A blaring horn deafened him. It pierced his ears, reverberating around his head. He looked up, but he was frozen; a rabbit caught in the headlights.

Two bright yellow eyes glared as they bore down upon him. Closer and closer, closing the dark chasm between them, seconds away from impact. The thing roared at him again, but there was nothing he could do to move out of its path.

Whatever it was took him, and turned his world to darkness.

"Charlie!" a voice was yelling. "Charlie, stay with me!"

Charlie struggled to concentrate. He wasn't sure where he was. His brain was being pulled from world to world, unravelling in an attempt to string everything together.

He recognised the voice. A Scottish accent laced with concern, and more than a little frustration.

He was moving somewhere. He could hear people running, shouting. Charlie was lying down. In a bed, or on a table.

When he finally gathered the strength, he opened his eyes. The Doctor was standing over him – running alongside him.

Charlie looked around at the corridor racing past. The strip lights flashed overhead, leaving halogen trails as they zoomed across the sky like shooting stars.

He tried to sit up, but the Doctor pushed him back into the bed.

"I need you to stay calm, Charlie," the Doctor was saying.

That didn't help. Charlie immediately began to panic.

His senses threatened to overwhelm him. The beeping of equipment, the humming of air conditioning units, running footsteps and urgent voices. Phones ringing. People coughing. Sneezing. Talking.

Every noise was amplified tenfold. It was deafening.

Charlie gulped down a few short breaths, trying to stay in control. But he was drowning in the noise.

They turned a corner, and Charlie was being wheeled down another sterile white corridor. He was in a hospital.

For a moment, he caught sight of another familiar face. It was the woman. The woman in purple. She was holding a smartphone, her fingers poised over the screen as she watched him. Her eyes flickered momentarily towards him, before she turned away.

"Wait!" Charlie tried to cry out. "Doctor, wait!"

"Shh!" the Doctor urged him. "It's okay. You'll be okay, I promise."

Charlie looked at him – waiting a moment for his face to stop being blurry. The Doctor was wearing a white coat, for some reason. It looked a bit odd on him. No, the darker colours definitely suited him better. And there was a stethoscope hung around his neck. What did he need that for? Couldn't the sonic screwdriver do the same things?

"Doctor? What's happening?" he asked.

Another man was asking questions. The Doctor waved him away, and immediately turned his attention to Charlie.

"Don't worry about it. Try to stay calm."

"How did we get out?" Charlie urged him.

The Doctor's eyebrows twisted into a frown.

"Excuse me?"

"How did we get out of the temple?"

The Doctor bit his lip, and shared a worried glance with the woman running along on the other side of Charlie's bed.

Charlie couldn't quite fathom the Doctor's expression. Why didn't he just explain what happened?

"It's worse than I thought," the Doctor muttered.

The woman with the blonde hair tied up into a bun started speaking to him, very slowly and calmly. Frankly, it was rather patronising. "Charlie, I'm not sure if you understand. You've been involved in an accident."

Charlie stared blankly at her.

He turned back to the Doctor instead.

"What's going on?" he repeated.

"We're taking you to the operating theatre," the Doctor explained. "It really would be best if you stayed calm, and… stopped talking."

Charlie shook his head and tried to protest.

"Hush, Charlie."

He was pushed through a set of double doors, into a slightly darker room. When the doors closed behind the trio of people racing behind him, the corridor noise subsided.

He looked around. Sharp, metal instruments on a trolley. Medical equipment. Computers, huge white boxes of indeterminate usage. This must be the operating theatre.

Why was he in an operating theatre?

He looked down. There was blood everywhere – all over his arms, his shirt, his jeans.

Oh.

His heart sank.

Oh, hell.

"Brave heart, Charlie," the Doctor was saying, as someone helped him into a green surgical gown.

"Doctor…?" Charlie uttered again.

The Doctor looked over, and gestured towards one of the staff. "Get him sedated."

"Yes, Doctor Foreman," the blonde woman responded.

Charlie looked between them in confusion. "Wait, what? Doctor who?"

The woman grabbed his arm. Charlie resisted furiously as a needle sliced through his skin.

"No… no, no, please…" Charlie uttered.

Venom surged through his veins. Within moments, his vision was hazy. He could feel his life force ebbing away.

Doctor who…?

The room fell apart. The blonde woman and the Doctor seemed to grow impossibly tall, drifting further away, yet closer at the same time.

"Doctor?!" Charlie's voice wasn't his. It belonged to someone else, and he could hear them speaking his words at him.

Now the bed had fallen away, and his body was suspended in zero-gravity, tangled in the white, sweat-soaked sheets.

Among the parcels of brown paper packaging suspended in the air, each tied up with white thread - and occasionally bursting with a fierce pop - the Doctor was leaning towards him, hushing him; a sound which turned into crashing waves.

The white foam horses splashed over his face, whilst the doctors and nurses danced around him; performing some kind of tribal ritual.

A switch flicked on, and the normal service of gravity was resumed. He rushed back towards his bed, and collapsed into the whirling depths his pillow; into the darkness…

The dark place of the inside. Where nothing made sense, but nothing mattered. It wasn't real, but it wasn't a dream, either.

Nothing really existed – certainly not colours. Only emotion. Fear. Fear of the end. Fear of the cold, and the dark. Yet it was so warm here, like he had just returned home.