It had been a year since he'd been shot. A year that had melted in vagaries of operations, of learning to use his left arm again, he was left handed and his Doctors' handwriting had not been improved any. The physiotherapist was nice; she was young and pretty and smelt of vanilla.
In fact everyone had been really nice. Really nice and ordinary and boring. And there was nothing to take his mind off the blackness that had swallowed him as he bled out into the sand.
The psychiatrist looked at him. She knew he was lying or at the very least not telling the truth.
"So John, what have you been doing?"
"Nothing. Nothing ever happens to me."
It had been a bit of a shock bumping into Mike Stamford, not only because Mike, the snake hipped star of the cross country squad, had got fat, but because John was sure someone had told him Mike had died of a Heart-attack three years ago.
And then without warning John Watson was hit by another bullet, one called Sherlock Holmes. On reflection that one did more damage than the one that smashed his shoulder. One minute John Watson was trying to work out the cleanest and most convenient way to kill himself. The next he literally hit the ground running. Not just running, flying, dancing, kicking and screaming. Like he had been born again and then baptised in champagne and flames.
Oh God yes! That was what he wanted. Needed.
And when he had to shoot, when the world had narrowed to the width of a gun barrel, then John Watson found he could aim and fire, without doubts and shaking hands. Knowing that with that bullet he could save the man who saved him.
John Watson squeezed the trigger and killed his self doubt, his psychosomatic limp and murderous Cab driver dead. Not bad with one bullet.
