The information Cam had given them turned out to be a wild goose chase. Every single one of Jake Oliver's confiscated slides showed nothing but Martha and Miranda took the report as evidence that there was some sort of pathogen involved. They just couldn't test for it… with today's equipment and methods. So, it was time to bring out the big guns. With Jack's permission, Martha and Miranda loaded Torchwood's medical scanner into the SUV's boot with Jack and Ianto's help. Jack had insisted on accompanying them to hospital, not wanting to let the scanner out of his sight. Miranda had insisted he drive like a civilised human being, citing the delicate equipment in their boot. It was large, about the size of an overnight suitcase but it performed functions that today's medical scanners could only dream about. Just by looking at it, you could tell it didn't belong. It was clearly not a time-current piece of technology and Jack had been reluctant to let it out of the Hub but Miranda and Martha had been most persuasive… They'd both yelled at him.
Miranda didn't have to flash her Torchwood credentials at the hospital. The silhouette of Jack's greatcoat was all they'd needed. Martha had scanned the patients donned in protective gear and the scanner in a special cover while Jack and Miranda had kept the staff, the families and the curious away. When the scanner had first come through in 2007, Jack had identified it as an 'antiquated piece of junk' from the thirty third century that hadn't worked anyway. But the technical genius of Toshiko Sato and the medical prowess of Doctor Owen Harper were all they'd needed to make it brand new.
It would scan each patient and store the information. It was instantaneous and thorough… but with a single drawback. The display was in a futuristic language that Jack's vortex manipulator would have to translate before they could understand it. It was the reason that they didn't use the scanner routinely.
They'd needed barely an hour at the hospital to scan the patients and return to the Hub. But it took Jack nearly all morning to translate the scanner's results… for the first patient. He had no idea what he was translating so he'd needed Miranda and Martha sitting by his side to constantly review and revise the translation as he made it. Rift alerts also popped up throughout the day that would occasionally interrupt their efforts. as an immortal team member was required for each field call. Jack's vortex manipulator was required for the translation but with Martha temporarily part of the team, Miranda would go as often as she could. When there was more than one call, everything ground to a halt as Jack had to abandon the translation. The three of them were back in the boardroom after just such an interruption and they were all quite frustrated. The first patient's translation was done and now they were working on the second.
"Patient has protein lost something," Jack spouted, staring at his manipulator's tiny display.
"That doesn't make any sense," Martha said.
"To you and me both," Jack shrugged. "Protein lost… loss… losing… Protein losing…"
"Is there more to the sentence?" Miranda asked.
"Yeah give me a sec," Jack said, tapping at his manipulator. "Sorry, sentence structure-"
"-is different in this dialect, you said already, Jack," Miranda finished for him.
Jack glared at her. "Be a little patient, Will."
"Said the pot to the kettle," Miranda replied.
Martha put her hands on both their arms. "C'mon you two."
An annoyed look passed between Jack and Miranda before Jack continued on with the translation. Martha sighed inwardly. These translations had been hardest on her not because of the work but because of her colleagues. She'd spent most of her time mediating between the two immortals and she was coming to the end of her own rope. There seemed to be no end to the bickering.
"Patient is protein losing nephron-" Jack said.
"Protein losing nephropathy," Miranda said, over him.
"-and enteron," Jack finished.
"Protein losing enteropathy and nephropathy," Martha said. She looked at the growing translation, handwritten in front of her. "It's not telling us anything we don't know. Jack can you scan the results? Is there a line that says differential or diagnosis or causative agent or anything like that?"
"That's not how this dialect works, Martha," Jack said, tapping his manipulator. "Words are taken from the translation of the words around it. It's a lot of context which is why-"
"-the translation is so difficult," Miranda finished for him.
Martha hissed at Miranda in a low voice, "Will you stop baiting him?"
"Give me a break, Will. This would make the mainframe's translation matrix have a litter of kittens," Jack said, pointing at the screen.
"Perhaps this would progress faster if you kept the commentary to a minimum-"
"Now who's the pot and who's the kettle, Will?" Jack asked, hotly.
Martha slammed her hands down onto the boardroom table and stood up, glaring at the two of them. She'd had enough. "How about the both of you stop this?! You're bickering like an old married couple!"
Miranda shot Jack a glare.
"I didn't tell her!" Jack said, defensive.
"Tell me what?" Martha asked. She glared at Jack and Miranda. "Oi! Keep up this nonsense and you two'll really be in for the dressing down of your lives and seeing who I'm talking to, that's saying something!"
"We are an old married couple," Miranda said, rolling her eyes.
"What?"
"Martha, meet the ex-wife," Jack said, jerking his head in Miranda's direction.
"Oh, ex-wife. Surprise of the century there with the way you two behave!" Martha shouted, glaring at the two immortals. "Look, you're both God knows how old! So how's about you start acting it! People's lives are on the line here!"
That seemed to get Miranda and Jack to stop most of their bickering and they settled down to the translation in ernest. They'd only translated three out of the seven reports from the scanner. If they kept at it, they'd get through the rest tomorrow. It was tempting for them to just ignore the rest of the scans since the first three showed nothing new. The scanner hadn't identified a causative agent nor made a diagnosis. It had only suggested the proper course of treatment but just because that was the case with the first three didn't mean it would be so with the next four.
They would have to keep at it and that was just what the three of them did all the next day. Thankfully, the rift didn't interrupt them much. There'd been a bit of a thing with a carnivorous alien plant and another incident with a Blowfish drugs deal gone wrong but other than that, Martha, Jack and Miranda were left to the translation. It was early evening, when they'd finally finished and all three of them were horribly disappointed.
Nothing.
The scanner had told them nothing new at all. Two whole days of work and they knew nothing more than what their time-current medical technology had told them. The comatose patients were heading towards organ failure with no cause detected. They'd scrutinised each translation anyway, hoping to glean something… Anything really. It was well into the night when Martha declared herself defeated, returning to Gwen's guest room.
Miranda rubbed at her tired eyes. She must be a bit dehydrated, her throat and mouth felt dry. Too much soda… she thought. Perhaps a nice cup of tea would help. Her legs felt like lead as she walked into the Hub kitchen to set the kettle. She rolled her shoulders as she waited. Bloody chairs… she sighed to herself. Sitting in the boardroom chairs for long periods tended to make her feel out of joint. When the kettle turned off, Miranda poured the hot water into the mug and dunked the teabag up and down. She squirted a fair amount of honey into the steaming tea and, with the mug in hand, walked down the north stairs to her rooms. She shivered when she opened the door. Donovan preferred the thermostat set a good deal lower than Miranda did. She indulged him in it, he wouldn't be here for long and there were plenty of ways to warm up. She drank the warm tea down and left the mug in the sink. She'd deal with it tomorrow.
After stripping nude, she scrambled under the blankets as quickly as she could to escape the chilled room immediately pressing herself into Donovan's warm body. This was the second night in a row that she'd collapsed into bed so very late. She was spooned tightly behind him, grateful for his warmth. Donovan reached back for her arm, tugging it around his waist. She hadn't meant to wake him and felt a bit badly for it. The long hours and sleep deprivation were hard on the rest of the team but especially so on Donovan, an aging man in his fifties.
"What time is it?" he asked sleepily.
"Late. Go back to sleep, Ethan," she said, softly, kissing the back of his neck. She shivered.
"Cold, babe?" he asked.
"A bit," she replied.
He sat up and dragged the coverlet up over them and then murmured an apology before falling back to sleep. He began to snore loudly as always. The noise didn't overcome her exhaustion and Miranda was asleep within minutes.