Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [31]
A long, high-windowed hall with a black-and‐white tiled floor. Another policeman. She let Fitz do the listening. She wasn’t expected to understand English anyway, which was just as well because the words went past her. Theatre. After hours. No idea what. Flyweight. The policeman showed a card. It had their London address on it, half-obscured in damp blood. The bright morning sun hitting the card seemed to her obscene. Their rushing footsteps were too loud, like a rattle of stones. At the end of the hall, tall white double doors. Then more white: the walls, the curtains, the screens, the sheets, the nurses’ aprons, the faces of the patients. And a young doctor in a dark suit: ‘He shouldn’t even be alive.’
‘I’ll say,’ thought Fitz. He stared at the Doctor’s face, paler than the pillowcase it lay against, even the lips without colour. Beneath a grey blanket, his chest was swathed in bandages. Jesus, Fitz thought, was he even breathing? The room smelled rawly of disinfectant with an under-odour of staleness and bedpans. Fitz put his hand on the iron railing at the foot of the bed. The young doctor was saying something. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Mr... Kreiner, is it?’ Fitz nodded. ‘You are the nephew?’
‘Right. This is my uncle John. Smith. Mum’s brother.’
‘Are you aware that...’ The doctor hesitated. ‘It was difficult to tell, with so much damage to the body cavity, but your uncle appears to be possessed of a number of physical anomalies.’
‘Does he?’ said Fitz nervously.
Fortunately the Doctor chose that moment to open his eyes and scream.
It wasn’t much of a scream, having almost no breath behind it, and quickly lapsed into a sort of moaning gurgle. The Doctor’s head thrashed-back and forth. Blood came out of his mouth. Fitz and Anji found themselves jostled aside by a sudden knot of busy nurses. A needle glinted in the doctor’s hand.
‘No drugs!’ cried Anji. ‘He’s allergic!’ Then, wondering if the word were even in use yet, ‘I mean, he can’t –’
‘It’s only morphine.’ The doctor lifted the Doctor’s wrist. ‘He reacted satisfactorily before – Oh!’ The Doctor had wrenched the hypodermic from his hand and flung it across the room. It shattered in a sudden silence as the hospital staff froze, staring at him. Wildly, his eyes raked across their faces and locked on Fitz.
‘Why...?’ he whispered in anguish. Blood bubbled over his lip. ‘Why am I alive?’
* * *
Two days later Anji asked Fitz whether the Doctor could die.
They were in the TARDIS kitchen, where they spent most of their time when they weren’t staring at the Doctor, white-faced and unmoving, plugged into the machines he’d attached himself to before dropping into a coma. She had made tea in a mechanical, unthinking way, but neither of them had poured out and the pot had grown cold.
‘I don’t know,’ said Fitz. Maybe not, he thought, if two days ago were any example. At the hospital, the Doctor had suddenly recovered his composure. He had spoken calmly and with great sincerity to the young doctor, staring intently into his eyes, and soon the discharge papers were signed and they were on their way to the station, the Doctor in a clumsy wicker-and‐wood wheeled litter-chair, encased in blankets and bandages, his pallor ghastly in the sunlight, his eyes glazed with pain. In the first-class compartment, they had stretched him on his back with his knees up and his head elevated on Fitz’s bundled coat, and he had immediately fallen unconscious.
‘Biodata,’ said Fitz.
‘What?’ Anji had lapsed into a little trance of her own, staring at the teapot. Now she frowned. ‘Biodata?’
‘Yeah,’ said Fitz. ‘It’s hard to explain. I don’t know if it’s his, erm, species,