"You look a little pale, Sarah, are you sure you're alright?"

The Doctor eyes her almost suspiciously across the console, and she sighs heavily.

"I'm fine, really!" Sarah Jane insists stubbornly, because it's near the seventh time he's asked her. Now, though, she's not feeling so confident in her answer because her hands are shaking, the console room feels like it's tipping and spinning around her, and she feels like she's going to be sick.

"I'm fine, I just—"

The TARDIS tips dangerously as they return to the calm, empty voids of space again, drifting gently and aimlessly among the scattered stars. The three of them topple like items off of a shelf as the entire room leans to the left, the Doctor gripping the controls hard in an effort to keep standing.

"I just..." Sarah Jane blinks and presses a hand to her forehead, looking up to meet the Doctor's gaze. She looks like she wants to say more, but practically crumples, crashing hard to the floor.

"Sarah!"

Both men are checking her over in an instant, but the Doctor is the one who folds back the collar of her jacket. As he'd expected, there's a set of three pinpricks on the side of her neck in a triangular pattern.

"Poison," he says softly, not daring to let his fingers brush the wound. Harry doesn't exactly understand what's going on, but before he can even think of the right question to ask, the Time Lord has huddled Sarah Jane into his arms and taken off into the interior of the TARDIS.

"Doctor!" Harry calls after him, trying to follow the echoes of footsteps through the twisting halls. He gets lost once or twice, but eventually finds his way.

Once, he'd wound up in a sort of medical room—a cupboard of bandages and spare disinfectant, really—but not this before. No, this is a fully functional hospital room with a bed against the left wall, and the cabinets fully stocked. The Doctor stands still by the bed for a moment, having already bustled about and fiddled with things, attaching monitors and such.

Harry can't even count—and doesn't recognize—half of the monitors that Sarah Jane is now hooked up to, her arms still at her side and an oxygen mask on (and even in a proper hospital gown, though Harry doesn't know where or why the Doctor keeps them).

"You know," he points out, glancing over the equipment somewhat suspiciously, "I'm a doctor as well, I could have—"

"Not this, Harry," the Doctor says sharply. "No, not this. She's been poisoned, and it's exactly what I was afraid of. I knew going through that jungle was a bad idea, the plants there are rather difficult and sometimes hostile like this. There's nothing you can do."

"Oh," he sighs, pulling up a hard plastic chair against the cabinets.

The Doctor keeps his eyes down, and lightly pats Sarah Jane's hand, connected to several IV tubes that are taped across the back, between her knuckles and by her wrist. "No, you can't help her...and I"m afraid that I might not be able to, either. I'm sorry, Harry."

Harry tries to smile, but can't find the will to. "Then I'm sorry, too."


He doesn't remember when the Doctor left to go land the TARDIS somewhere relatively safe, to put her around some lonely and distant moon, but Harry sits silently in the room and doesn't really move. He can't read the monitors, and doesn't even know what they're there for, either.

So, Harry rummages through mildly empty drawers in the counters, to see what medical supplies are stocked, or to even find an instruction manual to tell him what these things mean, to find out what's wrong with her.

In one drawer—that was also a home to three cotton balls, a stick of banana taffy, a small ball of wool, and a half-eaten roll of crackers—there lies a notebook. It's smaller than any one he'd have for notes at home, maybe only half the size. It's pale blue, with Medical Journal in white cursive lettering across the front. Idly flipping through the pages, Harry notices that they're all completely empty. Neatly lined, unmarked, and totally blank.

"Going through my things, Sullivan?"

He jumps nearly a foot, because he hadn't even heard the Doctor come in. Harry tosses the journal aside onto the counter and tries to apologize, but the Doctor holds up a hand to silence him, and gestures to the notebook.

"Found something interesting?"

"Just an empty medical journal," Harry shrugs absently, flipping through the blank pages again. "Completely blank."

The Doctor crosses to the doors. "So use it," he suggests.

"Use it for what?"

The Time Lord nods to the bed, and to their patient. "Well, she's deep in a coma, and it'll be more than just a few days of recovery. Write to her, Harry."

And so he does.