It's so very obvious to everyone watching us
That we have got something real good going on
Alarms are blaring overhead. Lights are flashing warnings and someone is yelling in the hallway. In one corner of the lab the ceiling has collapsed, and the resulting smoke has set off the sprinklers.
"Bloody hell," the Doctor murmurs.
Rose looks around. "This is...this is..."
"An unfortunate accident?" he suggests, eyes trained on what was once a wall.
"Really, really bad, I was gonna say." She throws him a look that is half annoyance, half laughter. "I'll go see if anyone's been hurt. You can stay and explain what happened." Rose pulls out her phone. "I'll find Dad and calm him down."
"Be sure you tell him it was an accident."
Rose doesn't reply as she leaves. He suspects it's just as well. It really was an accident, but perhaps on a slightly more dangerous scale. He looks with regret at the sonic screwdriver. The tip has disintegrated, the entire thing burned out and melted. For the first time he notices a burning sensation in his hand. The sensation abruptly turns into a ball of fire and he drops the sonic onto the floor.
"Ow!" Turning his hand over, he sees bright red welts striping his palm and fingers. He winces.
"Ouch." Anna is standing there, arms folded across her chest.
The Doctor pulls his attention away from his hand. "I'm sorry about your lab. Are you hurt?"
"No. Which is more than I can say for you."
He shrugs. "I'll be all right."
She walks to him and takes hold of his arm. "The sink. Run the cold water." She turns the tap on herself and guides his hand underneath the faucet.
He lets out a hiss as the water hits the burn, and then relaxes as the pain starts to recede.
"What were you doing?"
"I was, er, building a sonic screwdriver." He keeps his eyes on the water.
"Why a sonic screwdriver?" Anna is puzzled by this. "As a tool or a weapon? Why not something more practical?"
"I liked it. It had every setting I could ever need."
"You could have had anything you wanted, and you chose a screwdriver."
"Better than a squareness gun."
She continues to stare at him. He takes uneasy note of the fact that she is tapping her foot and that there are those little metal sticks in her hair again. He hopes they're knitting needles and that she won't be pulling them out to poke him.
"Did it work?" she asks.
He gestures to the hole in the wall. "Absolutely. Well. For a moment, anyway. Briefly."
She pulls his hand out from under the water and looks at it. His hand immediately starts to hurt, and he's surprised there's no smoke coming from his skin.
"That is just incredibly painful," he mutters, putting it back under the water.
Anna steps to his phone, ignoring the people who are now looking into the room through the hallway.
"Dr. Harper? It's Anna Ramsey from R & D. Yes, that's us. No, nothing bad happened! We just had a little accident with some equipment. Dr. Smith has a severe injury - can you come up and take a look?"
The Doctor can't hear the other end of the conversation - he can barely hear Anna over the voices in the hallway and the sound of the water running over his palm. He watches Anna wince and hold the phone away from her ear for a second.
"I'm not asking you to make a house call," she snaps. "We have someone hurt up here, and he can't come down."
She slams the phone down and turns to glare at the Doctor. "He's an arrogant one."
The Doctor's attention is back on his hand. "Who?"
"Owen Harper. Says he can't be bothered to come up."
"Well, I'll go down to the medical wing." It's not something that he looks forward to. It's not common knowledge, what he is, but enough people at Torchwood know to make it uncomfortable for him to be around the physicians that work there. Rose says it's all in his head, but he knows they're all anxious to get their hands on him and runs all sorts of unsavory experiments.
"Stay right there. The water will help the burn. He said he's coming."
A few months back he had some wounds from an alien attack. Rose was injured in the same attack, and his wounds healed faster than hers. They still hurt, still took longer than when he'd been a full-fledged Time Lord, and they'd left some faint scars. He hopes this body can heal efficiently from burns. It's not the worst pain he's ever felt, certainly not regeneration-worthy, but it's painful all the same.
"Dr. Ramsey?" They turn around to see a man in a haz-mat suit standing there.
"Oh, now that's unnecessary," the Doctor protests. "There were no chemicals involved here."
"I'm coming." Anna walks out to the hallway. "This is going to take some time," she says over her shoulder. "I'm sure Mr. Tyler will be by soon."
"Thanks for those cheery words." Left alone, the Doctor turns the water off. His hand is bright red and feels like it's been thrust into burning lava. He turns the water back on and wonders where Rose went.
"What's going on?" a man in a white coat asks in annoyance as he comes in. "What are you doing?"
The Doctor gestures to the sink. "I burned my hand. It's a bit painful."
"Let's see."
"Who are you? Not that I'm not grateful for your assistance, because I am. But I don't think we've met yet."
"I'm Dr. Owen Harper. I'm usually in the medical wing, keeping track of medical things."
"Nice to meet you," the Doctor says, his hand still under the faucet. "I'm the Doctor."
"I know who you are." Dr. Harper sets a black bag down on a nearby table and starts to take out various medical supplies. "You're that alien bloke that Rose Tyler kept looking for."
"Half-alien," the Doctor feels compelled to say.
"What?"
"I'm only half-alien. I thought you should know that, in the interests of open communication. I possess a human body."
"That's great for you. Let's have a look."
"Dr.- Harper, was it? - what kind of doctor are you, exactly? In the interest of open communication."
"I'm a medical doctor. And you can call me Owen, seeing as how we work together now." Owen takes the Doctor's hand and dries it off with a towel, drawing a painful exclamation from the Doctor.
"Owen, do you mind?"
"Mind what? I'm doing my job."
"Your job is not to make me suffer."
"Of course it is." Owen lets go of the Doctor's hand. "Can you flex your hand for me?"
The Doctor flexes his hand slowly and painfully. There are large blisters forming across the palm.
"Well. That looks very sore and painful." Owen says this quite calmly.
"The pain, actually, is quite remarkable."
"It's deep," Owen admits, "but it won't scar up, and your hand should be as good as before once it's healed. We'll just wrap it up." He takes out a basin, gauze and various tubes that the Doctor sincerely hopes are pain relievers.
"What were you doing, anyway?"
"Accident. I was testing a new piece of equipment and it, er, malfunctioned. Somewhat. Slightly."
"We have a lot of accidents around here, don't we?" Owen dabs on some sort of cream onto the Doctor's palm. "Explosions, fires, aliens trying to escape."
"Occupational hazard," the Doctor agrees.
"It's a damned circus around here most of the time," Owen says.
"Yes, it is." The Doctor thinks about this, glad for a distraction. "What are you doing here? You could be working out in civilian life."
Owen grimaces. "I was. Had a nice job, nice apartment, nice girlfriend. Then Torchwood came calling."
"What'd they want?"
"Me to work here. They needed someone after they took care of the Cybermen. I said yeah, and here I am."
"Do you like it here?" The Doctor doesn't feel like he had a choice - he belongs at Torchwood and he is needed here. Not everyone is needed.
"It's all right. My girlfriend broke up with me when I wouldn't tell her what I was doing or why I quit my job, but that's okay."
"Why wouldn't you tell her?" The Doctor is drawn in despite himself.
Owen snorts. "Who's gonna believe that I'm working on aliens and alien hunters? Come on."
The Doctor is silent, staring down at his hand.
Owen remembers who he is talking to. "That's right," he says slowly. "You're an alien."
"Half, technically."
"Half, yeah. How's that even possible? Did your mum have a go with a UFO?"
"It shouldn't be possible, but it is. I'm the product of a genetic meta-crisis. Long story, complicated explanation, you have no hope of understanding it. Don't try. But I'm part human and part Time Lord now. Haven't you got a file on me somewhere?" The Doctor glances around the exam room. "Everyone does, it seems. On the last world, anyway."
"You're a lunatic," Owen tells him, wrapping a bandage around the burn.
"Are you friends with Anna? Related, perhaps? You sound very much like her."
"Keep this covered," Owen instructs. "You can leave the bandage off at night after a day or two. Let some air hit the skin."
"Is that it? No salve? No compress for the pain?"
"Well, you're healing properly. I put a numbing cream on the blisters, that should help. Keep it dry. Don't use your hand too much. Move it normally as much as you can to keep the skin stretched - just don't try to do any work with it. Take something for the pain if you need to. Rest that hand for a bit."
He could have healed this injury with the sonic screwdriver, if he had one. The irony is not lost on him. The Doctor has to smile at himself. Maybe this is the kind of man he is now. Rude and not ginger and with no sonic capabilities.
At least not for now, he reminds himself. He'll get it built right eventually.
"Anna said you were down here." Rose has appeared in the doorway, slightly out of breath. Her hair has come free of the knot she'd twisted it into this morning. "Are you all right? What happened? I just left!"
"Yeah, I'm fine." He holds up his hand. "The sonic burned me a bit."
She winces. "Ouch."
"Oh, it's not that bad," he assures her, trying to assume a manly pose. He's certainly been hurt before. It's just that usually, once he's been hurt, he ends up either regenerating or healing up pretty quickly on his own.
Rose looks at the medical doctor. "Owen? Is he all right?"
"It's a burn. It'll be fine."
"I said it's not too bad," the Doctor says patiently.
"No? Do you want to go home?" Rose is holding his hand gently, peering at the bandage as if she could see beneath it.
"No, of course not."
"You sure?"
He's not at all sure. His lab is in pieces, a wall is gone, his latest sonic screwdriver is destroyed. Not to mention his hand. The thought of going home and lying down in a dark room is tempting.
"I'll stay," he says. "I should help clean up."
"We need you for something else at the moment."
He sighs. "Pete wants to see me, doesn't he?"
She nods. "He does want to see you."
"I was afraid of that," he murmurs.
"Be very afraid," Rose whispers, and when she moves he sees Pete standing in the doorway.
The Doctor raises his bandaged hand. "Hello, Pete."
Pete shakes his head. "Explosions. A wall disintegrated. You could have been killed." He says this last bit looking straight at Rose.
"It was an accident, Dad. They happen."
Pete shakes his head again and rubs the back of his neck. "Did it work? Whatever you were working on?"
"No, actually. It didn't." The Doctor tries for a winning smile and fails. Disappointment over the sonic screwdriver combined with the pain from the burn makes it hard to be sociable.
"All right. Take care of the hand." Pete looks at the Torchwood doctor, standing still beside the table. "Dr. Harper? Is everything fine?"
"The burn will heal on its own. I'll look at it tomorrow and see how it's healing. Take it easy on the hand."
"I will."
"Very good. Thank you." Pete turns to the Doctor. "We'll take care of the lab. Rose?"
"Yes, Dad?"
"I'm not sure which one of you is taking care of the other most of the time, but please be careful."
Rose smiles. "We will, Dad. Thanks."
"Anyone else would have been put on leave at the least for that stunt," Pete warns the Doctor on his way out. Dr. Owen Harper follows him, stripping off his gloves and tossing them in the trash as he leaves.
"People don't always appreciate the scientific advancements going on around them," the Doctor says.
Rose steps to him and brushes away a smear of dirt on his cheek. "You'll get it," she says, resting her head on his shoulder. His free hand comes up to squeeze her shoulders.
"Thanks."He kisses her hair and shuts his eyes.
oOoOo
Rose won't let him go back upstairs. She leads him to her office instead, where Jake is waiting with a look of incredible amusement on his face.
"You blew up your lab!" he keeps saying, much to the Doctor's annoyance.
"I did not blow up my lab. The sonic screwdriver had a slight programming malfunction."
"Which caused the lab to blow up," Rose adds.
"Jake, you can stop laughing at any time," the Doctor says.
"Sorry, Doctor." Jake tries to stop smiling and settles for a smirk.
"Jake, he worked very hard on the sonic screwdriver," Rose says. "Let's not tease him about it."
"Who's teasing? The man blew up his lab!"
"The lab did not blow up." The Doctor sits down, cradling his hand against his chest. "A wall disappeared, that's all."
"That's all," Jake murmurs to himself. A look from the Doctor makes him clear his throat. "Anyway, Rose, it'll be just you and me for a bit, eh? Until the Doctor's hand heals up a bit."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine," Rose counters. "You really ought to go home for the day."
"I'll stay," he says. "I have some things to catch up on." He'll be avoiding his own lab and office for a few days, but Rose's computer will allow him the same access as his own.
The rest of the day passes in much the same way. The Doctor hides in Rose's office for most of the time, reading emails, signing off on reports, and taking a truly worrisome amount of pain medication.
"If it's that bad you ought to see a doctor," Rose says.
"I am a doctor," he replies, eyes still on her computer screen.
"You'll damage your liver if you keep taking those."
"Rose, that's just a myth."
"No, it isn't." Rose gives in and glances at her watch. "We still have a few hours. I'll leave and we can go home."
The Doctor almost agrees, but then Jake comes in, holding up a slip of paper.
"We have something, Rose. Let's go."
Rose turns to look at the Doctor. He waves her on with his bandaged hand. "Go on, Rose. I'll be here."
She smiles at him. "See you when we get back."
When they're gone the Doctor lowers his burned hand and winces. "Blimey, but that hurts."