Confidential Transcript

Recording taken 17/10/2013, 13.00

Psychologist: Dr. L. Charles

Patient: John H. Watson

Re: Annual review and assessment

Have you started recording?

Yes, John. But I don't want you to think about the recorder. It's just a tool…something to help us review what we accomplish here today.

Right. All right, then. Where would you like me to begin?

Why don't you choose a single day that has been significant for you in the last month?

Wow. A single day. (5 sec. pause) There's one that stands out, actually, from August… the 23rd…really stands out.

Would you like to talk about what happened that day?

I could, I suppose. Do…do you want me to just…?

Take your time, John. Start from the beginning of the day. Tell me what happened from the moment you woke up.

(7 sec. pause) Looking back, statistically, it… it had to happen on an off day. I mean, the good days – I'd learned not to count on there being many. It'd been off from the start. Bad. I remember…I remember hearing my mobile alarm that morning. It didn't wake me; I only set it because I had to work. And there was just…grey. Nothing. I lay there fifteen, maybe twenty minutes longer than I should have, but I just couldn't find the energy – no, that… it was more than that; I couldn't find a reason, not a real one, to get out of bed. God I hate off days. You feel bad so you don't move; you feel bad because you haven't moved…you get the picture…obviously.

I'd slept in fits and starts, and when I'd woken up for good at half four, it was because my left hand was seized up in a fist so tight my nails had bitten half moons in the flesh of my palm. It wasn't the first time – used to happen all the time, after I got back from Afghanistan. It stopped when I met him. (3 sec. pause) It started happening again after – well, you know. It surprised me…the first time it happened again, but not after. Damn nuisance.

I'll skip the part of the day where I had breakfast, shall I? Focus on the important parts? (1 sec. pause) Actually, I think I did skip breakfast. I'm never hungry when I'm depressed.

I had been at the clinic for about six hours that day before signing myself out. I hated working on my off days, not just because they turned me into a miserable git, but because I was afraid of making a mistake, of overlooking something, maybe hurting someone. It's too easy on off days for me to drift off into my own thoughts when a patient is talking, telling me about a problem. I'd sometimes just think of things I'd rather be doing… sleeping, mostly, or walking, but more often I'd think about conversations he and I used to have. Or, sometimes, I'd imagine what Sherlock would've said if he were in the room with me, listening to my patients, if he'd had the patience. Funny.

Sometimes, I swear, I could really hear his voice, you know, in my ear, in my head, belittling the intelligence of a drop-in or a colleague. Sometimes it made me smile for a moment, just thinking about what he would say, and then I'd know that I hadn't heard a word of what my patient was actually saying to me.

I remember - that day had been one of the ones when I'd been distracted, mostly, by the thought of his voice, his presence at my side. (2 sec. pause) That's why what happened on the way home was so unnerving.

I'd left the clinic, taken the tube from Camden Town and planned on changing at King's Cross, as I always do, but I missed my stop. I just hadn't been paying attention, I suppose, which is typical and I got out at Moorgate instead. I wish I could remember why I decided to leave the tube at Moorgate. Maybe I wanted the long walk. Maybe I thought it would help me sleep that night. I don't know.

It was busy as hell. Well, with the crowds this year, it's always busy but at six o'clock the crush of people was mad. I wasn't looking around much, just letting myself be herded along with everyone else from the platform, fed onto the escalator, mashed in on all sides, hot and sticky. It was raining, and I remember the lady in front of me had a coat that was dripping onto my shoes.

(3 sec. pause) It was about a third of the way up. Just…like a mirage – it's a tired cliché, yes, but I'm tired so you'll have to excuse me – a man holding an open book. But not just a man, not…not just any man – that face I'd know anywhere, that ridiculous fringe, those grey eyes of his, that presence…the one I'd been thinking about all that afternoon… and every afternoon… flashed past me so suddenly and so briefly from over on the down escalator that it took me a moment to register what I'd seen. When I did, it was like a punch to the throat. I turned around, stared back down the escalator, trying to see, again, what I thought I might have seen, but…nothing. I looked for that, that white square, the book that I'd picked up on first. I thought: you don't see that often. I'll be able to pick it out again, but… I wanted to go back down straight away, but I couldn't. I was stuck. I yelled instead, his name, hoping that that face, his face, would turn around and find me but it didn't happen that way, just a hundred frowning strangers staring up at me, like 'who's this crazy bastard? Wish he'd shut it.' I shoved as best I could to get to the top of the stairs so that I could get over onto the down side. Well, I had to go check. I had to make sure that my eyes were just playing tricks on me, that it was just me, taking one step closer to madness. (2 sec. pause)

I went down as fast as I could. The people I stepped on or elbowed might as well have not been there at all. I was possessed by that single, what – thought? Fear? Need? Take your pick. I called his name again and again but it was useless over the din of the station, so I said it to myself instead, like, like if I said his name, maybe it would bring him back, conjure him or something. I don't know. I got to the bottom.

One of the station attendants didn't like me running and grabbed me by the elbow when I passed him on the platform. He wanted to know what I thought I was doing. I told him – odd to think about it now – I told him I thought I saw a friend, Sherlock Holmes, on the escalator, and I wanted to catch up to him. He was carrying a book; maybe he saw him? He said 'Good luck mate' and 'Don't you watch the news? Holmes is dead, the wanker' and 'Good riddance.' I might have hit him had I really been listening. Instead I scanned the crowd, but by then a train had come and gone and I could see he wasn't on the platform. Or, rather, I felt it.

His presence was gone. Again. If I'd let myself, I might have started to grieve all over again. Maybe I did, a bit. It almost felt the same; well, not the same as watching him… watching… you know. (6 sec. pause)

Don't stop yourself John. Say what you mean to say.

Fine. It wasn't the same as watching him fall to his death. Happy?

Go on.

It was like there was no air. There isn't, usually, down there, but I was used to that. This was different. I was faint, dizzy almost, and I had to brace myself against the tiles of the platform wall. I'll ask you, but I know what you'll say; everyone's the same: have you ever wanted something so badly, so very badly, that you knew it had to be impossible? That, that God or the Devil or whoever was playing tricks, testing you, seeing how far you could be pushed before you cracked?

Is that how you felt while this was happening?

Well, standing there, that was when it really struck me that I might have imagined the whole thing, hallucinated, maybe, from the insomnia…emotional stress. But a part of me was glad. It hurt, standing there, but it was something. It was a feeling, and I hadn't had many of those for months. (5 sec. pause)

What did you do after that?

I went home. I don't remember much about the walk home, except that instead of just letting my hand fist up like it wanted to, I kept my mobile in it just on the off chance I got a text…an impossible text. It was silent, though…cold, dead in my hand. No! I remember: it buzzed once, that's right, but it was just an ad and I have never, I mean never, wanted to throw something more violently in my life.

But, I got home.

I should have eaten, or maybe poured myself a stiff drink, or done the washing up, or watched telly, or done anything, really, when I got back to Baker Street. But I didn't. I wasn't hungry or tired or restless or upset. I just (1 sec. pause) sat, with my mobile in my hand, the whole evening. It got warm, the mobile that is, in my hand. Then a bit damp, a bit unpleasant, but I didn't even shift to wipe it on my trousers. I just couldn't be bothered.

I watched the light in the room fade. I remember that I watched the bright rectangle of orange from the streetlight sharpen on the wall next to the kitchen, and bleed the colour from the wallpaper there. I listened to the sound of the traffic outside in the rain. I guess I was just…lost…in the thought of him, and all else went numb. I must have shut my eyes at some point, but I have no idea how long I was asleep. I hadn't moved, even in sleep. Isn't that the oddest thing, now?

What did you—? (cut off)

I don't remember feeling the buzz of the text, but that must be what woke me. What it was, what I read…(3 sec. pause) 'Can you forgive me? –SH'

I'd, I'd read it too quickly. I wanted to read it again because I needed to be sure I saw it right but I couldn't because my vision went blurry and no matter how I held the screen or how I squinted or how hard I rubbed my eyes, I couldn't see straight. I remember crying with frustration, with anger, damning the darkness of the room and, at the end of my rope, I swore and I slammed the damn thing down on the desk and that's when I turned to see him standing in the open doorway.

I was terrified, I admit: terrified I was dreaming, or I really was losing it, seeing things, terrified to look away in case when I looked back…

I wanted to say his name but no sound came out. He stood so still like, like a photograph, a reflection on black ice. I wanted to go to him, but I was paralysed, pains shooting up and down my whole left side. I thought I'd be sick. We might have stood there an hour if it was thirty seconds.

When he moved in–into the room, he made no sound. His clothes, I'd never seen them before. He was in a grey hoodie, like some college kid. Ridiculous, but I wasn't laughing. I stepped forward, a man who didn't trust the floor not to give out under him. He just kept looking at me, quiet, like he was waiting for something. He still had a book in his hand, but I didn't know whether to be relieved by that or (1 sec. pause) or be frightened that it was just part of the same hallucination.

I got close enough to see the beads of rain on his shoulders, and I reached out. Can I be blamed if I was a little shocked to find that he was really there?

(2 sec. pause) I put a hand on his chest, and…I pushed him. I'm not proud of it, but I did. I pushed him and I hit him with my open hand, and then with my closed hand. He didn't fight back. No, he just stood his ground and kept on staring at me with those grey eyes until I was man enough again to stop and look back. And then he spoke, and it was there, his voice, Sherlock's voice, not in my head but there, really there in the room and it was my wish granted, my miracle.

Did he say anything to you?

It was barely a whisper, but he said to me: 'John, I want to explain. I am so… very …sorry.'

And (2 sec. pause) that was it. I pulled him to me and the pain in my shoulder was terrible. I crushed him with all the strength I had. You know, thinking back on it, I was so intent on my…my arms around him that I can't remember, I mean at all, whether his arms were around me? I might have hurt him. I didn't care. He was back, and I would never let him go again. For a long time we just stood there taking it all in, knowing we couldn't. Not really. Not yet.

He was cold. I sat him on the sofa and pulled a blanket around him and I remembered, the night after I'd first met him, and our first case together: the stupid orange blanket that the paramedics put him in at the end of the night when it was all over and I think he was remembering the same moment, because he had that look in his eye.

Sitting next to him I started feeling dizzy again and I wanted to get up, take some deep breaths, I don't know, pull away a bit…until my head was clearer, but he wouldn't let me. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me back down. He had both of my hands in his and that really was something different from before. I can't say it was uncomfortable. Surprising, yes, but I was still coming around to the idea that he was in the room, let alone thumbing my wrist. He had never been much bothered with physical contact…went out of his way to avoid it, actually, much as he could. It was clear, though, that he had something to say, and he was going to get it done before anything else got in the way. Good, I thought. I had one or two things to say as well.

I remember what we said perfectly. It's like combat… it's, the stress of the moment makes every part of you shut down and just your memory is working, taking it all in. He said…he, um (4 sec. pause)

John?

Sorry. I'm just…it's…sorry. (3 sec. pause)

John, what did he say to you?

You know, I think I'm finished for today. Can you stop the recorder…please?

(End of transcript)