Rose Tyler, I –

Just close your eyes

The sun is going down

You'll be all right

No one can hurt you now

The hospital smelled of antiseptic.

The Doctor walked slowly, past oxygen carts and defibrillators. Eyes flicking past one machine on to the next, he realized the bitter irony of hospitals. Places of healing, and yet so many came to die.

His head stayed low, hands hidden deep in the pockets of his trench coat.

How long had it been? Fifty, sixty? Seventy? Surely it couldn't have been seventy.

And yet. Here he was. Here she was, 2076, still fighting. . .

His red plimsoll squeaked against the flecked tile, and he flinched at the sound.

She was still fighting, but time was winning.

He stopped, glanced up. Here it was, Room 214. A heavy mahogany shield guarding him from the other side. He briefly wondered how many patients had ever been in this room – how many patients had left alive and lucky, and how many had suffered a different fate. His fists clenched inside the pockets.

Eighty-nine. 2076. Room 214. He had never hated numbers before.

He took in a breath, steeled himself to face the different world on the other side. With his hand resting on the handle, he considered that he could still walk away. He didn't have to mess with her life one more time.

He pushed on the handle and opened the door.

In a gray room, a gray figure lay on the bed.

A nurse dressed in pink fussed by the bedside, fiddling with the glowing mechanical snakes that kept her patient alive.

She looked up as he entered. "Can I help you?"

"I – I'm –" The Doctor couldn't stop staring at the figure on the bed. His Rose. "I was a friend."

"I'll give you two a minute," the nurse said, forcing a smile. The Doctor didn't hear her leave; he could only tell she shut the door as the column of light disappeared from the room.

"Oh, Rose," he whispered, holding back the tears, sliding down next to the bed.

Beneath thin lids, her eyes flickered. "Doctor?" Her voice was cracked and weary with age, a voice that time had beaten down.

Something broke, deep inside him. "Yeah, it's me," he said once he could control the emotion in his voice.

"What – what have you been doing all this time?"

"Oh, still mucking about in galaxies and timelines. Same old," he said with a forced smile.

"Galaxies," Rose sighed, with the breath of reminiscence. "I used to be able to see the universe stretch on forever. Now" – she waved a shuddering hand at the window, that tiny square of gray trees and concrete – "that's my infinity."

"I'll go back in time, when they were still building this place," the Doctor offered, feeling a stab of guilt as he looked at her world. "I'll make them build the biggest damn window for Room 214 Britain has ever seen –"

Rose let out her laugh in a soft sigh, tears slipping down her face in a silent river.

Staring out the window, Rose's bitterness and sorrow grew inside her. "Why couldn't you have come before – when I could still move, when I – when I needed you, when –" She broke off and succumbed to the tears, her shoulders shaking, her chest heaving, mourning seventy years. Swallowing hard, she closed her eyes.

"Why now?"

The Doctor felt a familiar ache, deep in his chest. The explanation of the crack in the parallel world seemed not worthy, irrelevant. "I didn't want you to – to go alone."

"Go. . . ." Rose's pale eyes refocused on him.

The beeping heart monitor, the hiss and sigh of the machines, filled the dry silence. The Doctor rubbed his hands and stared at the pale white floor.

"I lived a good life," Rose whispered. "I might even call it fantastic." A smile lifted her lips. "After. . . we last met, Mickey and I settled down. Two girls. Beautiful, strong. Ready to have adventures of their own."

"I'm glad," the Doctor said softly, but Rose was still talking.

"It's all because of you, Doctor." Rose gave a weak cough that shuddered her whole frame. "Thanks for all the adventures. . . for the memories and the good dreams. . . for the. . . for the. . . ."

Her eyes were starting to fade, moving listlessly up toward the ceiling. With a chill of fear, the Doctor realized it was now or never.

He leaned forward, lightly touched his forehead to hers. Her skin was growing cold.

"Since I never got a chance to say it," he whispered quietly, letting his eyes close, "Rose Tyler, I love you too."

The bright, unbroken scream of the heart rate monitor stretched forever into his mind.

Just

close

your

eyes

. . . .