Eventually, they found the narrow staircase downstairs. As the three of them walked into the dark, they were met by a big, dimly lit basement, its cold concrete walls and the stuffy smell of dust being raised on their arrival. The whole of the basement was stuffed with antique furniture, old paintings, plant pots, silverware and other trinkets – all of them spread throughout several rooms and corridors to fill the empty space underneath the house.
"All right...", the Doctor said, running a hand through his hair as he laid eyes on the mess of scattered objects in the first room. His eyes searched the surroundings but there was no framed mirror to be found. "Let's split up, then. We're looking for a framed antique mirror, roughly 25 by 32 inches big..." He took a breath and for a moment it looked like he wanted to add something, but it took a while until he had found the right words. At first, he pointed at the doorway up ahead, but then changed his mind, pointed left of him, and finally announced with a bit of uncertainty: "I'll go this way?" With a final shrug, the Doctor walked away and left his companions standing at the bottom of the stairs.
"Well, Shout if you find it!", Sarah instructed the naval officer, then turned on her heel in a playful, elegant way to walk into the opposite direction.
Harry just shrugged with his hands in the pockets of his jacket and sighed. "Door number three it is for me, then. I hope you haven't left me the blank."
In the end, it really didn't matter who of them found the mirror, or when. For all that Sarah cared, her friends were allowed to take their dear time. There were so many things to be discovered in the basement of a house with a history as long as this that she was tempted to study all of it. Plenty of the old and broken objects which had been forgotten under thick layers of dust told a story of their own; Stories of many people long gone, events long past. There was nothing she was particularly interested in, but as a naturally curious person she hoped to find that one story worth looking into further. On her search through the storage room, she lifted the blankets off of two frames only to discover old landscape paintings, faded by sunlight, underneath. Yet just as she was beginning to enjoy her trip through the building's history, Sarah was suddenly interrupted by the distant sound of something clattering and breaking on the concrete floor.
She rolled her eyes, but chuckled to herself as she turned towards the source of the sound. "Oh, Harry butterfingers...!"
While she was still wondering whether it was worth to take a look at what he had knocked over, she heard two people running through the corridors.
At the time, she didn't think much of it, until she heard Harry call "Doctor…!" in such a worried tone, she instantly knew that this was not just about some clumsy little accident. Sarah spun around and hurried up to meet up with her friends, but as she passed the staircase leading back to the ground floor, she noticed out of the corner of her eye someone running upstairs with a large object under his arm. She halted trying to spot who it was, but the stranger was gone before she could identify him or her. Just as she was about to make a decision on whether to follow this person or not, Harry called for her. And when he called like this, she knew where she was needed.
Following the direction of his voice, she found both Harry and the Doctor two rooms further into the basement, but she was shocked by the sight of the scene her eyes fell on. There was something disturbingly familiar about entering a room and finding the Time Lord in need of help once again. There were shards of china all over the floor and the Doctor amidst them, just lying there with his face down in the dust, unconscious. Judging by the scene of the crime, someone had just broken an old vase on his head – most likely the same person Sarah had seen running upstairs, but now it was far too late to catch them.
She quickly joined Harry who was already kneeling on the floor and helped him to clear away some of the dangerously sharp pieces of china so they could turn their friend on his back. "Have you seen who did this, Harry?", asked Sarah.
"Barely.", the medical officer answered briefly while he checked for the Doctor's pulse.
Sarah silently watched him count the beats and the worried, but also slightly confused frown forming on the younger man's face.
"He's all right, isn't he? It's just a knock on the head?" The Doctor has had plenty of those in the past. But despite her experience with his misadventures, Sarah still could hardly bear to see him unconscious, always worried that, this time, he might not wake up any more.
Harry shot her a glance, but waited with a reply until he was certain. Since he was among a handful of people with medical training that had some knowledge about a Time Lord's physiology, he listened for the Doctor's heart beat twice – for each of his two hearts. Sarah was used to that, but then Harry's frown grew deeper and he double-checked, which caused her worries to increase.
"I say", Harry exclaimed, looking almost a little frightened now, "That can't be right."
"What, Harry? What can't be right?", Sarah demanded to know.
He gasped as he overcame a moment of shock. "I think he's suffered a cardiac arrest."
The young woman shook her head as a small shiver ran down her spine. "What do you mean? He was fine all day!", she claimed, not wanting to accept what was usually a death sentence for a human – and could not be a lot less worse for a Time Lord.
"I mean that the second heart doesn't appear to be beating at all."
Sarah gave him a stern look. "I'm sure you haven't listened for long enough. I made that mistake once, too."
"I know what I'm listening for, Sarah.", insisted the Surgeon Lieutenant. "They measured ten beats-per-minute once when he was in a self-induced coma, but I'm getting a pulse of 70. Mind you, that's only one heart I'm referring to now."
Nervous with worry, Sarah chewed on her lower lip. "Well, can he make do with just one heart? Is it lethal?"
"Honestly, I don't know. But it can't be good if one heart has to make up for two, I suppose...", Harry tried to answer, but rubbed his neck in an anxious manner. "The strange thing is; This must have happened way before. I mean, a knock on the head cannot possibly cause this!"
"I don't like this at all...", she quietly said and looked down at the middle-aged man with great pity. Just when she had moved on from the things which had happened back then at the French coast, she was reminded of it again. Could this have been the Master's fault? Carefully, Sarah lifted the Doctor's head and placed her arm under his neck to keep him off the cold, dusty concrete floor for the time being. As she felt a warm drop of blood on her fingers, she noticed a small cut on the back of his head which had probably been caused by the breaking of china. "We should try to get him to the sick bay at UNIT.", Sarah suggested.
Harry nodded in silent agreement, but with a concerned expression on his face.
But before he could get up to organize a transport, Sarah felt life returning to the limp body of her friend. He moved with a quiet groan and brought a hand up to his head as he grimaced in pain. "He's coming around!", Sarah gladly announced to Harry.
"Doctor?" The younger man moved closer to the two.
"Ow… What is this nasty headache?", uttered the Doctor finally and, blinking his eyes, he discovered the face of Sarah leaning over him. At first, he seemed a little surprised to be met with the familiar sight, but then he smiled softly.
"Someone broke the minister's best china on your head.", Harry briefly explained to him while the Doctor pushed himself up into a sitting position.
He looked at the medical officer, then at Sarah and back at him again. "How long was I out?", he asked and just in the moment he breathed in sharply because he had discovered the small cut amidst his curls by himself. The red colour of blood on his fingers didn't please him, but didn't concern him particularly, either.
"Just for a couple of minutes. But, can you tell us what happened?"
"Ah, yes!" Suddenly, the Doctor turned around and pointed at a stack of boxes behind him. "I just found the…" Surprised not to find what he meant to point at, his explanation was suspended mid-sentence and he had to start again. "The mirror was right there, covered with a big white blanket."
"I suppose whoever attacked you didn't want UNIT to have it...", figured Harry.
As the Doctor attempted to get back on his feet, Sarah was by his side to help him get up. "Did you see who attacked you?", she continued the questioning, but he just shook his head at her.
"No, they didn't have the decency to introduce themselves.", he told her with a displeased look on his face. Still a bit unsteady on his feet, Sarah felt a part of his weight resting on her shoulder. His gaze wandered around the basement room as he attempted to orient himself again and he pressed a hand on the wound on his head.
"I better attend to that.", Harry suggested. "But let's get you to the UNIT sick bay first."
Just as he had heard the words, the Doctor shot him a glare. "It's not THAT bad, Harry. Besides, don't you mean the infirmary?"
"No, I don't mean...", the medical officer stopped right there and Sarah saw him twitch lightly as if a memory had just stung him and he had to make sure he was not heading into the same situation again. Harry cleared his throat. "We, uh… I mean, it's an insurance thing. UNIT policies regarding civilians and all that.", he hummed and hawed, and finally came up with what he deemed plausible.
Harry was not a good liar at all, but lucky for them, the Doctor bought into it, anyway.
"Well, fine. But let's get it over with quickly then.", he submitted himself to the procedure in place, but let out an annoyed sigh, just to complain quietly. As he took the first steps out of the room, Sarah followed him quickly, but she stopped to look back at Harry for a moment. She rolled her eyes with ostentation to mark her opinion of the taller man's displeased reaction. The medical officer was unable to reply something, because the Doctor would have heard him, but judging by his expression she imagined that the alien was among Harry's least favourite patients ever since he tied him up with a jump rope and hung him in a cupboard. And all of that had just happened because Harry had tried his best to persuade him to some more rest after his last regeneration.
They were not in a particular hurry to leave the building, but even so they didn't stop in the lobby to ask about the stranger who had attacked the Doctor. Someone around the place had been bound to notice and they would still be around for questioning later, unlike the culprit himself.
Sarah took her two friends to the UNIT headquarters in her car. The trip was surprisingly short, which pleased the Doctor, since he was already feeling like his time was being wasted with exaggerated care for his health. His attitude proved to be a big problem to Harry, who had not taken him all the way to the sick bay just to stitch up a cut. Not just for that, anyway. Both he and Sarah knew that they had to find out what had caused the cardiac arrest of the second heart the medical officer had diagnosed earlier. Needless to say, it took quite a bit of persuasion and many shallow arguments to get the Doctor to agree to as much an x-ray. Sarah had clearly sided with Harry on this one, or otherwise he might not even have listened to them. Secretly, she wished he had just stayed unconscious for a little while longer. For a while, she had also contemplated to tell the Doctor straight away about his condition, but quite frankly she was not even sure whether he was aware that he wasn't exactly human. Better to check first, talk later.
While the Surgeon Lieutenant disappeared into the laboratory to gather the results of his tests, Sarah and the Doctor waited in Harry's office, which was a sparsely decorated room in desperate need for a window. Its metal table and cabinets could touch a soldier's heart at best, but it was not the kind of environment Harry would enjoy to work in. Maybe that was why he was out on missions so often. Over the backrest of the chair her alien friend was sitting in hung his brown corduroy jacket. It had dark leather patches on the elbows, just like a similar red jacket he used to wear a while back. Earlier, he had taken out of its pocket a curious little object along with his wallet and now that Sarah had a little time to take a look around, it caught her attention. While the Doctor was not paying attention to her, she took it into her hands and her eyes widened as she recognized it. It was a fob watch, about as big as the palm of her hand, complete with a brass shell and a chain. There were circular symbols engraved on the top of it, but also a dent and a crack in the casing – just as she remembered it. Even now, she noticed a faint glow of light emitted from something on the inside. This fob watch was the one the Master had brought with him! It was part of the contraption he had forced the Doctor into. Out of natural curiosity, Sarah attempted to open the shell of the fob watch to look at the clock face inside. But the mechanism holding the two halves of the shell together was broken. It clicked and rattled, but it failed to open. She dug her fingernails into the crack next to the lock, yet even her attempt of bending it remained unsuccessful. Instead, she almost ripped a nail.
"Don't bother with it.", the Doctor said suddenly, before he snapped out of his absent-mindedness, blinked and turned around to face her. "It's too bent to open up. I've tried it several times before."
Sarah lifted up the watch to show it to him. "What is this?", she asked with great expectation.
"It's a fob watch…?" He raised an eyebrow at her, probably wondering why she asked such an obvious question.
"No, I mean… where is this damage coming from? And where did you get it?", Sarah quickly rephrased her question. Still, she had to realize that he was unable to remember the same things as she did.
"I don't know.", he just answered. "It was already broken when I found it in my pocket. But I can't remember where it came from. It might have been in my possession for a long time and I've just forgotten about it."
Sarah sighed, dissatisfied with the answer. In the faint hope that he might remember some more if she gave him a little more time to answer, she dangled the watch by its chain in front of his face. "So you don't remember anything about it?"
His eyes followed the movement of the watch for a little while, but he didn't allow for it to mesmerise him. "Why? Should I?", he wondered instead, looking back up at his companion's face. "I don't even get the engraving: 'As time will come, so time will tell.' It doesn't mean anything to me. Maybe, it's not my watch after all..."
Realizing that what he had just said was a quote, Sarah double-checked the fob watch. There was no such writing to be found anywhere. "Engraving? What engraving?"
He took the object back out of her hands, then presented it back to her, tapping at the watch cover. "These circles here. They're Gallifreyan, as far as I know."
But still she looked at him surprised to hear the name of his home planet out of his mouth, despite his apparent loss of identity. "What's Gallifreyan?", she questioned him, playing along as though she had no idea. In fact, she really had not. For whatever reason, the thought that Gallifrey had its own written language had never occurred to her before.
"An old, Celtic language. Has been used in some parts of ancient Ireland, I believe.", he pondered for a moment or two, then chuckled at her. "You'll probably pick up a few useless skills during your studies as well."
There was no use in telling him that Gallifrey was a planet, was there? Even if the word meant something to him, he probably had another great lie at hand, which he believed in whole-heartedly as though it was the truth. Sarah just stared back, somewhat disappointed, but couldn't think of any reply or comment to add.
"Honestly though, I don't know why I'm holding onto this watch.", the Doctor eventually admitted with a shrug. "It's obviously of no use if you can't read the time."
A little afraid that he might lose the object if he regarded it as useless, independent of whether the loss would be intentional or accidental, Sarah decided that it might be better if she looked after it. "If you don't mind, could I have it then?" She tried a bit of a begging expression to support her request.
The Doctor pondered about it for a little while. "I don't see why not.", he decided eventually, scratched his head, but dropped the fob watch into the open palm of her hand nonetheless. "But you shouldn't lose it. I might want it back sometime." His words just further evidenced that the watch was special in one way or another.
Smiling gratefully, Sarah replied: "Don't worry, I'll take good care of it."
Of course, she had no idea what to do with it... Obviously, it was a mayor clue to the Doctor's current condition, but that was already where logical deduction based on common knowledge ended for her. If only she knew where the TARDIS was! Then, at least, she could get access to the contraption this fob watch was used with – try around with it, figure things out!