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"The duty nurses were telling me about how you and the little Jennings girl became friends," said Julia, after they had spent some time driving in silence.
"Yes... she needed someone to talk to. I'm not sure why she decided to talk to me, but I don't regret that she did."
"She did need someone to talk to," Julia agreed. "She's missing her brothers very much."
"Tom. And Chris. I must admit to some feelings of dislike towards that young man. To abandon his sister in such a state... To not even leave an address where he could be contacted..."
Julia stifled a smile. "It sounds like you've become very fond of Amy."
"I have been an elder brother, Julia, and as you say, she is missing her brothers."
"She's missing her father, too."
"...Excuse me?"
"You're quite a bit older than Chris Jennings -- or at least, I'm sure you seem that way to a ten-year-old girl. And her father died a couple of years ago. It's possible, Barnabas, that she was drawn to you more as a father figure than as a surrogate older brother."
She hadn't intended to drop a metaphorical bombshell on his head, but from the expression on Barnabas's face, that was precisely what she had done. "I... hadn't considered that," he said slowly.
"Does it upset you?"
"N-no, not exactly, but--"
"But what?"
"Somehow it never occurred to me before now... but I am human again. I have the... capacity, now, to father children."
Julia raised an eyebrow. "Mm. Presumably."
"What do you mean, 'presumably'?"
"Just that. You presume you're capable of fathering children."
"I'm not an innocent, Doctor."
"I'm not for one moment assuming that you are," replied Julia, with just a hint of throaty amusement. "But unless you had offspring in the eighteenth century that you've never mentioned, you don't know that you were even originally able to father children, let alone if you can now. That's something we'd have to test."
"Test?" repeated Barnabas, alarmed. "Test how, precisely?"
"Nothing too drastic or invasive. It just involves looking at a sample under a microscope."
"A sample? A sample of what?"
Julia said nothing, only coughed and slid a sidelong glance at him before returning her eyes to the road.
"...Oh," said Barnabas at last, sounding rather pained. He turned away and looked out the window, but the day was dreary and gray and didn't afford him much solace, or much protection from his thoughts. "Have you ever thought about children, Julia?"
"About being a parent, do you mean? Oh, now and again. It's never been especially high on my list of priorities -- it's incredibly difficult, trying to be a mother and a professional at the same time. I've seen some of my medical colleagues deal with it; I admire them, but I don't envy them. All the same, I suppose I always thought it was something that would happen eventually." A hint of something hard and wry drifted into her voice, not quite bitterness but very near to it. "Always provided I could find a husband who would be willing to juggle both his own career and mine, as well as any children that came along. I still think about it sometimes... but it's getting a bit late in the day for that. I'm certainly not getting any younger."
Out of the corner of her eye, Julia saw him turn and look at her with a stunned expression, but she could not afford to give it the attention it deserved. The rain was pounding down and she needed to concentrate on the road.
Barnabas was grateful to be ignored. For the second time in ten minutes, he felt as though someone had kicked a prop out from under him and sent him tumbling to the ground. Just as he had never before thought of the possibility of creating new life, he had also failed to contemplate life's opposite number. He knew now that he was vulnerable, that one day he would at last die, and part of him awaited that day with eager anticipation. But the thought that time would come for his friend -- his closest companion and confidante -- and that one day Julia might be lost to him, not through some supernatural danger but by illness or accident or by creeping old age... no, that, he had failed to consider.
He would have preferred to go on not considering it.