- London, 24 December, 2004
He should have known better, John thinks, than to make plans to meet his sister in a pub on Christmas Eve.
There's been no sign of Harry all evening, and she's not answering her phone. Met some more interesting friends on the way, no doubt. Stopped for a drink or six, stood him up, forgot, passed out. It's happened more times than John cares to remember.
At least it had got him out of his hotel room for the evening, but then again, probably nothing could be more depressing than getting stood up in a dive like this on a public holiday. The young kids in their ironic punk gear all cleared out ages ago, and the likely-looking singles have all paired up and gone off to...pair up. Hardly anyone's left at this hour except the really seasoned old drunks, slumped morosely over their drinks. And then there's the obligatory pub bore at the other end of the bar who won't shut up. One more beer, John decides, and he'll call it a night. Tomorrow's his last full day of leave but one, and he doesn't particularly want to spend it with a hangover.
He hopes Harry doesn't turn up now. She'll be wrecked, and he'll spend the rest of the night forcing glasses of water into her and holding her head over the toilet, gritting his teeth through yet another drunken sobbing monologue about what a wonderful brother he is. John shudders. He should leave right away, probably, on the off chance. It's still snowing out there, though, and there's no chance of getting a cab tonight; it'll be a long, cold walk back to his bed. He changes his mind and orders a whisky instead of the beer. He'll gulp it down and go.
The annoying bore is really getting warmed up now, rattling on with some high-pitched giggly anecdote about...blood types? John could swear he heard the word "haemoglobin." He glances over surreptitiously to see who's got stuck talking to him, and isn't surprised to find that Mr. Annoying is conversing with no one, or possibly addressing the room at large. There are empty bar stools on either side of him, as if everyone nearby is giving him a wide berth. Wise of them, with the way he's gesticulating wildly as he speaks. Long-fingered, well-manicured hands. Nice suit. Posh. John briefly wonders what his story is, but decides he almost certainly doesn't want to know.
Just before he looks away, the man's pale eyes meet his and connect for an instant too long. John swears silently to himself and turns his attention back down to his drink, but it's too late, of course.
"You'll agree it's a brilliant idea," a voice at his shoulder says a few moments later, and John's too polite to pretend he doesn't realise he's being addressed directly. Not too polite to avoid getting sucked into conversation, though.
He lifts his chin in noncommittal acknowledgment and then knocks back the rest of his drink all at once, which makes him wince and bare his teeth. "I'm off," he says. "Cheers."
"Oh, stay for another. I'm buying."
John looks again, reflexively. All night he's been sitting here, unable to get anyone to respond to his halfhearted attempts to chat them up, and now he has to pull a drunken head case?
Not a bad-looking drunken head case, honestly. Interesting, even, in a pale, offbeat, cheekbony sort of way. Even so.
"No, thanks." John gets up to leave. "Nice of you to offer, but no." He'd add something about the fact that this bloke should really call it a night, too, but he doesn't want to risk being misinterpreted. Better to leave well alone.
He has to go to the loo before he takes off, though, and just as he's zipping back up, the door of the Gents' squeaks open behind him.
"Hello again."
John ignores him this time and heads to the sinks. He dares a glance up in the mirror and finds that the stranger is leaning against the wall, openly staring at him. "Sorry, not interested," John tells him.
"Oh, this isn't one of those. I was just hoping to continue the conversation. You're obviously the only person on the premises who might possibly begin to understand even a fraction of what I'm saying. Such a waste, because it really is extremely fascinating, could change the face of forensic science permanently. You overheard a bit of it; I saw you. Naturally, with your medical training, you'd-"
"What?" John stops drying his hands and turns around. "Who told you that?"
The posh bloke just smiles-smirks, even-and goes jabbering on about bloodstains and reagents, and John finally realises that he isn't just drunk, he's high on something. Really high. In the unforgiving light of the toilets he looks horrifically bad, milk-pale and sweating, the pupils of his strange eyes nearly blown to black. He's talking faster and faster as if he can't stop himself, babbling almost incoherently now.
"You should go home," John says, interrupting the rapid-fire lecture. "Have you got a lift? Not that I'm offering," he adds hastily. "I mean, is there someone you can call? You can borrow my phone if you need to." He fishes it from his pocket and holds it out.
The man looks down at the phone and begins to laugh-softly, at first, then hysterically, uncontrollably, hanging on to the row of sinks. He shakes his head, gasps for breath, then holds his chest, still laughing, apparently unable to stop.
Alarm bells are going off all over John's mind. He jams his phone back into his pocket and strides over to the man, grabbing him by the shoulders and shoving him up against the wall so he can get a better look. He's all but vibrating, burning with unnatural heat that radiates right through his clothes. A human furnace about to blow. "What are you on? Cocaine?"
He can't respond, he's hyperventilating, but John can see the answer written all over his face: raw red nostrils, watery pink-rimmed eyes which are beginning to go wide and vague with oxygen deprivation now. How stupid not to have seen it before-he's even got streaks of powder on one of his jacket lapels. "Idiot!" John says angrily, and rips his collar aside to find the carotid pulse with two unerring fingers.
There's a pause of approximately six seconds while John's mind goes absolutely calm and blank as if all the air's been sucked out of it. Then the world comes roaring back and he's already got his phone out again, dialing 999.
"Ambulance," he tells the operator, and gives the name and address of the pub. "White male, mid-twenties, cocaine OD. Tachycardia, severe hyperthermia-" The white male in question is still pinned to the wall and struggling against John's grip, starting to thrash as he tries to get more air. A sharp elbow smacks John's hand and he drops the phone, but he's got the crucial information out, anyway.
"Chest pain?" he asks, and gets a panicky nod. John reaches over and turns on the cold-water tap-lukewarm, no good-then seizes the bloke by the biceps and hauls him toward the door, half drags him out into the hallway and kicks open the emergency exit. The sound of the alarm going off synthesises perfectly with the stab of freezing air that hits his lungs, and he feels almost giddy as he shoves his patient down into the freshly-fallen snow that coats the alleyway.
The young man sucks in a great noisy gulp of air and continues to struggle while John holds him down in the snow. He still can't speak, but his eyes look shocked.
"Bloody-lie still!" John snaps. "I'm trying to stop you going into cardiac arrest. Tachycardia, hyperthemia-you seem to know a lot of big words; ever hear those ones before?" He's ripping open the designer suit jacket and the shirt beneath while he speaks, piling handfuls of snow directly onto shivering blue-white skin. Suddenly the long limbs stop flailing and go rigid. Seizing, fuck, John thinks. Too late, I should have-
"Oi, you, get off him!" he hears a voice shout from the open door behind them, and then there are hands trying to pull him away. He shakes them off, trying to explain. No one listens. There are more hands dragging him back, heavy, insistent, and a warm roar of beer-scented voices. Someone shouts "Call for an ambulance!" but the siren is already audible now, first in the distance, then getting closer, louder.
There are two broad-backed men bending over the body on the ground, obstructing his view, but John catches a glimpse of the high-cheekboned face with a shocking smear of bright red above the upper lip now, eyes wide and staring, sightless. Too late, he thinks again, as the flashing lights and the noise of the siren overwhelm everything else and the shouting and confusion increases tenfold. How stupid, stupid, stupid. He doesn't know if he means himself or the idiot dead bloke, who he's going to have to remember every Christmas Eve of his life forever from now on, probably.
Or maybe he means Harry. Stupid Harry. All her fault, as usual.
The bloke doesn't die. John wakes up in his shabby hotel room late Christmas afternoon to find his phone blinking with seven new voice messages: six from Harry (in various states of remorse, irritation, and concern as her hangover progresses) and one from a posher-than-posh voice asking him to please return the call at his earliest convenience "regarding the matter of last night."
He's nervous about this at first. The overdosing man had stabilised by the time John had finally answered the ninth or tenth round of questioning and been allowed to leave the hospital early that morning, but you never knew. The caller, who hadn't identified himself by name, sounded like the brother, the one who'd shown up at A&E in a three-piece suit at three in the morning looking preternaturally calm and collected. Exhausted as he was, John's chin had gone up and his shoulders had straightened automatically when the man's eyes had fallen on him.
When he calls the number on his voicemail, he's more than half expecting to be coldly informed that legal proceedings have been initiated, or asked for the name of his CO. Instead, a young woman's voice answers the phone, tells him to hold, and returns several minutes later to inform him in a bored manner that he's been asked to report to St Thomas's Hospital the day after tomorrow during visiting hours, if he's available. "You're not in trouble," she tells him, when John begins to stammer. "Mr. Holmes would like to thank you personally for the service you rendered. That's all." She hangs up.
She doesn't say which Mr. Holmes she means.
There's no sign of the brother when John shows up at the hospital, holdall in hand, and signs the visitors' log at the front desk. No sign of any parents or mates once he gets out of the lift and finds the right ward, either, just a glossy-looking young blonde perched on a chair outside the unmarked door he's been directed to. She's typing into her phone, and barely glances at John before waving him towards the half-open door. "Leave that out here," she says in the same bored voice she used on the phone.
"I'm sorry?"
She points to his holdall without looking up.
"Oh." John drops his bag, clears his throat, hesitates, and knocks lightly on the door. When there's no answer, he says "Hello?" and looks in.
It's a large room, and private, which raises John's eyebrows. The figure in the bed has his face turned away from him. Asleep, John thinks, but then there's a restless twitch and a sigh.
"Well, come in then, if you're going to. And shut the sodding door."
John does, and approaches the bed. The man in it still doesn't look over at him. He's hooked up to a monitor and an IV drip, and John studies them and the notes on his chart without really meaning to, the way a librarian will automatically peruse your bookshelves and make mental notes on the organising principles of your collection upon being shown into your house. He stops himself as soon as he realises he's doing it and turns his attention back to the patient himself, who is glaring at him now, sharp-eyed despite the impressive cocktail of medications he's being given.
He's been put in wrist restraints, John notices suddenly.
"John Watson," he says, trying to cover his awkwardness with an introduction. "Sorry, you wouldn't remember, of course, but I was- I was there, the other night, it was me who-"
"Of course I remember. Well? Why are you here? Did my brother put you up to this? I suppose he thinks I ought to thank you."
John blinks. He's not sure what he expected, coming here. He's not even sure why he came, except that it had seemed like an order and he isn't used to refusing orders, even when they result in personal embarrassment. And he'd been a bit curious, perhaps.
"You probably should thank me," he says. "I don't care if you do or not, though. In fact I'd just as soon you didn't."
"Gets tiresome, does it, with all the lives you save? Saving lives for Queen and country-now there's a noble pursuit. You must be terribly proud of yourself, even without the random acts of heroism during leave."
John gives a surprised laugh. He's not shocked that Holmes was able to find out his occupation-the information is on the paperwork from the other night, surely-but the attitude is too absurd; he's never met anyone so instantly combative in his life. No one who didn't have a large weapon pointed at him, anyway. He licks his lips and tries to think how to respond.
"Right," he says finally. "Well. Glad to see you're on the mend. Happy Christmas, and...better luck stupidly throwing away your life next time, I suppose." He turns to go, but the petulant voice stops him before he gets to the door.
"You know absolutely nothing about my life."
"No." John turns back, smiling pleasantly. "Not really, no. Just that you're an idiot."
A disbelieving laugh. "An idiot. Really."
"Mm," John agrees. "I'd say so, yes. Good morning."
His hand is on the door handle when the voice stops him again. "How's Harry? Recovered yet?"
John freezes. Surely he wouldn't have mentioned Harry to anyone involved that night-would he? He'd been absolutely knackered by the end of it, but...
The voice drones on, raspy but smug. "Pub's a funny place to go to escape an alcoholic sibling, but apparently drink's quite the family weakness; you might want to watch that, the next time you're home between deployments. You're better off with the gambling habit, probably, even if you can't afford it."
"How...?" John's hands are fists, his mouth is dry. This Holmes bloke isn't just strange, he's unreal. It's making the back of his neck prickle. "Your brother, the one with the suit. He had me investigated?"
"Oh, very likely. Not that he'd need to; it's all right there." The man in the bed rattles off something about John's phone, his hands, his choice of pub, the patterns of wear on his boots, and his blood alcohol level and corresponding reaction time after three drinks consumed over a period of two and three-quarters hours-though the whisky had been somewhat watered down, terrible bar staff, notorious for it...
John takes another step or two closer to the very strange stranger's performance (for that's what it is, clearly) without even meaning to, as if he's being literally reeled in. "That's...all right, that's rather brilliant," he has to admit, when the flow of words seems temporarily stemmed. "Impressive. Bravo. Not an idiot after all, then. Just a waste."
The cold eyes snap. "Better be heading off, hadn't you? You don't want to miss your flight." He turns his face away again and just...shuts down, as if he's used up all his energy reserves for the day. Probably he has. John flicks an involuntary glance at his monitor again and watches his vitals drop back down to baseline levels.
He thinks about walking out, shrugging it all off, the whole weird episode.
"How did you know I was on my way to- Oh, never mind. I've got a bit of time, actually," he says at last, and pulls up one of the hard plastic chairs that seem designed to punish hospital visitors for daring to hang about any longer than absolutely necessary. "Your turn. What were you doing in a place like that on Christmas Eve? Bit seedy for the likes of you, isn't it? Expensive suit, expensive drug habit-surely with a brain like yours you could think of a more interesting way to rebel?"
Holmes appears to struggle with his desire not to give John the satisfaction of an answer. In the end, his need to correct John wins out. "Not rebelling," he says shortly. "It's a useful place to gather information, information of a certain sort. You wouldn't understand."
"On Christmas Eve," John repeats, leaning forward a bit, elbows on his knees. "You must really hate that brother of yours. And what good would any sort of information do you if you're dead of an overdose, anyway?"
Another painful-looking struggle. He just can't let it go, though. "It wasn't intentional," Holmes snaps. "A miscalculation, that's all."
John's eyebrows go up. "Really? Brilliant fellow like you?"
"Oh, why are you still here? I hope you don't attempt to psychoanalyse all your patients this way, Dr. Watson. You're shockingly bad at it."
"I don't need to," John says steadily. "My patients are generally trying as hard as they can not to get killed. Bit sickening to see someone with everything you've got going for them throw it all away, that's all."
Holmes closes his eyes. He's as pale as the pillow. Paler. "Please leave," he says, and this time John does.
He gets as far as the lifts, where he stands with his head bowed for several minutes, then purses his mouth, exhales, and walks back down to the corridor, dropping his holdall at the unresponsive phone-goddess's feet before entering the unmarked room again without knocking. Holmes hasn't moved.
"I'm sorry," John says, standing at attention just inside the door. "I don't know anything about your life, you're quite right about that, and I apologise. You threw me, I suppose, with your...what you said. Anyway. I hope things improve for you."
The man doesn't look over at him, doesn't open his eyes, just gives a short, bitter-sounding laugh and flicks his fingers dismissively at him. It ought to piss John right off, but it doesn't. He feels sorry for him, suddenly, and guilty, too. Surely he's been around enough damaged young men and women to recognise that their reactions to pain and fear and forced immobility are often anything but reasonable.
"Do you need anything?" John asks. "A drink, or-the non-alcoholic kind, I mean."
No reaction, not even the ghost of a smile. John glances around the room and realises what's odd about it, apart from the fact that it's a private room: no flowers. He hadn't noticed at first because he's not used to seeing them in a military hospital, but it's a bit odd for a civilian, isn't it? In fact, there are no personal effects of any kind at all in the room, as far as he can see.
He draws in a breath to ask about it, but changes his mind and lets it out in a sigh instead. Impolite to ask, surely. Anyway, Holmes appears to have fallen asleep now, and from the stats on the monitor, John guesses he's not faking.
On impulse, he goes over to the bedside table and scribbles his email address on the pad of paper sitting there before he leaves-for good, this time. John picks up his bag again, glances curiously at the young woman stationed outside the hospital room, shakes his head, and takes the lift down to catch a cab to the barracks.
Three hours later he's on a flight to Kabul. Forty-eight hours after that he's in the field again, up to his elbows in gore, and the whole incident already seems like a strange, half-remembered dream.
- Camp Bastion, Helmand Province, 8 August, 2005
Bit of a strange question for you-none of my usual sources available at the moment. How long does it take for surgical scar tissue to fade completely from pink to white? Does the process continue in the postmortem state, and if so, for how long?
-Sherlock Holmes
John blinks at the computer screen in total confusion for a long time before he can make any sense of the message or remember where he's heard the name before. It's a memorable enough name, but he hasn't slept for more than two hours at a stretch all week, and the message is so bizarre that he nearly dismisses it as spam, a hoax, a practical joke.
When it comes to him, he makes a startled "huh!" sound out loud. Christmas in London seems light-years away. Also, it is without a doubt one of the strangest questions he's ever been asked a propos of nothing, via email or otherwise. He looks up at the date on the message. It's nearly two weeks old.
Finally he types back:
Yes, very strange question. Er...depends on a lot of factors, age, skin tone, epidermal elasticity, general health of the patient. Anywhere from nine months to three years, I'd say offhand. I don't know about postmortem. Corpses not my area if I can possibly help it. Sorry I don't have a more useful answer. Curious to know why you ask?
He hesitates for quite a while before adding,
I'm surprised (but not displeased) to hear from you after all this time. How are things going these days?
-John Watson
PS - Sorry for the late response, hope it wasn't a time-sensitive question. I don't usually check my email all that often these days.
He clicks Send before he has a chance to have second thoughts, then instantly decides he sounds incredibly fatuous and wishes he hadn't.
New message from TheScienceOfDeduction, the screen tells him, while he's reading the exchange over for the third time, and his eyebrows go up.
Very time-sensitive. No matter. Ancient history. If you're still at the computer, though, I've got another one for you: How many minutes/hours can a cleanly severed digit be kept before it can no longer be reattached?
-SH
John laughs in delighted surprise.
I'd say up to 8 hours, if it's been kept on ice. Not one of yours, I trust?
What is it that you do, anyway?
He doesn't get a reply before his turn at the computer is up, but he makes a point of checking his email again the next afternoon.
Not mine, no. As for what I do...it's a bit complicated. Asking to be polite, or really want to know?
-SH
John's had two or three beers in the mess (mates he hadn't caught up with in a while, he's not on duty, it is not a "family weakness") so he responds incautiously,
Stop being so mysterious and tell me everything, you wanker.
He waits, staring at the screen and drumming his fingers on the edge of the keyboard for what seems like a long time. Just as he's about to give up and log off, the new message signal blinks on with a soft chime, and he finds himself grinning like a fool.
[ Open message? ]
John moves the cursor and clicks Yes.