It was fast. In two bounds the creature had covered the distance from the entrance to where Josh was sitting on the ground. All the Doctor had time to do was dive over Josh and knock him flat. The creature powered into the time lord from behind, swiping at him, and bowling him over. The Doctor rolled off Josh grappling with the sonic screwdriver and spinning through the settings as the creature whipped round toward him. As the creature pounced for a second time the Doctor pointed the screwdriver at it and released a high pitched focused sonic pulse. The creature howled, shaking it's head, as it cowered down and backed away before bolting from the side tunnel and turning back down into its ghastly lair.

"We've got to go," the Doctor stated.

"What did you do?" Josh asked.

"Sonic pulse," the Doctor commented and showed Josh the screwdriver. "Higher than you can hear. It's not going to keep it at bay for long, so we need to go now," the Doctor insisted. "And, I'm so sorry, Josh, but this is going to hurt." He warned him. He had no time to think about dealing with his ankle. He grabbed him, hauling him up, and tipping him over his shoulder. "Hold tight," he instructed.

"Bag…" Josh gasped. "My bag." The Doctor grabbed his rucksack and slung it over his other shoulder. He couldn't afford to take any more care and he ran. Josh cried out as every one of the Doctor's steps jolted his ankle.

"I'm sorry." The Doctor knew he was causing the boy pain and potentially making his ankle injury worse as he sprinted down the darkened tunnel. "It's not far, Josh," the Doctor assured him. "Just hang on, we're almost there." The Doctor leapt out of the tunnel and into the woods. The sun was retreating so the woods were filled with shadow. He continued to run, down the path, and to the clearing beside the stream. He fumbled to find the key in his trouser pocket without jostling Josh too much, and then carried him into the TARDIS, kicking the door closed behind him. He headed straight through to the sickbay and carefully decanted the boy onto one of the four beds in there. Josh yelled as the Doctor laid him down on the bed. The time lord grabbed a pillow from the adjacent bed and gently slid it under his injured leg. Josh cried out as he writhed on the bed. "Try and keep still now," the Doctor encouraged. "We're safe in here."

"Josh," the Doctor put his hands on his shoulders. "I'm not going to force you to let me do anything you don't want me to do, and we're safe, but I'd like you to allow me to give you some pain relief now," he suggested. "I'll get it directly from the pharmacy and I'll show you the bottles so you can see what they are if you still don't trust me to help you."

"I'm allergic to aspirin," Josh whispered.

"Me too," the Doctor offered. "I'll not give you any aspirin." The Doctor went over to the cabinets at the side of the sickbay. There was a sink there and he quickly scrubbed his hands which were covered in sticky drying blood from the young man in the Green Day T-shirt as well as wetter fresher blood. He then went and got three different bottles of drugs from the pharmacy. He took them back to Josh. "Okay, so we've got three drugs here," he informed him. "This one is a painkiller. This one is an anti-inflammatory, and this one is a drug that is going to calm you down and help you relax a bit while I look at your ankle." He put the three phials of drug onto the table just beside Josh. "Is it okay if I give you them?" the Doctor asked him patiently. Josh nodded. "Thank you," the Doctor acknowledged though he suspected that rather than come to trust him Josh was just in too much pain to care.

The Doctor drew doses of the three drugs into the same syringe. He didn't go for a needleless delivery system. He didn't want to freak Josh out with technology that he might not have seen before. Josh had been hanging over his shoulder when he entered the TARDIS, so he doubted that he had noticed that it was a wooden box or that it was bigger on the inside. He still wasn't entirely sure what the date was, but based on Josh's clothing and the remnants of the clothes the other teenagers had been wearing it was early twenty first century, maybe a bit later than he had left Rose, but not that much later.

The Doctor got the drugs ready in the syringe and then ripped open a wipe with his teeth. He swabbed Josh's arm to clean it. They had no idea what kind of bacteria were thriving in the tunnels and now Josh was in the light of the sickbay it didn't look like he'd had a bath in recent days. The swab came away covered in grime, so the Doctor discarded it and ripped a second wipe open, making sure the skin was clean. "You're going to feel a sharp scratch," the Doctor warned. The teenager had good veins and the Doctor found one easily. He slid the needle in and drew a little blood back into the needle to make sure he was in the right place and then he slowly injected the drugs directly into his bloodstream.

"Those drugs are going to work quickly," the Doctor assured him. "They're going to make you feel a lot more comfortable, so just relax and let them work." Josh just looked at him suspiciously. The Doctor went to wash his hands again. His own blood was trickling down the inside of his shirt. His back was on fire where he'd been slashed by the animal, but it wasn't too serious. Not serious enough to kick start any kind of regeneration anyway and that meant he could deal with it later. As he was over at the sink he heard a clatter and thump and turned quickly to see that Josh had tried to get off the bed. He'd given him quite a strong muscle relaxant as well as the painkiller so it was little surprise that he'd melted into a heap on the floor. He rushed back over to him.

"You're not going to be doing that ankle any favours," the Doctor warned him. "If the bones come out the skin it's going to be a lot more difficult to manage. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm trying to help."

"You've got blood on your shirt," Josh informed him. The Doctor looked down to the smears of drying blood on the front of his shirt and flippantly thought that the boy should try looking at the back of it.

"It's not mine," the Doctor offered. "It was one of the other boys. I tried to help him, but I was too late," the Doctor explained briefly. "I couldn't help him, but I am trying to help you, you're just not making it very easy for me at the moment, and I get that, you have no reason in the world to trust me." Josh looked at him, but rather than say anything he just started to cry. "Come here," the Doctor sighed. He knelt right in front of him and wrapped his arms around him, knowing he was taking a risk, but Josh didn't fight to get away from him rather he seemed to sag into him. "You have been incredibly brave today," the Doctor informed him. "Will you let me help you?"

The Doctor wasn't really used to being in a position where he wasn't being trusted, but it just made him more determined to win Josh over. Either that or he was going to have to hand the injured boy over to the authorities, at a hospital likely, and looking at his injury he'd have a better chance of a good recovery if he at least did the initial treatment in the TARDIS than hand him over to barbarian twenty first century medics.

"I tell you what," the Doctor suggested leaning away from Josh to make eye contact with him if the boy decided to look up. He didn't. "I've got a phone kicking around somewhere. I'll find it and you can call anyone you want to. Do you want to phone your parents and ask them to come and get you?" the Doctor asked but Josh shook his head. "You don't want to call your parents?"

"They died," Josh informed him. "Three years ago."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor offered. "What about someone else? Is there someone else that looks after you who could come and get you?"

"I look after myself."

"What about the police? We could call the police and they could come and take you to hospital."

"Please don't."

"Are you in trouble, Josh?"

"I ran away."

"From home?"

"It's not my home," Josh told him firmly. "A foster home. If you call the police they will just take me back."

"How old are you Josh? 15? 16?"

"14."

"Tell you what then," the Doctor stated. "Let me help you now? We'll sort your ankle out and get a temporary cast on it so it's nice and secure. I'll not tell anyone where you are until that is done and you're more comfortable. Then you can rest here while I go and sort out those creatures. Then we can decide what we do about all of this together? Is that a deal?"

"Why would you do that?"

"A long time ago I ran away," the Doctor informed Josh. "I know what it's like not to feel you belong anywhere. What do you think?"

"Okay."

"Good, now, back on the bed and no more jumping off." The Doctor carefully lifted Josh back up onto the bed and positioned his leg on the pillow again. "Just relax and stay still. I need to get some scans of your ankle and see what the damage is," the Doctor checked, but noticed that Josh was looking at his hands. There was blood on them and along his forearms. Josh knew he wasn't bleeding, and the blood on the front of the guy's shirt was dry, so it had to be fresh blood and it had to be the guy who was claiming to help him.

"You're bleeding."

"It's just a couple of scratches from the creature," the Doctor admitted.

"It was coming at me," Josh recalled. "It would go for me. I'm smaller and weaker than you. You stopped it getting me."

"I said I was going to get you out of there didn't I?" the Doctor suggested and Josh nodded. "Don't worry about me. I'll get a cloth for your hands. Though you could probably do with a bath," the Doctor commented. "Where have you been living since you ran away?"

"In the woods," Josh stated. "I built a shelter. I like it."

"Maybe you could show me when you're ankle is cast up and you're feeling a bit better?" the Doctor prompted. Josh didn't respond but there was a subconscious shake of his head that was not missed by the time lord. He still didn't trust him, but he didn't really blame him. He'd clearly been through a lot and more than just the creatures in the storm drain. "I'm going to scan your ankle now. Try and stay still for me?"

The Doctor did the scans of Josh's ankle. He got scans right the way up to his knee just to be sure that it was an isolated injury. "Oh, Josh, you've made a bit of a mess of this," the Doctor informed him as he reviewed the scans. "Do you want to see the scans?" the Doctor checked and Josh nodded. The Doctor wheeled the monitor over so Josh could look at them. "This is your shin bone here," the Doctor pointed to the bone showing on the scan.

"The tibia," Josh reported. "I know what bones are."

"Okay, good," the Doctor accepted. "Do you know what a spiral fracture is?" he asked him. Josh shook his head. "Okay, you can break bones in different ways, we can go into all of those later if you were interested, but a spiral fracture is what happens when a bone breaks due to a twisting force. See how the bottom of your tibia has broken but it's not just broken straight across but goes up and diagonally across the bone?" Josh nodded. "A bit of it has broken off here. This bone here?" he checked with Joshua.

"Fibula."

"Good," the Doctor confirmed. "Well, you've got a break in the distal end of your fibula here, and all of it has rotated round you're ankle is fully dislocated, so, unless you want to be going round in circles, we're going to have to get it all back into the right position. The blood flow isn't bad, but the skin is going to be tight over here where it's bulging a bit, so we need to sort it out. It's a nasty injury," the Doctor informed him. "How did it happen?"

"I was running and I caught my foot in a root or something."

"Were you running into the tunnel or out of it?" the Doctor asked curiously. "What were you doing down in the storm drain anyway?"

"They took my bag," Josh commented. "They kept hitting me and they took my bag and they wouldn't give it back. They ran into the storm drain and I ran after them to get it back."

"Did they do that and that to you?" the Doctor asked indicating to Josh's split lip and the cut and swelling over his eye.

"They did that." Josh pointed to his lip. "I hit my head when I fell after getting my foot caught."

"I'll give that a bit of a check and clean up when we've sorted out your ankle," the Doctor suggested. "Because you've got some pretty bad breaks your ankle is going to have to be treated in two parts. I'm going to do the first part now and that means I'm going to reduce the ankle dislocation and set the breaks so we get the bones as close to the right position as possible. Then I'm going to put a temporary cast on it. It will keep it secure and make it feel better, but your ankle and foot are going to swell up like a balloon, so we can't put a proper plaster cast on it yet."

"What's the second part?" Josh asked him. "Am I going to need surgery?"

"You're going to need something done to hold the bones together while they heal," the Doctor informed him. "It will depend where you are when the second part is done as to how that will be achieved."

"I got pins put in my arm when I was 11," Josh informed the Doctor.

"You're going to have to be careful or you're going to end up like a bionic man," the Doctor suggested. "We can talk about what we do about the second part of your treatment later, but when that is done and you're in a proper cast you will be able to get up and about on crutches. It's going to be a while before you can go running round the woods again though."

"How long?"

"At least a couple of months, maybe a bit longer, it's pretty nasty. We can talk more later. I need to get this done and I need to go back out and see what is going on with the creatures. We don't want anyone else to be able to wander into the storm drain while they're still there."

"No one hardly ever comes down here," Josh commented.

"I'm going to give you another drug now so I can straighten your ankle out for you. It's a procedural sedative, so, it's going to make you feel very sleepy and very relaxed." The Doctor went back to the pharmacy and got the drugs he needed. Josh didn't try to get out of bed again and he didn't tell the Doctor he didn't want the drug that would make him sleep. "It's going to be okay," the Doctor assured him as he swabbed his arm again and then injected the drugs. Josh wasn't squeamish because he watched what the Doctor was doing. "You're going to feel sleepy now, just go with it, and I want you to remember that you're safe here. You're in the TARDIS. No one and nothing can get in here, so you don't need to worry. You're perfectly safe," the Doctor assured him.

"TARDIS?" Josh asked as his eyes began to get heavy and the tension began to leave his skinny frame. "Who are you?"

"I told you before, I'm the Doctor."

"But?" Josh tried to look at him, but his eyes wouldn't open properly. "That's just a story…" he slurred as his voice trailed off and he slid down under the veil. The Doctor raised his eyebrows at that as he pulled the oxygen feed down from the TARDIS and gently positioned it over Josh's nose and mouth. He had too much to do in order to be overly curious about who the boy was lying broken in front of him. The first thing he had to do was change his shirt. The Doctor went through to his room and quickly changed. He didn't do anything else, but dumped his blood soaked suit and shirt straight into the TARDIS disposal. He didn't want to look at it or the slashes that had to be through the material. If he concentrated on how much his back was burning he didn't think he'd be able to continue — Josh and the creatures were the priority for now.