Chapter 18

St Mary's Hospital.

Paddington.

London.

John ran up the steps of the hospital, through the doors and approached the volunteer run information desk at reception. He'd called the TARDIS to the Domaniale de Guînes forest, using his phone app, leaving Jack in to travel back through the Channel Tunnel, with the Torchwood 4x4.

"Can I help you sir?" an elderly lady asked him as he looked at the list of wards and departments on the signage.

"My wife is about to have a baby, I need an Obstetrician and a Midwife, now," he said, his voice brimming with authority.

The poor volunteer looked stunned and flummoxed. "Oh dear, er, right. You'll need the Delivery Suite in the Maternity Unit, which is just down this corridor." She pointed to his left, indicating the aforementioned corridor.

"Thank you," he said and set off at a run, reading the signs hanging from the ceiling, until he reached the Delivery Suite and burst through the doors. There was a nurse station to his left, and he ran up to it.

"Can I help you?" a young nurse said as she looked up from the notes she was writing in.

"I do hope so," John said. "My wife is having a baby."

"Oh, congratulations," the nurse said with a smile. "What's her name?" she asked, looking at the computer screen in front of her.

"Rose, Rose Smith."

"Date of birth?"

"27th of April 1987."

"Ah yes, Dr. Thurlow's patient. She doesn't seem to have been admitted as yet," the nurse said, looking puzzled.

"No, she's, er, outside."

The nurse then looked shocked. "Oh dear." She picked up a phone and dialled an internal number. "Dr. Thurlow, we have a patient outside the hospital about to give birth."

John was hopping from foot to foot as he waited for the nurse to finish the call. "Dr. Thurlow will be right out."

"Thank you," John said, visibly relieved that help was on the way. ["Rose, I'm on the way with some help, just hold on."]

["Oooh, that was another one of those crampy things,"] she said sleepily.

["Contractions."]

["That's them, contraptions. Y'know John, I don't remember EJ bein' this much trouble."]

["That's because he's a male, a Lungbarrowmas. This one's a female, a Tyler, what do you expect from a Tyler woman?"] He thought light-heartedly, trying to keep her spirits up by distracting her.

["Just you wait mister, I'll tell Mum, and you know what she'll do to you,"] Rose giggled mentally.

John was hoping, no, praying that the gas and air would make memories of this conversation disappear. He didn't fancy another slap from Jackie Tyler.

A middle aged woman in casual clothes, covered with a white coat, came out of some double doors, followed by a younger woman in a dark blue uniform, carrying a rucksack with 'Emergency' written on the back of it.

"Dr. Smith, I'm Nita Thurlow, Rose's Obstetrician. Can you take me to her?" She recognised John from when he had accompanied Rose on an outpatient appointment.

"Yes, follow me, she's…. in an ambulance outside…. Sort of."

They exited the hospital, and headed for an ambulance that was parked on the paved area in front, and to the right of the entrance. If the Obstetrician and the Midwife had been more observant, they may have asked why there were no tyre tracks from the road to the current position.

Also, they may have noticed the unusual design of the back doors of the ambulance, that seemed to open inwards, rather than the normal outwards. As it was they were focussed on helping a patient in distress, and followed the soon to be father into the back of the ambulance.

"Oh my Lord," Dr. Thurlow said, mouth open as she gaped at her surroundings.

"This isn't right," Vanessa the Midwife, said, shaking her head. "No, no, no, this is definitely not right."

John didn't have time for them to do the usual running outside, walking around once, before looking back inside, so he gently guided and pushed them up the ramp. In their current state of shock, that wasn't too difficult.

"But it's…."

"Yes, it's bigger on the inside, and no, your eyes aren't deceiving you." He took hold of Dr. Thurlow's shoulders and turned her to face him. "My wife is across town, stuck in traffic and about to give birth. She isn't due to do that for a couple of weeks. I need your help, please, will you help us?" he pleaded.

It was as though she had just woken up. She blinked, nodded her head, and said, "Yes, of course, let's go. Can you drive us there through this snow?"

John gave her his manic grin. "Oh yes. But first of all let me show you the medical facilities, the equipment will be familiar to you, just a bit more high tech."

After showing them to the Medi-Bay, he came back to the console and locked the TARDIS on to Rose's emergency transponder that he'd activated earlier. The time rotor started to pump up and down as they wheezed their way to Rose.

Gloucester Terrace.

Paddington.

London.

"How are things up front there Ross?" Georgina asked her partner, whilst monitoring Rose's vital signs. Her patient giggled at something, she put it down to the Entonox, because she didn't know about her private, mental conversation she was having with her husband.

"It's gridlocked, there must be an accident up ahead, the roads are white over." He thumped the steering wheel in frustration. "This is stupid, we're only half a mile from St Mary's, we could wheel her there on the stretcher in a quarter of an hour."

"Not in this weather we coul…." Before she could finish that sentence, the back doors of the ambulance flew open to reveal a tall, spiky haired man in a black uniform.

"What the hell?" Georgina said in amazement. Ross echoed this, as he looked down the ambulance from the cab.

John leapt into the back of the ambulance and crouched down by Rose. "Rose, I'm here," he told her, reaching for her hand and kissing her forehead.

"John?" She said as her eyes came into focus on his worried visage. "Oh John, I knew you'd come." She grabbed the lapels on his uniform and pulled him into a passionate kiss.

"Ahem." Dr. Thurlow cleared her throat as she climbed into the ambulance.

"What's going on?" Georgina asked the woman in the white coat.

"Hello, I'm Dr. Thurlow, Rose's Obstetrician. How's she doing?"

Georgina gave the doctor a run down on Rose's vital signs, and those of the baby, as John reluctantly separated from their kiss as another contraction hit. "Right, let's get you into the Medi-Bay," he said, with some urgency in his voice.

Ross had come to see what was going on, when John stood up and read his name badge. "Grab the end of the stretcher for me would you Ross, we need to get her out of here."

"Wha', where do you think you're gonna go? We can't push her to the hospital in this weather."

Dr. Thurlow put a hand on his arm. "It's alright Ross, Rose is in good hands, and we have some medical facilities that are second to none, just outside the doors."

Ross hesitated for a moment, thinking about the options available to them. But there again, this was a hospital consultant, an expert in child birth, telling him that she was confident that his patient would be better off outside. Who was he to argue with that?

He shrugged his shoulders and grabbed the end of the stretcher. John grinned at him and grabbed the other end.

"Ross, what are you doin'?" Gina asked him.

"According to Dr. Thurlow here, I'm doin' the best for our patient."

John backed out of the ambulance, trying to keep the stretcher level, followed by Ross, who then put the wheels of the stretcher into the snow.

Ross looked up and down the street at the white fronted, Edwardian terraced houses, wondering where the medical facilities, that were second to none, actually were. All he could see was an out of place, blue police box, with a woman in a Midwife's uniform looking at them with concern.

'Wheeze, wheeze'. Rose took another couple of breaths from the cylinder resting on her chest. "Chilly out here, innit," she said holding her hand out to catch the snow flakes.

"We'll take it from here Ross," Dr. Thurlow said as Vanessa came to help her push the stretcher through the snow to the blue box.

"Wha, you're goin' in there?" Ross asked incredulously.

"Yep," John said, as the two women backed into the box, the entrance of which was at a right angle to ambulance. He watched, first in amusement, and then in disbelief, as the stretcher was pushed into the box, followed by John.

He and Georgina climbed out of the ambulance and walked over to the box. He put his arms out from one corner of the box to the other, measuring the distance.

He turned to his partner. "Even on the diagonal, that stretcher could not fit in that box," he told her. They both slowly turned their heads to look at the doors of the box.

Medical Facility.

TARDIS.

They had wheeled Rose through the Console Room toward the Medi-Bay, with the two women focussing their gaze on Rose, so as not to look at the impossibly large room they were passing through. It was a way of avoiding the motion sickness that they felt, when their eyes were showing them something that their brains were telling them was wrong.

As soon as they lifted Rose onto the Medi-Bed, it came to life and started showing the telemetry of Rose and the baby on a screen at the head of the bed. A slender robotic arm introduced a cannula into her arm and connected her to a saline drip. Tiny electrodes in the mattress stimulated nerve points in her spine, giving her relief from the pain of the contractions.

"Ooh, that's better," Rose, said, as she handed the Entonox cylinder to Vanessa the Midwife. "I won't be needin' that any more now." She reached for John's hand and squeezed it. "I never doubted that you'd be here for me, for the baby," she told him.

"Well, I wish you'd have told me that, because I had no idea if I'd make it," he said with a grin.

"Okay Rose, when the next contraction comes, I want you to push," Vanessa told her, looking up at her from between her legs. The Midwife was the expert at this point, whilst the obstetrician would take a back seat and monitor the wellbeing of the mother and the baby.

They didn't have to wait long, before another wave of contractions squeezed her uterus.

"Here it comes," she told them. This time, there was no pain, only a feeling of pressure, as the TARDIS controlled the pain relief in her back.

"The head's out," Vanessa said in a flat, professional tone of voice.

"Everything is looking good here," Dr. Thurlow said, looking away from the screen.

Still holding Rose's hand, John leaned over and looked between her legs. "Oh Rose, I can see her face, it's all scrunched up, like she's all annoyed at being pushed out."

Rose gave a weak laugh at his description she was getting tired. "Oh, there's another one coming."

"Okay, here we go, here we go," Vanessa encouraged as she held the head and eased the body out. There was a sudden 'flop' noise and a gasp, followed by a whimper and a cry.

Vanessa held up the baby and placed her on Rose's chest. Rose immediately started to sob tears of relief and joy, John leant forward and kissed Rose on the forehead.

"Congratulations," Dr. Thurlow said, "do you have a name for her?"

John and Rose looked at each other; they had discussed the options of a name.

["Are you sure Love? Because Juleshkaliemmanatalisamablyledgemas, is a hell of a mouthful,"] John thought with a grin.

Rose looked up from gently cleaning their new daughter with a towel and smiled at him. ["Shut up,"] she playfully thought to him. ["You know what I mean, Juleshka, in memory of your first wife, and Suzette, after Mum."]

John was moved to tears by Rose's feelings of love and respect for his dead first wife. Rose had seen her in his memories, when he showed her his life on Gallifrey. Juleshka had defied her parents and married the man she loved, rather than the man they wanted her to marry for influence and power.

Her parents, the Blyledge's had punished her, and John, by taking her regenerations off her, forcing John to watch the woman he loved, wither and die.

John squeezed Rose's hand, wiped a bit of dust that had mysteriously gotten into his eye, and turned to Dr. Thurlow. "Dr. Thurlow, may we introduce Juleshka, Suzette Smith, our daughter."

"Oh what a beautiful name," Vanessa said.

Dr. Thurlow had a lopsided smile as she said, "I think an appropriate response in your case should be, welcome to the planet Earth."

Rose snorted a laugh. "You don't know HOW appropriate that is."

"John, I've just realised, she's our first baby to have actually been born in the TARDIS," Rose said.

"Oh yeah, you're right," John said with a smile.

Vanessa had finished helping Rose clean Juleshka, and had wrapped her in a blanket that just happened to be there waiting for her. "Am I going mad, or can I hear music and singing?" she asked.

"I can hear it as well," Dr. Thurlow confirmed.

Rose smiled at John. "It's the TARDIS, isn't it?"

"Yep, it's a Gallifreyan lullaby," he told them.

"Oh John, it's beautiful."

"So, Dr. Smith, what is this place then? Is this the kind of technology that Torchwood purchases or procures off aliens then?" Dr. Thurlow asked him. She'd heard the rumours and conspiracy theories about the Institute, although to be fair, Pete actually makes that information public.

"Not exactly, this one's all ours," Rose answered for him.

"It's certainly very impressive," Thurlow said.

They heard the ring tone from Rose's phone. "Oh, that's in my coat pocket John."

"I'll get it," he said as he rummaged through the pocket. He looked at the display it said 'MUM'. "It's your mother, shall I answer?"

"Yeah, Okay," she said.

John took out his mobile and handed it to Rose. "Here, you phone Pete and we'll swap in a bit." He answered the call. "Hi Jackie, where are you?"

Jackie was immediately concerned that he'd answered the phone and thought the worst. "Oh God John, what's happened, where's Rose, is everythin' alright, is the baby safe?" She fired off a string of questions like a machine gun.

"Jackie, calm down, Rose is with me here in the TARDIS, the safest place in the universe, looking absolutely gorgeous. Everything is fine and under control. But I'm afraid your Granddaughter has usurped your daughter for the position of the most beautiful girl on the planet."

He snatched the phone away from his ear as Jackie squealed with delight.

"Transponder?" Rose said as she was talking to Pete. John suddenly realised that Torchwood Dispatch would have picked up the emergency beacon from her nanite tattoo. 'That was me', he mouthed, pointing to himself.

"Oh, that's brilliant. What's she like?" Jackie asked as he brought the phone back to his ear.

"Well, Rose says that she looks a bit like you," he told her, Jackie 'aaah'd'. "But I can't see it myself; I just think she's the most beautiful girl I've ever seen."

"Are you sayin' I'm not beautiful?" Jackie asked, sounding insulted.

"Er, no, of course not, I just..."

Jackie couldn't keep it up; she was just so pleased and relieved that everyone was okay. "Of course she's the most beautiful girl you've ever seen, she's your daughter. I mean, it stands to reason don't it, look who her parents are."

John was silent for a moment, trying to work out if there was a veiled insult or sarcastic jibe in that comment. No, doesn't seem to be any there. If he didn't know better, that sounded like a compliment. "Thanks for that Jackie, it looks like Rose has finished with Pete, so we'll swap over.

When John picked up the phone to her Mum, Rose speed dialled her Dad on John's phone.

"John, what's the situation? I've got an all terrain ambulance on the way out to Rose. I'm sure she's alright so don't panic," he said urgently.

"Hi Dad, you're right, I'm fine."

"Rose, it's you, oh that's a relief, I take it you're with John then if you've got his phone."

"Yeah, we're in the TARDIS, John's on the phone to Mum, tellin' her the good news."

"Good news? Oh, thank God, when we picked up your transponder, we feared the worst."

"Transponder?" Rose asked, looking towards John, who was grimacing as he held the phone away from his ear. He then had a look of realisation on his face and pointed to himself, mouthing 'that was me'.

Rose giggled. "That was John; I think he must have activated it to find our stranded ambulance. We are all fine Dad, you have a beautiful Granddaughter."

"Okay Sweetheart, I'll recall the ambulance."

"Thanks anyway Dad, it was a nice thought, although you might want to pick up Mum on the way back. I'll hand you over to John now, so that I can have a chat with Mum, see you later."

John and Rose had similar conversations with the other parent until it was time to hang up. Pete said he would take a Torchwood 4x4 to rescue Jackie from her stranded car, and swing by to collect EJ from school, promising to come to the hospital as soon as he had them.

"Right, let's get the stretcher back to the paramedics, and then we can get going to the hospital." John wheeled the stretcher out of the Medi-Bay, through the Console Room, and out of the door.

Ross and Georgina were sat in the back of the ambulance, waiting for the return of their equipment. When they saw the stretcher starting to emerge from the enigmatic blue box, they jumped down into the snow, and trudged across the intervening space to meet John coming out.

"Any news?" Gina asked, knowing immediately from the daft grin on his face.

"Thanks to you and Ross, our daughter is fit and well. Thank you so much." John grabbed them both into a group hug.

"You're welcome," Ross said, "but can I ask you how all of you and that stretcher fitted inside that small box, I mean, what's all that about?"

"Oh let me show you," John said grabbing them by their arms and pulling them into the TARDIS. "Come and see my daughter, she's beautiful."

"WHOA!" Ross said as he froze in the doorway. He leaned backwards and looked out into the snowy street, turning his head left and right, before looking back into the vaulted cathedral of the TARDIS Console Room.

He started to chuckle as he walked up the ramp. "This is some of that Torchwood shit, isn't it?"

"Not exactly," John said with a smile. "I work for Torchwood, but this is all my own shit."

Rose's diary.

Entry Date: Christmas 2018.

'Another Christmas day lunch at the Mansion with Mum and Dad, only this year we had another little new addition. Also Rex joined us as Jacks plus one, and seems to becoming a member of the extended Tyler family.'

'Dad dropped a bombshell after lunch by announcing that he was going into semi retirement, and cutting down the number of hours he would be spending at Torchwood. I am so glad he's decided to start taking it easy, he will get chance to enjoy spending time with Tony and the Grandkids.'

'Before it got dark outside, we went and built a snowman on the back lawn, and had a snowball fight with Jack, Rex, Mum and Tony on one team, and John, Eyulf, Dad and me on the other. I shared a look with John, and he remembered when we had a snowball fight on Woman Wept, in the old universe when he was all ears and daft grin. Happy days, both then, and now.'

Doctor's diary.

Entry Date: New Year's Eve 2018.

'Wow, here we are, one year on, and what a year it's been. Who'd have thought that when I started writing this diary, we'd have another addition to our family?'

'And here we all are in the TARDIS, just coming up on Sydney, Australia for the fireworks on the Harbour Bridge. Rex is still a bit culture shocked by the TARDIS, but I think with Jacks help he's starting to get a grip. Pete, Jackie, and Tony are loving it, and Jackie is really pleased that she'll be getting back in time to throw her annual New Years party. I tried telling her it couldn't be anything but annual, and she gave me that look that made me nervous, and my cheek twinge.'

'This diary has been a real eye opener on being human (or part human). When I was a full Time Lord, I never bothered to look back, and not out of shame like Davros thought, it was because there is so much out there in front of me. And with the ability to regenerate, I never reflected on what had gone before.'

'Now though, I can see what awaits me, and these clever, brilliant humans have found their own way of regenerating. They keep diaries, and tell stories about their lives to their children, and the children tell them to their children, and so on (and boy, have we got some stories to tell).'

'And with each telling of their stories, the people are remembered and their memory honoured, until they become…. Well, the stuff of legends I suppose.'

The End