Chapter 3: NOT EVERY SHADOW
Sorry this is so short and it's taken me so long to upload – I had to make a new 1860s gown for Remembrance Day Weekend at Gettysburg. Historical Costuming – like a TARDIS, only slower . . . ;-) I promise more is forthcoming!
"Shouldn't we take him to hospital," I asked when we'd folded the Doctor's lanky form into the back of Elton's Mini.
"With two heartbeats, are you mad?" he said, turning sharply and skidding on the gravelly pavement.
"How are we supposed to help him, then? It's not like either of us are a Galli-whats-ian healer."
"We can keep him safe until we can find his TARDIS. That's what he'll need to heal-up proper, I expect." Elton ran a red signal and narrowly avoided creaming a bag-lady. "We'll take him back to my place, and you & Ursula can watch him while I go on a hunt for that police-box!"
"You on the street, hunting random blue boxes, not a chance! You'll get yourself mugged proper, you will. I'll look for it."
"Neither of you can look for it," said a low voice from the backseat. He coughed, tried to sit up, failed, then said "I put it out of sync with reality – it'll be one second behind anytime it's at. You'll never find it . . . Oh, Nice to see you're still around, Elton . . . Just drive me back to -" The Doctor's voice faded and he collapsed back into the seat.
"Great," said Elton. "We need our own bloody time machine to find his bloody time-machine. Freakin' Time Lords – always too clever for their own good."
"What do we do, then," I said, leaning into the backseat to check the Doctor's pulse.
"We get him somewhere safe, that's what," said Elton. "He probably just needs time. Let's just hope he wasn't, er, on the clock or nothin' . . ."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, he's the Doctor, ain't he. He's always got a world to save. For all we know there are Aliens up the sky right now, with some gigantic clock thingy counting down to the End of the World and he's the only one who can stop it."
"Well, we're right screwed then, aren't we. Does he always do that?"
"Do what, exactly?"
"Black our right when he's about to reveal information that people need?"
"Hrmph. You should hear Jackie Tyler's stories . . ."
Elton peeled into his council estate parking space. The light above the entrance and in the stairwell flickered – they were always going out – and I noticed a large, gold-coated alley cat settled on the stoop. As we were trying to maneuver the Doctor out the back door of the Mini, I looked up to the lit window of Elton & Ursula's apartment on the 8th floor.
"Oh, he is going to be so fun to carry up 8 flights."
"Well, there's this thing called a lift, you see . . ."
I pointed through the glass entrance. There was a posting on the lift doors in bright-red letters: OUT OF ORDER. PLEASE USE STAIRWAYS.
"Bloody, damnable building . . ." muttered Elton. "Well – we could both use some exercise with all this Chinese food waiting for us upstairs."
Elton grabbed the Doctor by the shoulders of his coat, and I grabbed his feet the best I could. As we lifted him over the front stoop, I kicked the alley cat out of my way, into the shadows on my left.
The cat instantly evaporated in a puff of fur.