Jack had gone out of the room where the Doctor was and he returned with four harnesses. They were the ones used to abseil down onto the ship to rescue the Time Lord. Now they were going to have to put them back on and get up on deck for the arrival of the helicopter so they could get him to the Valiant as soon as possible.
"We need to get one of these onto him," Jack offered as he held up the harness which consisted of looped straps and buckles. Jack and Martha worked to get it on him. They had to make sure it was tight. He was unconscious and he would not be able to hold on himself. Jack was going to go up first on the winch with the Time Lord and he had already decided he was going to clip the Time Lord onto himself as well as onto the rope in the hopes to keep him as steady as possible. The last thing they wanted was for him to be swinging around on the end of a rope for long.
As they rolled the Doctor onto his side in order to get the waist straps as high up his body as they could the Time Lord moaned. "I'm sorry, Doctor, it won't be long," Martha assured him. She rubbed his back as he was on his side, and took the opportunity to listen to the rattle and wheeze of his increasingly congested chest. They really needed to get him on some medications to help him fight the effects of the virus.
When they laid him flat he seemed to convulse for a moment, and then his breathing became much worse. He was gagging and choking. "Get him on his side again!" Martha barked the instruction. She got him on his side and tipped his head back, turning his neck gently so that the small amount of vomit that had risen into his throat was able to drain down out. She looked to Jack.
The Captain paced the room as he accessed his wrist computer and contacted the UNIT pilots bringing the helicopter in. They were ten minutes away and they couldn't get there any faster than they were already coming. It didn't matter if Jack shouted at them to hurry up or not.
Martha spent a few minutes cleaning the Doctor up. The thick gelatinous orangey vomit that had risen to choke him was a worrying sign. Even unconscious many patients would wake suddenly in order to vomit safely, but he'd not done. It had risen into the back of his throat ready to drown or choke him. She needed to keep him on his side now in case it happened again and that was going to be more difficult in the helicopter.
His skin was warm to the touch again and his features were so pale except for the burning red flush to his cheeks. There were swellings coming up under both of his arms and in his groin. Martha had to make sure that the straps from the harness did not interfere with them. The danger of the swollen glands being compressed was hard. She noted with concern that there was the first signs of mottling coming into his hands and down his lower legs. His hearts were beating rapidly but his circulation was not effective enough. She touched the top of his feet with the back of her hands. Despite his fever they felt cool to the touch. She got his boot socks back out of the Converse he had been wearing and pulled them onto his feet again. It wasn't going to do much to assist him. He needed to have fleece boots and something to help boost his circulation. He needed more oxygen than they could give him. There was hardly any left in the canister at all now.
Jack made sure that Donna and Martha had their harnesses on correctly. Martha had undergone the UNIT training so she was going to be able to make sure that she and Donna were attached to the helicopter winch okay, but one of the soldiers was coming out with them as well. That was going to leave five UNIT soldiers on the vessel to maintain the security of their prisoners. The sixth would ensure they got onto the helicopter safely and then would return to assist his colleagues until they were all picked up. He understood the urgency of getting the Doctor off the cargo ship and onto the Valiant. He didn't think he had ever seen anyone as sick as the Doctor was.
There was a lab coat hanging on the back of the door in the field lab pod. Martha grabbed that and wrapped it around the Doctor's shoulders. They didn't want to dress him again. He was too hot, but they were going back up onto deck. Jack eased his arms around the Time Lord and he got Martha to help support his head as he lifted him up off the bench. The Doctor moaned and then cried out more significantly as Jack tilted him so that he was leaning into him to make it easier to carry his limp form.
"I'm sorry," Jack whispered. He carried the Doctor, wrapped in the lab coat, out onto deck. Looking out over the side of the boat and to the south they could see the light of the helicopter approaching. The sea was quite rough and again the boat was rolling across the waves in a manner it didn't do when inside the field pod. It had to have some kind of internal stabilisation or inertial dampener system to prevent the motion from affecting those inside it. Donna was quite glad as she thought that if she had to spend any amount of time being rocked back and forth that way that she would end up being sick herself. The deck of the ship tilted so far to the side that they had to work their way along the barrier and they could see that the clouds were whipping overhead rapidly. When a wave crashed so far up the side of the ship that it spilled onto the deck they knew how difficult it was going to be for the helicopter to maintain a safe position for them to winch up. They were going to have to get up quickly.
Within a few minutes the helicopter was overhead. They co-pilot left the front and became the winch operator and he sent the rope down for the first time. The boat was rising and falling ten to fifteen feet at a time on the swell and the cold air and brittle sting of the freezing spray made it hard to see. The UNIT soldier managed to get forward and grab the rope. He brought it over to where Jack was trying to shelter the Doctor in his arms from the worst of the weather. He watched as the soldier clipped the Doctor's harness to the rope and then also to a spare D ring on Jack's harness. He then made sure that the clip on his own harness was secured on the rope below that of the Doctor's so he would be beneath him. He was planning on trying to hold himself so he could support the Doctor and stop him from simply dangling on the rope.
"Ready?!" the soldier yelled. Jack gave him the thumbs up. The soldier moved away and gave the signal to the winch operator above. The slack was taken up first but then the boat rose up on a wave making more slack which was taken up by the winch. The deck of the boat seemed to fall away from Jack's feet as it tipped back off the crest of a wave and he was in the air beneath the helicopter. He held onto the Doctor and the rope the best that he could, but the Time Lord's head rocked backward as he splayed out limply.
When they got to the bottom of the helicopter the landing ski came to Jack's shoulder first. He made sure that he didn't swing the Doctor into it as the winch operator brought them up. Jack managed to get hold of the floor of the helicopter and a handhold there as the winch operator grabbed the front of the harness holding the Doctor and hauled him onto the deck. Jack came up as well so that they were both lying on the ground. He unclipped himself from the Doctor and then from the rope.
The winch operator was already sending the rope back down for Donna and Martha. Jack could feel the helicopter being buffeted and tossed around by the wind and he knew the pilot was doing a sterling job in trying to keep it steady enough for the rescue. They were at their very limits of flying tolerance trying to hold a position in 40 mile an hour winds that were gusting to 60 and 70 miles and hour.
The UNIT soldier got hold of the rope again. Donna and Martha were hooked onto it. They needed to get going and get back into motion. As soon as they were off the deck the helicopter started to move away, but the boat rolled and came up. The deck slammed back into them as they had not lifted far enough away to get up. They were dragged along the deck for a few feet before it dropped down again. The winch operator was giving the instruction for the helicopter to gain altitude so they cleared the railing around the bow of the ship as it came back again. It was close but they missed it.
Donna had her eyes screwed tightly shut as the boat disappeared from beneath them and they were dangling over the ocean. She was holding onto Martha and Martha was holding onto her. They twisted and swung on the rope as it was winched up while the helicopter was in flight. The winch operator leant down through the door and dragged them both into the base of the helicopter and slid the door closed before they tackled the ropes.
Martha was checking the Doctor out as Jack was holding him on his side on the floor of the helicopter. His breathing was very bad. He needed to be sitting up and they couldn't afford to go too high. The co-pilot went back up front and he returned with a small oxygen cylinder. It wouldn't last the full two hour trip but it was there for emergencies and he could see that the Doctor's health was an emergency.
"Are you two okay?" the co-pilot checked when he went to get the ropes off them and finish getting the winch secured.
"I think so," Donna confirmed. "That wasn't much fun," she offered, but she went to the Doctor and took his hand. His fingers were limp and they didn't close around hers this time. She could see that there was a dark pink and white marbling pattern on the back of his hand and that the lines at the base of his fingertips were looking a bit bluish. That wasn't right at all.
"Doctor Jones? Are you okay?" the co-pilot checked with her. He had seem them both slam back into the deck and was sure that they'd be in trouble. It had not been a text book rescue but in any other circumstances they would not have risked venturing out to rescue in that type of helicopter. She didn't answer but had got her stethoscope out and was listening to the Doctor's breathing.
"We need to get him sitting up a bit more, Jack," Martha instructed him. Instead of getting him up onto the chairs they left him on the floor. Jack leant back against the wall and then they eased the Doctor so he was sitting between his legs on the floor and was leaning back so that his head was against Jack's upper abdomen. She took the seat cushions off the nearest seat and she slid them under his knees to bend them up and reduce the effort it was putting on his hearts to pump blood around his body. He was shaking and sweating and even with the oxygen that had been given he was struggling to get enough to keep his lips pale and pink. They loosened the harness off from around his middle where it had been pulled tight for the trip up to the helicopter and they saw that he had dark purple red bruises coming out in a line over his hip where the harness had dug in.
"How far out are we from the Valiant?" Martha asked the pilot.
"We should be docking within an hour and a half," he advised her. "We are going as quickly as we can, but we're fighting quite a strong head wind."
"Which means the Valiant has a tail wind," Jack commented. "That may be the best way round. Hear that, Doctor? It's not going to be long now," he assured him. He rubbed his chest lightly and his arms. Trying to make sure that the blood kept flowing.
They had been flying for almost an hour when the Doctor started to convulse again. There was nothing they could do inside the helicopter except try to stop him from injuring himself or one of them. The convulsion lasted for almost five minutes. When he finally slumped back down into Jack's lap he was too still.
"Come on, Doctor, you need to breathe," Martha insisted as she got Jack to ease away from him to lie him back down flat. She tipped his head backward to make sure that his airway was clear and the Doctor tensed and spluttered reflexively as more of the orange mucus type vomit rose into his mouth. They got him over onto his side and held him so it could drain into a sticky smear on the helicopter floor. "Please, Doctor, come on?" She rubbed his back and held him with his head back. His whole body contorted again and she had to use tissue to clear out the back of his throat. Thankfully after a few agonising seconds he wheezed a shaky breath.
"How long?" Martha asked quietly looking to Jack.
"It's going to be about forty minutes," Jack advised her.
"I don't know if he's going to last that long," Martha voiced her fears quietly to the Captain. "Why isn't he regenerating, Jack?"
"I don't know," Jack admitted. "Maybe it is something to do with the virus or maybe it is something they have done to him? If he does start? If there is any indication that he is going to, then we need to get this chopper down, even if it means us all jumping out into the sea," Jack advised. He was fairly sure that is he regenerated within the confines of the helicopter that he would end up killing them all.