Ch. 2

Nyssa heard Tegan coming before she exploded into their room, her bright green dress still twisted around her middle where she'd been sitting on the floor. "Tegan, what's the---."

"Hurry. The Doctor — that thing he's been trying to get out of the TARDIS was booby-trapped. He's been poisoned."

Nyssa didn't answer, merely leapt from her bed and in her night clothes bolted after Tegan's fleeing form. She did not run immediately to the Console room but to the lab for a spray injector, plus a portable bioscanner and an assortment of neurochemical compounds she knew would work on Gallifreyans. She swept them into plastic case whose previous contents she spilled out onto the floor and headed to the Console Room.

Tegan's head snapped around as she entered, looking past the Console from where she knelt directly across from the interior door. "Where've you --- Oh. I guess you couldn't do much without some equipment."

Nyssa's quick eye spotted the tracer on the floor and used a pair of what looked to Tegan like pliers from the Doctor's tool kit to pick it up. "Is this the tracer? I don't recognize it."

"Yeah, that's it."

"Good, with luck I'll be able to get an undiluted sample of the toxin." She placed it on the Console and knelt down on the other side of the Doctor, calm and efficient, hiding behind science to keep the fear and worry off her face. She waved the bioscanner over him and watched the readout on the small screen carefully, increasingly aware of Tegan trying to bite her tongue as she waited. "One of his hearts has stopped and the walls of his chest are constricting so tightly he's barely able to breathe. He's lost 80 percent of his lung capacity but he can only survive so long on his bypass respiratory system. I have to get the muscles to unlock. They constrict more every time he exhales, fortunately Gallifreyans don't have a substantial respiratory rate." Calmed by technicalities and an inkling of what to do, she was able to stave off the fear and think clearly. Tegan, however, was not reassured.

"So now what do we - you do?"

Nyssa began rooting through the blue plastic case. "I'm going to give him an injection but we may need to keep his lungs inflated by force. Go to the Medical room; over the bed you'll see a respirator unit that shouldn't look very different from the ones on Earth. A catch at the bottom will detach it from the wall."

Tegan bolted from the room yet again, and left Nyssa to her work. She found the most powerful combination of compounds available to her in the small case, made a guess (a very highly educated one) at the dosage from the Doctor's weight, the time since he'd been poisoned, the level of effect the toxin was having already, and her knowledge of Gallifreyan metabolism, which was blessedly slow. The last factor made her change the normal injection site of the jugular to a more direct route. She tugged the Doctor's sweater and shirt up, her worry deepening at the ice-cold feel of his smooth skin. She pressed the cold injector against his sides and unloaded it twice directly into the brutally contracted muscles. The Doctor lay still for a moment and then took a sudden long, wheezing breath that brought him up off the floor. She pushed the coat closer to him and then forced him again to the floor with his head arched back and his airway held open as he took several long, gasping breaths.

Tears of relief stung at Nyssa's eyes, but she held them back to keep the Doctor from seeing the extent of her concern. He was probably quite frightened himself and adrenalin wouldn't help matters now as it had when the beginning of this regeneration had gone so badly. His eyes fluttered open as Nyssa loaded another injection and she met them for a shy instant as she reached beneath his shirt again to inject his lateral muscles. Moments after she injected his jugular, another gasping breath entered and escaped him and she could see on the bioscanner that his stalled heart was beating again, if sluggishly. She met his eyes more firmly and pressed a finger to his lips. She had learned from Tegan that sometimes the direct path was best.

"Sshhhh.. just breathe. The toxin is a neuromuscular stimulant targeted to your thoracic and lateral muscles. It caused your chest cavity to nearly crush itself. I'm not sure it hasn't caused ligament damage or bruised the heart muscle." The Doctor nodded, just breathing, knowing he was in the best possible hands to find the solution to a toxin, a mind equal to his own in such matters. He smiled a weak reassurance at Tegan as she ran in with the respirator, having shed her shoes to move more quickly. She circled the Console and knelt down next to him.

"Well, how long before he recovers?"

Nyssa looked up from rolling back the Doctor's sleeve, fear skirting on her face again before she returned behind a clinical wall. "I've delayed the effect of the toxin, Tegan, not ended the threat." She kept hold of the Doctor's hand to steady it as she used the microtransporter to draw a considerable amount of blood. "I need to take a sample of the poison, screen it, and make an anti-toxin that will either block its ability to affect the Doctor or eliminate it… if I can."

"What do mean "if"?" Tegan demanded, quietly and tightly, she had long ago learned to hate the word "if".

"Tegan, you know I'll do my best, but I cannot offer us all promises right now. If I can get the Doctor stabilized he'll be more than able to help. We must deal with this together and then find out who did this."

That landed home. Tegan was suddenly angry again, who had done this having been forgotten in the rush to help the Doctor. Making someone answer for this was certainly more along her line of capabilities but for now they had to tackle getting the Doctor in a condition to contribute to the solution and the chase. Tegan sighed sharply and then remembered the respirator in her hand. She offered it up and Nyssa reached over the Doctor to adjust the controls as Tegan rested her hand on the Doctor's head and held the clear mask to his face, leaning down close to him as she did. "Don't' worry, Doc. We'll get you out of this mess and we'll put whoever did it in a worse one."

The Doctor found himself smiling slightly as he felt the intensity of her mind and purity of will, perhaps it was his sudden vulnerability that made them seem even more pronounced. After all, leave it to Tegan to comfort and reassure with a threat on her lips. Finished what she could do here, Nyssa got to her feet and with a small, confident smile gathered up her equipment and the tracer to head back to the laboratory. "Doctor, I'm sure there's at least some internal damage. I would suggest a healing trance while you're breathing pure oxygen. Tegan, it's safe to release the tourniquet." She was gone a moment later, before either acknowledged her.

Tegan took the Doctor's cold hand in her lap and undid the binding she had made then rubbed his wrist vigorously until the normal color had returned to his fingers. She remained where she was, chattering nervously at intervals and wishing Gallifreyans breathed more even under normal circumstances so that she wouldn't be tempted to poke the Doctor every other minute. Her only signs that he was no longer at the same level of distress was the fact that his skin was still warmer than it had been and his eyes moved occasionally as he lay in the healing trance that at best would only repair the damages a while longer. Tegan let her quiet stream of cheerful nonsense trail off, realizing the Doctor likely couldn't hear her and hoped that somehow her presence was of some support. She'd broken the strap on the respirator mask in her hurry to pull it off the wall and needed to hold the mask in place as she waited. Remembering her telepathic experience with the TARDIS, she tried to keep her thoughts positive, suspecting that even now, he might be able to sense them.

Three hours passed before the Doctor tried to sit up and was able to do so strongly enough that Tegan's only protest was a glare of silent, irritated rebuke and a warning they could wait for Nyssa to return. He would be careful, he explained, but it was better that they go to her so that he would be in the lab if she needed to do more tests. Tegan sighed and gave into logic but took the respirator and his rolled up jacket with them as they slowly walked to the equipment-cluttered room.

Nyssa greeted their arrival with a bright smile but went immediately back to work as the Doctor stood behind her and read the long stream of notes she had entered into the computer already. "So much so soon. You're amazing."

She didn't look up from what looked to Tegan like a microscope framed by three illuminated prisms. "Not really. The compounds are easy enough to identify; it's the genetic marker that makes it so powerful. It's not targeted to you personally at least; that would've made it much harder to defeat because it would have taken much more careful engineering, but it is a compound that only affects Time Lords. In another few hours, I'll know the answer to what might be," she faltered for words for a moment and then found ones that were inadequate, "the most dangerous element of it."

"Might be…," Tegan interjected, setting the respirator down noisily. "I think a poison that does the job of a boa constrictor is dangerous enough. What more is there?"

Nyssa took a tired breath and met the other woman's eyes for a long moment before turning to the Doctor. "If we don't find a way to neutralize or eliminate it, it not only can suffocate or cause thoracic trauma or pulmonary or dual cardiac arrest, it seems it will then also even prevent regeneration. There's a ribonucleic acid destabilizer keyed to Gallifreyan DNA."

The Doctor didn't react immediately, obviously having heard her as he stood so near, completing his scan of her notes. When he did respond it was only with a flattering smile for the young Trakenite. "I believe you're quite correct. It seems to prevent the genetic resplicing that normally undoes the damage we might have suffered. Regeneration itself actually triggers death. I hate to say it but brilliant."

Tegan huffed again, not knowing at whom she was madder at the moment. "Brilliant! How can you be so…. so… bloody calm? That's you who might not regenerate."

Nyssa picked up the stylus again, more able to write with it on the screen while her eyes returned to her work. "We're all very concerned, Tegan, but the best thing we can do is apply ourselves to a cure." Nyssa's face was pressed again to the viewer as she worked the controls but from his place beside her, the Doctor solemnly watched the tears rolling down the back of the device that Tegan couldn't see. Both of them had seen deaths in their families, of Adric, Nyssa even the death of her world, and they both had chosen to travel with him, and now were facing his death as well in a Universe that had offered them little in the way of kindness. As much as he didn't want to leave it, he also wished to not leave them to it.

Sighing, he moved to sit down on one of the rolling stools in the room but Nyssa extended a hand to stop him, not looking up from the scope. There was a sudden energy about her small frame and she adjusted the controls again with the hand not pointed at the Doctor. "No, on the bed. I think I've found the primary compound that embeds itself in the nerve sheath and delivers the neural overload. It recognizes the blood as Gallifrey and it's trying to latch on to the blood cells but it can't."

The Doctor did as she asked, lowering himself onto the table and meeting Nyssa's eyes as she approached him. "It looks like your difficult regeneration may come to some good, I had a chance to study Gallifreyan synaptic tissue and neurotransmitters quite carefully before we reached Castrovalva," Nyssa hesitated momentarily, her small face rippling with a momentary struggle to put a demon at bay. She focused again on the Doctor and the present. "I need another sample."

The Doctor obliging stuck out his arm but Nyssa took his hand and raised it above his head. "No, not blood. Tegan, please help me."

Relieved to have something to contribute, the twice-former air hostess came forward, remembering to bring the respirator with her. She snapped it back in the wall as she moved to the other side of the bed. "Just tell me what."

Nyssa was pulling drawers out in the stand supporting the bed, "Expose the Doctor's side. I need deep nerve and muscular tissue samples from the affected area to test my theory. If I can confirm the compound's the molecular construct I suspect we'll know what to attack or perhaps I can formulate a neutralizing agent or a catalyst to create one."

Tegan had no idea what she was talking about but nodded and turned a ruffled smile on the Doctor. She might have been a bit uncomfortable as she knew he had to be but she'd faced far, far worse in the past year or so than the Doctor's reserve. She tugged him upright quickly and slid her hands beneath the sweater, moving too fast to let him think. Caught off-guard and still slightly light-headed from his near suffocation, blood loss, and the following infusion of pure oxygen, he merely raised his arms as she completed the job and lay his sweater down on the counter behind her. She reached for his shirt buttons much to the Doctor's surprise and had laid her hands firmly on the first one when Nyssa intervened.

"That won't be necessary."

Tegan's hands withdrew immediately and the Doctor's fell away from where he'd been making a half-hearted – or in the case of a Gallifreyan – one-hearted attempt to, if not stop her, then take care of his own buttons himself, as he had for a number of centuries. Blushing slightly, not meeting Tegan's eyes he lay back and once again Nyssa raised his arm above his head. At his waist he saw Tegan reaching for his shirt and then suddenly pull back. "Don't we need to wash up or something?"

Nyssa shook her head, her eyes scanning the small array of equipment and the bandage she had prepared. "No, the bed generates its own sterile field. Don't be concerned this is a very simple procedure."

The Doctor started slightly at the immediate fall of Tegan's fiery hands upon his waist as she tugged more of his shirt out and folded it under. If she noticed, she didn't show it. Her hands were almost painfully hot on the more sensitive skin of his side as she secured the fabric back out of the way. "Is that high enough?"

Nyssa nodded and picked up the first bit of equipment. They all looked a great deal alike to Tegan, cylindrical and about six inches long but with different devices at the ends and different lights and control switches. "I hope you can tell those things apart."

Nyssa gave her a small, conceding smile. "Of course. They all seem quite different to me." The biochemist's blue eyes focused back on the Doctor for the first time. "I'm going to give you a local anesthetic but there's no telling what effects the drug may be having on your system since it's a neural stimulant. If you feel anything tell me and I'll try to concentrate the dosage. Failing that I'll have to synthesize a general anesthetic because very strangely you don't seem to have any aboard that would work on Gallifreyans. Unfortunately where I'll be working I can't really do a spinal block unless…", her voice trailed off as the Doctor shook his head.

"It's fine, Nyssa. You'll do splendidly." The Time Lord met her eyes and then closed his, waiting, and nearly opened them again when he felt an impossibly warm hand slide onto the arm Nyssa had raised above his head, his cool fingers hesitating for a moment before opening to return Tegan's gentle but steady grip. He squeezed her wrist once and quickly. "I knew I was in good hands, literally it seems." Tegan squeezed his hand back and willed like Hell for the TARDIS to behave for the next few minutes. "Nyssa, whenever you're ready."

"I already started. Can you feel this?" She looked up from the sharpened probe she was pressing into his side, not quite deep enough to break the skin.

"Nothing at all," the Doctor answered, calm and trusting, perhaps the least nervous of the three, certainly less than Tegan whose grip on his arm was now nearing what it had been when she was trying to stop the poison.

"All right then," Nyssa said quietly and picked up a different cylinder than the one with the injector spray head. "I think it's safe to get started."