Thank you to Kathmak and RenaissanceBookLover108 for basically pointing out something that would be very lacking in this chapter and lead to confusion. You don't know it, but you actually kind of saved the chapter from being just a 100 word filler stub.
Enjoy!
There was a woman at his side, knitting with a mediocre amount of skill—a recent habit then—and humming softly to herself. Sherlock watched her out of barely opened eyes for a few minutes, baffled when she reached out a hand towards his own as though to take it. Whatever he'd taken at that party he vowed to never take it again—hallucinations were not his favorite. Very much the opposite.
The woman didn't actually touch his hand though, biting her lip and going back to the knitting. Sherlock soon fell back asleep, a dull ache winding its way through his head. He couldn't for the life of him remember why he would be in hospital other than perhaps an overdose of some sort. Drugs were apparently not to be in his repertoire of in-depth experiences if this was where he landed after his first attempt.
Sherlock didn't remember these thoughts, or the woman at his bedside, the next time he woke up. He met Mycroft's eyes instead and felt shame well up through him. One party, one time being recreational with the drugs passed around, and he wound up in hospital. And his head was aching. His elder brother explained to him gently that he'd been there for some time. He'd hit his head while out on a case.
He'd been living with Mycroft's family for the last several years. He had no one in his life except for them. He was a detective—a consulting detective. Mycroft twitched a wry smile at that—coined it yourself, I do believe.
Sherlock remembered only bits and pieces of this conversation the next time he awoke, and Mycroft was once again at his side. His brother was patient with him as he relayed the information again. And again the next time Sherlock regained consciousness. Mycroft repeated the story until it was stuck in Sherlock's brain and he was able to recall it in detail. The doctors all said that what had been lost was lost unless some sort of shock happened to the brain that caused it to start to remember. One physician had joked that it was as though his brain had deleted the last eight or ten years of his life—Sherlock rather liked that terminology, and made a mental note to keep it with him. There was no need for the detritus he'd lost, he decided, and there was no need to being collecting it again.
Though he was still fuzzy sometimes, he willingly got in the car with Mycroft and went to the little house his brother had feathered for himself in the last decade.
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