When he woke bright sunshine was flooding the room. The curtains were back and the blinds up for the first time that he could remember. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, wondering for a moment why he was lying on top of the bed, fully clothed. Then he remembered. Good, the memories were coming with less effort now, stopping those pills had obviously been the right decision.

Minutes later, Sarah entered the room, carrying a paper cup of medication and his lunch tray. How had she known that he was awake? There must be cameras, but where? Try as he might, he couldn't see them.

'Good sleep?' He wondered, for a moment if she was annoyed with him. He had, after all, gone to sleep fairly deliberately to avoid the facade of normality that she had planned for the morning, but she didn't look annoyed. She looked - amused if anything.

He shrugged. 'Too much sedation, I guess. I couldn't stay awake.'

'Which is why we're going to try you on a little less for this afternoon, see if you can manage to stay out of bed for a while.'

The cup contained one blue tablet, instead of the normal two, and two orange tablets. He had been correct. The blue ones were the sedative, but what were the orange ones? 'What are they?' he asked. His curiosity he calculated would be thought of as natural.

'The blue one is lorazepam, its a sedative; the orange ones are haloperidol, they treat psychosis - stop the paranoia and the voices.'

Voice? What voices? Best to stay quiet in his confusion, he thought. He wasn't paranoid, he wasn't psychotic, so stopping the haloperidol had been a good choice. The sooner his brain started working properly again, the sooner he could get out of here. He took the blue tablet and palmed the other two.

He hadn't seen Dr Harrison today, he realised. Had he slept through his session?

'Its Saturday,' Sarah told him when he asked her. 'No therapy sessions today. But I've got a list of targets for you instead.' She laughed at his dismayed expression. 'Nothing too taxing, I promise. You've achieved two of them already. You've got up and into the shower without me having to bully you into it, and you've got dressed. Its not a bad start.'

'What else is on your list?' Sherlock asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. Irritation, frustration, annoyance. Was this what he was normally like? He was struggling to remember.

'You need to get out of this room,' Sarah was saying. 'Normally we would encourage you to start going into some of the communal areas - television room, games room, meet some of the other patients, start socialising.'

Sherlock felt physically sick. Socialising was not something that came easily to him at the best of times, and now, when he was like this. No, no way. He started to shake his head, panic rising again, tears to his horror burning behind his eyes. Head in hands, rocking slightly as he sat on the side of the bed. This was no good, this wasn't how he wanted to be at all. This wasn't going to get him out of here.

'Hey, calm down,' Sarah was saying, hand on his shoulder. 'There's a but. Dr Harrison doesn't want you socialising with the other patients, maybe he's afraid you'll come up with a Great Escape type plan, I have no idea. Whatever the reason his directions are very clear. You can go outside, with the supervision of a staff member, but he doesn't want you talking to any of the other patients, and he doesn't want you going in any of the communal areas here.'

Slowly and not without effort, Sherlock calmed his breathing, panic receding.

'You really don't like other people very much do you?'

'I don't think so, no.'

'Why not? What are you worried about?'

He shrugged again. 'I don't know. I don't think other people like me very much generally.'

'Did you have friends? At school? At home?'

'I don't remember.'

Sarah nodded thoughtfully. 'Your memory loss is pretty extensive isn't it. Its unusual you know. Most people lose a few weeks at most, round the time of their illness, in some ways its a good thing, not to remember that, but you - you've lost huge amounts of time, of memory. Is it coming back at all?'

'A little - odd memories, but not much.'

'It should come back eventually, its just going to take time.'

Time. That was all anyone ever seemed to say to him these days. 'It will take time,' 'Give yourself time.' He didn't want it to take time. He wanted to get out of here, get home, get back to normality, even if he couldn't remember what that was.

'Eat,' Sarah was saying, manipulating the table with the lunch tray on it over his bed. 'Then try getting out of that bed for a while, even if its just ten minutes. Try writing down some of those theories that are rushing round that head of yours. You never know, it might help.'

How did they all know what he was thinking? But she was right. It did help. Sitting in a chair felt odd after all that time in bed. His back and shoulders ached with the effort of staying upright without the support of the bed. His arms as he stretched them out in front of him looked thinner than ever, the bones still sticking out of the skin. He couldn't think about that now, something else to put in the box and shut the lid on. Theories then. Writing them down in black and white was harder than he had thought it would be. They seemed disorganised, chaotic even. What had seemed so rational in his head looked ridiculous on the page. He threw down the pencil in disgust, just as a soft knock on the door preceded the buzz and the click of the electronic lock.

A tousled sandy head came into the room, followed by a boy dressed in jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt. Not a boy, a young man, early twenties maybe, with a staff ID attached to his belt.

'Can I come in?' he asked.

Sherlock was confused for a split second. 'People don't usually ask,' he said finally, feeling more stupid than ever. What was this fug in his head? Even stopping those tablets hadn't helped clear it yet.

'Most of them have to come in. I'm sort of an optional extra,' the visitor said with a grin.

Sherlock shrugged then nodded, 'Then come in.'

'I'm Matt,' the man said holding out a hand for Sherlock to shake. 'I'm an assistant here. Sarah thought you might like a little company as you're still confined to quarters as it were.'

'No she didn't,' Sherlock said.

Matt laughed, 'No you're right, let me re-phrase that, she thought that some company might be good for you.'

'An assistant what?' Sherlock asked.

'Assistant anything really. Its sort of an apprenticeship post. Most of us want to go into clinical psychology, so we help out here, get some experience, looks good on the cv and its interesting.'

'So you spy on the patients, report back the staff?'

'Jesus you're defensive, are you always like this? We don't spy, and we are staff, well sort of. I told you, we help out, spend time with the patients, talk to them if they want, not if they don't and help out in the therapy sessions too. Will I report back on you? Not if you don't want me to, no. We're sort of a bridge between the staff and normality. A bit less clinical, a bit more real, and I can, for example take you outside if you want, when the nurses don't have time to.'

'I don't want to go outside, thanks.'

'Don't want to, or can't face it?'

Sherlock's jaw clenched. He didn't like being analysed like this, especially by someone he'd only just met.

'Look I'm sorry,' Matt said. 'I used to hate being told what I was thinking too.'

His wrists, Sherlock noticed, just visible beneath the sleeves of his t-shirt were criss-crossed by white scars. Self-harm marks. Old but still there, a reminder of what had come before. 'You were a patient here?' he asked.

'Not here, somewhere else,' Matt said. 'Mind if I sit down?' Without waiting for a reply he sat on Sherlock's bed. 'Thats how I got interested in psychology, did it for a degree, and now I'm getting experience so I can apply to do clinical psychology. Do some head-shrinking of my own.'

'So you're going to tell me that you know what its like?'

'No, because I don't know what its like for you, I just know what it was like for me. Look if you want me to go, I'll go, and leave you to your -' he looked at the sheet of paper in front of Sherlock, 'hieroglyphics. What the hell is that, anyway.'

'Greek,' said Sherlock briefly, but he didn't ask him to go.

'Worried about them reading what you're writing? They told me you were paranoid.'

'I'm not paranoid,' Sherlock snapped automatically.

'Yeah you are,' Matt chuckled. 'If you weren't you wouldn't be writing in Greek. Conspiracy theories?' Sherlock looked at him in disbelief. 'Can't get it down on paper? Doesn't make any sense? You're paranoid all right. All seems straight in your head, doesn't it? Then when you try and put it down on paper it all looks like mad ramblings. Ever occur to you that maybe thats because its exactly what it is?'

'Were you paranoid too?'

'Psychotic,' Matt shrugged. 'Too much weed, thats what did it for me. Trying to stop thinking about what a mess everything else was. Three months in a place like this, trying to work out what was real and what wasn't. On so much medication I couldn't think straight. I hated it, just like you do, but it got me well. Did my A-levels in a year, went to university, and here I am.'

'Is that why Sarah's sent you to talk to me?' Sherlock asked, not bothering to try and hide the edge of frustration in his voice, 'To tell me to be a good boy and take my medication and everything will be okay?'

'No, I told you, she thought you might like some company, and a chance to look at something besides these four walls. You know you've been here for over a month, and the only time you've been out of this room is to go for ECT. Thats a tough ride. Why don't you come outside with me? Remind yourself what the real world looks like.'

Sherlock shook his head. 'I don't think so.'

'Why not?'

'Its an effort even to walk to the bathroom. There's no way I can get all the way outside, even if I wanted to.'

'I could get a wheelchair and take you out in that if you want. They're going to set the physios on you Monday, did you know that? They think you've lost too much weight and too much muscle in here.'

Sherlock looked at him, calculating. Information. Interesting. Much more information than any of the other members of 'proper' staff had given him, with their careful considered answers.

'Did that happen to you too?' he asked, interested despite himself.

Matt shook his head. 'No, I wasn't as bad as you. I didn't have ECT, didn't end up as sedated as you, didn't really end up in bed for more than a couple of days. You're the worst one I've come across in a while,' he said cheerfully. 'Most people are back on the open ward after a week at most, but not you.'

'Does that make me interesting?'

'Do you want to be interesting? No, don't say it, I know, I sound like one of them and thats driving you mad. I can see it in your face. How about we make a deal?' He leant forward slightly, 'I won't tell you what you're thinking, and I'll try not to psycho-analyse you like the rest do, and you let me take you outside.'

Sherlock shook his head. 'Not today,' he said.

'Tomorrow?'

'Maybe.' He looked down at the pad of paper, covered in scrawled notes. Matt was right. It made no sense. He couldn't come up with rational theories. Maybe they were right. Maybe he was just ill after all.

'Try doing it as a diary,' Matt said, indicating the piece of paper with his head. 'That helped me. Write down what happened to bring you here, what you can remember, and what's happened since you've been here. They would tell you to write down how you feel about it too, but I won't do that. They tell me you like the facts, like things to be rational, logical. Write down what you know, and then everything else will come from there.'

'My memory's shot,' Sherlock said briefly. 'I can't remember much at all.'

'All the more reason to write down what you can remember then. Help you keep track of it all.' He got up as he spoke. 'Listen I'm going to leave you to your writing for now, but I'll come back tomorrow if thats okay. See if you feel like going outside then?'

Sherlock shrugged again. 'Okay, if you want.'

'You're not easy to help, you know that? Just do me a favor, when you're constructing those theories of yours, just include the theory that you are genuinely ill and that we are all genuinely trying to help. Its a possibility.' He had reached the door. 'I'll see you tomorrow,' he said, as he swiped himself out with his card.

Left alone, Sherlock filled page after page with writing. It was disjointed, snatches of memory. He left gaps between sections, hoping that he would be able to fill them in later, but he remembered more than he had thought. What was more useful was the information that he had got from various people. He wrote those on a separate sheet. His father had arranged his admission, Mycroft had been to see him and told him something about his father, he was not allowed to talk to other patients, he was not allowed out of this room unaccompanied. Finally, exhausted he threw his pencil down again, and picking up one of the books the librarian had left, curled up on the bed with it. Bleak House. How appropriate. It seemed vaguely familiar. He had studied it at school, he thought. More memories coming back. Good.

The light was fading outside already. Time really did do odd things in here. Dinner arrived, medication which he was to tired to attempt to conceal this time, and then sleep.