A/N: Bonjour, I'm back. Thank you for all the reviews and follows so far! I hope you enjoy chapter 2...

In the Nick of Time

Chapter 2: Rose Tyler...

When the Doctor opened the door of the TARDIS onto Lattimer Place, Chiswick, he couldn't help but notice how similar it looked to the street Donna lived on. The only major difference was the zeppelins in the sky, but he chose to ignore those. Walking down the street and approaching the house, the Doctor thought about a fact he hadn't thought about for a while. His other half was living in a house. A human house with doors and windows and mortgage loans – those things that humans seemed to hate but got anyway. The very thing he had been so terrified of. The conversation he and Rose had had back on the impossible planet seemed to echo in his head. From making Rose giggle by saying he'd rather die on the planet than live in a normal house, to that statement of commitment she'd made when he realised that he might not be able to take her home.

"Yeah, but stuck with you? That's not so bad." "Yeah?" "Yes."

The Doctor had to push those thoughts away as he rang the doorbell of the house. As his heart rate accelerated again and he clenched his fists to try and stop his hands from shaking, he decided he didn't like déjà vu. The nervous anticipation, though, was immediately replaced with anxious worry when he heard a bang and a clatter from somewhere inside the house and he thought he heard Rose shout 'SHIT'. Jackie's words echoed in his head: '… she got ill, so ill she could hardly get out of bed…' and he wondered whether he should have simply let himself in with his sonic screwdriver. But before he could ponder that for any longer, the door swung open. He was staring at Rose. It was actually Rose. Not an image, not a projection of someone lightyears away. The one and the only Rose Tyler. It was all the Doctor could do to stop himself from immediately embracing her.

"Doctor?" Rose slurred, and it then that the Doctor noticed how her hair was a tangled mess on top of her head and that her eyelids were half shut and swollen. He assumed that her loose-hanging t-shirt and trousers were pyjamas and despite himself, he found that he liked the way the shirt fell off her left shoulder. Her normally rosy cheeks were pale, and she was shivering slightly even though there was a glistening sheen of sweat on her forehead.

"Rose?" He answered quietly.

"Why are you out of the hospital so early?" She scrunched her face up in confusion and tilted her head. Oh no, not this again, the Doctor thought.

"No, Rose, it's me. The Doctor. The one with two hearts," He tried to explain, but she clearly wasn't listening as she giggled, grabbing his arms and pulling him inside.

"Come in, you dumbo," She said, her fingers gripping the sleeve of his coat, but almost immediately it was no longer Rose holding the Doctor, but the Doctor holding Rose up. She practically collapsed in his arms and the Doctor realised that this was not the time for sentimental thoughts or notions.

"Come on," He encouraged as he picked her up bridal style and carried her into the living room. It was a nice house, he had to admit, and he imagined that if it was a house that even he approved off, that his human half would have approved of it too. As he observed the walls, he felt a slight suspicion that the design was based off the TARDIS and he couldn't help but smile a broad grin at the thought while simultaneously trying not to feel like an intruder in her life. However, Rose's giggling drew his attention back to the woman in his arms. He raised an eyebrow as he looked down at her.

"You're beautiful, you are," She gave him tongue-touched smile as she tapped him on the nose and the Doctor found it hard not to laugh.

"Blimey, it's like you're drunk," He muttered as he tried to lay her down on the sofa which also happened to vaguely resemble the chair in the console room of the TARDIS.

"You sound like my mother. I'm not drunk, I promise. It's only ten in the morning," Rose replied indignantly, making the Doctor frown. Ten in the morning? His time sense told him otherwise. He glanced up at the clock on the opposite wall just to check. Almost two o'clock in the afternoon. 11 hours and 15 minutes left.

"Rose, you see that clock over there. What does it say?" He asked, worry increasing inside him.

"Hm?" She mumbled, then looked up obediently. "Uh… I dunno. It keeps on moving. Are you doing that? Stop it, I'm trying to read the time! Doctor…" She continued to grumble, squinting up at the clock. The Doctor placed the back of his hand on her forehead and winced. She was burning up. He stood up and ran a hand through his hair worriedly. Whatever it was that was making Rose ill, it wasn't a regular human-infecting virus. Jackie had been right. The Doctor knew and could recognise almost every virus or bacteria that was capable of infecting Homo sapiens in the billions of years that humans roam the universe. And although he was fairly certain that any ordinary doctor would diagnose the flu or Lyme disease, he wasn't any ordinary doctor.

He tried to think. Swollen eyes, blurry vision, lack of balance, fever. What would be the cause?

He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and scanned her, all the while Rose was giggling away.

"You're cute, Johnny," She mumbled, just about audible and the Doctor frowned. Johnny? She called him Johnny? Now that was something he didn't understand. He pushed the thoughts aside as he observed the readings on the side of the screwdriver. He frowned again, this time in confusion.

"What?" He muttered. "WHAT?" He gaped at the readings, hardly believing what he saw. There was no trace of any bacteria, fungus, virus or any living thing out of place for that matter. But her ionising radioactive readings were off the chart. Radioactive radiation. From a human. Nothing made sense.

As he looked back at Rose, he realised she had noticed his confusion and was looking at him curiously.

"What is it?" She slurred. But the Doctor was busy. Busy thinking. If she's radioactive, then something has to be causing it? The sort of radiation she's giving off, it's not anything 21st-century humans would discover for another six centuries or so… He gulped. This was not good at all.

"Rose, listen to me, have you seen anything unusual recently? Any aliens? Something that wasn't normal? Anything out of the ordinary?" Rose frowned.

"Aliens? Haven't seen many of those since we travelled in the TARDIS…" Her eyes unfocused as she fazed out, her mind wandering to those times.

"Doesn't have to be aliens. Could be anything unusual or odd," The Doctor said urgently.

"Well, there was a time that I got locked out of the house,"

"Anything else?"

"I woke up on the sofa a few days ago even though I swore I went to bed the night before,"

"A bit more unusual than that, maybe?"

"Two weeks ago, someone rang the doorbell and then just ran off. There was this little golden thingy on the floor, but no one was there. I thought maybe it was a get-well-soon gift for you," The Doctor froze.

"What?"

"It was weird. The thing felt hot. I tried putting it in the freezer but it just made the food thaw so I had to put it in a cup of water in the cupboard to make sure it didn't set fire to anything," Rose stopped then looked at him, blurry-eyed. "Do you want to see it?" The Doctor nodded as she got to her feet, then rushed to her side when she stumbled. With almost her whole weight on the worried Time Lord, she hobbled to the kitchen and pointed at a cupboard next to the oven. The Doctor opened the cupboard with his foot, his hand never leaving Rose' waist, pulled out his sonic screwdriver and scanned the object. As Rose had described, it was in a glass of water, on a shelf with pots and pans. And as he studied the little display on the screwdriver, Rose distractingly nuzzled her face into his neck. Trying not to think too much about the growing feeling in the pit of his stomach, he decided that whatever the foreign object was, it was the suspect.

He bent down to take the glass out of the cupboard, but the moment he brought it closer to him to look at it, Rose fainted in his arms. The glass smashed on the floor as the Doctor used both his arms to steady her. The water spilt out onto the floor along with the object, which immediately caused a cloud of evaporating water to rise around it.

The Doctor didn't notice though, as his eyes were solely fixed on Rose. He brushed away a strand of her that had stuck to her face with sweat and felt a pang in his hearts.

"Rose," He found himself murmuring as he lifted her up bridal style once again and led her out of the room. Time to take this to the TARDIS.

11 hours left.

A/N: Let me know what you think in the reviews (as I said last chapter, they make my day!) and I'll see you on chapter 3 in two days time!

Stay safe!

~httydfangirl123