Docking the helicopter with the Valiant was a feat in itself, but they did and somehow the Doctor was still alive; just. He was stronger than anyone could imagine as he was clinging onto life. He was cyanotic, he was not getting enough oxygen again. He was burning up and there was clear evidence that his circulation was shutting down, but he had made it to the Valiant and that was now his best chance. They had a medical team and they had the limited UNIT medical files on him. They had oxygen and fluids and medications and a proper bed and a ventilator and proper monitors that Martha knew how to use.

As soon as the helicopter was secured on the upper surface of the Valiant and the rotors had stopped and the skis had been clamped down the doors were thrown open. A medical team with a gurney rushed towards the helicopter aware that they were bringing the Doctor in and that he was incredibly unwell. Jack lifted the Time Lord up and laid him on the bed. There was no acknowledgement from him of the movement, unlike when he'd groaned in pain when he was lifted into the helicopter. Any awareness that he had was lost.

Donna jumped out of the helicopter next. Martha moved so she was sitting on the edge of the floor of the helicopter where she had spent the journey with the Doctor. She stepped down and followed. Jack was the first to notice that she was barely putting any weight onto her right leg at all as she tried to hurry after the Doctor.

"Martha?"

"Keep on going after him," Martha insisted waving off Jack's attention.

"What is it?" Jack asked her. He knew that she and Donna had slammed into the deck again when the ship had come up and he had been entirely grateful that neither of them had been hurt, but it was clear that his gratitude had been misplaced and that Martha was hurt.

"Jarred my ankle," Martha commented. "It's not worth fussing about. We need to sort him out, quickly Jack, or we are going to lose him. I am amazed he has hung on this long."

"I know," Jack accepted. He knew that Martha couldn't stop and that wasn't fair. Of the medics available at UNIT she was the one who had the best chance of saving him, but she was lagging behind. The Doctor had already got into the lift and they were now waiting for her and holding her up. "Piggy back," Jack suggested. He got in front of Martha and ducked down. She accepted that in terms of covering the ground it might be more sensible and she got up onto Jack's back. She was as light as a feather to the Captain and he jogged over. "As soon as he is stable you get that looked at," Jack told her.

"I will," Martha agreed.

They took the Doctor down into the lift into a medical bay. He was transferred onto a proper bed and there were medics ready to act and to ensure that they gave him the best chance. They knew that the person they had in front of him was the Doctor so they did not immediately jump into action. They needed the guidance that Martha could give them to ensure they did nothing to harm him.

"Right, strip him down, we need to get plain fluids up for him. I want him lying on a cooling blanket and we want fans on in here. I want his vitals taken every five minutes and recorded manually and electronically. I want blood samples in the lab straight away and I want a full test. We're going to intubate and ventilate and we'll sedate him until we have some kind of idea what we are going to do to support him while he fights this. I want a general anti-viral given and we will give him a bolus of glucose and of potassium to give him a fighting chance," Martha instructed.

It took almost an hour to get the Doctor sorted out. During that time Martha insisted that both Donna and Jack remained outside. Instead of being stuck in the corridor they were called in to a briefing room with the current commander of the Valiant, a Colonel Hartley. He wanted a full brief of what had happened and where they were at. Jack advised them of the three prisoners who were being held by six UNIT soldiers on the cargo vessel anchored North of Alaska. They didn't have any provisions they were aware of so they were going to have to be retrieved.

Colonel Hartley had direct orders to take the Valiant straight back to London as soon as the Doctor was on board. He scrambled a boat to go out and retrieve the soldiers and prisoners and then they would be transported to UNIT HQ in London as well. They were going to be handling all aspects of this incident. He assured them that they would make sure that any resources required to assist the Doctor and to bring the people to justice that had done this to him would be made available.

"How is he?" Jack asked as the door opened and Martha hobbled to the door. She looked worried and tired and like she needed the chance to have a break and get her ankle looked at.

"He is still very sick," Martha offered. "But, I think he is stable for now. It is always hard to know how he is going to react to our interventions, and we are now at a position where he could go either way. He is going to be monitored constantly. I have given him a huge dose of anti-viral medications. Now they are pretty nasty with side effects for humans and I expect they will be for him as well, but he needs them. As he is so sick and because his breathing has been difficult we have put him on a ventilator that is taking over his breathing for him. We have also medically induced a deep unconsciousness so that his body has a chance to try and fight this. He is still suffering from a high fever so we are trying to bring his body temperature down and I the science team have taken blood samples and the data on the virus that was provided by Coljai and they will look at developing some more specific treatments for him."

"Can we see him?" Donna asked.

"Yes, of course you can," Martha offered. "He's ventilated and he's got a lot of different monitoring devices attached as well as several drips running in so don't be upset by any of that. It is there to help him even if it looks pretty invasive."

"Does he look any worse than when he was convulsing?" Donna asked. Martha shook her head.

"You need to go and sort yourself out," Jack told Martha.

"We have taken some scans of his shoulder and we are waiting to see what comes back from them. Then, I am going to spend the next hour sitting with him to make sure that if he immediately turns a corner he is turning it the right way, and then, I will sort myself out," Martha assured Jack. "I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. I just landed off centre when we were being winched up."

Donna went into the room with the Doctor. It was a proper room now and there were three chairs in there. He was lying in a bed but there was no sheet on it or any covers. He had electrodes positioned all over his chest and there was a monitor showing a double line. It seemed to be running very quickly. He had a blood pressure cuff around his arm and that was regularly going up and down to see what his blood pressure was doing. They were constantly taking his body temperature and he was running at 34 degrees. It was far too high for him, but they had him lying on a cool mattress and the fluids that he was receiving were on a cooling pump and there were fans blowing across him to keep him cool. There was a bowl of water at the side of the bed and there were cloths in there to regularly wipe him down to try to keep him from getting too hot again.

He had a double canola in each of his arms. They were taped and then bandaged in place in case he had another convulsion. He was receiving fluid and nutrient and medication through the bags. He had a tube down his throat and into his trachea and that was attached to a machine that was clicking and whirring regularly as his chest rose up and down.

"Oh, Doctor?" Donna sighed as she rubbed his forearm as it rested loosely on the mattress beside him. "What are we going to do now?" she asked him. Seeing him like that surrounded by medical equipment and so totally still she actually doubted for the first time that he was going to bounce back. "How long will it be until we know if he is going to be okay or not?"

"We need to know what the virus is doing to him and how it replicates. Some viruses don't replicate very well in the body and the anti-virals we have given him will stop that from happening. If the virus is not replicating and we only have to see him through the current level of infection then we will know how he is responding within the next day or so. If the virus is not going to react to the anti-virals we have given him we will have to do some more work and see what happens," Martha explained. "Unfortunately we don't know yet and there are too many variables for me to answer that for you. We do have some very good people working on it. The best in the field."

"On the valiant?" Donna asked curiously wondering why they would be up on the ship.

"No, we have the full resource of UNIT available to us even while we are up here. We are digitally linked to everyone that we need. The Doctor is important to UNIT and there will be people getting out of bed across the globe to solve this if we need them to. It is not however my area of expertise, so, I will be sitting waiting for news as much as you are," Martha admitted to Donna. "All I can do is try to minimise the effect of the symptoms on him both in terms of their acute and immediate effect on his systems and any long term issues," Martha commented. "We're doing the best we can by him by giving him the fluid, nutrient, and medications and keeping him unconscious. The less his body has to do to sustain itself the more it can fight the virus. He is strong and he does have a good immune system."

"So, he will be alright?" Donna checked.

"I'm sorry," Martha offered. "I simply don't know at this stage. He is critically ill, Donna. If we had not got him here when we did then I don't think he would have lasted more than fifteen minutes more. He's not been getting enough oxygen. Even now his circulation is not as good as it should be. We are supporting that. He will be getting massages regularly from the nursing staff to make sure that he keeps on getting blood flow to his feet and to his hands in order to prevent any risk of tissue death. He's not out of the woods yet, but we are doing all we can to support him while he continues to fight."

"What do we do now?" Donna asked.

"The Valiant is taking us back to London and to the UNIT HQ. As soon as we get there we will transfer him down to the main hospital there. It is even better equipped than the Valiant and we will have more staff and more resources available to assist him. They will likely retrieve the TARDIS too and hopefully she will have something to hand to further assist him. We just have to take this one hour at a time at the moment. Hope that we come up with something to help him and that he remains stable and ideally begins to improve."

"Wait and keep our fingers crossed," Jack concluded.

"Yeah, I know it is cliché but a lot of this is down to how much fight he has left in him. He's strong and he's fit and he's generally quite healthy. I'd like it if he was a bit heavier but he's not hugely underweight."

"Are you kidding?!" Donna exclaimed shocked by the sentiment.

"Don't be mean to him when he's so sick," Jack scolded but was amused. "He's not that skinny."

"Yes he is!"

"He's not." Martha smiled. "You can see that he's not. He's not emaciated and he has a degree of musculature where it is supposed to be. He is lean and he's certainly not fat, but he's on the lighter side of where he should be. In normal circumstances that is not an issue, but he's got a huge fight on at the moment and he could have done with some reserves."