An hour and a half past. Donna, Jack, and Martha had all been able to just sit and relax for a moment. They also had a drink and something to eat. None of them were really that interested in it, but it had been a long time since they'd had any sustenance. Nurses came in and out of the room where the Doctor was being kept unconscious and they were recording his vitals. His heart rates had come down a little.
They were still elevated but they had got his blood oxygen levels back up to a good level and the blueness had gone from his extremities. His body temperature had dropped back down to 22 degrees. He was still feverish but it was not raging as it had been. Martha was too cautious to allow herself to be optimistic that the worst was over, but she was confident that for now he was moving in the right direction.
Jack knew enough to know that too. He was no longer getting worse. He was starting to get better. He hoped that was down to the anti-viral and that they were stopping the viral cells invading his systems from replicating. Perhaps they could relax for a while now. Even if relaxing was not truly something that was an option he was fairly sure that Martha could now afford the time to go and get her ankle checked out.
He knew that she wasn't comfortable by the way that she was sitting with it raised awkwardly. She had not yet taken her boot off. It was a military trick and something that she would know as a medic. If she had taken her boot off she would probably have sought attention sooner but the stiff leather would have prevented too much swelling and would provide support.
Jack went out of the room. He spoke to one of the nurses and a few minutes later a medic brought a wheelchair in for her. Martha sighed. She knew she was not going to get away with it for ever. Donna remained with the Doctor, but Jack went with Martha to make sure that she didn't evade proper attention.
"Doctor Jones," the medic that was dealing with her nodded. She carried a higher rank than he did within the field.
"Doctor Raynes," Martha acknowledged.
"What can I do for you?"
"I injured my right ankle when being winched up from the cargo vessel."
"Okay, I am just going to get the portable X-ray and the ultra-sound. We will do the full tests straight away in order to rule out any significant injury," he offered. "If you could sit up there on the treatment couch and remove your boot and sock?" he instructed.
"Do you need a hand?" Jack asked her as she gingerly went to unfasten the laces in her boot. "Sit back, let me do it," he offered. Martha did as she was told. Jack tenderly unfastened the double knot in her laces and then unwound them from around the top of her boot where the excess lace had been wrapped. Her boots were tiny so there was plenty of lace. He took the lace right out the boot down over her ankle and to the bridge of her foot and then carefully eased it off. Martha gripped the side of the bed as the loss of the boot caused a new level of pain to explode right through the side of her ankle. "I'm sorry," Jack acknowledged knowing that it was hurting. He popped her boot down on the floor and then carefully removed her sock. Now the boot was off her ankle was throbbing and swelling.
"Right, let's have a look at you," Doctor Raynes suggested as he came back in. He had two assistants bringing the equipment in that would give them immediate access to the scans needed to diagnose or rule out significant injury. That Martha had been treating the Doctor led him to believe that it was not going to be too serious, until he saw that there was already a line of bruising following the base of Martha's foot at the outside of her ankle. He took a cushion from the chair in the treatment room and he put it on the bed and got Martha to lift her leg up onto it so it was resting on the calf but her heel was off the bed. "Just relax if you can," he offered. "Where about are you experiencing the pain?"
"It is along the outside of my ankle," Martha advised.
"To the bony aspect of your ankle or to your foot?" he checked.
"I am not sure, both I think?"
"Can you remember what the mechanism of the injury was?"
"No, I have no idea. We were being winched up and the waves were high and we hit the deck again. I just know I hit the deck and the pain was significant," Martha advised.
"Can you move your ankle?" he asked. "Flex your foot up for me?" Martha did but it was painful. He supported her foot at the heel and eased her foot down and to the side. It was painful but she could tolerate it until he rotated her foot to the side. She jerked and pulled away from him when he did that but she barely squeaked, but the grip that she had on Jack's hand became like a tight vice. He felt into the side of her foot and then up into the bony aspect of the side of her ankle. Both were exquisitely painful. "Let's get the X-ray done," he suggested. He put the film on the bed and got Martha to hold her foot in three different positions so he could get good images. He then got them transferred straight onto the screen in the room so he could look at them.
"Do you want the good news or the bad news?" he asked Martha as he stood in front of the images.
"I will stick with the good news, thank you," Martha told him. There wasn't going to be any bad news. Yeah, it hurt, but that was all it was. A couple of days resting it and she was going to be fine. There wasn't going to be any bad news. She was far too busy for bad news.
"Okay, the good news is that there is no displacement and no fragmentation," he told her.
"What?" Martha knew that good news was only going to be associated with an ankle fracture and there was no way that was possible. Not only was it going to be highly inconvenient it just wasn't going to have happened to her.
"What is the bad news?" Jack asked on Martha's behalf.
"There is a fracture here across the lateral malleolus," he offered and moved out the way of the X-ray so that they could both see it. "It is low down on the fibula there and it doesn't look like it is going to interfere with the actual function of the joint, so, I would be inclined to monitor conservative healing," he advised. "We will put a temporary cast on now and it will feel much better and we will get you booked in for a follow up in 72 hours for a new cast to be put on. We will see what it looks like when the associated swelling has resolved, but I think we will be looking at three to four weeks in a non-weight bearing cast followed by three to four weeks in a walking boot," he advised Martha.
"That is ridiculous," Martha stated defiantly as if her will alone was going to change that quite definite line on the film of her ankle.
"You broke your ankle," Jack told her plainly. "And, then you walked all the way in from the chopper on it and you have been treating the Doctor with it, both on the chopper and back here," he reminded her. "I always knew you were one tough cookie."
"I've not broken my ankle," Martha stated and Jack chuckled as he hugged her. "How am I going to be able to look after the Doctor if I've broken my ankle? There is absolutely no way they will allow me to maintain a position of active duty."
"You're right," Doctor Raynes agreed. "I expect that you will be able to continue providing consult on the matter under the circumstances. Let me get you some analgesia and then we will apply the cast."
"I don't want any pain relief."
"Yes you do," Jack told her. "The Doctor is stable now. You can start to relax, and when you do? That is going to hurt, and you will be better able to consult if you're not distracted," Jack told her. "Now, you need to start following the instructions you would be giving. You're CMO for UNIT UK, you need to be setting an example, Martha."
Doctor Raynes gave Martha some painkillers. She just took paracetamol and codeine to begin with to see if that was going to be enough. She was lucky that it wasn't displaced and it was more a crack than a significant break so once it was cast she was sure that it would feel better. They applied a temporary cast to her ankle. Getting her foot into position was painful and she gripped hold of Jack's hand but she didn't complain audibly. They pulled a stocking on from her toes to her knee and then added a layer of cotton wool bandaging before moulding long warm wet strips of plaster around her heel and up the sides of her leg. It was warm and it hugged the skin and it felt nicer than she expected it to do. They applied several layers of bandage over the top of that to keep her foot and ankle immobile but still allow room for the swelling that would begin to take hold now she had removed her tight boot. She was lucky she had been wearing it. She guessed if she had not then the blow to crack the bone through her boot would have caused a very significant ankle injury without it. At least she didn't regularly have to hop on and off boats from helicopters and at least she hadn't broken her ankle tripping over a kerb or something mundane.
An update on Martha's injury was sent to the commander of the Valiant. Colonel Hartley agreed that she could consult at least until the Valiant landed but that she was off duty when it came to direct doctoring. It meant that she could sit in the Doctor's room and monitor him and that was all she wanted to do.
She had to remain in the treatment room for an hour after the cast had been applied to let it dry and to make sure there wasn't any immediate swelling. She was then told that she had to use a wheelchair for the rest of the day and that crutches would not be provided immediately. That infuriated her a little, but Jack warned her to behave. When she went back into the Doctor's room Donna could not believe to see that she was sitting in a wheelchair with her ankle in a cast. She was stunned to find out that she had actually broken it.
Martha was just relieved to see that the Doctor's temperature had come down by almost another full degree and that his hearts were beating strongly and equally. There was still no news from the science laboratories with regards the nature of the virus, but as far as he was doing he remained stable and there was a small improvement. A nurse was in the room and she was rubbing his feet. There was still a worrying amount of blotchiness on the skin and Martha hoped that did not get any worse. She did not want him to end up losing toes because of it.
Martha wasn't naive enough to think that the slight reduction in temperature and his stronger outward appearance meant he was beating the virus. What it meant that what they were doing for him, keeping him deeply unconscious, providing him fluid and nutrient and medication intravenously, breathing for him through a ventilator that was providing him oxygen at a slightly higher pressure than normal breaths in order to keep his lungs open was supporting him and preventing him from declining further. It was buying them some more time to figure out what to do or to allow him the chance to begin to win the fight. He still had a long way to go and the forest remained dense, but it looked like he might actually make it back to UNIT HQ in London.