Prologue:
As the club connected with his head, the Doctor again winced and berated himself for falling for that trap. It was such a simple trap, yet he fell for it. He never suspected the danger. What had happened? Was this regeneration gullible?
Truth be told, the Doctor was almost certain that he would have fallen for it at any point in his lifespan. He was the Doctor; he made people better. Usually, the people who came running up to him where the ones who needed help. These people seemed desperate, and they didn't know who he was. They didn't know he was the Doctor. Of course, if he had run into a bunch of people on earth in 2010 in Texas, of all places, who knew him, he would have been more than a little suspicious. But they didn't know him. They came to him like people who were at the end of their rope, who thought that anyone, no matter how qualified, could make things better.
So, he fell for it, and now he was their prisoner. He looked up at the man with the club, putting as much fire in his gaze as he could in his wounded state. This was the gaze he gave those who were up to no good, whom he was going to stop. This was the gaze of a Time Lord infuriated by the injustice he was seeing. Normally, people trembled in his gaze. Well, some laughed, and some merely ignored him; those were the real baddies, the ones who knew no fear. Well, at least until he ruined their plans yet again. But these people, ordinary humans from the looks of them, didn't even notice that look. Perhaps his bruised and bloodied face could not express that gaze as well as it could normally.
His vision was starting to fade. He knew that, with the next blow, he'd probably be unconscious. Then he'd be completely at their mercy. Like he wasn't now. That had never stopped him before. Once he recovered, he would escape. And then find his TARDIS. And find out why those humans were acting so strange. And put a stop to their plans, whatever they were. Yep, he would get out of this. He always did.
The man in front of him let the club fall again. The Doctor grunted only slightly at the impact. He collapsed on the ground, out cold. The man looked at him through his dark sunglasses. "The Doctor has been neutralized," he said in a calm voice. "Proceed with containment plan."
Chapter 1:
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
There were no words to describe the utter cruelty of that sound. Melissa groaned. An arm snaked out from beneath the covers to punch the offending alarm clock into silence. She squinted, bringing the bleary red numbers into focus. 4:30. Oh yes, clinical day. Melissa groaned again.
It was great being in the nursing program. Oh yes, she loved all the stuff she was learning, but... things weren't going as planned. Oh, they most certainly weren't. She had gone from being a bright student with a 4.0 GPA, one of only 70 who were accepted into the program, to being a student struggling with the simplest physical skills, on the verge of failure. Her family had known that she would have problems. She usually did with physical skills. But now... seeing that evaluation, hearing her instructor's worrying comments... those problems were getting pretty big.
She got out of her warm bed and tried to ignore the quivering feeling in her gut. She dressed her short, insignificant figure in her freshly ironed uniform. She looked in the mirror as she brushed her hair back. A small, frightened girl stared back at her with wide, chocolate-brown eyes in a pale face. She brushed her thick, dark brown hair into a ponytail. This always made her arms ache afterwards, but it was necessary for clinical. Her face was almost a perfect oval, and nothing struck her as very attractive. She had a small, freckled nose and quiet lips. Her eyes, under their dark eyebrows, were the only things that stood out, and they weren't that pretty. Well, they weren't ugly, either, just okay.
She clipped her ID badge onto the short white jacket that was part of her uniform. She grabbed her bag and stethoscope and rushed down the stairs. A lump was on the couch. It moved, rolling over as she turned on the kitchen lights. Heavy snoring echoed in the room. "Sorry, Dad," she whispered. Well, it didn't look like he minded.
After eating a bowl of cereal, she hopped into the car and began to drive to the hospital. The nurses there called it an LTAC facility, for Long-Term Acute Care, something between a hospital and a nursing home. The one she went to was a small, two-storey building. It was a long journey, 45 minutes. The air-conditioning in her car seemed to be dying, which was quite an issue in Houston. However, it was pretty cool in the mornings. Going home she could sweat buckets without having to worry about her uniform.
She arrived when it was still dark. As usual, she was quite early, half an hour early. It was only 6:00. She went to the cafeteria where the students met before and after clinical and waited. She took a notebook out of her bag, ready to doodle, but she was too nervous. All she could think about was her instructor's face and her words the previous week.
Soon the other students arrived, chatting. None of them seemed to have her problems. She was too shy. She lacked confidence. She couldn't do an assessment correctly. Those were the reasons why she was failing. She shrank into her chair, feeling intimidated by their cheeriness and chattiness.
"Okay, what do we have to do today?" the instructor said as soon as she walked in. "Chloe needs to work on her bedbath. Janice still hasn't used a bedpan yet." Her eyes fell on Melissa. "And I'll need to see you do an assessment. I need to see an improvement very soon, Melissa. Have you spoken to Mrs. O'Connor yet?"
Melissa swallowed to moisten her throat. "Yes, Miss Gabriella. I went there like you said. And I went to the open lab, too. Miss Sheryl and Miss Claire said I did pretty well."
"Okay. I'll see if you do any better today." She flipped through her papers, muttering about which students to go with which nurses.
Soon, they were marching through the hallway, ready to hear their nurses give report. "Okay, Melissa and Robert, you're with Nurse Lisa today," Miss Gabriella said.
Nurse Lisa turned and smiled. She was an older lady with red hair in a perm. She was shorter than Melissa and wore glasses. Melissa felt comfortable around her already, like she was with her grandmother. "Ah, students! I always love students. I still remember when I was in school. Some of the nurses I was with were real monsters! I hope I give you a good learning experience."
"I'm sure you'll be great," Robert said. He was a tall black man who looked like he was more suited to play basketball than be a nurse. However, he was one of the best students in clinical. "What sort of patients do you have today?"
"Hmmm, it depends on what specialty you're interested in," Miss Lisa said, looking at her papers.
"I really like neurology," Robert said.
"Then the one in 104 will be best for you. He's in here for a stroke. And what about you?"
"I kind of like psychiatry," Melissa said.
"Oh, then you'd do great with 102. He's a very... interesting patient. Now, when I get report on your patient, be sure to fill out this sheet."
Melissa took the sheet. She marveled about how her mind was beginning to morph into a nurse's mind. At first, the night nurse's report was just a jumble of abbreviations and acronyms that went by at the speed of lightening. Now she could keep up to them, and she knew more than half the stuff that they spoke about.
"... and Dr. Wilson put an order in for a BMP this morning," the young blonde night nurse said. "You'll want to get it done pretty soon, you know how he is with lab tests."
"Oh, I sure do," Nurse Lisa said, scribbling on her papers.
"Now, 102. He's a young male of an unknown age. He came in just last night. He had no identification, so we really don't know who he is. His doctor is Leroy Smith. He is allergic to aspirin. He came in to St. Mark's ER early Friday morning after an alleged assault. He was unconscious and had an ET tube put in en route. He had facial trauma and multiple scalp lacerations. Those have been stitched up and are healing well. He was also diagnosed with respiratory failure so he's currently on a ventilator. He also has a large-bore NG tube in place. All extremities are restrained. I've already got a restraint order from Dr. Smith for today, so you're okay for that. Apparently he can be quite violent. History is insignificant except for paranoid schizophrenia currently being treated by Haldol. He has no family or friends that we know of. Assessment findings were pretty much normal, except his vital signs are completely wacky. His temperature is extremely low, no matter what we do to increase it. We've tried blankets, heating the room, but it's still the same. His blood pressure is pretty high, too. He doesn't have any history of hypertension, but he is on Haldol, so it could be NMS. I'd suggest you hold his next dose and monitor him carefully. And his pulse is the weirdest rhythm I've ever felt, but his apical pulse sounds normal. I'm sure it's some kind of arrhythmia. I've called Dr. Smith to get an EKG, but he says it's unnecessary. Dr. Smith hasn't put any orders in except for Haldol, Ativan, and the usual prn orders. No labs ordered. He has a saline lock in his left arm and it is currently intact. He's been pretty much quiet the whole night. The Haldol and Ativan have pretty much knocked him out, but he never really slept. He just watched everyone go by with those sad brown eyes of his. He may start to wake up soon because I didn't give him the last dose of Haldol because of his blood pressure. Okay, that's about it. Any questions?"
Nurse Lisa looked over her shoulder at Melissa. "How's that? Does he sound interesting?"
Melissa nodded. "Oh yes."
"Why don't you go in there right now? Take his vitals, say good morning."
Melissa nodded again and walked to the room, taking the nearest vital signs machine with her. She knocked on the door, just like she'd been taught. Because her patient had an endotracheal tube, she knew that he wouldn't be able to speak. After a moment, she opened the door and walked in with a cheery smile. "Hello, I'm Melissa. I'm a student nurse and I'm going to be taking care of you today."
The man on the bed watched her every move. His head only moved slightly, but his brown eyes tracked her. She could hear the sigh of the machine that breathed for him. He was tall and thin, she could see. His arms, tied in cloth restraints, rested beside his slender figure. His hair was brown like hers, and just as messy. His eyes were the most striking aspect of his appearance. They were old, so old, and they contained such wisdom. She felt like she could drown in them. They also ached with sorrow, and a hint of anger burned deep inside of them. However, the only thing she saw in them for herself was a questioning curiosity.
"Wondering about the accent, are you? Well, I'm not from around here, so I don't talk like a Texan." She plugged the machine into the wall and waited for it to come to life. "Not like they talk like they do in the movies, but it is different. I'm from up north. Way north. Canada north. Yep, I'm a foreigner." She wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his arm gently. "This'll only squeeze a little." The machine took his heart rate the same time as it took his blood pressure, so she decided to look at his respirations instead. The ventilator had the number of breaths on it, so she used that. "Okay, now I need to take your temperature." She put the probe under his arm and read the findings from the blood pressure cuff. The reading was a little high, but the heart rate was inconclusive. She took his wrist, but she couldn't count the beats as they were so irregular. So, she took her stethoscope out and listened to the apical rate. Well, that sounded normal, a good steady rate, but why was his radial pulse so odd?
"Well, that's all I need for now," she said, taking the probe. "I'll be back soon to check you over with my instructor." She gasped when she saw the number. She didn't know a human temperature could go so low! He was as cold as a corpse! She decided to check it against his other vital signs and retake it if it wasn't in his baseline, but that was extremely strange.
She was looking through his chart when her instructor came a few minutes later. "Are you ready?" Miss Gabriella asked.
Melissa nodded as she wrote in the vitals she had just taken onto the graphics sheet. She closed the chart and slowly got off her chair. She did not meet her instructor's eyes. Her heart was going about as fast as the vital sign machine thought her patient's was.
"Relax. Part of the reason why you still have trouble is that you get so anxious."
"Or I'm just not good at it," Melissa mumbled under her breath.
Miss Gabriella did not hear this comment. Instead, she nodded towards the door. "Go on. We're going to be giving meds in twenty minutes."
As soon as she stepped into the room, she fell into her routine. She had practiced this at home and in the open labs. "I can't really assess his orientation because he's got an ET tube in."
"Does he have a communication board?"
Melissa looked around, feeling slightly flustered. "No, I can't see any."
Miss Gabriella let this pass. "I'll talk to one of the nurses and see if we can get one. Go on."
Melissa went through her assessment smoothly. She used her penlight to check his pupils and mucous membranes and felt his scalp through his hair. She also checked his wounds. They were healing nicely. Then she examined his arms. His capillary refill was excellent, his skin was elastic, his strength was good, but he still had that weird pulse. "I really don't know what to make of this," she said. "Feel his pulse."
Miss Gabriella felt it for half a minute, no expression on her face. "Probably has an arrhythmia. You'll find out more on the chest examination."
Melissa continued to his chest. That was where everything went wrong. She found his apical and counted for the full sixty seconds. Nothing strange there. Perhaps he had a bruit or some peripheral vascular disease? Then she went to breath sounds. As she continued down the chest, switching from side to side, she found something strange. She was hearing heart sounds on the right side of the chest! The strongest point was right where the apical would be if this man's heart was on the right. She listened to all the other landmarks, the ones over all four valves. It was a mirror image of what was on the left. She listened to the left side again. So that's why his pulse was so strange! She straightened up and stated her observation. "This man has two hearts."
"No person has two hearts. There's nothing documented on that. Perhaps it's possible with conjoined twins, but he doesn't look like one."
"Go on, you listen," Melissa said, confident that she was not mistaken.
Miss Gabriella used her own stethoscope to listen to this man's two hearts. She took a while, and Melissa began to think that she believed her, but then she turned to her and said: "It's not two hearts. He's got some arrhythmia or valvular problem. Perhaps we should get an ECG or an echo done."
Melissa sighed. So, she had failed again.
"Melissa, you've already had trouble with breath sounds and bowel sounds. I'm beginning to wonder if you can hear anything at all through your stethoscope. Or perhaps you have problems hearing yourself."
"No," Melissa said. "My hearing's just fine."
"Melissa, you still have three weeks until the semester's over. If you can do a whole assessment next week, you may still pass the course."
"I know," Melissa said. "I'll try really hard." She bit her lip.
"Melissa, I've heard from Mrs. O'Connor that you're an excellent student in class. It's the practical aspects of nursing that you have trouble with. With practice, you will be a wonderful nurse."
"If I pass the program," Melissa said. She felt tears building up. She couldn't cry now, not in front of Miss Gabriella, not in front of the patient. That would only make her more of a failure. She walked out the door, ignoring Miss Gabriella's words. They seemed more encouraging than reprimanding. Well, she didn't need encouraging. Someone telling her that she would definitely pass because she was such a bright student felt like a slap in the face.
She stayed at the nurse's station for the next while, shutting out all the noise around her. She heard Dr. Smith talk about transferring the strange patient that afternoon. She looked up once and stared for a while. Dr. Smith was wearing dark sunglasses indoors. That was strange. However, she went back to her drug book, scribbling down her patient's medications and all the information she needed about them to give them.
"He may not need more Ativan," Nurse Lisa said from the nurse's station. "I'm not sure. I don't like giving too much Ativan, it's like turning people into zombies. Why don't you go check?"
Melissa simply nodded. She turned and walked into her patient's room. She was only going to check on him for less than a minute. She was too wrapped up in her own problems to focus for long. However, her first look at him captivated her. He looked terrified! His fists were clenched and his eyes were wide and frightened. Oh dear, he definitely needed some Ativan. "Hey, Mr. Doe, you're going to be alright. We're going to give you some medicine to help you calm down."
His eyes locked onto hers and suddenly she was unable to move. They had such a desperate, pleading look in them that she was shocked into silence. It was as if she were his only hope to live. She felt that her heart wouldn't be able to make it whole if she didn't find out what was bothering him. She had to find out, but he was unable to communicate. She had an idea. "I'll be right back."
She walked out into the hallway. Nurse Lisa was nearby, holding a medicine cup with about five pills in it for another patient. She looked up from the orders she was checking. "Could I remove one of his restraints?" Melissa asked. "I know you're supposed to exercise them every hour or something like that. When I do that, can I give him a paper and pen and ask him what he wants? He really wants something. That should probably calm him down."
Nurse Lisa nodded. "Yes, go ahead. That cuts down on the work for me. Just be careful. Dr. Smith says he's dangerous and he attacked him in the ER."
Melissa went without paying much attention to this last statement. She was sure that patient wasn't going to strike her or anything. He recognized her as a friend. Once she gave him some freedom, he'd be grateful, not violent. She came into the room with a shred of paper, her clipboard, and a pen. "Okay, I'm going to exercise your arm a bit," she said, yanking on the slip knot. "You seem to want something. You can write it down here."
The patient almost immediately snatched her pen once his arm was free. She was startled at first, but she held out the clipboard. He began to write.
Coat.
He wanted his coat. Well, that was easy to manage. "Where is it?" she asked.
Closet.
"Don't worry, I'll get it," she said. She threw the doors open and found a long brown coat hanging up. She bounced back to the bed, happy to be helping him at last. She set it down on top of him and his eyes almost smiled at her. She smiled back, but it became a frown when she read his next message.
Don't panic.
What? What did he mean? She opened her mouth to ask, but, before she could do anything, he yanked the tube out of his throat.
