"Sarah!"

She had never heard a tone like that in the Doctor's voice before, and hearing it now, it nearly took her knees out from under her.

"Doctor!" she said, running to him.

"TARDIS! Now!" he gasped.

"Doctor, are you hurt? Better..."

"Sarah, please," he begged. "TARDIS. Now!"

She ducked under his right arm, which was flailing madly out to his side, and tried to reason with him. "Doctor..." He turned wild, wide, unfocussed eyes on her. Even in the shadows she could see the chaos that had overtaken him, reflected in those deep brown pools. "TARDIS. Right," she said, grabbing his arm, draping it over her shoulders, wrapping her other arm around his slim waist, and taking off toward May's, the Doctor stumbling beside her.

She would never forget that run. Half guiding, half carrying the Doctor, keeping him from running them both into walls, trying to keep up with him when he found his legs for a few sure and swift strides, helping him up when he lost his footing and went to his knees, his gasping breath in her ears, panic in her heart. Her own breath coming in gasps before they were halfway there. His repeated whispered pleas of "Sarah!" and "TARDIS!" that wrenched her heart. "I've got you," she whispered back. "I'll get you to her. Trust me."

She thanked God that, in their nocturnal ramblings, she had learned her way around Denver well enough to be able to take him straight back to May's. They lurched up the walk together, through the door, down the hall, both of them gasping for breath so loudly that she couldn't believe they hadn't wakened the whole house. She tried the door. It didn't open. "Oh, please," she thought desperately. "He needs you."

The door popped open as if the TARDIS had heard her. She guided the Doctor into the room, then opened the TARDIS doors and with the last of her strength, helped him through.

He collapsed at the bottom of the ramp, rolling over on his back and breathing hard, one knee up, his left arm draped across his abdomen, his right thrown carelessly up and out on the ramp. Sarah made it a few steps further up the ramp before she grabbed the railing and sank to her knees, gasping for breath. Suddenly, she heard her name and felt strong arms around her.

"Sarah," Harry said, his voice full of fear. "What...."

"I'm fine," she gasped. "Out of breath. The Doctor...." She nodded toward the Time Lord, still sprawled at the base of the ramp.

Harry gave her a close look. She nodded again, trying to reassure him wordlessly. He tore himself away from her, headed down the ramp and knelt next to the Doctor. He quickly started unbuckling the Doctor's belt.

"Wha..what are you doing?" the Doctor gasped, lifting his shoulders off the ramp and peering down at Harry.

"Making like a doctor," Harry answered. He looked into the Doctor's uncomprehending eyes, then picked up the hand that lay on his abdomen and held it in front of his face.

It was covered with blood.

The Doctor looked at his own hand with astonished eyes. He put his hand on his abdomen again, and again brought it up in front of his face. Fresh blood. He blinked at it in amazement.

Harry had pulled the Doctor's shirt tail out and was examining the wound. He looked up to see the Doctor's surprise at the sight of his own blood. "You didn't know you'd been shot?" he asked, incredulous.

The Doctor shook his head. Then he reached out, grabbed the railing, and lurched to his feet.

"Doctor!" Harry cried. "Lie still. You're going to make it worse."

The Doctor shook his head and started up the ramp.

"At least let me stop the bleeding first," Harry said.

The Doctor shook his head again. "Infirmary," he said, his breath still coming in gasps.

He strode quickly up the ramp and through the coral arch that led off the console room, Harry on his heels. Sarah took a second to close the room door, then returned to the TARDIS and closed the doors behind her as she headed up the ramp after her friends.

She caught up with the Doctor and Harry in the infirmary. The Doctor was leaning against what appeared to be a cross between a dentist's chair and a doctor's examining table, his body at a forty-five degree angle to the floor, looking like he was in the process of doing a push-up. Harry was hovering. He threw her an exasperated look as she came in, then turned back to the Doctor.

"Doctor. Lie down. Let me see if the bullet went all the way through."

The Doctor shook his head. "Didn't," he said. Then his muscles tensed and his whole body strained for a few seconds.

"Then lie down and let me take it out."

The Doctor's body relaxed and he took a few breaths, then shook his head again. "Just give me a minute," he said, and his body tightened again and strained.

Sarah and Harry exchanged baffled and worried looks, but stood back and didn't say anything else.

The Doctor relaxed again, and blew out several breaths. Then his body tightened again, and he strained, teeth clenched, eyes screwed up tightly. This time, he brought his hand up to the wound, and a second later, a bloody bullet plopped out into his hand. His shoulders sagged, his head dropped, and he closed his eyes.

Harry reached out and took the lead slug from him. He looked at it and shook his head. "Damn," he said. "First time I ever had a patient do that."

The Doctor opened his eyes, straightened up, and turned. He slid into the chair, which smoothly and silently flattened itself until he was lying down. "Harry," he said, his voice rough.

"Oh. Something I can do," Harry said.

The Doctor gave him a weak grin and nodded. "That cupboard." He pointed. "There's a bottle. Violet. Not much left in it."

Harry opened the cupboard, rummaged a bit, then held up a likely suspect. "This one?"

The Doctor nodded. "Put one drop. Just one drop. Right in the wound."

Harry opened the bottle, finding a dropper inside, and did as the Doctor asked.

The effect was immediate. The Doctor visibly relaxed, closed his eyes, and blew out a long breath. "Thank you," he said, his voice his own again. "Now. Look in the cabinet again. You'll see a jar with patches in it."

"Patches?" Harry asked as he rummaged again. He held up a jar and gave it a little shake. "These things?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yeah. Pick one big enough to cover the wound with at least half an inch extra all around."

Harry sorted through the patches, pulled one out, and measured it against the wound, which had stopped bleeding after the one drop of medicine was applied. "Now what?" he asked.

"Just put it on," the Doctor said.

"With what?" Harry asked. "What makes it stick?"

"It grows into the skin," the Doctor said. Harry looked dubious, but applied the patch over the wound as directed. Within ten seconds, it had merged with the skin around the wound, leaving no visible trace of injury.

"Amazing." Harry said. "Would these work on humans?"

"Those particular ones most likely wouldn't," the Doctor said. "Could probably come up with some that would."

"What about infection?" Harry asked. "How does the wound drain?"

"Doesn't need to. That drop you put in. Antihaemorrhagic. Antiseptic. Anti-inflammatory. Antibiotic. Tissue regeneration stimulator. And analgesic."

"All in one?" Harry pooched out his bottom lip appreciatively.

The Doctor nodded. "And that's all I have left. So please be careful with it."

"You can't get more?" Harry asked.

He shook his head. "It's from Gallifrey. I've tried to formulate a substitute, but some ingredients can't be found anywhere else."

Harry very carefully replaced the lid of the violet jar and put it back in the cupboard, along with the patches.

Just then, they all heard the sound of knocking on a door.

Harry and Sarah exchanged glances. "I'll see who it is," Harry said. "You stay with him."

Sarah nodded gratefully. "Thanks, Harry."

"And I'm checking you over when I get back, miss," he said emphatically as he turned to leave the infirmary. "No arguments."

"What's he talking about? Are you alright, Sarah?" The Doctor asked, looking up at her, brown eyes full of concern.

"I'm fine. He's just a worrier."

"You sure?" She nodded. The Doctor raised his hand in her direction, and she took it in hers. He closed his eyes and pressed the back of her hand to his cheek for a moment. "Thank you..." he started, then laughed softly. He shook his head. "Thank you doesn't even begin to cover it, Sarah," he said. "I'd never have made it back here on my own."

"What exactly happened out there?" she asked.

"The time slip happened," he said with a sigh. "And me right in the middle of it." He blew out his cheeks. "Felt like I was being ripped to shreds."

"You really didn't know you'd been shot?" Sarah asked, still amazed.

He shook his head. "Would you notice a mosquito bite if someone was pouring boiling oil over you?"

"It was that bad?" she asked, looking at him with concern.

He closed his eyes and nodded, then opened them and looked up at her. "Remember what it did to me three weeks out?" She nodded. "That was a walk in the park." His eyes reflected his frustration. "I knew it would be bad. But I thought I'd get enough warning. And I thought I could hold it together long enough to push the button and seal the split." He sighed. "Didn't anticipate being so thoroughly distracted when it happened."

"Should Harry or I go look for your machine?" she asked. "Can you still use it to fix the slip?"

He shook his head. "Not now. It's gone too far. Best we can hope for at this point is to fix what it did to Groucho."

"But you did that. You saved him."

He shook his head again. "He still was robbed. At gunpoint. Terrified. Violated. If that was the event that changed him, then my barging in and getting myself shot didn't fix it. Could even have made it worse."

"How?"

A muscle jumped in the Doctor's jaw as he looked bleakly off into the middle distance. "He saw me. He recognized me. So now he thinks someone he knows and likes got hurt because of him." He paused a moment, then continued. "Guilt can eat away at you worse than fear."

She stroked his forehead gently. "Yes, it can," she agreed. Their eyes met for a moment, then he looked away. His eyes drifted closed. "You'd better get some sleep," she said. "Heal yourself. We can deal with the rest tomorrow."

He nodded. She watched him compose himself, saw him take several deep slow breaths, felt the muscles in his hand relax. She placed it by his side and let go, not wanting to distract him. She waited until she was sure he was asleep, then started to quietly leave.

His eyes popped open. "I thought you were asleep," she said, turning back to him.

He shook his head, frustration in his eyes. "My nerves are still too jangled. Can't get where I need to go."

"Can I help?" she asked.

"I don't know how," he said, but then looked at her thoughtfully. "Maybe...Sarah, do you remember the Venusian aikido I taught you?"

"Sure." She nodded. "I use it as my meditation. Always have."

"Really?" he said, sounding both pleased and hopeful.

She nodded again, more emphatically this time. "What do you want me to do?"

"Well, I was just thinking," he said. "If you could quiet your mind. As I taught you. And then let me touch your mind. Maybe it would help me..."

"Quiet yours, of course," she finished for him. "Just give me a minute. I'll squeeze your hand when I'm ready. Or do you need to do the fingers on the face thing?"

He looked up at her, his hearts in his eyes. "Not with you, Sarah."

She smiled down at him, then closed her eyes and focussed on her breathing. She felt all tension fall away, felt her mind emptying, her body relaxing, felt herself reach the clear and quiet state that thirty years of practicing this mental discipline had allowed her to attain.

She gently squeezed his hand, and a moment later, felt his mind touching hers. Lightly. Gently. Carefully touching the quiet that she'd built to share with him. She opened her mind to him completely, fully, willing the quiet to embrace him, to give him the peace he needed, to heal the wounds, all the wounds he'd suffered in his long life. She felt him take the quiet, felt him slip away into silence, gratefully, and knew he'd managed to put himself into the healing coma that he needed to mend the physical damage of the gunshot wound.

She felt her knees weaken and grasped the edge of the table for a moment. Then she called on every last stitch of mental discipline she had and quieted her mind again. She turned and walked out of the infirmary, keeping her eyes closed, focussing entirely on holding onto the quiet, keeping all that pain, all his pain, quiet, silent, just there, not being pain, not actually, because pain couldn't touch her when her mind was quiet, it just would roll off her, it would just be gone, it wasn't hers, if she could only keep it quiet, for just a little longer....

"Sarah?"

Harry's voice shattered the quiet. She opened her eyes and looked at him and tried desperately to put the pieces back together. But it was no good. The pain flooded her mind. She heard Harry say her name again, heard the concern in his voice, heard it veer toward panic as her legs turned to jelly and she slowly sank out of consciousness and into the pain. The Doctor's pain.

*********

"Harry. I'm fine. Let me up."

"Fine people don't faint, Sarah Jane. Lie still." The only reason she complied with this command was that Harry had a hand on each of her shoulders and was forcibly preventing her from sitting up.

"I did not faint," she said indignantly.

He raised his eyebrows. "Then what did you do?"

She gave up for the moment and lay back on the bed. "Took an unplanned--and very brief--nap," she said, looking into his eyes. One corner of her mouth quirked up after a second.

"You're not going to jolly me out of this, old girl," he said, not the least amused. "He.." he said with a jerk of his head toward the TARDIS. "...may be able to patch himself up..." He paused a moment, shaking his head. "...quite literally...but you can't." He took one hand off her shoulder and put two fingers on her neck, checking her pulse.

Sarah lay quietly for a moment, then wriggled uncomfortably. "You could at least have put me on a better bed," she said."Why this one?"

"Shh," he said. She shushed, reluctantly, and waited while he finished taking her pulse, then lifted her eyelids in turn. "Any dizziness?" he asked. "Nausea? Discomfort?"

She shook her head to each. "I told you. I'm fine."

"Mmm-hmm," he said. "The only reason you're not in the infirmary is because it's occupied," he said, answering her earlier question. "And don't think I wasn't half-tempted to bump him off that exam table and put you on it and have the TARDIS run a full diagnostic on you." He gave her a stern look, then took a deep breath and relaxed a bit. "You're out here in case someone else comes knocking on our door and I have to field more inquiries about what happened while keeping an eye on you. Without having the least idea what did happen, of course."

"Oh, right," she said. "Who was that knocking earlier?"

"Groucho. He wanted to see the Doctor."

"What did you tell him?" Sarah Jane started to sit up, stopped halfway and raised her eyebrows at Harry. He reluctantly nodded permission, and she sat the rest of the way up, swinging her legs to the side and off the bed.

"Dizzy? Anything?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said, dismissively. "Go on, what did you tell him?"

"I squeezed out the door so he couldn't see in the room, and told him that the Doctor would be fine but that he was resting at the moment and it wouldn't be good to disturb him."

"How was he?"

"Groucho?" She nodded. He gave a small, rueful chuckle. "He's in worse shape than the Doctor."

Sarah gave him a horrified look. "He wasn't shot too?"

Harry shook his head. "No, he's just an emotional wreck. He desperately wanted to call a doctor. I had to tell him I was one to calm him down." He looked intently at Sarah Jane. "What did happen out there?"

Sarah gave him the story of their evening's adventure, including what the Doctor had told her about the time slip after Harry had left the infirmary. Harry nodded when she finished.

"Well, that explains the police," he said.

"What police?" Sarah asked.

"Groucho said the police want to talk to the Doctor. I told him to have them check in the morning and see if he was up to it."

Sarah took a deep breath and looked at him with worried eyes. "Harry, he can't leave the TARDIS." She looked around the room. "It's a nightmare out here for him."

Harry shook his head. "He's going to have to. Unless we're just going to pack our bags and disappear into the night. Or go on saying he's too ill to be seen. Either way, what would that do to Groucho? We're supposed to be helping him, not giving him further emotional trauma."

Sarah looked at him, thinking it through, then nodded. "You're right. Groucho has to see that the Doctor didn't suffer any serious harm. Or at least that he gets over it."

"The no serious harm part is true, at least," Harry said, laughing softly. "Shakes off a gunshot wound like it was a hang nail. Amazing." He looked at Sarah Jane. "Did you see him expel the bullet?"

She nodded. "I did see that, yes." She laughed and shook her head. "He is amazing." She smiled and her eyes drifted out of focus, thinking about the Doctor.

"So, what did he do to you after I left that made you faint?" Harry asked softly.

"Harry!" she said, surprised and indignant. "Nothing! Why would you even say something like that?" Harry just looked at her and waited. "It wasn't him at all. It was me," she finally went on.

"Not surprising. Go on," Harry said.

"What do you mean, 'not surprising,'" she asked, still indignant.

"Sarah, you'd throw yourself under a bus for him. Do you think I don't know that?"

She paused just a moment too long. "Would not."

"Would too," he said, mocking her, but gently. "And I know there's nothing I can say or do to change it. Never has been." His eyes grew serious. "Back in the old days, I thought, I just don't want to be there when it happens. That's why I left. Now." He sighed. "Now, I want to be there when it happens. To pick up the pieces."

Sarah just blinked at him in astonishment for a moment. "Harry..." she said softly. "It's not like that at all. He just needed some help getting to sleep. So he could heal himself. He was so frazzled..."

"So you took that frazzlement on yourself. So he could sleep. Did he psychically transfer it to you?" His eyes grew dark. "I'm surprised. I thought better of him than that."

"No, no, it wasn't like that, Harry. He has no idea. He would never do that."

Harry gave her a scornful look. "You were psychically linked. How could he not know?"

"Because he went out before it happened. I know it. I felt it. He was so careful. So gentle. He just needed a little quiet. And as soon as he got it, he dropped off." She closed her eyes, remembering what had happened next. "It was my fault. I...I didn't put up my shields."

"You're not psychic. You don't know how to put up shields," Harry said. "Not that you ever would when it comes to him."

She crossed her arms and looked away from him. "It's possible," she finally said. "That I may be a bit too open to him." When Harry didn't say anything, she looked at him, and saw a crooked smile.

He stood up. "Come here," he said. She stood up, puzzled, and he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly.

"Harry," she said, "I told you. I'm fine. I don't need consoling."

"What makes you think this is for you?" he said, not letting her go. "You scared the bloody daylights out of me, Sarah Jane."

She laughed, and wrapped her arms around his waist. "Sorry."

"Yeah, well. Just don't do it again." He hugged her for another long moment, then held her out at arm's length and gave her an appraising look. "Now go wash your face. Or shave. You look like you have a five o'clock shadow."

She put a hand to her cheek and looked at him with surprise. "I'd forgotten that." She laughed. "I wonder if Groucho recognized me."

"If he did, you got some 'splaining to do in the mornin', Lucy," Harry said.