VS3:08 -- "Crash Course", Part Three
Crash Course -- Part Three
Ianto was working below the secondary air duct when Jack showed up, leaning in the doorway and watching him, silently at first. Like most of Torchwood's infrastructure, the HVAC system was a cross between Victorian ingenuity and creatively-adapted alien technology. It had been upgraded in fits and starts as the various teams found resources to accomplish the task, so its network of ducts resembled a giant steel crab partway through the process of moulting. It was just about as pleasant to deal with when maintenance was required. In short, Ianto was in no mood for Jack's blithely casual question when it was finally delivered.
"Did you try to disable Gwen's script first?"
Ianto took a deep breath, partly to keep from biting Jack's head off - one round of hyperventilation was enough, thanks - partly to avoid a lungful of dust, then yanked on a filter frame.
"Thought never crossed my mind," he replied, tossing the dirty filter away. It sailed over Jack's shoulder, missing him by inches.
"So what are you doing?"
Ianto tightened his grip on the spanner he'd been using to remove the frame bolts. "Ventilation filters needed cleaning weeks ago. Haven't had a chance to get to it."
"Can't it wait?" Jack asked, so blasé, so Jack. As if everything was perfectly normal and they hadn't just been having a row a few minutes earlier.
Ianto took another deep breath, staring at the duct over his head and willing it to give him patience. "No, Jack, it can't. When this comes back online, it's going to choke up the whole place. I don't want to smell it and I don't want to breathe it, provided I'm still breathing when that happens."
Jack sighed, walking slowly into the room and leaning against the massive dehumidifier. "Come back upstairs. There's bound to be a way for us to figure it out together."
Ianto shook his head once, ignoring the pleading in Jack's tone. "I've tried everything. The script has to run its course."
"Did you-"
Growling, Ianto yanked out the next filter, causing Jack to stop mid-sentence. "I tried terminating the script and terminating the app." He stepped out from beneath the duct, dropping the dirty filter unceremoniously onto the growing stack, then he wiped his hands against each other in a token attempt at cleaning them. "None of Tosh's hacks were able to get round it, so I tried shutting down the entire system, but whatever Gwen did has it locked out until the script completes."
Jack craned his head away from the dust cloud. "Can we cut power to environmental?"
"No!" Ianto planted his hands firmly on his hips. "It's tied directly to medical."
"You're sure?"
He gave Jack a withering look. "I have a passing familiarity with how power is routed in the Hub."
"Come back upstairs with me. We'll figure something out," Jack said. His tone verged on begging.
Ianto wiped the sweat from his brow with his handkerchief before reaching for his water. Gulping it down, he stared at Jack curiously, debating how to reply, then decided against anything other than removing the next filter. "When I’m finished with this."
He offered Jack the water, and Jack took it reluctantly, recognising it as the diversion it was. "I'm not leaving you alone down here." Jack gestured around the room, using the bottle like a pointer.
"Then you can watch me finish."
Once hidden behind the ventilation plant, Ianto sat down, staring at his hands. They were shaking, but he'd been dealing with that well enough since it had started. More problematic was the fact that he could no longer see them in any detail. Try as he might, he couldn't seem to get a clear image of anything around him. It felt like his eyes were starting to give up, as exhausted as the rest of him. And Jack... Jack was worried. Ianto felt sick and this time it had very little to do with the disease they were fighting.
"Once again, he knows more than he's letting on," he whispered to himself, head sagging into sweaty palms. "Shit, shit, shit, shit-"
"Everything okay back there?"
Ianto jumped at the sound of Jack's voice, grabbing his spanner and clanging it against a grate for effect. "Yeah. One's being stubborn is all!" He stared at the grate, desperately trying to get it to come into focus. He failed and panic began to overtake him. "It's happening faster than he thought it would, that's why he's acting like this," he said under his breath. "He doesn’t want me to die alone. Oh, God-"
"Are you sure you're doing it right?"
Livid, Ianto straightened up and promptly cracked his forehead on a duct. The impact rebounded through his skull and sent him straight to the floor.
Jack was at his side immediately. "Are you hurt?" he asked, cradling his head and trying to pull him into his arms at the same time.
"I'm fine!" Ianto snapped, pushing him away so he could right himself. "And I know how to do my job!"
"I’m not saying you don't. But Gwen thought she was helping, too, and-"
"Fuck!" Ianto pounded a fist on a duct and it echoed ominously. "It never changes. No matter where I go or what I do, it's never good enough." His accent thickened, losing its carefully cultivated roundness. "Try harder, boy. You're not applying yourself." He gave Jack an icy glare. "Well, I have tried, and I've done quite well, thank you. Who got this place running smoothly again? Who takes care of the bills and figures out how to stock the cupboards for humans and aliens?"
"You," Jack replied, face contorted with confusion.
"Now we're getting somewhere." He felt triumphant and defeated all at once, and he sighed, leaning back until he could use one of the ducts as a makeshift prop. He wrapped his hands over the top of his skull and pressed, convinced they were the only things keeping his brain inside. He wanted to be sick, but he turned every ounce of his will into holding it down, refusing to yield his last shred of dignity.
"I still don't understand," Jack said.
Ianto struggled to keep the unvarnished shame out of his voice. How many ways did he have to explain it? "You can't have the Doctor. You can't have Gwen. That leaves Eye Candy, keeping your house tidy and your bed warm."
"You don't really believe that?" Jack asked, trying again to hold him, but flinching as Ianto jerked away.
"Don't." He fished in his pocket for the handkerchief and mopped more sweat from his face, pressing the cloth down against his skin until he could count the threads in the fabric. "I’m your consolation prize. I'm fine with that, but I don't appreciate being treated like it."
Jack shifted to the duct behind them and it swayed uncertainly, not designed to hold the weight of a human. Ianto was too tired to care if it broke or not. He just inched away, skin crawling at the feel of Jack's body heat radiating toward him.
"You are not a consolation prize," Jack insisted, sounding anxious for Ianto to believe him. "I've been around the block a few times, Ianto Jones, and I've never had anyone hit on me using a stopwatch before, let alone a dinosaur." He laughed. A small laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. Like nothing was wrong. Like the rest of them weren't dying while he sat there cracking wise about flirtation techniques. Because that's all it was for Jack. All the time. Sex. Just like Hart had warned them. Fucking John fucking Hart.
Ianto's anger boiled up, blood throbbing from wretched stomach to aching brain. "So why are you having a sympathetic pregnancy?" he spat. The room seemed to shift out of phase and he braced a hand against the floor on the side opposite Jack, so Jack couldn't see him doing it. "I researched Couvade Syndrome, and you know what I found? Partners get it, not bosses." Then he forced himself to lean in close, lowering his voice in a way that didn't so much ask for privacy as demand undivided attention. That it also reminded him of one of Hart's tricks didn't matter, because Jack was rapt. "Is it your baby?"
"What?" Jack recoiled. "No!"
Ianto snorted derisively and let go of his head. It didn't matter anymore. He couldn't feel his face and it was getting harder to understand what Jack was saying. Something about fifty-first century physiology...
"Rather convenient, that." Summoning every ounce of will he had left, Ianto drew himself up, smoothing his shirt down. Suddenly, he missed his waistcoat and jacket, but they were just clothes. Lisa had always teased him that he could show up to work naked and still command the room if he put his mind to it, but he'd known better. He'd always known, just as his father had said: clothes make the man. He'd slide into a suit and he'd become someone stronger, more capable.
Still, he could do it, had done so many times. What was a bit of fabric in the end? He pictured the waistcoat tight across his chest, reinforcing him, and he turned to look at Jack, who was still talking, practically vomiting explanations.
"Remember how the girls would have their cycles at the same time? Owen used to write it on your calendar so you'd make sure to buy extra chocolate?"
"So?" Clothes. Jack and his greatcoat. Jack and...
"So, it was pheromones, and now Gwen's pheromones are affecting me." He thumped his chest enthusiastically, palm spread over the braces.
Braces. Red stripes, vertical stripes, swaying left to right. Ianto fisted them, trying to get them to hold still. "And why haven't they affected you before?"
"I don't know! When the Rift sucks in a fifty-first century obstetrician, maybe she can explain it!"
Ianto clung to the braces, holding himself upright, forcing his thoughts into coherent patterns. "Every day I protect secrets about other times, other planets, and you can't trust me with a few facts of your own biology?"
"You're lecturing me about trust? After Lisa?"
"Don't you dare bring her into this!" Lisa, beautiful Lisa, who'd died in a suit of armour, who had believed in him more than she'd believed in his wardrobe. "This is about you!" Jack, who obviously didn't believe in him at all. Ianto could see it now. Everything made so much sense, everything except the strange echoes swimming around him. He glanced around the room, wondering who else was talking.
"No one, no one has ever conned me like you..." And Jack was prying his hands free, leaving him to slump against the duct while Jack's own hands stabbed the air. "...I don't know if my immortality is something that can be passed on..." It was oddly beautiful, the way his hands moved in the harsh overhead light, cutting in and out of shadow, conducting the echoes. "...watch them die..."
Watch who die? Oh, yes, dying. They were dying. He wanted to laugh, but it was too much work, and the pleasant blur of the room was so much easier to cope with when he stopped trying to fight it.
"Well? Answer me!" Jack snapped.
"What?" Ianto asked, swallowing hard, forcing his eyes open. For a split second, Jack came back into focus and something else had replaced his anger. Ianto couldn't tell what it was and the effort was wasted when Jack waved a hand in front of his face. Ianto tried to track it but failed, everything going blurry again.
"Ianto?" Jack asked, grabbing his shoulders, shaking him. "Ianto!"
What? He was positive he'd replied, but Jack's voice was going away, sliding down a tunnel, soft and dark and quiet. So quiet.
Dr. Muli glanced between her two patients in the medical bay. It was incredibly frustrating not being able to do more for them, particularly since she wasn't even sure what she was doing for the extraterrestrial was safe, but she had no idea what else to do. With fever came dehydration and loss of vital nutrients. She'd hooked both of them up to banana bags, a dextrose solution supplemented with vitamins and minerals. It was pure desperation, even less than palliative care, really, but at least it was something. Besides, the alien seemed to be okay with breathing the Earth's atmosphere, so with that rudimentary and probably incorrect assumption, she'd figured it would benefit from the fluids. It certainly was helping JJ. He hadn't exactly recovered, but his fever had stopped elevating and his breathing had eased. It could also have been a result of the muscle relaxant she'd doped him up with, but...
She sighed. She needed to stop speculating and work with what she knew. She rubbed her eyes, the headache still grinding behind them like a jackhammer on pavement, so she tightened her cotton headscarf, sighing at the temporary relief it provided.
She was waiting on the results from the pteranodon to print out from the analyser, not that she had any point of reference for it, but perhaps it might give her something to compare against the humans and the alien. She'd run a CBC and chemistry panel on everyone's samples and was planning to apply the "Sesame Street" approach: find which thing was not like the others. In the meantime, she was making lists of facts that she could use.
Order of exposure:
1. Alien - where and when contracted?
2. Harkness - life pod
3. Jones - during transfer
4. Me/Cooper/Namkung - emesis
5. Pteranodon - airborne?
Onset of symptoms:
1. Alien - fully symptomatic upon discovery
2. Namkung - after the lockdown. First affected? Why?
3. Me/Harkness/Jones - symptoms were different but all appeared to occur at same general time
4. Cooper - uncertain
5. Pteranodon - could've been sick earlier, but distance of nest favours later onset
Symptoms:
1. Fever
2. Headache
3. Paranoia/delusion
4. Paraesthesia
5. Motor disturbances
6. Breathing problems/hyperventilation/panic attacks
7. Nausea/vomiting
Not everyone had every symptom, though, and she needed an update on Agent Cooper's symptoms so she could categorise them, see if she could find any sort of pattern. She tapped her comm.
"Gwen, Dr. Muli, how are you doing down there?"
"As if you care!"
She quickly scribbled 'Cooper' next to 'paranoia.' No point in trying to soothe her. "Any fever? Trouble walking? Pins and needles in the hands or feet?"
"I'm fine, and I'm fixing the problem, so let me think."
"Fixing the problem?"
"Yes. Ask Jack." The channel closed.
She tapped her comm again. "Captain Harkness?" she asked. "Gwen tells me she has a solution. Why didn't you alert me to this?"
Instead of a voice, she heard gasping. "Captain, where are you?" He continued to gasp, muttering in between, until she realised he was hyperventilating again. "Jack, breathe!" she said, pulling her comm close to her mouth so he could hear her long, measured exhales. "Breathe with me." She repeated herself several times, listening to him slowly pull himself back together.
"Environmental," he finally wheezed. "Ianto. Oh, God."
She grabbed her medkit. "On my way. Where's environmental?"
"Two levels down. Stairs by the fountain."
It took every bit of her concentration to make it across the Hub without hurting herself again. She grabbed the railing and used it to guide herself down the stairs that curved around the fountain, and as she carefully edged her way below, she realised Captain Harkness's ramblings were no longer on her comm but in her open ear. She switched off the device.
He was easy to spot, splayed half in-half out of a doorway at the end of a dimly lit corridor. The warren of tunnels she'd entered was something they could discuss later. More importantly, he was straddling Ianto, clutching him to his chest and rocking back and forth. Not just rocking, but crying. She stopped in her tracks, propping herself against the wall.
Had Ianto died? Was this disease lethal? Somehow, her usual remove failed her. She was just getting to know the poor boy. She appreciated his old-fashioned decorum; it was a rare quality in one so young.
"No," she interrupted herself before she could get too upset. "Grief is for later. Grief now costs lives." Forcing herself to detach, she knelt beside the captain and began examining the young man beneath him.
Ianto was still. Eerily so. Arms hanging limply at his sides. But his skin colour hadn't changed to anything worse than his natural pallor. No signs of petechiae, jaundice, bruising, or any of the other classic signs of a viral death. She lifted his wrist and felt for a pulse. Her fingertips were tingling, but hadn't gone numb like her feet, and through the stinging of a thousand tiny pinpricks, Ianto Jones's heart waved a faint hello.
"Captain, he's still alive."
"He is? I can't..." He lifted a hand futilely. "I can't feel anything."
She opened her medkit and pulled out the stethoscope, fitting the eartips for Jack and placing the diaphragm over Ianto's heart.
Jack gasped with with relief. Then he surprised her again, stroking the damp hair away from Ianto's forehead, following it with a kiss. "Doc, I can help. Help me get him upstairs. I tried, but I couldn't because moving JJ wiped me out, and... It doesn't matter. I can make myself better. You'll see. I just need some help, get him upstairs to you where we can keep an eye on him. I wasn't paying attention and I was so angry and stupid and I should've been paying more attention and..."
He continued babbling, though mostly into Ianto's face, while she checked their vitals. They were getting worse.
"Why was he down here?" she asked, tucking the stethoscope back into her bag. "I thought this was all computer-controlled?"
"He was cleaning the filters so the system wouldn't make a mess when it came back online."
"We're in a life-threatening lockdown and you ordered him down here to clean?" Maybe it was a good thing that Ianto had passed out if the captain wouldn't let him rest now, of all times.
"No orders," Jack's head jerked up, shaking frantically. "His idea. That's just Ianto," he added, in a tone that conveyed both fondness and irritation. "Ianto. Please be okay. Please."
"Can you walk?" she asked, not sure what else she should say. Jack nodded, stroking Ianto's face again, giving him another kiss before clumsily sliding off him. Then, with an almighty groan, he hauled himself upright. She gave him a second to regroup before they lifted Ianto from the floor, suspending him between them and dragging him, step by stumbling step, back to the atrium.
"There's no room at the inn," she said, aiming for the sofa. It was probably a good thing. Ianto wasn't exactly a frail one, for all his dandy wardrobe affectations. "Stay here with him. I’ve got to check the latest blood work, then I'm going to put you both on fluids."
Jack nodded, leaning back on the tatty old couch and holding Ianto against his side. He seemed all of his forty-odd years for the first time since she'd met him. Which was fine, because she felt about eighty herself.
"Take your time," he added. "Just ignore us out here for a bit. I'll- I'll handle things. I'll be good as new before you know it. I'll get it right this time."
Great. It was affecting his mind now. He wasn't paranoid, but he was 'The Captain', convinced of his ability to get through anything despite mounting evidence to the contrary. It didn't make sense, but it didn't have to make sense. The cause was the same: fever leading to mental incapacitation.
"How much longer do you have, Megan?" she asked herself.
Back in the medical bay, she collapsed onto the uncomfortable little stool, allowing herself a moment of rest while glancing at her sickest patients from afar. They seemed to be holding up, their bodies less tense.
Then the alien blinked at her. She thought. It could've been an illusion, like the dancing glyphs on the Bekaran scanner, but she had to confirm. She forced herself to get up and, by the time she'd arrived at the alien's side, not only had she confirmed its eyes were indeed open, she'd realised its skin had adopted a slightly deeper hue, now almost violet.
"Is this the E.T. version of the flush of returning health?" she asked, daring to be hopeful.
She glanced at the nearly-depleted banana bag, then she stumbled over to JJ. He wasn't conscious yet, but his breathing was more regular. A check with the thermometer showed that his fever had dropped a degree. Not exactly a diagnostic change but still an improvement.
Eyes back to the banana bag. Thiamine. Folic acid. Magnesium sulphate. She repeated the litany in her head, the three primary nutrients in the bags.
Pulling the reports she'd accumulated from the chemistry analyser, she turned on her voice recorder and began comparing results between the humans and the not-so-humans.
"White blood cell count elevated: every human above eleven but wild variance. Leukocytic... No surprise. The alien is similar," she said, chewing on her thumbnail.
The pteranodon, well, the system had errored out on all its tests. It'd been worth a shot, though. She tacked the sheet to the wall above her desk - a reminder that every avenue should be pursued, even the crazy ones. Back to the non-Cretaceous members of her team. She laid the reports side-by-side.
"Across the board, I see a drop in red blood cell count, suggesting anaemia. This is certainly consistent with the symptoms, but what's the morphology? MCV is high. That makes sense, but what pathogen causes rapid-onset anaemia?"
Something was right there, nibbling at the edge of her mind, but she couldn't quite see it. Her head throbbed again. She sighed, realising that while she'd been hydrating her patients, she'd not thought to hydrate herself.
"Put your own mask on first," she said. She had to keep herself together. No wonder she couldn't figure things out. Up and out of the medical bay again, she averted her eyes from Jack and Ianto, confirming with a glance that neither had gotten worse in the time she'd been gone, and that the captain was, well, whispering sweet nothings for lack of a better description. How had she not cottoned on to that situation sooner? Captain Harkness wasn't exactly a model of discretion about anything. However, Ianto was. That made her smile and it felt foreign, but it strengthened her resolve. She was going to save that boy if it was the last thing she did, just so she could see if he blushed when she teased him about his boyfriend. Then she was going to smack his boyfriend upside the head.
She paused long enough to check on the pteranodon. It was just as she'd left it, laying in the water at the edge of the pool, breathing fast and shallow, head well clear of the water line. If the pool was tidal, they'd have to move the old girl eventually, but at least she appeared to be stable. She briefly considered the idea of hooking the beast up to a banana bag but decided against it. With all the errors, it was too risky.
At the small refrigerator by Ianto's workstation, she pulled out an energy drink and then, since the captain was still capable of drinking, made it a double. Although she usually loathed the salty-sweet flavour that lacked the courage of its convictions, today the neon green energy drink was like nectar. Amazing how desperation improved things.
What it didn't improve was the sight of the captain with a gun in his mouth as she went to give him his drink. For a moment, she doubted what she was seeing, fearing another hallucination. But a firm blink and shake of her head later, he was still deep-throating a revolver, his eyes locked on the perspiring beverage in her hand. She had no time to think, no time to put the bottle down or even attempt to save herself if he should turn the gun on her, so she did the only thing that came to mind: she flung the drink in his face. And he, in turn, did the first thing that came to his mind: sputtered, spitting out the muzzle and giving her the precious seconds she needed to twist the gun away.
"Captain!" she bellowed, aiming the gun at him. "Get a grip on yourself!" She was sure he could tell she had no idea what she was doing with the revolver, but at least it was pointed in the right direction. Surprisingly, he smiled, raising his hands. As he did so, Ianto's limp body tipped over into his lap.
"You're right, Doc," he said, blotting his face off on his shirtsleeve. "Ianto would kill me." He paused, snorted, wiped an eye with his fingertips. "Too messy. He'd never forgive me if I got brains all over him. Though it's going to be a treat explaining this green stuff," he said, wiping the drips off Ianto's face.
She lowered the gun a little. "Captain... Jack, I need to get back to my tests, but it's clear to me that you are not safe unattended."
"Oh, I'm perfectly safe," he replied, laughter shaking his shoulders. "Nothing can hurt me, really. Well, nothing sticks." He laughed again. "Though, I am going to be sticky soon. Ianto likes it when I'm sticky." The laughter turned darker and she was afraid he might start crying. She lowered the gun and placed it in the pocket of her lab coat.
"Jack?" she asked, doing her best to keep him focused. "Gwen told me earlier that she'd come up with a solution."
He shook his head. "No. This," he waved at nothing around his head. "This was her. The air system. She's..." he swirled a finger by his ear. "She thinks it's all some allergic reaction to the alien."
Dr. Muli considered this for a second, something tickling at the back of her brain.
"She's also locked herself in the conference room. She thinks we think she's carrying an alien baby and that we're going to come cut it out of her."
"Oh," she said, sighing in defeat. He shrugged, agreeing with her. With Ianto on his lap, and no gun in sight, she figured he was also safe for the moment. "Look, just don't move." She held a hand up at him, as if that might stop him. She was simply too exhausted to do anything else, even though she knew any responsible physician would already have had him strapped into a straitjacket "I'll be right back. I need to give him fluids, and you're going to be his IV stand."
She slumped back to the medical bay, the gun tapping her hip with each step. Considering her feet were numb and her hands weren't far away from joining them, it was damned annoying how clearly she could feel the rest of her body. It ached, but she could ignore it. Had to. Had to tend to her patients who were, she was disappointed to see, getting worse again. She took their temperatures, noting that both their fevers had gone back up in the few minutes she'd been gone.
"Putain!" she said, tossing the thermometer across the room. She slouched onto the stool, entertained crying for a moment, then thought better of it.
"Right. Ianto and Jack. Fluids." It may not have helped for long, but it had still helped. "Thiamine. Folic acid. Magnesium sulphate. Thiamine. Folic acid. Magnesium sulphate," she chanted to herself as she trudged back out to the two men on the sofa.
"This is all my fault," Jack said in a monotone, watching her while she located a vein in Ianto's arm, haltingly attempting to pierce it, then blowing it like an intern.
"How's this your fault?" she asked idly, keeping him talking. The sound of his voice was soothing, though God only knew why.
"What are you giving him?" he asked, watching her seek out a vein in Ianto's other arm.
"Just fluids."
"Not going to hurt him, is it?" He grasped her wrist before she could try again.
She looked down at his hand on her arm, and it took all her physician's training not to rip it away. He wasn't trying to harm her, wasn't being some big military buffoon and trying to intimidate her. It was just a concerned lover talking. "No, Jack. It'll help. I promise."
"I don't know if I should let you. I don't trust myself."
"Trust me, then. It's helped the other two." She nodded towards the med bay, and he relaxed his grip on her wrist.
"I recruited them," he said, watching as she carefully inserted the needle into Ianto's forearm. It slid home perfectly that time, and she fought back a sigh of relief, not wanting to worry Jack. "They'd be safe if it weren't for me. You'd be safe."
She finished with the IV line and handed him the bag before setting the drip rate and releasing the clip. She gave the bag a squeeze, and the yellow fluid began to drip. Thiamine. Folic acid. Magnesium sulphate.
She settled back onto the coffee table, not caring that she was sharing her seat with a stack of outdated magazines.
"Captain, one of the most important jobs a leader has is to bear the burden of responsibility. If you want to continue to bandy around that title, you need to learn to carry the weight that goes with it."
He stared at her quietly for a moment. "You have no idea how long I've been carrying this weight. I'm tired of it, Megan."
Honestly, she preferred him as a cocky bastard. "Come on," she said, taking his forearm, "you're next."
He nodded, no longer questioning, just pushing his sleeve out of the way. A thick, healthy vein roped invitingly along his inner arm. A minute later, she was handing him his own fluids. He laid his other arm across the back of the sofa, giving both bags the height they needed for gravity to do its work.
"Get some rest," she said, patting his knee. She adjusted both lines a final time. Jack nodded, draping his free arm over Ianto's chest before closing his eyes.
As soon as Megan returned to her desk, she opened her comm to check on Gwen again. It turned out she was still in better shape than the rest. Paranoid, beyond a doubt, but active. No problems with her extremities, and she wasn't lying about it. Megan could hear her pacing in the conference room.
Thiamine. Folic acid. Magnesium sulphate. The litany kept running through Megan's head as she tapped a pencil on her desk, reviewing her notes.
"What's different with Gwen? Why her? It's not because she's female. If it were that simple, I'd be in better shape. And mon dieu, I take enough vitamins." She continued tapping the pencil, the rhythm soothing. "Gwen was exposed at the same time as JJ, but was the last to develop symptoms. Why?" She leaned forward and stared at her notepad, looking over her lists. Nothing. "Being pregnant should put her at a disadvantage. She should be more susceptible, not less. God, if I only had a current blood sample."
Thiamine. Folic acid. Magnesium sulphate. "Vitamins," she said, thinking aloud. "Prenatal vitamins."
She felt the itch again.
"What do prenatal vitamins have that regular vitamins don't?" She racked her brain. It had been a long time since her last obstetrics rotation. "What do expectant mothers need more?" Then it began to fall into place. "Iron, because they're making more red blood cells. Calcium, because they're helping baby build bones, and folic acid to help prevent neural tube birth defects."
She grabbed the blood samples and ran another analysis on each, this time for serum vitamin levels. While those results processed, she began digging through the cupboards to see what other tools she had. Clearly, this was not the first time Torchwood had faced something of this nature. They had the classic broad-spectrum antibiotics, including amoxicillin and Cipro. She also found a vial that had been labelled 'Owen's Special Brew' with a listing underneath it that left her somewhere between excited and terrified:
Amantadine
Pleconaril
Darunavir
Rifampicin
Zanamivir
It was, essentially, a broad-spectrum antiviral. It was either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid.
"Did you check for drug interactions?" she asked the vial. "Or was this better than the alternative?" The vial didn't answer her, which was something of a relief, so she figured she still had time to learn more about what she was dealing with before she began lobbing drugs at it.
Just as she was about to close the cupboard, JJ began convulsing on the stretcher. She grabbed another emesis basin, catching the vomitus just in time. If he was aware of what had happened, it was only long enough for him to get sick, because he collapsed in a sad heap as soon as he'd stopped retching. His fever was up past 39.4 again. She was going to have to put him in an ice bath if he got any worse.
She looked back at 'Owen's Special Brew'. Stupid was starting to look better by the minute. Still, she returned to her data. The latest tests were beginning to print out.
Gwen's serum vitamin levels in the control sample looked horrible: low on calcium, iron, folic acid, vitamin D. "Good lord, didn't she take a multivitamin?"
What if she wasn't taking prenatal vitamins? After a few days on this job, she could see how the woman may not have had time to get to an NHS physician. She tapped her comm.
"Are you taking prenatal vitamins?"
"Started as soon as I found out I was pregnant with a human being!" Gwen exclaimed.
Megan resisted the urge to laugh; it wouldn't help matters at all. "And when was that?"
As Gwen answered, she compared it to the date on the control sample. It had been drawn long before she'd gotten pregnant. No help there.
"Good show," she said, clicking off and leaving Gwen to her delusions.
A moment later, Jack's results started printing. The control sample looked fairly normal, but, as she scanned the results on his most recent sample, she was disappointed to see a missing point in the graph. His Bs had errored out. She must have made a mistake. Frustrated, she crumpled the printout and tossed it aside.
Next came Ianto. He needed to get out in the sun more; his vitamin D was low. His general vitamin profile could use an overall boost, as well.
"Damn it!" Another error on the B levels.
Carefully, she loaded up her own blood samples and ran just the serum B and folic acid tests. She waited as patiently as she could, jerking upright when she heard the little printer beginning to hum. Another set of errors.
"Impossible!" she exclaimed, staring at the strip.
Suddenly, it dawned on her. "What if I'm not doing it wrong?" She ran the test again, this time having it print the exact amounts rather than a graph. And when the results came, she stared at them in horrified triumph. It wasn't an error; it was literally off the charts. Every last one of them was suffering from massive B12 depletion.
She glanced back at the banana bags. Thiamine. Folic acid. Magnesium sulphate. Folic acid masked other B vitamin depletion. Which was why JJ and the alien had appeared to get better when she'd first given them the banana bags, then started to get worse again as soon as they'd run out. And Gwen's system had been buffered by prenatal vitamins.
When Megan had first surveyed the medical supplies, she'd been troubled by Torchwood stocking so many things for dealing with stress: injectable vitamins, sleeping agents, anti-depressants. But now she was relieved by the plentiful supply of B12. She pulled a large vial of injectable from stores, gathered up a handful of syringes, then ran over to JJ. She pulled a dose as fast as she could and jabbed it in his hip, grateful she'd had the presence of mind to strip him of his clothes before covering him with a drape.
She tossed the needle aside with no mind to sharps precautions and headed over to the alien, injecting it as well, before drawing a third dose and undoing the fastenings of her cargo trousers. "Come on, Megan, keep it together," she muttered as she injected the vitamin into the back of her thigh. She wiped away a spot of blood and did up her zip, wincing as she sat back down at the desk. "It's a matter of time now," she said as she carefully pipetted a drop of blood onto a slide. She used the edge of a second slide to create a smear, labelled it and set it aside to dry while she began another. Preparing and fixing a series of slides was slow, painstaking work with her hands compromised, but it kept her mind occupied, kept her from panicking as she waited to see what would happen as a result of the injections. She bumped the desk, and a slide fell to the floor.
"Putain!" She carefully disposed of the fragments of glass and started again.
"What!" Megan jerked upright, startled awake, scattering the slides she'd been analysing at the microscope. The sound that had awakened her repeated: a weak, hacking cough. She spun around on the stool.
JJ looked back at her through bleary eyes then collapsed back down. "Thirsty," he rasped.
Megan rose to her feet and nearly stumbled. The ground was firm and solid underneath her for the first time in hours. Her head felt light and she realised it was from a reduction of pain. "Headache diminished, sensation has returned to extremities." The back of her throat seized, cutting off her self-review. She went to the sink, found a paper cup and drank deeply. It helped a little, but the raw feeling persisted and her sinuses were stuffy.
"Water," JJ said again. He sounded as raw as she felt.
She filled a second cup then raised his head off the table. "Take a sip and hold it in your mouth before swallowing."
He nodded and did as she instructed, taking a few drinks before closing his eyes and going back to sleep. Immediately, Megan snatched the vial of B12 and drew four more doses. As fast as her trembling legs would carry her, she ran back into the atrium. Captain Harkness had collapsed, asleep or unconscious, but still cradling Ianto. She looked at the tangle of arms and other body parts, decided against trying to separate them, and began to undo the buttons of the captain's shirt.
He roused at her touch and gave her a bleary leer. "I'm taken, but I do appreciate the initiative, Doc."
Megan glanced down at Ianto, unconscious on Jack's lap and in what would be considered a compromising position under any other circumstances. "So I gathered, but this is strictly official business. Your upper arm, Captain."
Jack fumbled the rest of the buttons open and pushed back his braces and shirt, exposing his bicep. "You sure that's all you need?" he asked, starting to drift away again.
"It'll do." Taking an alcohol swab from her vest pocket, she prepared the injection site and followed it with the needle.
Jack yelped back to alertness. "Hey! What was that?" He rubbed at his arm and gave her an affronted look.
"The first step towards a cure," she replied as she removed his IV. She turned her attention to Ianto, carefully removing the IV needle from his arm. She set it aside along with the nearly depleted banana bags. "Help me get his trousers down."
She reached forward to manoeuvre Ianto into a better position so she could give him the shot in a major muscle, but Jack pulled him into his embrace protectively. "No. He's been through enough. I don't want you to hurt him anymore."
Megan couldn't help it. She looked up to the ceiling and counted to ten before taking a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "You can both have a lolly after he has his jab. It will help him get better. You want him to get better, don't you, Captain?"
Jack nodded his head as he stroked Ianto's hair. "More than anything."
"Good." She uncapped the syringe. "Let me see his bum." Jack watched anxiously as she finished the job. "It won't be long now. He'll be up and around," she promised as she capped the syringe and put it into her pocket.
"What about the others?" Jack asked.
"JJ and the alien are already showing signs of improvement," she replied, checking Ianto's pulse. "But I've not yet tried to get to Agent Cooper or the pteranodon."
"I can help you." He began to shift around, trying to extract himself without disturbing Ianto.
"It's fine, Jack, I can handle it," she insisted, gathering the used IV materials and checking the floor to be sure she hadn't dropped a needle.
He smiled, reaching out a hand for her assistance. "No, you need me for this. The old bird can be a real grouch when she's sick."
Megan acknowledged this with a shrug. She tugged on Jack's arm and, with a halfway graceful swivel, he stood up, Ianto slipping from his lap and onto the couch where Jack had been sitting. She watched as Jack removed his shirt, folding it and turning it into a makeshift pillow.
"Actually, it's been quite simple to care for Myfanwy," she added.
"I was talking about Gwen," Jack replied as he turned to face her, the faintest hint of a sparkle already returning to his eyes.
"Come on, Gwen," Jack pleaded. They'd been trying to get her to come out for a full twenty minutes, but to no avail. He'd tried charm. He'd tried bribery. He leaned against the door and slid down to the floor, desperation sapping his paltry energy reserves. "I swear if you come out, no one will hurt you or the baby."
"I don't trust you," she replied sullenly.
"You've made that abundantly clear." Jack thumped the back of his skull against the door. "But I'm not the one giving the treatment. Dr. Muli is. You remember Dr. Muli. You like her, don't you?"
"I promise, Agent Cooper, it's nothing more than a vitamin shot. Just something to give you energy and make you feel better," Megan said. "You need to be at your best for the baby." She was met by silence.
A faint, raspy voice on their comms interrupted the negotiations with Gwen. "Jack? Jack, where are you?"
"Ianto?" Jack's eyes lit up as he tapped his earpiece. "You're awake!"
"So, I'm not dead?"
Jack practically leapt to his feet. He shifted from foot to foot as if torn about where he needed to be. "No, you're still stuck with me."
"My cross to bear." An odd fondness softened the strange remark. "Do I want to know why my trousers aren't zipped and my arms are covered in bruises?"
Megan cut in before Jack could answer. "I'm afraid that's down to me, Agent Jones," she said, pleased to count another one of her patients on the road to recovery. "You may not remember it all, but you've been very ill, so I've had to take blood several times. I also had to give you fluids and an injection in your hip."
"She promised you could have a lolly," Jack added helpfully.
"Oh, well, that makes everything so much better," Ianto replied dryly. Then he coughed, a hoarse, hacking cough that didn’t sound at all productive, but it was a sign of progress. His body was starting to fight the contagion in traditional ways, ways she understood how to address.
"You see, Gwen?" Jack forced his attention back to the problem at hand. "Ianto had the shot, and he's getting better. You've got to trust us."
"But I don't trust you, Jack," Gwen replied in a reasonable tone. "How can I trust you when you keep abandoning me?"
"I... what?" Jack looked up at the camera. "Gwen, what are you talking about?"
"You left us for the Doctor. And you came back, but by then Rhys had proposed, so you let me go without a fight. You didn't fight for me, Jack."
Jack looked at Dr. Muli. Her expression was noncommittal as she turned on her heel and walked a discreet distance down the hallway. Jack cupped his hands behind his neck, looked at the ground, then back up at the camera.
"What else was I supposed to do? You love him. He loves you. You're supposed to be together. That's how it works in this time and you wouldn't be happy any other way. You belong with Rhys, not with me." He sighed, eyes following a crack in the wall that took a skittering path to the floor before disappearing under his boots. "I need you to have a life outside of this. You and Rhys and your baby. Together."
"So why do you want to spoil things? Why do you want to take my baby away?"
Jack gritted his teeth. "Gwen, please listen to me. I do not want to take your baby. What I do want is for you to take the vitamin shot so you'll get better. Your baby will be safe. Please, do this for your baby. Do it for Rhys. And if you care as much as you say, do it for me."
The door rattled on its track and slid open a fraction. Gwen peered through the gap. Jack turned and gave her his most gentle smile. She opened the door a bit further.
"He's always there for me. I can depend on Rhys. He's not like you, Jack."
Trying not to wince, Jack offered her his hand. She regarded him sceptically for a moment, her wide eyes red and swollen from crying, then practically flung herself at him.
He gathered her into a hug and held her against his chest, one palm spread protectively over the side of her abdomen. "I know. Trust me when I say, the better man won."
He gestured to Dr. Muli, who carefully took Gwen around the shoulders and guided her away. Jack watched them retreat, and when they had disappeared out of view, he walked into the conference room, shut the door behind himself, and dropped into his chair at the head of the table.
"The better man won," he repeated.
Jack felt the sneeze building and fumbled for a handkerchief, barely getting it to his nose in time.
"Bless you," muttered Gwen, even as she grasped for a tissue to smother a sneeze of her own.
"Drink this, it will help with the congestion." Dr. Muli set a pot of peppermint ginseng tea down on the conference room table along with four mugs. She served Jack and Gwen before pouring a third mug for herself and inhaling deeply of the steam.
"Better to sniff than to drink?" Gwen asked, regarding the cup with suspicion. "Like aromatherapy?"
Jack sneezed again and blew his nose. He shoved the sodden handkerchief back into his pocket, earning a sullen look from Ianto, who had chosen that moment to enter.
Ianto walked as if his entire body ached. His face had bruised spectacularly from his fight with JJ, and he looked as if he might fall asleep in mid-step. He dropped a folder containing a sheaf of papers in front of Jack before sliding into the chair at his side. Jack opened the file, frowned, and shut it again.
Unbidden, Megan rose from her spot, poured Ianto a cup of tea and set it in front of him. "Drink it. It'll make you feel better."
He offered a polite smile. "I doubt it, but thank you all the same." He took a dutiful sip then set the mug aside.
"So," Jack said, "Doc, what have you learned about..." He broke off and looked at Ianto.
Ianto cocked his head, thinking, before offering, "The Emo Flu?" He closed his eyes and shrugged, clearly displeased with the name. "Sorry, perhaps Dr. Muli has a more suitable name."
Megan opened her mouth to question the exchange, then thought better of it. She replied to Jack as if Ianto hadn't spoken. "First of all, it's a type of bacteria, not a virus like influenza. It's airborne, can be spread by contact, opportunistic certainly, but not particularly robust. How it got to Myfanwy all the way up in her nest, I'm still trying to work out."
Ianto looked up from his cup, raising a finger. "My fault. The alarms upset her, and I gave her a bit of chocolate to calm her down."
She gave Ianto an incredulous look. "You gave a pteranodon chocolate?"
"Dark chocolate is her favourite treat," Ianto replied as he stifled a sneeze.
Gwen coughed. Jack blew his nose.
"Moving on." Megan took a few sips of tea to soothe her throat, cleared it carefully, and continued. "What's interesting about the bacterium is that it feeds on vitamin B12. It rapidly depleted our bodies of this critical nutrient and left us in a dangerous state of privation."
"So, how do we get rid of it?" Gwen asked, her voice muffled. She had leaned forward onto the table, pillowing her head in her hands and letting her hair cover her face. "If we take B12, won't we keep feeding the bug?"
Megan felt a pang of sympathy for her exhausted colleague. "Yes, but I'm also prescribing a broad-spectrum antibiotic. Between the two, you should start feeling much better. And I'll keep running tests."
"But we're still contagious," Gwen persisted. "I won't be able to go home."
Megan shook her head. "No. No one leaves the building until the fever has broken." She looked at Jack. "I'm afraid the team is offline until further notice, Captain."
Jack didn't look happy, but he nodded. "We have procedures. Reciprocal agreements with other agencies." He glanced at Ianto.
He nodded. "I'll notify UNIT as soon as we're finished here."
"UNIT?" she asked, sounding as if she had heard the name before and was trying to recall where.
"Unified Intelligence Task Force," Ianto supplied.
"They have a similar mission statement but sexier uniforms," Jack added.
Her mouth rounded into an 'O'. "The blokes in the red berets."
Ianto blushed. Even the shells of his ears turned pink, but he remained utterly stoic. "That would be them."
"Will they be able to help with the alien?" she asked. At the others' confused looks, Megan added, "I expect it to make a full recovery."
Jack looked at Ianto, who sneezed. "I'll stock up on..." He looked at Jack. "What do you suppose it eats?"
"We'll table the alien problem for the moment," Jack replied. "Right now, we need to talk about JJ."
"Poor lamb," Gwen said. She turned to Megan. "Is he any better?"
Megan shook her head. "Physically, he's on the mend. But psychologically? I'm afraid that's another story." She looked at Jack, her expression professionally blank, but she couldn't quite control the undercurrent of anger in her voice. "The stress of this latest lockdown overwhelmed him. He'll be unfit for any sort of duty for weeks to come."
"Not even paperwork?" Jack asked. "Or working upstairs in the tourist office?"
Megan shook her head. "He'll need complete rest and quiet. Nothing that's going to remind him of aliens."
"That rules out the tourists," Ianto quipped, under his breath. Jack gave him a dark look and Ianto shrugged.
"Jack," Gwen said, hesitantly. "There's no way we could have seen this coming."
"Really, Gwen?" He paused for a fit of coughing. "Look at our track record. This place, it chews people up and spits them back out again. It was a risk bringing him on, you said as much yourself."
"I only said he was young," Gwen protested. "In time, he would have adapted."
"The trouble is," Ianto said, gently, "we haven't any. Time, I mean. There will always be a new threat. A new hostile alien. Another lockdown."
"But what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger!" Gwen said, her accent thickening as she argued. "Isn't that how the saying goes? Hasn't that been true for all of us? Why give up so easily on JJ?"
"It's not giving up," Jack's eyes were hard as he met hers. "It's facing reality. Trust me. I've seen enough shell shock to know."
"I know I'm new," Megan said into the tension-filled silence as she rifled the pages of JJ's medical file. "And I may be speaking out of turn, but Ianto has a point." She removed a set of pages and held them up. "This is JJ's psych evaluation. It was part of his hiring packet. Did you read it, Captain?"
Jack shrugged. "I didn't see anything overtly pathological."
"No," she agreed. "Not pathological. But not suited for the demands of this job, either. JJ is extroverted, communicative, very eager to please. He's willing to work outside of his own comfort zone. Apparently to his detriment, if he feels it's for a greater purpose. Every single criterion an outwardly-focused person has, JJ ticks the box. He appears to be a classic overachiever destined for early burnout." She took a few slow sips of her tea, steadying herself while the rest of the team shifted, not much happier with the current symptoms than they were with the first ones. "The hours you keep. The conditions you're forced to work under. The secrecy. That poor boy was doomed to failure from the moment he stepped through the door. He'll recover from this experience, given enough time, but if he has another traumatic shock before he's ready-"
"Who can say how he'll handle it?" Gwen argued, refusing to let go. "We've all made mistakes here, and no one knows the future."
Jack looked anguished for a moment, then shook it off. "He was ambitious, good at what he did. We thought we could help him do something more important than writing puff pieces for the Sunday supplement. We were wrong."
"It was a good idea, Jack," Gwen insisted. She sat up straighter in her chair and offered an encouraging smile. "In time, you would have-"
"No, you tried to warn me, and I didn't listen," Jack said, cutting her off. "JJ wanted to prove himself. You two were desperate for help. It seemed like the perfect solution." He opened the file in front of him, glanced over the pages, uncapped his pen, and started signing his name. When he was finished, he shoved the packet across the table. "Keep him sedated until he's safe to move. Megan, you'll have to go as an escort, so familiarise yourself with the cover story."
Confused, she took the folder and began to read. After a moment she said, "You're sending him to Providence Park?"
Jack shrugged. "He's had a breakdown. We'll just substitute a different cause. JJ will believe he's spent the last couple of months chasing the story of a lifetime without getting anywhere. He's been out of touch with almost everyone since he left the Gazette. Eager cub reporter cracks under pressure. Sad, but not uncommon, especially from someone with his background. You'll go along to sell the story and to make sure he gets the right follow-up treatment for the alien bacteria."
Megan flipped through the rest of the paperwork, stopping to read one page carefully. "This 'Retcon' you mention. What is it, exactly?"
Jack started to answer, but drew a sudden breath instead. Ianto dug a fresh handkerchief out of his pocket and stuffed it into Jack's outstretched hand. He sneezed, wiped his nose, gave Ianto a grateful look, and continued as if nothing had interrupted him. "It's a tool. A very effective tool. It's a psychotropic, but like nothing you're familiar with."
Megan looked troubled. "I'll want to know more about it. A lot more."
Jack nodded. "Of course. Ianto, make sure she gets the files."
"It's nothing to worry about," Gwen said as she reached for the teapot to top off her mug. "We've all taken it at one time or another." She smiled reassuringly. "We're fine."
Ianto caught Jack's eye. He held his gaze for a moment, then lifted his chin and inclined his head a fraction in Megan's direction. Jack narrowed his eyes in response and gave an equally tiny shake of his head. Ianto furrowed his brow, and Jack finally sighed.
"Look, Doc, as long as we're doing this, it's not too late. If you want to back out, we can plant a cover story for two as easily as one."
Megan sat up as straight as she could manage and touched the chunky amber necklace at her throat. "I want to stay, but I've got something to say that's probably out of line and may make you disagree." She lifted her mug to take another drink before setting it aside. "You three, there's history between you." Gwen started to protest, but Megan raised a hand. "History that I don't want or need to know."
Ianto stirred uncomfortably in his chair. Jack folded his arms over his chest, his expression guarded.
"This is a small team." She gestured at the folder. "Now it's even smaller. And teams don't function well if their members don't talk things out. Keep me, or send me on my way, but this is my prescription if you want me to stay: the three of you need to talk a bit more openly with each other when you're not under the influence of alien bacteria."
Jack looked at her, then at Gwen, and finally his gaze fell on Ianto. He cleared his throat, returned his attention to Megan and said, "Noted. Is there anything else, Doctor?"
She met Jack's eyes and shook her head. "No, Captain."
Jack nodded curtly. "We're finished here. Update me when JJ's fever breaks." He rose from the table. "Ianto, with me. Gwen, take the couch, get some sleep. Megan," he paused, then broke into an appreciative smile. Tentatively, the newest member of the team returned it. "Welcome to Torchwood."
END