The steady beep of the heart monitor filled the ears of the man who sat watching the still form lying in the bed. Sherlock sat with his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped around his legs, if he had been anywhere else the infuriating waiting would have made him, in his form of the word, board. But he was here and it was John, he wouldn't be board for John. Sherlock knew that he shouldn't be there, if John were to wake up… But John wouldn't wake up and Sherlock could not even fathom being anywhere else.
The only reason he was there now was because silly John hadn't taken a dead man's phone number off of his emergency contacts. And Sherlock, in a moment of weakness, hadn't gotten rid of his phone, he told himself that he didn't do sentiment, but that is exactly what this was. If John had been awake he would have been amazed at the amount of humanity Sherlock was capable of.
As Sherlock sat waiting his thoughts drifted back to two days ago when he had gotten that phone call. He didn't answer it knowing that it would be someone from the life he had been forced to leave. But after wards he had listened to the message; it had been a woman who told him that there had been a car accident involving Mr. John Watson and that he was in the hospital. Sherlock had dropped what he was doing and gone to London, where he learned that John was in a coma. He had enter the hospital room and setting down next to the bed and had not left his friends side since.
He did not eat, he did not sleep; he simply watched and waited, feeling the passing of every minute as if it were a year. He hoped for and yet dreaded the moment when John would open his eyes.
After a while Sherlock untangled himself from the chair and walking over the window looked out on the dreary ran swept city. As he stood there he heard John's voice, faint but still there, "Sherlock?" Turning Sherlock saw John still lying in bed but with his eyes opened just enough to see. When he saw Sherlock's face he gave a sigh, "It is you." He whispered, barely able to make the words come.
Before Sherlock could even open his mouth to reply, John's eyes closed and they didn't open again. In a daze Sherlock left the room pausing only once to inform nurse that John was waking up. And then as quickly and as quietly as he had come, he was gone.
When John had fully regained consciousness, he remembered what he thought was a dream. Not until much later would he realize that it wasn't a dream, and that his dead best friend had come to visit him in the hospital.