Chapter 2: A favor

John and Clare stood and waited, an awkward silence lingering in the radiology suite. It would be awhile yet before the radiologist would be able to advance with the procedure.

After going through her patient's vitals on the monitor – still steady - Clare stole a glance at John. He looked older than when they'd last met but not old in a stagnant, sluggish sense. Older in a wiser, worldlier way. Could they be friends again, like they had once been? Or had too much happened to him since they had finished their medical training? Clare had contended with the small victories of her nondescript career while John seemed to have floated towards danger and mayhem. During their training, while Clare had endlessly fretted over on-call shifts in the ER, worried what emergencies she might encounter and whether she would be able to address them properly John had thrived in the high-strung atmosphere of acute care. There was much she wanted to ask about what had been going on in his life, but this didn't seem to be right moment.

Garvey appeared at the doorway. "I checked on Devendra for you. Appy's in recovery, awake. Don't think you'll be needed there anymore."

Clare nodded. "Thanks."

"How's the gunshot wound guy doing?"

Clare wondered if John minded his friend being described like that. He didn't seem to be listening. "Stable for the moment. 8 units crossmatch, sixteen donors worth of platelets, 4 units FFP. Actually, could you cover for me here for a moment?"

Garvey nodded and yawned. "Whatever."

Clare stood up and grabbed John's arm. "Let's go."

He stood up, reluctantly. "Can't I stay?"

"You can, but I think we both need some fresh air." She smiled at him. "Come on. He's not going anywhere for a moment. Garvey here will keep an eye on him."

Soon they stood outside by the hospital loading bays. It was chilly enough to hope for a coat but not cold enough to shiver. Sounds of cars echoed in the concrete walls. Clare leaned onto a trolley, thanking the stars that her phone hadn't rang for awhile. "You two are really good friends then." More of a remark than a question.

John nodded. "He doesn't have friends. There's just the landlady and me. And I've nothing to give to him," John blurted out, sounding frustrated.

Clare couldn't quite follow.

"He doesn't think he's got any bloody friends, but still he jumped off a fucking building for those non-existant ones. For me. And I just don't get it. For a guy who hates feelings in general and claims he doesn't even have them-I just don't get why he pulls these sacrificial stunts. Now he gets himself killed again. And for some bloody rubbish puzzle-solving, deduction bullshit reason."

"Maybe he just doesn't want to admit he cares more than he lets on?"

Clare suggested. John thought about the suggestion for a moment. "That would be it for any Joe Cheese, but with Sherlock you just never know. He reads people perfectly, you know. All the small stuff that nobody notices. But noone can read him, not what he's feeling."

It was none of Clare's business, but at the moment John didn't seem to have much in terms of choice concerning who to share his grief with. "What did you mean, you've nothing to give? You're a good friend, John, never doubt that. What more could he want?"

John spread him arms, confused. "I don't know. I don't know what I want, either. You can't really describe him in the usual way like if he's lonely, or sad, or whatever. All I know is that I got engaged, he got a bit weird, I got married, he got high, and now he's got a bullet stuck to his chest and somehow I thinkit's somehow my fault. And I can never repay him for what he's been, what he's done, after Afghanistan. I could never make his life as amazing as he's made mine."

Clare simply nodded.

"He's insufferable, he's a total dickhead but you can't walk away, just can't, even after he wrecks your life. And then he returns like it's a fucking joke, "hello John, how've you been?".

"There must be some reason why he'd want you around, though. And why he'd jump off a building."

"Sure as hell can't be for some high idea of moral or duty. He doesn't understand either."

"Maybe it isn't just for convenience either. He's got you listed as his emergency contant."

"Me and his brother Mycroft, yes."

"No. Just you."

John did not reply.

"Mary." Clare was startled by a raspy voice from the bed. She'd been adjusting an infusor pump by the bedside at the HDU, lost in thought. She had been certain her patient would most likely remain knocked out for some time yet, allowing time for his treatment plan for the next day to be finalized.

Clare put the infusor on standby. Morphin. John had managed to talk her out of a PCA solution even with lock settings – "not a good idea for him to be able to push the buttons himself, he won't even bat an eyelid before figuring out the passcodes to the machine". A regular iv then, with Clare relying on the courtesy of her new patient not to start adjusting the dose himself. Surely he wouldn't dare to touch the infusor? Maybe John could keep an eye on him, since he practically had moved in to the hospital to be at his friend's side.

Clare turned to face the man lying on the bed. His eyes were closed, but Clare could see movement under the delicate, thin eyelids. Clare was certain he was still awake. "What about Mary?"

Brown eyes flew open. "Where is she?" Sherlock Holmes asked, with a more demanding tone that Clare had been expecting from someone recently risen from the dead.

"She was here earlier, said she needed to get some things from home. How are you feeling, Mr Holmes?" Clare touched the back of her hand to his forehead. No fever. Which meant no infection. Yet.

He didn't reply at first, instead fiddled with the nasal oxygen cannula, seemingly annoyed by the sizable collection of wires and infusion tubes restricting his movement. Movement, which seemed to be starting to cause him some discomfort. "Hurts," he remarked.

"Well, you did take a bullet in the chest, Detective."

He grimaced and coughed. "Nag, nag. You sound like John."

"Funny, since people at Uni usually said it was the other way round. Would you like to see him?"

Sherlock looked as though he'd realized he was forgetting something important. He tried to sit up, but paused halfway, breathing heavily and droplets of sweat appearing on his forehead.

"Mr Holmes, take it easy." Clare gently pushed his reluctant and hasty patient back onto his back. "John'll be back in a minute."

"Need. To. Discuss-" he spat from behind gritted teeth.

"No." Clare upped the morphine and a thin veil of fog seemed to descent on the pair of brown eyes looking at her indignantly from the bed. "You're barely out of danger so no acrobatics. It'll take time for the air to empty from your pleura ad the cracked rib along with the crushed muscles will be nasty for a while. The more you'll take it easy, the quicker it'll heal."

He didn't reply. Probably didn't like to be scolded like this, by a doctor. John had informed her of Mr Holmes' not-so-high opinions of medical professionals. 'Such boring drones, digging into people's orifices for a living. Plus they have to talk to all sorts of people, all day, every day. Nightmare. Enough to make anyone lose their marbles.'

She caught him eyeing the morphine drip. "Don't even think about it." The only reply she got was a quiet snore a moment later. Maybe he did listen to doctors sometimes.

Clare snuck out of the door and ran into John in the hallway, carrying two cups of coffee, the other which he passed unceremoniously to Clare. One of their old uni morning routines. "Is he…?" he inquired a bit anxiously.

Clare smiled. "He's sleeping, but yes, he did manage a few words before I had to up the morphine."

John took a moment, closed his eyes and Clare wondered what he was thinking. Considering his reaction to the situation the night before, anything he might say would probably sound a bit trite or trivial. "Maybe I shouldn't go in just yet, then." He sounded calmer, more relaxed than he'd been during this whole ordeal.

John's phone rang. "He's pulled through!" he exclaimed, the person at the other end obviously aware of what had transpired. He covered the phone with his hand and turned to Claire. "It's Mary, she's on her way up."

Third text message. And it wasn't even noon. Three times Clare had had to abandon her duties at the operating theatre to return to the HDU. Mr Holmes did not seem to fathom that she might have more pressing duties than to be at his beck and call. When John was around things were a bit more quiet, but when Sherlock had somehow gotten hold of her personal mobile number she had had to recruit John for a disciplinary campaign. The occasional message did pop up every now and then, still, at varying intervals. As per John's instructions she always replied, since not doing so would have resulted in a flood of follow-up messages. At least according to John, who seemed to have quite a bit of experience in the matter. Mr Holmes had been doing well for several days, no signs of infection and the pneumothorax had drained fast.

'Assistance required urgently. John refuses to adjust iv. SH'

'Call a nurse. CR-H'

'Already did. Told me off. SH'

'Adjust iv to what end? CR-H'

'Adjust it so it isn't attached to me. SH'

Clare was just about to call the ward when another text message appeared.

'So sry. Shl stole my phone again. Do carry on with actual important doctor work. JW'

Clare laughed and began typing a reply.

' No prob. Although I'm not actually in charge of him anymore. The HDU has its own doctors. C'

'He told me that if you were study partners with me you have to be at least as skilled as I am, which would suffice at a pinch. Doesn't seem to like the HDU doctors. JW'

Clare smiled. Judging by what John had told her about Mr Holmes, she probably had reason to feel a bit honored by Mr Holmes' assesment.

Clare received a call an HDU nurse a few hours later. "It's him again. Wants a word," remarked the exasperated-sounding orderly at the other end of the line.

"What now?" Clare was slightly annoyed. John had gone to fetch some things from work, Mary – who had been a quite a regular visitor herself – had gone home for the afternoon, meaning that the patient had more time in his hands to bug whoever would listen.

"Wouldn't say. Refuses to tell anybody else."

"I'll be a minute."

She made sure the regional anesthetic she had just administered was beginning to kick in and headed upstairs.

"Well then, Mr Holmes. This better be urgent, since I had to leave my patient in the OR again."

Sherlock Holmes looked at her. Really looked. He'd been fine with a considerably lower dose of pain medication during the last few days so appeared less confused. Clare had begun to understand some of what John had hyped about considering Mr Holmes' mental aquity. He had driven a couple of nurses to tears with his cold, calculating deductions of the state of their love lives after they'd refused to obey his various wishes. He'd been suprisingly courteous with Clare, however, making her slightly suspicious. "Anyone dying?" he inquired, expression deadpan.

"Not at the moment, no."

"Hm."

"So?"

Clare was getting impatient. Mr Holmes crossed his arms, careful not to exert pressure on his thoracoscopy wounds. "I require a favor."

Not 'I need a favor' or 'please', simply a statement of requirement. "Depends." Clare thought he looked a bit worried. Distracted.

"I need to get out of here. And I need your help to do so."

"No. Absolutely out of the question." Clare prepared for a lenghty

lecture. John had told her Sherlock hated them so now she was willing to give it her best shot. "Need I remind you, Mr Holmes, that you were brought in a mere four days ago practically lifeless, with a punctured pleural sack and internal bleeding and if you discharge yourself you risk-"

He raised his hand to interrupt. "Dr Rosemore-Harringdon. I know exactly what I will be risking if I leave. Recurrent bleeding, fainting due to anemia, exacerbation of the pneumothorax. However, if I do not leave, I risk far more."

"And what would that be?" Clare crossed her arms.

"John Watson."

After all the interactions between her patient and her friend she'd witnessed the past few days, this admission did not surprise her a bit. Clearly there was this… thing of some sorts going on between John and this strange man. Something that might defy ordinary descriptions of words like "friend". The shared looks, the inside jokes, the slight touches when the thought noone was looking. And it all looked so natural, so effortless. As though the two men shared a universe no other could enter.

"I am not asking you to discharge me. I am quite familiar with hospital policy, the judicial background of discharge orders and the usual time periods for which thoracic gunshot wound patients are typically hospitalized."

He'd been borrowing John's laptop again to do his online research, Clare realized. Even though John had sworn not to give it to him. 'It'll only make it worse when he finds things he can't go see and experiment with immediately. Plus he's always beating my game scores,' John had complained.

"I am merely asking your advice as a physician on the safest methods of disentangling myself from this mess." He wiggled his right index finger, attatched to which was a pulse oxymeter. "You have two options. Either I do this myself to the best of my abilities or you simply accept it as fact that I will be going, whether you discharge me or not, and be a nice doctor by making my exit as safe as possible."

John was right. Both his argumentative tone and his well-justified point made it moot to try and argue, no matter what the subject. Clare still wasn't sold, though. She took a seat in a chair next to the bed.

Sherlock had obviously noticed her suspicious expression. In a minute, she was offered a phone with the line open. "If you refuse to take it from me that it is imperative that I leave, talk to Molly," Sherlock said, pointing at the phone.

This was getting weirder. "Molly Hooper?

Our pathologist?"

"Quite right."

Clare sighed, and pushed his hand, still holding the phone, back down onto the bed. Sherlock pressed the disconnect button.

Molly Hooper was a nononsense kind of girl. She had no idea what a pathologist might have to do with the reason for her patient's urgency to leave the hospital but if Molly thought it important enough to risk his health and well-being, then maybe Clare didn't have all the facts. "Let's say I believe you. That it's a matter of life and death-"

"And marriage," Sherlock added.

Clare decided to ignore that. "-That you walk out that door, there's one condition."

Sherlock looked at her inquisitively. "Yes?"

"No morphine."

Now he looked annoyed.

"I promised John I'd help in weaning you out after all this. If you take a hike prematurely, you definitely won't be trailing behind an iv full of morphine with my name on the tag."

He sighed. "Very well. I shall make do without, then."

"It'll hurt."

"Unquestionably. What else can I expect or should avoid?"

"No running. Heavy breathing would probably make the pneumothorax worse. It isn't gone yet, you know, even though we pulled the drain tube out yesterday."

"Bleeding?"

"Not likely. But if you strain yourself and the broken rib dislodges, there might be another bleeder in there. In that case the pain will get worse fast, and you'll start to feel faint, cold, sweaty and tachycardic. I assume you know what that means."

"Tachycardic? Medical slang for an elevated heart rate exceeding a hundred beats per minute in adult humans."

Showoff. "In that case, call a bloody ambulance. We need to get you back here as soon as possible. Maybe do another embolization, maybe even surgery."

Sherlock began stripping himself of the electrocardiogram leads. Clare helped him out of the blood pressure cuff. Then he began tugging on the central line. Clare gently pushed his hand away. "Stop. Let me. That thing's no joke. First of all, I'll need a pair of sterile gloves to avoid passing bacteria straight into your central circulation. Plus we need to lower the top half of the bed before I pull out the cannule. Can you figure out why?" Clare couldn't resist testing Mr Holmes' infamous knowledge base.

"Risk of venous air embolism if the ambient air pressure exceeds that of the punctured vein?" He wasn't really asking whether it was so, it was more of a statement.

Clare nodded. "Private detective, eh?"

"Consulting detective."