession lingered in the air like steam after a shower, and I wasn't sure what to say or do.

"I've taken a pregnancy test every day since the engagement," she said, still not making eye contact with me. "I know these things take time, but... It should have happened by now! My birthday is way too close, Luca. I'm running out of time."

I was in such a weird spot. I wanted to hold her and tell her to keep the faith, but this was bad news for me, too. She wasn't the only one looking forward to bringing a baby into the world. But it was her body going through that, not mine. And as much as it hurt to hear that, I still had a level of detachment she didn't have.

"Is there something we can do?" I asked. "I mean...is there...a test or something for that?"

Finally, she looked at me as if awakening from a trance.

"Yeah, actually. There is." She shook away those sad feelings and sprang into action. "I'll make an appointment right now. I guess I've been too flustered to think straight. I could have done this days ago."

She called her doctor and scheduled an appointment for the next afternoon. When she hung up, I finally embraced her like I wanted to and told her everything would be okay. I didn't know how true that was, but I had to believe it for the both of us.