Sometimes, I think I can feel the anatomical extra in my chest flutter. But surely that is only fancy?
It has never had a beat.
When we were little, we used to try and 'make them go', John and I. Screwing up our might, and our little faces and fists, and concentrating on the extra muscle in our chests. When one of us got scared, the other would ask 'can I feel? Did it start it?'.
Once, after watching a particularly dramatic episode of casualty Mum found John prepping my chest for a pair of defibrillator paddles fashioned from the filaments of the toaster….And she got this look. She looked hurt, and full of joy all at once. And about a billion miles away. But just for a moment, before she flicked the plug socket to 'off' and seized the paddles.
"bloody hell, John. I thought you two had given me all them tools back?"
She drops her Gs and forgets her grammar when she is angry, and when she is excited. Or upset. Or when she's had a few too many baileys.
Needless to say, we never succeeded in jump starting the extra hearts. At one point we went through a bit of a 'save the whales' phase, tried to dupe Mum in to signing our excess organs over to medical science, but the woman raised us from babes. She is a tricky one to dupe. Besides I suspect the attempt was somewhat half hearted…
Neither of us have ever been too fond of needles, and we've managed to successfully avoid any hospital stays since our rude entrance in to the world. Although we did wear our angry, red twin scars as a badge of pride when we were younger. Oozing, bleeding and minor deformation earns cool points in a state primary schools playground. Being a twin earns cool points as well, and clocking up all those points early was important for us, as a propensity toward learning…and a to be quite frank, an inexplicable mathematical brilliance tend to win a child few friends.
WNDHKAFKBAKAJHDFAHDKA
A dark haired woman hopped up and down in a panic as her lanky, suited companion jiggled a key in the door of the blue police box they were standing beside.
She sounded short of breath, and her cheeks were a bright almost comical pink.
"Hurry UP!...Lord of all time and you can't handle a bloody yale lock."
She shot daggers at his back.
The key turned, the doctor shot in to the Tardis, followed by the woman, almost tripping over him in her haste and slamming the door, the doctor thought, unnecessarily hard behind her.
She brushed herself down, in an attempt to remove the odd purplish tendrils of alien weed attached to her fleece jacket… The attempt was rather futile, especially as it turned out the tendrils stuck not only to fleece but to most things. Including human skin.
"well." He strode in to his ship "it wasn't me who introduced the concept of fire to a completely undeveloped race"
He turned around, eyebrows raised, and noticed the state of his companion.
"ah yes"
the doctor indulged in a Cheshire cat grin.
"rather sticky weeds on teflakon one. Sorry. I had a spray somewhere…."
He was on his hands and knees now on the metal grating that made up the floor of the central control room of his Tardis.
"breaks down the chemicals in the weeds, they bond loosely with whatever they touch you see"…
He pulled up a piece of grating, aided by the sonic device in his left hand.
"Very interesting really….no glue…complicated chemistry…well, not for me obviously, but for the teflaks…enterprising people, they'll harness it in a few years…well a few centurys"
he drew out the 'e' in 'well', made a face at his companion
"so not THAT enterprising obviously, but they do wonderful things wi…AH"
He cut himself off in mid sentence. The cry was triumphant.
Throughout his monologue he had been riffling through a cardboard box he had pulled noisily out from the bowels of the ship.
He held up a can in his left hand.
A bright green can, chipped and dented and covered in cobwebs.
"Spiders live in the Tardis?"
The dark haired woman took the can, which the doctor had proffered towards her.
"Brilliant. spiders travelling through space and time"..
She smiled gave the can a shake
"and you keep your stuff in a cardboard box?"
The doctor, having replaced both the box and the panel, stood up.
"oh yes. Brilliant things cardboard boxes.
Close your eyes when you spray that, or you'll be seeing double for days"