A/N: A further instalment of the Resuscitation series (yes, I've named it.) The other pieces are listed in my profile, but here they are anyway. So, in the recommended reading order, there are It was Greg, Not with Haste, Give Me Strength and Blood, Skin and Gratitude. Enjoy!
John wasn't being totally truthful when he told Sally Donovan that Sherlock was breathing on his own. It's not quite a lie, either. Half of each breath he takes is thanks to his own initiative. The doctors are working on weaning him off the ventilator, ever since he forced his way to consciousness through the cloak of sedation, attempting to fight the intubation tube though he's really far too weak to manage without it. He passed out almost immediately afterwards, and it's might never have happened at all only for his choking on the tube has stayed in John's mind in the hours since, coming back to him in the quiet as he keeps his fingers intertwined Sherlock's.
He only managed to wake because they started to lighten the sedation him last night, easing off on the cooling fluids and pads and replacing them with warmer ones. He's still a little cooler than he should be – John can feel it in his hand – but these things need to be gradual after all.
John sighs and lays his head down on the pillow beside Sherlock's, squeezing his fingers gently. They feel so thin and delicate now that they are limp. It's such a far cry from the strong hand that's he used to holding that it makes him want to cry.
"I love you, you know," John murmurs, voice hoarse from the tears that he's suppressed and how much he's talked over the last few days – to the doctors, to Mycroft and Greg and Mister and Mrs Holmes and Mrs Hudson and of course to Sherlock too. He needs to know that he isn't alone. "I do. I don't say it half enough but we never really talk about these things anyway." He raises Sherlock's hand to his lips and kisses it. "Christ. I always said you needed to be more careful. Greg's told me that nothing could have stopped it, except you not getting involved in the first place. But you've never been able to do that, have you?"
A stray curl hangs loose over Sherlock's forehead and John brushes it out of the way gently. His fingers brush over the parted lips, carefully so as not to disturb the tube still delivering oxygen into damaged lungs. The bullet tore through Sherlock's right lung, collapsing it and contributing to his cardiac arrest. John's seen enough of them to know what it was like, what each of the three were like. The battle to secure lines in order get fluids into him, the chest compressions, the mouth to mouth breaths replaced with a tube right into his lungs, the defibrillations and temporary dressing of the chest wound. The needle into his chest to try and drain the blood and air constricting his lungs. No aspect of it is new to him, aside from it being performed on Sherlock.
His skin is still so pale, body trying to adjust to the massive amount of blood lost and replaced in such a short space of time, major transfusions which have helped to keep him alive so far. It strikes John anew how lucky Sherlock's been. If the bullet had been a little more to the right, it would have destroyed his aorta, and there would have been no resuscitating him from that. He would have been dead before the ambulance even had a hope of getting there.
It was close as it is, with the ambulance making it to him within the prescribed eight minutes.
The image of Greg as he appeared on that first day swims before John's eyes again. Grey and tired, lip bitten and dried blood staining his shirt. Sherlock's blood. The shock was clear in the lines of his face, the way he was at a loss for words and what to do, though he did his best to break to John easily. It's always different having to tell someone you know about something like that. Sally too, only today, strangely pale and tired as if she's been worrying over Sherlock almost as much as everyone else.
And she probably has been. She was there, after all. She fought just as hard to keep him alive long enough for him to get to hospital as anyone, and maybe harder than some. It was her hands that tried to staunch the blood flow too, her hands that worked to coerce Sherlock's heart into beating again. It's not so long since those hands were coated in his metaphorical blood, after he jumped from Bart's. John found himself looking at them as he was talking to her, feeling nauseous at the thought of all that they've done both to and for him. But especially for him.
He likes to think that he could have helped Sherlock if he'd been there instead of at the surgery, but he's not sure. More than likely he would have slipped into battlefield mode, dredged up what's left of his Afghanistan days. He's had friends under his hands before, those who lived and those who died. But it's different when it's Sherlock. He's so much more than they were or ever could have hoped to be.
There's a part of John that wishes he was there, for Sherlock's sake, so he could offer what comfort he could summon. Yet there's another part too that's thankful that he wasn't there, thankful that he didn't have to see Sherlock like that, fighting for breath and bleeding everywhere and slipping further and further away, powerless to stop it coming. He couldn't live with himself now if he hadn't been able to do anything. It was enough watching Sherlock die once, even if he wasn't really dead. If he'd had to go through that same helplessness again . . .
He still might have to face it. Sherlock could still die now. It's not as if he's out of the woods yet. Who knows what state his brain will be in when he properly regains consciousness? The lack of oxygen when he went into cardiac arrest could have done anything to it. And that's not to mention the possibility of his contracting an infection, which could kill him now without much warning, considering the condition that he's already in. It wouldn't be the first time that John's watched a post-surgical infection claim a patient.
(Sherlock is more than a patient, no matter his current status, and always will be.)
John would hug him if he could, if it wouldn't disturb the multitude of tubes currently keeping him alive. He'd hold him close and protect him from anything that came their way, if he only could. If it wasn't too late for that already.
If John hadn't been called into the surgery that day, this might never have happened. Sherlock took the case out of boredom as much as anything, based on what John's managed to glean from Greg on the subject. And if John had been there, they wouldn't have gone on the case. Or if they had, they'd have left before the attempt at an arrest where it all went so badly wrong. Or John would have pushed Sherlock out of the way if he had to, if he could have done so in time. Anything so that Sherlock wouldn't be lying in this hospital bed now, more dead than alive.
How much more pressure can his body take? How much more strain can his heart bear? How much more fight could possibly be left in him? John's not sure that he wants to know. It can't be much on any count.
He'll stay here anyway, holding Sherlock's hand and murmuring softly for as long as it takes, comforting both Sherlock and himself, no matter what the outcome is. Hoping that he pulls through and will be all right, with little or no lasting side effects.
It's all that he can do now, anyway.