Sherlock did not remember discussing a Plan C that included his involvement. It was his understanding that he was to stand back out of the way and let the professionals work. This directive had been rather disappointing after all of his research, of course, but he had consoled himself that observation of the event would be enlightening in itself. Now, being permitted to be actively involved was exciting!
He watched as John settled Mary onto the bed on her hands and knees and tucked a number of pillows underneath her. "Does this help your back? Are you warm enough?" he asked, spreading a sheet over her, and she nodded briefly, hugging several pillows under her head. "All right, I'm going to get things ready. Call if you need me, yeah?" She didn't reply—she was busy, labouring.
"Wash up and go sit by her head, Sherlock, and do whatever she asks of you," John ordered sharply, aggrieved at seeing him just standing and watching. The detective huffed and stalked into the bathroom as John bustled about piling up towels and bringing a cup of ice and arranging equipment.
He could hear Mary, humming a sort of prolonged moan, as he scrubbed up. Then, as Sherlock finished washing his hands, John shoved up next to him at the sink and began to scrub his hands and arms up the elbows with antibacterial soap. He was entirely Dr Watson now. "Why are you still here? Go and sit with the patient!" John ordered sternly.
"But John," Sherlock objected uncertainly. Much as he relished the chance at this experience, he had been watching and listening to Mary and felt-distressed by her pain. Odd! But there it was. "Shouldn't 'Plan C' be taking Mary to hospital? After all, you said you didn't want to be attending physician, didn't you?"
John shook his head. "She's in transition now. Riding in any vehicle, cab or ambulance, would be nothing but misery for her, and I won't put her through it as long as everything is progressing normally and no complications. Now, go in there and see to your patient! She's been left alone too long."
"MY patient?" Sherlock hesitated.
John now lost his patience in earnest. "Sherlock, we have two patients in there, and they each need and deserve someone's full attention," he exclaimed in full earnest. "Fortunately, there are two us here. One of us must care for Mary while the other delivers the baby."
Sherlock's face lit up eagerly. "I could . . . ."
"No. You really couldn't," John said, speaking with the same chilling voice he used when warning perpetrators that he was about to kill them. He shouldered past the taller man and went to the bed. "How're you doing, love?" he asked, his voice now sounding entirely different—gentle and loving and comforting.
"Mmmhmmm," Mary hummed, rocking gently.
"You said you wanted to be 'the supportive husband and excited father.' I've done all the research, into every contingency," Sherlock assured John, boldly taking his life into his own hands. John glared daggers at him. "I know I'm not experienced, but how much experience does one really need if there are, as you say, no complications? It's a perfectly ordinary, biological event which practically progresses on its own without any need for . . . ."
"No," John cut him off abruptly. "Giving birth is not a by-the-book event,
Sherlock. Every one is different, and anything can happen. And I'm not about to put the life of my wife and baby into the hands of an inexperienced and insubordinate prat who can't follow simple orders without being told twice. I am taking over from the midwife, and you are taking over from me. Go on, get to it!" John turned his back on Sherlock and began snapping on surgical gloves.
Sherlock sighed and approached the head of the bed. "Erm, Mary. Are you still head-hunting?" he inquired cautiously.
Mary turned her head to look up at him and pulled a wry smile. "You may safely approach," she assured him, her voice tired.
He gingerly sat by her head and looked around for something useful to do. "May I offer you an ice chip?" he suggested grandly. She managed a chuckle and accepted his offering and then asked him to massage the back of her neck.
Sherlock massaged and sighed. John was doing interesting things with medical instruments, but the sheet was in the way and he couldn't see. It was so disappointing. There was nothing scientific about ice chips and neck rubs.
"You're looking good, my love. Nearly there," John said in his cheerful, reassuring doctor voice. "And the baby's heartbeat is perfect." Mary hummed again in response.
"It's no use, John! I don't know how to be you! "Sherlock burst out in agony. "I didn't research this part of the process. I assumed you would be being you," He hated not being in control. He hated not knowing what to do.
Mary sniggered. "You're doing fine, Sweetheart," she murmured, her voice muffled in the pillows.
"Just do whatever she asks you," John told him. "If she holds her breath, remind her to keep breathing through the contractions. And just talk to her—let her focus on the sound of your voice. Be encouraging."
That sounded easy enough. Sherlock mentally rummaged through the copious files of information he had accumulated in preparation for this event and picked out the most encouraging facts he could find.
"Did you know that the global mortality rate for women in childbirth dropped from 500,000 a year in 1980 to 343,000 a year in 2008? Although, strangely," he added thoughtfully, "the rate in the U.K. has remained nearly the same for the past 20 years. The infant mortality rate in this country is only. . . ."
"John!" Mary cried anxiously. "Make him stop encouraging me!"
"Sherlock!" John snapped, then stopped and shook his head. "Why don't you just leave the encouraging to me, and you hold her hand and give her whatever she needs."
This was something Sherlock knew how to do. Mary had been in the habit of grabbing his hand whenever she felt like it, and he had got used to the idea. It apparently gave her comfort; and to be honest, he had sometimes found the practice comforting himself. He reached between the pillows under Mary's head and found her hand and took it gently in his. Then she began another contraction and squeezed. Sherlock winced. He'd no idea that Mary had such an iron grip! After a few more contractions, he began to wonder how many of the bones in his hand she'd cracked so far.
It seemed nothing interesting happened in ages and it was all dropping ice chips onto Mary's tongue and massaging Mary's back and letting her mangle his hand. And all the time he was listening to John drone on in low, comforting tones about how well she was doing and how strong the baby's heart rate was and how wonderfully things were progressing and what an amazing woman Mary was and how much he adored her and how proud he was of her and blah, blah, blah. Sherlock supposed that this was John's feeble way of being encouraging, but there was so little specific information offered and so few solid facts to grasp onto that he couldn't imagine why such generalized drivel would be considered comforting.
But then suddenly it was time to push and events accelerated to a nice, fast pace. Sherlock was required to fetch hot water and to support Mary's shoulders as she pushed and to wipe the sweat from her brow and to remind her to do her breathing.
"You're tensing up, love, you need to relax," John said gently at one point. "Focus on my voice and relax."
"Let me try being encouraging again, John. I've been listening to you do it for ages, and I think I've got the knack," Sherlock interrupted. Anymore of John's drivel and they would surely all become barking mad.
John looked Sherlock in the eye for a long moment. "All right, give it a go," he sighed, "if it's so important to you."
The detective took a deep breath and began, "Mary, listen. You're the strongest person I've ever known, and vastly superior to most in nearly every way. I frankly admit that I admire you a great deal. However, you've been pushing for over 30 minutes now, and there are numerous records of women who, although inferior to you in every other way, have delivered babies in under 15 minutes. I am certain that if you apply yourself, you can accomplish this task quickly and at least beat the 40 minute . . . ."
"Sherlock!" John exclaimed, outraged, "you call that encouraging? She's tensed up more than ever!"
"Not tensing," Mary gasped out. "Laughing!"
John stared, amazed. "Well, stop it," he grumbled. "It works out the same down this way."
After that, Sherlock gave up on being encouraging, to everyone's relief.
"He's crowning!" John exclaimed at last, and Mary breathed out a happy little laugh. "He's a blond—no surprise there. Masses of hair! One more try, my love, let's get his head out. Good girl! There he is! Hold still now, let me turn him."
Sherlock could not resist a peek and saw a tiny head, eyes clenched, mouth wide open in a silent howl of protest even though there was no air in the lungs to lend sound to the fury.
"You're smirking," Mary observed weakly.
Sherlock smiled down at her. "He looks just like John," he told her. "Yelling already!"
"Stop the laughing!" John ordered, but he was smiling as well. "All right, love, one more big push and we should be parents. Sherlock, get the blanket ready."
And then it was over, and John was holding a warm, wet, squirming mass of humanity wrapped in a blanket whilst he suctioned the little mouth. A sudden deep breath and the child began screaming, furious with this sudden advent into a new world. Murmuring comforting words to the red-faced, angry infant, John clamped the cord and made the cut. A Watson had entered the world.
Mary had flipped herself over without help, scattering pillows every way possible, trying to see her accomplishment. John was examining his offspring with a doctor's eye, but his voice held the pride of a new father.
"He's perfect, Mary. You made a perfect child," her husband said in a reverent voice. "Sherlock help her prop herself so she can meet our son."
Sherlock gathered scattered pillows and settled the new mother into a reclined position on her back. "Congratulations, Mary," he said quietly. "That was . . . . quite remarkable."
"Well, I didn't do it all alone," Mary smiled gently and reached out to take her baby into her arms for the first time. "Hello, little boy," she crooned, soon quieting the child, and John sat beside her, tears in his eyes, one arm around his wife and the other hand stroking the baby's soft hair. Sherlock watched this tender tableau with an affectionate warmth growing in his chest.
"What will you call him?" he asked at last, hovering beside them.
John grinned up at him. "Ian Scott Watson," he told his friend, eyes twinkling.
Sherlock felt a sudden unusual sense of awe in spite of himself. "Ian is the Scottish version of John. And Scott is . . . ."
"Yes, you git," John chuckled. "The Scott part is in your honour."
But then it was back to business for the doctor. "I need to deliver the placenta and take a few stitches," he explained to Mary. "It's not going to be pleasant, I'm afraid."
Sherlock had a number of experiments planned for a fresh placenta! He'd been looking forward to this for months! "May I watch?" he demanded eagerly.
John chuckled. "No, you may not, mate. I have a much more important job for you. I need you to hold your nephew while his parents are busy." He took the now sleeping Ian carefully from his mother, wrapped him a bit more snuggly in his blanket, and placed the little bundle into Sherlock's waiting arms.
If the detective was disappointed about the placenta, he soon forgot all about it. His little nephew briefly opened drowsy lids and looked up at him with Mary's blue eyes. He then pursed his little lips in the same pensive way John so often did, and fell asleep again. And Sherlock was entranced. Everything about this tiny Watson was astonishing; and nothing was more astonishing than the way this baby made him feel.
It was suddenly entirely unacceptable that evil should exist in the same world as this little child. All good things should be given freely to this special boy, and all wickedness and ugliness banished to the nether regions, never to be allowed near him. Sherlock vowed in his heart to protect this smallest Watson with his life, and to give him the entire world, and a box to put it in.
"Sherlock," John's voice interrupted his reverie. "Sherlock, you can play with it now. It's all yours." The doctor was holding out a container.
Sherlock looked up and met his friend's eyes. "In a minute, John. I'm . . . bonding."