John.

Where was John?

Sherlock flung his eyes open, almost violently, in anticipation of what he was to see.
He was in a hospital room, in the bed, as he deduced. There was a curtain separating him from the other part of the room. Sherlock hoped that he wouldn't have to share a room with anyone, but then again, Sherlock wouldn't be spending much more time in the bed if he had his way… which he would, of course. On his right index finger was a pulse oximeter clipped to his finger. He hated those bloody things; any moisture in the receptacle, and the pressure on your fingernail felt like it was being ripped off. Oh, how some small things annoyed Sherlock. Somebody had changed him out of his clothing and into one of those awful hospital 'johnnies' as they called them.

John.

Back to him. John, that is. At the thought of John, Sherlock's heart began to thump clumsily in his chest. 'Oh joy, more arrhythmias." Sherlock thought to himself as he felt the all too familiar disjunct pounding inside his chest swell as the monitor beside his bed turned from quietly exposing every contraction of his heart to the world, to crassly honking, notifying anyone in earshot of Sherlock's racing, and arrhythmic heart.

"Sherlock," a familiar voice rasped.

In response, Sherlock's heart beat even faster.

It was John.

Surely Sherlock was mistaken; John had died.

John's heart had stopped beating - Sherlock had felt its cessation, had felt John's body lose the warmth in which Sherlock often sought to bury himself.

Then again, John's voice, more aggravated this time – "Sherlock! Are you all right?"

Sherlock thought he was going mad.

"Bloody hell, Sherlock Holmes; answer me!" Despite the frailty of his voice, John was using his Military/No-time-or-patience-for-your-rubbish-Sher lock voice, and it shocked Sherlock into reality.

"John, you're, well,' Sherlock breathed. "I'm fine, I think. Are you all right?" Sherlock responded, still not convinced that he wasn't talking to himself.

Sherlock's various telemetry devices had not ceased wailing, so thankfully a nurse rushed in to attend to the matter of obvious urgency. She ripped open the curtain disguising the unknown other half of the room.

John was there, in bed.

Pale as the sheets in which he was encompassed, leaned over the rails on the bed, wide eyes. John had obviously figured how to silence the machines monitoring him, as the screen flashed in alarm just as Sherlock's was still doing.

Must they do everything together?

The nurse saw both men's apparent need for urgent medical care and so she called for another nurse.

"John, are you all right?" the petite woman asked.

"Yes, I'm fine; attend to Sherlock." John replied as he slumped back into bed.

Sherlock wasn't quite sure what he was witnessing between these two, but the nurse and John were obviously familiar.

The nurse gently reached over and felt his pulse, thrumming away at his wrist.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Holmes?" She asked.
"You tell me, uh…?" Sherlock waited for a name.

"Watson."

"Pardon me?" a startled Sherlock, who was out of breath, inquired.
"I'm John's sister, Harry, Mr. Holmes. Your blood pressure is startlingly low, but due to your condition, we shan't do anything about it just yet." Harry indulged.

An official looking man walked in to see to John, and he drew the curtain shut.

"By what do you mean 'my condition', Watson?" Sherlock noticed the IV in the crook of his elbow. Peculiar; most people would immediately notice a needle in their arm upon waking, but Sherlock was not one of these.

"Upon producing results from tests obtained during your unconsciousness, we have come to conclude, not unanimously, that-" Watson was cut off by John.

"Not now, Harry. I have a few things to discuss with the other physicians here, as well as Sherlock."

"If this is because I'm a lowly nurse and you're a doctor," She spat, "I will not hesitate to kick your arse at Scrabble."

Watson returned to Sherlock's out-of-sorts body. She opened a drawer and after a short altercation with its contents, she handed Sherlock two small, alarmingly red pills. His face contorted in both questioning and disgust prompted Watson to explain.

"Beta blockers. I'm giving you 80 milligrams of Propanolol Hydrochloride." She poured Sherlock a short glass of water.
"I can't take these." Sherlock stated.

"Please don't be difficult, Sherlock." John called from the other side of the curtain.

"No, I cannot take these." Sherlock insisted through gritted teeth.

"Unless you want to risk permanently damaging your heart, amongst other things, I suggest you take them, Mr. Holmes." Watson implored.

"Unless you wish to risk a decrease in coronary blood flow, left ventricular function, cardiac output, and tissue perfusion, I strongly suggest that I do not take them." Sherlock responded, getting more agitated. Thankfully, John clicked on to what Sherlock was getting at.

"No, Harry, he can't take them. Read his chart." John instructed from the other side of the curtain.

"You don't look like a cocaine addict." Harry said.

"I looked the same then as I do now, except for a few track marks." Sherlock said defensively. The decrease in left ventricular function alone would kill me, by the sound of it. If you only told me what you all hypothesised, I could help you diagnose me." Sherlock put forth in his usual quick flow of speech, wasting no time.

The doctor that was attending to John burst through the curtain, opening it as he came.

"Sherlock Holmes, your condition is quite a mystery to us, currently. Before we talk further, I'm going to need to prevent you from going asystole again." He said, getting straight to the point. Sherlock liked this doctor. The doctor rummaged around the same drawer as Watson had, and handed him different pills. "Calcium channel blockers. Your heart can't handle much more of this-" he said gesticulating towards the monitors, still noisy, and he reached over Sherlock and muted them "-and hopefully should return to functioning relatively normally in a few minutes. I'm Doctor Wittner, by the way."

Sherlock dry swallowed the pills. Sherlock's heart began to slow down gradually, and after the prescribed few minutes, now silent monitors stopped flashing, and the display returned to normal, and the doctor switched the sound back on. A quick bleep filled the silence.

"Wait… Why is my condition a mystery? Asystole again? What tests did you run? The results? Where's my chart?" Sherlock demanded. This new doctor obliged and relinquished Sherlock's file. Sherlock skipped over the first page, which contained his personal details and any previously known conditions, and went straight to reading the details of his admission and stay thus far. Skimming over a great deal of information he considered unimportant, a few details caught Sherlock's eye.

He and John had been admitted together, at 20:57, and had come by ambulance. Sherlock had presented with syncope; ECG reading displays distinct significations in the ST segment, T wave inversion, with sinus tach; what appeared to be basal hyperkinesis; stills from an echocardiograph showed the strangest looking heart he'd seen. He was wrong – he actually had a heart but it was as ruined as he expected anything inside his chest to be. Of course nothing denoting how John was holding up was contained in Sherlock's file. A phone number had been scrawled in the margins of the chart with 'ICE - DI Lestrade' next to it.

Lestrade.

He could get more information from the least irritating member of the police force he knew.

"So, why on earth would my heart look like this?" Sherlock asked, afraid of the possible answers.

"I think you are a textbook example of Stress Cardiomyopathy. John agrees. Some of the other staff disagrees, because, well, technically speaking, there aren't really any textbooks with the condition listed, and if it is, it's a hypothetical with few or no known cases. Well, there's a few in Japanese, but we tend not to read those." Wittner explained.

"Okay, treat me like I have Stress Cardiomyopathy. Case solved. What's John's condition?" Sherlock asked impatiently. Wittner moved aside to allow John to answer the question himself. Watson's pager beeped and she waved absentmindedly as she rushed out of the room.

"I was shot. Twice. You were there. You saved me, Sherlock. One shot went through my left shoulder. You stopped the bleeding with your scarf. One shot went through my pleural cavity, and caused a Haemothorax. When my heart could no longer pump, you started CPR, which is the best thing you could have done, considering that a chest tube was not a possibility in the field. You called for help, and so Lestrade and ambulances came, and we ended up here. I have two fractured ribs, and I had emergency surgery to stop the bleeding, and to try to repair the damage caused by the haemothorax and my shoulder." John began forlornly. Wittner had obviously turned the volume on John's telemetry devices up, because Sherlock could hear the reassuring beep from them punctuating John's speech. It was an enormous comfort to Sherlock. "You were drifting in and out of consciousness, and you wouldn't calm down, so we decided that it was best to knock you out for a while, gave you a low dose of antipsychotics to allow your body and mind to relax in order to cope with trauma you experienced. During this time, an angiogram and an echocardiogram were performed. This led some of us to deduce you were suffering from Stress Cardiomyopathy. If your condition doesn't improve tonight, we're putting in an intra‐aortic balloon pump, but I don't think you'll need it; or I really hope you don't. It has been 36 hours since this all happened, Sherlock, my love, and everything is surprisingly okay. I'm right here, and we can go home soon." John explained.

Wittner nodded in agreement, his arms crossed casually on his chest. Sherlock remained silent. He began to close in on himself. He crossed his arms, which turned into desperately clinging onto himself. His eyes watered, and he felt a surge of adrenaline within him, but he tried to calm himself, to stop it from triggering another episode of arrhythmia, which would trigger the machines and alert John to his immense distress. He breathed as deeply as he could, in an attempt to prevent his heart from getting out of sorts. He closed his eyes, and scrunched his whole face up in focus. The beeping coming from his side of the room started to accelerate despite his efforts. Wittner knowing Sherlock was a bit eccentric waited until then to intervene.

"Sherlock, what exactly is going on?" Wittner asked from across the room.

"He's having a panic attack. I need to get over to him." John said as he tried to manoeuvre his way out of bed.

"John Hamish Watson, you stay in bed or so help me," Wittner began tersely as he walked toward Sherlock. He put his hand on Sherlock's forearm and pulled him out of his own vice grip, hoping to try relaxing him.

"I'm fine!" Sherlock bellowed.

"Sherlock, calm down, please." Wittner instructed.

"Wittner, can you just help me get over there?" John asked impatiently.
"John, you've recently come out of surgery; Jesus, John, you were dead!" Wittner replied.

"I was dead for, what, maybe four minutes?" John retorted angrily. "Now help me up!"

"Stop!" Sherlock roared. He had brought his knees up to his chin and was shaking.
"Just give me time to breathe." He cried. "I need a minute to calm myself." He snapped.

The men let the silence fall between them, stiff in the air like humid suffocation, with the unceasing beeping disrupting it.

Thankfully, after a short recess of silence, Sherlock let the adrenaline surges come, and he had no choice but to ride them out. Thanks to the calcium channel blockers, they weren't half as bad as they usually were. After letting the panic attack pass, Sherlock managed to collapse into his normal self again. Despite it being close to midday, Sherlock managed to fall asleep. John lay motionless, listening to the sounds of the never silent hospital.

Over the few days the men stayed at the hospital, Sherlock and John learned more about each other's pasts, and family. Both men being introverts, the conversations were much like a butterfly coming to rest upon one's shoulder; the smallest thing could cause it to fly away. They discussed favourite Christmases, childhood pets, high school, and silly anecdotes about their mutual friends. As the time went on, the conversations turned more serious. John opened up about Afghanistan, and Sherlock tried, and was surprisingly successful in avoiding callousness when talking about some of the things John had seen. Sometimes, when John was asleep, he'd whimper, sometimes yell, which went unnoticed to all but Sherlock who stayed up, trying to talk his slumbering companion out of nightmare. It didn't work as often as he liked, but it was the best he could do.

The two men were ready to go home. John, the more seriously injured of the two was ordered to submit to bed rest for the following 48 hours, and Sherlock was to be his assistant for once, Wittner had informed them. The men left with a few scripts, and via Lestrade, they made their way home, to 221B Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson had, of course visited the men in hospital, but seeing her back in her usual environment bought joy to both John and Sherlock. She ushered Sherlock, John and Lestrade inside, and John put the kettle on.

"Now, John, you heard what Wittner said. I expect you won't go to bed, but the couch will do. Off you go." Sherlock instructed. John without protest cautiously lowered himself to the couch and watched as Sherlock made cups of tea.

"Lestrade. I haven't yet properly thanked you for your assistance throughout this whole ordeal. I can't thank you enough for saving the both of us." John began. As if on cue, Mer. Hudson presented a rather delectable bottle of finely aged scotch whiskey to the detective.

"Oh, wow, that's unnecessary, but I will most definitely enjoy this. Shall we make a toast?" Lestrade offered, taken aback by the kindness of the bunch.

"I'll go fetch some short glasses." Mrs. Hudson began as she scurried away.

"None for Sherlock, Mrs. Hudson, please." John instructed kindly.

Mrs. Hudson returned with the glasses and Sherlock in tow, balancing four cups of tea on a platter with a rather drab looking doily on it. Sherlock bequeathed the tea unto each person, in their favourite mugs, of course – even Lestrade had a usual cup from which he drank at Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson poured three generous glasses of the whiskey, and handed one each to John and Lestrade. Sherlock's lack of liquor rendered him confused, and his face showed it, to which John replied "Sherlock, as a consulting physician on your case, I deem it unacceptable for you to drink."
Despite the mix of emotions Sherlock was feeling, he just nodded, and began a toast.

"To DI Greg Lestrade, without whom we would not be standing."

The cohort raised their glasses and drank deeply.

The festivities soon ended, leaving John and Sherlock to their devices.

"Come on, you're exhausted. Come to bed." Sherlock insisted, offering a hand to John who was still on the couch. John accepted and the two men went into bed together.

"I'm glad to be back here. I missed bed." John said, as he breathed in the familiar scent of his own home.

"Come here, John." Sherlock was lying on his back, and gestured towards himself. John shuffled up the bed and into Sherlock's arms. Sherlock's warmth always surprised John. The gentle thumping of Sherlock's heart beneath his head calmed John exponentially.

"How are you holding up, John?" Sherlock asked tenderly. The sound of his name reverberating inside his companion's chest was so pleasing.

"I'm fine, Sherlock, really." John said. For a moment, he almost believed it.

"I know you've been having nightmares again." Sherlock mused, trying to sound casual, as he played with John's hair. John said nothing but nestled further into Sherlock.

"I won't just let you bury yourself in me, John, not without help." Sherlock kept his voice calm.

"Help? I've got a therapist, Sherlock, in case you hadn't noticed." John snapped.

"Yes, but you sit there and argue semantics and don't get anywhere. You need to start moving forward, John. We can move on from this and other things together." Sherlock pleaded. He reached down to John's hand, and held him by the wrist, feeling his pulse, which was starting to accelerate.

"How can I move on from killing people, Sherlock?" John began. He propped himself up, glaring at Sherlock. "I was sent over there as a doctor. I fix people, Sherlock. How am I supposed to move past the fact that I violated the oath I took? First do no harm. How can I live with that?" John exploded. Sherlock stared him straight in the eye.

"You just do. You can't change the past, you've learned from it, so let it go." His heart in his throat, hoping he hadn't said the wrong thing, Sherlock waited for a reply.

John smiled wistfully.

"For once, Sherlock, it is my mind raging like a mad bull, and yours finds the most linear way from point A to point B. I wish I could just get on with it, but it's unrelenting; I can't escape, and I don't know how to get past it." John confessed.

"Funnily enough, psychiatrists specialize in just that. We'll get you the best we can. I'll consult Mycroft and see to whom they send all their scarred employees. Excellent." Sherlock pulled John closer as he felt a surge of joy blooming within him. John returned to his original spot with his head buried in the taller man's chest.