==== ==== EPISODE 4 ==== ====
{ In which two and a half human finally set out to confront their reflections. }
A clicking noise, followed by a low humming forced its way out of the light box as Harry switched it on to illuminate the x-ray image from behind.
"Is that what I think it is? The second heart?"
Sarah-Jane pointed at a small, dark shape behind the left half of the ribcage visible in the picture. So far, she had never seen an x-ray of the Doctor, but if it wasn't for the two hearts – one curiously smaller than the other – she still could have mistaken him for a fellow human being. Even so, that one physical anomaly was more than enough to prove that her original guess had been right: He was changing back into his old, alien self.
The young woman cast her gaze over to the medical expert at her side.
Harry had arrived in his best lab coat to meet her in the hospital the ambulance had brought the Time Lord to. Even though the local doctors had been asked a little too much of by this curious new case, Sarah's initial reaction to send for help had not been entirely wrong. After all, their friend was still alive, albeit barely hanging on at the moment for all she knew. The surgeon lieutenant studied the x-ray image for a few more seconds, answering rather absent-mindedly "Yes, I suppose so..."
Impatiently, Sarah watched the expression on his face for any change which would signify good or bad news.
"This could be an internal blood clot there..." Harry pointed at one of many shadows near the second heart's aorta, but the frown on his face remained unchanged.
"That's bad, isn't it?", Sarah demanded to know.
He finally turned to face her. "No, not really… it's not dangerous where it is... But I believe that it happened when the second aorta opened up. Probably that was also when he collapsed; the vascular system couldn't take the sudden change."
He did not seem as worried as she expected him to be, but still her frown grew deeper as she tried to understand what had happened at the sport aviator's festival. "I'm not sure I understand. I thought he's changed back?"
"He is changing back.", Harry corrected her. "But the process is slow, a little too slow, perhaps. The parts which are still human and the parts which are already… Time Lord-ish have to figure out how to work together. At least that is my theory." Since she was just nervously chewing on her lower lip, he eventually decided to explain in detail. Not that he actually knew much about the topic: His gestures suggested that he was guessing at best.
"Imagine it like this, Sarah: If there's anything we know about Time Lords, it's that their metabolism works a lot more efficient than ours, doesn't it? Now imagine..." His eyes searched the room while he tried to come up with a simplified scenario to compare the current situation with. "You have a light bulb, but your only power source available is a nuclear power station. Or, the other way around: You have a small city and just a coin cell to power it with."
"It's all right, Harry, I can see what you're getting at." She hung her head low and paced a few steps up and down in the lab of the hospital. "It's dangerous for him either way."
Even though her aimless gaze wandered throughout the laboratory, she heard him sigh behind her. "Thankfully, the Doctor's stable now, but back there – whatever hamlet you've been to – he was lucky that the paramedic on site had a flash of inspiration to administer a shot of adrenalin to him. It appears to have saved his life."
As she turned back around, she missed out on her chance to agree with him. Luck, as he called it, was nothing she wanted to bet on again, even though she was grateful for the kindness of strangers. "Is there anything you can do?", Sarah asked him specifically.
"Well, I'll certainly try!", Harry assured her, but the look on his face was not exactly full of confidence. "But, if I may be honest with you, I am scared to treat him with any medicine at all as long as I cannot predict how the mixed metabolism will react..." The look in his eyes alone told her that he was sorry not to know what he should do.
She nodded understandingly, but cast her gaze back at the floor to her feet. "I see...", she just replied and allowed silence to settle between them, as uncomfortable as it was.
"Well... there is one thing which might help a little..." Harry suddenly walked over to Sarah, which caused her to look back up into his face. "When I went to the university on Saturday, a student by the name of Clara Oswald found this..." Out of the pocket of the jacket he was wearing underneath his lab coat, he pulled a small silver object. A key, to be more precise.
"It's the TARDIS key! But how-? Where-?", Sarah stammered and hastily reached for the precious pendant. It was a true shimmer of hope: Finally some part of the TARDIS had made it back to them!
"She said the Doctor lost it, so I suppose he had it with him all the time, just never knew what it was for...", explained Harry briefly, but smiled in an optimistic fashion. "I suppose he'll be glad to have it back when he comes to."
"He better be! Because I will give him a stern talking to for losing it in the first place!" His friend angrily lowered her brows. How could he dare to lose an item of such importance? Obviously, he had been able to keep the fob watch on him because of its importance, and so his subconsciousness should have recognized the TARDIS' spade-shaped key as well!
A chuckle came from Harry as he watched her act in such an upset manner. Quite obviously, he was not taking her seriously. "Something tells me that you won't, really.", he said. "I say, you're the last person on this planet to kick a man who's already hit rock bottom."
She could not help but smile. Of course he was right. After all this time, Harry knew her so well. "You may be right about that...", she answered lowly before lifting her gaze again. "Well, you know where you'll find me..." She hid the key in her hands as she began to walk over to the laboratory exit and glanced over to Harry once more to show him a grateful smile.
"I'll come check on the two of you later once I'm done trying to identify the additional chemical components in this blood sample.", he replied. His sympathetic gaze seemed to follow her all the way until she was out of the door.
What Sarah had not needed to mention explicitly to Harry was that she was returning to her best friend's bedside. The hospital's room was actually meant for four patients, but because the Doctor was such a special case, everyone else had been moved. Apparently, the last time he had accidentally ended up in a hospital, word had gotten out about him being different from the rest of mankind, and within the same day reporters from all over the country had gathered in the hospital's lobby. This time however, UNIT had gotten involved early enough to make sure that Sarah was the only reporter allowed within the Time Lord's proximity. So there she eventually sat, on a chair pulled as close to the sickbed as possible. To her right stood a night stand onto which she had placed the TARDIS key and the velvet pouch which prevented the fob watch inside from spilling more of its golden light.
Secretly, she hoped the items might help the Doctor in one way or another, although she was unable to explain just how. It was a horrible feeling not knowing what to do, feeling so absolutely useless again. But what other options did she have? She could continue the mirror investigation, sure, if that would only look less like a dead end… And it would not help the Doctor much, would it?
With sad eyes she looked at her friend, who was just lying there, looking pale and weak… a little more maybe than usual when something had knocked him unconscious. Knowing how strong and confident he usually was, and cheerful on top of it all, it easily hurt twice as much to see him so beaten. While Sarah tried to think back at the last weeks, she carefully placed her hand on his. The touch seemed cold, just as it should be for his kind, but she could not suppress her natural human instinct which associated coldness with sickness. She picked up his hand to close both of hers around it and lean her cheek onto. It was unnecessary trying to warm him, but at least it made her feel a little better... a little less useless, perhaps.
The room was mostly silent, except for the sound of rain pelting against the window nearby. The clear blue sky of the morning was long since gone and forgotten. Why was it always that the rain seemed to make a situation such as this even sadder than it already was? She sighed heavily and closed her eyes to listen to the distant drumming for a while. After all the times she had feared for his life, you would expect the feeling to be weaker this time around, but it was not. No matter how often she had pointlessly shed tears over what she had believed to be his untimely end, she would still cry again.
"Sarah… It's you." The dark timbre of the voice was familiar, but so very weak, just a faint whisper of a lovely melody. "You're there…"
Almost startled by the sound, Sarah raised her head to discover that the Doctor had opened his eyes a crack wide. The smile he wore was so terribly feeble, a shame compared to his usual toothy grin. She let go as she felt his hand move out of his own will. Just before he placed it back on the edge of the bed, he gently brushed her cheek with the backside of his hand.
"Doctor…!" The tenderness of his gesture had her almost paralysed for a moment.
"Just like that time I was strangled by a mummy or... the time I lost the mind-bending game… Just like all the other times I passed out..." He was speaking more slowly than usual. "As I opened my eyes, you were there. Why are you always there...?"
"I worry about you.", Sarah answered quietly, without a moment of hesitation. "You're important. I tried to help you; to save your life, every time. Don't you remember? You saved my life countless times as well." His words had made her hopeful that finally, he might remember the past as it had happened and not as he imagined it.
"Did I…?", he wondered, and so she let him for a while. "… I don't know, Sarah. Surely I would, but… I can't remember." There was a stressed frown forming on his face and he shifted, seemingly uneasy with the confusing thoughts on his mind.
"Shh...! Yes, you do." Sarah hushed him just to indicate that she did not want him to think too deep into it when she had all the answers already. "You just told me you were strangled by a mummy. This only happened because you subjected yourself to the will of its master, the Osiran Suthek, as you walked into his prison to disrupt his concentration. It was the only way to stop him from burning the universe!"
The Doctor listened, but just shook his head. "I can't make any sense of what you're saying… Who is this Suthek, the Destroyer?", he asked back, looking somewhat sorry that he was unable to follow her words.
But Sarah just sighed. It was there, it was all there! She had never mentioned Suthek's nickname. "Well… he did not burn the world in 1911 thanks to you, so never mind now." Her attempt to make him let go of the topic for now was rather mediocre, but there were so many more things she needed to tell him. While she picked up the TARDIS key from the night stand, he mumbled something about "alternative points in time" to himself. Judging by the way he was staring into space, the Doctor was still trying to put his thoughts into order.
"Look here, Doctor..." Sarah dangled the spade-shaped silver key into his field of view, so that he wouldn't need to turn his head. "Harry and Clara brought this back to you. Do you recognize it?"
"That's my pendant. Huh, I thought I lost it…?" He blinked at it, surprised, but then lifted a hand for her to drop the object into.
"It's more than just a pendant, Doctor. It's the key to the TARDIS.", Sarah explained while he examined it closer. "She looks like a police box, but is actually a time machine – and a piece of your home world."
Looking past the key in his hand, he shot her a sceptical look, but allowed her to continue nonetheless.
"For the last three years, you and I travelled the universe in it. We fought monsters and saved people, sometimes with the help of UNIT, sometimes without." Harry had warned her not to tell him, but feeling that she could wait no longer to remind him of his true past, the words just flowed from the young woman's mouth. "But then your old nemesis, the Master, tracked you down and disappeared with you and the TARDIS to carry out his revenge. When I finally found you, over a month later, you were no longer a Time Lord and you had forgotten all about our adventures. To you, they were just bed-time stories we supposedly made up when I was a child..."
"Sarah…! Sarah." The Doctor signalled her to stop. "Listen, I worry about you, too. But about your mental health, I am afraid." The upset look in his eyes told her that she had already said more than he cared to hear, but he was still too tired to truly raise his voice even if he had wanted to. "Do you even realize what you are saying? Do you think I would find it funny if you kept pretending that I'm this superior being from outer space? How can you even expect me to believe you when I remember so well a childhood on Earth?"
Hurt that he would accuse her of purposely trying to upset him, Sarah averted her gaze for a moment, before she found the right question to contradict him with. "...Do you, really?" She challenged him to give it some more thought by pointing out the paradox he had just created in his own memory. "You just remembered me being there all the times you almost gave your life in an attempt to stop evil – although you've told me before that we haven't seen each other for twenty years."
Too stubborn to admit that she might in fact be right – or at least that there could be a grain of truth to her variation of their history – he merely turned his face away from her. Sarah sighed as she finally understood why Harry had warned her about doing this. Yet now it was too late: The Pandora's box had been opened.
"...Why did I pass out this time?", the Doctor suddenly asked, with a worried tone to his quiet voice.
"That would have been because your second heart started beating again...", Sarah replied bluntly, while she looked down at her folded hands again.
Still, she heard the soft rustling noise of the pillow as the Doctor turned his head towards her again.
"Really? But when did it ever stop beating?"
"What...?" Surprised that this was not the question she had expected, Sarah looked up. They stared into each others faces with wide eyes. "You've known all along that you were supposed to have two hearts?"
"Yes, of course, I…!", he started with a light frown, but then gasped as another realization hit him. "What gave me that impression!?"
Sarah watched his expression contort in mental distress with eyes of pity and placed a hand on his arm in the hope to ease his confusion with her presence. Just then, the sound of a door handle caused her to spin around in her seat.