This is the third short trip in a row to feature a female protagonist. But, just as last time, the author is a man.
Here's it's Nanci Cruz, a teenager who has moved from American to England. Two weeks, three days, and 14 hours previously she caught her now ex-boyfriend with his hand up her now ex-best friend's blouse. Standing around moping, a boy literally runs into her and Nanci notices that, when he touches her, she gets a warm sensation and all of her misery disappears.
But the boy is being chased by an older woman as well as by a little man with a Beatles' mop top. It turns out that she wants to keep the boy around as an emotional analgesic, to literally suck her negative feelings away, while the Doctor is trying to rescue him. He wants the woman to learn to cope with the problems of life but she refuses.
The woman's hideout is at an old pier where the Doctor tracks her down. Nanci joins him as she wants to see the boy safe & sound. The Doctor manages to get the boy but Nanci is captured by this embodiment of immaturity. They begin a swap of the kidnapped but the woman activates a collar that she has placed around Nanci's neck which causes great and immediate pain. The boy rushes to her aid. He takes Nanci's distress and channels it back to the woman who does not want all of her garmonbozia. She is overwhelmed with creamed corn and spontaneously combusts.
Nanci realizes that, although the boy took away the pain induced by the collar, she still had other stressors such as school. But she accepts these pains and is determined to live with them.
A bit like "Blink" in that a non-companion is the protagonist here, though this is not exactly Doctor-lite. This one had a bit of a fairy tale feel to it with the woman as the evil stepmother and a lesson being learned at the end.
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