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http://amythest-n-ice.livejournal.com/31682.html
Link to Chapter 10
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The Doctor looked up with a bright grin as Mickey came into the console room.
“Morning Rickey. We’re landing soon, have you seen the others?”
“Jack is throwing up, Rose is hovering.”
“Jack is sick? Damn it, where is he?
“Bathroom just down from the kitchen.”
“Don’t touch anything,” the Doctor snapped, running his hand over his cropped dark hair and hurrying from the room.
He found Rose hovering outside the bathroom door, a worried look on her face. He could hear the unmistakable sound of a human being violently sick.
“What happened?” The Doctor asked Rose.
“I don’t know, I was cooking breakfast, he came in, was in the room less than five minutes, then went white and ran out.”
“Did he touch anything that would have wheat in it? Bread, whatever.”
“No, nothing. Anyway, we came out after breakfast, and we could hear him in here.”
“All right, Mickey is in the console room. Go and make sure he doesn’t touch anything, I’ll look after Jack.”
Rose left and the Doctor quietly entered the room, his leather jacket creaking as he knelt behind Jack, wrapping an arm around his shoulders.
“You done?” He asked quietly. Jack nodded, sucking in a shuddering breath as he leaned into his lover.
“Come on, up, rinse out your mouth and brush your teeth, then we’ll get you to medical and check you out,” he said gently, helping Jack to his feet and steadying him when he swayed. He leaned Jack against the sink and hit the flush as Jack brushed his teeth to get rid of the vile taste. He could hear Jack hitch and gag a couple of times as he forced down the urge to be sick again, and rubbed a hand up and down his back, unable to hide his worry from his mate.
“It’s nothing, I’m sure it’s nothing,” Jack said, his voice tight with false conviction.
“Well, I’ll be a lot happier once you’ve been thoroughly examined. It was only just over a month ago that you were dead for three days. We still don’t know what happened there, and I’m not taking any risks with you.”
He rested one hand on Jack’s shoulder, guiding him out of the room.
They reached medical, and the Doctor chivvied Jack up onto the couch, making him lie down.
“You still feeling sick?” The Doctor asked.
“Yeah.”
“OK, we’ll run all the tests, then see if there’s something we can give you to settle your stomach.” He put a bowl beside the couch, and stroked Jack’s hair for a moment before starting to pull over scanners and dig out needles for taking blood.
“Right, we’ll get some blood first, and then set the diagnostic scanners running while the TARDIS analyzes the blood.”
The Doctor drew two tubes of blood, putting them in the analyzer before setting up the scanners to the left and right of the bed.
“Stay still, if you can. It will stop the scan getting disrupted.”
The Doctor started the two machines running, blue and green lights flickering up and down Jack’s body as they scanned him from head to foot to try to diagnose what was wrong with him. The Doctor watched the numbers on the scanner going up, showing 60%, then 90% as the scans neared completion.
“Not long now Jack, just hold on a little, nearly done. You’re doing really well, just stay still a little bit longer.”
The first machine beeped, the blue light cutting out, and a few minutes later, the green light cut out with another beep.
“It will take the TARDIS fifteen minutes to process the scan results, and the analyzer is still going. You doing OK there?”
Jack didn’t answer the question, he was occupied with being sick once again, hunching over the bowl with his head hanging low in misery.
“We’ll figure it out,” the Doctor reassured him.
“Just save the effort and shoot me now,” Jack suggested miserably.
“Don’t be daft, you probably just picked up a bug on one of the planets we visited, we’ll find out what it is, and fix you up no problem. Just take it easy.”
The machine running the blood chirped cheerfully, spitting out a data chip, and the Doctor grabbed it, sticking it in a reader. His eyebrows went up as he read the results of the blood tests.
“What?” Jack asked.
“Wait until we have all the results, OK?”
“Whatever.” Jack sighed.
A second data chip popped out of a console, and the Doctor quickly read the contents, his brows going up again.
“So, what kind of bug is it? Can you just fix it, please.”
“No bug Jack. According to both sets of results I have here, you’re pregnant.”
“No.” Jack’s voice was choked, horrified, with an underlying note of panic. He shoved the bowl onto a trolley beside the bed as he rolled off, then he was gone out of the door.
“Let me know where he ends up,” the Doctor said to the ceiling, feeling the TARDIS acknowledge. There was no way he was going to chase Jack all over the TARDIS, he needed time to get his head around the bombshell. The Doctor looked at the two sets of test results he had, sitting down with a sigh, he could use some time to get his own head around the idea.
It took nearly an hour for the TARDIS to report a stationary location on Jack, and the Doctor hurried to check on him. He wasn’t terribly surprised to find Jack in the cloisters, seated on the edge of the barren dimensional well that had once housed the Eye of Harmony. He was staring down into the eternal blackness that showed through the broken cover of the well.
“Do you want to talk to me, Jack?” He asked quietly.
“Are you sure I’m pregnant?” He asked.
“Yes, of course I’m sure.”
“They promised, they promised me that they had fixed it, that I could never get pregnant again.”
“Tell me, love.”
“I got pregnant when I was 19, in my last year at the Academy. It was a bit of a shock, as you can probably imagine. Even in the 51st century, only 10% of males were capable of conceiving, and I had no idea I was one of that happy band. As I was so close to finishing my training, and didn’t intend to raise the baby myself when it was born, they allowed me to stay on, doing restricted classes.”
“So your baby was adopted?”
“No,” Jack said hoarsely, a tear running down his face.
“What happened?”
“When I was 26 weeks pregnant, there was a generator explosion at the academy. It leveled a couple of the buildings. I wasn’t that close, but the building I was in took damage. I was buried under some rubble, badly injured. The last thing I remember from that day is the horrendous pain,” Jack said, one hand absently skating over his stomach.
“I was in a coma for two weeks, in and out of consciousness for another two. So it was a month before I learned that I had miscarried that day. I’m scared Doctor, I can’t do it, I can’t face that pain again. I don’t want to feel a life I’m carrying suddenly stop again.”
The Doctor hugged him tightly, stroking his hair as Jack cried out an old pain.
“Jack, I can’t promise that nothing will go wrong, you know that, but the TARDIS and I will do everything we can to look after you. You don’t have to be scared alone.”
“You’ll be with me?”
“Every step Jack, every step. Come on, back to medical, we still need to find something to deal with the nausea, and decide what if anything you want to tell the others.” The Doctor wrapped his arms around Jack and guided him from the cloisters.
tbc
