((Written in collaboration))

"Doctor?" The woman's voice was low, somehow filtering through the lantern-lit room and mixing seamlessly with the motes of dust that floated on the air. She was an unassuming creature, her hands folded in front, the blue of her dress and the faded off-white of her apron and cap were sensible and well-kept. She faded into the background, and that was how she liked it. So it wasn't surprising that the doctor didn't hear her right away, and once he had he didn't bother to turn. He kept his fingers upon the pulse of a comatose woman, counting under his breath. All the same, she could feel his attention.

"I wondered about the patient in bed seventeen..."

"Which one is that?"

"The gentleman that came in with a gunshot wound. With the brown hair, and the..."

"Yes, if course. What about him? Still alive, I hope. Luckiest chap we've seen in a while, hardly any infection..." He left off, distracted, and tapped the still woman's arm with a slight frown.

"He...he's been stirring, Doctor. His fever broke last night, I told Doctor Torday..."

But he never heard the rest of what she was saying. In a abrupt moment the 'sleeping' young woman's arm was dropped back at her side on the narrow bed, and the doctor walked with hurried, relentless strides to bed seventeen.

Tim swam back to consciousness, a stale taste in his mouth and a dull throbbing in his back. It took him a little while for his surroundings to register with him, then they suddenly snapped into focus, as he realised that he was in a hospital. Somebody must have found him, which almost certainly meant that he'd lost everything of value he'd been carrying. Still, he was alive, which was more than he had any right to expect, his last memories being of lying bleeding under a bridge.

Hearing the sound of approaching movement, he raised himself up on his elbows to better see, and almost doubled up from the red-hot pain that knifed through him as he moved. Lying gasping, he turned his head to see who approached, hoping that it wasn't someone he knew. Rather an embarrassing position to be found in, after all...

The man that looked down had a stare with no pity and what couldn't even pass for compassion. He did however look quite comfortable in these surroundings, suggesting that his skill as a doctor was nothing to sniff at. Still, there was something gruff in his manner as his large hands pushed Tim unceremoniously flat back onto the bed. "Don't even think about rising. Better yet now, don't move at all. You'll strain something, and we hardly saved you the first time." He motioned to the nurse, who hastily lay her hands gently yet firmly on the patient's shoulders. "Are you sensible?"

Through teeth gritted against the pain, Tim hissed "Yes, thank you. How does it look?"

"It looks like you're alive." The doctor seemed to think that Tim ought to find this funny, and he looked at the nurse until she finally gave a strained little smile. And then his hands, dry and rough from the caustic chemicals he washed them with, took Tim's wrist lightly and felt for a pulse. "Are you in pain? How much?" That the man had lived was surprising. That he'd woken up? Well, it was damned inconvenient, is what it was.

"Just a little, doctor. Rather like I've been cut in half. Still, now that I'm in your capable hands, I'm sure that I'll be up and about in no time." Now that he was lying still once more, the pain was receding, but it was a slow, slow ebbing, leaving him still in a great deal of agony. He could feel himself on the edge of passing out, but fought to stay awake for now. It would never do to fall asleep halfway through a conversation! Besides, were the doctor not there when he next woke, it could be quite some time before he learned anything else about his condition.

"Right. Lay still." The doctor went to work slowly and carefully...checking vital signs, peering into Tim's eyes, leaning down to listen to the lungs with a single-tubed stethoscope. Finally he let out another harsh laugh and nodded. "Vut in half. Did you hear that, Nell? cut in half. Like that magician, the one you went to see, wossname..."

"Lindsey." the woman supplied, and she looked down at Tim. Her expression was very sympathetic, and quite resigned.

"Right." The doctor finished, but there was no real levity in his banter. Once he'd finished his examination, he looked at Tim, though his eyes seemed to look...past, somehow.

"Right. So. There's absolutely no way to know how you managed to wake. We didn't think you would." the nurse stared reproachfully at him, he ignored her.