A/N: Hello all. This, my fellow readers, is a very special co-authored piece with TheGracefulBlueCat, you can find her work by clicking on my profile and favourite authors or searching in the writer search box. I highly recommend checking out her work and her lovely artwork if you like this or any of my angsty pieces. Most of the credit of this goes to her!
This story is a continuation on the storyline in chapter 26 of 'It takes John Watson to save your life' short stories. In this story Sherlock is bitten by a venomous snake and John rushes him to hospital as the detective slowly falls into shock. John is powerless and as Sherlock clings to life John has to fight some demons of his own.
Chapter 1:
John felt his breathing quicken, his head was light and for a second he lost his thoughts but he was brought back to reality when he heard the medic next to him speaking.
"Doxapram's done it, we got him."
John looked down to his friend and to Sherlock's quivering uneven muscle contractions, a respiratory stimulant had sent his body back into attempting to breath itself but they were awful in and exhales. The oxygen levels on the screen were wailing in response at the poor effort but there was a fresh flow of the gas in the face mask and the numbers were climbing ever so slowly.
"You need to sit down Doctor Watson." The EMT looked concerned as the ambulance took a sharp corner making John almost lose his footing. The medic pointed to the seat behind him and smiled sadly, "We're nearly there."
The doctor let himself down from his feet but he didn't release the hold from the bed, pulling Sherlock's hand into his own he studied it with an odd interest. The area around the detectives newly acquired IV cannula was blooming with a fresh dark bruise, John frowned.
"You need to run coags." He said quickly.
"We know." The medic replied, he was taking pulses and writing notes on his clipboard. "The critical care team are expecting us."
"He's bleeding out..." John's voice wavered far more than he thought it would, damn body, why was it betraying him now, what was wrong with him, "he needs a blood transfusion and vitamin K."
"It's alright." The paramedic smiled sadly. "We've got this doctor."
The doctor clasped his hand around Sherlock's wrist, allowing his fingers to rest on his radial pulse. The beat was thready, erratic and uneven and John felt his own pulse begin to rise with each bounding thud. His medical mind suddenly felt much like the detectives, running off a list of conditions associated with poor pulses. Shock - cardiogenic, distributed, hypovoleamic, obstructive. Reasons for shock - severe blood loss, heart failure and cardiac arrhythmia's, poisoning or envenomation, anaphylaxis, bacterial infection, SIRS, sepsis, drug overdose, drug reaction, extreme dehydration, cardiac tamponade, spinal trauma, thoracic trauma, head trauma, pulmonary embolism. His mind was racing like a train...
Only moments later John was jerked out of his mantra, when the ambulance suddenly stopped and the doors were slammed open with a loud clunk which jerked his attention up. Someone jumped in, pushing past John and breaking his only contact with his friend. It was such a sudden change of pace he needed a few moments before he realised he should stay out of their way.
They rushed past him, pulling Sherlock with the gurney out of the vehicle. As soon as they were out he tried to stand up to follow them, only to grab the handles inside the doors hard when his vision began to be fill with black dots.
Fighting to get himself under control, he blew out air with puffed cheeks, once, twice… three times, then his vision cleared and he hurried after the team. He never lost sight of his friend's lax form on the trolley, still unresponsive to the sudden noisy commotion.
When they parked Sherlock in the large emergency bay and the medic started to rattle off all he knew John realised there was way more he needed to inform them about. He didn't interrupt but made a few mental notes about what to address as soon as the man was finished.
The medical team listened with concentration, one man making notes, another checking the lines going in, while two nurses spread out the transportable equipment that had rested on the gurney for the short ride through to the resuscitation room. They made space for the team to work.
John stepped over to his friend, collecting his limp hand with the pulse ox clipped on his finger in situ. He squeezed it gently. "I'm here." So quiet he practically said it to himself.
The coldness brought a new bout of panic in him and he had to caution himself to remain a doctor, not slip into the pain of being a friend. Sherlock wouldn't want him to do that, he would expect a logical, medical, Doctor John Watson, not irrational worried friend.
"Alright," the lead doctor said when the paramedic to finished his short report. "I want…"
But John interrupted him."Antivenom is on the way, Inspector Lestrade is bringing it here, can somebody go to meet him and bring him to us so we don't lose time?"
"Who are you?"
Much to John's relief the medic from the ambulance stepped in then and told them to listen to him and the background of John's presence. In that moment he was suddenly shifted from a bystander to one of the treating doctors, which was good, because he needed to help, needed to do right thing so they could save Sherlock.
They had to save him.
Not doing so was not an option.
John couldn't...
Sherlock needed to survive this. He would so kick Sherlock's arse for not seeking treatment straight away, he would not live this one down that's for sure!
While he showed them the bite wound and explained how long he thought the timeline was, it suddenly felt a lot like his earlier days when he had worked in accident and emergency, well before his time in Helmand province.
This was so very different from sitting in a surgery and looking at people's warts and sending them for further examinations when he feared they might have kidney stones.
This was a battle. A fight for life and limb, and since Afghanistan he hadn't worked in the centre of a resuscitation area at full throttle. Organised chaos was it's best description.
Words flew through the room, barked orders and note taking, people ran around, fetching supplies and wheeling in machines, starting more monitors, taking blood, shoving more catheters and lines into his friend's body.
Then Sherlock moaned and all professionalism flew out the window in a second.
John's focus was shifted.
Noises around him seemed to vanish, the people disappeared, and all he focussed on was Sherlock's grimacing face. Sweaty and with clear visible lines of pain carved into his ghostly white features, his eyes opened, but barely so.
"Thank god, there you are."
"John." Sherlock's voice was much higher than normal, the word more a whimper than anything else. His body gave a shudder.
"Antivenom will be here any minute, hang on."
But the awareness only lasted a moment, and Sherlock was out again, unconscious to the madness going on around him. The battle the medical team were fighting, against the overwhelming shock and organ failure the detectives body was quickly succumbing to.
John felt his legs go weak and his hands trembled with the thought of it. With a bout of annoyance he gritted his teeth so hard they ground together when realised he might actually be in shock too.
Lestrade should be here by now, what was keeping him?
When he turned towards the large double doors of resus to check if someone was there he shifted his weight to his 'bad' leg and gasped silently. A jolt of pain went up from his knee into his hip and then up his spine like an electric shock.
"Shit." Not now!
He clenched his teeth even tighter and audibly hissed in frustration.
Slowly, John's senses allowed him to return to what was happening around him, he was able to focus again on someone reading out lab results, it was that coagulation profile, and it didn't sound good. The consultant started ordering people around and John could see two bags of fresh blood units being handed to one of the nurses to begin infusion.
He was trying to focus and read the monitors, but the numbers were fuzzy momentarily. No changes were good, stable readings were good right? Not the readings themselves but the fact that they were not changing was something. He was clutching at straws now, oh God, his mind was babbling. Focus Watson!
He felt of kilter and took a lot of effort to stand upright John realised. But before he could think about sitting down the large doors swung open and a very stressed looking Lestrade entered, a cooler bag in his hand, trailing behind a breathless security guard.
John was so relieved that he felt his legs become even weaker, his knees wobbled.
The inspector spotted him immediately, "John! How is he? What's happening?"
The former army doctor saw Greg's gaze wander over Sherlock's lifeless form, all the medical lines and then come to rest on the horribly swollen and blistering area where the detective had been bitten.
It really looked nasty and John saw the DI pale at the sight of it.
"Antivenom?"
"Right here," he held the bag up and a doctor quickly relieved him of it. "Though, I am not sure which one is right. He labelled it meticulously but…. I mean, should we trust it?"
"A man like that wouldn't risk his life by mislabelling antivenom, would he?" John asked and started to move around the gurney to meet Greg and the lead physician.
But when he had reached the foot end of it, he suddenly started to feel very faint. He gripped a nearby kit trolley firmly and stopped dead. He was afraid that his legs might not be able to hold him upright if he took one more step. His knees were wobbly and weak again, was this really happening?
"John?" Lestrade's voice and face was filled with concern. Did he really look that bad?
"Fine…" John raised his free hand but held fast with the other, knuckles turning white as his grip tightened.
Then suddenly the instrument trolley moved towards him and…
… He was falling.
"Fuck! John?"
The impact with the floor was hard and metal things clattered to the ground around him, he wasn't aware he moaned in pain, only of the fact that his vision was filled with a growing number of black patches.
He fought it.
"John?"
Desperately.
"John mate, stay with us yeah?"
But his body had none of it and he lost the fight only a seconds later. Darkness burrowed into his consciousness in a merciless swoop attack and he was out cold.