In Her Eyes (A Whouffle Fanfiction)

Chapter 16- Reverse the Damage

As soon as the TARDIS landed the Doctor rocketed through the doors, one hand cradling the back of Clara's head so she wasn't bumped on their way out. He had shifted her in his arms so that her arms were looped around his neck, legs wound firmly around his waist her knees bracing against his hips. Any other time he would have been distracted by the intimacy of the embrace, the way Clara would involuntarily nuzzle her head into his neck every time a wave of pain threatened to overcome her and her legs and arms would tighten, pulling him towards her, but he was too concerned by the screams and pleas for help that echoed through their conjoined minds that accompanied the actions to care. He had deepened the link between them when he realised that it gave Clara a degree of comfort to feel his presence, but it did nothing for his already frayed nerves as he was constantly aware of the agony that Fenric was putting her through. 

The Doctor had parked the TARDIS in the middle of a busy ward, bypassing reception and the endless delays that were sure to have accompanied it. Delays that could cost Clara her life. He ran down the central aisle, patients in the rows of beds on either side gawking at them as they passed, and barrelled into a smaller, more private room off to the side-rooms that were usually reserved for the terminally ill. Luckily this one was empty and the Doctor once again shielded Clara against his full-speed impact with the door, this time turning his whole body so his back took the most of it, and once they were through gently lowering her onto the bed, disengaging her limbs from him to tuck her in. Clara began to panic as he layed her down. She had no clue where they were or what they were doing, and the only sense her mind could make of the situation was that he was abandoning her for somebody else to deal with and running off. 

Doctor?

She was only capable of sending him one-word messages at a time: whether that was a result the lack of finesse humans had with mental communication or her current state, he had no idea. Still, it was remarkable that she could communicate at all, as ill as she was. 

Still here. He reassured her, Hospital. Safe.

She moaned as another wave racked her body. Her frail, beautiful body. Quickly.

He poked his head out of the door and grabbed a passing nurse by the elbow on her way past. "Doctor Whyatt. Where is she?"

The nurse just stared at him, wide-eyed. He gave her a shake. " I need Kim. Now." 

She shook her head softly. "I...I'm sorry, sir, I don't know where she is." 

The Doctor growled with frustration. "Find her then! I don't care where she is, or what she's doing, just bring her to me. Now." His words were punctuated with a particularly loud yelp from Clara, tugging at his heartstrings. The nurse stood, feet rooted to the floor, mouth agape. The last of his patience gone the Doctor finally began to crack under the pressure. 

"FIND HER. NOW, BEFORE I DO SOMETHING I WILL REGRET," he yelled. 

The nurse ran. 

                                                                                  ****

Kim was signing a stack of paperwork in her office when the nurse burst through the door, panting and bent double from the speed she had run. Kim frowned and set the various files she had been verificating to one side, waving her colleague inside. Nurse Swann waved her off.

"No time. There's a man in Intensive Care demanding to see you." 

Kim's blood went cold. "Did he leave a name?" 

She shook her head. "No. He was very agitated. I think he had somebody with him. I checked at reception, but he hasn't signed in." 

Kim shrugged into her doctor's coat. Sounds like him. "On a scale of one to ten, how distressed was he?" 

"I'd say eleven." 

It's him, and presumably Clara too. Kim snapped into action, barking instructions to the nurse as she left her office and began to jog, taking the quickest route as possible in a crowded hospital.  "Quarantine the beds around the room they're in. We don't know what she has, could be contagious. Assign all available staff to her and ready an Operating Theatre. We may need it." She listed the equipment and drugs she would require then let Nurse Swann go, the younger woman threading her way to the staff room to grab as many members of staff as she could. 

When Kim arrived at the room five minutes later a trolley was already outside, fully equipped with the medicines and machinery that she would need. She wheeled it in ahead of her, bracing herself for what she was about to witness inside. If the Doctor- the most upbeat, positive, confident alien she knew- was distressed then lord knows what she was about to find. 

The Doctor jumped up as she walked in, leaping from his seat as if it were electrocuted. He opened his mouth to speak but she cut across him. 

"No time," she said shortly, "do as I say, and she might just stand a chance. Okay?" 

He nodded and, for once, obeyed, remaining silent.

"Good," said Kim. "What's her symptoms?"

The Doctor explained as quickly and simply as he could what had happened. She listened carefully as she hooked the girl up to the monitors and attached a morphine drip to her arm. By the time he had finished the rest of her team had shown up, sitting outside in case they were needed.

"So what you're saying is, " Kim said slowly, turning the situation over in her mind, "to stop the acceleration you need to heal the damage within her mind while I keep the pain down to a managable level?"

"Yes," said the Doctor tersely, eager to skip the talking and get to the healing part of his plan.

"You do realise that it may not reverse the damage? That the acceleration will be stopped, but the illness will stay advanced and she'll die anyway?"

He looked down at her. "I know the risks Kim," he said bitterly, "but I'd rather she died in comfort, at home, surrounded by her family friends than alone and in agony."  

Kim nodded, and for the first time saw a flicker of an emotion that she had never once seen before in his eyes. Here was a man who had looked death in the eye and scorned it more than once; had put his life and that of his friends on the line in schemes so daring and reckless that it left the legs of lesser men trembling and quaking at the very thought. But not once, not once ever in the time that she had known him, had she seen this- written so plainly across his features that even a blind man could have seen it.

Defeat. 

The Doctor had given up.