The next twenty hours go by in a haze of painkillers, a brief sedation for a new head MRI because the headache turns out to be very persistent, and the irritating routines he is forced to endure.
The pain has lessened, but now every bit of skin still retaining some sort of sensory function feels irritated and over-sensitized. He can't concentrate on anything, and not a moment's peace has been allowed due to the constant influx of staff.
His parents visit, adding to the burden. Ushered in by Mycroft, they have clearly been coached well before entering. They don't seem overly affected by the fact that he's on the ventilator. Mummy is, as she always is, a commanding presence, not prone to bursting into tears. She finds solutions, she endures things. She wants to know everything; all the pertinent information about this illness. She likes to know how things work.
Mummy likes John. Sherlock can tell. She's curious about something, but expresses none of it out loud.
Father is always the more open one, the one who pats his shoulder and tells him to hang on. He's the one who shakes John's hand with a quiet thank-you when they're leaving, while Mummy conspires with Mycroft by the door. Mycroft is answering her questions keenly, looking as though being interviewed for the Telegraph. He likes to be useful and on top of things, but he keeps saying 'myocin' instead of 'myelin' and Sherlock wishes John would correct him. John seems to be too busy being circled around by Mummy like a mongoose being accosted by a matriarchal cobra.
Finally, the whole entourage of his family leaves.
When John starts nodding off in his chair, Sherlock taps G.O.O.D.N.I.G.H.T. pointedly on his palm.
John sits up, blinking and yawning and looking slightly awkward as though it is some sort of a crime to fall asleep in Sherlock's presence. At home it happens all the time. Here, it has somehow become the epitome of impolite. Another example of how people walk on eggshells around the sick.
"Yeah, I suppose you'd want to turn in. Quite a day, eh?" John asks.
Yes, it had been a day. Mostly a forgettable one. Taxing visitors, pointless procedures, the clocks' slow hand proving worthy of its name.
"I'm going to find Suzy and tell her I'm heading home." Suzy is the Ward Sister for the night shift this week. Sherlock wouldn't have bothered to learn the rota by heart if he had had something more useful to file away in the Mind Palace.
Before leaving, John entwines the fingers of the hand he's kept available for communication with Sherlock's, and gives it a little squeeze.
This is now a regular ritual for them, one Sherlock is quite fond of. As much as he wants everything to be over with, he wouldn't want to lose this. He'll have to, won't he, if he ever returns home?
During his better moments, he sometimes dares to hope that they could rip off the proverbial silver lining of this thundercloud, and bring it home by keeping some of these things that they now keep doing without having to acknowledge that these acts don't belong in the realm of friendship.
John steps out for a moment, carrying his parka, and when he returns, only sticks his head through the doorway. "Suzy'll send someone right up. Night."
Then he's gone.
Sherlock closes his eyes, enjoying the peace and quiet he hasn't had much of during the past twenty-four hours.
After a few minutes, he hears the door creak open and footsteps approaching. A woman, likely weighing less than 110 pounds, wearing rubber-bottomed shoes, probably something in the line of Birkenstocks. A nurse, obviously.
He blinks his eyes open when he hears something firm being slid under the hand with the still-functional little finger. The nurses don't do what John does - hold their hand underneath Sherlock's. While it's true the taps can be heard better on a hard surface, it's much less personal.
It's professional. Business-like. Under any other circumstances, he'd prefer such an approach, but this ridiculous illness is making him yearn for evidence that his tether from the world hasn't been completely cut. Touch helps with that, as long as it's on his terms. It also makes everything feel more real, instead of having to second-guess himself, testing things and deducing everything to ensure this is not a dream, that he's not been drugged and kidnapped. That he isn't dead and this is just his own personal iteration of hell. Sometimes he suspects even that for a second, even though the whole notion is preposterous. He doesn't believe in hell, but he's clearly in one.
Touch helps, but usually only if it's John.
"Evening, Mr Holmes," the nurse says quietly, failing to introduce herself.
O.U.T., he taps on the book placed under his palm and gives the nurse the most malicious glare he can muster.
The nurse writes down the dots and the dashes and takes an agonisingly long time to interpret the Morse code by using the chart John had taped to the edge of the nightstand.
"You want me to step outside for a moment? Sure," she says. She's young, eager and appears slightly intimidated by something - perhaps the situation as whole, having to care for a patient who can't even communicate and to sit with them in a private room, or perhaps she's heard stories of him.
John thinks he has a tendency to bully the nurses when hospitalised. The line between bullying and simply expressing his will seems to be thin indeed.
S.T.A.Y.O.U.T., he taps and then, again, he has to watch that clearly sluggish brain in action, trying to match her new notes with the Morse chart.
"I can't leave you alone, Mr Holmes. Usually patients are placed in bigger rooms where a nurse can leave for while, whilst the other nurses can cover for her patient, but in a private room someone needs to be present."
W.H.Y.
It's not like he could get a wire of the intubation tube dislodged. And don't these machines have all sorts of fail safes in case of malfunction? Doesn't the hospital have a spare generator to compensate for power outs?
He's had it with having strangers in this room. He can't think, he can't sleep with that intrusive, alien presence, the pressure to acknowledge the other person. Even when he can't talk he still feels the expectations hoisted upon him by the ridiculous rules of normal people.
He's tired. He's annoyed. He wants a moment's peace. Or John, alternatively, but John has left for the night and he'll be annoyed if he gets called back in just for an argument.
John had stayed the first nights after the intubation but now things have calmed down, they'd found some sort of a bearable way of existing in this place, and Sherlock had dismissed his concerns about spending the night at 221B. John's shoulder had clearly taken a dislike to the mattress in this room, so sleeping at home put him in much better spirits the following day, which naturally benefited both of them. So home he went, as far as Sherlock was concerned.
"It's the rules, Mr Holmes, I'm sorry," she says.
O.U.T., he repeats and this time the nurse doesn't need the chart. She bites her lip, looking young and small and apprehensive.
Then she makes a decision. "I'm going to call the doctor."
Sherlock rolls his eyes. Just what he needs, some idiot repeating the same mantra he's already heard, only this time with a condescendingly superior tone.
She steps out for a moment, which isn't a relief at all, because soon she'll come in with reinforcements.
Sherlock tries to enjoy the brief moment of peace and quiet, but his anger has not fizzled out yet. This is nothing but an endless, fathomless exercise in patience, which he has very little of to start with. John cringes whenever someone promises to call Sherlock later about a piece of information he needs for a case, because invariably Sherlock will run out of patience fast and start calling the person himself instead.
Why does it matter, if it gets him results? How is it even rude, sparing that person from the trouble of placing that call? Granted, if the data isn't available he might repeat that call rather often, but still.
The door opens. Here we go, then. Time to put the patient in their place.
"Mr Holmes? I'm Matt Hill, on call for ITU tonight. There was an issue here, I understand? You wished to be alone in the room?"
Y.E.S.
To his surprise, this doctor doesn't need the wall chart. He seems to pick up on Sherlock's surprise. Every other idiot in this place have made good use of that piece of paper John had hung up.
"I know Morse. I used to play MI6 with my brother all the time when we were kids."
This reminds Sherlock of Mycroft, which doesn't cheer him up much.
"I'm afraid we need someone with you at all times. We do have remote access to the monitors at the nurses' station, but the ventilator doesn't have those remote alarms. Even if you can't move, there might be mucus plugging up the intubation tube or something else that we would want to spot immediately."
Won't the saturation drop if there's an issue with the ventilator?
O.2.S.A.T.E.N.O.U.G.H
Dr Hill seems to understand what he means. "You're a young man, so you'll have good reserves of oxygen now that you're on the vent. The saturation will only drop once that's gone, in which case we're going to be in a hurry to fix things, and it won't be pleasant for you."
I.A.C.C.E.P.T.R.I.S.K.
"You might, but I doubt Dr Watson would be as willing. Besides, we'd be opening ourselves up to litigation if something happened.
Can't have that now can we?
He can decline anything he wants, can't he?
I.D.E.C.L.I.N.E.B.E.D.S.I.D.E.W.A.T.C.H.
Dr Hill actually laughs a little. "We'd have to move you to a three-person room if you did, but that would still leave you with three nurses in that area to keep an eye on you. If this is about not being able to sleep, there's plenty we could-"
N.O.
"A no to what exactly?"
Every bloody thing.
Dr Hill lets out a breath. Sherlock would expect him to be already annoyed at this point, having probably had to interrupt some more medical task to come and argue with him over such a stupid, stupid detail. "Would you prefer a male nurse?" he asks, slightly hopeful.
The female nurse standing beside him looks slightly insulted.
N.O.
"Dr Watson has left word that he volunteers for night watch duty whenever needed. Is that something you'd prefer?"
John is not his damned safety blanket. He doesn't need this mollycoddling. What he needs is for everyone to leave him alone for five minutes. He doesn't care if he chokes on his own spit for an extra minute, it's not as though he hasn't already spent days doing just that.
John has just gone home. Of course he'd take John's company at a heartbeat, there's not a moment when it wouldn't be welcome, but right now he needs the illusion of having some sort of control of his life, even if just for a moment.
It feels good to be talking to a doctor without John acting as an interpreter. It's good to remind them he's still him, still present, still in his right mind, despite all of John and Mycroft's assumptions that he'd inevitably break like glass at some point.
He's not an invalid. He is not helpless.
Dr Hill turns to the nurse. "Jen, is that system we used during when we were really understaffed still available?"
"You mean the webcam setup for the private rooms and the isolation rooms?"
"Yeah. We could set that up to show him and the vent, couldn't we? I'd still post someone outside the door, but that way we could watch the monitors from the nurses' station?"
Finally, a doctor as clever as John and as willing to accommodate what Sherlock wants instead of sticking to the rules like some mindless drone. He'd breathe a sigh of relief if he could.
It still feels like a sucker punch to realize he isn't breathing on his own. Something that so profoundly delineates between life a death - oxygen, delivered by the movement of chest muscles into the alveoli - isn't something he can do, now.
Maybe they're not so neurotic for wanting to keep a close eye on the vent. Maybe.
"Would that be acceptable? Someone outside the door where they can watch the room through the window, and remote monitoring with a camera system? It isn't what we usually do, but that would free up some resources so I don't think our Ward sister will mind."
"She won't," the nurse says in a sunny tone. Sherlock suspects she's relieved for no longer having to sit vigil behind his bed.
"Let's go set that up, then," Dr Hill says. "Goodnight, Mr Holmes."
Sherlock would have actually replied, but the doctor, with the nurse trailing behind, has already turned his back to him. Everything is so slow, now, and no one really has the patience to talk to him for any longer than they have to. Except for John, of course.
His eyes drift open. The darkness behind his eyelids turns into the greyish, foggy twilight of the hospital at night. The edges of the room seem frayed and distorted. He must still be half asleep.
It takes a moment to register that someone is standing beside the bed.
White coat. Doctor, in all likelihood.
The ITU physicians seem to prefer scrubs and they're never seen wearing long-sleeved, old fashioned white coats such as this.
This must be some outside expert called in from another unit to assess him.
Even though a visit in the middle of the night might mean a new development, Sherlock finds he's not all that interested. The late-night argument had managed to wear him out. It must be the early hours of the morning, and he needs more sleep.
The doctor is studying what looks like a chart attached to a clipboard, his back turned to Sherlock. Blackish brown hair, whippet-like compact physique. Something about him appears familiar - he's probably been here before, but the parade of doctors during this stay has been so extensive that he can't be expected to remember them all.
He can't hear the ventilator. Maybe someone has made adjustments to it. Perhaps that borderline acceptable doctor that had been here last night.
The doctor taps a pen against the clipboard while he reads. It doesn't appear to be Morse - why would it be. The rhythm isn't very regular, and something about it is unsettling.
The doctor lets his hand fall, having finished his reading and turns to face him.
Sherlock's eyes widen in shock, and his heart leaps into a frantic staccato while he feels as though he's been plummeted into ice-cold water. The claws of panic curl into him, twisting his stomach.
"What are you still doing here?" Moriarty berates him with a disinterested tone. "You should be at the graveyard with all the other hopeless cases."
He tries to speak, tries to swallow, expecting to feel the intubation tube there, tries to cough it out but he can't feel anything below his neck. They must've used the lidocaine again.
He begins tapping his finger, desperate for someone, anyone to realize what's going on. They must have set up the camera system already, they must've noticed his heart rate spiking, someone needs to realize what's going on!
H.E.L.P., he taps.
"Really, Sherlock? Not 'hello Jim, nice to see you, how lovely for you to come and visit'. Nooo. Have you lost all sense of self-worth in the middle of all these lovely pastels?"
G.O.T.O.H.-
"That's slow, and it's boring, and you know it as well as I do. Let's see what we can do about it."
Moriarty grabs the end of his intubation tube. Wasn't it supposed to be taped into place and attached to the tubing running to the ventilator?
He'd been right. This is how he's going to be killed. Choking to death, while Moriarty, instead of some minion of his, watches on with that snooty, venomous glare.
John is going to kill that man with his bare hands.
Unceremoniously, Moriarty pulls out the tube.
Nothing happens. No alarms, no sense of choking whatsoever.
He isn't breathing, but it doesn't seem to matter.
"I'm still me. Not useless," he whispers. How is it that he can speak but not breathe?
"I beg to differ, and so do your doctors. Let's see," Moriarty says gleefully, and lifts up the chart again, flipping it around so that Sherlock can see. His name is one it, scribbled down with what looks like Mycroft's handwriting. On the line stating "consultant" it says Dr John H. Watson.
That can't be right, can it? He told John not to be his doctor. He must've teamed up with Mycroft after all, and look where their so-called good intentions have got him, now.
"Can't move, can't talk, can't breathe, can't even piss in a bottle on your own. I'm curious, Sherlock, as to what bits of you, you actually think are left? Unless they figure out how to plug your brain into a computer with a voice synthesizer, I certainly wouldn't hire you as a consulting detective," he says, pursing his lips and shaking his head in a dramatically saddened manner. "Good thing you don't charge for your services," he adds, "Looks like they wouldn't be worth much now."
Sherlock's eyes dart around the room. What the bloody hell is taking the staff so long to come to his rescue? Surely his blood pressure is through the roof and his pulse threatening to drive his heart into malfunctioning.
He can't show his fear, because Moriarty will surely skin him alive just to see more of it.
He can't afford to show it, but due to the monitors it must be plain for Moriarty to witness, like everything else about him he doesn't want others to see is now splayed out in the open.
The sound of rain begins again. There's water dripping down a wall, its meander strangely slow down the coarse concrete surface.
"Shame about the weather. You'll probably drown like a newborn calf. You remember where we last met, don't you? If I pushed you in that pool now, you wouldn't stand a chance, would you? The end of the great Sherlock Holmes," he bellows and then pauses for maximal dramatic effect.
"Although I think the greatness is now highly debatable," Moriarty then points out dryly, his gaze scanning Sherlock from head to toe.
The seductive edge to it that Sherlock had grown to expect since their encounter in the empty swimming pool hall is gone. In its place there is now condescending disinterest and more than a whiff of pity.
"You think John will stay, don't you?" Moriarty says mockingly, "it might be fun at first, him playing nursemaid, probably fill some of those fantasies of yours in the process, although he won't know it, will he? Because you won't tell him, you never will," he says in a singsong voice. "Such a cliché," he says and tuts, "I'm sure the boy scouts give out very special badges for not gay. They must have one, at least, for selfless servitude to bedridden sociopaths."
"This isn't forever, you know. Full recovery is very likely," Sherlock tells him defiantly. It's hard to be convincing when all that's moving are his lips and his now trembling little finger.
"Oh stop fooling yourself. You believe all that the doctors, including your precious John keep telling you? Do you honestly think he wouldn't lie to you? They all do. If your body can't be trusted then you can't be trusted, can't be left to your own devices. Mycroft knows this, you know this and I bet precious little John knows it, too. You don't know how to do any of this on your own. A tiny little fall, and it all cracks to pieces. Any cravings yet? I bet you'd love nothing better than a seven percent solution right now. Transport that mind someplace else. Someplace nicer. Somewhere more interesting."
"What the hell do you want?" Sherlock demands. If Moriarty is here to kill him, wouldn't he already have proceeded to do that? Certainly the man has a propensity for melodrama, extended speeches and theatrics, but this just seems rather pointless.
Moriarty comes closer. His footsteps sound as though he's walking across a puddle. Wading, almost.
There's still water coming down the walls.
"You'll come around to my way of thinking eventually, and stop wishing for some fairy tale ending. Accept that it's over, that there's no walking away from this, even if it doesn't kill you. In the meanwhile, I think I'll just leave these here," Moriarty says, taps the metallic railing of the bed, and four ravens descend from the ceiling, taking up a perch at the foot of the bed.
The ravens are staring at him expectantly with their unsettlingly black eyes. It's quiet in the room, as though the air itself is waiting for something. When Sherlock reluctantly moves his gaze from the birds back to Moriarty, the man is gone. There's just a white coat on the floor.
One of the ravens shifts where it's sitting on top of the metal rail of the bed, tilting its head inquisitively.
"Go away," Sherlock rasps, wishing he could wave his hand to evict these harbingers.
More ravens fly in from somewhere - an air vent? An open window? What the hell is wrong with this place, letting birds wander around the premises?
They're walking on the floor, sitting on the back of John's chair and staring, staring at him like he's a delicious morsel to be devoured.
He closes his eyes, squeezes them shut.
He wakes up hours later, in a world where all the sounds are back to the way they should be, the intubation tube has rematerialized in his throat, and the room no longer looks like someone has smudged its edges. There's no water.
Everything is back to normal, except for one thing.
The ravens are still there.