I once suffered awfully from hay fever. I'd get sore eyes and a red nose, and after any minor al fresco activity the onslaught of Nature would soon force me to retreat to my room and surrender to the symptoms, hoping that Morpheus might fight my battles for me. Then came my friend the doctor, in our first summer living together:
"Mr Holmes, I have something for you," he said softly as he opened the door to my room, as I lay suffering on top of the covers of my bed. He was late home.
"I'm quite sure I have tried every drug in existence, Doctor-"
"This isn't a drug, Holmes," he'd dropped my prefix, but I can't say I minded. He sat on the edge of my bed and drew from a paper bag a pot of honey and a teaspoon. "It is merely medicine." And there and then he pulled the paper wrapper from the jar's rim eagerly, the elastic dropping into his lap, and put the spoon in.
"Watson, what are you doing?" I sniffed, shifting my position to peer into his hands suspiciously.
"I'm giving you local honey. It is a little experiment on my part. I read about it in a medical journal. Basically, the pollen that bees collect for honey from around here build up a resistance in your system in a way that doesn't trigger your allergic reaction, and in fact inhibits it. You can have it for breakfast tomorrow and consecutive days, but for now could you just have two teaspoonfuls, please?"
"I'd prefer it with toast, but it appears sound reasoning- alright, Watson!" I had had to stop him feeding me the spoon, and took it from him. "This is very nice. How did you get local honey? We live in London."
"With difficulty." I realised that I was the reason he was late back, and frowned slightly. "I am a doctor, Holmes. I can't have an ill person in the same house as me and not help them."
I removed the spoon from my mouth and pushed into the jar in his hands for the second time. "Couldn't you have recommended me go and get it?"
"Would you have done, really?" he paused as I bit the spoon, and flinched at the sound of my teeth against the metal.
"Probably. I'd have tried anything."
"In your condition…? I don't think you understand sometimes, Holmes, that I am fond of you." He stood up, taking his honey with him and leaving me with a spoon in my mouth and a very odd feeling spreading through me like the smile across my face. I laid back and tossed a tissue into the waste-paper basket I had positioned close to my sick-bed. Watson thinks this is when I developed my curiosity of bees, and he's possibly right. But I know that was when my curiosity first grew of him.