The Doctor's Shadow

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Gallifrey: A Long Time Ago

Old, he thought.  She had grown old.  Simple.  That is what he had to keep telling himself as he sat by her bed.  If only he could believe it was so simple.  Holding her dry, wrinkled, hands in his.  Eyes that used to sparkle with such life now were the colour of milk.  He raised the hands to his lips and kissed each of her fingers in turn.

“Do not worry for me,” she said weakly.  “I shall - shall - be gone soon!”

The man raised his thoughtful eyes to look at his wife lying there. Stabs of light pierced through the hospital window highlighting the translucency of her skin, just reminded him how little of her life was left.  It was draining away from her before his very eyes, and he could do nothing to stop it.  He should be able to hold the tears back but he could not.

“You do not have to be!” the man exclaimed as he sniffed back the next torrent that threatened their way down his cheeks.

“I am tired,” the woman rolled her head on the pillow so she could glance at her husband for many hundreds of years, “tired of regenerating,” she let out a throaty moan.  “I had regenerated during the birth of each of our three children.  As a child, accident prone, I regenerated several times then too... If I co-” she coughed.  “If I counted my regenerations as blessings I consider myself blessed,” the woman managed to slip one of her hands out of the man’s grasp and stroked the many wrinkles on his aged face.  “Please, do not beg me to stay when all I want to do is slip away...”

“We can retract your...”

“Do not fight me on this,” the woman managed a little smile.  “I beg one thing of you... Please, make it up to my sister.  She has not forgiven me...”

The man smiled a little.  His wife always seemed to ask the impossible.  

“That may be difficult,” the man sighed rising from his seat then he leant over his dying wife and planted a kiss on her lips.

“My dying wish...” she sighed.

The man felt his wife’s hand fall from his.  The man glanced down at it, as it just laid there, ghostly white and still on the pale yellow hospital sheet.  

As the realisation hit him that his wife was dead, he broke down in another torrent of tears.  Sobs wracked his chest as he held the cold stiff form of his wife, rocking her back and forth in his arms, tears wetting her hair.  Begging her to come back in another form.  Pleading that she would come back.  Please, darling, please, come back to me!  But there was no golden glow.  The two hearts were not beating.  

The doctor’s had taken her at her word and, indeed, drained all her regenerative sources away from her.  “No!” he exclaimed.  “NO! NO! NO!”

Two doctor’s rushed into the hospital room and tore the man away from his dead wife’s body.  The man shrugged them off.  Glaring at them, anger through tears, he stormed out.

The man entered the family bay.  Seven people stood up.  His three children with their spouses and one of his grandchildren.  The one he was particularly closest to.

“Sorry...” he sighed.  “Your...” but he could not complete the statement.

Suddenly he turned round and ran out of the hospital as fast as he could.  All three children looked at each other.  Never had they seen their father this distraught.  Only one ran after him.  

The man turned to see his granddaughter, jade green robes flapping after her as her feet thumped against the floor.  

“Grandfather!” she yelled.