Chapter Four: Alone in the TARDIS

Wilfred, having found the box Pennine had pointed out, turned round triumphantly to find she had disappeared. Oh blimey, he was going to have to do all this himself.

Come on, get a grip, he told himself. The Doctor's relying on you.

The box had a strange kind of locking mechanism, but she had already told him what to do. Wilf placed the key in the ready-made hole, and the lid popped open. In the top of the box was a very old piece of folded paper. Opening it up, he saw it was a list of instructions.

Sylvia slipped into the kitchen, away from Donna and Shaun, and dialled her father's mobile number.

It rang and rang, and finally she got the voicemail.

"Dad, it's me," she said. "Please answer your phone, I need to know, are you okay?" She sighed. "Please call back. Or better still, come home. And make sure that ..." she glanced around her. "... man stays well away."

She hung up, and tried to shake off a nagging feeling. Wilf would be fine, of course he would. He was resilient.

The image of Wilf getting into that blue box sent a shiver down Sylvia's back. Of course he'd come back. Why wouldn't he? She couldn't explain it, but something definitely didn't feel right.

Wilf gave a little jerk and he realised he'd dozed off. His eyes snapped towards the bed, where the Doctor lay very pale and still. After checking his pulse for the hundredth time, Wilf sat back and watched him.

He didn't know how much time had passed since they'd arrived in the med bay. The instructions Pennine had pointed him to had guided him through treatment to the Doctor's wounds, giving him a blood transfusion, administrating various liquid medications through a needle and how to tend to him once he'd managed to fall into his healing coma.

Wilf had followed them to the letter through the process, and only once the Doctor was stable and soundly unconscious did he collapse into a chair next to the bed and start to shake. He felt a little better now he'd fetched a couple of blankets and some tea.

It could take days for the Doctor to wake up, but he couldn't leave him. Sylvia had tried to call Wilf several times, but he hadn't picked up, unsure what he could say to her. He'd call her back once he'd figured it out. At least he knew Donna was all right; Sylvia had said so in the first message she'd left on his phone. The first of many.

Maybe he was still in shock, Wilf thought as he pulled the blanket a bit tighter round him. The horror of the whole experience hadn't quite sunk in yet.

He knew the Doctor well enough to know that, if said Time Lord knew Wilfred was keeping vigil there instead of returning home to his family, he'd have something to say about it. But Wilf didn't care. The Doctor deserved his help, nay needed it; right at that moment it was all he had. And Wilfred Mott was nothing if not stubbornly loyal.

His eyes were beginning to close again, and he decided he might be better off moving around. As long as the Doctor was in his coma he didn't want to fall asleep. He'd already found the kitchen—about the only useful room he'd managed to locate, and then only by accident—and wondered if he ought to get something to eat. Maybe he should also find something to read. There had to be some books somewhere in this place. A strong coffee wouldn't go amiss either.

There had been a ball of string inside the box Pennine had pointed him to, the only item that had no medical use. Wilf had tied the end round the Doctor's bed post and unravelled it as he explored the TARDIS the first time so as to not lose his way back.

As he did this the second time, it occurred to him that maybe Pennine had left it for this reason. He wondered how she could have known. And then he wondered what he hadn't figured out yet. There was something about her that was bugging him, but he couldn't put a finger on it.

Boxing Day was quiet in the Noble household. Plans of a family get-together at Shaun's parents' place had been somewhat dented by Wilf's twenty-four hour absence. Donna hadn't wanted to do anything without her grandad, but Sylvia managed to persuade her to go and spend time with her fiancé and future in-laws.

"I promise you I'll call if I hear from him," she said, trying not to make it seem like she was pushing her daughter out the door. "I'm sure he's gone to one of his astronomy meets and forgot to phone, you know what he's like."

"What, all night? Last night of all nights?" Donna didn't sound convinced.

"Well you know how it is, if there's something special in the sky they don't care what night it is. Now go on, I promise I will bring him over when he turns up."

The moment Donna had walked out the door Sylvia picked up the phone and dialled again.

"Dad. It's me. Again. You have to come home, right now. Donna's worried about you, it's all I could do from stopping her calling the police. If you're not back by the time she gets home, I won't be able to stop her, and then what am I supposed to say? That you went off with the Doctor? If you're even bothering to listen to these messages, call me back right now, or better still just come home."

Mere minutes after she'd left the furious message, the phone rang.

"Hullo," was her father's somewhat timid-sounding voice. "It's me."

"Dad! Where the hell have you been?"

He muttered something which sounded like 'you just answered your own question', before answering properly. "I'm with the Doctor."

"You don't say. Come home. Now."

"I—I can't."

There was a long silence. Sylvia could practically hear Wilfred's fear of her. "What do you mean, can't?"

"Er, well, it's a bit … complicated …"

"Don't give me that, Dad, either you get you backside back here now or I'm reporting you as a missing person."

"Hey, you can't do that!"

"Come home then."

"I can't!"

"Why not?"

"I'm needed here."

It took Sylvia a moment to process what he'd said. "What?"

"I'm needed here. The Doctor needs me. I can't leave him."

"Why's he need you?" Sylvia couldn't keep the surprise out of her voice.

"He's hurt. Injured. He needs someone with him, he can't look after himself right now. And he doesn't have anyone else."

The words took her argument away, but not her anger. She took a few deep breaths.

"So what am I supposed to tell Donna?"

Wilf took another route around the TARDIS. He located the wardrobe, changed into some clothes that weren't blood-stained and put his own clothes in the Doctor's washing-machine.

He wondered how his granddaughter would take the story, that he was looking after a sick friend. It was close enough to the truth. But he still thought it would be best not to collect his things once the Doctor was awake, in case he ran into her; he wasn't certain he could lie convincingly to her face.

Sylvia had always been better at deception than him. Something that, when she was a teenager, it had taken him a while to figure out.

Once he'd worked out the strange controls and started the wash, he returned to the med bay. The Doctor hadn't moved; Wilf checked on his vitals, temperature and hydration as per Pennine's instructions, before settling down with a book.

TBC …