Molly was bent over a female corpse who was lying open from a large Y-incision and a formidable chest spreader. John could tell Molly was examining the heart, probably looking for signs of Arteriosclerosis. She looked up as he made a gentle clearing of his throat so as not to frighten her. "John," she exclaimed, "it's lovely to see you!" She came at John with open arms, which normally would have been a warm gesture, but due to the blood and viscera smeared on her smock, John recoiled. Molly caught herself and laughed. "Sorry!" She pulled off the gloves and the apron. John said, "that's better," and they gave each other a proper hug.
"Gosh, I haven't seen you, well, how long now? Since the funeral, I guess."
"Yes," he replied, "eighteen months. Sorry. Didn't mean to be out of touch so long."
Molly brushed it off, "no, no, of course I wasn't suggesting anything. Just surprising how quickly the time has gone."
John looked away. "It seems longer sometimes, actually. Seems a lifetime." There is a pause as neither knows how to respond. "So, how are you, Molly? Doing well?"
"Alright, yeah. Busy. Always busy here. People keep dying, hard as they try to fight it."
"Yeah, I suppose you're right on that."
"What brings you to St. Bart's? Visiting someone?"
"I came to see you, actually."
"Me?"
"Molly, I…I'd like to see Sherlock's autopsy report." She freezes. "I know it's probably not proper, but I'm curious about some things and I just need to know exactly how he died. For closure or whatever. Do you think you could help me?"
She is nervous. He can see that she's gone pale and seems quite flustered. Why, he wonders? "I don't know, John. You don't want to read that."
"I know it will be…difficult, but I'm a doctor. And he was my best mate. And I feel I owe it to him to know, to understand…please, Molly."
"I don't think it's a good idea. I could get into trouble…"
"Molly, I'll stand here, right here, for five minutes, glance at the report and you can put it right back and no one will be the wiser. Please, Molly, I'm begging you."
He sees that he's worn her down. He hadn't expected this level of resistance from her. There's something curious about this that he knows he should examine, but the folder in Molly's hand as she walks toward him stops those thoughts. It stops all thoughts. His best friend, a man he dearly loved, the man who brought John back from the brink of despair was reduced to a quarter -inch stack of papers in a tattered manila folder.
"Here he is, John." She held it out and, for the first time since coming up with his plan to investigate Sherlock's death, John had serious doubts about going through with it. Did he want to know the details? See the photos of the injuries? Learn how Sherlock went from being a vital, powerful, unpredictable man to being a body on a slab? He knew, if he was being honest with himself, that the odds of Sherlock having staged his own suicide were abysmally low. It was likely that when he opened the folder, he would see and read things that he'd regret. Images worse than that of Sherlock falling from the sky. Unconsciously, his hand slipped into his jacket pocket and clutched the blue ball. "Forward," it encouraged.
He reached for the folder and opened it gently. On top were a series of photos, of a long and lean body broken. A leg, twisted. A skull, split open. Arms curled in unnatural poses. John leaned against the steel table for support. He drew a long breath, steadied himself and looked again, more detached this time, pretending to be Sherlock. Taking in details and analyzing, but not getting lost in it all. Yes, broken bones, crushed skull, but was this in fact Sherlock's body? There was no photograph of the face. Every photo was in isolation, showing some detail of the victim. And it could have been Sherlock's body, no doubt about it. But it wasn't definitely Sherlock.
Now the autopsy report. "Deceased died from massive head trauma caused by fall from a great height." A listing of the bones broken, nine in total. A detailed examination of the body, an excruciating description of the head wound. It was all there in black and white, well, white and blue ink, written in a steady hand that never seemed to hesitate or break mental stride. (John noticed this because usually his own notes on patients were filled with obvious stops and starts – it was hard to make it all look seamless like this report did.) The autopsy was obviously conducted by a highly-skilled expert who knew what they were doing. John had seen autopsy reports before, many times while serving in Afghanistan, and it had been rare for someone to be so perfectly specific about the cause of death. Usually doctors or medical examiners figured that getting the gist of it was good enough, the person was already dead, right? At a certain point, that level of exactitude ceased to matter. But the person who conducted the autopsy on Sherlock's body (god, that was hard to think about, hard to imagine him spread open on one of these metal tables) had gone above and beyond their duty. John was just starting to understand that this was all a dead end, that there was nothing more to learn here, and probably nothing more to learn about Sherlock's death at all, and that, yes, he was dead, when Molly interrupted.
"Five minutes, John."
She reached for the folder. "Hmm? Oh, right. Yes. Thank you, Molly." He started to hand over the folder. "Your colleague was very thorough. Went above and beyond."
"Colleague?"
"Whoever did Sherlock's autopsy did an excellent job. From a purely professional perspective, of course."
Molly hesitated for a moment and then said, "I did Sherlock's autopsy."
"This is your report?"
"Yes. Do you think it strange that I did it myself?"
John pulled the folder back and looked at the report again. Flawless. "No, Molly. I know how you felt about Sherlock. Doing his autopsy yourself would have been a gift to him. Your last gift. Making sure you were the one who took care of these final needs. But this isn't the autopsy of Sherlock Holmes."
"Of course it is."
"No, Molly. If it had been Sherlock's body on that table, your hand would have trembled, your mind would have wandered as it processed the grief and tears would have stained the page, puddling the ink. But this report is pristine. It shows no personal connection, nothing but the most detached, clinical assessment of Sherlock's injuries. Sherlock's crushed cranium, Sherlock's broken bones, Sherlock's exploded heart. Sherlock. The man you fancied. The man you dreamed about. And you expect me to believe that his corpse laid here on this slab and you never shed a tear and your hand never shook?"
Molly is shaking, babbling and she runs from the room without saying another coherent word. John feels a sense of exhilaration and understands, for the first time, the rush of what Sherlock must have felt upon making one of his great deductive leaps. It was thrilling. The folder, labeled 'Holmes, Sherlock,' felt light in his hand. The riddle would continue to unravel, he felt sure of it. "I'm coming for you, Sherlock," he said, striding out of the room, smiling for the first time in what seemed like forever.
