Run. (The DoctorxRose One-Shots)

"Rose."

They had no idea who he was. They had found him washed up on a beach in Norway. A strange sight. An unconscious man in a pinstriped suit laying in the sand as the waves washed over him. He was lucky someone had found him before he drowned. The tide had been coming in on top of him. The doctors had no idea what to make of him. For one, he had two hearts. And every test they did always showed he was something other than human.

But the strangest thing was, despite his comatose state, he still spoke. The doctors tried to communicate with him, but nothing worked. He only whispered one word. The same word over and over again. Always the same word. And he always spoke it with such urgency, it made the doctors fear his life depended on this word. They tried everything, but he never changed. Always speaking the same word. His word.

"Rose."

A nurse would bring fresh roses to put by his bedside everyday. They tried letting him hold a rose. They tried letting him smell a rose. They tried everything they could think of, but nothing changed.

After a few weeks, this unnamed man, this John Doe, was dying. The doctors had no idea how to care for someone of his kind. They tried giving him the same treatment as they would a human, but it was either too much or too little, and it never worked. They predicted today he would die. One of his hearts had already stopped working and the other was so slow. He was close to brain death. Even as death rushed up to greet him, he still whispered his one word over and over. But today it changed. They predicted he had only mere minutes. And then he spoke not one word, but two.

"Rose Tyler."

"Is that a name?" the nurse who had been supervising him asked.

"Rose Tyler," he repeated.

"That's a name," the nurse said, then yelled over her shoulder, "That's a name! Rose Tyler! I think he's got family! Maybe a wife or something!" She rushed out into the hall to join the mess of doctors and nurses who were now desperately trying to find Rose Tyler. They had no idea how to save this strange man, but maybe this Rose Tyler did.

They found her eventually. A young woman in London. Someone who had just shown up out of the blue a month or so prior to this man's appearance. They managed to contact her, and like they had expected, she seemed to know much more about the situation than they did. She told them to keep him alive, she would be there.

And there she stood, by his bedside, watching his heart monitor, so close to flat line. She knelt down and took his hand in hers.

"How long has he been here?" she asked a nurse.

"Just a few weeks, ma'am," the nurse replied, "but he's dying."

Rose shook her head and looked back to the man's face.

"Would you like some privacy?" the nurse asked. "These are his final moments after all."

But before Rose could reply or the nurse could leave the room, the man whispered his word.

"Rose."

"Doctor," Rose replied.

"What?" the nurse asked. "Do you need a doctor?"

"Yes," Rose, replied, her voice betraying the tears she was trying so hard to hide. "Yes, I need a Doctor."

And then before the nurse could leave to fetch a doctor, the man's slowing heartbeat jumped and began to race, back at its original quadruple sequence. And then the man's eyes opened. The nurse bolted from the room, screaming for a doctor because the John Doe was waking up.

"Rose," the man said, as his eyes met hers.

"Doctor." And then his hands were on her face and he was raising himself off the bed to press his lips to hers. She responded willingly after a second of shock. They broke apart relatively quickly, as he gasped for breath, still weak.