From Bad To Worse | Doctor Who Fanfiction

13. Burning Up

Martha quickly opened the door to the infirmary for Jack, allowing him to carry the unconscious Time Lord into the room and place him onto one of the beds.

Martha and Jack were followed into the room by a worried Donna, Mickey and Wilf.

The first test rest results weren't very promising, one of his hearts wasn't beating at all while the other was beating irregularly, his blood pressure had dropped dangerously low, his breathing was laboured and his temperature had risen through the roof.

Martha was worried about his organs as well, but she still had to wait for test results to come back and right now that wasn't her focus.

Right now she just needed to get him stabilized.

There wasn't much Martha could do, every medicine she could give to combat one symptom could potentially worsen another one. Therefore she decided to refrain from giving him any medicine until she had the result of some detailed scans she had run on the Time Lord. She couldn't do anything else for the moment, she had to wait 'till the results were in, so she decided to check up on Donna, the other person who had been involved in whatever it was that happened like ten minutes ago.

She needn't have bothered, Donna appeared to be perfectly fine, though different than how she remembered her to be. The biggest revelation had been that Donna now seemed to have two hearts, which beat normally, unlike an earlier named alien individual who was still fighting for his life. Donna also got the Time Lord's mind back, just as she had had during the Crucible incident, allowing her to perfectly and quickly explain what happened during the stabilisation process, which cleared up for everyone involved why Donna was saved from joining the Time Lord on the next bed.

Martha mentally thanked the fact that the Metacrisis' safety measure existed, having one patient in a life-threatening condition was more than enough. She did make a mental note to run proper scans on Donna later, mostly just to get the woman's base vitals.

Unfortunately, Donna couldn't really use her newfound knowledge to help with The Doctor's treatment as the situation was simply unprecedented. She did, however, agree with Martha that they should wait until the results of the scans were in before making any decisions on how to proceed.

Not long after they had made that decision did the computer next to the Doctor's bed beep, indicating that it was done with the scan and also with analyzing the data from the scan.

Both Martha and Donna, who with her newfound knowledge was now an expert on Time Lord biology, (sure Martha had read up on it while she was staying on the TARDIS but she was by no means an expert), and considering the situation an expert on the subject was very helpful and needed, went to read the results.

Which turned out to be rather surprising.

They had expected for the scan to just come up with a list of what organs weren't functioning properly and stuff like that, and while it did list that information, neither woman had quite expected to get the cause of the Time Lord's illness as well, or for it to be anything other than being the unfortunate byproduct of the stabilisation process from earlier.

The Doctor seemed to have been infected by a disease called Taranium Altora.

Martha had never heard of the disease so could only frown before turning to Donna, who looked shocked at the discovery and obviously knew what it was.

"That shouldn't be possible," Donna whispered slightly.

"Why not? What is Taranium Altora?" Martha asked her.

Donna shook her head to clear it.

"No time to explain now, we need to get him something for it quickly. Give him an IV while I get the needed solution" She told the other woman before quickly rushing towards the medical storage room to get what she needed.

The solution she needed was a rare one at that, mostly because it was solely used to cure Taranium Altora and cases of it where rare. As she grabbed the solution from the shelf she knew that she would forever be grateful that The Doctor actually had some of the solution stored on the TARDIS.

It wasn't just a rare disease but a very deadly one as well.

Donna rushed back to the Time Lord's bed and handed the solution to Martha who hooked it upon the IV she had just put in. She still wasn't sure what was wrong with him but was happy to follow instructions from the only person who seemed to know, and whom she trusted.

Donna sat down on the bed next to The Doctor's and let out a deep sigh.

"What else can we do to help him?" Martha asked her, Donna looked at her with a suffering look.

"Right now, we can't do more for him now, the solution should help him fight the disease but it's his body that needs to do the work. All we can do now is wait." The part-human woman answered.

"Okay, hang on, I've heard about Taranium Altora and I find it hard to believe he got that." Jack butted in. "It's useless against most immune systems, Time Lord's have one of the most advanced immune systems in the universe, don't they?"

"You're right, that's why it's weird that he has it." Donna started. "However, it is perfectly possible that the energy exchange from earlier disabled his immune system, leaving him open to pretty much all diseases." She pulled a face, "We should probably check whether his immune system is working correctly."

Martha nodded and moved to put on the test. "Should I put on a full body scan as well?" She asked the older woman.

Donna nodded, "Yes, we don't know how damaged his body is and the scans we've run already didn't get much more than the basics we needed to know to stabilise him, he's stabilised now, at least, as much as possible, now we can focus on everything else, whatever that might be."

At that, they started to get to work, with the help of Jack and Mickey, on getting the Time Lord better again. All of them were mentally hoping that he would be fine and wouldn't end up regenerating because of this.

Well all of them except Donna, who had done the maths and knew that he didn't have any regenerations left.

Not that she was planning on sharing that to the already worried humans.

She just hoped that he wouldn't die.