In the End
Chapter 3
Turning with the listless and staying close behind. The arms that once held you have receded over time.
And the little love I had for all my friends and foe and the little lines we've drawn between us all have taken hold.
The Frames, "Friends and Foe", For the Birds
The tidy neighborhoods in the suburb of Barking and Dagenham looked almost untouched by the turmoil cutting wide swathes out of London. Front gardens were, for the most part, neat and orderly. The curbs had no rubbish piling up, with chirping birds providing the only disruption to the streets' quiet.
Of course, that could be because the area was half-deserted. Apparently, many of its residents had fled the city. The roads looked surprisingly wide in the absence of parked cars and lorries. There were no people strolling down lanes with their dogs, no dust carts trundling down the road, and no children wheeling around on bicycles in front of the terraced houses that stretched on as if endless.
In an ideal world, the quiet would be peaceful. But this was not. The weather was mild and sunny, yet no windows hung open, their curtains fluttering in the light breeze. All of the houses on these particular streets were shut up, curtains drawn, as if the homes, themselves, were grieving.
And on Eustace Road, the spring daffodils that had just started opening their cheerful faces across the city presented an eerie dichotomy to the absence of all other signs of life.
Molly and Sherlock spent the hour-long bus trip from Barts to Barking in silence. It was more exhausted than companionable, flavored with at pinch of awkwardness. But she was glad for his presence, nonetheless.
On exiting the hospital together, he'd balked when she stopped at the bus stop. Molly had then proceeded to studiously ignore his increased agitation, as she looked at her TFL app on her mobile, hoping service would still be running somewhat dependably.
They'd been in luck. Within a minute of Molly figuring out their necessary route, the bus they needed had rolled to a stop next to them. As she'd climbed aboard, Molly could hear Sherlock muttering something about taxis versus filthy public transpo. She'd pretended she didn't hear him.
She was actually a little surprised that he hadn't whipped out an antibacterial wipe and run it over his seat before deigning to perch his posterior on it. Apparently he wasn't that fussy. Or he didn't have an antibacterial wipe on him. She'd decided not to tell him she had small packet of Detol wipes in her bag. Either he'd take the whole packet or he'd start lecturing her on supergerms. One could never tell with Sherlock.
They were the only passengers on the bus for the majority of the trip. Like everything else in the city, public transportation was only just running. TFL had managed to scrabble together some kindly (read: lonely) volunteers, much the same as Barts. Judging by the lack of people, anything more than bare-bones service was unnecessary. There probably weren't too many commuters heading to and from work anymore.
When they arrived at the quiet suburb, they had a short walk ahead of them. Sherlock silently followed Molly the few blocks from their stop to 5 Eustace Road. Like the other row houses around it, it had the appearance of something trying to shut out the rest of the world. None of its blinds were open, and there were no cars parked in close proximity to the house.
"Doesn't look like anyone's there. Shall we go find some coffee?" Sherlock asked brightly.
Molly just rolled her eyes and strode forward to the front door, knocking smartly on its wood.
They waited. And waited a bit more.
Just as she was starting to (silently) agree that the house had been abandoned, she heard footfalls from inside, and the tumbler on the lock fall back.
The woman who answered the door looked haggard. Her hair was unbrushed and she wore stained, wrinkled clothing.
She also wore a look of deep consternation, directed deliberately at her unexpected visitors.
"If you're here to tell me that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, I already sent away some of your friends yesterday. I'm not interested in whatever you're selling."
Molly spared a second to marvel at the constancy of a few things, such as door-to-door proselytizers. She shook it off and hurried to dig her Barts identification out of her bag.
"Mrs. Brown, I'm Molly Hooper. I'm a doctor with Saint Bartholomew's Hospital. I was the attending pathologist for Michael Brown's postmortem. And this is Sherlock Holmes, who is assisting me today."
Where Anne Brown had previously looked annoyed, now her face flickered between grief and hope.
"Do you have Michael's ashes? I can't reach anyone at the hospital. I've tried phoning over and over, and no one answers. I want them so badly before…. Well, before."
Molly heard Sherlock open his mouth and inhale, probably about to tell Anne that she wouldn't care what she had with her when that particular "before" arrived, but Molly elbowed him roughly in the stomach before he could get a word out. He let out an oomph (more out of surprise than pain) and then remained quiet.
"I am so sorry. I don't have your husband's cremains. He was transported to City of London the same morning I completed the postmortem. And I'm sorry I didn't answer your calls. I'm one of two people remaining on staff in the pathology department and am rarely at my desk to hear the phone."
Tears pooled in Anne's eyes, but she nodded silently in understanding. Molly hastily dug in her tote for some tissues, which she thrust out to the silently weeping woman, who took one with a choked thanks.
"Actually, Mrs. Brown, I was wondering if you might have the time to answer a few questions. I am trying to complete my final report, but I'm having some difficulty piecing a few details together. I can't reach his physician's office; I don't think it's open any longer."
The widow nodded and waved them into her dark house.
The front entry opened into a slightly cluttered sitting room. A lumpy sofa dominated the room, the only option for seating, positioned in front of a flat screen television hanging silently on the wall. A knitted afghan throw lay bunched up on the sofa, but there were no books and no remote control around, leading Molly to believe Anne had been sitting, doing nothing, in the oppressive silence.
Molly felt a surge of empathy for the woman. She knew what it was like to have nothing but one's own thoughts and grief for company. When a knock on the door was both the most welcome and most intrusive sound in the world.
Anne waved them through to the small kitchen, located at the back on the ground floor. Molly's nose wrinkled as they entered the room, noticing the slight smell of spoiling food that was starting to overtake the air. No necessarily meat, but vegetables certainly. She did her best to school her expression so she didn't let on that the sickly, sweet scent was apparent.
Sherlock, for his part, appeared rather incurious of everything that was happening. Molly wasn't sure what she'd expected. She supposed she hadn't thought he would whip out his magnifying glass or start flipping through the Browns' post, currently piled on the kitchen counter. But she had thought he might examine his surroundings a little.
Instead he stood there, hands in his coat pocket, looking to Molly with an arched brow. She shrugged her shoulders minutely before turning to face Anne once more.
"Mrs. Brown, how long was your husband employed as a pilot?"
Anne didn't look too inclined to do any exact mental math in her dulled state, but she glanced at her wall calendar, as if the Month-at-a-Glance would show her years' worth of dates.
"He earned his license a couple of years before we met in 1980. He worked for various airlines during that time. He was headhunted by EasyJet when it first started up in 1995."
Molly hmmed as she set her bag on the counter, searching its depths for her mobile. As she dug around the striped tote's bottom, she continued her line of questions.
"Had he ever had problems with blood clots before his last flight?"
Anne shook her head, a bit uneasily. Molly only barely caught the change in the woman's demeanor. She looked to Sherlock to see if he'd noticed, but he was busy sighing at Molly's futile search. He walked up to her side, his hand diving into her left coat pocket. It emerged holding her mobile. He unlocked it and pulled up her Notepad app. The look on his face as he thrust the phone under her nose could only be described as 'aggrieved'.
Molly chose to respond with a sophisticated, distant smile of thanks.
She flicked through the series of questions she'd typed up on their bus trip for easy note taking.
"And when was Michael diagnosed with a protein S deficiency?"
Anne's head snapped up from its slumped, wary manner.
"H—he wasn't diagnosed with a protein S defi—whatever you called it."
Finally, Sherlock's attention turned to the other woman; slowly, like a predator scenting something.
"You were about to repeat back exactly what Dr. Hooper said. You changed your mind midsentence and feigned ignorance. Why?"
"I did no such thing. I started to worry that I was saying it wrong, so I stopped," Anne sputtered indignantly.
Sherlock scoffed at the woman's excuse.
"I would almost believe that, but for the fact that you didn't want to discuss your husband's propensity for blood clots before the protein deficiency was even mentioned. Do us all a favor and tell us the truth. We're not here on a police investigation. The good doctor here is trying to help determine what happened to your husband. Something no one else in all of London is trying to do, so it would serve you well to answer her questions honestly."
Anne seemed to slump further, if it was possible, and then she started talking, haltingly but earnestly.
"Michael began feeling poorly a couple of months ago. He started violently coughing. Within a week, it was nearly nonstop. Finally, I called a GP friend of ours. We met with him at his clinic after hours, where he x-rayed Michael's chest and found several clots in his lungs.
"He tried to insist that we go to the hospital… but a pilot developing a clotting disorder would have meant the end of Michael's career. We couldn't afford that. Jwala—the doctor—finally agreed to prescribe him a blood thinner, on the condition that we do tests again in six months. If he didn't improve, Jwala would have to report Michael to the Civil Aviation Authority."
Anne moved over to a cabinet and pulled down a mug. Shuffling over to the cooker, she poured some steaming water from a kettle. She kept her back to them as she fiddled with a bowl full of teabags.
"Now it's two months later, my husband is dead, and I am here alone at the end of the world."
Molly could feel the waves of despair rolling off of Anne Brown's shoulders, but she had to get more answers.
"Mrs. Brown, I am so sorry for your loss. I know you're distressed. But I have to know, why did your husband stop taking his medicine?"
This drew Anne up short. She turned around quickly, confusedly.
"What? He didn't stop taking his medicine. He wouldn't. His career depended on it. The lives of his passengers depended on it. Why would you think such a thing?"
Molly and Sherlock exchanged a glance.
"I did his postmortem, remember? I ran blood tests and catalogued the contents of his stomach. He ate a spinach salad a few hours antemortem. There was no medicine at all in his system. But he had purple toe syndrome, so I knew he had taken warfarin, and fairly recently."
Anne started shaking her head as Molly enumerated her evidence, and didn't stop once the doctor finished speaking.
"I saw him take his medicine. Every day, including the last. You're mistaken."
Molly tried a different tack.
"Do you still have his medicine? I'd like to test it. Perhaps it was defective," she offered.
Anne's hands clenched in helpless fists and tears slid down her face, but she nodded miserably, asked them to remain there, and left the room.
While they waited for her return, Sherlock actually did begin poking around, though Molly thought it was likely more out of boredom than any desire to investigate shady circumstances.
"So… what do you think?" She asked.
He opened the refrigerator door, peering inside with a look of mingled disgust and apathy.
"I think she's conditioned herself to cover for her husband. You heard her admit any revelation of his disorder would have meant the end of his career," he replied as he opened the crisper drawers in the fridge, and closed them just as quickly when the rotting vegetables therein greeted him. He poked at a plastic Tupperware container. Its lid had a faded word scrawled in permanent marker and it held something that vaguely resembled saag paneer, though mold had taken hold and the food was now inedible.
He closed the fridge door and turned back to Molly.
"She's made up a pretty story for herself that she witnessed his every move, when in actuality, he was negligent regarding his own health. She thinks that might somehow reflect badly on her, so she'll likely never admit that he slipped up and she missed it. At least to us."
Molly frowned, not able to find many holes in his logic, but bothered, nonetheless.
She was about to respond when Anne's footfalls approached once more.
Upon reentering the kitchen, she handed off the nondescript chemist's bottle to Molly and then crossed her arms in front of herself like a shield.
"Now, if that's all, I need to be alone. I am sure you'll be in touch. In the meantime, I need to try to get in touch with City of London's crematorium and try to get my husband's ashes back."
Not sure how she could change the widow's mind, Molly nodded and collected her bag.
"One last thing. Have you heard anything from EasyJet since Michael's death?"
Anne herded them through the house, back to the front door.
"No. He only died seven days ago, as much as it feels like it was longer. And now I doubt I'll hear anything from them, what with flights being grounded and airports closed. No reason for any official business now. I have received a few calls from Michael's best friend. Glenn Ericson. He was the first officer on that last flight."
"Could we have his phone number? Maybe he can tell me more about your husband's last few hours," Molly explained.
Anne reluctantly took Molly's proffered mobile and typed in a number on the Notepad.
"He was the one who safely landed the plane after Michael collapsed," she said as she handed the phone back. "Glenn tried to do CPR and save him but—" She broke off on a choked sound.
Molly put a sympathetic hand on the other woman's shoulder.
"Again, I am so sorry. I am going to try to get some answers for you. You're not planning on leaving the city?" Molly asked.
Anne offered them a weak smile and opened the door for them.
"Why would I?" She asked as they stepped out. "This was our home. And whatever you think may have happened, I already have all of the answers I need, except for where my husband is now. But thank you for caring."
Molly opened her mouth to reply, but Anne shut the door, and the lock fell back into place.
As they slowly walked back to the bus stop, Molly trailed behind Sherlock, preoccupied with her thoughts on Anne Brown's sendoff.
Was Sherlock right? Was Michael Brown's death just a tragic mistake? And as a result, was Molly torturing a grieving widow for no reason other than her own desire to escape an encroaching reality?
But she had been right in her diagnosis of Brown's clotting disorder. He and his wife had made a definite effort to disguise the ailment. That should have meant that Michael would be rather vigilant following his prescribed routine, wouldn't it? What if Sherlock was wrong, and Anne was telling the truth that she'd seen her husband taking his medicine with no disruption? What, then, did that mean?
Yes, there was still the salient argument that it was a waste of time, since everything would be wiped like a slate in ten and a half days' time. But Molly couldn't just reprogram her inquisitive mind, even at so dramatic a hat drop. She'd become a pathologist for her love of puzzles. That, and she couldn't negate her own moral code about right and wrong.
And damn it, if Michael Brown had met a premature end at someone else's hand, didn't the fleeting memory of him deserve the truth?
Molly was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn't see Sherlock draw up short to answer his ringing mobile until she crashed into his back. He spared her an affronted look before he connected the call.
"Hello, Mycroft. How's France? I hear the éclairs are particularly good this season."
As he listened to the response on the other line, Molly was fascinated to watch his expression change. Where it had been playfully snide, he now looked almost cowed.
"Ah. Mummy. I apologize—"
Molly could hear a woman's voice filtering out of his mobile earpiece.
"Yes," he replied, "But because you called me on Mycroft's phone, I had no way of knowing that until you actually started talking. Why are you calling me on Mycroft's phone, by the way?"
He stood listening quietly for a moment and then looked to Molly, jerking his head in the direction of the bus stop. They started walking again as Sherlock continued to receive what she decided was a dressing down from his mother.
Molly began making up the other half of the conversation in her head. She decided 'Mummy' was busy telling Sherlock that he needed to be nicer to his big brother.
She hoped there was some threat of grounding involved.
As they arrived at the bus stop, his phone conversation shifted. Molly didn't have to imagine that his mother was asking him to join his family in France. Sherlock's discomfiture was evidence enough. This was a discussion they'd had before.
"Mycroft has assured me transport over there at any time. I will come. I just have things I need to take care of here in the city, first."
Mummy must have had something quite blunt to say to that, because Sherlock wasn't quiet for long, this time.
"I am working on a case, actually… yes, really."
He quieted again, then rolled his eyes.
"An important one, thanks for asking. I couldn't tell you how long it will take to solve, but I will ring you and Mycroft when I have completed it."
His face had scrunched into a mask of exasperation, but at whatever his mother said next, the frustration dropped off, and he suddenly looked much younger than his thirty-six years.
"No, Mummy, I'm not all alone. I'm fine. I will be in touch…. Goodbye."
He hit end on the call and stared expressionlessly at his mobile's face for a moment before tucking it back into his coat pocket. He glanced up, not meeting Molly's eyes, and then his expression darted over her shoulder.
"Here's the bus. Shall we?"
Once Molly had scanned her Oyster card and dug out some coins to cover Sherlock's fare, they made their way back to a row of seats toward the back of the bus. There were more passengers this time around, but not by much.
Sherlock didn't seem inclined to talk, but Molly couldn't just ignore what she'd heard.
"Sherlock, why did you use Michael Brown's death as an excuse not to go to your mother's? Why are you still here? I know you said you're not close, but it sounds like she really wants you with her."
"I guess impending doom has made her sentimental," he tried to evade.
He couldn't quite miss the sardonic look Molly was shooting him, so he gave in with a sigh.
"When I was twelve years old, I figured out that my father was engaged in any number of extramarital affairs. My mode of revealing this to Mu—my mother was less than tactful. It put a rather distinct wedge in our relationship, one which she's tried to expel in recent years."
"And she hasn't been successful," Molly supplied.
"She was never unkind to me, before. But my early twenties were particularly difficult years, and she left a lot of my…handling to Mycroft," he explained with a frown. "I feel it widened the gap between us. I wouldn't say I resent her, but I've had a hard time fostering any sort of closeness since then. Not that I've ever excelled at close with anyone. Trust has never come easily for me."
Molly felt a pang in her chest, for the woman whose life was dramatically changed by a precocious observation from her young son; for that son, older, lonely for his mother when he needed her love and support; and for them both, now, possibly missing their chance to make amends with each other and themselves.
She looked at her seatmate. He was gazing out of the window, his brow only furrowed enough that someone who knew him well would notice.
Opening her mouth, Molly tried to find bolstering or comforting words. But she couldn't think of any.
So, instead, she reached over to him, hesitantly. He didn't notice her hand hovering over his until she finally expelled an impatient huff and air and grabbed it, interlacing their fingers.
She felt his muscles and tendons contract in surprise. He switched his gaze from the window down to their hands, currently resting on the seat upholstery between them. Miraculously, he didn't jerk his away, demanding to know what she was on about.
Instead, he curled his fingers more securely around her hand. She could feel the roughness of callouses on his fingertips, brushing over her skin, sending prickles of awareness shooting up her arm.
All too soon, however, Sherlock pulled his hand free, clearing his throat and returning his eyes to the window.
Rather than dwell on what had just transpired, Molly pulled her bag up from where she'd braced it between her feet. She extracted Michael Brown's medicine bottle, scrutinizing its label. It looked to be in order; a thirty day supply of Warfarin—ten milligrams—prescribed by a Jwala Bakshi, and signed off by a chemist. The bottle was nearly two-thirds empty, judging by it its lightness and rattling.
Gleaning all she could from the exterior (perhaps she could convince Sherlock to look at the nondescript plastic when she was through making her observations), she twisted off the safety cap on the bottle and tipped a tablet out onto her hand.
And immediately drew up short.
"Sherlock," she said quietly.
He turned once again from the window, his eyes inquiring.
"Sherlock," she repeated, "This is not Warfarin."
"How to do you know that without proper lab tests?" he asked politely (or as politely as he was capable of being—so it came out sounding a bit swotty, to be honest).
"I know," she explained, "because Warfarin does not typically have the word 'Aspirin' stamped on its side."
Note: *headdesk* Sorry for the lateness of this. I hope to have the next chapter done in a timelier manner. But by now I've probably proven myself untrustworthy in giving estimates, so just know I'm an earnest scatterbrain. I do have more of an idea of the story's outline and I have more than half of an upcoming chapter written. Woot. Though, it's not the next chapter, so maybe un-Woot?
Thank you so much to everyone who's followed, favorited, and reviewed. I tried to thank reviewers individually, but if I missed someone, I apologize and just know that I am so grateful for the feedback. The same goes for any guest reviewers to whom I couldn't PM my thanks.
Thanks again for your interest in this story, everyone!