3 years, 36 months, 156 weeks, 1095 days…..
The calendar on the wall practically screamed at John from across the room. It didn't look any differently than it normally did; simple picturesque photo above the plain white dates. It hung in the same place it did on the wall as it has since the beginning of year. Most of the time John never even looked at it; he never needed to scribble a note on a date. There was nothing of importance to remember, no need to really care what day it was. Today should have been like any other day…except that it wasn't. Today was not any other day.
John sat in an arm chair across the room from where the calendar hung ominously on the wall. There was a chill in the air and he pulled his robe tighter around him, not sure if the chill was from the air or the deep chill inside himself. His feet were cold and he should have gotten socks to put on, but he remained frozen, staring at the calendar. Light streamed in through the window opposite him and cast a light upon the calendar. Had it been completely obscured in darkness, he would have still known what day it was. He had been trying to forget but of course that didn't work, just like many other things these days.
He picked up a cup on the table beside him and drank the potent liquid inside, drawing back from the taste and at the same time happy for the drink passing through his lips. He had never been much of a drinker, until…..
Not to say that he was drunk or anything. Sure, he did well, to anyone on the outside who cared to notice. He went to work every morning, saw patients, made small talk with his co-workers. Occasionally he would even go out for dinner or a drink with a friend. He was always on time, never late. His co-workers would probably even call him ambitious for all of the overtime that he worked on weekends when we was not normally scheduled. No one knew the truth. No one knew that the real reason he worked so much was to keep from having to go home, to a home that didn't even feel like home. That he would do anything to escape what lay at his new small flat that he hated; loneliness, emptiness, flashbacks.
No, he did a good job hiding these things from the people he saw every day. By now he was pretty much an expert at hiding his feelings from the world. There was only one person skilled enough to see through his tough mask. And that one person was the one who had caused all this turmoil.
Up until this morning he had told himself that he was going to act like today was any other day. It was after all, no different than the past three years. He had planned to go to work, stay late and see some patients that he hadn't been able to see yesterday, and then come home, just like any other day. But when he woke he knew that that wasn't option. Because even though his mind knew logically that this day was no different than the other 1094 before it, to his heart, it WAS different.
He glanced at the calendar again and felt like it was practically screaming the words his own mind screamed at him all the time : Sherlock's dead, Sherlock's dead…