Well, I don't have much to say here except, I think you'll like this chapter! :-D

TWO

"Virginia, it's Helen," Sharpe said into her phone, practically whispering.

"Yes, I know," said the salty, jaded Virginia Staunton, Doctor of oncology, on the other end, mimicking her whisper. "What can I do for you?"

With her normal voice, Helen asked, "How close is Max to the end of his session?"

"An hour or more, why?"

Helen cursed under her breath. "Because I need him. I mean, the ED needs him. And I need to… the ED needs him."

"Well, everyone needs him Dr. Sharpe, but isn't that what you're doing in his absence, as his Deputy?"

"Yes, it's just, something's come up…" Helen said, glancing at her office door, knowing that Jane Smith was inside. She felt dread rising in her stomach, thinking of trying to finish out the madness in the ED, while this madness waited for her. But she also knew that this was, ultimately, a selfish errand, and the reason she needed Max was more personal than professional. "Never mind. Please have him contact me when he's able."

"Good. I'll tell him," Virginia said flatly, before cutting off the call.

Helen bit her lip, and steeled herself.

The past had come knocking at her door, and she didn't quite know how to handle it. More accurately, it had come bursting through the ED on a gurney, with an erratic BP, and she felt totally derailed. That part of her life was not just another chapter, it might as well be in a different century, and on a different planet. And actually, it very often had been.

The fact was, Helen Sharpe was not entirely who she claimed to be. She was not a fraud – she was, in point of fact, a highly-trained, well-honed, extremely versatile medical professional. She was a brilliant doctor. An intellectual. A woman of science. A woman of the world, and at one time, a woman of the universe.

But part of her was still living a lie. She reminded herself that a person who lived as she did should not be surprised nor rattled when old memories came to call… and yet, here she was, both surprised and rattled.

Because, this particular memory was poignant, indeed. She had thought that perhaps it might rear its head again during her lifetime, but for it to be presented to her in this way… she wanted to scream what the fuck? at the top of her lungs from the roof of the building. She wanted to explode with confusion and excitement and resentment, and every other emotion. That woman in her office represented a myriad of difficult questions and might even represent more difficult answers.

But there was an ED that needed attending-to, and excuses to be made, so she took a deep breath and opened her office door. "Hi," she said to Jane Smith, then closed the door behind her. "Erm, are you doing okay?"

Jane, who was sitting on sofa across from Helen's desk, reading a magazine, looked up and smiled. "Yeah, never better. Thanks for patching up my headwound."

"Lungs? BP?"

"I'm breathing, blood's pumping. I'm a quick healer."

"Good. Glad to hear it. Listen, I would really like to chat with you. I mean really. In fact, I'd never forgive myself if I let you leave without following up, you know?"

"I know," Jane said, with a gentle smile.

"But I've got a madhouse of an ED down there, and we're short-handed."

Jane got to her feet. "I could help. Give me a set of scrubs and aim me somewhere – I've got experience."

"You're a medic?"

The woman nodded. "A doctor."

Helen opened her mouth to speak, and ended up only gaping at the blonde woman before her. Jane smiled.

"Erm… well, do you have credentials?" Helen managed to croak, tentatively.

Jane patted her pockets and produced a familiar-looking leather wallet, and held it out.

Helen took it, with a trembling hand. Now she was the one short of breath, with the erratic heartbeat. She felt sure she had handled this very wallet before, and felt very sure that whatever was inside would toss a lump into her throat

She was not wrong. She glanced at Jane, who was smiling beatifically, as she opened the wallet. The card inside read, "You know I don't have credentials, but you know you can trust me. Let me help you, the way you helped me."

Helen handed the wallet back, and said, "There are scrubs in that cabinet, and a cap and mask. Meet you down there."

"Thanks… Dr. Sharpe, is it?"

"Call me Helen."

Jane Smith seemed to slide in to the ED as if it were her home… so well that almost no-one noticed her. Casey recognised her as one of the cave-in patients, but Helen assured him that she was fine, that they had actually attended medical school at Cambridge together – she had simply forgotten her old classmate in the bustle of the overcrowded ED.

"She offered to pitch in," Helen shrugged. She gestured to the chaos surrounding them. "Are you going to refuse help today?"

"If you say so!" he said surprisingly cheerfully, heading for the door as another patient was brought through on a gurney.

Jane was excellent on her feet, showed no signs of having been concussed or ill recently, and was attentive as well as compliant with other medics. She had ideas and initiative, knowledge, and an almost inhuman problem-solving prowess.

At the end of the second hour, the speed of the ED died down, and some of the staff from other parts of the hospital were able to return to their posts. It was clear that the department was beginning to revert to normal.

During the third hour, one of the collapse victims went into cardiac arrest, and Jane ran for him. She defibrillated and stabilised him. Casey took the liberty, at that point, of calling Dr. Reynolds, one of New York's finest heart surgeons, who turned up within a few minutes. Before anyone knew it, Reynolds was wheeling the bed out of the ED, headed for the OR.

Jane followed the bed, carrying the IV fluids, to the other side of the double doors. There, there were two people waiting: a nurse, ready to take the fluids off her hands, and Helen Sharpe.

Together they watched the gurney, the surgeon and the nurse disappear around the corner, and suddenly, they were alone in an empty hallway.

"Hi," said the blonde, pulling her mask off her face, revealing her bright, relieved smile.

"Hi. Thanks for your help."

"No problem. Been a while since I've done anything like that. Felt good."

Helen broke eye-contact. "So you…" she began, then lost her nerve. She gulped, and tried again. "You've got two hearts, then."

"I do."

"I've seen that before."

"I know. And just like before, I knew I could count on you not to freak out and tell everyone who would listen."

Helen gulped hard. Just like before. These words caused her to go prickly hot all over. "So, you're… a Time Lord? Time Lady? How does that work?"

Jane Smith continued to smile, now almost indulgently, "It seems to me that Helen Sharpe wouldn't even know to ask a question like that."

Helen took three steps forward and found herself almost nose to nose with Jane. "Stop messing me about. Who are you?"

There was a long pause in which the two women studied each other… again. Helen admitted within herself, she had never felt this weirdly "drawn" to a woman before, and had never found any female quite so enigmatic. It was an odd feeling, even though she didn't sense anything sexual between the two of them… it was still unprecedented for her. This being standing before her was definitely singular. And there was a connection… of a sort. But of what sort?

Well, really, she already knew the answer.

The silence was somehow reverent now, and the moments seemed to pass in slow motion.

At last, the other woman broke the silence. In a whisper, Jane said, with all of the gravity of the moment, "Look in my eyes, Martha Jones, and you'll see it."

At hearing that name, the woman in the white coat took in a curt breath.

The woman known as Jane continued, "Actually, you've been seeing it all along, refusing to believe it. You know me – you know me well. We were close once, you and me. We were everything to each other. We once held each other's lives in our hands."

Helen did as asked, and searched the stranger's twinkling, penetrating brown eyes. "Oh my God."

The blonde smiled again. "Hello."

"Say it."

"Say what?"

"Tell me who you are. I need to actually hear the words."

"I'm the Doctor."

A pregnant pause, then, "You are, aren't you?"

"Couldn't be anyone else if I tried. And you're Martha Jones."

"I was. Am."

"You still are," the Doctor said, with a crinkly, radiant smile that, in spite of the vast differences since last Martha Jones had seen the Doctor, seemed very familiar. She sighed. "Martha Jones in the flesh."

"Yeah, erm… speaking of flesh, you used to be taller," Martha whispered.

The Doctor laughed. "Indeed."

"How did this happen?" Martha asked, making a gesture indicating the Doctor's entire body.

"What, being smaller, daintier, with a lot less potential for facial hair?"

"Yeah!"

The Doctor shrugged. "It just did. Over a thousand years have passed, Martha. I've regenerated three times since last you saw me – twice more as a man, and now this."

"Is this your first time as…"

"As a woman? Yes it is!"

"Wow. I never… wow."

"History tells us that about seventy-five per cent of all Time Lord regenerations have been same-gender. The vast majority of us never change from one to another, though I wouldn't say it's exactly rare, per se."

"Wow," Martha repeated.

"And guess what. The Master is one of us now too!"

"The Master is a woman?"

"Yes! Although I reckon her transformation was karmic, since he was such a misogynistic bastard back in the day."

"I thought he… she… he was dead."

"Long story. Time Lord resurrection, vengeance, radiation, a guy with a really big chin suddenly appearing in my console room… someday I'll tell you the whole thing. Anyway, sometime after that, our Master committed Mastercide and became Missy."

"Holy shit."

"Don't worry, the shock will pass. Did for me. Well, actually, I still forget sometimes, but then I find I can't lift a heavy box, and I think, oh yeah. And I've got to say, the Middle Ages are loads harder to navigate than they ever were before. Other than that, I rather like the change."

"I'm… having mixed feelings about it, honestly. Mostly because… well…"

"I get it."

"No, I mean, I'm supportive and all. It's just…"

That was when the double doors opened again, and Max Goodwin walked through them, in his light blue scrubs. The Medical Director stood with both feet apart and hands on hips.

"Hi," he said to his Deputy, annoyed. "Why didn't you come get me?"

"You know why," said the woman he knew as Helen Sharpe. "You needed to finish what you were doing. Did you? Finish, I mean?"

"I finished, yes," he told her. "And then I threw up everything I'd eaten for the past week, and now I'm here."

"Max, go home," she said, approaching him. She stroked his arm a couple of times. "You're looking green."

"No, we need to talk."

"No, we don't. You need to concentrate on you."

"Helen, there was a cave-in…"

"I know," she interrupted. "And we handled it."

At that point, the Doctor caught Max's eye. "Is this your friend from Cambridge?"

"Erm, yes," Martha said, clearing her throat. "Max Goodwin, this is Jane Smith. She and I go way, way back."

"Yes we do," said the Doctor, enthusiastically shaking Max's hand. "Way, way back! And sometimes further than that!"

"Well, thanks for your help, Dr. Smith," Max said affably,. "Casey told me you were invaluable in the crisis down there."

"Casey's no slouch himself," the Doctor chirped. "Me, I'm just glad to be part of the team!"

Max turned his attention back to his colleague. "As much as I appreciate the work that you, and Dr. Smith, have done here, next time, call me."

"No," Martha said.

"No?" he asked, incredulous.

"No. If you want me to be your Deputy, it means that I make decisions when you can't."

"Helen, your friend was of great help to us, but you took a big risk inviting her in," Max insisted.

"How? I know her. I know she's brilliant. I trust her, just like I trust you. More, in fact," Martha told him. "Besides, what would you have done?"

"I would have assessed the situation piece by piece, and I would have…"

"Tried to be a bloody hero," she interrupted. "You would have gone from bed to bed, person to person, trying to intervene with each one of them. Eventually you…"

"I would have solved the problem our way," he insisted. "The New Amsterdam way."

"The Max Goodwin way. Which is to say, the throw-yourself-to-the-wolves way."

"Helen, you know what I'm saying here, I know you do," he said, lowering his voice instinctively, to an intimate level. "The liability of having an out-of-network doctor from a foreign country, no matter how skilled she is, could have been enormous if anything had gone wrong."

"Nothing was going to go wrong. Not with her."

He looked at the blonde. "No offense to you, Dr. Smith – you must understand the pickle this puts me in."

"I understand pickles," the Doctor responded. Without context, it would have sounded completely like she was discussing brined cucumbers.

"So what do you want to do? Suspend me?" Martha asked, hands on hips, whimsically defiant.

"No," Max responded, anything but whimsically. "I…"

"Reprimand me?"

"No! I don't want to see you get hurt. Or reprimanded from some other channel just because you were trying to think outside the box."

"Thinking outside the box, it's why you chose me. It's very me," she said. She glanced at the Doctor. "I learned from the best."

"From now on, let me take the brunt," he instructed her.

"No promises," she shot back. "I'm not your doctor anymore, but I am your friend, and your colleague, and we're in this together. I know you want to be here for everything that happens, but you can't do that if you're dead. You'd think as a doctor you'd understand that."

"I do, Helen, but…"

"No buts," she shot back. "Do you want me to be your Deputy or not?"

He sighed. "Do I have a choice?"

"Not really. But you could choose someone else, if you like."

"No," he whispered. "It has to be you."

"Then give me the lead I need to work. When you're in chemo, you need to let go. It's the only way you'll survive, Max, and you know it."

He looked at the Doctor, and put out his hand again. "Thank you again, Dr. Smith. Outstanding job. I'm sorry you're having to hear all of this, and I hope that you understand, that none of it is about you."

The Doctor shook his hand, and said, "No, I can see quite clearly what it's about."

"This isn't over," he said to his colleague, before going back through the door.

"Indeed it isn't," she replied, watching him go.

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