Chapter 7
"Ho-cough," Watson began, grabbing at his companion's arm. Holmes barely stirred though he too had begun to cough in his sleep as more and more smoke seeped into the room.
"Doctor Watson, we must be quick!" Dr. Reid said, suddenly at his side, "We will bring him out together." The other doctor had one arm across his mouth and nose to help filter the smoke while he used the other to help up their patient. Watson quickly took his other arm.
"Wa…?" Holmes attempted to say, his throat rough and broken by coughs. He made a weak attempt at helping the two doctors as they lifted him to his feet, but most of his weight still leaned heavily over them. Watson had no breath to answer; the world he had awoken to seemed a nightmare of impossibly thick smoke that choked the air from their lungs and left them slow and lumberous. And if Watson felt so overcome, he feared what a recovering patient must endure. It was too soon to add such strains to Holmes's heart and other organs.
They made for the door, finding no heat but a horrendous and noxious cloud. Watson had been down this path a million times, yet he felt strange and disoriented in this fog. Stumbling and attempting not to trip over furniture he led Holmes and Reid towards where he felt the way out should be, only to feel rebuked by a sudden blast of heat. They were heading straight into the flames.
"W-, w-," Holmes attempted to say, unable to get the words out between rounds of desperate coughing.
"Here," Watson attempted to say, when he felt Holmes tugging weakly at his elbow.
"Win-," he managed to choke out and then Watson understood, and turning them he led them towards the window. His lungs choked, his mind began to feel light and he became afraid that he might pass out before he reached it, thereby dooming not only himself but Reid and Holmes to the furnace that crept up the stairs. Then the weight he was dragging suddenly increased, pulling him down.
"Holmes?" he managed to hack out through his sleeve, but Holmes made no response; he did not even seem to be coughing. He did not seem to be breathing.
Watson shook him, coughing out his name.
"Go," Reid called to him, his voice thick and rough, "Crawl." And Watson discovered the air was clearer there upon the floor. They inched forward, dragging Holmes between them as a dead weight, until Watson's groping hand came upon the wall. Eyes watering painfully and throat raw, he heaved himself up, reaching with his hand until it came upon the window. The world spinning horribly, he managed to open it and lean out.
Air at last, and he coughed harshly, drawing it in desperately, before ducking his head back into the room. Reid did not copy him, a heavy weight next to Holmes.
"Come on," Watson half sobbed, shaking both their shoulders, and Reid let out a harsh gasping cough and allowed Watson to heave him half out the window. While the doctor coughed in fresher air, Watson felt the heat in the room rising and desperately grabbed Holmes's unresponsive form. Having no breath for conversation, he got the other doctor's attention by tugging at his leg, and Reid weakly managed to help haul Holmes up next to him. He kept pulling him, and before Watson realized what was happening, Holmes had disappeared out the window.
Watson gave a small cry of alarm and felt himself falling back to the floor, the hazy sight of the open window swimming as his vision began to grow dark about the edges. Then Reid's hands were pulling at him, and with his last burst of energy he heaved himself up again. Down below them he did not see, as he had feared, Holmes's broken body. There was a large group of people gathered and a sheet arranged between them as a net, and Watson understood and let himself fall.
He fell for a long time.
When he awoke again to the world, it was once more to his own harsh coughs and to excited voices. He reveled in the fresh air of the night, his thoughts hazy as a kaleidoscope of voices swirled away to the side. A woman's voice, distraught, a soothing male, a smoke rough response. One voice was notably absent, and he came fully into himself with a jolt, his eyes searching.
"Holmes?" he managed to hack out, his throat filled with sand paper.
"Oh, Dr Watson, thank goodness!" the distraught woman cried, this time registering as Mrs. Hudson. There were a lot of other people around as well; police, firemen, and gawkers all gathered in the street. He couldn't see Holmes. Where was Holmes?
"This is getting to be serious business," Inspector Lestrade said from next to her, "First poison and now arson. Just relax, Doctor, and we'll have you to the hospital in no time."
"No…" Watson began, breaking into a coughing fit. His chest ached and throat felt like he had swallowed glass but he finally managed to say, "No need…where's Holmes?"
"They're looking after him right over there," Lestrade answered, "He's under guard now and looked after."
"He's breathing?" Watson asked, "He wasn't…" And finally someone came with a glass of liquid. Watson barely glanced at it before gulping it down. It burned down his throat and only after did he think it might not be smart to accept drinks from strangers. But Lestrade had let the drink come, and whatever Holmes said, Watson trusted him this far at least. It was too much effort to fear for everything. At this point, he seriously felt it might be a relief to be poisoned anyway; he could let go of the case, of his anxiety, of everything and hand it on to someone else to worry over. But as far as he trusted Lestrade, he trusted no one to properly see after Holmes. So he didn't let go, and didn't find the drink to be poisoned though it was barely adequate to quench the glass lodged in his throat. And a moment later Mrs. Hudson managed to bring up some tea, though from where Watson couldn't imagine.
"There, Doctor," she said, "And we checked it carefully for yew leave and other poisons." He drank it more slowly than the first, his eyes searching in the direction Lestrade had indicated earlier as he hoped to catch sight of his friend. He saw Reid instead, coughing harshly and half insensate as he was plied with a drink. Then he heard a familiar and beautiful voice, for all that it was weak, rough, and being employed as a sharp edged weapon.
"No, I'm afraid (cough) that the standards of medical license must have become distressingly (cough) lax, if you cannot grasp the simplest instruction of your native (cough cough)…tongue. I do not need to go with you and my coloring (cough) is not smoke (cough) inhal…(cough)…ation, it is tax…(cough)…it is…(cough, cough)…I need my (cough)…my Watson, not…(cough)…Where…?" As his voice grew distressingly rougher the further into his speech he got, Watson took it as his cue to come to the rescue, though who he was rescuing from whom he wasn't entirely sure.
"Here, old boy," he managed to say without breaking into another coughing fit as he stumbled to his feet, Lestrade discreetly helping him as he stumbled on his bad leg. "It's alright," he said as he stumbled over, trying to give them a reassuring smile despite looking rather like an escaped patient himself, "I'm a doctor." The two men hovering over Holmes looked uncertain, but when Lestrade also gave them his assurances, they gladly gave Holmes over to their care and left.
"But are you sure you shouldn't go?" Lestrade asked, concern flavoring his words. Watson didn't even want to consider what he must look like for Lestrade to get that sound in his voice as he looked them over, but if Holmes was any way to judge then he must be blackened over with soot, clothes torn, eyes red and skin pale. Holmes also did indeed have a faint blueness still to his lips, and whatever he had said earlier it was not entirely up to his previous illness as the color had been almost returned to normal before the fire. In fact, Watson wasn't entirely sure they shouldn't be being treated, except that he knew Holmes would never stand for it and in the long run it would be easier to get Holmes to relax if he was allowed a little bit of effort now. And Watson really didn't want to be poked and prodded himself with doctors at the hospital when he knew perfectly well all that was wrong with himself and didn't think it needed.
"Holmes…" he said, and instead of all the instructions he would like to give, instructions that would almost definitely be ignored, he settled upon "drink your tea." And Holmes did.
The fire was out quickly, it turned out. It had been set upon the stairs but had done little damage beyond them, though the smoke had done a bit more. The fire brigade dispersed. The onlookers were slower to leave, but as most of the police departed and the rest moved back inside to the kitchen, which didn't even get the smoke damage the rest of the house was treated with, they slowly dispersed. In the kitchen a makeshift bed was made up of cloaks and curtains where Holmes was meant to rest. He was surprisingly accommodating, going as far as to lie down as Watson instructed and close his eyes, but despite an obvious exhaustion he did not rest, wanting to know the facts he had missed by virtue of being half dead earlier. He listened quietly, except for the still persistent coughing which necessitated him being propped up upon a couple of chair cushions, to what information had been gathered on the fire first, and in fact looked on the verge of falling asleep after all, when his eyes flew open and he looked about with an expression of distress.
"Holmes?" Watson asked, worried. He had been propped up on his own set of cushions and coats while Mrs. Hudson continued to ply everyone with tea, but his earlier rest had restored him somewhat, despite the tiresome cough and his bout with oxygen deprivation, and he was not ready to sleep.
"But we are not all here!" Holmes said, eyes darting about the room, "Wherever is Gladstone? And the two girls who are ever giggling in the kitchen?" The others stared at him and Mrs. Hudson turned away, distraught.
"What is the last thing you remember before being ill?" Watson asked carefully. Holmes frowned as he looked inward upon his memories.
"You were called away before we ate…Nanny hovered…I took up some reading as you returned…and…oh," Something very like pain briefly shadowed his face before he managed to smooth it away into indifference. "The dog is dead, then. And…" his expression grew more troubled. If there was anything disconcerting to one with a memory as Holmes's, it was for that memory to fail. Watson was not entirely surprised at the failure, however; his casebooks on yew poisoning indicated it to be likely. After a moment Holmes continued, though his words sounded less sure than before. "A cry downstairs…someone dead…the soup was poisoned?"
"Yes," Watson confirmed, and when Holmes opened his eyes to look at him questioningly, Watson took up the narrative to fill in the blank spots. Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson gave their share as well, jumping in when Watson's throat began to sound too rough. It was as they finished with the fire, and after Holmes had once again succumbed to closing his eyes, that the knock at the door came.
Lestrade opened it, ready to send whoever it was away unless it turned out to be someone from the yard with more news. It was not. It was a woman of middle age wearing clothes which seemed unsuited in their coarseness to the smoothness of her skin and the regal bearing of her head. A larger man stood at her back and another woman with him but they stayed back with the cab that stood in the street. Two policemen stood watching them suspiciously but backed off when Lestrade gave them a nod.
"Excuse me," the woman said with an accent that was not British, "Is this the address of Mr. Sherlock Holmes? I have a matter of some urgency with him."
"I'm sorry, Madame, but Mr. Sherlock Holmes is unavailable at the moment," Lestrade answered firmly, "If it is truly urgent, I can recommend taking it to the Scotland Yard." But the lady was only half listening, for her eyes had moved past him to the burnt stairs, the stench of smoke still strong in the room, and an expression of great distress came over her.
"Oh dear!" she cried with some dismay, "I seem to be too late!" Then Lestrade's expression changed from polite to interested.
"Too late, Madame? Whatever do you mean?"
"Perhaps," Holmes said roughly from the doorway, Watson hovering disapprovingly at his elbow and not quite holding him up, "the lady should be allowed in." And despite the brief coughing fit and near collapse that followed, his eyes took her in with a sharp clarity which belied his weakened state, and no one doubted in the least that he already knew a great deal more of the situation than all the able bodied people in the room.
"Yes, yes of course," Lestrade agreed. And she was allowed through to the kitchen while Watson half carried Holmes back to his repose and Lestrade shut the door firmly behind them.
