My Son
The man's driver parked his sleek black car in near the entrance of the Sally Oak care home. He opened the door for himself, as he always did when visiting the home, then walked towards the entrance with a vacant expression on his face. The automatic doors slid open as he approached, he walked up the receptionist desk and picked up the chained ball point pen.
"Morning sir" said the nurse behind the desk cheerfully "You having a nice day?"
The man studied the woman's face, she seemed to tremble during the silence. 'Out of fear?' he thought, 'no, I see this woman weekly, she knows who I am. He pondered the possible causes for the nurses trembling before quietly he asked "Is she okay?"
"It's been a bad week sir. She…"The nurse paused, unsure of how much she was allowed to reveal. "She can't remember anyone so far. Just keeps talking about this detective in the papers recently."
The gentleman signed his name in the log book, and without a word to the nurse, paced the wide corridors to room 36. He slowly opened the door and announced he was coming in, so as not to startle the frail old woman sitting on the bed. She didn't respond, instead she continued to read the newspaper. He examined the walls, all of which were plastered with clippings of Sherlock Holmes's cases before he took his usual place on the plastic chair by the window and waited for the woman to talk.
"Who are you ?" She asked. The man exhaled deeply.
"My names is...it isn't important."
"What do you want?"
"Just to talk."
"What about?" The woman asked.
"Whatever you want to talk about" He said, but he knew the response would be the same as every week for last three years.
"My son is a detective you know, the only consulting detective in the world. Have you heard of him? Sherlock Holmes?"
Despite knowing quite a lot about Sherlock, the man shook his head, to allow the old lady to have a decent conversation.
"Well," She began "He lives in London, but he travels all of the country with his friend John. John writes a blog about all their adventures, some sound quite scary. Sherlock is an amazing man, I'm proud to call him my son." The woman paused to wipe a tear from her eye. "Looks like his father, smart like he was too. He has saved so many lives."
The man allowed the old woman to continue her long and detailed account of Sherlock's adventures. Every now and then, she would pass the man a clipping from a blue box she had pulled out from the bed. The clipping would be from a newspaper or from John's blog, but the man had seen them all before. Not only because he too reads John Watsons blog, but because the woman had shown them all to him before. The door swung open, and a nurse came in with a box of tablets.
"She has to have her medicine now sir, thank you for visiting. She needed someone to talk to."
The man got up, and kissed the woman on the forehead, while the nurse began to prepare a cocktail of medicine. He whispered into the woman's ear, " I love you" before he went to make his way out of the room. He was about to cross the threshold, when the woman turned to face him and asked again "What is your name, dear ?"
The man paused, a tear rolled down his cheek. He begged that one day she wouldn't ask that question, and that she would just know the answer. "My name…My name is Mycroft Holmes"
