It was nine o clock in the morning when the Valiant arrived back over the UNIT HQ in London. It was Friday morning. Donna had gone shopping with the Doctor in Kingston on Wednesday morning. Two days had passed. If she had ever thought that shopping was going to be the biggest trial she would face with the Doctor then she had not understood how difficult things could have got. She had heard the medics having a discussion with regards to the Doctor's condition. They had not celebrated anything more than him having made it to UNIT.
When Donna heard one of the nurses comment that at least he'd not died on the Valiant and under their care she had been outraged, only Captain Jack had prevented her from going and giving the nurse who had said it what for. Jack had reminded her that the Doctor was important to UNIT and that what had been done to him was not their fault and that he did remain critically ill and they were right. He had not died on the way back to UNIT HQ and that meant that they had more resources available to them to help him get better and top on the list for that was the TARDIS. As soon as they got down to the ground that was where Jack was going. He was going to the TARDIS and he was going to find out if there was anything she could do for him.
The Valiant had the proper facilities to medevac the Doctor down to UNIT HQ facilities without disrupting the treatment he was receiving. The only thing they could not do was take the ventilator down with them, but that did not mean they stopped breathing for him. They transferred him onto a manual oxygen tank with an ambubag attached to the intubation tube sited down into his lungs and a nurse travelled with them. Her only job on the way down was to carry on the same rhythm of breathing for him. Squeezing oxygen into his lungs and allowing him to exhale and maintaining his oxygen levels.
Martha was quite appalled that when she went into the medical helicopter she was also noted down as being a patient on the medevac. Her ankle was aching a bit but she was not in need of a medevac. When she got into the helicopter she hopped to the board and rubbed her name off it and then hopped back into the seat directly beside the Doctor's gurney so she could continue to monitor him on the way down. Jack was amused by her stubbornness.
The helicopter took off from the Valiant. It was only a ten minute flight down to the roof of the UNIT HQ building where the hospital facilities were and where Martha was in charge. When one of her nurses came out with a wheelchair to fetch her she glared at them. She was going to have to speak to the base commander and insist that she remained on consulting duties as far as the Doctor was concerned. In reality all that meant was that she sat by his bed with her leg up monitoring him, but she knew what she was looking for and she didn't want anyone else doing that and if they did not allow that then she would be on forced medical leave and then she'd not be able to spend the time with him at all.
Martha still supervised the Doctor's transfer into a private room within the hospital area that she ran. He was attached back up to the ventilator and all of the monitoring devices. The trip down from the Valiant had done him no additional harm and he was settled in the area. Martha briefed them all on what had happened and where they were up to. The medical sciences team had already been liaising with the same group on the valiant about the virus and results were pending. They took additional bloods from the Doctor to run comparisons to see if the number of virus cells had increased or decreased over the last ten hours.
It was recommended that Donna went home. She was reluctant to do so at first, but Martha promised to ring her if there was the slightest change in the Doctor's condition. She was as confident as she could be that he was going to remain stable under their treatment and that the next big thing would be when they decided to see if he could breathe for himself and they brought him out of the heavy sedation he was under to see how he was then. He was still so weak that it was not something that would be considered for at least another day. The longer he remained stable in that condition the better his body had a chance to fight the infection and to survive it.
The TARDIS had been moved from Kingston onto UNIT HQ so that it was secure and safe. Jack took a blood sample of the Doctor's over to the TARDIS. He was sure that she would know that her pilot had been taken and that he was desperately ill. She was connected to him in a way that none of them could understand even if they did their best to appreciate it. Jack went into the TARDIS sickbay and gave the TARDIS the blood sample to analyse. She flashed her lights in what appeared to be a display of anger and he patted the equipment in there. He knew exactly how she felt, but he needed to know if they could do anything to assist him. He downloaded all the current medical data that they had on the Doctor. A drawer in the back of the sickbay opened. Inside there was a drip bag containing a milky looking fluid. There was a label on it stating that it was a medicated suspension that would support him and boost his immune system and enable him to continue to fight, but that there wasn't much else they could do for him but to wait and hope that he could fight it to completion.
Jack took the drip back and they put it up according to the instructions on the bag. It was to run slowly over a period of six hours so there wasn't a sudden boost in his immune system which could have sparked the dangerously high fevers again. The science team came back and confirmed that there were fewer viral cells in his blood stream now than there had been when the first sample was taken on the Valiant. That was the first tangible bit of good news for them. The infection was less severe. He was going in the right direction. They just had to continue supporting him and give him time.
Martha did not go home and she did not go sick. She remained on campus. On the third day she was given further X-rays to check that she remained suitable for a conservative treatment. It looked like she did so she was put into a more comfortable and less bulky cast. She elected to have a lilac coloured casting material put on and as soon as that was dry she was back at the Doctor's bedside on crutches.
On the fourth day the morning blood test was taken down to be tested and it came back showing that there was no viral cells in his blood stream. He still had an elevated white blood count, but it was not significant and his temperature was normal. His hearts were beating well and his blood oxygen level was good even if he remained sedated and ventilated. A discussion was had with Martha and the medics that she instructed but carried out the actual doctoring. They decided that they were going to reduce the level of sedation and see if they could bring him up a little. If he started to respond positively and he remained stable then they would that afternoon try him without the ventilation and see if he was capable of breathing for himself.
It was tense. When they reduced his sedation his heart rates increased initially but then they settled back down again. Donna and Jack were both on site as well throughout the day to provide support and willing him to do well so that they could see if he would wake up by the end of the day. When he had managed with the first reduction in sedation they reduced it again. It was clear after half an hour at the reduced rate that he was fighting against the intubation tube down his throat. He started to gag on it and his heart rates increased again because of that.
The nurses calmly removed it despite Donna and Jack almost panicking as much as the Doctor seemed to be. Even when Martha explained that it was a normal reflex coming back in line it wasn't easy to watch. The Doctor took a shaky breath of his own. They put him on oxygen under pressure to assist him. He was still wheezing a little with the effect of the virus causing fluid and scar tissue on his lungs. They were going to have to monitor that as it was a potential complication as he continued to recover.
He was breathing calmly and evenly in a comfortable medicated sleep once they had finished reducing the sedation and the ventilator. They decided to allow him to continue to rest with that medication for a period and ensure that his lungs continued to cope without the ventilation. When he had gone a further two hours without his breathing deteriorating any further they removed the sedation from the drip altogether. He was still receiving pain relief and other medications to assist his recovery, but, he was no longer being kept asleep by chemicals. The question that remained on everyone's lips was whether he was actually going to wake up and if he did how he was going to be. It was fairly clear that he was not going to be waking up fine and ready to get on with his shopping trip to Kingston as if nothing had happened. They just hoped that he woke up coherent and capable of continuing to recover.
When it got to ten at night and he hadn't shown any inclination of waking up Martha gave the instruction for Donna and Jack to leave for the night. They could come back first thing in the morning and if there was any deterioration then she would call them back in, but he was sleeping and even if he had not woken he seemed to be comfortable and he remained stable and perhaps that was the best he could be for now. He needed the time to recover and to recuperate as well.
When the night nurse came in and suggested to Martha what she had suggested to Donna and Jack she put her foot down. She was not going to leave him without someone there that he knew. If he did wake and he was in a hospital bed surrounded by medics that he did not know then it was going to be hard for him and she was not going to do that to him. She was going to stay with him, but that did not mean she was not going to relax and get some sleep.
The wing backed chairs in the hospital were big enough for her to curl up in, the only downside was the cast on her broken ankle. She eased that up onto the side of the Doctor's bed, there was plenty of room and he was sleeping deeply. Martha sat like that reading some reports that had come in from other areas of the hospital, she had tried to suggest that because she had a broken ankle she shouldn't have to do all the paperwork that came with the administration of the hospital, but she wasn't going to get out of that without losing the consultation position and then the Doctor would be there on his own.