Up a Tree p.7
The Doctor's face was beet red, grossly swollen, and dotted with red marks.
"What?" the Doctor asked innocently, batting long eyelashes against his rounded cheeks.
"Don't move." Rory pointed at him, sternly. "Stay right where you are." He whipped the curtain back into place, leaving the Doctor standing on the three foot wide ledge that fronted the bed alcove.
He poked Amy awake. "Amy get up, get dressed."
"What? Why?" she said muzzily. "Tell him to go away and come back in the morning." She buried herself under the bedclothes again.
"Seriously, Amy, get up." Rory said, scrambling into his clothes in the limited space. There wasn't even room to stand up, and the chute didn't help. "Something's wrong with the Doctor."
"What?" Amy whipped the blankets down off her face, staring at him, suddenly awake. He tossed her clothes to her. "Get dressed before he wanders off."
"I can hear you, you know," the Doctor said from outside the curtain.
-----
Rory studied his vest quickly. Somehow the Doctor had taken the chute out of the visitor's jacket and sewn it right into his vest. It now had a flap on the back, where the chute would deploy. With the puffiness of his vest, he'd end up with a headrest if he had to use it.
He pondered the straps for a moment, wondering how he should get dressed, then pulled on his shirt and underpants, shrugged on the vest and attached the leg harness lines like he'd been shown, clipping them back to the belt at the front. He slipped on his trousers over them. With the lines under the cloth it was much more comfortable, and less likely to get snagged on a stray branch.
He turned to find Amy had wiggled into her clothes too. She snapped her last harness clip onto the ring at her belt and jerked her shirt down.
"What's wrong with the Doctor?" she asked urgently.
"Didn't you see his face?" Rory asked.
Amy shook her head, Rory whipped the curtain aside to show the Doctor, looking out over the hall in the morning light. His face was swollen, and bright red.
-----
"Get down there, right now," Rory said, pointing at the tables in the common area below.
The Doctor raised his eyebrows at Rory's authoritative tone. "Yes sir," he said, giving him a mocking salute.
Rory reached out and grabbed his saluting hand. He turned it over, it was red, with a rash of raised red dots all over it. The normally bony knuckles swollen.
"Can you even climb like this?" Rory asked worriedly. He shook his head. "Obviously, if you got up here, you can climb. Just be careful going down." He dropped the Doctor's hand and the Doctor gave him an indulgent look but started climbing down.
"What happened to him?" Amy asked. She had been uncharacteristically silent, sitting on the side of the bed, staring at the Doctor, appalled.
Rory shrugged. "There's no telling. We'll know better after I've examined him. Maybe that ripper fruit didn't agree with him." He pushed off of the soft mattress and swung over onto the carved-in handgrips. "Come on."
On the way down he noticed that Amy's red shirt also had a new back panel sewn into it. Part of the back of the shirt now serving as a flap.
When they hit the floor they found the Doctor sitting patiently at one of the tables, hands clasped in his lap in mock obedience. Rory immediately scowled at him. "It's not funny, Doctor. What have you been doing?"
Rory knelt down and examined the Doctor's face. It was swollen, puffy, as red as if he was sunburned, and covered with little red dots. The Doctor started scratching his cheek.
Rory grabbed his hand and forced it down in his lap. "Don't scratch!" Rory examined the Doctor's eyes, they weren't yellow or rheumy, still clear, the bumps on his face weren't oozing anything, they didn't look like hives or chicken pox. His skin was fiery red, but not hot to the touch, not even by the Doctor's standards of cool skin.
"Does it hurt?" Amy asked worriedly. Morning sunlight flooded in through the now open transom windows, making the Doctor's condition all too clear.
Rory turned to look at her, more worried by the subdued tone of her voice than by the rash on the Doctor.
The Doctor shook his head. "Just itches." He started to scratch again. Rory shoved his hand back to his lap. The Doctor scowled at him.
"How could you not notice you were in this state?" Rory demanded, studying the bumps on the Doctor's hands.
The Doctor shrugged, "I was busy."
"Too busy to take care of your own health. Typical." Rory humphed. "Could it be an allergic reaction?" he asked. "Something in the ripper fruit? Or something we've been exposed to while we've been here?" He looked up at Amy, she seemed perfectly healthy. "We're not reacting to anything, but we're not Time Lords."
The Doctor shook his head. "Time Lords are resistant to most things. We have to be. I don't see how..." He started scratching the back of his hand and Amy slapped his hand, a scowl on her face. He scowled back, like an offended child.
Cindy, fresh and energetic this morning, bounced up to them. "Good morning!" she piped. She got her first good look at the Doctor and her eyes lit up. She started laughing. "You look like you were caught by a night swarm!" she pointed at him with a tiny finger, bouncing in delight.
"Night swarm?" Rory asked. Jake walked up to them just then, carrying mugs of some hot drink, he set them down on the table then turned and got a look at the Doctor. He shook his head.
"Where you outside anytime last night?" he asked.
"I took a walk, that's all," the Doctor said defensively, seeing the accusatory look on Rory and Amy's faces.
"And let me guess, you started chasing the pretty glowbugs," Jake said, with an aggrieved sigh.
"I didn't chase anything," the Doctor protested.
"What are you talking about?" Rory asked Jake. He nodded a greeting beyond him when he saw Sondherson arrive, walking up behind the bartender. The administrator took one look at the Doctor and dropped his head, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"I didn't chase anything!" the Doctor protested at all their disapproving looks. He couldn't pull off quite the usual innocent look with his face all puffy and spotted. "Yes," he admitted, "There was a swarm of very pretty glowing insects, but I didn't chase them."
"Instead," Sondherson said, sounding very weary, "they landed all over you didn't they?"
"Yes, but they were harmless, they didn't bite me."
"Glowbugs secrete a natural anesthetic, you never feel the bite until afterward. They travel in swarms, usually on humid nights, like after a storm." He sighed. "Everyone here knows to avoid them." He set a handful of soft boots that he'd been carrying on the table.
Reminded, Rory looked down, to see that even the Doctor's long feet were covered in bite marks.
"Is it dangerous?" Rory asked.
"Not usually, no." Sondherson said. "Depends on how big the swarm is, and if the person is allergic. Then it can be deadly." He looked at the Doctor with a serious expression. "I should point out, that most people don't swell up and turn red."
"That's it!" Rory said. He grabbed a pair of soft boots and shoved them at the Doctor. He started pulling on a pair himself. "We're going back to the Tardis. Right now."
"Rory, I'm fine, it's just a few mosquito bites," the Doctor said.
"Alien mosquito bites," Rory said, glaring at him. "And even regular mosquito bites can carry malaria and all sorts of other nasties. I'm not going to feel better until we get you checked out in the Tardis infirmary."
"But..."
"Don't argue, Doctor," Amy said, sternly, pointing down at the boots in his lap. "If it was one of us you wouldn't rest until you'd checked us over. We're going back to the Tardis."
"I'm sure the locals have some sort of cream or..." he started to turn to Sondherson but saw the flash in Amy's eyes.
"Put the boots on," she said, with a gravely tone in her voice that snapped him to attention.
It wasn't the order, so much as the scared look behind it that had him meekly pulling on the boots over his itchy feet.
Rory looked up at Sondherson. "Is it safe for us to go back to our transport now?" he asked. "The storm damage..." he hinted.
Sondherson waved a hand. "It wasn't as bad as we'd feared. Most of the branchways are fairly dry already, you should be fine. Do you need a guide?"
"No," Rory said. "We can find it from here."
Amy lifted the Doctor out of his chair by one arm. She noted it felt strangely squishy under her hand, not as bony as she was used to. She also noted the back of his tweed jacket had a chute panel sewn into it now, the same as her and Rory's.
He was being strangely quiescent. Amy shot a worried look at Rory. He returned it. "Come on." He led the way out of the community hall, through the big doors standing open to the morning air, and down the stairs from the plaza to the smaller platform they'd first arrived on.
The morning was bright and balmy, people were out and going about their business, clearing away leaves and fallen branches, and generally getting on with their lives. They garnered a few incredulous looks and indulgent smiles when they saw the Doctor's red, puffy, bitten face, but otherwise were left alone. One man did call a congratulations on the treecat kill, the Doctor raised a hand in acknowledgment and smiled. But he lacked his general bounciness. He was acting positively normal. Which wasn't normal for the Doctor.
Rory retraced their route out onto the massive "J" branch, then turned right when he saw the junction with 27 carved into the branch beside the path.
Behind him, he could hear the Doctor puffing and wheezing. He looked back with worry. Amy gave him a terrified look. The Doctor was plodding along beside her, his face was noticeably more swollen.
"What's happening?" Amy said, a quaver in her voice.
"Vascular contraction," the Doctor croaked out. He looked up at Rory. "We need the Tardis."
Rory nodded resolutely, he started jogging faster. Amy and the Doctor stumbled after him.
They reached the junction where the Tardis was parked. It wasn't there.
Rory stopped and spun around in consternation. He checked the view. Yes, this was the same spot.
"Where's the Tardis?" Amy demanded, she was propping the Doctor up with one arm around his waist, his other arm around her neck. He was breathing heavily. His breath whistled.
"It was right here!" Rory said helplessly, flinging out his arms.
"Blown over during the storm," the Doctor said, breathily. He pointed one heavy arm at recent scratch marks on one of the two branches the Tardis had been backed up against. He looked down over the side of the branch at the drop thousands of feet below.
"You mean it's destroyed?" Amy said, aghast.
"No, no, the old girl's indestructible." He saw the looks they were giving him. "From the outside anyway." He breathed in a deep gasp, his breath coming in shorter pants.
"So what do we do?" Rory asked, running his hands through his hair. The Doctor was practically hanging from Amy's grip.
"Get me... back to the great hall," the Doctor said, stopping to gasp in much needed air. He shuffled around in a turn, his skin so tight and swollen now that he couldn't move with his usual alacrity. Rory ran forward and grabbed his other arm, slinging it over his neck.
"Hurry, Ponds," the Doctor gasped out, trying to make his legs move. "My Ponds."
The sound of that made Amy and Rory flash panicked looks at each other over his bent head.
They picked him up and ran.
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