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Human, the Doctor thinks, deliriously. Humans. This little twist of fate, the small kindness among unimaginable cruelty. Earth his chosen planet and it's inhabitants just perfect for what he now will always need and never wishes to take. Humans, with so little telepathic awareness but so much telepathic presence, consequently unguarded.
The hands cradling his face to breathe air into his lungs are human. That's the first thing he knew from them, what he felt before he was aware that there were hands. And the second-
Oh. This is a doctor. More precious for the lack of definitive particle or capitalisation. A doctor, a healer. The telepathic mark denoting a medic is consistent always, something the Doctor has long strived towards and grieved falling short of achieving. Whoever is saving his life, any being gifted with telepathic awareness would know them for a medical professional.
The Doctor shouldn't know this. If he knows this that means his shields are down. No, not down. Non-existent. Because he was dead and they faded along with him. But now, against his will, the rhythmic pressure on alternating sides of his chest has jump-started his hearts in the right sequence to force both of them into beating.
The Doctor drags in a gasping breath of air so thin in oxygen it barely does anything to replenish his supply, even with his system's supreme efficiency of binding it. He's dazed, disoriented, vaguely nauseous and throughly miserable. The air is its own form of torture, making him cough, but really everything hurts. He can't find it in himself to be surprised at his prior relinquishment of life, if this is how it feels.
The hands are gone. Martha. It was Martha's hands and now she's collapsed by his side.
"The scanner," she whispers weakly. There is so little oxygen, too little for a human. "She did something with the scanner." She loses consciousness after that.
Things are coming back to him in bits and pieces. He knows just what the scanner has been turned into. And so the Doctor forces himself to crawl towards his target even as the current of returning awareness grows stronger, threatening to pull him under with all the reasons why he was so eager to give up saving himself. But he cannot give up on saving Martha.
And it is about her first, before it is about anyone else, a hospital full of innocent strangers, the moon-facing half of Earth. Time Lord brains are capable of comprehending scale in all the ways in which human brains aren't, but Time Lord brains are also capable of suppressing their own functions when necessary and shifted priorities are a small price to pay for not being raving mad. Even if it's only mostly not raving mad, most of the time.
Sane enough to do whatever needs to be done. To save Martha. Martha whose cousin was an innocent secretary with the great misfortune of working at Canary Wharf. Martha who was clever and yet too kind to him for her own good. Martha who restored the beating of hearts which had lost whom they were beating for. Martha who had faith when he didn't.
Martha. The Doctor can do this for Martha. And while he's doing it for Martha not think of anything or anyone else.
The cables are in his hands and the sonic screwdriver isn't, just like it isn't in his suit pocket. This would perhaps be less of a problem if he wasn't so dizzy, or at least had more time. But it isn't hopeless; he just needs to tear out the right wires. He puts his hands on the blue, tries to focus on the timelines swirling in the MRI machine's opening instead of the floaters in his vision from blood loss compounded with oxygen deprivation.
This incarnation is not the best at it he's ever been, but still good, too good for his own good, and that's too much good for a no-good situation. As for the blue, oh, oh, that'd be a disaster, the foreboding feeling that's tortured him so when it was aimless finally a warning he can actually use. The Doctor moves his hands over to the red cable. It offers no immediate portents of doom and so he wastes no time disconnecting it. The machine sputters and dies with one last discharge of latent electricity.
The Doctor's thoughts return to Martha immediately, even as his body once again threatens to give out on him, sending him into another coughing fit that's just short of culminating in retching. He needs to check on her, starts crawling towards her as soon as movement feels feasible again, sooner. Earth is safe, down below, but that would mean nothing if he lost her. Stars, he's known her such a short amount of time, and yet that part of him which he can never decide whether to consider the best or worst of himself is already hopelessly attached. Curse of the Time Lords but truly no one else has ever been as bad as him.
But the Doctor can worry about whether or not he's condemning them both to his personal curse once he's sure that Martha is alive. He doesn't even contemplate getting up from the floor until after he's checked her life signs. Her pulse is blessedly there, and her chest is moving up and down in thready breaths, but moving nonetheless. It bolsters him and suddenly he can no longer bear to stay put, even if he's far from ready to be parted from Martha for anything.
It's easy enough gathering her up in his arms, much more laborious than it ought to be to stand up, holding her. And a bigger struggle than he'd like to admit, not scooping her up into a proper embrace, resting her head in the crook of his neck. Still, the Doctor refrains. What he cannot restrain himself from, however, is giving into his restlessness, going in search of a window.
The effort of walking may be a reckless misuse of what little oxygen they all have left, but if he's wrong then it won't matter anyway and the Doctor needs to know. He cannot stand to just passively wait. Martha has saved him and he is so close to saving her right back, come on, the plasma coils, there's still precious seconds of time left, just please, now.
The rain falls and the Doctor feels giddy, genuinely giddy, like he thought he'd never experience again.
~
It was, perhaps, rude (and unginger as ever) of the Doctor to slip away before Martha came to. He hopes he made up for it at least somewhat by leaving her deposited securely on a hospital bed.
He's nearly to the TARDIS by the time she spots him, and he can feel it even from across the distance, her, noticing him. He turns around. It wouldn't do for her to think... Well, anything that isn't true. His gaze finds her in the crowd as easily as if she were the only one there.
Martha's eyes are still on him, even as who he can only assume is her sister is by her side, talking a mile a minute with the relief of having her safe and back on Earth. It should give the Doctor pause, this proof that Martha has people who need her. But her eyes are on him and he knows that she will not say no. It's a look he's seen before and never deserved, never deserved less than he does now. The eyes of someone ready to follow him across the stars.
He's still not sure if Donna put him back together more or less than she broke him, walking away. He's never handled rejection well, and loneliness is a band around his hearts, squeezing ever tighter, cutting into him. But all of that is beside the point, in a way. He wouldn't make a decision as serious as asking someone new on board just for the solace he hasn't earned.
It was too close for comfort. Not his own death; gambling with himself on the line is nothing new to him. But half the inhabitants of earth and he came so close to not saving them, just because his selfish desire for oblivion won out. And he knows that potent as his guilt and self-disgust over that fact are, they wouldn't be enough to stop him from doing it again.
It was Martha who didn't allow him to do the selfish thing. And so for the good of the world, he needs her by his side. He's not willing to risk even so much as one last solitary trip. Well, just to his own medbay. And his own room for a shower and change of clothes. Maybe also his own workshop, to make a new sonic. Then he will be right back for her.
The Doctor doesn't get to be a martyr. The Universe has made that very clear.