"John, please hold him steady – he's been fighting me since I began." Abbie's voice was worried and low as she bent over the prone figure of Sherlock Holmes on the bed, holding a wet cloth in her hand and attempting once again to clean the area around the ugly wound in his shoulder.
Watson knelt on the other side of the bed, sweat beading on his brow as he shifted his hands slightly on Holmes' good shoulder and chest, holding him firmly down. "He needs more morphine," he told her. "He's still half-conscious, and I can assure you that he's feeling everything you do."
Abbie shot him a look before returning her gaze to her patient, who moaned and twisted restlessly in the soft glow of the lamplight. Outside the windows, the storm answered his moan with a keening intensity of its own, shaking the very walls of the little house. "I've already given him far more than is enough. I don't understand it – he should be deeply asleep and not feeling any of this."
"Believe me," Watson gritted, applying gentle but firm pressure as Holmes tried to thrash again, "you have no idea what his capacity for morphine is. Or any number of other substances. In the past few months alone…" His voice trailed off as a wave of something like guilt crashed over him. When he'd moved out of their shared quarters in Baker Street, he knew, Holmes had turned back to cocaine with a vengeance – and "vengeance" may well be the operative word here, Watson thought grimly. He shook his head, not wanting to follow that particular thread of thought to its conclusion.
To counter the cocaine binges, which kept Holmes thrumming and alert for days on end as he pursued his cases – especially his damnable fixation on Moriarty – he would obtain morphine to make his body rest and finally sleep, so that he could function. Then he would go back on the cocaine and start the cycle all over again. Without Watson to intervene, the mania had continued unabated. Watson had weaned Holmes off the drugs once, earlier in their partnership – but once he'd left Holmes and their lodgings for the pleasures of married life, it was as if the healing had never happened.
Holmes was so damned convinced, Watson ruminated, that he knew how his mind and body operated, and that he could handle the drugs as long as he applied them to himself in what he considered a scientific manner. Watson had been contacted by Mrs. Hudson more than once over the past few months when she had found her lodger insensate on the floor, his pulse racing, limbs twitching - and once with a thin trickle of blood running from his nose.
It had been Watson's deepest fear that he would come to the flat one day and find Holmes cold and dead – and that he would blame himself forever after.
And Watson had watched Holmes closely during the course of this current case. Clearly he had been in the grip of some mood-elevating intoxicant (not formaldehyde, as Holmes had joked at the time, trying to divert Watson's attention from his real very real symptoms) the day before the wedding. The day Watson had visited 221B and had witnessed the fruits of Holmes' obsessive fixation on Moriarty, including the frightening spider's nest of red threads in Watson's old rooms. Had his dearest friend's incomparable mind finally been overcome, Watson had wondered at the time?
But once the hunt was in play and the case in motion, he mused, there had been no clear signs of drug use. Holmes was so good at hiding it now, though, and functioned so normally on the drugs that Watson really had no idea.
He glanced down now at Holmes's left arm – they had divested the wounded detective of his clothing, begrimed with the muck of blood and battle, and had managed to clean him up a little. The pale arm was mottled with blue and greenish needle scars, but they all looked at least days old, possibly older.
Holmes' eyelids fluttered and he rested his head momentarily against Watson's arm; Watson put the back of his hand to the detective's forehead, smoothing back the matted raven hair, and felt the radiating heat. His fever is growing worse, he thought helplessly. With all the advances of modern medicine, the treatment of deep wounds such as Holmes' had not improved much since the last war. How many good men in Afghanistan had he lost to wounds even lesser than this, once infection, fever and gangrene had set in?
It was, of course, the barbaric wound that Moriarty had inflicted in Holmes' right shoulder that was the main enemy tonight, and that needed attention first. To a lesser extent, the splinter wound in his leg would also need cleaning and treatment – because that one, too, could kill. Watson, exhausted as he was, had allowed Abbie to take charge of the procedure, fearing that his tired eyes and fingers might slip and hurt Holmes as he tried to help him.
Abbie had always been the better surgeon, anyway – she had been the only woman in their medical school classes, and Watson couldn't help but admire the way she persevered, honing her skills and art even as she bravely stood up to doubting professors and heckling classmates. Watson had once broken the nose of one of those classmates – he'd almost forgotten the incident; Henderson, was it? The cackling little mustachioed jackanape had carried it too far one evening in the dining commons, insulting Abbie with a filthy word to her face, and as she had stood there in shocked, painful silence while the lounging male students grinned behind their hands, Watson had flattened the cad with a single punch, and had watched as Henderson crawled away, bleeding and in disgrace. From that moment on, no one else in the class had insulted Abbie – to her face, at least – and she and Watson had become close friends.
Too close, one might say, he mused, his overtired mind drifting…
He was brought back to the present very suddenly by a sharp cry from Holmes, who groaned and fought him feebly again as Abbie tried to debrade the terrible shoulder wound. Awake, Holmes might have soldiered through the pain with his customary stoicism; half-unconscious as he was, he had no such mental control. "Hold him, please," Abbie said breathlessly. "There is debris inside the wound cavity, and infection is already setting in. I must get it cleaned out before it grows worse." She looked sharply at Watson. "This is a very cruel wound – what in God's world has happened to this man? The muscle is torn through, the bones are dislocated – was he caught and dragged by some farm implement?"
"No," said Watson grimly. "I wish it were that easy an explanation. No, I will share with you that he was tortured, by the criminal we are pursuing. With a metal hook. When I finally reached him, the hook was still in the wound."
He shuddered momentarily at the memory – it was just last night. So much had happened since then.
She stared at him. "Tortured? With a hook? What sort of fiend would do this?"
"A fiend indeed. One whom we are trying to run to ground." Watson watched as Abbie smoothed the matted hair from Holmes face, dipped her cloth in the water bowl and pressed it comfortingly against Holmes' hot brow. "So far, the villain been winning, and we have been on the losing side. It's all an extraordinary story, and I don't know that I can adequately explain all of it. It's a tale for when we have all rested - and when this operation is done."
"This puncture wound goes almost all the way through his shoulder," Abbie said, resolutely returning to her work on Holmes, who tried valiantly again to resist her and pull away. "It's a wonder that he survived it, let alone traveling with you and walking here through this storm. He's lost a lot of blood; he is very weak. John, I would not want you to think this will be an easy task, bringing him back to health again. If I can't stop the infection from spreading…" She cast him a significant look. "He could lose his arm. Or his life." She gently probed the wound again, prompting another strangled cry from Holmes.
"You are sure you have no chloroform? No ether?" Watson gasped, using all of his remaining strength to try to keep Holmes pinned down.
"I used all that I had on the victims of a bad wagon accident last week; broken bones, children involved. I ordered more, but with this bad weather all my shipments were delayed. Had I known of his…tolerance for morphine, I would have given him brandy beforehand. Now, however, he's not conscious enough to drink. I'm afraid this will become more painful, too." She peered at the wound in the lamplight, then reached for a small forceps from the tools she had spread out on the bedside table. "There is a small piece of cloth inside; I can see it, amid the laudable pus." She grimaced and looked at Holmes' pale, sweat-beaded face. "Sorry, my dear man. This IS going to hurt."
Holmes' shriek of agony echoed through the room, and Watson again fought to hold him still while Abbey probed inside the wound with the metal instrument.
"Stop it!"
Watson and Abbey looked up in surprise. Simza – who had shouted – was standing in the doorway, dressed only in one of Abbie's long white cotton nightdresses, her eyes wide as she took in the tableau on the bed. In the lamplight, with her dark Raphaelite locks loosened, she looked like the very figure of an angel to Watson.
"She will need to leave," Abbie whispered to Watson, and, raising her voice, "My dear, you'll have to leave this room and allow us the space to work to save your friend's life."
Simza started forward urgently. "No, I can help. Please, please, let me help him."
"Sim," Watson said as kindly as he could, while using most of his strength to quell the thrashing Holmes. "You'll need to leave this to us…"
But Sim was at the bedside, looking up at Watson with her enormous brown eyes – eyes that were full of tears and empathy. "Please, doctor, I can calm him. He is in such pain. I can do this. Let me help him while the lady doctor works."
Watson would never know if it was his weariness and befuddled mind, or if Sim really did have some kind of mental influence over him, but he suddenly found himself letting Holmes' head fall back on the pillow, moving away from the bed and going to sit in a chair not far from the bedside. Abbie, looking slightly dubious at this turn of events, paused in her work to allow the gypsy to take Watson's place at the bedside.
And then Sim was there, her hands on Holmes' face, stroking the planes and lines of it as she knelt beside the bed, and then in the air there was a crooning, mellifluous sound.
Sim was singing. She stopped for a moment, caressed Holmes' face again and whispered, "Holmes."
The injured man shuddered once, opened his eyes and looked directly at Simza, as Watson watched in wonder.
"I'm here, Holmes. I know this hurts you. The doctors must do their work. But I will take you away again. Will you go with me?" She gazed into his eyes, brown into brown, and as Watson looked on in disbelief, Holmes reached out his good arm and grasped her hand, closing his eyes again. Sim took up the thread of the song again, and Holmes sighed and, astoundingly, appeared to relax a little.
Abbie murmured, not quite under her breath, "John…what is happening?"
"Let's let them be. It's worth a try. Anything that might help him…"
"Is it some sort of gypsy mesmerism - a magic trick?"
"Whatever it is, if it helps him, if it helps quell his pain, then I am all for it," Watson said. "Give them a moment."
Abbie said nothing, but nodded and sat back, the red-stained forceps in hand and with one eyebrow raised, taking in the scene before her with wondering eyes.
The beautiful tune wove on and on, and Sim crawled up on the bed and lay down next to Holmes, her eyes and hands never leaving his face as the song continued, twining into Eastern threnody and lament, plaiting shadow and sunlight and storm.
Watson's overtired brain wafted along with her song, and it seemed to him that he was at the gate of some fair land, still in the bedroom and yet not in it any longer. He found himself overlooking a glorious meadow, sprinkled with the most beautiful flowers he had ever seen, and then a seascape of water and sand – and high above, where white birds wheeled, the pink and purple of a magnificent sunset.
Or was it a sunrise…?
"John." Abbie's voice intruded into his dream. "John, look." Her tone was full of awe.
He shook the silvery webs of the dream from his mind and came back into the golden lamplight of the little bedroom. He looked at the bed.
Holmes and Simza were sleeping, their foreheads touching, fingers of his left hand and her right interlaced. Holmes' face was as peaceful as Watson had ever seen it, the lines and creases softened, the strain of the past days seemingly gone. He looked almost like a boy with his face scraped by some tumble down a hill, and there was the slightest hint of a smile on his face as he breathed easy and slow.
Abbie was holding a bloody, tiny piece of cloth in her forceps, looking as if she had just witnessed some sort of miracle.
"He slept through it," she said in amazement. "I was able to reach inside and get the cloth out, as well as some other debris. He never felt it."
Watson stood and limped to the side of the bed, looking down upon the pair.
"Astonishing," he agreed, and felt a small twinge – what the hell am I feeling? – as he took in the simple rapport, the quiet trust, that he could almost feel between Holmes and the girl.
We had that once, you and I, I think, he reflected sadly.
But then again, my singing voice, well, that wouldn't have soothed you now, would it have?
He almost cackled at his own poor joke, and caught himself before he sounded like a madman. Abbie was still looking at the man and woman on the bed and, thankfully, not at him. I am past weary, he reminded himself. All these things would seem…well, probably odder and even more fantastic in the morning.
"Are they lovers?" Abbie asked, too obviously trying not to seem curious as she busied herself with her instruments. She packed some of them up and reached into her bag, drawing out a bottle of carbolic.
Watson hesitated.
"Probably. Maybe. I…don't know. I've rather lost touch with a lot of what Holmes is up to, at the moment."
He took another step and reeled a little, catching his balance. Abbie looked up and frowned at him.
"John, you are exhausted. Sit down in that chair. I'm going to apply carbolic to this wound, which I hope will halt the infection, and then try to stitch some of the flesh together so it will heal and not leave such a big scar. It's going to be an ugly scar, though, whatever I can do." She shook her head sadly. "The evil of men – I cannot understand it. Who would do such a thing to one's fellow man?"
"It was purely evil. That's why we are on this criminal's trail. And he plans worse things, which will affect many more people. That is why we are here, Abbie."
"But that is a tale for the morning, now, isn't it?" She looked at him kindly and with some concern. "You are here and you are safe, and I am doing all I can for your friend. I have seen some things tonight that have opened my eyes, and for that I am grateful. We can all talk tomorrow. Now close your eyes and rest, John, and I will finish my work here on your friend."
The storm outside built up to a crescendo of thunderous wind and driving snow, but the lamp in the little bedroom burned bright, casting Abbie's shadow high on the wall as she carefully wielded her needle.
And outside, far off in the forest, other shadows moved, silent in the storm.
Watson's eyes closed at last, and he slept, dreamless and deep.
