Chapter 9

The Doctor was weak and tired.

As he leaned heavily on Clara and she led him over to the Tardis, he paused as his hand pressed against the door of the only place in the universe he truly thought of as home.

"We have to do this," she reminded him, "Toby said he's come up with something -"

"And I'm probably wasting my time," the Doctor replied, "What could be so special or remarkable that he's found it so quickly and he wants to put me through more treatment? I don't think I can stand up to it."

"But we have to try, he said you'll understand when he explains."

He looked into Clara's eyes, and the hope he saw shining there was all the incentive he needed to ignore the pain and weakness and push on with his journey.

They went inside the Tardis and the Doctor closed the door, then as he walked wearily over to the console, he paused to lean on it, listened to the familiar hum of the place and suddenly the walls that surrounded him felt like the sweetest of embraces.

"I thought the last time I'd see this place was at the end," he said, "And now I feel that end might be closer than I thought – this standing up and walking thing, it's not working for me. I feel like I'm about to pass out. I want to go to bed and stay there – here, I mean, here in the Tardis. And I want you to hold me in your arms."

Clara looked at him. She saw how pale and tired he seemed all of a sudden despite the meds, as if the life was draining from him, and now the look of hope that had shone in her eyes was replaced by one of defiance.

"You're not giving up yet!" she told him, and he gave a sigh and set the destination, and as he weakly reached for a lever, she grasped it too, they threw it together, and the Tardis took flight on a very short journey.


The Tardis materialised on board the ship, and as the sound of the engines faded out, the Doctor paused again at the console, looked around the room and thought of every journey he had ever travelled, concluding this short flight because he was too weak to walk would most likely be his last. And then, leaning on Clara for support, they left the Tardis and stepped out into the corridor of the medical ship.

As Toby met them in the corridor, he looked to the Doctor and then to Clara, knowing this mix of good and bad news would not be exactly what the Doctor wanted to hear:

Yes, there was a cure, but the price would be total honesty with Clara over a matter he did not want to discuss with her, possibly, he had intended never to tell her about it...and now, he had no choice...

"Come with me," Toby said, "I need to explain everything," and he led the Doctor and Clara in the direction of his office.


When they entered the office, Maria was present, which struck Clara as unusual because she had never seen the professor's partner take an interest in his work before...

Maria looked at her and noticed the expression in her eyes and seemed to read her mind.

"I'm just here to help out if I'm needed," she said.

Clara frowned.

"But you're a pilot..."

"Please sit down," Toby said, and the Doctor took a seat beside Clara, then he reached over and grasped her hand as he waited to hear the news.

"I'm feeling lousy. More than that, I don't think I have much time to sit around talking about maybes, so please make this brief. I've already decided I won't be dying here, Toby. I'm going back to the Tardis with Clara, I can't waste time on remote possibilities that could kill me anyway."

"No this isn't a possibility," he said to him, "This is a definite cure. I've identified the problem. The scanner couldn't work it out because you're alien and all it has to go on is its vast archive of human tissue disorders. But I know what's wrong now and I can cure it, there's no doubt about it."

Clara stared at him.

The Doctor was staring too, as if he was almost afraid to believe all he had just heard.

"It...it's a cure?" he said.

"Yes it is, I've run a simulation and included the changes to cover your alien DNA and it came out one hundred percent effective. A complete cure."

"What's wrong with me?" the Doctor asked.

"Well I know nothing about your race, Doctor – but based on what you told me, I'd say, when the regeneration occurred it was rapid and incomplete, hence the reason the kidneys were replaced last of all. And because the dying body was aged and the immune system was low, the old kidneys that remained for a split second before the replacement kicked in carried in a virus – which then mutated as it got caught in the regeneration process."

Clara's hand tightened in the Doctor's grip.

"You really can cure him?"

He hesitated, looking to Clara and then to the Doctor.

"If I told you super charged white blood cells from a donor whose immune system is currently ready to kick ass for the whole of the galaxy can wipe it out in a simple transfusion, what would you say?"

The Doctor's eyes widened in surprise, and then took on a shade of alarm.

He looked to Clara, and again she felt a strange prickle of suspicion:

She had been missing something all the long, of course she had, because now she saw it in the Doctor's eyes – he had been keeping a secret from her...

"Doctor?" she said, "What's this about? What am I not being told?"

And the look in his eyes changed to one of utter panic.

"I can't do this today," he said quickly, and struggled to get up from his seat, "I need some time -"

"You don't have any time left!" Clara told him, now she was up too, grabbing his arm as he swayed on his feet.

"I can't do this now. I need time alone with you, at home, I need to talk to you, I need to explain!"

"Say it now, get it over with, you need this treatment, your life depends on it!"

He blinked away tears and spoke apologetically as he replied.

"And you are my life and I don't want to risk losing you, I need to talk to you but not now, not here -"

"You need the transfusion now!"

"I can wait."

"Doctor!"

He pushed away her hand on his arm, swayed again and turned for the door.

"I can't do this right now," he said weakly.

Clara looked back at Toby.

"Stop him!"

"I can't," he said, "It has to be his decision."

"What is going on?" Clara demanded, and she stepped forward to make a grab for the Doctor's sleeve was he opened the door.

"Wait!"

The Doctor looked back at her. All trace of colour had drained from his face now.

"I'm so sorry I didn't tell you," he said, and then he slumped to the floor in a dead faint.


What followed was a frightening five minutes as Toby checked the Doctor's pulse and breathing, while Clara stood there watching and feeling powerless.

"He's weak, he's just passed out again," Toby said, and then as he looked up at her, he asked a question:

"It's your call now. He needs the transfusion, he won't last without it. Are you willing to make the choice for him?"

Clara nodded without hesitation.

"Take my blood, do what you have to do," she said as she looked down at the Doctor, who was still unconscious, "And once he's being treated and I know he's on the mend I want a full explanation, I don't care if its from you, or her -" she glanced to Maria, "But I deserve to know the truth. I want to know exactly what he's been hiding from me."

"Of course," Toby said, "You deserve that much. I would have preferred it to come from him, the Doctor made me promise I wouldn't say anything about it – but I will tell you everything, as soon as I've treated him."

And then between the three of them, they lifted the Doctor from the floor and took him through to the treatment room.

Clara did not care about another needle in her arm, the pain of it was the last thing on her mind as she gave the blood that would save the Doctor's life.

But she kept thinking and wondering:

What could be so terrible that he had almost turned his back on life saving treatment to avoid telling her about it?

What the hell was he hiding?

The more she thought about it, the more it began to dawn on her that she had perhaps missed a great deal that she ought to have picked up on, but it had been brushed aside, because her concerns had been entirely for the Doctor.

Something was apparent now, but she still couldn't figure it out.

There was something glaringly obvious she should have seen right from the start, something he should have told her. The pieces of the puzzle were not quite in place yet, but they soon would be...


Less than an hour after she had given blood, she watched as a machine worked to separate the cells and prepare the fluids for transfusion.

Maria was still hanging around the treatment room...keeping an eye on her? Did she perhaps think she might fly into a rage when Toby explained the truth?

Clara did not know what to think, but she held back from asking just a short while longer as she watched Toby connect the IV line and the Doctor's transfusion began as he lay unconscious on the bed.

Clara looked on and said a silent prayer for her Time Lord lover, and then she stepped away from the bed and looked Toby in the eye.

"Tell me what's going on!"

Toby glanced back at the Doctor.

"Not here, not right now – I need to watch him, he's going to be waking soon."

"Clara," Maria said, "Come through to the office with me."

"Maybe you should wait," Toby said, "Maybe the Doctor should tell her -"

"She needs to know!" Maria said to him, "I'll handle this."

Clara looked at her doubtfully.

"Don't assume you can handle anything until I know what the secret is!" she exclaimed, "I've had enough of being kept in the dark!"

"Just come through to the office with me," Maria said again, "I'll tell you everything, Clara."

And Clara glanced back at the Doctor, saw he was breathing easily, noticed some colour was returning to his face, and she felt a wave of relief pass through her, she could see it now, the treatment was working. Knowing that was enough for now, and she turned away and followed Maria from the room, keen to discover exactly what the Doctor had been so afraid to tell her.


As Maria closed the office door, Clara looked hard at her.

"Come on, then, out with it! What's such a big secret that the Doctor was afraid to tell me?"

"Clara, sit down with me, it's going to take some explaining -"

Anger flashed in Clara's eyes.

"No, you owe me the truth!"

Maria went over to a sofa at the back f the room and sat down.

"Please, just sit for a minute?"

Clara gave a sigh of impatience and went over to the sofa and joined her, sitting heavily as she looked at her with a frosty expression.

"I want the truth."

Maria hesitated, then as she spoke again, Clara's expression changed to one of confusion:

"We didn't bring the ship down because of a programming fault," she said, "The Doctor picked up on us passing in the time stream and we responded to his SOS. The Tardis signal was much stronger than our systems can handle and it knocked out our guidance, that's why we had to land when we did."

Clara stared at her.

"But he said -"

"He kept a great deal back from you, he did it because he loves you."

Clara's eyes clouded with confusion."I keep hearing this. It's like a broken record, Toby said it, you said, he loves me, its because he loves me, you'd do the same if it was you or Toby...I still don't understand."

Maria paused again before speaking.

"The Doctor had asked the Tardis to run a scan to try and identify the source of his pain. All it could come up with was a regeneration complication, causing a form of cell mutation that was life threatening. But the Tardis didn't just scan the Doctor. It scanned the whole ship – and also scanned you."

"Me? What have I got to do with this? I still don't get that part."

"This is going to come as a shock," Maria said to her, "I'm trying to explain to you carefully -"

"I've watched the Doctor fight for his life, I've had to think about life without him, about losing him, don't tell me anything could be worse than that! Just tell me the truth, it's all I'm asking."

Maria paused for thought again.

"Clara, there's no easy way to tell you this. When the Tardis ran the scan the Doctor didn't just find out he had the regeneration complication. He found out you were in the early stages of developing Leukaemia."

Clara drew in a shocked breath as she stared at her in disbelief.

"No, that can't be right, I felt okay -"

"Because it was in the early stages," Maria replied, and then she continued: "He scanned the time stream and found our ship, knowing it was from the future and could wipe out the cancer with a series of injections, he sent us an SOS. He always knew there was little chance that a human centred medical ship could treat a Time Lord with a regeneration complication, but your survival was never in doubt."

Clara's face had paled.

"I was seriously ill and he didn't tell me? How could he keep that from me?"

"He had a choice to make," Maria told her, "Between searching for help for himself, or getting you treated and then relying on human treatment methods to cure his own problem because he was out of time. He chose your life over his own. He wanted you to live no matter what happened to him. He almost lost his life over it, too. He would have died if Toby hadn't remembered the treatment you've received has left your immune system supercharged for a short time – meaning it can wipe out just about any threat, including his cell mutations."

She shook her head.

"No, he couldn't have kept that from me – I could have died, and he didn't tell me?"

"Your life was never in danger, Clara! Where we come from a simple course of injections can wipe out cancer! He would have told you afterwards, he probably would have told you very soon, he just didn't want you to know until it was over. He didn't want you to be frightened."

The news was sinking in.

Clara felt as if the shock of it had knocked the air from her lungs:

She had been handed a death sentence, and the Doctor had taken it away, he had found a cure for her...

She could have died?

Would she have died if he had not intervened?

She wanted to be angry with him for keeping so much back.

But the more she thought about it, everything made sense – how he had shed tears over her taking the shots, how he had been anxious she did not miss a single injection, even when he was too ill to get out of bed, his only thought had been for her...

The shock had hit her properly now:

She had been ill, and the Doctor had been forced to choose between a definite cure for her and a doubtful one for himself, ensuring her survival while considerably decreasing his own odds of making it...

Her eyes were blurring with tears as she started to shake.

"It's okay," Maria said gently, "You're fine now, you're cured. And the Doctor is going to get better too, thanks to your white blood cells. It's all going to be okay," and as Clara gave a sob, she drew her into a comforting embrace and held her as she wept.