Chapter Text
I wake groaning in pain, surrounded by the familiar sounds of beeping machines. I’m fairly sure that I had never felt quite this sore before, no matter how often I was in a hospital. Even at my worst, my pain has always been a horrible ache that sapped me of strength, not this sharp nothingness I suspect has to do with painkillers. Also attributed to painkillers is the fact that I can’t seem to remember how I’ve ended up in this situation, normal illnesses aside. In fact, if it were just for my normal illnesses I’d be much more at ease. Falling asleep in one place and waking up another is hardly something new, but not knowing why definitely is. I haven’t not known why since my parents decided I was old enough to know about the failings of my body. For someone who’s been in and out of hospitals for as long as I can remember, it’s quite unnerving to not know something about my health, abysmal as it is. In fact, I can’t really remember a lot of things at the moment, memories slipping by like sand through my grasp.
I scrunch up my face in preparation to open my eyes. I need answers, preferably by yesterday, and this is the only way I can think of getting them. Oh, but I hate this part, waking up for the first time in a while. The cotton-mouthed feeling and sensitive eyes never get any more fun. I wince as I slowly opened my eyes and allow them their time to adjust. Once they do, I can’t help but narrow them again in suspicion. This is not my normal hospital. I could tell by its relative plainness and the marks on the normally pristine ceiling. I spent a lot of time looking at the ceiling of my hospital, I should know what it looks like. And I’d been in and out of my normal hospital enough that I had my own room for most visits, personalized with flowers and pictures and all. From what I can see from where I currently lay, I’ve got no pictures and no flowers or cards. Not that the cards thing is unusual, being holed up in hospital room after hospital room doesn't lend itself to making friends, but the point still stands. A completely plain room where I could swear I should have been residing for months now.
It’s only now that I spot the head of blond hair resting on a pair of arms at the edge of my bed. I don’t recognize the woman, but I find myself reaching for her as if I did. My mouth opens to speak before my brain can catch up to it.
“Mum?” I croak. I find myself confused again, not that I ever hadn’t been after waking up. But my ma was a ginger woman, tall and willowy. This woman was much stockier than she, almost the opposite in body type. Short and curvy where my ma was thin as a stick in every way. It felt right to call her mum, but I’ve never seen this woman before and besides, my ma has always been my ma and never my mum. The woman stirs and looks up at me. It takes her a moment to register that I'm awake, but then she’s all but pulling my into her lap, careful not to dislodge the various tubes attached to me or jostle my body.
“Rose, oh Rose! Sweetheart, I was so worried!” The woman, my mum apparently, desperately whispered into my hair. The name feels wrong, like it isn’t mine, but I can’t think of any other name I should have. For all of my confusion about mum though, her hug feels just as it should. I melt into the embrace, in pain or not, and feel tears spring to my eyes. I feel as though I’ve missed this, as if I hadn’t hugged my mum in quite a while. But that’s wrong too, I’d hugged my ma not minutes ago, sitting in a hospital bed just like this. Ma had always been scared to lose me and took every chance to show me she loved me. I’d always hated how every hug felt like a different sort of goodbye, but the comfort of her hold had always been more important. I should have died from a lot of things a lot of times by now, but it was always her hugs that kept me anchored to the world.
“Mum, wha’ happ’n’?” I ask, my voice hoarse and my words slurring together. “Where’m I?” Mum sits up at last, wiping her eyes of the silent tears she’d been crying.
“It’s all that Jimmy Stone’s fault!” she declares angrily. “I told you he was bad news, I said! And now look where you are! Oh, if I get my hands on that boy,” she trails off threateningly, her hands clenched as if to strangle someone. Part of me twinges in fear, the clenching of her fists too familiar an action, but most of me is simply confused.
“Mum,” I interrupt her angry mutterings, “ Mum, who’s Jimmy Stone?” Mum stops dead to look at me, something cautious in her eyes. “That boy you ran off with, the musician? You dropped out of school for him.” she prompts. I simply shake my head, no clue what she’s talking about. I’d never been able to make friends before, much less run off with boys. Heck, I don’t think I’d ever even met a boy my age unless medical students counted. I’d never be able to make it far if I ran anyway, my body too weak from being confined to beds and besieged by illness. If I even tried, Dad would have caught me within minutes, what with how protective- I pause. I didn’t have a dad. Fairly sure. He’d died when I was six months old, I never knew him. Why am I thinking of a dad I didn’t have? Something like fear starts settling into my confusion.
“Mum,” I start, my voice quietly afraid, “Mum I don’t remember a Jimmy. I don’t remember going to school either.” Mum sits there, quiet and stunned for a moment. I gently reach over and push the call button, hoping a nurse would show up soon. They usually knew what was going on when my parents (and there it was again, parents, like I had two, but I’ve only got my mum. But she was Ma before wasn’t she?) and I didn’t. Mum grabs my hand as it retreats back to my side.
“Sweetheart, what’s your name?” she asks in the worried way of a mother who watches too many soaps. This time though, the implied accusation is justified. It’s Rose, I think, my name is Rose. But, thinking about it, I only think that’s my name because that’s what she’d called me. It doesn’t sit right as I try to place it like a mantel over my shoulders. I slowly meet Mum’s eyes (and now she’s just mum and why can’t I remember her name? My own mum’s name? Ma’s name? No) and shake my head only slightly faster in answer to the unasked question.
After the doctors burst in and start doing their tests and taking their samples and generally doing their doctor-y things, I find myself diagnosed as an amnesiac. Mum and I are told that I should start remembering things again as I healed, but that some things might not return. It’s as I finally get a look at my medical chart and take stock of myself that I realize in how bad a shape I really was. A broken rib and several bruised ones, the broken one dangerously close to piercing my lung. A broken leg and fractured arm. More bruises than I could count and just as many cuts. A stab wound on my thigh. Most damningly, perhaps, are the hand-shaped bruises around my neck. I find myself glad that I can’t remember what happened.
As my wounds finally start getting to acceptable stages of healing, I’m allowed to go home. I’m given the name of a physical therapist and a psychiatrist and told to see both. After that, I’m finally allowed to go home with instructions for the care of my injuries in hand.
I settle back into Mum’s flat, a place I hadn’t been in months, and pause when the feeling of being home crashes over me. My brow scrunches in confusion as I hobble on crutches into my room. It was just the way I’d left it. Except, I hadn’t left it. In fact, I’d never lived in a flat before. I’d lived in a house with my parents (again with the plural, like I had two, but I know I don’t) between hospital visits. We’d had a garden and everything, I remember planting petunias in it one spring when I’d been well enough. I also remember starting a little kitchen garden with mum, here in the flat, when I was smaller. Just little thyme and basil plants. They’d died because we didn’t get enough sunlight. But our petunias had flourished. I sit heavily on the bright pink comforter, my head cradled in my good hand. I tried to run through a list of facts to get the confusion to abate.
I was 16 (19) years old. I’d been sick most of my life, in and out of hospitals (I was healthy as a horse and loved gymnastics). I only had my mum, Dad had died when I was six months old (I had both of my parents, Dad was going bald from worrying about me all the time). I lived on a council estate for most of my life, mum doing her best to support the both of us (Dad was was head of IT for the hospital I usually ended up at, mum a software designer. We lived modestly, to pay my hospital bills). I lived in London (I lived in Louisville). My name was Rose Tyler (my name was).
Wait.
Rose Tyler.
Shit.