Thank you so much for all the positive feedback on my last chapter, I'm glad you all enjoyed! Slightly shorted chapter this time but hopefully it'll allow you your fix!
The battle to stay conscious lasted countless hours. It got to the point where he was simply blinking the hours away. At this point, time was only a word to describe the comings and goings of the unorthodox confusion he was experiencing. Somewhere to his right he heard a door creak open.
"Hello Scott, how're you feeling?" Hearing John's voice made him want to throw up. Throw up all the tears he wouldn't cry, throw up all the loss and emptiness he was experiencing.
Today the doctor wore a green jumper over a white shirt and navy tie. This man didn't even smell like John, he'd only stolen the voice he longed to hear from the mouth to which it belonged. He had so many questions to ask this man. His thought processes were sluggish, and he was still deciding on what would be the wisest path to follow when a soft, "Who am I?" tumbled from his tongue.
As far as he could remember, those were perhaps the first words he had spoken since this incident had occurred. Perhaps that would explain why the red-faced male was now scribbling frantically on his clip board.
"Well, who do you think you are?"
Perhaps this was another test. He'd sound insane, whatever phrases he chose to best connotate his thoughts.
"You refer to me as Scott." he half-whispered.
"But that's not my name, well, not all of it. To put it bluntly, this is not my body, not my voice. I'd guess the body was perhaps, fifteen at most, voice not fully broken." he began to feel buzzing in his ears. He groaned. "My name is Sherlock Holmes, I live in London with my flatmate John Watson."
It was strange to be explaining this out loud. He could feel the atmosphere in the room become tense, heavy. As he continued, his words seemed to sound more and more crazy, even though they were of course the whole truth.
"I'm thirty seven years old. This is not me."
The doctor took his glasses off, he was chewing the inside of his lip subtly. The glance he cast at Sherlock was pitiful, sad. It was extremely unnerving.
Returning to his clipboard, he scribbled a few short-hand paragraphs in red ink. The room was silent for minutes before the man placed the clipboard on the bedside and reached into his bag, pulling out a similar book to the one of which he'd glimpsed on first awakening. On sight of the book he felt a twinge of uncomfortable recognition, and a sudden flash of pain deep in his skull, but if faded as soon as it came.
"Do you know what this is?" The man asked, calmly holding the book up where it was visible to both males.
"No."
He heard a little sigh come from the elder, as he pulled the book to his knee and turned to a page in the front section. He began to read, clearly, calmly, like John reading him emails from clients. He read from the dirty, well-worn pages almost by heart. The literature spoke of a sign of four, of a John Watson, Sherlock Holmes and Mary Morstan. Of a love declaration between Watson and Morstan, of a house-keeper named Hudson, of a group of "Baker Street Irregulars" run by a Wiggins. As the man continued reading and the sun began setting, Sherlock felt his brain go into meltdown. It was overpowering to the extent that he had to physically strain to retain processes of thought.
The book was evidently at least fifty years old, falling to pieces – any number of tests would prove that correct. Yet adventures so similar to his own, names and personality traits identical – why were there no flaws for him to pick open and find a solution? His deductions were failing him.
He might have dozed off, or even just zoned out, yet as the room bathed in a pink hue from the setting sun it was peaceful. During the day of course there'd been doctors, nurses, tests, therapy, but none of them mattered like this. The book had been returned to the inside of his bag and the older male sat straight in his chair, patiently, watching with interest. If there were other people in that room then he certainly was not aware of it.
Sherlock swallowed. Was this the best idea? Did he really want to know? Did he really believe that this wasn't a case to be solved, yet something to which he had to plead for understanding? He exhaled slowly, his small, hairless chest rising and falling. His mouth was dry as he formulated the diction.
"Explain everything I need to know. Who am I, why am I here, what is that book – I need to know, my brain is in overdrive and once I've eliminated the impossible, nothing remains, however improbable, to be the truth. Just tell me -" he inhaled sharply, sending monitors beeping. "-please."
The doctor swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing against his neck, littered with scratchy little ginger hairs. He stammered his opening.
"I-I don't believe I'm the right person to inform you of these matters, Scott." He put particular emphasis on the name. It was much sterner than anything he'd heard from this man.
"Please – I need to hear it from-" He bit down on his tongue, forcing himself not to say "-a voice I can trust."
His eyes narrowed and flickered in thought for a moment or two. He ploughed on.
"-uh, you."
The elder sighed in capitulation, running an uneasy hand across his forehead.
"If this is what you want, Scott, then I shall oblige."