"Do you think we were wrong not to tell him about what the Bylaxians did to him?" Donna asked Martha?
"No, I don't," Martha offered. "I think that hindsight is a wonderful thing. If we were presented with the same scenario again would you have made a different decision about telling him when he was so unwell?" Martha asked her.
"No, I don't think so."
"I should have been more adamant with the medical brief that it did not contain his details, but I was over ruled," Martha advised. "UNIT have a strange relationship with the Doctor," Martha commented. "When they feel like it he is a hero and a legend and a representation of all things good and positive that the stars can present, other times, he is a scientific advisor on staff and is not going to receive any preferential or differential treatment," Martha offered. "So, the medical report that goes out biweekly included details of the circumstances of his ill health if not his actual medical condition."
"I should not have brought him downstairs."
"No, don't think like that. We all agreed that he could come downstairs if he was feeling up to it. That was a joint decision and it would have been nice for him to get out of that room. He has been staring at the same four walls since he came round almost a week ago. The difficulty is not what happened or what we have or have not done, it is that he is so sick again. We will just have to have the conversation with him about the Bylaxians and their actions when he is able to have it. It may be a couple of days or even longer before he is well enough and that is as long as there are no further complications. We are taking things one step at a time at the moment until he is better."
"Has Jack been told that he is really sick again?" Donna asked Martha. "He will be devastated won't he?"
"Yeah, on both accounts. He is on his way back in. He will be about an hour. Do you want to come through and sit with him now? Like I say, there isn't going to be much we can do until our cardiologist gets here and can review his test results and his anatomy."
"Thanks, Martha," Donna offered. She got up and she hugged the younger medic. "On your day off too? That is just typical and when Spaceman is up to it we need to let him know just how inconvenient he has been," Donna advised. Martha smiled. She had no doubt that Donna would give him what for, her doubts came from whether the Doctor would be well enough to receive it.
Donna was shown into the emergency treatment room where the Doctor was being monitored. She'd hoped she'd never have to see anything as terrifying as him lying on a bed with monitors and tubes all around him again, but here they were. His skin was so pale that the bluish veins near his temples were visible as they snaked up beyond his hairline. His eyes were closed and his mouth open to accommodate the tubing connecting him to the bellows of the ventilator. There was an attachment on the tube and there was a yellowish fluid in there that appeared to be giving off a white smoke that he was breathing in along with the pure oxygen being pumped into his lungs.
He had a whole array of electrodes on his chest. Many more than there had been the last time. There were some low down on his chest too and there were others on his wrists and on his ankles. Donna had seen that when they had been treating her father in hospital and it was a horrible reminder not only of how sick the Doctor was but also of that time. Like her dad the Doctor also had a blood pressure cuff around his bicep and a clip on his finger. The Doctor's dignity was being maintained by a sheet across his middle, but he was naked. There were remnants of the worst of the bruising on his boy as the virus had damaged blood vessels and across his shoulder where he had been hit by the Bylaxians. The suspicion was that they had dislocated his shoulder but that it had gone back in at some point, likely though manhandling rather than medical assistance.
Donna recalled the conversation with Martha and Jack about how slim he was and her being told that he was lean but not significantly underweight. In a week it was clear that had changed. His chest was exposed and rather than the musculature that had been seen before ribs were now rippling under skin as he'd lost body weight over the ten day fight with the virus and the damage it had done. Now a heart attack? It was so horrendously wrong Donna found it hard to think about.
She went right to his bedside and caressed his head. She almost felt scared to touch him, she had never considered him fragile before, but she was scared for him now. More scared than she had been when they'd found him on the boat. Then she had not truly understood what had been going on, but heart disease. It had taken her father from her, quickly turning him from a vibrant loving dad to a shadow of his former self. Repeated bouts of pneumonia and pulmonary oedema had taken him in the end, they couldn't let it take the Doctor too. When he'd last been hooked up to ventilation his skin had been fiery with fever, now he felt cold and clammy and Donna had to remind herself of his naturally lower body temperature or the almost waxy feel of his skin would have been too much like touching a corpse.
"Oh, Martian Boy, what are we going to do now?" She guided a wayward strand of hair away from his closed eyes. She'd seen him sleep a few times. Normally he'd wake straight away, but even if he didn't, if she managed to creep up there was always that underlying tension there as if he was going to be immediately ready for action. Now he just lay slack on the bed, machines monitoring and supporting him, the screens on both sides of his bed showing different versions of the same data. Donna looked at them as she caressed his head lightly, not sure what else there was she could do.
"We've had to modify the way that we monitor him because we want to be able to measure the output and the strength of his hearts separately," Martha explained to Donna. "This main monitor is reading his usual vital sighs, his body temperature, blood oxygen levels, blood pressure, and the combined effort of his hearts as we normally would see," she explained. "It is not showing ideal conditions for him, but it is not dreadful. I think that is how we may not have been able to see quickly enough that his right heart was deteriorating. He is showing some distress here but because his left heart is compensating it looks off but not seriously off. It is a bit too fast and it's a bit shallow, but we have been seeing that and it is what happens when the heart beats too fast. The heart pumps the blood out into the body and then pumps again before the heart chambers have a chance to fully fill with blood again. This is showing a borderline level of concern," Martha offered.
"Now, compare it with this monitor. We think we have managed to isolate the pattern and rhythm of his right heart only." Martha indicated to the line of an electronic cardiogram coming up on screen. It was irregular. Some beats were barely registering and it was very fast indeed showing at almost 204 beats per minute. "We are actually seeing a bit of an improvement since we got his heart started again, it was worse than that before. It is not beating effectively, if that was his only heart then he'd have been straight into surgery. Our main concern is to minimise the strain on his left heart. He can survive short periods with only one heart beating, but he finds it incredibly uncomfortable. He has two because he does need both to function. It is not like the human kidney where there are two but it is possible to live an unhindered life with only one kidney. He does require both of his hearts to function."
"So you can't just whip that one out if it continues to deteriorate?" Donna checked.
"No, he'd not last very long at all. He certainly wouldn't be able to withstand any kind of physical exertion," Martha advised. "I think we need to wait to see what our cardiologist says, then we will have to look at the choices we have available to us and make some decisions on the appropriate level of treatment and medical intervention."
Captain Jack had returned to Cardiff overnight. He had not prepared to be away from Torchwood as long as he had been. When he'd received a call that the Doctor had been kidnapped he had immediately dropped everything and left. What he thought would be a quick rescue mission followed by tea and cake had turned into a nightmare. He'd left Gwen and Ianto for ten days and though they knew why there were things that he had to attend to that they could not. He'd agreed to go back to sort some things out as the Doctor had been doing better. He was still incredibly unwell and it broke his heart each time he saw the Time Lord struggling to breathe or to stay awake after the simplest of tasks. Even eating a sandwich had left him feeling short of breath, but he was at least sitting out of bed and capable of eating a sandwich unassisted. That was something they had feared would not be possible when they found him.
He'd also been happier to leave knowing Donna was there with him. He liked her. She took no nonsense and he was sure she'd look after the Doctor, so he had driven back to Cardiff the previous evening with the intention of fully briefing Gwen and Ianto. He was going to put some things in place to assist them in his absence and then he was going to return that afternoon. At least that was the plan. The plan he had until he received a phone call from Martha. The gist of which was that the Doctor was in intensive care on full life support fighting for his life after having a heart attack and they were trying to keep him alive until their cardiologist got there and perhaps Jack should consider coming back because they were going to have to intervene and there were going to be choices to be made and as his three closest available friends they were going to have to agree to what was decided and give consent for surgical procedures to go through.
Jack couldn't afford to care too much if Gwen was annoyed and Ianto disappointed when he hung up the phone and immediately set toward the exits. He ordered then to set up a Torchwood clearway back to London along the M4 and then he headed back at breakneck speeds.
Jack ran into the hospital and he went to where the Doctor had been located before and found a stripped bed. HE almost died on the spot and he was unsure if he would have revived. Luckily Gladys, one of the Doctor's dedicated nurses, saw him and advised that he was downstairs in an emergency cardiology treatment room on the ground floor. Jack hurried down there. He opened the door and looked in. Donna turned and saw him there, the concern, love, and fear on the Captain's face when he saw the Time Lord laid up as he was brought it all back to Donna. She got up from his bedside and went over to Jack and hugged him. As soon as he folded his strong arms around her she broke down into tears. Jack took a moment to try to console Donna. He reminded her that their Doctor was as tough as nails and had the strength of ten Cardellian muskox. Jack looked over her shoulder at the Time Lord as he said those words and found that he didn't actually believe it. His friend looked old and frail and sick.
Martha came back into the room and gave Jack the same brief that she had given Donna. Jack had slightly more medical knowledge than Donna but when it came to the Doctor a lot of what they knew was obsolete. The very fact that they were discussing about the strain his left heart was under due to the ineffectiveness of his more seriously damaged right showed just how different things were. A young care assistant came in and made them drinks as the three of them just sat with the Doctor and waited. They caressed his head and they held his hand and they included him in conversation in the pretence that it was to support him and to keep him company. He was sedated into a medical coma beyond any awareness, it was not for him, it was the only thing they could do to keep themselves sane.