Chapter Two : Doctors Orders

Rose obediently rolled down the waistband of her jeans and bit down hard on her bottom lip, as the Doctor ran the sonic screwdriver across the heart shaped tattoo on the curve of her hip. She tried to think of brown paper parcels tied up with string, whiskers on kittens and... something with mittens, but for the life of her all she could think of was Prigga mites, Mern larve and Chrona worms.

"It's only a tattoo," she said, half to convince herself.

The Doctor looked up. "No Rose, if you'd had this done on Earth is would only be a tattoo. As it is you decided to have it done on Guilmalgorn."

"What's so bad about Guilmalgorn?" Rose asked. "I've seen worse planets, an' the tattooist wasn't so bad. I mean, once you got past the blue teeth and orange hair, he was okay. I had to draw the heart for him though; he didn't know what 'heart shaped' was an'..." her words trailed away as she saw the look on the Doctor's face. He had disapproval down to an art form.

"What's so bad about Guilmalgorn is what they use for the colours of their tattoos."

"Oh," Rose said heavily and stared at the cherry red outline on her hip. "You're gonna say 'not ink', an' then follow it up with something gross, aren't you?"

"Not exactly ink," the Doctor said, looking at the readings on the screen he had Rose hooked up to.

Rose avoided the obvious question and stared at the screen instead, but she couldn't make sense of any of it. She looked to the Doctor's face, but he wasn't giving anything away. She sighed again.

"Well?" she asked. "What does it say?"

"It say's that you're probably okay."

"Probably?"

The Doctor nodded. "At least 93 percent."

"Good," Rose said. "I mean, that's good isn't it?"

"We'll know better in a couple of weeks."

Rose stared at him. There was something he wasn't telling her, she knew it. "What did you mean before... not exactly ink?"

The Doctor smiled as though he had been waiting for the question.

"Guilmals use a mixture of crushed insects -- the harmless types, to provide the intensity and variety of colours that they use in their tattoo inks. The problem is that other less harmless insects come along and lay their eggs inside these eyecatching insects so that the babies have something nice an' tasty to eat when they hatch out. More often than not the eggs survive the ink making process." He let Rose fill in the blanks from there.

Rose pulled a face and looked at the crisp red outline of the heart shape on her hip.

"Just like 'Alien'," she said and then, "Oh my God, I'm John Hurt and you're Sigourney Weaver." She stared up at the Doctor. "Sod 93 percent! Do something!"

"I am doing something," the Doctor said and turned his back for a second. When he faced Rose again he was holding a large syringe of turquoise liquid, he gave a cheery smile. "Antidote."

"I hate needles."

He raised his eyebrows and looked pointedly at the tattoo. "Funny that, you seem to have been fond enough of them on Guilmalgorn." His gaze narrowed. "Oh by the way, I forgot to tell you the best bit about the Chrona worm. Once it's travelled through your bloodstream it heads for the head." He grinned suddenly. "Heads for the head -- geddit? Anyway, once there it burrows into your brain an' eats it."

Rose held out her arm and squeezed her eyes tight shut.

A second later it was done. Rose hadn't felt the injection, just the cool rush of whatever the turquoise antidote was called, flooding into her bloodstream. It had felt like snowflakes falling onto her warm skin and then melting away into nothing. Rose opened her eyes as the Doctor turned away to dispose of the needle.

"Well, that wasn't so bad," she said, looking at her arm.

The Doctor turned to face her and nodded briefly. "S'pose. But next time you decide to do anything like that can you do it on Earth, and make sure there's a certificate on the wall?"

Rose nodded, only half listening. "Yeah, sure. Certificate." She rubbed her arm, which was begining to tingle a bit. More than a bit. Quite a bit. A lot.

"Now all you have to worry about is the side effects," the Doctor said as though it was almost an afterthought.

Rose looked up at him from her arm full of pins and needles. "Side effects?"

"Don't worry. They don't effect everyone, and none are permanent."

"What kind of side effects?" Rose demanded.

The Doctor shrugged. "Could be any number of things. They're a bit like 'Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans'. You never know what you're going to get till you..." he stopped suddenly, aware that Rose was grinning at him.

He shifted from one foot to the other, not wanting to meet her eyes. Rose delighted in teasing him over his bed-time reading. For a second her wide grin of amusement knocked some of the wind out of his sails; then he silently reminded himself that he was 'The Oncoming Storm' -- a force to be reckoned with. He coughed slightly and picked up where he'd left off.

"Sneezing, itching, pins and needles, spots, headaches..."

"Oh," Rose said, still grinning as she jumped down from the examination table. "Well they don't sound too bad -- pretty normal." She shook her arm, hoping to stop the tingling. In fact I have the pins and needles already."

"Warts, hair loss, teeth loss, sudden blindness..."

Openmouthed Rose stared at the Doctor then felt her head swim, as everything in the room suddenly became dark. The Doctor caught her as she fell.

"An' fainting," he added as he swept her up into his arms. "Followed by several hours of unconsciousness."