I rather lost the will to write after watching CoE, till I decided that I was just going to ignore anything and everything that happened. So sorry if it rambles I didn't really have my mind in the game, I'll find my mojo again soon, I'm sure I saw the cat running out the patio door with it. Here kitty kitty.

Ianto sprinted to the door and ripped it open even before the two tone sound of the door bell had died away. Jenny tripped over the door sill as he practically pulled her inside when she didn't move immediately, the fact she was still removing her helmet and couldn't see didn't seem to matter and she snapped a protest.

"Why the hell didn't you come in the SUV?" Shouted Ianto

"Because someone didn't put the keys on the hook labelled SUV, I didn't think you would be too happy if I hot wired it." She pulled the back pack off and Ianto felt his stomach contract, it was Owens old medical bag, the only thing he had ever kept tidy.

"We didn't really do a proper induction." He mumbled, already dragging her back towards the bedroom.

"Well where's the fire?" she asked with a hand on her hip

"It's Jack he started throwing up, he never throws up," he seemed to be reassuring himself "But it's his shoulder, I tried to make him more comfortable, get him to lie down, get him undressed, but his t-shirt." The staccato bursts stopped as he swallowed down some bile. She put a hand on his shoulder just before he entered the bedroom again.

"Don't worry Ianto, 45 years a doctor and hundreds of years as a nurse there isn't much I haven't seen and dealt with, we'll sort it."

He just shook his head. "You've never seen this."

He moved back into the room and immediately went to Jacks side. Jenny followed, she couldn't explain to anyone how it felt in those first few seconds, to her it wasn't Jack sat there on the end of the bed it was a patient, not much more than a slab of meat that needed help, so detached. In the few paces in took to get her in front of him and on her knees so he was at more or less the same height as the hunched figure she could already see the pain, notice some of the more obvious injuries and note the deep level of shock her patient was in.

"Hey Jack, I never thought you would be my first patient." She said gently running her hand down his thigh to check his reactions and catching his wrist to get a pulse. Most of the modern puppies she had recently left behind would be stuffed without all the bleeps and whirrings of the vast array of modern medical equipment. Even in the field you got pocket monitors for this and that these days. She couldn't find a radial pulse and she could see how much problem he was having even breathing, he was leaning sideways, favouring his right arm, the one not cold and loosing sensation due to lack of blood. She brought Ianto in a little closer and gently pulled Jack over to lean on him, placing the near useless arm across his lap.

"Jack." She said sharply felling for his carotid pulse and thankfully finding something weak and thready but there. "Jack, where does it hurt?"

She kept a hand on his knee to reassure him of her presence while she opened the medical kit and one handedly pulled out a few bits of kit.

"Jack, did you hear Jenny, she needs to know where it hurts so she can help you." Said Ianto gently, Jack responded slumping more then tried to take a normal breath but ended up with a shuddering panting instead. Ianto's eyes widened to the size of saucers and he looked panic stricken at her, she smiled something close to reassurance and put a hand on Jacks chest.

"Ok we'll make the questions easier shall we?" She could feel the heat of his fever and the wet slick of sweat through his t-shirt. He gave a single tiny nod and opened his eyes a little, he hadn't been this helpless in so many years, he didn't object to the oxygen mask slipping over his nose and mouth, he normally hated that because it made him feel claustrophobic, but this time the slightly cooler air and the high concentration of oxygen gave him a tiny amount of relief.

"Jack just squeeze my hand if I'm right." She felt a small amount of pressure, she had no idea how she was going to ask some of the questions she needed answers to.

"Are you in pain?" The grip tightened, it was almost a given and a negative would have been more worrying but she had to ask.

"Is the pain mainly in your left shoulder?" squeeze

"Do you hurt anywhere else?" nothing, his unfocused eyes moved to lock onto hers and she caught Ianto's hand moving round his waist to add a comforting hug. She needed to look at that messy shoulder but there was a much more pressing problem before that, the two sides of his chest were moving in opposite directions the left side seemed to be inflating as he breathed out indicating a punctured lung. It seemed that whatever was in his shoulder was in deep but she couldn't get him to lift his head up to get a look.

"Ianto what did you see there?" she asked to try and complete the initial diagnosis.

Ianto swallowed convulsively again and squeezed at Jacks waist

"The bullet wounds from where I shot him this morning." God that seemed a long time ago. "They should have healed, he died, he always goes back to normal after he dies but they kept bleeding. I didn't think when I saw them bleeding I just thought it was normal, I thought perhaps they might be infected, I got an infection once from a bullet, it grazed my knee a couple of degrees more and the bastard would have knee capped me." He stopped seemingly unable to go on then took a deep breath and started again. "I thought he was just tired, that the Chinese was a bit dodgy so I told him to lie down and I wanted to get him comfortable. I took off his boots and then his shirt but I couldn't get him to lift his arms to get the undershirt off. I pulled it by the hem, I wanted him to stop playing up but it wouldn't come off, he screamed, Jack I hurt you I'm so sorry, it wouldn't come up I didn't understand why, I do now." He stopped again, he shuddered as a flash back replayed in his mind. "It wouldn't move because it's embedded in there, the regeneration, the thing that brings him back to life it left the fabric in his flesh."

Jenny closed her eyes and breathed out, ok not much in the teaching manual about this one, nothing ever was at Torchwood. She slotted the information into the bigger picture and placed it behind the most pressing need, he was slowly drowning in his own blood, Priorities.

"Would you like something for the pain?" Stupid question, he nearly broke her fingers.

"Ianto, is he allergic to anything?" she said taking her hand away and ferreting round for a suitable canula

"Tidying up, writing reports and staying on his own side of the bed." He said running a hand gently down Jacks cheek. "I'm afraid he's never been ill before, never thought to ask." There was still too much he didn't know, he could feel he slight shake of his lovers head against his collar bone and he let Jenny know. She opened the sterile packet and threw it back in the bag, Owen would have made sure it didn't fall in the bag he thought irrationally, she took Jacks hand and flexed it in order to find a half decent vein that hadn't collapsed with the fluid loss. Jack pulled his hand back,

"Don't tell me the brave Captain Jack Harkness is afraid of a little scratch." She said taking the needle away from his vision for a moment, a trick she had from her experience of dealing with screaming kids. He lifted his hand up to remove the mask and Ianto went to stop him but Jenny lifted her own hand to help.

"Don't let me die, again" he managed with some difficulty.

Ianto pulled the mask back over his face and looked at Jenny.

"Before he got this bad he told me that when he" Ianto swallowed trying not to say the D word, it still caused him problems even though Jack took it in his stride, he missed out the end of the sentence and took a different tack. "If it happens too often his body seems to take short cuts and doesn't reject foreign objects but tries to incorporate them."

Jenny looked down at the plastic and metal canula in her hand, no wonder he had pulled away having that fixed under your skin as you body re-grew round it had to be painful.

"If anything happens I'll whip it out, but nothing is going to happen with me on the case, super doc."

Ianto squeezed Jack again, he wasn't going to tell her she was right the first time too, he was great at ordering everyone else to have blood tests but he just pulled rank whenever the flu jab came round. She took Jacks hand again and he didn't resist as she flicked the plastic cover from the wide bore needle, he did hiss as it went in though, it was like all his senses were heightened and he didn't like it.

She drew a milky liquid from a small glass bottle and pushed the liquid into the port, Jack could feel it burning the vein as it moved up his arm but within seconds it started to take blessed effect. The world started to move away from him and the pain became like something on the edge of a bubble in a strange way it reminded him what it was to be human. He felt his body moving a bit like the movement of a water bed and he realised Ianto was moving away, the veil lifted slightly and groped into space to try and stop him, but another hand gently caught him and made some soothing noises while trying to prod and poke at his shoulder. He pulled away again like a small child and felt the hot rivers of tears flowing down his cheeks, he wished he had his trusty Webley, even though he knew it would only make it worse. He hadn't felt as sorry for himself in a very long time.

Ianto ran back into the bedroom with the standard lamp from the living room, an armful of clean towels a roll of black plastic bin bags.

"What am I doing with these?" he asked as Jack eyed him with suspicion.

She handed him the IV bag which he smiled goofily at as he hung it on the light fitting,

"I thought you might like to keep the blood off the mattress, couple of the bags on the top sheet, towels on top."

"Ah clever but I could cope with messy sheets you know." He said defending his reputation as a neat freak.

"I'm sure Jack would be more comfortable later on when there isn't a soggy patch underneath him, makes it easier to move the patient too."

"Where the hell do you learn something like that?" Asked Ianto busily tearing sacks from the roll.

"District Nurse in the twenties, people preferred to stay at home, hospitals were where you went to die in those days. Used kitchen tables, billiard tables, it was oil cloth of course not plastic bags and smell of carbolic still has the ability to make me wretch."

Jack felt himself being lifted gently back till he was nearly flat, it didn't help the pain any, Ianto swam into his vision and he could see his lips moving but the sound of buzzing drowned all the noise out. It took him a second or two to realise the sound were his own screams.

"Prepare to be wowed by medical magic boys." She said pushing up the offending T-shirt slightly and rubbing some iodine on Jacks chest, she winked at Ianto and he saw the size of the needle she had in her hand, he talked louder to keep his attention it would just freak him out. She pushed the needle in, Ianto heard the sucking sound, and then turned the tap on the top of it and the sound was not dissimilar to a bottle of fizzy pop opening. Jack took a deeper breath and the subconscious part of his brain realised there was less resistance so forced him into pulling a deep and wheezing gasp reminding Ianto of one or two of his noisier resurrections. The colour started to flood back to his face and he immediately struggled to sit up until the pain in his shoulder caught up with him and he crashed back into the mattress.

"Told you it was magic not a miracle cure and as we all know magic is just slight of hand, don't push it."

She turned back to the bag and started looking for something. Jacks eyes were wildly darting across his chest and then to Ianto face and back again, he pushed the mask up before Ianto could stop him

"What are you just leaving it there?" He snapped.

She turned back with a pair of fabric scissors in her hand, she had taken a quick look at the offending shoulder but it was difficult to really to get a good idea what was going on.

"Normally for a few hours Jack, but with you I've no idea, if it starts to get difficult again or you can feel things returning when we don't want them too I can release a little more air or take it out altogether." She went back to the task in hand, she preferred it went patients were just that, docile, quiet and above all unquestioning.

"Not fond of this t-shirt are you?" she said slicing through the cloth in fluid motion up the middle, Jacks head kept swivelling round like something off the exorcist.

"Jesus Jack will you just play dead for one minute please." Ianto gently gripped Jacks cheek and turned his face to look at him as Jenny started to poke around.

The adrenalin rush was starting to wear off and Jack quietened down again, going from righteous and loud squeals when she started pulling at the fabric merging into his skin to a slight whimper as she got Ianto to hold him on his side as she poked the long nosed tweezers into the exit wound and fabric mix on his back. Finally she stood up and took a pensive stare at the ceiling, Ianto noticed irrationally that she wasn't wearing any gloves as she drummed her fingers on her own throat while she thought.

"How you feeling Jack?" she asked to break the silence.

"Had better days, what's the diagnosis Doc?"

She fiddled with the IV feed, stared at the wall for a few seconds more, then looked round the room. She wanted somewhere to sit, it was irrational but she needed to sit down, but it was a mans room and they had no need of a dressing table. She finally decided to screw professional etiquette and carefully sat on the edge of the bed. She looked obliquely at the wall, she couldn't look at Jack, in truth what she had seen freaked her out.

"It goes something like this." She said still trying to form the words into a coherent sentence. "Ianto was right, the fabric of your undershirt does seem to have become embedded into your shoulder. Right through every part of the tissue, skin, muscle, if I pull on one side the other side moves too."

Ianto was slowly going from pink through white and onto green, but he steadfastly held Jacks hand.

"I think it might also have caught the top of your lung which caused the collapse."

"So if you don't take it out the lung will just keep collapsing?" asked Ianto quietly.

"I guess so." She said taking a deep breath "Without some serious imaging equipment I don't know one hundred percent, it could be from the original injury."

"There's a scanner in the Hub, lots more equipment we could get Jack there and see."

"I don't think Jack is in a fit state to be moved, it seems like he has a raging infection, massive fluid loss and I gave him enough morphine to stop an Ox but he is still in a lot of pain. Even with the SUV we couldn't get him back to the Hub without sending him into shock and in all likelihood killing him, compounding the problem."

"You know the bedside manner could do with a little work." Said Ianto quietly, "What are you going to do?"

"We should call an ambulance, stabilise the patient, get him straight to an operating theatre and with a team of around 15 to 20 highly trained people spend round 15 hours carefully dissecting each fibre and then a round the clock team of nurses to look after him in ITU for three days."

"What do you mean should?" asked Ianto quietly

"It's too dangerous to get anyone else involved." She brushed a stray hair from Jacks head. Ianto looked directly at her, she felt really uncomfortable stating the obvious truth even though they all knew it.

"He deserves the same treatment as everyone else." The voice was dangerously low.

Jack reached up a hand to lay on Iantos arm.

"She's right." He said wearily

"I could call Martha, we could retcon the hospital staff, there has to be something." Said Ianto petulantly

"Martha's in New York." Said Jack

"We can't retcon a whole hospital." She pulled her hand across her eyes in tiredness.

"You have to do something."

"I trust you." Said Jack with increasing difficulty.

Jenny huffed out a breath, in her heart she know there was only one option, but it wasn't an easy one. She took a second or two to think.

"Can you do it?" asked Ianto

"It won't be easy and I'm going need your help." She moved her gaze from Ianto, who nodded slightly to Jack and looked directly into his bloodshot eyes. "I can't promise you what will happen, I don't think there is a precedent for half man - half t-shirt." She took his hand "You will have to be awake, I can't control an anaesthetic by myself but I can try to block the nerve but without imaging equipment I can't guarantee the result. The room isn't the best environment, it isn't exactly sterile and the bed moves a little too much, I'll need to get some extra equipment so you will have to wait another hour or so but I am willing to try my best, it's up to you." She couldn't look at either of them, she was offering Hobsons choice. Damned if she did…

"Just do what you can." Said Jack looking directly at her "I trust you"

"Owen left some equipment here, we couldn't use the Hub once and he'd been shot, he had to go to A&E so he dotted stuff around in our houses." Jenny just raised an eyebrow, that would have been useful information an hour ago. Ianto rose, he kissed Jack lightly on the forehead and ghosted out of the room, truth be known he had forgotten about the sliver case in his spare room. Hadn't really mattered in the last few months as they had no doctor to use it, both he and Gwen had ended up in St Helens for a knock to the head they had been taught to deal with the more minor bites, cuts, scratches and burns they did themselves. Thank god they had listened to Owens post hangover lectures on sutures and various injectable substances.

As he came back down the hall he could hear Jenny's voice raised ever so slightly. As he kicked the door open gently the conversation stopped and she looked round with a fleeting guiltily look. She opened the case and found it had everything she needed, Owen had planned for an apocalypse, pity he couldn't plan to save himself, Death by Torchwood.

"I'm going to clean myself up, couple of minutes Ianto." She said looking back at the pair, she might well have said nothing they were so engrossed in each other, she hoped Ianto left the coffee somewhere obvious – this was going to be a long night.