The calendar. The first thing he checks as he wakes up is the calendar. He struggles to look for a marker— nevermind the alarm clock, he's been waking up at exactly 6:32 in the morning ever since he moved into the damn flat, it's the marker that needs attention.
As he scrubs the dirt off his eyes with one hand, the other finds the marker he so delicately left next to his bed nightly.
He picks up his cane and stands up to stare at the calendar his landlady had given him positioned conveniently on the left side of his bed, just above his nightstand. It reads "July 2015," and somehow those two words upsets the man.
He stares at it for a good two minutes, as if the letters and numbers would morph back to "May 2012" if he looked at it long enough and with just the right amount of grief.
Dreadfully enough, it doesn't.
He checks the date.
16. Today is July 16, he mouths to himself.
His mind calculates exactly how long it has been as he uncaps the red Sharpie he had been gripping the minute he woke up, and he marks another X on the box that read the date. The writing isn't visible, to his demise. After all, he had been keeping the marker for a good three years. It was one of the few things he had left.
Instead of looking for another pen however, he forces the ink out of the goddamned thing. Luckily enough, there's still a bit left and after a faint X mark is visible, he caps it and places it right back where he picked it up.
Three years, two months, and twelve days since it happened.
Three years, two months, and twelve days and he's still grieving.
You'd think a man that lost half of his colleagues against a thousand Iraqi soldiers would have moved on after this time, he thought.
But no, as much as he hated to admit it, as much as he despised the man that had caused him three years' worth of stained pillowcases and therapy, Sherlock Holmes was not simply a colleague. He was more, oh, so much more than that.
A deep sigh comes from his mouth as he remembers the one piece of advice he actually deemed important from his therapist.
He's not coming back.
He forces a bit of sense into himself. You can't keep doing this daily, John. It simply won't happen. Get over it.
Of course, he's told himself that almost daily ever since he heard it, so that was no use. Instead, he prepared himself for the day that's about to come. The clock read 6:43, which meant he was three minutes late for his tea and biscuits with the landlady.
He saw a few patients and ran into a few friends. The day had went on normally until one of his patients cancelled an appointment and he finally had the time to read the papers. On the front page was an article that may as well have shot a bullet through his chest.
"JOHN WATSON THE CAUSE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES' SUICIDE; FORENSIC ARTISTS REVEAL AFTER THREE YEARS OF CONFUSION."
He re-reads the lines five or six times, and after processing what it means, he stands up, picks up his coat, tells his secretary to reschedule all his later appointments, and promptly walks out of his office, newspapers in hand.
"Can you believe this! Three years and those rats are still on him? And this time they've dragged me along!" His words echoed throughout the confines of 221A, where an extremely terrified Mrs. Hudson sat listening to his babbling.
"Well John, you know the press. They'll do anything for a story and—"
"It's not even fair anymore! I had to put up with headlines like these for months after he left!"
"Dear, I think—"
"And years later they think they can just do this? They, they think they can just... accuse me of his death? Without even speaking to me? Do they have any idea how hard this was on me? I—"
He stops mid-sentence as he realizes how his screaming had caused her to tear up, and immediately he regrets blowing up like that.
"I'm sorry." He whispers to nobody in particular as he walks out of the room to his own 221C, so as to not bother anybody else with his useless opinions.
The next morning at 7:00 in the morning, his landlady wonders why he hasn't been downstairs yet, as it was not in his character to be late for anything. She climbs up to his flat, and nearly faints at the sight.
She runs downstairs and calls the police at once.