A normal day: go for rounds to berate the idiots that don't have a clue, go into the OR, have lunch, go back to the OR, go home and struggle to eat without falling asleep face first into dinner. This was life for an attending surgeon: this was life for Cristina. Her dreams, ones she had since childhood and ones that took her by surprise, had all come true. Professionally, she became who she thought she would be; personally, she was pleasantly surprised to find herself pleased to have a best friend and a husband.
Today would be like the others: saving lives, torturing interns, maybe a drink across the street. Midway through rounds though, the Chief grabbed her for a word.
"Yes?" Cristina asked as they rushed through the hospital to the Chief's office.
"Cristina, I got a phone call this morning. You're needed for a consult—"
"A consult? I didn't get a page," Cristina double-checked her pager.
"No, you're needed for a consult overseas. There's a patient in Wales who needs the best cardio-thoracic surgeon: that's you."
"Of course. I have patients here though, who also would like, if not need, a world class surgeon. Aren't there hospitals in Wales?"
"They didn't ask for "world class" Dr. Yang, they asked for the best. We do have other cardio surgeons here that can look after your patients while you're gone you know."
"Of course Dr. Shepherd."
"Cristina, I don't know that you're aware of this opportunity." Dr. Shepherd closed the door behind him. "This call isn't just another consult. You're aware of UNIT yes?"
"Sure, their people come in for surgery sometimes."
"Of course, but beyond that you're aware of them? They deal with extraterrestrials. They have a counterpart overseas called Torchwood. They're the ones that called for you. They didn't brief me on the case beyond you're needed in Wales and you will be there for an undetermined amount of time. This is possibly the most tremendous opportunity anyone could dream of having. Pack your bags Dr. Yang, you're going to catch the next flight out." Dr. Shepherd dismissed Cristina and she left to pack up. She called Owen on the way to tell him that she would be leaving for a while, then Meredith. They were each excited, Meredith a bit jealous in the usual friendly way that they had been flirting with since day one. Cristina took a taxi to the airport and departed for Cardiff.
When her plane landed and she had her suitcase, Cristina looked around for a taxi or someone from the local hospital. It wasn't that she was nervous, she was merely anxious to get to work. Not only was it unusual to be called halfway around the world to perform a heart surgery, but a heart surgery that would be worth flying halfway around the world was what drove her during the long hours of studying, through her internship and fellowship to now. She's the one to find whenever or wherever a heart needs fixing; her dream was achieved but rather than search for some new challenge, she kept pioneering this path she started on as a three year old girl. Meanwhile, an attractive dark haired man wearing a long brown coat approached her.
"Are you Dr. Cristina Yang perchance?" he asked salaciously.
"I am, and you are?"
"Captain Jack Harkness, I'm here to take you to the patient."
"Excellent, can you just hold right there?" she asked without skipping a beat. Capt. Harkness stood still as Cristina fished her cell phone out, prompting Jack to mug for the camera. Cristina took a quick picture, thanked him and proceeded to follow him out to a large black SUV. In the car Cristina sent a text message to Meredith, "This guy? Seriously?" and attached the photo. Soon the response came through, "Good to see you're alive, fill me in when you get the details on the case."
"What is this case then?" she asked.
"Well, it's pretty – you should just wait until we get there. It's just complicated. We'll be there soon."
The SUV pulled up in front of a large open square with a smooth dark tower of glass. Cristina looked around as she got out.
"Where is the hospital?" she asked Jack as he got her suitcase out of the back.
"I'm not sure you'll like the answer. It's there," he pointed to the tower. "And it isn't a hospital exactly."
"So I'm going into a non-medical facility, without knowing anything about the patient or diagnosis? Has another doctor seen the patient?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"What does that mean?" Cristina snapped. Jack grinned and he led her through a small shop to an abandoned tube station.
"Welcome to Torchwood Dr. Yang."
"What the hell is this place? Is there any semblance of a sterile OR here? Why isn't the patient at a real hospital? Seattle Grace has UNIT guys in and out on a regular basis."
"This isn't just a regular agent. We have an autopsy lab, it isn't an exceptionally clean place, but the patient is. She's got quite the immune system." Harkness gestured deeper into the underground lab.
"Quite the- No, no I'm here for a surgical consult. I flew here from Seattle, if it is this important that I be here, it can be assumed that I will be cutting open a chest here. Open chests become easily infected, which explains the need for a sterile room in which to open said chest; have you never even thought about the concept of surgery? Unbelievable," Cristina shouted.
"You tell us what you need, we can get it for you. This is Torchwood: we can do anything."
"Not without me you can't."
"Okay, alright." Jack took her arm and led her to the autopsy room. "Before you run back to the airport, just let me introduce you to the patient." Cristina sighed. "Doctor, please meet," Jack stepped aside. "The Doctor."
Cristina stepped forward towards the woman lying in a bed in the middle of the room, next to an autopsy table. The sickness of the layout almost made Cristina laugh.
"Hello Doctor – I'm sorry I didn't catch the last name?" she asked Jack.
"Hello!" the patient said brightly. "I'm just The Doctor."
"Okay…" Yang sighed and turned to Jack. "If I'm going to do this, I'll need someone who can get her medical history, run labs and what kind of imaging technology do you have here? I'd like a CT and MRI to begin with. I'm not here to do a full body search: I'm a cardio-thoracic surgeon, I assume the patient is having problems with her heart."
"One of them anyway," The Doctor spoke up. Cristina whipped around.
"Excuse me?"
"One of my hearts is having problems. The other is working just fine."
"Are you serious?" Cristina asked, pulling her stethoscope out. She exposed a spot on the chest and listened for a heartbeat. When she couldn't find one, she tested other spots. She found two spots that presented a familiar sound, almost familiar.
"Can you tell me what – What is going on here? Who are you? Or should I ask what are you?"
"I'm a Time Lord, the last Time Lord—"
"So you can see why we called you," Jack interjected. The Doctor shrugged, and Yang just looked between the two of them incredulously.
"As I was saying, I'm the last Time Lord. I have two hearts. Before, when one stopped working I could just have a quick pound to the chest and all was right, but now that I've used all my regenerations it would seem that doesn't work. I'm getting old you might say." She laughed. "So my friends here thought I should see a doctor."
"I thought you were a doctor."
"No, I'm The Doctor."
"Do you have a medical degree?"
"Not from Earth."
"Do you have a PhD?"
"Like I said..." she admitted with a grin.
"What qualifies you to be "The Doctor" then?" Yang asked feeling exponentially frustrated.
"Well, that's what people call me."
"Fine, tell me about your symptoms."
"I've had some intermittent dizziness, and a funny feeling in my chest. Sometimes one of them just stops."
"Your heart stops. Out of nowhere. You should be dead. This is incredible. I'm doing heart surgery on an alien," She turned back to Jack, smiling for the first time. "Do you have a medical library, a database on aliens, somewhere I can do some research?"
"Of course, I'll have one of my people put together everything we have on Time Lords." Jack left the room.
"So you have two hearts. If you don't mind my asking, it pertains to your health after all, what should your heart…s sound like?"
Hesitantly, The Doctor tapped out a familiar four beat pattern.
"Lean forward," Yang told her and started looking for a heartbeat. "Okay, well you've got something causing an arrhythmia."
"Yes, yes I could have told you that: ventricular tachycardia in my right heart. I've got the diagnosis you see but I cannot treat it myself; I just need you to fix it."
"If you don't mind, I think I'll run a few tests to confirm your diagnosis. Like you said, you haven't exactly got a medical degree." Yang observed as she continued her examination.
"I don't need one." The Doctor snapped suddenly, throwing Yang off of her. "Your mind would burn - quite literally - if you knew nearly as much as I do. I can see all of time, the fabric of the universe; I can see everything and make sense of it. I'm clever, to put it modestly," she screamed out. "You are human." Dr. Yang's face got stony and her eyes blazed.
"I am not a nursemaid. You may be some kind of genius alien but don't forget that you need me, not the other way around," and she stormed off. The Doctor tossed herself back into the bed, hitting her head on the wall behind her.
After a few hours to cool off, Yang came back in to continue the tests she had stopped earlier.
"I'm sorry," The Doctor said. "So sorry." She added when Yang hadn't responded.
"I've," she sighed. "I've never been scared to die before. Some people say it's cheating what I do, but it really isn't. Each incarnation of myself is a different person. I've been a man 12 times after all and here I am with all these new parts; I am a new person each time and the one before dies." Dr. Yang kept at her business, checking vital signs and reading lab data.
"Of course, it's dying. Everyone does it. I've just – I've never really." The Doctor started to get audibly emotional. "I'll be gone." She thought for a moment then looked to Dr. Yang and waited until she was sure of the doctor's attention. "I'm almost two thousand years old you know. I've led my people into war, saved entire planets from destruction, traveled from one end of the universe to the other and all through time. I've had so many adventures and fought so many enemies; never once did I think it would come to an end," she laid back into the pillows on the bed. "There's still so much left. Two thousand years and I haven't done it all yet. And who will be left to save those who can't save themselves? More important than the exploring and all that, I've saved so many and now you're all going to be so – helpless." She swallowed away the firmness in her throat. Without either of them realizing it, Yang had stopped examining The Doctor and just listened.
"Stop. You have ventricular tachycardia, I'll put in a pacemaker and you will be fine."
"That will just prolong the inevitable Doctor. I'll be different from that point on, part machine. All stories come to an end someday and that will be the beginning of mine. I'll feel different, I'll be different and I know something about becoming different. You never come back to the way you were, not really."
"Why am I here then? If you just want me to sit and wait for you to die, then that is a colossal waste of my time; I have real patients who need a lot more help than you do and are much closer to death."
"I want to live. Being different is better than being dead."
Later that night, Cristina called Meredith.
"This patient, this whole case is outrageous. I have no idea what I'm doing here, Mer. Please, can you get Derek to call Torchwood? I tried to get out of it when the patient had a meltdown but it didn't work. If there's an emergency with one of my patients though then I'll have to come back. Please." Yang begged of her best friend.
"But you're his wife. Honestly, I swear it isn't even necessary that I be the doctor on this case, any one halfway competent could do it. The patient diagnosed herself, I confirmed and all she needs is a pacemaker insertion. This is such a waste of my time, I need to be back at Seattle Grace with my patients that need my skills."
"We're talking about me, the world's foremost cardio surgeon; your husband, who is not only the world's foremost neurosurgeon but the chief of surgery at that holiest of surgical meccas – Seattle Grace/Mercy West Hospital; you're his wife and I'm your best friend: you're trying to tell me that I'm stuck here?"
"Yeah, well you suck. Bye Mer."
Yang consulted the materials Gwen had compiled for her and found few complications due to the alien nature of the surgery.
"This is going to be a pacemaker insertion surgery, mindlessly simple to do. You'll be awake with an anesthetic. I don't know that we should put you under, for the obvious reasons. We'll have to experiment with the anesthetic to see what will work best and what affects it could have. After this, there will be determining where to place the pacemaker. Human hearts are medial and there is just one so typically pacemakers are placed on the less dominant side of the chest. You've got two hearts so hypothetically the pacemaker can be placed between them, but there's no way to know for sure until we open up the chest. Afterward, you'll have a few weeks of recovery and post-op care but minimal inpatient care. You'll have to avoid extreme movement. I suggest just keeping a low profile. You seem to lead an active lifestyle; you should consider taking some time to relax somewhere. Afterward you'll need to check in with a cardiologist every few months to monitor the pacemaker's function. I'll give you a card that details the device we're implanting in case you need to have it checked out or prove you have such a device. Since you lead such a unique life, you'll probably come up with other concerns too. Call your cardiologist. Questions?" Yang listed off. The surgery, once exciting, was quickly becoming dull. A first year resident could do this while she was working towards her Harper Avery.
"When are we going to do this?"
"Tomorrow evening. In the meantime we'll be in to run some tests to understand the effects of anesthetic on your physiology. Get some rest, tomorrow is going to be a long day," Yang answered somewhat tersely and left The Doctor to do whatever it was that aliens do before surgery. Yang herself studied and went over equations to find the best possible anesthetic and the proper dosage for an alien, trying to find a starting point for her experiments tomorrow.
The next day, after getting only two hours of sleep Yang went to the makeshift patients room and OR to make sure everything was as sterile as could be and that her equipment would be in order. The pacemaker arrived with Ianto Jones midday as Yang and Owen adjusted doses and anesthetic on different spots of The Doctor's body to determine how much would be effective during surgery. Yang and the others left to eat lunch, leaving The Doctor and Jack together.
"Hi Jack."
"Doctor. How are you feeling today?"
"Scared, that's okay still right?"
"Of course." He paused. "You've changed quite a bit. I mean, clearly you've changed," he said gesturing towards her. "By the way, I still wouldn't mind a little time alone with you after this surgery business, of course if your excellent surgeon will clear it." Jack winked and The Doctor looked at him sternly. "Hey, I've known five of your incarnations and they just keep getting better and better looking!"
"Jack, you're so lucky. I mean it, you really are. You can look ahead and know that you'll never have to slow down and you'll never have to stop."
"That's terrible though. Remember all the companions you've had, think of Barbara and Ian, Sarah Jane or Rose, think of The Ponds. Everyone moves forward, don't they? You've always been so determined not to watch as they start to make the last move toward the end, think of how hard it is living like that. Imagine now that you'll outlive every single person you meet. You've been to the end of the universe but there's always going to be one person that lives just a bit longer. The thought sickens me."
"I'm sorry. I can't believe I said that, that was stupid."
"It's fine, you didn't mean it that way. So like I said, I'll see you after surgery," he winked again and left to monitor something over in the center of The Hub. The Doctor took a nap until Yang returned to administer an epidural and begin her procedure.
"You have done this before, right?" The Doctor asked as Yang began to make the incision.
"Yes," Yang said absently and Gwen assured The Doctor that Torchwood went to great lengths to get the very best.
"Splendid. How does this compare so far with your other surgical experiences Dr. Yang?"
Yang stopped spreading her ribs and looked closely at The Doctor. "Absurd, this surgery is completely absurd in every way imaginable. Now please stop talking or I'll have someone put you under," Yang went back to the rib spreader and had Jack and Owen hold the retractors.
Yang gently shifted the two hearts so she could lodge the pacemaker between the two and attached the leads to the heart on the right. She gently probed the area to get the hearts back to a position similar to where they had been. She wired the ribs back together and sewed the incision shut.
"You're going to be recovering for some time. I'm going to stay for a few more days to monitor your progress and after that you need to take it prodigiously easy until your sternum can heal. In humans it takes between two and three years, I'm not sure how long it will take for you but I'm sure you have an idea. Now you need to go to sleep, when you wake up you'll be in a lot of pain. What do your people usually take to relieve pain?"
"Oh, Jack can find something. Thank you so much Cristina."
"Yes. Well. Get to sleep while the epidural is still in effect." Yang left the room to take a shower, eat dinner and call in to see how her patients back in Seattle were doing.
Three days later, Yang was finishing her final examination of The Doctor.
"Well your heartbeats have normalized, you're healing up very nicely, and there have been no cardiac events since the surgery. I would say my job here is officially done. Remember what I told you, and please find a cardiologist you can trust. You'll need to have your hearts examined as well as your pacemaker, which will need maintenance. It's been a pleasure treating you Doctor," Yang said flatly.
"I would think you'd be more excited. A successful surgery, healthy patient and all…"
"That no one will ever know about, not exactly the groundbreaking material I left Seattle for. I'm glad you changed your mind though; you seem like an extraordinary person. Good luck Doctor."
"You too. I hope I never require your services again Dr. Yang." Yang nodded and turned to leave. She stopped before climbing the steps out of the morgue and turned.
"You can go to the future?" she asked.
"Yes."
"So… I could ask you something? There's an award for pioneering surgeons, it's called a Harper Avery and I've dreamed of winning one since I was born. Will I-"
"I used to ask a friend questions like that, and she always replied the same way: Spoilers," The Doctor replied with an impish grin that never seemed to change. Yang let out an irritated sigh and left.
Author's Note: Yes, I know there are all sorts of reasons why The Doctor will never die, he keeps getting more regenerations, he can regenerate infinitely, the BBC won't let him. Even the Face of Boe dies though, so just humor me. It's fan fiction!