Author's Note: Soooooooo... it's been roughly four months since I last updated this story... when I said that the updates would be slow, I wasn't saying this slow! errrrrr, I'm sorry?
To make matter worse, this chapter doesn't exactly contain plot, but I finally got the bridge to the action, which means that there will be plot next chapter, WOOOO!
Enjoy your chapter and I'll see you guys another four months from now (I really hope it won't be that long again.).
Disclaimer: Even though I have been working on it for the past for months, I still haven't been able to get the rights for Doctor Who.
5. Recovering
The Doctor looked up at the ceiling, bored out of his mind. It had been a full week since the incident at Royal Hope Hospital. He had recovered quite a bit but was still very weak. He could barely make it to the loo without help, and it was practically next to the bed! This was, however, a normal result of losing so much blood that a transfusion was needed.
And guess what had happened to him?
Time Lord blood contained a small amount of vortex energy, ever since said Time Lord had looked into the Untempered Schism, this bit of energy helped to make their bodies much stronger and efficient than humans. However if your Time Lord friend ended up without enough of this energy you would end up with a very weak Time Lord friend, a lack of this energy wasn't deadly in itself, though a lot more nutrients and rest were needed to keep the Time Lord alive. The energy in their blood was replaced with new energy on a cycle, the cycle took weeks and only replaced a small amount of the energy, more wasn't necessary. However, this meant that when there was a shortage of the energy, which was usually due to blood loss as new blood was made faster than the energy.
The energy couldn't be transfused as it was designed to disintegrate the moment it left the body.
All The Doctor could do was wait until his energy levels were high enough again, from Martha's tests they had concluded that his energy levels were two times lower than it should normally be.
He knew that he couldn't just blame the plasmavore for levels this low. He knew that his levels had been lower than normal already before the plasmavore had happened. A part of that energy had gone to his broken hand, but it hadn't been low enough to really bother him, except that he needed to eat a bit more than usual.
The Time Lord looked up as the door of the infirmary opened and Martha strolled in, carrying a tray with food.
"Good morning." She greeted him enthusiastically.
"Morning." He greeted back in the same tone.
"How did you sleep?" She asked him as she put down the tray on the table next to him.
He shrugged.
"Didn't have any nightmares." It was the truth, he found himself thinking less and less about Rose. Sure, it still hurt like hell, but now he could manage thinking about her most of the time. He also still had nightmares every other night. It was getting better, though, and that was the important part. He knew however that he would never forget the pink and yellow girl that was carrying his son.
"Well, that's good." Martha commented as she handed him the bowl of cereal. She insisted on him trying to do as much as possible by himself, both for him to regain strength and for them to know what he could and couldn't do. He had managed to eat on his own without being fed for the first time yesterday. logically it still took him a lot of effort not to mess it up and he certainly didn't want to mess it up as it wouldn't be him cleaning it up. Both Martha and Sarah Jane were busy enough already.
When he was done with his breakfast Martha she put the empty bowl away.
"So, time for your daily medical check, mister." She told him, causing him to groan, he hated these check-ups. Not that they entailed much more than a couple of scans, he just hated being a patient.
"Oh don't complain, you know just as well as I do why they are necessary." Martha reminded him as she started to prepare the things she needed.
"Doesn't mean I have to like them." He mumbled just loud enough for Martha to hear, who just shook her head and continue to prepare things.
He's such a child. She thought to herself fondly.
"Anyway, where do you want to talk about today?" Martha asked him as she headed back to his bed. Martha had forced him to tell her something about himself every day, in the hope of making him feel better about his past. As a consolation, he was allowed to talk about things that didn't matter to him on an emotional level, which usually was him giving her a lecture about Gallifreyan biology.
"Well, I thought it was time to tell you what happened to my home planet." Sure, it was something he hated to talk about, but he had decided that she deserved to know.
"Gallifrey, you mean?" She asked, as she started the scanner and sat down in the chair next to his bed, the scanner would take about 15 minutes to completely scan him, so this was the perfect opportunity for them to talk.
"Yeah." He confirmed.
"What happened to it?" Martha asked him.
"There was a war. A Time War. The last Great Time War. My people fought a race called the Daleks, for the sake of all creation. And they lost. They lost. Everyone lost. They're all gone now. My family, my friends, even that sky. Oh, you should have seen it, that old planet..." He continued to explain how Gallifrey used to be to Martha, and when the scanner beeped to let them know it was done, it was ignored, in favour of the Time Lord's story. Martha knew that she could take the other scans after he was done with his story, that wasn't a problem.
Over the next weeks The Doctor slowly, but surely, got his strength back. He was still weaker than normal but found that he no longer had to catch his breath after five steps. His life had slowly gone back to how it had been before the incident at Royal Hope. However, both Martha and Sarah Jana disallowed him to go out of the TARDIS on his own, afraid of something similar happening to him.
While he understood their reasoning, he hated that he was basically stuck in the house. Sarah Jane had told him that she would consider allowing him to go out once again after his hand had healed. To burn his time he hanging around with Luke a lot, even more than he had done before the incident. Luke appreciated the attention, the boy was just full of questions he hadn't always been able to ask and the Time Lord gladly answered them.
This was how life was until about 3 months after the incident when The Doctor and Luke were working on an advanced science project, the boy really loved science so The Doctor had decided to introduce him to science from the future and other planets. Now he was teaching the boy how to make an artron energy scanner.
As they were putting together the first wires together, they heard a knock on the door.
"Yeah." The Time Lord answered as the door opened to reveal Sarah Jane looking slightly worried.
"Doctor!" The tone in which she his name really caused him to worry
"What's wrong?" He wondered.
She took a deep breath.
"I wish this wasn't necessary, but I'm going to need your help." She told him.
"Mum, what's going on?" Luke was also worried now.
"I think it's better if I showed the two of you."