A manipulation of time and space, CD Sanders [books to read in a lifetime .TXT] 📗

what you’re talking about. I have to get to the hospital, a woman is in labour and I have to help her,” he mumbled desperately.

“What?” When the Doctor was angry and couldn’t believe something, he snapped an arrogant ‘What?’ It always gave his conversation partner the feeling that they had said or done something stupid. Paired with his strikingly furious expression and his eyes sparkling with anger, he was an intimidating man. However with that short word he not only expressed his disbelief over what he had heard, he also gave the man a chance to rethink his words and to change them.

Potter wanted to babble on again, but the Doctor interrupted him: “Oh you surely mean Martha Parrish, whom you should have warned before she got pregnant. Well because of you she is going to die tonight. And if there isn’t a more competent doctor at the hospital tonight than you are, Martha’s daughter Amelia is going to be disabled for the rest of her life. Is that what you want?” His eyebrows drew near to each other. When the Doctor was angry he was a force of nature, unstoppable for everybody. And now he was bloody angry, after all a person’s life was at stake and he took that very personally.

“How do you know that woman’s name and condition? Even I just got news of it. What am I supposed to do now? I have to get to the hospital.”

“Listen closely, I will tell you what you have to do. First you are going to run the few kilometres back to your house, you will pick up your phone and you will call a rehab clinic and get admitted there.” His eyes were cold and without mercy. “Otherwise I will destroy you. And believe me, I destroyed men much stronger, than you will ever be.” The threat was cold-blooded, his voice barely a whisper. But there was no doubt that he would have no qualms fulfilling it. That he said it so calmly was not a sign of weakness. No, the Doctor never screamed and he never threw a tantrum. He was the most dangerous when all of his anger was focused on somebody.

Without another word Potter turned around and ran back to his house. He didn’t even stop to take his coat off, just walked up to his phone and dialled the number of the rehab clinic he had dialled so often already. Except this time he didn’t put down the receiver at the last moment.

The Doctor saves Amelia

The Doctor stepped inside his Tardis and travelled back to 2015. But he couldn’t find her, actually there were no news of her anywhere in the past few years. Finally he found a newspaper from 1989. An eight year old girl and her father had been killed by a drug addicted young man while he was trying to rob a grocery store. Before that he had raped the pretty young girl. The police had already searched for the criminal for a bunch of other robberies.

“No, no, no, no, no. I can’t let that happen!” And again the dance around the Tardis’ circuits started and he was on his way to that fateful day, Amelia Parrish’ new death date.

The evening outside of the grocery store on the 19th of September 1989 was black. Peter Parrish had never witnessed an evening that black. While Mike, the owner of the store, packed the food in a bag, he looked out of the gigantic window. There, the darkness was again ripped apart by a bright flash, thunder following closely. Amelia clung to his leg. She had never been an especially timid kid, but the rumble of the thunder made her shudder. He softly placed a hand on her shoulder and pulled her close to him. Smiling she looked up at him.

“Oh, look there!” he suddenly exclaimed excitedly. With one of his long fingers he pointed at the sky. “A comet. I saw it clearly!”

His little daughter looked into the direction he was pointing, but she couldn’t see anything special. “I don’t see anything, Dad. Where is that gourmet?” She didn’t want to admit that she had no idea what her father was talking about.

“Honey, I meant a comet. They are flying objects in outer space on which aliens travel to earth. Just today we got a lodger from the comet Krax.” His voice was so earnest that his daughter was staring at him, eyes and mouth wide open.

With childlike interest she asked. “Where is that alien supposed to sleep and what is his name?”

“His name is Spocky and I gave him the room next to yours. He hopes you don’t snore all that loud.”

“But I don’t snore at all!”

"He’s going to be happy to hear that.”

Incensed she glared at her dad, but for that moment all her fear of the thunderstorm was forgotten. She had thousand questions about their new lodger and she had to ask them all!

The Doctor stood behind one of the shelves in the back and listened to their conversation amusedly.

Now he knew, where she had gotten her talent for storytelling and where the ideas for the tiny alien names Spocky came from.

The people inside the store couldn’t hear the sirens of the police cars outside as they were muffled by the storm. But in that moment the police surrounded a young man, carrying a gun, not far from the store. The next day you could read in the papers, that the police had only been able to find that man thanks to an anonymous tip. An observant citizen had been able to tell them the exact time and place where the criminal was.

As they arrested him, there was a loving father in a tiny grocery store telling his daughter a story about an alien, who travelled from planet to planet. Meanwhile she stood there on her healthy legs and smiled at her Dad. When the Doctor passed by Amelia he smiled and winked at her. He whispered softly: “Keep a stiff upper lip!” A radiant smile from the bottom of her heart was a good enough reward for him.

The Funeral

One year later in her life, the Doctor wasn’t able to save Amelia’s father, just as he hadn’t been able to save her mother before that. Their deaths where fixed points in history and couldn’t be changed. The laws of time and space forbade him to intervene. Even though the Tardis was a powerful weapon at his disposal, he had never used her for unlawful purposes and he wasn’t inclined to do that now. He didn’t have an idea just yet, that a time would come where he would bend the laws of time quite a bit. But even though he wasn’t able to do anything for young Amelia this time, he wanted to be with her in this hour of need. So he hid in the cemetery behind a tree and watched her. His eyes were dark with grief, he felt her pain intensely.

After everything was over, Amelia stayed behind, watching over her father’s grave. Suddenly she turned around and looked directly at him.

Recognition flashed through her eyes and she walked up to him. She said: “You are the men from Mike’s grocery shop, am I right?”

He nodded confirmatory.

“Where you and my father friends?”

“No, Amelia Parrish, but I do hope that we two will be friends someday. But not now, that point is still far away in the future.”

She blinked confused at him. “You are a strange man. What’s your name?”

“Doctor.”

“Ah, just the Doctor? How mysterious.”

“I’m sorry for what has happened to your father, I truly am.” He looked at her with an incredible sadness in his eyes, he seemed resigned. But his left eyebrow was raised slightly, causing his face to look slightly arrogant. It said, if I couldn’t help your dad, no one else could have done it.

“Amelia!” a high and piercing voice called her name and she turned around and shouted, that she would come in a moment.

When she turned back around to see the Doctor, he was gone. On a tiny branch in the tree hung an envelope. She took it and opened it.

“My little Amelia Parrish. The next few years in the orphanage will be hard for you, but you are strong and you can do it. I believe in you. And don’t forget to keep a stiff upper lip. We will meet again. In joyous anticipation, your friend, the Doctor.”

As he stood in the doorway of the Tardis he turned around and watched the sad little girl walking away. That was the doctor, an infinite soul full of emotion and a face that spoke of beauty inside and out. But in the next moment the melancholic shadow had passed. He clicked with his tongue and his whole face was light up in a smile. “Well…” He knew that was the way life was and you could just try to make the best out of it. So he did just that. “Allons-y!”

The social worker

Back in the year 2015, he searched for her book in the database. But he couldn’t find it anywhere, it had never been written. He also couldn’t find any other book written by Amelia Parrish. What had happened? Hadn’t he removed all disturbances? He searched for her and found her as a patient in a psychiatric hospital. She had tried to kill herself repeatedly. He hacked inside the database of the psychiatric hospital to read her file. He found out that she had been raped by a social worker when she was twelve. The Doctor couldn’t believe it, that girl seemed to attract misfortune wherever she went. Thanks to his intervention she had developed in a healthy beauty. She had also been pretty in the wheelchair, but