The Doctor in Room 705
Part One / of Three
Before you read this you should know, this is by far the most personal piece of writing I have ever done. Just keep that in mind as you read this (if you read this). It's kinda odd knowing how close certain bit of this is close to my mind (not to mention frightening). I'd say more about how difficult this makes me posting this. I do hope you like it at least.
Synopsis: All the nurses and aids at St. Bart's Psychiatric Ward have talked and speculated how the woman in 705 got there. It becomes even more speculative closer to the year mark of said woman's admittance that a certain man makes he's reappearance and begins visiting. She must be special they conclude as they watch the coming and going of the only consulting detective; Sherlock Holmes. She is that if not a bit more than damaged.
Molly Hooper wasn't waiting for any one person to visit her. She had long since stopped feeling as if she really needed anyone to help her. If she could recall the two instances that landed her in this padded room, she would merely delete them. She isn't ashamed of her actions nor does she regret it.
It's in her file. Everything is in that small Manila folder that the neurologists and the psychoanalysts carry. She even has an appointed therapist who she is supposed to discuss the deeper matters of her mind. It doesn't mean that she does. She has never left the four plush walls of 705 since the day she was escorted into it by two men.
She thought it was because she was labeled fragile - physically and mentally speaking that they didn't shove her in there. They only guided her in there with her arms wrapped uncomfortably within the confined straps of the yellowish white straight jacket. She has found comfort in the isolation and the odd twists of her upper limbs being constricted in a form of containment.
It's supposed to be for her own good. So that she won't harm herself - or others. She would have smiled ruefully at them after the incidents, now she just sits there in the corner where she knows the camera over the door has a pretty good vantage point of all of her.
Her knees are slightly drawn up to her body and she is leaning against the crevice of the corner. Eyes closed. She isn't sleeping, just there. She knows what will be there if she opens them. Open space where she can walk and roam for so long before she is supposed to start dwelling on what is wrong with her.
She did that for three days in the beginning and then she turned off. She's no machine - she's no robot but she had driven her own self to the edge and this is where she stayed, idle.
Thinking does nothing for her. At times she's reminded of someone fleetingly but she never let's her thoughts stay on him. She'll find a way to bring the nurses in and get them to inject her or shove that god forsake pill down her throat until she clocks out again. She would rather not be awake than be reminded of any of the things before she got herself in here.
It's painful…
She won't say it aloud. She won't speak to anyone. She just sits there with a blank look on her face. She is breathing and most would think that would be enough. It's not.
Sometimes she wishes she could feel a spark of adrenaline. Something that could give her a jolt of life but it isn't a possibility. She had decided that a great length of time ago.
It's only on the day that she is sweating out a fever and actually lying flat on the plush surface with her face planted into it does there seem to be any sign that she isn't entirely gone. He's sitting in the center of the room. She doesn't blink. She rolls over so that she is faced in the opposite direction. She just closes her eyes.
She's hallucinating, she concludes.
She isn't sure if a day has passed or if it's the way she is actually feeling that makes it feel that way when she resurfaces again.
A long time ago she mapped out this room. If there was even a small alteration to it she could tell. She could tell two things:
1) There was an IV drip in her right hand. A doctor had been in there recently to assess her condition. They had slipped one of her arms out of the confining jacket. It would go back in soon, she was positive.
2) He was still there. Staring at her.
Molly could go a great deal of time without acknowledging the existence of any person that entered her safety net. That's what you deemed this room. She was comfortable here. She was content.
Sherlock Holmes had disrupted the flow of comfort. He was someone she had blatantly disconnected herself from. There were reasons of course. None that she would bring herself to think about. She could just shut down again. She can rest for a few more days. It wasn't a problem.
There was something her therapist had told her during the third week of silence that suddenly peaked at the forefront of her mind. It was foggy but she remembered it in broken pieces. "Confrontation is the only way you can move past the problem. Leaving things unresolved won't get you by or out of here."
Molly did something that could be seen as an accomplishment. She said something. "Go."
Sherlock doesn't budge apart from the movement of his lips curving slightly.