Patience

"Patience" was the name given by Tegan Jovanka to the Time Lady wife of Omega, the Other, and the Doctor.

Early life
Patience was born in the House of Blyledge on Gallifrey, one of the last Womb-born Gallifreyans. She was apparently "immortal, barring accidents" and lived to be two million years old. She was a young woman when the Pythia cursed Gallifrey with sterility. (PROSE: Cold Fusion)

Life on Gallifrey
Her husband, one of the first to explore the Time Vortex, married her upon his return to Gallifrey and they had thirteen children. When the Lord President at that time targeted her family because they were not Loom-borned, despite her eldest son complaints, she was taken to the Machine of her husband for safety. (PROSE: Cold Fusion)

Exile
The Machine crashed on an ice planet, where it was eventually found by human colonists in the 26th century.

Patience, meanwhile, had her first regeneration shortly after the Fifth Doctor discovered her. Provost-General Tertullian Medford, believing Patience to be a threat, shot her in the head, and her body vanished. The Ferutu told the Doctor that "it's not the first time you've met her, nor will it be the last." (PROSE: Cold Fusion)

Physical appearance
In one incarnation, Patience was slender with black hair cut in a bob and vivid green eyes. She had freckled shoulders and a birthmark on her ankle. (PROSE: Cold Fusion)

Behind the scenes

 * "Patience" being the name of the Doctor's wife is a pun based on the word "patient".
 * In REF: AHistorys entry on COMIC: The Tides of Time, Lance Parkin acknowledges the common assumption that the woman seen by the Fifth Doctor within the Maelstrom is Zoe Heriot, but he also asserts that she resembles Patience's first incarnation from PROSE: Cold Fusions flashback.
 * An illustrtion of her was made in DWM illustrated previews of DWM 509.