(Reader warning: This chapter contains mention of a suicide attempt and the death of a child. Just to get us kicked off in fully cheery mode. Neither character is one we know but feel free to skip if you'd rather just not.)
It was the hallucinations that finally convinced John that he needed to get back into therapy.
Specifically, it was the one of his wife standing in the corner of his surgery, scowling at him and saying, "You need to get back into therapy."
He ignored her. He knew he just needed a bit of rest.
"Yeah, no," Mary replied to his unspoken thoughts, "Needing some rest is one thing, insomnia on this level is very much another. You're going to kill someone."
No worries there, John thought, he was a mild-mannered suburban GP. Everything else was over and done with.
"You just wrote a prescription for prednisone for Mr. Kelly's tachycardia."
John, slowly, pulled the screen of the EMR back over and read over his notes.
"You meant to type propanolol," Mary said helpfully, "Which is what he has been taking for his tachycardia, because, you know, it actually works to treat it. As opposed to prednisone, which doesn't. And which we don't give him, generally, since he's diabetic and it can cause sudden rises in blood sugar but I'm sure you didn't just make a really unforgivable mistake."
John bolted out of his office after the departing Mr. Kelly, hearing, quite clearly, Mary calling merrily, "But he probably wouldn't actually die! The pharmacist would likely catch it!"
Thus after getting the right prescription to the right patient, and getting an intolerably understanding talking-to by the head of the practice, John pulled up a list of the nearest therapists on the NHS's internal website. He didn't want to go back to Ella-
"Because Sherlock thinks she's a qua-ack," Mary singsonged.
Because there was too much history there and John was all about the fresh starts, now. There were four men and one woman, Doctor Inga Braun, within cycling distance, and he chose the woman after brief consideration. He'd always felt more comfortable talking to women than men, and that held true for his therapist preferences. Her first available slot was two days later.
Two days and nights passed. Two days in which John visited the real Mary in hospital, went to work and looked after Rosie, all while feeling so fatigued it was like he was about a quarter inch separated from any of it. Two nights of fitful catnaps inevitably ending with his bolting awake, heart racing, where he sat in the dark by Rosie's crib and listened to her quiet breathing and tried not to think.
The new trick cyclist was youngish, with prematurely grey hair. She practiced out of her home and seemed faintly familiar to John, although that was probably because she was almost a caricature of a therapist, all long skirts and chunky jewelry and rimless spectacles and soothing mannerisms. She even had a nice little Sigmund Freud sort of accent.
As always on the first visit to a new therapist, John had to provide a little capsule autobiography and psychiatric history. In his specific case, this took a while. Midway through, Doctor Braun looked at the clock hanging over his head and said, "Well, I don't have anyone on after you, so I suppose we can run a bit long today."
He finished up. Doctor Braun looked at her notepad and said, "Well, there's obviously a lot to unpack here, but let's start with the proximate cause. What was the specific reason you decided to return to therapy?"
"The insomnia's starting to affect my work," John replied.
"Oh for God's sake. Just tell her that you're hallucinating about your wife yelling at you, you asshole," Mary suggested. John looked away from her.
"You haven't taken time off work to deal with all this?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I'm a GP. If I don't work I don't get paid, and I've got this weird fondness for making rent and buying food." If anything John was working more than he used to, since all the financial estimates that had gone into choosing their flat had assumed two incomes. The six months of maternity leave Mary had taken for Rosie had been a pinch, but they'd managed it because Sherlock had gotten unusually sensitive and practical and started insisting John accept a share of his eyewateringly high fees on the cases that they worked together. Obviously that wasn't an option any longer.
"Do you have friends or family who can give you financial help?"
One thing John had noticed since Mary had been in hospital was how few people, financially helpful or otherwise, were really in his life. There was Harry, but if she couldn't even be arsed to show up to his wedding he would be damned before he went crawling to her again now that times were hard. Mike and Molly, yes, but because he was finding it incredibly difficult to leave Rosie with anyone who didn't have an MD they were already holding the bag for him more than he liked. Mrs. Hudson, but she was Sherlock's more than his. That was basically it.
"No," he said.
"Not Sherlock Holmes?"
"I don't see Sherlock any more," John said, precisely. The therapist raised her eyebrows at this, and then decided to move on.
"I see your GP prescribed you ten milligrams of zolpidem. Has that been helpful?"
"Not really," John replied, "It puts me out for about two hours but then I wake right back up again." Also he was concerned about mixing Ambien and alcohol, which was sort of starting to become a thing again… but one problem at a time.
"What are you thinking about, when you first wake up?"
John considered for a moment, and then said, "Death."
"Your death?" Therapists are always interested in you when they think you're suicidal.
"No," John said. His death held no particular terrors any longer. There were worse things.
"Whose then?"
John inhaled, and said slowly, "I always have to go check and see if Rosie's… if Rosie's still breathing. The baby monitor isn't sensitive enough that I can hear if she is or not."
"Rosie is… ten months old, correct? And healthy? Not at any particular risk for a cot death."
The fact that someone besides him had said "cot death" out loud was an inexpressible weight off John's mind. He liked Doctor Braun, he decided.
"Johnny-boy's got a crush," Imaginary Mary cooed. He. ignored. her.
"I had a patient once, back in Afghanistan. Her son… perfect, healthy little boy, born at term, no respiratory problems, no smokers in the house, none of the standard risk factors. Then his dad went in to wake him one morning and he was blue. She'd cut her wrists, and when I was patching her up she kept asking why I wouldn't just let her die. And now I can't stop thinking about that."
Doctor Braun looked at him with her deep dark eyes, and said, "You don't feel like the people that you love are safe."
John laughed bitterly.
"Well, yeah. Cause they aren't. Nothing's safe. The second you think that it's otherwise is right when you find out how bloody wrong you are."
Like the times when your best (hell, only) friend comes back from the dead and you're happy and about to get engaged and then you get drugged and put into a bonfire. Or when you think her enemies are dead and the worst thing in your future is confessing your infidelity to your wife and then you get to watch her try to breathe around the bullet in her chest.
"Insecurity and fear are both very typical reactions to traumatic experiences like the ones you have been through," she said, "Though it's always fascinating to observe how different people respond to the same stimulus. But this is something which we can work on… knowing how to manage it in a productive way, knowing which fears are valid and which ones the mind is constructing for you, and how to keep these negative emotions from spilling over into other areas of your life where they may or may not be relevant."
Dr. Braun made a few notes, then asked, "Is that all?"
John frowned, "Isn't that… enough?"
"Certainly it is, but at the same time I can't help but notice that you keep glancing over my shoulder. What are you looking for?"
John glanced. Mary shrugged at him.
"Just… looking away," he said.
"All right, then," she said, with (again, weirdly familiar) brusqueness, "Averting the gaze means avoidance, deceit, or concealment. But you did choose to come here and talk with me, and while I do assume all my patients will eventually try to keep things from me if not outright lie, I haven't even asked you about sex or substance abuse yet."
"Oooh. You've found another noticer," Mary said.
"You're observant," John said, flatly, "Reminds me of someone I know."
"Sherlock Holmes?"
"Yep," he said, popping the "p."
"And I don't believe you consider that to be a flattering comparison."
"Look, I imagine being really perceptive is very useful for a therapist, and I don't mind that you've clearly heard of me," John bit out, "But honestly all I'm after here is a fresh diagnosis... what I'm thinking is some sort of panic disorder, though I'll defer to your expertise. And then I'd like some CBT or some EMDR or some handy exercises that I can take home so I can bloody start to calm the hell down and get some sleep. If I wanted someone to deduce me I'd go over to Baker Street or wherever he's hiding and talk to Sherlock. Frankly he's better at it than you are."
John was probably imagining the split second when Doctor Braun looked incredibly pissed off at that last sentence. He really needed some rest. Envisioning one woman being mad at him was quite enough. All she replied was, "Why haven't you? Are you angry with him?"
"No, I'm not angry any more. I've got other things to worry about now. I've moved on."
"Has he?"
"I can only assume so, yes. His brother phoned me a few weeks ago to let me know he was out and about again. And he's really hard to avoid when he wants something."
"You're averting your gaze again," Doctor Braun said, "Evasion or deceit?"
"Neither," John said, "It's just… can you hear that?"
Doctor Braun cocked her head to listen, but the sound quickly grew so loud that it soon became unnecessary. It was sirens… and a helicopter, very near at hand. John stood and walked to the front door, Doctor Braun following behind curiously.
Through the quiet streets of Twickenham, he could hear the noisy revs of a V8 engine. A car was approaching at speed.
(Notes: It takes surprisingly little sleep deprivation to make you hallucinate. I'm taking a bit of artistic license in how detailed and coherent said hallucinations are likely to be because John is, after all, a fictioneer.)