Chapter Seven
"Gave you the good silver, did she?" the Doctor croaked as Wilfred poked the juice box straw through the little white bit then held it to his mouth. "Old Girl, can you… can you get rid of the mess? I don't want Wilfred to slip…"
The library candles dimmed, their flames popping into near-darkness for a half-second. Then when the light returned, the fluid and all the stains on the rug were gone.
"Ah, thank you, TARDIS love, you good old thing! I'm really grateful, I am! I am. Our boys here, they need us, really need us now." Wilfred murmured out loud, then reached to rub the armchair the Doctor had left vacant.
The lights blinked again, flickers on the wall in answer, like unseen seabirds coasting off a cliff before they dive.
Clink, clink.
Bumpp-slip.
Rolllll.
A sleek gurney rolls in, sidles up to the Doctor then collapses quickly, like a windfall from nowhere.
"That would be the TARDIS," says the Doctor as he eases himself onto the gurney with Wilfred's supporting arm behind him.
Then the gurney rises up again and rolls alongside Wilfred down the hall.
As they passed the still-unconscious Other, the Doctor flopped a hand down and thwacked him on the head, saying, "Oi, you there! Wakey-wakey! We're off to see Toy Canoe Land."
"Oh, you two! Be nice!" said Wilfred, ruffling the Doctor's hair.
Then the Other woke up to the sound of the gurney wheeling by, and wobbled after them into Medical.
By the time he had managed the door, the Doctor was already writhing slowly on one of the empty beds, moaning in his sleep.
"The scanner-thing… it gave my poor boy a sedative methinks, eh son?" the old man ventured, worry having long since crept up behind his wrinkles and taken root.
The Other sighed, then heaved himself up onto another of the beds and settled his daughter in the well-padded small-humanoid stasis crate that had popped out of the side of the bed. It slid in with her, leaving him alone with the slow-roasting Time Lord and the elderly human. He smiled at both of them, then pulled back the covers on his own bed and slid his naked feet in.
