[RM] Problems that need Solving... my innie should be an outtie!

[onlysayinghello]

Despite having a wonderful time as the opposite sex Jack was thoroughly convinced that enough was indeed enough and he was really tired of having to sit in order to go to the bathroom. Highly inefficient was what came to mind, along with the fact that there no longer was that option to ask Owen to 'pull over' so he could relieve himself on route somewhere. No now it was a procedure, and it involved sanitation issues and indoor plumbing.

Indeed enough was finally enough for Jack, even with the visit to New York and the run in with a few that were less than strangers before that evening. Now he was pressing bitten down nails against his forehead as he scanned over more files and documents trying to sort out what he could have missed.

A full blood work up had been run. Every toxic screen they could think of to run within the confines of Torchwood had been run, and now Jack was looking at the list of naturally occurring plants and vegetation that resided in the area that he had found... and torched the Tachkrin in. Gwen had been trying to track down another plant, Owen and Tosh were both running whatever they could in house and Jack was pretty sure he just needed a new set of eyes on the matter.

Which of course reminded him that when he got back from New York he should have called Martha straight away, but for some reason his mind had wandered during the events of the party and thinking of her now was just like happenstance.

Grabbing his cell he sent her a text message,
/STILL UP TO SOLVE MY PROBLEM DROP BY SOON - HARKNESS/

Leaning back in his chair he wished it would hang back further but the slender frame didn't have the same body weight to it, so it just felt pointless. So instead he let his feet slip out of the shoes Gwen loaned him and pressed bare feet against the ledge of his desk trying to force the lean back a bit further. Although the sight of his slender legs was going to be a distraction of a different kind for a while as he contemplated shaving them again while he waited for Martha to either show up, or call for a pick up... or call to cancel.

Comments

[notquiteadoctor.livejournal.com]

Martha got her hand free and the kiss did make her blush where just "examining" him hadn't. "Um, yeah. I'll just let you..."

She backed out of the room, ran into the door jamb, then made her way to the galley cursing herself under her breath. Setting up the ultrasound helped, giving her something regular and soothing to do, another problem to focus on. She got the machine plugged in and warming up and the other things she'd need all ready while she waited for Jack.

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack laughed a bit politely, but more amused than anything at the slight stumble Martha took into the door jamb on her way out of his office. Shaking his head he bent at the knees instead of the waist to pick up his trousers tugging them on over his hips and really hoping that he didn't have something duplicated in his body at the moment. Two spleens weren't really what he needed today.

Closing the button on the front of his pants he let the suspenders hang against his sides as he made it out into the galley where Martha was already setting everything up, "Well don't you just look the part. I might consider firing Owen and taking you on full time."

[notquiteadoctor.livejournal.com]

"Don't tempt me," she said, and meant it. Things at the hospital had been less than thrilling, after the Doctor. Maybe one day she'd remember and focus in on the lives she could save, but right now it was long shifts and residents yelling and scut work and paying her dues. She wasn't too proud to do it, of course. It wasn't that. It was just after everything, after saving the world, it was hard to feel that much a part of it anymore. To know all that was out there and the threats so much greater than the common colds, as well as the beauties, and still focus. Jack at least got to carry on the work.

She pushed the thoughts aside, glancing up at him. "You ready?"

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

"Oh I'm full of temptation Martha Jones, you should know that by now. If not then I've really lost my touch," he winked and this time well it felt more natural to him.

Taking a seat atop the medical table he glanced to her and lay back onto the cold metal, "Ready and waiting."

[notquiteadoctor.livejournal.com]

"Girl's got to watch herself around you," she said with a faint smile, ducking her head.

She squirted some gel on his skin and put the untrasound sensor against his it delicately. Frowning she moved it around, then moved it back to where she'd felt the extra organ.

"Um, yeah. That's most definitely not supposed to be there, Jack."

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack shivered slightly as the cool touch was felt upon his skin then the slight pressure of the instrument as she roamed across his midsection. When she paused then shifted it back around Jack tried to make out what she was looking at... there were a few... oddities that he already knew about. His internal organs were pretty close to the same as humans but there were a few extra 'spots' for certain... things.

That though... that round thing... what was that?

"What isn't supposed to be there?"

[notquiteadoctor.livejournal.com]

Martha glanced at him, then back at the screen, then back at him with a half-worried, half-apologetic look on her face. It didn't seem possible, of course, but given that a few minutes before, he'd been not a "he" at all, she wasn't really in a place to argue with what was possible and not.

"It looks like an ovary..."

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack balked at the thought of that. Technically he did have a few... extra things in there that had been a bit of a hassle in the fifty-first century, especially when that flirty little minx...

Still an ovary? That was pretty much wrong. Stupid leftover organs sticking around.

"Ovary? Typical. Can't just have one pregnancy in a lifetime... have to have an ovary now too, increasing those odds."

Jack glanced to the screen, "I'm going to sound insane here, but... feel like some open cavity surgery Martha?"

Was that even needed? Surgery? He couldn't really leave that in there could he? Nah... that's just silly.

[notquiteadoctor.livejournal.com]

"One...pregnancy?" Martha gave him a look, a bit astounded, which she shouldn't have been, all things considered, but Jack seemed so human, and that was definitely different. "Do I even want to know how that works?"

She followed his glance back to the screen. "Probably, I could, yeah. With retractors, you wouldn't heal faster than I could work, so long as you don't grow it back when I'm done."

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack nodded, not really one for trying to sort out how long his wounds stayed wounds for the most part he just took in a deep breath and gestured casually around him, "Think this will do the trick? I mean, really you don't have to worry about sterile anything... I'd think at least."

Hopping off the slab he moved through the galley fidding with a few cabinets trying to make sure Owen had actually put things into the right drawers after the last case they'd run. Thankfully it seemed everything was in order, and Jack pulled it all onto one of the trays.

"Bet you didn't think you'd be doing this today did you," Jack teased as he headed back to grab one of the towels from the other locker along the wall. He had little modesty and it probably didn't really matter since Martha had seen it already so once more Jack was stripping his pants off and tugging the towel around his waist. Laughing he caught Martha's eye with the sound as he flashed her just for the hell of it, "Come on Martha, time to get cutting."

[notquiteadoctor.livejournal.com]

"Yeah....this'll do."

She blushed when he flashed her, shaking her head. When the world wasn't ending, his sense of humor seemed to escalate above and beyond even what she'd seen before, and while it was charming, it was also something she had to get used to.

"Is there something to sedate you with? Or at least localized anesthesia? No matter if you'll heal, this is going to hurt."

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack wasn't used to actual surgeries, he in general healed quickly and didn't ever need anything medically done for him. No disease, no common cold, no tumors... just... Jack Harkness forever, except when he was a girl. Pain hadn't even registered into his mind that he'd have to worry about that. Then again if he had a local everytime he'd been shot in the past few months it might not be so bad.

"Yeah... let's find something. I'm not sure how long it'll last though," Jack slid off the table once more and started to go through the cabinets beside the galley, "You know if you come work for me, I hope you'll make this place a bit more organized, I swear I have no clue how Owen sorts through it all."

Finally finding a vial of a local he handed it over to Martha, "Dose me up Doc."

[notquiteadoctor.livejournal.com]

"I'm good at organizing," she said with a bit of grin. "You sure Owen won't mind my mucking around in all his stuff, though?" Come to think of it, having another doctor around might mean stepping on toes and that worried her just a bit, but she pushed it aside for now.

Martha nodded at him, taking the vial and snagging a syringe. Normally for this deep of a surgery, she'd prefer a patient knocked out, but this would have to do. She injected him where the ultrasound had indicated the ovary was.

"It should work pretty fast," she said, glancing up at him, fingers still pressed over the spot.

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack shook his head, "This place needs a bit of organization, and if he gives you trouble just let me know. He'll probably be happier avoiding the field work anyway. Jack barely felt the injection and after a bit he didn't feel the pressure from Martha's fingers against him either.

"Seems to be all systems go, just remember only take out the extra stuff. There might be a few things in there you're not familiar with, but trust me I need most of it. Just not the ovary."

[notquiteadoctor.livejournal.com]

Martha gave him a searching look. "Some time you'll have to explain the extra stuff in case you ever come in unconscious, yeah?"

One more pinch he didn't seem to feel, and she bent her head to the task quickly, using forceps to keep his skin from healing immediately before she could find the ovary and cut it.

"What would he do if he avoided field work?" she asked, meaning Owen, and working to distract him from her highly unorthodox surgery.

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack lay there staring up at the lights as Martha cut into him, "I'll draw you some pictures of what goes where, or maybe I can dig up a Boeshane Province Medical Guide, if I can track one down. It's a bit hard to get future text... especially that far in the future."

It was odd that he could sort of feel her working on him, but in the sense that it almost felt like it wasn't his own body being cut into. At the mention of Owen, Jack simply folded his hands beneath his head and thought it over, "Examine what we did bring in from the field? Sleep with Gwen? I'm not sure but it'll give them options? Four seemed like enough. Four people plus me? Not too many that I have to worry about control, not too few that I'm outnumbered... but four just isn't enough anymore. Things are getting worse, and they're not going to get any better yet."

[notquiteadoctor.livejournal.com]

"I'd imagine so," she murmured, concentrating on her work, biting her lower lip. It was really disconcerting to be doing an operation on a talking patient. Extremely, really.

But she set about it, cutting out the ovary and watching the cut heal without stitches, which made her frown a bit, head tilting curiously.

"So you really need me? Not just...saying that because you feel sorry for me?"

She slid the forceps back, staring as her incision healed before her eyes.

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack laughed a bit because it sort of tickled feeling his internal organs stitching themselves up on their own but mostly because of how Martha had worded her question, "So what this is me offering you a job in a highly classified organization that fights aliens, risking life and limb and pretty much guaranteeing that you'll never have the same life again.. because I feel sorry for you?"

Glancing to her as best he could while still laying still he smiled, "Martha if I felt sorry for you I would be spending this topless time with you a bit differently. For starters your hands wouldn't be removing internal organs from my body they'd be-"

The playful swat from Martha stopped his sentence in the middle of the innocent flirtation, "Alright! Honestly Martha... I think- no, I know I need you here. We've seen things... things that didn't really happen and if anyone is going to stand by my side and tell me to shut up? I'd rather it be you. They don't know me anymore, I feel like I've had a whole year without them around and now... now it's just different."

[notquiteadoctor.livejournal.com]

Martha stepped back, watching him with serious eyes. Different, she knew. Different was spending every day at the hospital, listening to all of them chatter, even making up stories to explain going to the moon, never touching on anything remotely resembling the past year. Different was having Leo stare at all of them, not comprehending the way Tish had changed, that Mum and Dad were back together, listening to them always asking her about the Doctor.

Different was a phone call she made, and another one she didn't and how they never connected, and she never let herself hear either voice, not really, because it was all too tied up in too many things she couldn't dwell on for too long.

And Jack was part of that and yet his own, too. His own suffering for that year, and yet he seemed to have come through. She wondered about the scars he had and if they ran as deep as the ones she'd acquired and if anyone who hadn't lived that year, hadn't seen the Earth nearly decimated, hadn't seen the end of the universe could really, truly, understand.

Nodding, she took a breath, then said, simply, "All right."