"Owen, it's some sort of chemical reaction, I don't understand it fully but I think it has something to do with iron." Tosh pushed the papers from the various instruments at Owen pointing out the differences in the blood work he had taken just after the accident and those more recent tests. Owen studied the numbers flashing up on the wall umming and arring at various things that Tosh couldn't fit into her understanding. Quietly Jack and Ianto slipped back to the railings, having seen Tosh rush past had slightly sobered Jack and a good brush down and a few well chosen peppy words had given him the strength to return to the problem in hand. His brain had started sorting the things he could change now from the things to deal with later and this time he knew he would have to face them.
"Let me run this past you Tosh because I need to get this straight, the iron bound in the haemoglobin is somehow reacting with the stuff that looks like blood that she has and is causing some massive reaction which destroys her oxygen carrying cells?"
Tosh couldn't decide if Owen was being sarcastic or really couldn't comprehend that she had just said all that, granted she had used the proper chemical reactions and had lost everyone when she took a whiteboard marker to the wall to explain the full chemical equation but was it really that difficult for a trained professional to comprehend?
"Yes and I think the heat from the reaction is pushing up her core temperature and causing further damage to the immature cells her body is producing to replace the ones she is loosing." She clarified.
"Fascinating" said Owen quietly his arms crossed in front of him as his tapped his chin in true nutty professor stance.
"Fascinating Owen but can you do anything about it?" asked Gwen pointedly
Owen spun round like he had been touched with red hot poker and paused for a few seconds, inside his head he had a film playing of the last time he had seen Katie being wheeled away in a time when he trusted the things he saw in front of him.
"Yes there is, but it can only stop that reaction, it isn't some magic wand that is going to make her all well again." The despair in his voice was audible.
Jenny started coughing, a rasping, hacking cough that sounded as if she was trying to expel half a lake, Gwen who was still sat holding her hand looked horrified as Owen ran the other way. He threw open the metal drugs cabinet and started pulling out small bottles, snarling as he found each one wasn't the one he really wanted, when he finally found the one he needed he quickly looked at the mess he had left and wondered why Ianto wasn't clucking at his lack of tidiness. As he drew the liquid into the syringe he saw Ianto sat on the stairs flicking furiously the old file, Jack had swooped past him and was helping Gwen sooth away the coughing with little success. Owen stabbed the IV bag and pushed the liquid in quickly before turning away again to fill the syringe up from a larger bottle
"Physician heal thyself." Said Ianto excitedly
"Really don't need pseudo-religious platitudes at this moment Tea-Boy" snapped Owen as he flicked the air out of the syringe.
"No she has been giving us the answer, cold. After each of these experiments they took her back to a cell where the ambient temperature was barely above zero, I should have seen it before."
"So the cold slows the reaction down and gives the immature cells a more stable environment" started Tosh
"While protecting the body and brain from any further damage." Finished Owen, "Brilliant"
Owen took the needle and pushed it in the IV port on her hand that seemed to make the team less squeamish than the one into her neck and waited 20 seconds for the large dose of adrenaline to kick in. Truth be told Owen wasn't at all certain this would go his way but he needed to get the previous drug round her body to neutralise the iron, he looked at the numbers and was pleased to find he had found the lucky side of the coin he just flipped, not that he would ever admit it, except perhaps to Tosh when she was drunk and he thought she wouldn't remember it.
"So we freeze her and stick her in the vaults for a few days." Said Tosh just a little too brightly
Owen fixed her with a stare that would have pleased Ianto,
"Brilliant hypothesis Dr Sato but one fatal flaw," Owen saw Gwens arm fly out to make contact with him for his crass remark but he was just too far away to let her strike home. He made another scan of the numbers and motioned for the old notes from Ianto.
"The technology behind the vaults puts bodies into stasis, nothing happens to them so we could stop the reaction and pretty much everything else."
The coughing had stopped and Gwen and Jack gently laid Jenny back towards the high stack of pillows, some colour coming back to her face but Jack had seen it all before, too many times. The synthetic effects of the drugs would mask the true symptoms for a few minutes then the end came fast and hard. He had wondered in one of his many introspective musings whether they speeded things up or if the drop from the plateau of better health just made it look like that. He gripped her hand hard, that one he had learnt from personal experience – the sensation disappeared from your hand first as the blood rushed back to the bodies core. There was a little more peace behind the heavily dilated pupils and the fight for breath wasn't so obvious but still her eyes moved steadily between Gwen who was muttering and wiping her face and Jack who stood on the other side of the bed.
"What about those Russian guys, they freeze people for hours while they operate." Said Gwen suddenly, they all looked at her as if she had gone mad, Jennys eyes fixed on Gwen. "What? I watched some late night documentary on it when I was waiting for Rhys to come home."
Owen reached over and kissed her right in the middle of the forehead.
"When did you get so clever Gwen Cooper?" asked Owen rhetorically
"Ok reality check here what are you talking about?" asked Jack tearing his eyes away from Jenny and fixing Owen with his most piercing stare, the type that followed you through walls.
"Hypothermia, induced hypothermia, cool the body down and it slows the rate of, err" what he wanted to say was decay but even to Owen that sounded a bit gruesome when your patient was laid in front of you, "Well preserves the tissue." He recovered.
Owen came round to face Jenny, blocking Jack, and spoke directly to her,
"Is this what you have been trying to tell us, is this the solution?" he asked but the light was fading from her eyes again, this one was going to be his call.
"No" said Jack forcefully, "Do you know how incredibly painful hypothermia is and do you even know if it will work?"
"No to the first because while I might be dead Jack I don't delight in seeing how many different ways I can scare the shit of my nearest and dearest and for the second all I know is that doing nothing is not an option."
"Is there nothing else?" Jack asked in despair "You said you could stop the reaction."
"Jack." Said Toshiko quietly behind him "The damage has already been done Owen can only stop it not reverse it."
"I think that a small amount of hope is better than none at all." Said Ianto quietly from his position leaning against the low wall.
The team were presenting a united front again and even if it hadn't been the right thing to do Jack doubted he could have done anything to stop them, it was the night they opened the rift all over again.
"Jenny love, do you understand? Do you want to do this?" asked Gwen quietly with little hope of a response but her eyes opened and she felt the fingers tighten ever so slightly in her hand, Gwen nodded at Owen, who looked directly at Jack. Owen didn't need Jacks unfailing approval anymore, he hated to admit it but for sometime after he had come here he had sought it, he seemed to capitulate and Owen snapped into emergency mode.
"Tosh get some saline direct from the chiller, Ianto we need ice lots and lots of ice, Gwen you need to soak that blanket and make sure the heat is turned down here."
"Threashers are going to think we are having some wild party ." said Ianto darting from the Hub again.
Gwen rubbed Jenny's hand one last time and placed it back down on the cold metal surface and ran up to the main area. She returned quickly with a jug of water
"This is going to work isn't it Owen?" she asked quietly, his glance was non committal "Just we tend to loose people when they get involved with us, Lisa, Mary, Suzie, Beth, John, Diane, Estelle." She said quietly thinking of all the others that had passed through by Torchwood and not made it.
"Well I'm not loosing this one, could be a lot of hard work but if I make bloody Captain Invincible do CPR until the universe ends."
Some days Gwen hated this job so much she could happily take the Retcon and leave it for a nice desk job, babies and actual nights with Rhys, oh God she would have to phone him and make another excuse for not coming home,
"Oh hiya Rhys, yes there is a frozen meal for one in the ice box, why aren't I at home, well you remember Jenny from yesterday who I introduced as another long lost school friend, well she's laid out on the slab and we need to do continuous chest compressions for the next three weeks." That would work. She handed Owen the jug, the tears pricking the back of her eyes as she mumbled about something urgent and ran to the hot house. She knew she wouldn't be disturbed there as she flicked the re-dial,
"Rhys love, is that you? Thank God, you know I love you don't you?"
Gwen crept back in after half an hour of blubbing and sniffing that convinced Rhys he really had to come to the Hub and collect her and many reassurances on her behalf that despite outward appearances she was fine and it was just stress. Rhys tried to lighten the situation by reminding her that his mother wanted to know what colour the flowers were so she could co-ordinate her outfit and she had nano seconds to bluff her way through the fact that was still on her list of things to organise.
She stood behind Ianto and felt as his hand reached for hers, he always seemed to know just what to do to make things right, always got the right level of sarcasm to diffuse the situation, unlike Owen. She could hear her mother voice, all the best ones are married, all the handsome ones are gay or Rhys… Ianto was practically both but at times like this he was the one she would turn too. Jack was great if you needed to kick someone's head in, Owen was great for a reality check and Tosh was good when you needed technical fact, but Ianto was just everyone's rock.
"What's happening?" she whispered.
"She slipped into unconsciousness a few minutes ago, Owen doesn't give her long."
"Is the plan working?" she asked afraid of the answer
"Tosh is doing some more analysis now." He said giving an extra squeeze to reassure her.
"And Jack?"
"That might be more difficult to fix" said Ianto remembering the earlier incident.
"The shivering has stopped." Said Jack as if he was on auto pilot. Mentally he was ticking off the stages that Owen had clinically described to the rest of the team, what he hadn't described was the sheer insistent hell of pins and needles that came with the cold, the feeling of broken glass in each and every joint and then the rush of excruciating heat that poured through every single cell in the seconds before your lungs exploded and your brain left the building. That was the bit he really hated about eternally coming back, he knew what each and every death felt like and when life flooded back he could remember every feeling and had to suffer the resurrection hangover.
"She won't feel it Jack, the morphine will have kicked in by now" Owen was watching the numbers tick off.
"Ya think?" he asked quietly, morphine never really did it for him, granted it was a bit slow acting for his body but if it ever was really that bad he found it only took an edge off things, like a blunt knife raking across your skin rather than the faster sharp one. Gwen left Iantos side and went back to the place she had left to phone Rhys. All that could be seen under the bulky blankets keeping the ice in place was a paper white face, mainly covered with the oxygen mask and the single hand grasped by Jack, limp and waxy. Ianto stood behind Jack and placed his right hand on Jacks shoulder, Gwen noticed as Jack instinctively moved his head to make greater contact like a cat looking for an ear scratch. Owen did the same thing to Gwen and she didn't flinch, this was what everyone wanted at the end, to be surrounded by people who loved you, but no one even knew who she was. Silently Tosh slipped into the room and stood by Gwen and took the offered hand, her heart torn by the tears slipping soundlessly down Gwens face.
It seemed like a life time they all stood there, most of them contemplating their own existence when Jenny snapped opened her eyes. She looked round in confusion for a few seconds and finally fixed on Jacks face, he wiped away a rivulet of water from the warming ice and smiled.
"See you soon." He said quietly.
She smiled the most brilliant smile, one to rival Jacks best efforts and looked at the rest of the team for a second. Suddenly the serene expression vanished and her face contorted in pain as her body spasmed and went stiff momentarily, a primeval howl of pain and surprise left her lips and she went limp.