Disclaimer – I'm still not Conan Doyle (although I may be the tooth fairy… or perhaps not…)
I own Sweetie though…
Observations of a Boswell
Prior to the Reunion – Lestrade
Once we were in the cab, the old man beside me whispered one word.
"Watson."
I gave the cabby the Kensington address, relieved to the bottom of my heart that the business referred to in the office had been related to assuaging the grief of a very good friend. Once we were well underway Holmes judged it safe to ask me in a low voice what had become of his only friend. I had seen how hard the death of his friend had hit John: I was beginning to understand that the man beside me had felt a fraction of this pain as well. A startling discovery about a man that we at the Yard often called the 'thinking machine', sometimes with less than fond tones.
"Well," I grimaced, "He was very low for a few weeks after he lost… his friend, and Mrs Watson had a job of cheering him up. You know what he's like sir, you can knock him down as hard as you like, but he gets back up again eventually."
The bookseller grunted, long thin fingers twitching on his wares. He was thinner than I remembered and had the look of a man who'd slept rough for a while – not his clothes, which were immaculate to his disguise, but his eyes. He was also unmistakably eager for whatever information I could offer him about our mutual friend; as tempting as it was to draw things out, I knew better than to prolong his agony. Sherlock Holmes always came up with inventive ways to make you pay.
"Well, he started working for the Charity hospitals for a while, on top of his practice, which I think Mrs Watson suggested to him. That helped, because the hospitals would call him out at odd hours, which he was used to in his… old line of work," I hinted, garnering an irritable grunt in reply, the feverish grey eyes all but shouting at me to get on with it.
"When she died… he took sick for a while after the funeral. Not brain fever, but close on it… and when he recovered, although it wasn't really a proper recovery, we at the Yard convinced him to sign on as a Police Surgeon, part time. He might not have been in your league when it came to detecting the living, but he can make the dead speak with an accuracy that is uncanny," I sighed, "He'd come on raids with us when we thought we'd need medical backup and he'd come to interviews and the like with some of the other Inspectors or myself when we needed a calming influence. The Constables see him as one of their own, though that could be because he tends their families when someone's sick. Quite a few of us have him down as our physician of record… I'm sure you can understand why."
Because Dr John Hamish Watson was a stubborn son of a mule who would fight Death herself for his patients, winning more often than not. He'd saved the life and limb of so many of the men who policed London that there had been talk of getting him his own credentials. The man beside me didn't need me to tell him that – he'd been on the receiving end of John's medical skills more than once.
"Overwork," the dissatisfied grumble recalled me to my situation and I nodded grimly. I wasn't looking forward to witnessing the shock that John's physical appearance would give to Mr Holmes – the man was thinner than he should be, thinner than he had been when I'd first met him.
"Yes," I agreed, "As much as we try to limit him, as much as we try to get him to slow down and take a breath now and then … he works hard to cope with his grief."
There was a barely audible groan from beside me, and it struck at my heart. I'd seen the disappointment in his eyes when he'd realised that Watson wasn't there with us in the office, followed by the grief and rage when he'd realised his brother's duplicity. He and Mrs Watson had enjoyed a very unusual relationship, but it couldn't be denied that he'd taken her death as something of a blow. I didn't know what the brothers' relationship was like before all this happened, hell I didn't know the man even had a brother, but pounds to pennies that the two of them would barely speak for a while, if ever.
"I think… it would be best if we got him home before you told him you were alive. It's the half day at his surgery today, then he was supposed to come to the Yard this afternoon, but that doesn't matter," I withstood the grey glare as best I could, "Look, you haven't seen what all this has done to him. In fact between his health and a rather vicious criminal, I think we'd have lost him eight months after Switzerland if one of his patients hadn't given him a gift of a dog. Sweetie is one of the few things that have kept him going."
"Sweetie?!" the incoherent splutter was worth being stiffed for the fare as the cab pulled up outside the practice of John H Watson.
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