They didn't have to hire anyone to move the TARDIS this time. The Marx brothers, the Dancing Ardinis, Silas the Strongman, and nearly every other man in the company turned out to help. The TARDIS, bless her vortex, cooperated without the Doctor having to scold her into it, and slipped out the room door with ease.
Harry had borrowed a wheel chair for the Doctor, and, just before their friends showed up to move the TARDIS, he and Sarah helped the Time Lord step out of his ship and into the chair, his eyes again covered with protective bandaging. His hands gripped the arms of the chair so tightly that his knuckles turned white, but he didn't say anything.
It's so not like him to give up control, Sarah thought as they walked to the railway station, her eyes never leaving the Doctor. And for him to accept it so passively. It must really be bad out here for him. Harry was pushing the chair, and she was walking by the Doctor's side, one hand on his shoulder to reassure him and, she hoped, to help ground him.
"Not exactly disabled access," Harry muttered when they arrived at the side of the train and he looked at the steep, narrow steps that they would have to negotiate to board the car. The station master assured them the wheelchair would be returned to its owner as they helped the Doctor to stand, draped his arms around their shoulders and wrapped their arms around his waist.
"Sarah. Let me." Groucho gently moved her aside as he took the Doctor's arm from her shoulders and draped it over his own. Sarah had been so focussed on the Doctor that she hadn't even noticed Groucho's approach. She stood back now and watched as he and Harry half-guided, half-carried the disoriented Time Lord up the steps.
Once they got the Doctor settled into a berth, Sarah perched on the edge, clasping the Doctor's hand tightly between hers, while Harry prepared to put him under. Groucho stood behind Sarah, frowning worriedly down at the scene.
"What's Harry doing?" Groucho asked Sarah softly.
She turned and looked up at him. "He's going to put the Doctor to sleep for the journey," she explained, equally softly. "He'd never be able to rest otherwise, and, well, Harry thought this would be for the best." She gave him a smile that was meant to be reassuring. "We just want to make it as easy as possible for him. And not cause him a setback."
Groucho nodded, but didn't look reassured.
"Do what you need to do, Doctor," Harry said quietly as he got his stethoscope out and hung it around his neck. "I'll start the ether as soon as you're ready."
The Doctor took a shaky breath, then nodded his head slightly. "Go. Please."
"OK. I'm going to put a gauze pad over your nose and mouth. Just lightly." He suited his actions to his words, then uncapped the bottle of ether and drizzled some onto the pad. "Now. Deep breaths. Deep as you can."
The Doctor took one deep breath, then another, then another. Harry dripped more ether on the pad. Before long, Sarah felt the Doctor's hand relax and then go limp. Harry left the pad where it was while he put the stethoscope earpieces in his ears and pressed the bell to the Doctor's chest. He listened carefully, moved the bell to the other side of the Doctor's chest, and listened again. He gave Sarah a reassuring smile, took the stethoscope out of his ears and lifted the pad off the Doctor's face.
The Doctor's head rolled gently to the side.
"He's out," Harry said. He looked up at Groucho. "Thanks for your help getting him on the train, Julie."
Groucho shook his head. "Don't thank me. Glad I could do it." He looked wistfully at the stethoscope, still hanging around Harry's neck. "Wish I could do what you do," he added.
Harry gave him a bemused look. "What? Be an escapologist's assisant?"
"Be a doctor," Groucho said. "I always wanted to go into medicine, not show business."
Harry glanced at Sarah, who nodded her head very slightly. "No reason you couldn't do both," Harry said with a smile. "Look at me."
Groucho gave a little snort of derision. "Would be tough to get into medical school when I didn't even finish grade school."
Sarah reached up and squeezed his hand. "You can do anything you put your mind to, Julie. You're brilliant."
********
"Doctor! Doctor!" The frantic cry resounded through the car an hour later. The Doctor moved sluggishly in his drugged sleep, turning his head and moaning softly.
Harry and Sarah Jane exchanged astonished glances. They sat together on the bottom berth across the aisle from the Doctor, where they had been keeping a close eye on him. Groucho had gone to join his brothers in the club car after many assurances that everything was fine, and they would most definitely let him know if they needed anything.
"Doctor Sullivan!" The cry came again.
"Oh. That doctor!" Harry said softly. Sarah laughed and shook her head. "Right here!" Harry called.
"Oh, thank God." Fritz Frelberger, the violinist, hurried down the aisle, his face creased with worry. "It's my wife. The baby. I think it's coming."
"Blimey," Harry said, so softly only Sarah could hear him. "Timing." He stood up and put his hands on the frantic father-to-be's shoulders. "I'm right here. Calm down. Let's go see her."
"Please," Fritz said, turning and hurrying back the way he came, looking over his shoulder at Harry and gesturing for him to follow.
"I'll be back as soon as I can," Harry told Sarah. "Call me if he starts to wake up."
Sarah gave him an eyebrows-up questioning look as she mimed putting a phone to her ear. "You know what I mean," he said with a crooked grin, then disappeared in the wake of the agitated violinist.
"Sarah?" The Doctor's voice was almost too soft to hear over the noise of the train. She looked at him, not sure if she had imagined it, and saw his hand rise weakly from the bed and reach out blindly.
"Blimey, timing indeed," she said softly, as she quickly crossed the aisle, sat on the edge of the berth, and took his hand. "I'm here. Harry had to go help someone. But he'll be right back. Are you...?"
"Not so bad," he said. "Manageable. Enough of the drug's still in my system. Should be okay for another minute."
Sarah looked up and down the aisle, hoping to see someone she recognized and could send for Harry. She knew a minute wasn't going to be enough if Mrs. Fritz really was in labor.
"How much longer?" the Doctor asked.
"Till what?"
"Kansas City."
"Oh." She breathed out a sigh. "Long time, I'm afraid. We've only been travelling an hour or so." Even with his expressive eyes and eyebrows covered in bandages, she could see the disappointment appear on his face. "Hold on. We'll get you there."
He nodded and licked his lips. Sarah looked up the aisle where Harry had disappeared, willing him to come back.
Suddenly, he appeared at the far end of the car, headed her way, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
"He's awake," she said, as soon as he was within earshot.
"Doctor?" Harry said, crouching by the berth. "How are you doing?"
"Cricket bat to the head's starting to sound good," the Doctor responded, his breathing gone ragged.
"Still able to bypass that bypass system of yours?" Harry asked as he got out the ether and gauze and put on his stethescope.
"Think so."
"Go for it," Harry said. He waited for the Doctor to nod, then repeated the earlier procedure.
Sarah didn't realize, until the Doctor relaxed back into sleep, how much sympathetic tension had been building up in her body. She stood up, shook her arms, rolled her head from side to side and blew out a breath.
"You need a shot of ether too, old girl?" Harry asked with a grin.
She shook her head at him with affectionate exasperation and decided to let the 'old girl' slide this time. "How's Mrs. Fritz?" she asked.
"Pregnant."
"Got that bit," she said.
"Very pregnant," Harry elaborated. He sighed, growing serious. "She's a tiny little thing and the baby is huge. First baby. Of course. I reckon well past due. If I had her at home, I'd have induced her two weeks ago."
"Is she in labor?" Sarah asked, concerned.
Harry nodded. "Early stages. Or could be false labor brought on by the motion of the train. That's what I'm hoping, anyway."
She grinned. "Navy doctors don't deliver a lot of babies, do they?" she asked.
He raised an eyebrow at her. "More now than we used to," he said. "But there's no way that baby's coming out the way God intended. And I really don't want to have to do a C-section on a moving train." He looked down at the Doctor, then back up at Sarah, and his face was sober. "Maybe I should show you how to put him under. Just in case."
She nodded. "Looks pretty simple. What do I need to know to make sure I'm doing it right?"
Harry gave her a quick course in elementary anaesthetics, and how to monitor the Doctor's respiration and dual pulses to try to determine how deeply he was under. "Course, given he's a..." He glanced around the car, noticing other passengers. "You know. It's something of a guessing game as to what's normal."
"You seem to have guessed pretty well so far," she said with a grateful smile.
"Didn't waste my time in the TARDIS this trip, did I?" he said softly. "I'm not saying everything I read made complete sense to me, but I do have a little more knowledge of what makes him tick than I used to."
Harry spent the next few hours shuttling back and forth between his patients. The Doctor's system seemed to be adapting to throw off the effects of the ether with ever-increasing speed and efficiency, forcing Harry to up the dosage each time to achieve the same duration of effect. Mrs. Fritz's labor increasingly seemed less and less false.
"Sarah," Harry said earnestly, taking her hands and looking her in the eyes. He had just returned to their car from another, much longer, visit with Mrs. Fritz. He took a deep breath before he continued. "That girl's not going to make it without help."
"You are helping her," Sarah said.
He shook his head. "It's not enough. The baby needs to come out. Soon. Very soon."
She searched his eyes. "You're going to do a C-section on a moving train? You said..."
"I know what I said. And I still say it."
"Then...?" Sarah asked, confused by his uncharacteristic hesitation.
He set his jaw and continued. "I've got to take her off the train." He hurried on in spite of Sarah's shocked expression. "There's a small town just ten minutes ahead. They have a doctor's office." He ran his fingers through his curly dark hair. "God knows what it will be like. But with any luck, they'll have scalpels and sutures and something I can use to sterilize everything."
"You're getting off the train," Sarah said softly, disbelievingly. "In the middle of nowhere. In 1913."
He nodded. "I'll catch up. It's not like we're on an alien planet. I can take care of myself." His eyes softened. "More importantly. I have a patient to take care of."
"Two," Sarah said plaintively.
"Three, actually," Harry said, giving her a crooked smile. He nodded at the Doctor. "He has you. The other two only have me. And one of them isn't going to get a chance at life without my help."
Sarah sighed deeply. "Of course. You have to help her. Them," Sarah said. She ran her hands down his upper arms and smiled what she hoped was a brave smile. "It's not like we're on Skaro in the middle of a war or anything."
His lips twitched. "No. It's not."
She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close. "I just always hated it when we got separated. Back then. I always worried about you," she said, her voice muffled by his coat.
"You did?" he said, sounding pleasantly surprised and looking down at her.
She loosened her hold on him so she could look up into his face. "You didn't think I did?"
He grinned. "I was too busy worrying about you to wonder what you were thinking," he said. He glanced over her shoulder at something behind her and then, before she could turn and see what he was looking at, he bent down and gave her a very husbandly kiss. Not a long-married-off-to-work-see-you-later-dear husbandly kiss. Oh no. More of a recently-married-oh-God-I-can-barely-stand-to-leave-you husbandly kiss.
"You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that," he said softly when he was through kissing her. He flashed her a grin as she just stood there, saucer-eyed, staring at him. "Take care of her for me, Julie," he called over her shoulder. He glanced down at the Doctor. "Take care of both of them."
"You betcha, Doc." Sarah heard Groucho's voice behind her and she whirled to face him. He grinned at her, and she felt her face grow even hotter than it had done in response to Harry's unexpected kiss. She whirled back around just in time to see Harry disappear down the aisle.
"You need anything, Sarah?" Groucho asked. "Anything I can do?"
Sarah wasn't quite sure what she needed at the moment. "Erm. No. I think we're fine, Julie. Thanks, though."
**********
The next five hours seemed to Sarah to take at least twice that to pass. The Doctor woke more and more frequently as his body grew ever more resistant to the ether. Even more worrisome was the fact that the time distortion seemed to become slightly less unbearable for him as the hours dragged by. He had always had a few moments of relative clarity as he came out of the anaesthesia, when the drug was still dulling his senses, but these moments lasted longer as the trip wore on. Sarah was terrified that this meant his time sense was being permanently destroyed as his DNA was irreparably damaged by this extended--interminable, she corrected herself--exposure to the time slip. But as nothing could be done about it at this point, she kept her fears to herself.
The Doctor attributed his improved tolerance of the chaos to his own efforts. "Been trying to get it under control," he said during one waking period. "Practicing aikido. Mental discipline. Since I'm stuck out in it anyway."
"Want me to help?" Sarah asked.
"Oh no," he said. "Thanks, but...I don't want you sharing this. The slip, I mean. What it feels like."
"Maybe it wouldn't affect me. Just like the time slip doesn't."
"And maybe it would. Not an acceptable risk."
She smiled, even though she knew he couldn't see her. "Isn't that my decision?" she asked softly.
"Not this time," he said. "Mine."
When he realized she had been the one administering the anaesthetic the past few times, he asked about Harry.
"He has another patient he's taking care of. A lady having a baby."
"Oh," the Doctor said. "Well. As long as he doesn't wander off."
Sarah was glad he couldn't see her face as she proceeded to send him back to blessed oblivion.
The ether ran out when they were still at least an hour from Kansas City, but as it had stopped working on him entirely by then it was no great loss. The first time Sarah had to use what she couldn't help thinking of as the Vulcan Nerve Pinch to knock him out, she was inwardly shaking, afraid that she hadn't remembered it right, that she might harm him inadvertently. But when he relaxed under her hands, and she knew she had helped him escape the turmoil of his senses, she felt nothing but gratitude.
When he came back to consciousness ten minutes later, she realized she'd been a bit tentative after all.
"Just...press a little harder, Sarah. And hold it a little longer," he directed her.
She pressed harder and held it longer, then quickly pulled out the stethoscope Harry had left with her to check his hearts and respiration. Everything seemed in order, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
In fact, she had succeeded so brilliantly this time that he was still unconscious when they pulled into Kansas City. Before she could begin to panic about how to get him off the train in this condition, Groucho and his brothers appeared. They arranged a stretcher from somewhere, carefully carried the Doctor off the train and placed him in the back of a wagon. Sarah insisted on staying in the back with him, despite all of the brothers' protests that she should have the seat next to the driver. When they pulled up in front of the boarding house where the company would be staying, Groucho helped her descend from the wagon bed without too much loss of decorum, and they carried the Doctor in.
The lady who ran this rooming house put up a bit of a protest when she saw the Doctor's bandaged, unconscious form, pointing out rather sharply that this was a lodging establishment and not a hospital. The brothers, who obviously knew her well from previous visits, explained the situation. Sarah's reassurances that the Doctor wasn't always like this, that it was just a temporary condition and that yes, he was part of the show, finally convinced her to check them in. She even gave them a first floor room, fortunately, in light of the fact that the boys would have to carry the Doctor to it.
Sarah could hardly wait to get the Doctor into the sanctuary of that room. But when she did, when the Marx brothers put the stretcher down on one side of the bed and carefully transferred the Doctor's limp form to the other side, she looked around the room and suddenly slapped herself on the forehead.
"Sarah? What?" Groucho asked.
"The TAR...our trunk!" she said. She stared at Groucho, dumbfounded. She had been so busy worrying about the Doctor, and had grown so used to Harry being there to handle details like getting the TARDIS where it needed to go, that she hadn't spared a thought for it herself.
"What about it?" Groucho asked.
"We need it!" she cried. Seeing the look of consternation on his face, she quickly calmed herself. "John's medicine is in it," she said. Which was true, in a sense. "We just took enough with us for the journey. The rest is in there. And he needs it." Dear God, he needs it, she thought.
"We'll take care of it," Groucho said. "Don't worry."
Sarah did worry, though. After the brothers left, she worried and she paced and she checked on the Doctor and then she worried and paced some more. The fact that he was still out cold reassured her at first, but then as time passed became an added worry. Had she put him too far under? Would he ever wake up? Then she thought about Harry and found new reasons to worry. Would he be able to find them again? Would he end up stranded somewhere out in the middle of the Great Plains of the United States in 1913? Then she thought about Mrs. Fritz and her baby and managed to work up some worry for them and their welfare. And then there was the TARDIS. Where was she? Would they find her? They'd all be stranded in 1913 without her! Not to mention the Doctor. And the time slip. And...
She had worried herself into such a frazzle that, when she heard a knock on the door, she nearly jumped out of her skin.
"Julie, did you find it?" she asked as she opened the door and saw Groucho standing there. She looked up and down the hallway outside the room. Nothing. "Oh."
"It's not at the station," he said. "It may have been left on the train by mistake and gone on to the next stop."
"Oh," Sarah said again, sinking into an overstuffed chair. Wonderful, she thought. Even in 1913. Your luggage sometimes goes on a journey of its own without you.
"We're still checking, though. We'll get it back," he hurried to add.
She sighed deeply. "I know you will," she said, giving him a weak smile.
"Do you need anything? Are you hungry?"
She shook her head. "I don't think I'll be hungry again until the Doctor is better and Harry's back with us," she said.
"You need to eat, Sarah," he said, looking down at her with a worried frown. "It's not going to do them any good if you make yourself sick."
She looked up at him, looked deeply into his earnest brown eyes, now clouded with concern. And suddenly the worry all fell away, as the reason they were there jumped back into the forefront of her mind. This man. This amazingly brilliant and talented young man who stood before her, who would one day become Groucho Marx, star of Broadway, movies, radio and television, both as the best known member of the Marx Brothers' team and on his own. This man who was being so sweet and kind and attentive to her, whose name would one day be synonymous with sarcastic, biting wit.
She surprised both herself and him by standing up and giving him a heartfelt hug. "You have been so kind, Julie," she said, as she let go of him and took a step back. "I can't begin to tell you how much we appreciate you."
She was highly amused to see a flush of color rise up from his neck and spread across his face. "I made Groucho Marx blush," she thought. "That's one to add to my CV."