Title: Torchwood’s Doctor
Fandom: Torchwood
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Owen, Tosh, Jack, Gwen, Lily.
Rating: G
Word Count: 603
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Owen was training to be a surgeon, but look at his life now.
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 332: Medicine at fan_flashworks.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.



When Owen had first begun studying medicine, he’d had it all planned out. He wanted to be a surgeon, to cut into people, remove whatever was causing problems, and cure them, heal them, without having to interact with them too much. It wasn’t that he hated people, but he’d soon discovered that patients complained a lot and were seldom completely honest. Leave the diagnoses to people who were better at dealing with all that; he had good, steady hands that would be wasted as a general practitioner.

The life and the career he had now were nothing like he’d imagined. These days, as often as not he spent his time cutting up dead creatures, sometimes in order to determine cause of death, but also to learn as much as he could about the anatomy and physiology of the various species, many of which were almost totally unknown.

When he wasn’t conducting autopsies on aliens, and occasionally humans, he was tracking down things, and sometimes living beings, that fell through a rift in time and space, or battling aliens bent on invasion, or studying living specimens of said aliens.

Sometimes he had to patch up members of the team, or innocent bystanders; working for Torchwood was a dangerous occupation, and getting in their way wasn’t a smart move either. Other times he had to develop cures for alien infections, antidotes to toxins, or a chemical compound that would be effective against alien moulds, slimes, invasive plant life… The work was certainly varied.

Just this week, he’d had to set Andy’s broken wrist, treat Tosh for an allergic reaction that had left her sneezing uncontrollably and covered in itchy white spots, and give Jack an ultrasound to check his pregnancy was progressing as it should. He was due in about four months, and to everyone’s relief the baby was showing normal development. Never had Owen ever imagined doing pre-natal care on a man with man parts!

On top of that, he’d had two alien autopsies, treated one weevil for burns and done dental work on a second, stitched up Gwen’s hand and prescribed a course of antibiotics after she had a run-in with a cute, furry creature that turned out to be less than friendly, and retconned a couple of nuns and a priest who’d come face-to-face with a Hoix that was eating the communion wafers.

On the whole, it was an average week so far; busy but not to the point that he didn’t have time to complete his paperwork. Still, he’d had a tough day, he was tired, and now he had this to deal with. It was the worst thing to happen all week, maybe even all month. Worse than his wife being all sneezy and itchy, worse than a nearly naked, pregnant Jack, worse than Weevil breath!

“Daddy, it hurts!” Three-year-old Lily’s tear-streaked face broke his heart. Surely nothing could be worse than seeing your own child in pain.

“I know, baby, but daddy will make it better, I promise.” Just an ear infection, nothing major; eardrops, and some medicine for the pain and she’d be fine in a few days. Maybe it would teach her not to put things in her ears, but he wouldn’t bet on it. At least he’d managed to extract the foreign object without doing any damage, although there was no way of knowing how long it had been in there before it started to cause problems.

As he tucked his daughter into bed he smiled. This might not be the life he’d planned all those years ago, but it was the only life he wanted.

The End