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"You need to get out of here," Rose said, standing at the front entrance of the blood-donation clinic and watching the wind whip dead leaves and litter across their empty, rain-drenched parking lot. "That rain is supposed to turn to sleet soon, and that'll make getting across the city almost impossible. If you want to get home before Christmas Eve mass, you need to leave now."
"I can't abandon you," Martha said, joining her at the door and looking out, though she didn't sound sure. "We're open for another hour…"
"Don't be stupid," Rose said, glancing back into the empty donation center. Everyone had left already but her and Martha, and the only remaining sound was the television, which had been set to the apocalyptic predictions of the weatherman. "It's Christmas Eve. Nobody in their right mind is going to come donate blood tonight, and I'm the obvious man to hold the place down as I can walk home even if the city shuts down."
"But you've never done a draw by yourself before," Martha said, though Rose could tell she was nearly convinced.
"And I'm not going to tonight," Rose assured her friend. "Come on, love. Only ghouls hang out at the blood bank at Christmas."
It had been Martha who had, the year before, recommended that Rose, who had been working as their receptionist for six months, put her charming personality and calming bedside manner to use and enter a course of study to become a phlebotomist herself. When Rose had found out that the center would pay for much of the course, she'd jumped on the opportunity. She'd qualified a month before and the center had hired her into a new position immediately.
Martha was quite correct: Rose hadn't done a draw by herself yet, but as she helped her boss into her coat and smiled into her friend's Christmas hug, she knew that if the impossible happened and someone braved the storm, she could do it.
Martha hadn't touched one of Rose's patients in three days- she'd only observed. Rose had a knack for finding difficult or delicate veins and hitting them straight the first time, and she always managed to tease and talk to the donors while she did, so even the younger or needle-shy patients smiled and looked calm.
For all her confidence, however, Rose was pretty sure as she waved Martha off into the dark parking lot, that she wouldn't see anyone else that wasn't Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, or Jimmy Stewart that night. She'd volunteered for the Christmas Eve shift because her mom and stepdad had chosen this year to take a Christmas cruise, and with Rose having only just finished her certification, she couldn't possibly go with them- even if she could have afforded it. So she was alone for the holiday and thought it was just as good to spend it at the blood bank as in her apartment.
Alone in the center, Rose turned up the television slightly to keep herself company as she sorted draw supplies and organized them into bundled packs, took donations to cold storage, and hummed Christmas carols to herself. She was amused at the macabre juxtaposition of the almost-cheerful red of the bags of blood she stacked in the cooler, and the near-mournful tune about joy and hope she found herself humming.
When the bell over the clinic's entrance jangled into the quiet, Rose nearly bobbled the two packages of blood she'd been organizing by type.
"Just a mo'!" she called as she shoved the bags onto their proper shelves and bumped the cooler door shut with her hip.
"If that's you Martha, back out of some sense of misplaced guilt, I'm going to drag you back to your car myself," she said as she emerged from the low light of the coolers into the antiseptic fluorescence of the clinic. "I told you I'm fine, not that anyone is mad enough to try giving blood in this weather-"
She cut herself off as she found that the person who had come into the centre was not Martha, but a stranger. A tall, handsome stranger with dark hair, dark jeans, a dark jumper, and a dark leather jacket. In spite of the festive night, the only spot of colour on him was his icy blue eyes.
He gave her a crooked grin. "You should never assume there isn't someone mad enough to do just about anything. I'm here to give blood."
Rose couldn't say precisely why, but that grin hit her like a punch in the gut.
Her friends and coworkers were quick to tease her about her love of "pretty boys" with photos of Zayn Malik and Zac Efron taped to her locker on a near-weekly basis.
This bloke wasn't pretty in the same way a sheer cliff face isn't pretty. It's hard and commanding and downright impressive. It takes your breath away and leaves your heart hammering. It's gorgeous and awe-inspiring, but not pretty in the slightest.
For the space of about four heartbeats, Rose just stood and stared at the man, open-mouthed, as his grin fell away and he raised one eyebrow.
"Sorry," he said finally. "Only I know the place is open until nine, and I figured it wouldn't be too busy tonight so…"
Rose finally managed to rouse herself. In point of fact, the clinic was meant to close at 7 in deference to the holiday, but a standard donation wouldn't take that long to complete.
"Right," she said shaking the last of the cobwebs out of her head. "Go ahead and sign in there-" she pointed at the register on the counter- "and take the educational materials there-" she indicated a stack of leaflets- "and read through them. Also, I'll need your ID."
He dug into his jeans pocket to pull out a faded leather wallet, and Rose would never admit to following the movement of his hand to catch a closer glimpse of the way his jeans fit over his lean hips before dropping her gaze quickly to the computer before her where she had pulled up the page where she would enter his information. She took the card he held out to her, ignoring the buzz in her fingertips as their skin brushed, and verified his name (James Foreman) and address (1123 Tardis Place, unit 9, which surprised her as she lived only one building over in the same complex).
"Can you confirm that you're feeling well, you've eaten a full meal, and are fully hydrated?" she asked. The only question she was required to ask was the first, making sure that they didn't get blood tainted with the flu or a cold, but she always asked the others to be sure she wasn't likely to end up with a fainter.
"Of course," he said, not even looking up from the materials he was supposed to be reviewing (though he was flipping the pages so quickly she didn't believe he was doing more than the barest skim). "I'm a doctor. I know what's required."
Rose found the idea of a doctor living in Tardis Place vanishingly unlikely, but said nothing. As he'd admitted himself, the bloke was obviously mad. Fortunately for her, madness was no bar to blood donation.
The folder of information was slapped down before her nose again, and Rose lifted her eyes to meet the sparkling blue above her as she handed him back his papers.
"And will you be making a whole blood donation today?" she asked, keeping her voice as professional as possible, even as her stomach flipped to look at him again.
His eyes left her for a moment to a spot over her shoulder. Rose glanced back at the dry-erase board where they maintained their path to their donation goals.
"It looks like you're still a few donations behind on double red," he said, returning those lovely light eyes to hers. "I could do that then."
Rose considered objecting. A double-red donation usually took about two hours, and they were meant to close in 45 minutes. That said, they were low on donations for the month ahead of the holiday (New Year's Eve was the single highest demand of the entire year with people getting into drunken accidents), and it wasn't as though she had anywhere to go. Besides that, she liked the idea of spending a few hours with this handsome stranger.
"Yeah, all right," she said, standing up from the front desk's computer. "Come on into the office."
He followed her like a puppy dog into the first of three evaluation rooms and sat where she indicated, folding his body into the hard plastic chair and making it look like art. He shucked his leather jacket and rolled up his sleeves when she asked to examine his arms, and made it look like erotica. It was frankly annoying, and when Rose examined the insides of his arms to be sure that both sides had a vein she could use for the centrifuge machine, she might have poked him just a bit harder than was necessary.
He didn't seem to mind, however, if the goosebumps that came up on his skin, following her fingertips were any indication.
She kept up her informative patter, too nervous to delve into her usual calming small-talk. The bloke answered her questions, and seemed unperturbed as she took his blood pressure, temperature, and even the blood from his middle finger.
There was nothing to say, however, in the few moments that the haemoglobin machine whirred, and Rose could feel the silence oppressive around them, but was still unsure what to say.
"Big plans for Christmas?" the man asked, even as the machine's beep broke the silence.
"No," Rose said, nonchalantly as she wrote down his numbers. "Mum and Dad are out of town and most of my friends are with their families, so I'm on my own this year." She stood and moved out of the way of the chair before the computer screen and gestured the man into it. "Go ahead and answer the questions on the screen, and when you're done just open the door."
She fled the tiny room like a coward. For some reason the bloke's presence seemed to take up more space than seemed possible for a lean man. She needed to catch her breath away from him for a moment- the air of the main donation centre seemed cool against what she was sure must be a flushed face.
It didn't take long for the man to finish his questions and open the door, and though she wasn't ready, Rose entered the tiny room again to check his answers.
"Alright then," she said after she'd gone through them all. "Looks like you're a perfect candidate. Come along then, we'll get you hooked up to our machine. This'll take a bit, so you might like to use the loo, and we can pick out a movie for you to watch, if you like, there's a whole selection we can go through.
The man (James, she reminded herself) crowded her to look into the drawer she opened full of DVD cases.
"Blimey, how many vampire movies do you have? Isn't that a bit on the nose?"
Rose laughed. "One of the phlebotomists has a rather sick sense of humour and buys every vampire movie that comes out, no matter how camp. Some of the donors love them, even if I think it's a bit sick."
He laughed and Rose's skin trembled at the sound. It was perfectly lovely, and she wished she could find a way to make him do it again. He reached past her and plucked out a movie with a dark spine.
"Seems appropriate for the evening," he said, showing her the cover of It's a Wonderful Life.
"Perfect," Rose agreed, taking the DVD and directing him to the loo.
Five minutes later, the title card was playing on a loop and Jamie Foreman was settling himself into the seat beside the centrifuge.
"Presumably you know how this works," Rose said as she swabbed the inside of his arm, "being a doctor." She said this last teasingly.
"I am a doctor!" he cried, sounding offended. "I work at the clinic of the Estates in Peckham!"
That surprised Rose, who looked up from his arm in surprise. She'd been to that clinic half-a-hundred times when she was little and she and her mum had lived on the Estates. It was a grubby, unimpressive clinic that always seemed stretched for resources, and served some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city.
If he worked there, it was no wonder he was living somewhere as unimpressive as the Tardis flats.
"I'm sorry, Doctor Foreman," she said quietly. "I didn't mean to offend… I suppose I just thought-"
"Doctors are supposed to be rich, aye?" he said, and she could hear the irony in his voice. "Yeah, my sister says the same. I can't help it though- it's a need, and I can meet it, you see?"
Rose looked up, meeting his eyes again. "Yeah," she said quietly. "I see."
Once she had Doctor Foreman hooked up to the machine, and had coached him in squeezing the little rubber ball she'd given him at the correct intervals, Rose started the film and, checking her watch, locked the front door of the clinic. There were only 15 minutes left before close, and the street looked as quiet as London ever was.
"So why are you alone on Christmas Eve," she asked, joining her patient and speaking over Jimmy Stewart's moaning about how he'd ever pay back his debts. "You say you've a sister?"
"Yeah. She and my mum and my grandfather are in Italy for the holiday. She won a raffle. I couldn't go with them as there were only three tickets, and I couldn't afford the time off. It's all right. I haven't liked Christmas much since our Da' died anyway."
Rose patted his hand gently, careful not to dislodge his needle. "My dad died when I was a baby, but it was in the summer so…"
"I'm sorry," he said softly. "I at least had mine for a few years. You never did."
Rose shook her head. "Impossible to really miss something you never had. Mum always talked about him when I was growing up so I'd know. It's fine though- her new husband is so good to her. She'll always love my dad as her first love but…"
"Yeah."
The pair lapsed into silence, the only sounds in the clinic the movie, the whir of the machine, and the rush of the wind outside. It took a few minutes for Rose to realize that her hand was still covering his, as though she had the right. She snatched it away, worried that she had overstepped, and her hand felt immediately cold and bereft without the heat of his skin on it.
His draw finished shortly before the end of the film, and Rose removed his needles and bandaged him, then brought him a drink to fortify him as the pair finished watching the movie. As the final bell rang and the final credits rolled, she helped him rise, watching him carefully for signs of dizziness.
She helped him into his jacket and led him to the door where he seemed to notice, for the first time, that he'd kept her at work nearly two hours longer than she was scheduled to be there.
"It's really fine, James," she said, shaking her head. "If it'd been a problem, I'd have told you. I enjoyed spending time with you."
"You have to let me make it up to you," he insisted. "You're not doing anything tomorrow for the holiday, and neither am I… let me make you Christmas dinner or something."
"None of the shops will be open tomorrow," Rose said, not sure why she was objecting to the idea of spending more time with this man.
"I've the makings at my place. Where do you live?"
Rose hesitated, her mother's voice insisting that he could be a nutter and she would do well not to trust him. There was a different voice, one that sounded a bit more like herself that said that losing this man would be her worst regret.
"Did I mention I'll bring wine?" he asked again.
Rose grinned. "I live in the Tardis flats, unit 13."
He gaped at her for a moment, then grinned at her, wide and true and bright as starlight. "Fantastic!" He fidgeted awkwardly for a second, then said in a rush, "I'll see you tomorrow, bye!" and pushed out the door.
Rose had just reached her hand out to lock the door behind him again when she saw him turn in the parking lot and rush back, pushing the door open and standing in the gap.
"I didn't think to ask your name," he said, looking nervous.
"It's Rose. Rose Tyler."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Rose Tyler," he said, and Rose was shocked at the way his accent caressed the syllables of her name. He leaned forward quickly and seemed to surprise both of them by pressing a very quick kiss into her cheek.
"Merry Christmas," he said, and vanished into the cold again before Rose had even recovered.