A new chapter and by God this took it out of me. THANK you for your reviews. I heart reviews. I'm afraid the angst may not yet be over, but I hope you like the direction I've taken ...
9 years later.
Afghanistan was a land of mournful beauty, John thought, it's sad grandeur and lost grace a testament to the ravages of conflict.
Between desperate spurts of active combat and once all his patients were either stabilised or bagged, John ventured to the far reaches of the Roshan Tower base and pressed his body against the rusted chain-link fence that marked the perimiter, gazing out upon the countryside and what he'd termed the real Afghanistan.
He imagined it had once been warless, bloodless, but now even the earth was tainted with the hand of death, the weeping trees hung over with long grey moss like mournful funeral draperies, topped with brown-winged, songless birds. The camp was flanked by a shallow, stagnant, inland sea, and sick swamp grassed wove in an ill breeze. Deadliness lurked in the air.
There was a sharp crack in the distance, and John flinched against the fence. Time to take cover.
He reacted without thinking, his training taking over, sprinting away from the vulnerable perimiter edge, towards the cover of the base's buildings. He was afraid, yes, nobody was immune to fear, but his training allowed him to turn that fear into adrenaline, and purpose. Now he ran like a soldier, efficient, low to the ground, always aware of potential threats. His most precious item was his medical kit, and he kept one hand clamped to it's strap.
John's radio crackled violently as intelligence flowed through,
"All units at Roshan Tower this is Intelligence - prepare for air-strike - we have heavy fire from two sides - machine gunners first line - prepare for mortar and grenade fire. We have no air cover today. I repeat, we have no air cover today, so be sensible. Dr Watson please report. OVER."
John felt rather than heard the gutteral rumble of mortar overlapping like a symphony - the croaking of frogs or chirping of crickets. Instinctively he crouched behind a mammoth water tank, lightly resting his SA80 on this thigh.
Sweat trickled ominously into his eyes, stinging - he wiped it away, couldn't let it blur his vision. He lifted his radio,
"Intelligence, this is Dr Watson reporting. Brief me. OVER."
His radio crackled, "Dr Watson we have a soldier badly injured - multiple shots to the intestines. Holed up in Outhouse Four, assisted by Sargaent Lim who has sustained only minor injuries. Please provide location and ETA. OVER."
John steeled himself to sound calm and reassuring. He was the only qualified doctor covering three hundred servicemen, and the nurses were not fully trained military personnel. That meant that when they were under heavy fire, it was all on his shoulders.
"Understood - I'm 50 metres away, Outhouse Four in sight. Switching channels to liaise with Sargaent Lim, please keep me advised. OVER." He paused, waiting for the curt, "Roger that, over and out" from Intelligence before switching channels to reach Sargeant Lim,
"Alright Suse? OVER."
Another crackle, "Not really, cut a pace if you can - we're waiting." Her voice is breathless, and the prerequisite over doesn't come. John lets it go.
Sargeant Susanna Lim was the first soldier John had met when he'd arrived in Afghanistan, a half-Chinese, half-English woman who could beat almost anyone in a fistfight. Tasked with showing John around, she had appreciated his quietitude, and they had often shared a bench at mess. She talked about her fiance, the house they were trying to buy in Woking, and her parents' recent separation. John talked a bit about Harry, and his training at St Barts, but not much else. He omitted entirely his time at Cambridge.
Once she'd peered at him over her canteen and asked, "You never talk about anyone ... special in your life. Is there?"
John gave her a dry smile, "No. I don't really go in for that sort of thing. Army doctor. Too much travel, risk."
She nodded sceptically, "Has there ever been ... anyone really special?"
John had averted his eyes, colouring, "Once. Well, I don't know. I was young, and fucked up. Sandhurst beat the hubris out of me. Bit late, I'd already made a hash of it. A pretty big hash. Not like you and Leo," and he recovered his equinimity, smiling warmly at Susanna.
She was a friend, and a colleague. And right now she was holding a man's intestines inside his body, and drawing heavy mortar rounds. He was going to get to them, he was going to save them.
Hefting his medical pack back onto his shoulder, John raised his rifle, and ran. The sound, when it came like a physical thunder, bringing what felt like half the desert with it, was deafening. John's first thought was, Gosh, that was close.
And the very next thing he knew was the noise of some poor animal screaming, high-pitched agonised death throes. It took ten seconds to realise it was himself, and to force himself through sheer force of will to stop - the pain was almost blinding. John blinked grains of sand from his eyes, trying to orientate himself in a world of blood and dust and pain. He was on his front, just a metre from the outhouse he had been aiming towards.
Dumbly, John pushed himself to his feet. Shock was setting in, he could feel it, his fingers numb and mind clagging over. He couldn't see his gun but his medical pack was close by and he scooped it up, dimly aware of a wet, slick feeling sliding uncomfortably down his shoulder.
He looked down,
"Oh."
Deep, deep, his shoulder was perforated, a mess of blood and slough and shredded cloth. John could see sharp pieces of shrapnel embedded there, jurassic looking. He bit his lip, knowing immediately that the injury was grave. Though not as grave as shots to the intestines. And he was so close to Outhouse Four. He made his decision.
Thanking God and all his angels for the effective anaesthesia that was shock, John managed to stumble to the door. Shoving it open, he burst in, trying not to gag at the swampy death-stench within.
Susanna's dirt-streaked face peered up at him, hovering pale against the gloom. Her hands were soaked with blood,
"He's dead." she muttered.
John's energy left him like water through a plughole, and he collapsed to his knees without a word.
"John!" Susanna scrambled over to him, "John - what is it, where are you - right, got it." She was efficiently tearing away the remains of his fatigues, and John was dimly aware of her small, rough fingers manipulating his flesh.
He sat propped up in the dirt and grime of the outhouse, bleeding out his life through his chest and shoulder. Pain was a distant concept as delerium stole through him, and John soared on memory - water becoming ice and faintly if at all snowflakes hover red scarf green wellingtons occupied in the night mum crying how the bells from Kings ring out Harry skipping smiling wailing circuit training pale blue eyes blinking blinking Molly pretty young -
"One day you will suffer."
His mind chose to hook on that memory, faded as it was, with little left but her words. John had chewed over them so many times over the years. They were so unlike Molly. But she had been right. Over the years he had suffered, enduring it in self-imposed hermitude, never falling in love or taking more comfort than sex, with anyone.
And on tour with the army, seeing women stoned to death for crimes that were nothing, young girls raped, boys sent to war as quaking soldiers, men martyr themselves with no real result ... John now understood not just the value of life, but the value of self. He will never, he knows, drive the self from someone again, because he's seen that people will acquiesce, will give, will pour their souls into something and allow it to ruin them, because they believe in that thing, in it's power and validity. They will give until it drains them.
John's world grew dark, as if the fuses had blown.
"John," Susanna's voice drifted from the ether, her tone urgent, "You must stay conscious, stay conscious" A sharp slap to his cheekbone.
"'m conscious..." he groaned.
"Come on John, I'm trying to stop the worst of it. And think how awful it would be to die in a bloody outhouse at Roshan. Think of what's back at home."
No, John wanted to say, there's nothing back at home. But there had been, once, hadn't there? Good friends, a place to belong, love. Love that he had wasted.
John wasn't aware he was crying (it had been nine years since he last allowed himself the luxury). But he did cry, dry hacking sobs. And he bled. And he only screamed out, sharply, when Susanna prised a particularly jagged piece of shrapnel from his shoulder.
And then Susanna was listening intently to her radio ... John could just make out the words "medical emergency response" and "helicopter" through the static. He sagged with relief.
"Three minutes, then we're bugging out," Susanna said close to his ear.
John allowed his eyes to flutter closed, the darkness to swallow him whole.
...
He won't be going back to the army. They'd have no use for him now, he could never pass MATT 2 in his current condition. Eight months after Susanna plucked jagged shrapnel from his shoulder with unsteady fingers, he is unhealed. His wounds have left him with a legacy of tremours, nightmares and an ungainly limp.
But as hard, as traumatic, as dirty as that life on the edges of the world was, John misses it desperately, needs it. Without it, the tight and angry dark in him rises daily, and he has no idea what to do with it any longer. It becomes a physical pain, shooting down his leg like a lumbar puncture.
He is given a cane. He has to use it.
Technically, life is alright. John has a pittance of an army pension and can just about afford to live, if he's frugal. His world is tiny, himself and his sadness, together in his tiny Stockwell council flat.
Susanna emails when she can, but since John was extracted from Roshan Tower, things have gone from bad to worst. They had, she writes, taken 59 mortars in a day, and at one point were defending a piece of land the size of a football pitch.
Ours not to reason why, ours but to do. John types back.
And die? She responds.
He smiles sadly at that, and wonders if he wasn't meant to survive. Would it not have been a fitting end for him to die there at Roshan in his element, medical pack still strapped to his back, knowing he had become a good man? Back in London he faces himself again, and while he knows he has retained all those good, patient, self-sacrificing qualities he had gained through years of service, what good are they without using them?
He keeps his gun close to hand, speculatively. He doesn't think he'll do it. But then again, how many more days of bland depression, loneliness, impotence?
He's in that sort of mood on a grey morning, a morning like any other, taking his morning walk through Victoria. Morning hobble was the technical term, perhaps.
Suddenly,
"John, John Watson?"
John doesn't recognise the large, middle-aged man at all.
"Mike Stamford, Barts! I know, I got fat."
For a while, talking to Mike, John forgets his sombre mood. He exchanges pleasantaries, agrees to a quick coffee. There he talks, smiles, mentions he's thinking of a flatmate and jokes, "Who'd want to live with me?"
And oddly Mike is laughing back and saying, "Funny, that's the second time I've heard that this week."
Mike frowns thoughtfully, and John gets the feeling he's being evaluated. He raises an eyebrow. Mike nods, finally,
"I think there's someone you should meet. What are you doing this afternoon?"
They agree to meet outside Barts at 3pm, Mike assuring him that the potential flatmate is always at Barts on this day, at this time. A creature of habit, then, John muses. He wonders if he should dress up a bit, make a good impression, but decides that no, the flatmate won't give a damn and it's best to let people know upfront about his penchant for ugly woollens.
When he arrives, Mike is already there. John gives a little wave, drawing closer,
"Hullo."
"Good to see you. Right. Ready?"
"Of course." They walk. "Lot of effort you're going to, to find your mate a flatmate."
Mike shrugs, "He's done me a few favours. And ... it would take anyone a lot of effort to find someone willing to live with him."
"That bad?"
"Well ... he's separate, put it that way. But you ... I remember at Barts, you had the same sort of air about you. Less external, I suppose, but I think you'd handle him."
John smiles wryly, "Right. Well. Lead the way?"
Mike opens doors for John, searching rooms, "Hmm. Wait a sec, let's go to Molly's labs, she'll know where he is."
John stops, abruptly. He knows he shouldn't even be thinking it, because what a common name, but ...
"Molly?"
"She works in the morgue," Mike smiles, "Bit grim down there, but she's great. One of his oldest friends, though he bullies her something rotten."
John's stomach twists. He's paralysed with - what? It feels, it feels like - like -
"Molly Hooper's one of the best people at Barts, you know. You two'd get on."
Like a hot poker through his brain, his fingers tingle, his head swims. He swallows, mouth dry - I can't do this.
It's difficult to back away on the cane, though, and Mike is already opening the door, and saying, "Ah, Molly, there you are."
John takes a deep breath, fighting hyperventilation, and peers into the room.
Molly. A woman now, her face more serious, hair shorter, but still essentially Molly, turning with a too-bright smile. She looks exhausted though, and is holding a cup of coffee so strong John can smell it as he shuffles quietly into the room.
She looks past Mike, her eyes rest on John and fly wide.
"Oh God!"
To her credit, she doesn't drop the coffee. John is transfixed by her, the memories she unearthes in him: happiness and youth and innocence. Their eyes lock, hers brimming with tears, his dry and sad. He tries a small smile.
Mike is silent, radiating confusion. The clock ticks. More silence. John can hear his breathing, and hers.
"John?" it's a question. He has no answer for her.
Silence, tense. Broken only by a small creak as the swinging door is pushed open just behind John's right shoulder, where he feels most vulnerable.
Crash.
Molly's entire body flinches, the mug falls sharply sending dark liquid and splinters of white china across the floor. She's immediately broken from her reverie, shaking her head and starting for the door, babbling desperately,
"No Sh- I mean, no - don't - please go away now-"
"I shan't go anywhere. Where is my coffee? I specifically requested coffee ... what's going on here?"
