"What is your name?" Martha asked the alien scientist that Jack marched in. He had an angry looking bruise coming out on the side of his face, but Martha couldn't quite bring herself to care much about that despite being a medical doctor. She was the Doctor's medical doctor first and the man in front of her had made him deliberately sick, from what she could gather from Jack they had done that to turn him into some kind of antibody factory for their own benefit. She was not going to stand for that, but she had to gain cooperation from them or she didn't know how to treat the Doctor.
"Coljai," he advised her.
"I'm Doctor Martha Jones, I'm a medic. Are you a medic?" she checked with him.
"I am a biochemist," he explained.
"I understand that you have given the Doctor a virus. He is very sick," Martha advised him.
"His systems are being overwhelmed by the viral cells. We gave him a considerable dose of the pure virus in order to increase his immune response," Coljai explained.
"What are the symptoms of the virus?"
"In our species it manifests slightly different to what we have seen in the Doctor," Coljai advised. "There are several stages in the progression of the symptoms. They begin with what would be considered some kind of respiratory tract infection. In some there are bouts of sickness and diarrhoea through the initial periods as well. As it progresses the virus attacks the cells of the organs. The hosts go through systematic organ failures. It also has a haemorrhagic affect."
"Okay," Martha nodded. It sounded like a nasty virus to have. "What is the mortality rate amongst your species?" Martha asked him.
"The virus carries a mortality rate of 79%. All persons who are known to have contracted the virus have suffered long term affects even if they have survived. With the circulatory break down this includes the loss of limbs through necessary amputation, brain damage, and sterilisation."
"I am sorry that your species is experiencing such an illness," Martha offered with some sincerity. "But, that does not give you any right over the Doctor. What you have done here is abhorrent and if there is any way that I can I will make sure that you and your colleagues and anyone who has been involved in this process is held to account for what you have done here," Martha told him firmly.
"I understand your concern," Coljai advised. "My colleagues and I will not be held account by any kind of authority," he offered. "We will be held to account by the virus. All three of us are positive for the virus. We are in the early stages, but Nimal has been the most serious of us affected by it. We have given him a dose of the antibodies that we have drawn from the Doctor's blood and it seems to have reduced the affect of the viral cells within his body," Coljai explained.
"I will not allow you to draw any more antibodies from the Doctor," Martha told him plainly. "He is going to need them himself in order to fight the disease you have given him."
"He will not be able to survive," Coljai commented. "The amount of virus he is receiving he will not have a chance."
"Receiving?" Martha clarified what Coljai said. "You're still giving him virus cells?" she checked with him. Coljai did not answer her question. "Are you still giving him virus cells?" Martha asked him. "Are they in the drip?" she checked but he did not answer him.
"Answer her question!" Jack exclaimed and yanked on the cuffs to make Coljai hiss at the metal digging into his flesh.
"Jack," Martha warned with her tone. "I will not have you hurting him to gain his cooperation. That makes us no better than him." Martha went over to the drip that was running into the Doctor's arm through a wide canola. It was on quite a fast speed for it just to be fluid, but the Doctor was feverish and sweating. She opened up her kit. She had plain saline in there. She had three packs of it. She handed two of them to one of the soldiers in the room. "Go and put this out on deck in the snow. I want to cool it down. Hopefully it will start to bring his temperature down a bit." Martha instructed. She took the drip bag that was running into the Doctor down. She flushed the canola through and then put her own saline bag up for him. At least she knew he was now getting fluid and it was not going to be containing more virus to continually over whelm him and not give him a chance to fight the infection he had.
"So, Nimal? You say he is the one with the most severe symptoms?" Martha asked Coljai. He nodded. "If he is suffering then we won't want him to get dehydrated himself." She held the half bag of fluid that she had disconnected from the Doctor. "I will go and assist him. I should have a needle canola in my kit here," Martha told him. She got the correct equipment out. She turned to another of the soldiers. "Can you bring Nimal in here please?"
"Do not do that," Coljai commented quietly.
"Why not, Coljai?" Martha asked him.
"The drip bag contains the viral cells," he admitted.
"Take him back out of here, Jack," Martha instructed. "Please don't kill them," she added. "I may need to ask more questions."
"Is there anything that I can do, Martha?" Donna asked worried for the Doctor. It didn't seem like Martha had done anything for him yet.
"I am going to need some help now. We need to get his clothing off him. He is far too hot. We need to cool him down," Martha instructed. The Bylaxians had hacked at his clothing to gain access to the points they needed. They had tubes going into him at various places and Martha wanted to be able to view him properly. The priority was going to be to get his temperature down. At least he now wasn't getting any more viral cells into him. She had to get him safe for transport in time for the arrival of the Valiant. The delay in the storms meant the airship was less than 8 hours away from them now. Looking at the stress that the Doctor was under she hoped he lasted that long.
Martha had a generic anti-viral medication in her emergency kit and she had her emergency kit with her. It was a generic drug, but in humans she knew that it had significant side effects. It wasn't a very nice medication to be given, but she had it on her largely for dealing with potential contamination through spilled infected blood or for needle-stick injuries in her colleagues, or, God forbid in herself if dealing with someone she knew had a serious viral infection. The side effects were so severe in humans that it was often worse than the actual virus, but it was a good drug. She didn't know if she could risk giving the Doctor a dose of it. He could react to medications in a far different way to a human and some of the most basic human medicines were deadly to him. She needed more information about whether he could take it before she could give it to him, but they had no contact with anyone who might be able to tell them.
"Doctor?" Martha caressed his head. "Can you hear me?" she asked him but she got no direct response from him. "It's Martha, it is okay, and we've got you now. We're going to get you out of here and sort you out, okay?" she told him. "You have got a really high temperature, so we need to try to bring that down for you. You just keep on fighting. We're not going to let anyone else hurt you."
"If I was you I'd wake up, Spaceman, Martha is about to cut your suit up," Donna warned him, but she got no response from him either. She helped Martha to remove his clothing. They cut it all off and then left him lying in just his shorts and on the remnants of his clothing. They could see there was bruising on several parts of his body where he had been manhandled roughly. Martha ran her hands over his head and found the injury where he had been coshed. He'd received a fairly significant blow to cause the swelling that he had. There was no gash or bleeding. She checked his pupil response and it was present. If he did have a concussion then it wasn't going to be too serious and compared to the effect of the virus that was ravaging his body she didn't think it was going to be significant.
His heart rates were far too high still. His breathing rate was low and shallow and snatched. All of it told him that he was under immense medical strain. She didn't know what it was that they had been giving him or what they were doing to him. She had plain saline up for him now, but she added a glucose solution to help provide him energy and to support him in the fight. She then put an oxygen mask on him with a portable cylinder. She did not have much of it. Not enough to last until the Valiant arrived so she decided to give him oxygen therapy in short bursts in case his breathing deteriorated. She adjusted the bed so that he was raised slightly at the head end. If he was going to have respiratory difficulties she did not want him to get more congested than he needed to.
"Jack?" Martha called to him. "Can you send a couple of the guys to go and get some ice or snow from on deck? I want to pack it around him to try to bring his temperature down."
There was a tube running into his left forearm. It was not attached to anything but it was capped off. He didn't need it to be in there and it was a potential infection risk. While she waited for the snow to cool him down she decided to remove it. It was taped to his flesh and she peeled that back expecting to find some kind of canola there. Instead it looked like the actual tubing was snaking into his body. Martha felt around the entrance wound and she could feel the tubing under his skin. It went into the crook of his elbow but it seemed to go up into his arm and towards his armpit. She raised his arm slightly and she could see a lot of bruising there and swelling.
She didn't know where his lymph nodes were, but as she felt into his armpit she expected that he did have glands there. They were very swollen. She checked his groin and again he had very swollen glands down there too. He didn't have them in his throat or she would have seen it straight away. She found the end of the tubing up towards his swollen gland and Martha realised they had been using it as some kind of a siting tube. There were long needle like tubes on a tray that would have been passed up the tube directly into the lymph gland under his arm. They hadn't done it cleanly based on all of the bruising, but they had been drawing antibodies and white blood cells straight from the glands where they were being made? They had literally been harvesting them from him?
"I am so sorry, Doctor," Martha whispered. "Let's get this tube out." She couldn't see that it was stitched in anywhere. They had not even secured it. She gripped it and slowly eased it out of him. The wound where it came out bled and she had to apply pressure to stop it and then stick a dressing down to it. She went to check his other arm. There was no tube in there, but it looked like they had attempted to put one in. There was a lot of bruising. When she went to raise his arm a low moan escaped the Doctor. "Shhhh, you're okay," Martha assured him even if she knew the statement couldn't be further from the truth. He really wasn't okay at all. "Can you hear me?" she got nothing from him in terms of a direct response. She wasn't happy that he had been in pain from her moving his arm though.
"I think that is the shoulder they hit," Donna commented as she stood beside the Doctor gently stroking his sweaty forearm.
Martha went to examine his shoulder but before she had a change his breathing changed suddenly and he tensed on the bed. A wail erupted from him moments before he started to convulse. His body twisted and jerked on the bed.
"Martha, what's happening?" Donna asked.
"He's too hot," Martha exclaimed. "Jack! I need that ice!"