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"Come – on – you – stupid – bloody – heavy – Time – Lord!" Rose grunted as she half-carried, half-dragged the very unconscious Doctor into the TARDIS. She dropped him unceremoniously on the grating as she hurried over to the controls. She gazed helplessly at the confusing array of buttons, levers, knobs, switches, and tracker balls that covered the console. "If I was a mad alien with a time machine, where would I put the start button?" she mumbled to herself. "Come on, Tyler, think. You've seen him start her up more times than you can count. You know how to get her going!"
Perhaps uneasy with Rose piloting without any help from the Doctor, the TARDIS took things into her own hands (figuratively speaking) and flew into the Time Vortex on her own.
"Thanks," Rose cast a grateful look at the Time Rotor in the center of the console before facing her next challenge: getting the Doctor to sick bay. But she highly doubted that she would get back the strength to move him again for a while, at least.
A weird contraption that looked like a cross between an epi-pen and the hypo-shot-things from Star Trek appeared on the jump seat next to her. "Will this make him better?" she asked, giving the console a hopeful look. A few lights flashed in her direction.
"Good enough for me," she mumbled, grabbing the Trekkie epi-pen and kneeling down next to the Doctor. She hesitated, unsure where to use it. His arm, like a normal shot? His leg, like an epi-pen shot? Or his neck, like they did on Star Trek? Or somewhere completely different, like his stomach or something?
A light suddenly fell upon his left thigh. Like an epi-pen, then. "Thanks," Rose said again, "Sorry I'm so useless." A few wires sparked on the console, and she got the feeling that the TARDIS was telling her, just like the Doctor would, you are not useless, now give him the shot!
She took a deep breath before holding one end of the shot against his leg and pulling the trigger on the other end. A loud /lick echoed through the console room. Rose silently counted to fifteen before removing the epi-pen thing, so as to be sure all the medicine had entered the Doctor's system. A little spot of blood stained his pant leg where she had stuck him, but her concern was more on the Doctor than his clothes.
He groaned, and Rose finally breathed normally again, the lump in her chest that had been present the whole 30 minutes he had been unconscious finally shrinking away to nothing. "Rose?"
"I'm here, Doctor," she grasped his large, calloused hand, smiling as he squeezed back. "What is it?"
"Don't ever let me fall asleep in X-Tonic sunlight ever again. I don't care how thick that glass roof is, you can still get sunburned if you sit in it long enough," he winced as he moved his arm slightly and felt the warning tingle of pain from the angry red skin. "And I don't really fancy falling into another healing coma for a while."
Rose smiled and shook her head as she carefully helped the Doctor to his feet and gently removed the leather jacket so that as little as possible was touching his irritated skin. He limped away to his bedroom, mumbling something about finding some aloe to slather on, and Rose shook her head in amusement again.
Silly Time Lord. 'Stupid apes' aren't the only ones who need sunscreen.
