In my own words: I dunno man, I dunno. This one's for Lizzy though.
"Why does my morgue smell as if that Santa fellow set one of his gnomes aflame?"
"Elves, for starters."
"Pardon?"
"Santa's got elves, Sherlock, not gnomes. Goodness, do you know anything about anything without a scientific nature to it?"
"Completely beside the point right now John, but thank you, let me archive that golden fact in the cleanest hall of my mental temple."
Sherlock paused before the door to the innermost lab of the morgue, where instead of entering, he opted to contort his neck and head in an attempt to see into every corner of the aforementioned room. "What is that smell? It's toxic. I'm not going in."
"What? It's not literally toxic, and you've got to go in, you're teaching me the basics of blood work today and I refuse my training schedule to be offset because you don't like the smell of cinnamon – wait. Why's a morgue smell like cinnamon?" John Watson's shorter figure soon joined Sherlock's, visible through the clear glass door to one Molly Hooper, who was lounged in a chair within the lab, sucking furiously at a stick of cinnamon as she raised a brow at them. The tube-shaped piece of herb appeared to be smoking at one end.
The slight-figured, eccentric "consulting detective", as she dubbed herself, would sporadically appear in the morgue, before business hours, letting herself in somehow and waiting for the attendant to arrive before making some random demand for a case she was working.
John reached for the door handle unbeknownst to Sherlock, and when he pushed the door open, the unsuspecting pathologist lurched forward with a squawk of alarm, and the two ended up on the floor, entangled by the long scarves they both wore.
Molly, deciding that the stick of cinnamon wasn't cutting it for her, tossed the singed, fragrant chunk of herb to the side, where it luckily landed in a vacant petri dish. With an exasperated sigh, she moved forward, separating the two men, who scrambled to their feet, preening and adjusting collars while glaring at each other. "If you don't mind, gentlemen, I just had a favor to ask."
The glares were turned upon her, but she ignored them. "Have either of you got a cigarette? Nicotine patch? Those little mints or the gum? I'm dying for one today, and homeopathic substitutes are proving grossly ineffective."
"Cravings, then, Molly?" Sherlock was already moving to his desk, sliding open a drawer and retrieving one nicotine patch, then, knowing Molly and her habits and firm belief that nicotine fueled her little gray cells, grabbed another, turning and tossing them to her. She caught them without looking, already on to the next topic, advising John that he should really invest in a lint roller or some lighter pants, if he was going to be dating a "lady of feline influence", whatever that meant. She ended up pointing at his charcoal slacks, where a coating of light cat fur was visible. The outfit must have been a layover from the night before, another observation noted mentally.
John fluffed his shirt collar, discarding his jacket for a lab coat to shrug on. "Sherlock, maybe you ought to set this elf on fire," he called with a scowl.
"This one brings me toys though, fulfills her job requisites at least," the pathologist called back, already absorbed in a microscope as he got to the first of the tasks on his checklist for the labwork of the day. "You, on the other hand, are a sorry substitute for an assistant if I ever saw one."
Molly, meanwhile, had slapped on both patches at once, inhaling deeply and reclaiming the comfiest chair in the lab, where she adopted a serene yoga pose, legs crossed and pulled up, eyes closed, and hands spread to the side.
When she had held it for fifteen minutes straight without moving a muscle, John paused in his notetaking from observing Sherlock, tapping the instructing pathologist on the shoulder and raising a brow in Molly's direction. Sherlock examined her position, before slapping a palm to his forehead. "That's right, I've got test results that should have arrived for her."
Racing across the room to a dropbox that was positioned at the bottom of a chute accessible from outside, Sherlock opened the lid and retrieved a thick manila envelope. "This'll be it, then, Molly. Run along." In a stage whisper, he confided to John, "She doesn't like to ask for things. She likes to make a big blatant physical statement and make you realize what she wants on her own. Nutter." He ruffled her hair at this last statement, in a rare moment of camaraderie that was soon tainted by the fact he headed straight for the hand sanitizer dispenser, before returning to his microscope.
Molly had taken the envelope eagerly and the hair-mussing silently as she hurriedly scanned the contents of the charts inside. "As if I didn't know this."
"I was unaware that cranium of yours held a full-service laboratory, dear Molly Hooper," Sherlock muttered distractedly, fine-tuning the focus of the lens and allowed John a peek. The female detective in question merely waved a thanks, casting aside the package without a further glance, grabbing her bag, a bright tribal-patterned wool concoction she insisted had been knitted by Nelson Mandela in prison, and sweeping out the door.
Another fifteen minutes later, the smell of cinnamon renewed itself with a smoky intensity, and it took only a moment for Sherlock and John to realize she had discarded the unwanted papers right on top of the smoldering cinnamon-stick-turned-homeopathic-cigarette, which had set the documents aflame. Ten seconds more, and the smoke alarm was going off, and an additional alarm that signaled to evacuate the building.
Shouts of alarm and the sounds of scurrying shoes scuffing against the linoleum provided an auditory backdrop to Molly Hooper's thoughts, traveling at ninety miles an hour as she calmly exited the hospital and flagged a cab. She had a dog to interrogate, and a pistol to fire into a wall.
thanks for reading! ~xoxo Bon