Father Figure

The door alarm shrieks, and I call, "Come in."

"Nyssa!" Olvir cried, squeezing through the doors as soon as they slide open. He's out of breath and red faced from running. "The doctor..." he gasps, gesturing for me to follow him.

My life has ever been like this, it seems, since I came to Terminus, and even now, having passed the torch on, I am still at its beck and call.

I follow Olvir through the wide, white corridors -- he's leading me to the storerooms. What could be so urgent outside the infirmary?

A team of orderlies, dressed in protective gear and dragging two empty stretchers behind them, beats us to the only open door in the corridor. As Olvir and I approach I catch a glimpse, just past the blur of the rushing orderlies, of a particular shade of blue, and I realise that what Olvir said was "The Doctor."

The TARDIS! I push my way past the orderlies into the closet -- the funny old ship is squeezed in among shelves of crisp white bedsheets. My heart races at the sudden rush of memories... and then stops when my eyes fall on the Doctor, sitting on his heels before his ship, his hands on his knees. Sweat mats blond hair to his head and drenches his shirt -- his hearts flutter visibly through the thin fabric. He makes soft fretting noises over a prostrate woman in front of him. A nurse, bent over her, checking her vitals, hides her face from me -- my first thoughts are: Is she dead? Is it Tegan?

The Doctor's sodden senses respond at last to the commotion and he raises his eyes as if they're made of lead. "Nyssa." It's a gasp of relief, and then his eyes roll back and he sways and collapses, unconscious. There is a sickening crack as his head hits the corner of the TARDIS.

The orderlies react before I do, easing the Doctor onto a stretcher and making room to remove the woman. "Get these two into isolation care immediately!" I say, needlessly, trying to regain command. I glimpse the woman as they carry her out -- no, not Tegan. Older, taller, fairer. The same symptoms as the Doctor.

The nurse stands before me, reporting: "Looks like a variant of the Stargian virus we saw last year -- high fever, disorientation, the whole thing. The wild heartbeat is new, though."

I purse my lips at him, simultaneously pleased with his selflessness and angered that he endangered himself. "You shouldn't have examined them unprotected. There's no telling what contagions they could be carrying -- and Stargian plagues can be highly infectious." sigh Despite myself, I smile at him a bit. "Get to decon immediately, and get yourself a new booster."

Olvir is the only one left, leaning his lanky frame against the doorjamb. He stares at me, worry smeared across his face, and doesn't say a word.

I have no time now to think about whatever might be bothering him -- at the moment he's just my head of security. "Get a decon team down here and seal the area off until we know what we're dealing with."

"Where are you going?"

"To look after the Doctor, if you'll let me past."

He considers this for a moment, then kisses my forehead and steps aside.

***

After a new immunity booster and a quick chemical shower to decontaminate myself, I run up to the isolation ward.

When Terminus Hospital was new and we were still dealing mainly with highly contagious Lazar disease, the ward was crammed. Today the only two occupied beds behind the glass hold the Doctor and his friend. They are unconscious, and in the warm pink lighting they look to be in peaceful sleep.

The duty doctor is beside me then, speaking softly. "We're treating their symptoms empirically for now, until we know what's attacking them. We've got them under cold-blankets to bring their fevers down, and we've administered cardiac sedatives to slow their heartbeats--"

I start at that. "But the Doctor... we don't know how he'll react to that--"

She lays her hand on my arm. "I know. I examined him. It was a mild sedative, and his hearts were racing like mad -- it was risky, but so it would've been if we'd left him be. He hasn't had any adverse reactions yet."

She stares at him through the glass. "He is very unusual. He's obviously running a fever, yet his body temperature is only 21 C-degrees. And a double cardiopulmonary system...!"

"He's Gallifreyan," I say, heartsick with nostalgia. No other Gallifreyans have come through Terminus, no other TARDISes. Can it be just five years? It seems a lifetime ago.

The doctor continues: "Well, we're running complete blood and genetic typing. By tomorrow morning we'll know everything there is to know about them."

The nurse... I recall his name suddenly. "Andrus thought it might be a Stargian variant."

"Hmm." Her eyebrows rise in consideration. "It could be. We may have to create a new antiviral if it is, especially for him."

"Can it be done?"

"No way of knowing yet. He is humanoid -- he can't be radically different from anything we've dealt with before." A pause. "He's a friend of yours, yes?"

I sigh. "Yes."

***

The duty doctor promises to call me if there's any change, so I return to my office.

Olvir is there, in my chair. "Door was open," he says by way of explanation. He stretches out and makes room for his feet on my desk among the strewn-about papers and books. He's relaxing -- he wants to talk.

I'm not in the mood for it. "I have to finish packing, Olvir," moving a stack of books into their crate. "The new administrator will be here in a few days -- he's going to need the space to settle in."

"So this isn't going to change your mind, then."

"What do you mean?"

His gaze is steady but his words falter a bit. "You're... you're not gonna run off with the Doctor, are you?"

A very physical shock runs through me as I realise that this is now an option. Packing tape drops from my shaking hands. "I don't know." A whisper: "I'm scared."

Olvir pulls his legs down from the desk and pats his newly formed lap. I go and sit and lay my head on his shoulder. "What are you afraid of?" he asks.

I sigh. "I don't think I can do this new job. You saw the place -- it's filthy and dark and most of the people who go there die. The staff is inadequate -- they're unequipped and untrained and morale is terrible. And they want me to change that."

"But that's exactly what you did for Terminus," he says. His arms tighten around me, comforting me. "You built this place. You talked to the right people and raised all the money -- you turned Terminus around. The galaxy doesn't send the sick here to die now -- they're sent to be cured."

His words sound only distantly behind my fears. The Vanir are long gone from Terminus -- would it be possible to call some of them back? I don't even know where most of them are... They knew so much about Terminus and the Company and survival -- could I do it again without them? The Keeper knows Olvir might not as well have been here back then -- he spent most of his time hiding. Who is there for me to count on?

"Olvir, I don't know if I can do it again."

***

Running toward the TARDIS... tall grasses brushing past me... I look up -- the Doctor leans on my arm... As he stares at me, dark curly hair straightens, fades to blond... features melt and reform. Scarf becomes celery, overcoat becomes morning coat, boots become sneakers... Olvir is near yet far away, watching but making no move to help me...

Inside the TARDIS, a tall, fair woman is waiting --

I jerk awake, and for a moment I'm not sure where I am. Then reality settles over me -- the room is dark, Olvir is breathing deeply and slowly in sleep beside me. The chrono glows with an absurdly early hour.

I stare up at the ceiling for a while, sifting through the remnants of the dream. Regeneration. I have vivid memories of the Doctor's actual regeneration -- his pain, his confusion, his reliance on us to look after him. Tegan took it very much in her stride, but I worried that something had gone wrong, and wondered if we would be able to care for him.

Olvir... Olvir figured in the dream somehow.

And the woman in the TARDIS is the woman in the infirmary with the Doctor.

I slip from bed and dress quickly in the dark. The corridors outside are dimmed for night -- I meet no one on the long walk from the residential wing to the infirmary until I reach the isolation ward, where the duty nurse nods to me from her station. The ward is dark behind the glass now except for the small lamps directly over two beds, and their monitors pulsing with vital signs. I pull on protective overalls and gloves and a mask and step through the airlock.

At the Doctor's bedside, I look down at him for a long moment. His face is still flush and damp with fever, but through this I can see that he hasn't changed much at all. Little time must've passed for him since he left me at Terminus.

Tears well in my eyes are I remember. He told me life here would be hard, but did he really know? It was only after he left that I realised what a massive dose of radiation I received to cure my Lazar's disease. I was ill for weeks with radiation sickness -- didn't move from a dirty pallet in the Vanir's squat -- and as my hair fell out and I grew anemic, I cried out in my delirium for the Doctor to come and take me away from that filthy, dark, rat-infested place and make me well again. And when he didn't come, I gave up my will to live. How? how could he leave me to die in that awful place?

I didn't die, though, but there were times during that first year when I wished I had. Never before in my life had I had to struggle just to survive -- the Company cut off our supplies of Hydromel and food and water immediately -- and my life suddenly focused entirely on synthesising the drugs we needed to protect ourselves from disease and lobbying anyone who would listen for money and matériel. Old Terminus no longer exists, but still it haunts my nightmares -- the moans and shuffling feet of the sick, life slipping from their haggard faces, who were still heaped upon us; the rusty catwalks that creaked under us, often collapsed under us; the rank odours of unwashed bodies and decaying flesh...

I fall down into the chair at the Doctor's bedside, realising suddenly that I've never forgiven him for abandoning me here -- and admonishing myself just as quickly: Of course he didn't abandon me -- I asked to stay. And yet, I was no more than a child then, and he an adult; he knew the danger I was putting myself in -- or he should have known -- and he should have stopped me. And another sudden realisation: I expected him to protect me, keep me safe.

Why did I expect that? It seems that what the Doctor is best at is getting himself and his friends into trouble -- even now he lies here, unconscious, with someone else who may have looked to him for guardianship. Certainly Adric needed looking after...

My eyes water again. Poor Adric -- he was stubborn and ill mannered and immature at times, but I loved him dearly. There was a time, after his death, when I couldn't even go near his bedroom on the TARDIS -- but when I finally needed to recapture a sense of him, I was drawn there. One day I went in and found the Doctor there, stretched out on Adric's bed, reading one of his books, and he looked up at me and motioned for me to join him. So we sat on the bed with our backs to the headboard and talked of Adric. And when I began to cry, he proffered a handkerchief and placed a very tender arm around my shoulders and drew me to him. It was so rare that he expressed any kind of affection, so the effect was doubly potent -- I clung to him and cried and cried. "I'm sorry, Nyssa," he said, and when I looked up at him there was something in his eyes that told me he'd never allow me to suffer the same fate as Adric. And I believed him.

And, I have to tell myself several times, he didn't let that happen. He didn't let that happen.

***

The duty doctor's face is the first thing I see when I open my eyes.

?

I fell asleep in the chair in the isolation ward last night.

"We've got the test results," she says.

I follow her through the airlock, staggering with sleepiness and sore muscles.

"She is 94.7 percent Terran humanoid normal," the duty doctor says once we're seated in her office and a nurse has pushed a mug of coffee into my hands. "The rest of her genes are a mix of various humanoid subspecies -- some ordinary, some exotic. We shouldn't have any problems fixing her up." She looks to another hardcopy and blows out her breath. "He is a different story. There's not much recognisable here -- he's even got an extra pair of chromosomes!" She shakes her head. "Still, we'll manage."

"Is it Stargian?" I ask.

"Yeah -- a variety we haven't seen before, but it won't be too big a job to rework the antiviral. And we can get them out of isolation -- they quit being contagious once they showed symptoms."

"I'd like to be directly involved," I say.

"Of course."

***

I do not like the Doctor's new friend, Ayren.

She awoke two days ago, only hours after we administered the new antiviral. She was weak and hungry and spent another day in bed regaining her strength, and I had the opportunity to speak with her.

She knows nothing of Tegan save what the Doctor has mentioned in passing -- that they parted under strained circumstances and that Tegan returned to Earth. The boy Turlough was with the Doctor when Ayren met him, and he remained on Ayren's homeworld of Luna when she joined the Doctor. She has been travelling with him for about a year, but she seems reluctant to discuss their adventures -- I sense that they have been unpleasant. And yet there is a glow to her face when she talks of him.

"How is he?" she asked, and her gaze softened and her body relaxed. "Is he all right?"

The antiviral is working on him, but much more slowly -- he is still unconscious, as much from his head injury as the virus. With Ayren on her feet again this morning I took her to his bedside.

And now she leans over him, brushing locks of hair from his forehead and laying her hands along his face and squeezing his fingers. She smiles a wan smile at his unseeing eyes -- and I clench my fists in an impotent rage. How dare she take advantage of his unconscious state like this! There is nothing diagnostic in her touch -- she is not checking for fever or chills. Her... caresses... are purely affectionate. If she has been with the Doctor for a year she must know that he would not allow this were he conscious.

"We should leave him now," I say. "He really mustn't be disturbed."

In the corridor she asks, "Do you have any idea when he might awaken?"

"It's difficult to say. We've never treated a Time Lord here before. It might be days yet. We're keeping a close eye on him." I am anxious to end our conversation, but my curiosity gets the better of me. "What happened? How were the two of you infected?"

She looks up at nothing. "There was a ship in trouble -- we picked up its distress beacon. We materialised on it -- it was an ambulance ship, empty, except for one man... He was at the controls... dead, of nothing we could see. We checked the ship's log and discovered that he had just transported a shipload of Lazar victims to a hospital. This meant nothing to me but the Doctor rushed us out of there, back to the TARDIS. He started to tell me about Lazar disease and Terminus, and that you -- he had told me about you before -- that you had stayed at Terminus...

"The next thing I remember, I was lying on the floor in the control room and the Doctor was over me. He looked terrible -- he was feverish, sweating. He said, 'I'll get us to Nyssa.' Then I must have passed out -- I don't remember anything until I woke up here. The Doctor must have thought we'd contracted Lazar disease. Did we?"

"No, but it was a plague that often afflicts Lazars. That's probably what killed the pilot of the ship, but I don't understand how you caught it. It isn't contagious once symptoms appear, and it's usually a waterborne virus."

"The ship's water supply..." She is quiet for a moment, then: "We washed our hands on the ship after we handled the man's body..."

The duty nurse calls me away then -- the new administrator's ship is arriving, and would I like to greet him? I ask Ayren to return to her room and rest, and then I head down to the docking bay.

***

The mirror stares back hard at me as I twist and turn in front of it. Past my own reflection there are stacks of boxes -- some from my office, now cleared out for the new administrator, some from Olvir's office, and some with our personal belongings -- and Olvir, lounging against pillows on the bed with the sheet draped over him, making silly come-hither faces at me. He gives an exasperated sigh when I ignore him.

"Must you do that every night?" he asks.

I don't stop my self-examination for his question either. "You know the amount of radiation I received -- the sooner I catch any cancers the better chances I'll have of being cured."

"But wouldn't once a month, or once a week, be enough? And don't your tests turn up negative every six months?"

I catch his gaze in the glass. "Does it bother you that much?"

"I think it's gruesome." But there's a little smile on his face as he crawls across the bed with the sheet wrapped around himself. He joins me at the mirror and enfolds me in the sheet and in his arms. "At least I get to see you prance around naked every night." He grins at our reflection and I hug his arms and smile. After a long, pleasant moment his grin falls away and he whispers, "You do want me to come with you, don't you?"

I stare at him silently, and then: "Of course I do."

He blinks. "You don't sound very convinced." And then he is playful again, his hands slipping around under the sheet. "Perhaps I can convince you..."

Much later, I lie awake in the dark, Olvir's arm around me, his breath warm on the nape of my neck. He was right -- I did not sound very convinced. I wonder why.

***

I feel like I haven't slept at all when the intercom wakes me.

"Your friend is coming round," the duty doctor says when I run into the infirmary. "He's in normal sleep and he's starting to wake up."

I stand over the Doctor's bed as he stirs. His head rolls on the pillow, and he moans, and his eyes crack open and catch sight of me. "Ayren."

It takes me a disconcerted moment to realise that he hasn't mistaken me for her -- he's asking how she is.

"She's fine, Doctor."

He closes his eyes again and tries to smile.

The doctor and two nurses push their way in then to examine him. I wait on a couch outside.

A nurse prods me awake as the hospital's dim nighttime lighting is starting to brighten for day. "He's asking to see you."

The Doctor is sitting in a chair by the window in his room, looking out at the stars. He has shaved and bathed and brushed his hair and he smiles -- I forgot how charming his smile is! -- he smiles at me as I enter. Despite the hospital robe and a still-pale face, he looks more exuberant and youthful and alive than I can ever remember him being.

"Nyssa... That was you before, when I woke up, wasn't it? I'm sorry, I didn't recognise you--"

"That's all right." I pull up another chair and sit facing him. "You were worried about your friend."

His smile, impossibly, widens. "I asked the nurses to fetch her. Do you mind?"

"No, not at all." I only hope she can keep her hands to herself this time.

When Ayren steps in, a strange expression -- serene yet impassioned -- crosses the Doctor's face, and a terrible realisation grips me. It is obvious now -- all the signs were there for me to see, if I hadn't been blinded by my idealisation of the Doctor. He seemed above this in some way, above basic needs and desires, and certainly above betraying his inner self to anyone.

The Doctor reaches out his hand to Ayren -- she crosses the room and clasps it and draws near to him, leaning over him, laying her free hand against his cheek. His eyes long for her and then their lids fall shut as she presses her mouth to his.

They are lovers.

Another realisation: I've felt this gut-wrenching feeling before, when Father announced that he and Cassia were to be married. A strange jumble of jealousy and betrayal and a desire to protect -- there was no woman who could be Tremas's equal, I imagined.

And no woman who could be the Doctor's equal.

***

The doctors wanted to keep a watch on the Doctor and Ayren for a few days, in case of a rare relapse, so the Doctor and I had a chance to catch up with one another. He danced around the subject of Ayren, offering nothing but bare facts -- they met on Luna when he tripped over her minirobot; she's an expert on Earth history; she plays a good game of chess -- but there was an enthusiasm in his voice that I sensed he couldn't have hidden even if he wanted to. I barely saw them touch one another, after their kiss, and yet I felt an intruder into their private world -- and I was a little angry, and a little disappointed, that he is so much freer with her than he ever was with me or Tegan or Adric. I've tried to divine what about Ayren is so unusual that he would love her, and can come up with nothing -- she is attractive and intelligent and warm and friendly, but not extraordinarily so, as far as I can see.

I've tried to imagine them making love, but my mind, so attuned to the Doctor I knew, won't let me.

And now, the doctors have declared them fit to travel, and they're on their way.

The Doctor looks after Ayren as she disappears into the TARDIS, and then he and I stand alone surrounded by shelves and shelves of white linens.

"Nyssa," he says, as if he's beginning something difficult. "I've seen the looks you've been giving me and Ayren. I know it's been awkward... having her around, I mean."

"Doctor, there's no need to apologise--"

"I'm not." He smiles a bit. "She makes me feel alive. She is... my whole life right now." He places trembling hands on my shoulders. "But I want you to know that how I feel about Ayren -- or anyone else, for that matter -- will never change how important you are to me. You are the daughter I will never have, Nyssa, and I am very proud of what you have done here."

Tears well in my eyes. "Thank you" is all I can manage to say.

"It's been rough here, but if you decide to accept your new post, I know it will be easier the second time around. You and Olvir -- you're not the same people you were when you came here -- you're stronger and more resilient, and I know you'll both do well."

It took an outsider to point out the obvious -- we have changed. I am too close -- I couldn't see it, living with myself and him from day to day. Olvir... he's no longer the cowardly boy he was when we met. I was afraid of taking the new job because I thought it would be like Terminus was, and I could not live through that again. But everything has changed. There is no Company this time. Basic survival will not be an issue. Terminus will never happen again.

"I've made my decision, Doctor."

"Oh?"

I smile at him. "Of course I'm going."

"Good." He drops his hands and casts a glance toward the TARDIS. "Good-bye, Nyssa. I wish you the very best of luck."

I won't ask for a hug -- he's already given much more than is his wont -- but, "Doctor?" I ask as he steps into the TARDIS.

"Yes?"

"Will you visit me there?"

He beams. "Of course!"

"It's in the Morgana system. And... bring Ayren if you like." I have not suddenly grown to like her, or their relationship, but she makes the Doctor happy, and I would not deny him that.

He leaps forward and kisses my cheek quickly, then slips into the TARDIS and melts away.