Please don't kill me for where I decided to leave off this story and the place I will start the next...


Epilogue

It was the TARDIS ringing in his head which woke him up, after he had finally gone to bed. His legs were stiff and still a bit sore, but the water, warmed by the TARDIS, had helped a lot in taking away the majority of the pain.

He rolled over, sighing with the put out thoughts that he'd like to go back to dreaming. He had been enjoying his sleep for once, and it wasn't very nice of his TARDIS to have woken him up, ringing phone or no. He could still see images of Rose smiling at him from his sleep muddled head.

It was probably Jeremy, wondering how he did with his little talks. He was still in a very good mood though, and didn't want that ruined by having to talk about how he had done. He'd call in his own time...surely Jeremy understood that.

He managed to ignore the slight ringing the TARDIS was sending trough his telepathic centres, and had almost fallen back to sleep again, when the noise stopped. He was relaxed and in that floaty place between real sleep and being awake when the TARDIS started it up again, three times as loud and almost to the point where it deafened him in a way he didn't think he could be deafened.

"Ow! Alright! Bloody hell, cut it out!"

And he'd had a good few hours of having normal, happy fun with Donna yesterday. He didn't want to have to go through his failings in what had happened before that. Still, if he didn't get the phone, it was possible the TARDIS would rupture something to get him out of bed.

Grumbling to himself, rubbing his eyes and wishing for at least 1 more hour of uninterrupted sleep, he made his slow way out into the console room.

He was surprised when he found that the phone that was ringing wasn't the TARDIS phone, but the mobile Martha had given him, and he immediately brightened. A talk with Martha would be fine, even if it was just her calling to see how he was doing. He hurried over to it with a grin on his face, accepted the call and said a loud and happy "Martha!" down the line.

To his surprise it wasn't Martha's voice that answered him.

"Doctor? Doctor! You've got to come. Mum's going insane and we don't know what to do. We're at Royal Hope...please come."

His grin immediately dropped and worry took its place. "Tish? That you?"

"Yeah. Please, can you come? Martha's asking for you."

His worry intensified. Tish was really worried about whatever it was that has happened. "What happened, what's wrong?! Has something happened to Martha?!"

He heard a sniff and felt his hearts clenched. No, she couldn't be dead, Tish had jut said Martha wanted him to come. Just injured then? Was she dying?!

"Martha's fine, Doctor. She's just a bit busy at the moment and couldn't call you herself. She's trying to calm mum down, she's not allowed to help with any of the hospital things with him or anything because it's a family member and she's too close. It's Leo. Our brother. You met him at Laz Labs, remember?"

He remembered how to breathe when he heard that Martha wasn't the one that was hurt, but the worry didn't leave fully. If it did, he'd have felt guilty for that. "Yeah, I remember him. What happened?"

"God, poor Shonara, his girlfriend, found him hanging in their room. Mum's going absolutely mental over it. With him having...you know, during that year, and seeing him like this..."

His breath caught again, remembering how Francine had acted when she had been forced to watch Leo, his girlfriend and their baby killed in front of her. It had taken Clive, Tish and himself to calm her down, and it took a month before she uttered a word again.

But...hanging? Leo? He hadn't met the boy more than once, but one thing he knew for sure, he wasn't the one of the Joneses he'd peg for suicide. He had been a genuinely happy person, proud of both his sisters and hadn't stopped smiling until the disaster had struck. "Was it by his own hand, or was he put there?"

"He did it to himself. If anything, it's making this even harder. Please...can you come?"

"Day, year, time."

She told him without asking why and with no hesitation whatsoever. Having people know he was a time traveller sometimes did come in handy. He couldn't leave the Joneses like this. Not now. Not after they had gone through all that pain together already.

It was like he almost lost a part of his own family, hearing this news and that was worrying. When had he begun to get so close to the Joneses to think them like a surrogate family for him? Why did he have to continually torture himself by getting close to his companions' families?

Shaking his head clear, he hung up on an extremely worried Tish, put in the coordinates and arrived, just as Tish was hanging up on her end.

He hadn't been in the Royal Hope since the day he had met Martha, but he suspected more than ever that he had a reason to hate hospitals. Every time he ended up in one, it was because something bad had happened.

He hoped for the sake of the Joneses that Leo was alright and that he got better from this.

He still couldn't understand why though.

Tish noticed him, waved him over and stared at a closed door. "She's been in there for the past 2 hours and refuses to leave. Leo's going to be fine, physically anyway. But she refuses to leave his side. Doctor...she was doing so much better."

In no time at all, he had a crying woman in his arms, Donna was wandering, confused, out of the TARDIS and tried to take in what was happening and he was lost in a maze of confusion himself.

How was he supposed to make this better? He could barely help himself.