"I'm not in shock!" John had kept on telling everyone, hitting away doctors hands with frustration, praying they'd get the message and leave him alone. He'd hardly slept for the past four nights, and if he was anything, it was tired. The neurologists had been the worst. John, in his desperate attempt to protect Sherlock, had dragged his friend to the floor, and had hit his own head on the tiled floor of the hallway of 221B. But he was feeling nothing more than guilt, feeling partly responsible for the motionless body he saw before him, lay in the hospital bed, attached to machines, tubes going down his throat, keeping him breathing, intravenous lines in his hands, providing him with various vital fluids - most noticably blood - and everything else he could have expected to see on a life support machine.
John's mind had wandered back to some days earlier, he and Sherlock had been laughing about a narrow escape from a gunman, John himself, for once, understanding exactly why Sherlock had caused the diversion that had almost seen them both shot. And for once, them both knowing the others thoughts, laughing was easy. It had been what Sherlock was calling a "textbook diversion" although John was quite certain there was nothing quite so "textbook" about carrying a gun yourself, whilst trying to escape from a serial killer with a gun.
"Oh bloody hell," Sherlock snorted, his laughter ceasing, standing at the window, seeing his brother climbing from a car. "Mycroft," he said, looking slightly disgusted. "I'd better go and answer it. He might try breaking in again otherwise."
John's laughter ceased with a snort also. He frowned. He knew that Mycroft was Sherlock's brother, and that both men respected each other in some sort of a way, but he didn't have much time for Mycroft. There had been many arguments between them both. And he didn't exactly trust him. He stood up and followed Sherlock down the stairs, passing , the landlady, and saying hello.
"Mycroft..." Sherlock said, opening the door, looking at his smartly dressed brother, and then looking at the cuff of his own shirt, blood stained and damp. "Please do..." he said, as Mycroft pushed his way past his younger brother. "Come in..." For a moment, Sherlock stood on the doorstep, gazing down Baker Street, looking for any signs of any more trouble. He hadn't realised the pain of it until John had dragged him to the floor, trying to shield him from any more shots, dragging him inside, failing to kick the door closed, feeling a bullet fly past his left shoulder at very close range, sent, no doubt, to hit Sherlock in the head, and hearing scream from the top of the house. And just when he thought the firing had stopped, Sherlock, despite coughing up copious amounts of blood, raised his head, looking at John, when another bullet flew at him, tearing into his skull.
"Still no change?"
John shook his head, looking at the woman behind him, a colleague of Mycroft's, sent no doubt to check up on Sherlock's condition, not John's. "Nothing," he muttered, listening to the steady beep of the ventilator, his hand, as it had been for hours, fastened firmly around Sherlock's hand. "Not at all," he yawned, screwing his face up in tiredness, crossed with a headache from a lack of sleep.
At that precise moment, he felt Sherlock's hand twitch, and saw his eyes flickering, though he didn't get his hopes up. As a doctor himself, he'd dealt with head traumas before, and he knew that anything could just be a sign that someone was fighting. That it didn't necessarily mean that they were better, or even awake. And as far as he knew, looking again at Sherlock's eyes, which had stopped flickering, and feeling that his hand had stopped twitching, Sherlock was still in the drug induced coma, brought on from the heavy sedation and anaesthesia.