Lost In Thought

Can You Hear Me?

The Doctor:

She was sick again.

I'd been sat with her in the library, her just lying on the sofa as I put away the books she had been reading, before I saw her try and escape without me noticing. Notice that she was shaky, and pale, and burning hot with a cold sweat covering her body. Luckily, I caught her before she passed out, which she was about to when I got to her. 

"Oh, LizBeth..." I sighed, brushing her sweaty hair off her face, before lifting her up, resting her head on my shoulder, shaking even in her sleep. Her brain would boil if she got much warmer, given that it already ran like a computer. "You always put it off telling me, and that makes it so much worse."

My sister had been born sick. Not terminally, but she was a weak baby, barely heavier than a kilo, and that had caused complications further on. Constant fevers, sicknesses, coughs and colds. Anything ranging from mild to almost life threatening, her immune system so weak and compromised that anything would almost cripple her. And once she realised what getting ill meant, at least a night in the infirmary, she would try and slope off and burn it out herself. Which was when it got worse and she spent even longer in there, usually on multiple drips instead of just the fluids.

I passed Donna coming out of the bathroom, wrapped in a dressing gown and purple check pajamas, as I went to the infirmary, making her stop and stare at my now trembling sister, clearly feeling cold when she was ridiculously warm for someone who was only supposed to have a central temperature of 15 degrees. "Oh, my God, what's wrong with her? Is she alright?"

"She's got a fever. Get the door for me." She opened the door, going in and pulling back the covers on the bed so I could lay her down, taking off her slippers and the many layers of clothing she had over her, seeing how frail she really looked under it all. "Okay, sister. Looks like you're in for a long few days. Donna, pass that IV kit and oxygen tank."

"Does she really need that all, though, Doctor? Isn't this just flu or something?"

If only LizBeth could actually defend herself against something as small and easy to treat as typical flu, or even just a bog standard common cold. "She got human grade flu once. Almost killed her with how hot her body got. Her immune system is so weak that she got poultry pox on our world so many times that they had a special sterile room just for her."

That made her pause as I was starting to clean her hand to put the needle into, that scar permanently there in each regeneration due to the fact that it was so repetitive. "Am I okay to be in here? I don't want to make her worse if I'm not sterile."

Shaking my head, I then carefully pushed the IV needle into her pale hand, getting a feeling of cold over me. "No, it's fine, the TARDIS is  completely sterile anyway, she must have caught this last time we were on Earth or around other humans. And you, stop it. You know that you can't fight this yourself and you're massively dehydrated." Donna was staring at me, clearly confused about how I was addressing my unconscious sister. "Her body is sick, but her mind is just here, and very annoyed that I'm doing this."

"Oh, is it that mind walking thing again?" I nodded, carefully then putting the air cannula around her ears and into her nose, her short red hair damp with sweat. "That's cool, that she can still be here even when unconscious."

"Well, she can't go too far from her body when she doesn't choose to Wander." I replied, hooking her up to the fluids to keep her hydrated and to try and flush out the fever. "She's able to go anywhere in the universe otherwise, from the Earth to anywhere."

"That's so cool. I'd love to be able to do that, go anywhere whenever I wanted." She shivered, rubbing her arms quickly, obviously affected by the astral spectre of Elizabeth Terrance Caine. Or Remy, as Donna called her. "Wow. That's. Wow, she can still interact with us?" The door opened and closed itself. "And move things. That's kinda awesome."