Deep And Dreamless Sleep

From The Sunday Times December 24, 2006

Deep and Dreamless Sleep A special Doctor Who story for Christmas by Paul Cornell The door of the TARDIS opened, and out stepped the Doctor. "Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. This can't be right." He ran to the wall of the room and tapped it, smelt it, licked it. Tasted paint, made a face. "This isn't right. Christmas Eve, 2006, check. But why doesn't the TARDIS know where?" "It's my room." It was a boy, about four years old. He was sitting up in bed. "Are you Father Christmas?" "Ah. No. Father Christmas, me and him, we're like that." The Doctor crossed his fingers. "By which I mean I've fought evil doubles of him. Couple of times. But I'm not, actually, him, no. He'll be along in a minute, I should think." He went to the window, pulled open the curtains, and looked out at a picturesque landscape, like something from a Christmas card. "Now that's... that's odd, 'cos this was meant to be central London, 'cos I always like to have a look at the Christmas lights, but there's something weird going on with the TARDIS, and — " He looked round to see that the small boy had got out of bed, and was peering into the TARDIS. "Ah, now, wait — " But the boy had already stepped inside. The Doctor ran in after him. The boy was at the console. He didn't seem to have wasted any time with the usual oohing and ahhing and saying how it was bigger on the inside than the outside. He was hitting buttons. The Doctor stared. "Now — wait — oi!"

The doors slammed. The central column started to rise and fall. The Doctor grabbed the controls. But nothing was working. It was as iflike the TARDIS was co- operating with the boy. Which was a bit of a cheek, because it never did that for him. "What's your name?" he asked. "Daniel." "Listen, Daniel, Danny, Dan the Man, you've just taken us off into time and space. I'd better get you back home, or your Mum and Dad are in for a shock — " "They already had a shock." "What?" But the boy was silent in the way four-year-olds are sometimes when they don't want to answer. "I want," he said, distantly, "to see Christmas." With a little thump, the light vanished from the column, and they were somewhere else. The doors flung themselves open. Daniel ran for them. "Would you stop... Whose ship is this? ...Oi!" The Doctor bolted after him. It was a landscape of churned-up frozen mud and barbed wire, as far as the eye could see. It was still night. The ground was illuminated only by distant flashes, and there were rumbles that could have been thunder, but were not. "You don't want to be here," the Doctor told Daniel urgently, marching up to his side. "This is World War One. 1914. Ypres in Belgium." "I want to see Christmas." "This isn't — " But then the Doctor stopped. It was suddenly very quiet. And he could hear a sound... singing... the German words for Silent Night. There was a whistle. A football landed at the Doctor's feet. "Okay," the Doctor nodded, "you've got me there. This could possibly be Christmas. But — "

But the boy was running towards the trenches. Ninety minutes of muddy soccer action later, the Doctor stumbled back into the TARDIS after Daniel. "World War One," he called, "not often like that. On Christmas Eve, each side heard the other singing carols and they had a game of footie instead of a war. The truce kept going, the officers had to force them to fight again. Brutally." He remembered who he was talking to and changed tack. There was something weird about this particular boy that he couldn't quite put his finger on. "Three-two to the British. Maybe I shouldn't have allowed that last goal, but handing out a red card, in that context... Oi!" Daniel was at the controls again. Before the Doctor could do anything, they were in flight once more. "I want to see Christmas," the boy repeated. He was looking so sad. The Doctor remembered something in that moment: if there was one thing he had to fix immediately, it was four-year-olds looking sad. He organised a party, popping to different times in history, and cajoling, persuading, okay, with maybe a little bit of kidnapping involved, getting every person he could think of that Daniel might enjoy meeting. The TARDIS, as if knowing this was what the boy wanted, obeyed him completely. He flicked a few switches and made a party room, with games and toys and Christmas decorations, and let all the people into it. Stan Laurel went up to the Christmas tree, saw that a bauble was slightly out of place, reached up to adjust it, and fell into the foliage. He wrestled with it, making it collapse completely, and ended up wrapped in tinsel at the feet of Oliver Hardy, who twiddled his tie in frustration. "Well," he humphed, with a twinkly glance towards Daniel. "I hope you're satisfied!" None of them would remember any of this, the Doctor had seen to that. It wouldn't do to give the Chuckle Brothers the secret of inter-stellar travel.

But there was something weird about the way the guests dealt with Daniel. It was as if they had to concentrate to see him. As if he wasn't quite... there. The Doctor put a hand to his own brow. He was feeling weird himself. He got all the guests back to their times and places, closed the doors and shoved his hands into his pockets, a cheery grin on his face. "There we go!" he said. "Now that was smart! Wasn't that smart? Go on, wasn't that the Christmas you were after?" The boy was already working the console. The smile that had sometimes been on his face during the party was already fading. "I want," he said, "to see Christmas. I have to!" The Doctor took off the party hat he'd only just realised he had on. The trip across the fields to the stable took an hour, there and back. The Doctor had landed the TARDIS at quite a distance. "I liked the baby in the manger," said Daniel, as they trudged back. "And the shepherds, and the wise men, and the reindeer — " "The reindeer?!" The Doctor hadn't gone inside the stable, but he was pretty sure that — But that sad expression had returned to the boy's face again. Possibly because of where they were, the words of an old carol had come back to the Doctor. "O Little Town of Bethlehem." What was that line? "Above thy deep and dreamless sleep..." It was as iflike his brain was trying to tell him something. "Listen, Dan the Man, if that wasn't seeing Christmas, I don't know what is. You're going to have to show me what you're after. What it is about you. Why your bedroom didn't seem to be anywhere, why I'm feeling so woozy, why people find it hard to see you — " The Doctor realised, as he spoke, that he could see the fields through Daniel's head. The boy was fading from view.

He hustled him quickly back into the TARDIS. The boy stood at the console once more. Hardly there. Almost a ghost. "I just want to see Christmas," he said, hopelessly. The Doctor's expression became grim. "You have to tell me, Daniel," he said. "What's the last thing you remember.? Where are you? Where are you really?" The boy blinked, as if realising something for the first time. He opened his mouth in shock. And he vanished. "No!" The Doctor slammed his fist onto a control on the console. "You hang onto him!" he yelled at his ship. "You worked out what was going on straight away, we're not losing him now!" The boy wavered back into view. "The Christmas lights," he said. "The road. The car." The paramedics had brought Daniel Francis Thompson, aged four, into the A&E department of St Nicholas's Hospital, in London, at 21.30 hours on December 24, 2006. He was rushed into surgery, in a coma. His parents, Michael and Ann, had only let go of his hand for a moment. They'd been looking the other way. For a moment. Daniel had seen the Christmas lights on a house on the other side of the road. He had run into the street. The car had hit him at 32mph. They sat waiting outside the operating theatre. Christmas was gone for them. It might be gone always. But someone else arrived in the hospital that night. He stopped at the end of the corridor, and he saw the looks on Michael and Ann's faces, and he knew those looks of old. That Christmas night, no drunks wasted the time of the A&E department, and every doctor and nurse and anaesthetist found that when they thought something had been forgotten, or was unavailable, it was actually to hand. The ambulances found every traffic light in their

favour. A man with a knife told his circumstances to someone who had all the time in the world for him, and left his knife in a bin. There was all the blood that any patient needed. Crying relatives had someone to cry on. A three-bar electric heater appeared in a waiting room where no three-bar heater had been before. Because he stood at the doorway of that hospital that night, and it was under his protection, and he waited and wished that no harm could ever come to four-year-old children. In the TARDIS, he'd put his hands on Daniel's shoulders and squatted to be at his eye level, and had said: "I'm going to let you go, Daniel. I have to. But I won't leave. I'll be there. It has to be up to you, right? You have to find Christmas yourself. You're going to come and find me. The way you found me while you were asleep, when you brought me and the TARDIS into your dream and made us part of it. I'll be there when you see Christmas." Daniel bit his lip. But he saw the look on the Doctor's face. Which was the look of someone who would never let anything happen to him. It was a look that reminded him of his Mum and Dad. He didn't cry. He nodded. The Doctor had reached up a hand and hit another control. And Daniel had vanished. As midnight approached, the Doctor stood at the end of the corridor again. He watched as Michael and Ann stood up, afraid, at a doctor approaching. The clock ticked to the top of the hour. Time stopped. The doctor didn't say anything to them for a long moment. And then, in the distance, the sound of bells. The old bells of London. Bow and St Clement's and Shoreditch, like in that silly old song, that silly old song that meant everything, because now it was midnight, now it was Christmas, and this doctor was quite seriously reading out a list of details and medicines and treatments and what would happen next — Because things would happen next. Because Daniel had woken up. And he was going to be fine. He was

going to see Christmas. The Doctor didn't go to join them. He watched for a moment as they broke down in tears and held each other and said stupid things about their love for their little boy that the doctor already knew. But those moments weren't for him. He walked down three corridors in the hospital he knew so well now. He accepted a Christmas piece of Chocolate Orange from Sonia in the Recovery Unit, who'd met him six months ago, as far as she was concerned, and thought he was some sort of lovely consultant. He pecked her on the cheek under the mistletoe. He walked up to Daniel's bed and looked down at him. The boy's head was wrapped in bandages. "Daniel," said the Doctor, through a mouthful of chocolate, "wake up." Daniel opened his eyes. He blinked, as if he wasn't sure if this was a dream or real now. "Are you Father Christmas?" he asked. The Doctor grinned. "Me and him," he said, crossing his fingers once again, "we're like that." Copyright Paul Cornell Paul Cornell is a screenwriter and novelist. He wrote Father's Day for Doctor Who, plus as well as two episodes in the forthcoming season. His website is Paulcornell.blogspot.com. Doctor Who: The Runaway Bride, BBC1, tomorrow, 7pm