Day thirty-four after he had fallen ill.
It's gone. It's all gone.
As of this morning, even his little finger has been lifeless.
Unmoving, unfeeling fingers, all of them. Corpse fingers.
This leaves just his eyes to say what he needs to, and not even that is very effective in conveying messages.
Today he doesn't feel like opening them, acknowledging the rest of the world or interacting with it. He can keep his eyes open, but Morse code is now almost impossible to execute, even with blinking. It takes him too many seconds to move his lids to even manage a couple of letters.
The nurses have forgotten to bring up the head of the bed, so he's been staring at the ceiling for hours. It's painted in the ubiquitous, boring, unsightly yellowish white that's everywhere in hospitals and apartments decorated in Scandinavian style. There are hundreds of shades of white, from ghost white to ivory to seashell to cream, so what sort of an utter imbecile had decided that this dirty-looking yellow abomination is that standard? He'd google it, yes he would, if he only could.
There's no pain today, but there is little joy to glean from the fact. It means there's nothing to delineate between his body and the stagnant air in the room.
He feels like a wraith, and he could almost imagine being able to move around as though he were made of vapour himself, no longer tied to a body that refuses to submit to his command.
Once, he would have been delighted at such a thought - being liberated from the pointless demands of the Transport. He had had no idea how this would feel - as though teetering at the edge of some vast darkness, the ropes holding him on this familiar plane of existence already burning and snapping.
If this is it, if this is how he'll remain until the rest of his days, he's going to spend it in the Mind Palace, where he can still touch and be touched, where he still has a life other than one spent in an inevitably disintegrating, desiccating body; a place where he can still be with John, in whatever capacity he wants. John is still what tethers him to this reality, but unless something changes for the better, he might start preferring the imagined version of their lives.
His body needs his mind as much as his mind needs his body. This painful realization has come at a cost. He has never known how to negotiate that connection between the physical and what goes on in his brain, and now he has probably lost the opportunity to learn that lesson altogether.
If he never improves, and the Palace proves an ineffective solution, there will have to be decisions made. This is not how he's going to spend the next sixty years.
They are not the sorts of decisions that John could, in all likelihood ever discuss. Sherlock knows he could rely on Mycroft. The man excels at unflinchingly making terrifying moves. The flinching happens, but only much later. Sherlock regrets putting nothing about this on his advanced directive. It would be a difficult thing to communicate in the state he's in but on the other hand, he's quite certain the question of whether he wants to live like this would cross Mycroft's mind at some point, too. The solution would likely entail some clinic in Switzerland, with physicians of flexible morals, since Swiss law requires active participation by the patient to call it legalized assisted suicide.
Or maybe he should have planned ahead, and hired a member of the homeless network to do it with a pillow. Much cheaper.
John is in a bad mood. Sherlock is not in a mood of any kind, really.
John has already tried every trick, every possible pastime at their disposal to try and coax Sherlock to open his eyes and to engage.
That was a word they'd loved at Bethlem Royal. 'Patient does not engage with staff in a meaningful way.' Shouldn't it have been the patient who decided what was meaningful or not? Discussing the weather, sports scores or the side effects of drugs forced on him were hardly that. He did none of those things when he was sober and fine, so how could they be a measure of fine at any occasion?
He doesn't want to engage. He only wants to observe seconds ticking by towards an unknown future. He wants the wait to be over.
He refuses to linger in memories of days past, even though the Palace is full of them. He'll only start doing that if it turns out that this is the state in which he's going to remain.
"Sherlock," John tries again. "I know you're awake. They just suctioned your intubation tube. Not even the dead could sleep through that."
Would it be better if John left, stopped being a painful reminder of a life potentially lost?
No, never.
John will leave at some point, Sherlock reminds himself. People always do, eventually. They always do, when they get fed up with the way in which he fails to adhere to their expectations.
Judging by the gentle tug he feels in his shoulder, John has taken his hand - his pale, limp puppet's hand and is now holding it.
He has wasted years. Years, during which he could have found out what it feels like to speak to John with this body instead of his words. What it would feel like to hold hands without the pretence of communication.
It's all lost now. He ought to feel some measure of devastation, but all he feels is empty. It's fitting that his emotional state should now be defined by an absence of feeling - similar to how this body is now defined by what it cannot do.
He could drift away, go to the Palace, stay there, but the fear of not finding his way back must still be strong, because something is still keeping him here.
"Sherlock, please." John lets out an exasperated sigh.
Sherlock feels another slight tug in his shoulder - John has probably placed his hand back on the bed.
The sole of John's shoe squeaks slightly on the linoleum floor. There's another angry huff, and curse words muttered under his breath.
"Sherlock bloody Holmes, you open those eyes RIGHT NOW!" John commands, voice risen to a yell, and Sherlock is acutely reminded of Mummy, because she has used that very tone so many times. 'Sherlock Holmes, you clean this up right now!', 'William Sherlock Scott Holmes, stop trying to shoot your brother with that crossbow right now, and repeat to me what I said about building them!'
"Fuck it if I'm going to sit here all alone while you put on some goddamned Snow White imitation," John adds angrily, and judging by the metallic noise he has slammed his palm onto the side rail of the bed.
'You'll come around to my way of thinking eventually, and stop wishing for some fairytale ending. Accept that it's over, that there's no walking away from this, even if it doesn't kill you,' Moriarty whispers in Sherlock's head.
If he heads to the Palace now, Moriarty is the sort of company he'd have to keep.
Sherlock opens his eyes instead.
John's smile doesn't smooth the worry lines on his features, but there is still a modicum of relief there.
The only thing Sherlock hates more than his body is disappointing John.
"Hey," John says softly, and he now looks a little embarrassed. "I didn't mean to yell. It's been- a long day. A long twenty-six days."
John runs his palm up Sherlock's arm, all the way up to his shoulder. "Anything?" he asks with a tone that betrays that he thinks he already knows the answer.
Sherlock blinks twice, slowly, for no.
John's dry lip part slightly. "Sorry."
John runs his palm down that same arm, and then up again. It's not really a massage, more of a nervous tick. Is touch such as this more acceptable now that they've established that Sherlock can't feel it? Is it safer, now that his body can't possibly react to it in any untoward way? Is this John experimenting on him in the proverbial Faraday cage created by the GBS?
"We should try and get you more physical therapy appointments," John says, glancing at the wall clock. "You're going to lose so much muscle."
Thank you, John, that is very encouraging.
John's fingers circle his wrist and turns his palm upwards. "Your nails have got long." He then looks up and their eyes meet. "I'm sorry", John says again.
Why is John apologizing? He didn't cause this, nobody did. It's no one's fault that Sherlock's immune system decided to detonate itself.
John straightens the collar of Sherlock's hospital-issue pyjama shirt. There are several pairs of his own that John has brought for him from home, but the nurses keep forgetting about them. "I'm sorry I can't trade places with you."
Judging by what he sees is John's eyes, Sherlock believes he would, in a heartbeat.
"We need a game plan," John tells him, leaning back on his chair. "I know you hated that eye-movement system, but we might try that again at some point."
Sherlock tries to convey that he's still unimpressed by it.
John lifts up a finger that says hold on - pointless, since Sherlock is hardly going anywhere, and goes to the wardrobe.
From there he produces a pad and a pencil and sits back down with his loot.
On the pad, John draws four arrows.
Up, down, left, right.
"Which one is going to be yes?" he had asked, and Sherlock catches on immediately. He pointedly looks up.
John, holding the pad up above the bed so he could see, writes down "yes" under the corresponding arrow.
"What about no?" John asks.
He looks down.
"We need a 'maybe', too."
Y, Sherlock painstakingly blinks. He eyelids feel unruly, and it requires an effort to move them.
"That's what all the websites say. You need something to tell us you didn't understand or what's more likely, that we didn't understand, or that you don't know or can't decide."
Sherlock moves his line of sight to the right and keeps it there.
John scribbles down 'MAYBE/?' on the pad. "One direction left. What do you want it to be?"
I.D.I.O.-, Sherlock blinks as quickly as he can.
John bursts out laughing. "Yeah, of course." He scribbles down 'Pissed off, do not approach unless absolutely necessary'.
John finds a roll of silk tape on the window sill. He rips the page off the pad, and tapes it on the wall above Sherlock's head. "You come with a warning label now. Maybe we should have pinned one on you years ago."
Sherlock can't manage an actual smile - another thing that's been lost now - but the corner of his mouth quirks up.
Lestrade visits, after Sherlock had answered 'yes' to John's question on whether he is allowed.
The DI walks in with a thick tower of case files in tow. His behaviour betrays much less apprehension than Sherlock would have expected. John has probably coached him beforehand.
It's not new - people having to be prepared and forewarned about things before interacting with him. It's always been like this, but it has never stopped bothering him.
"They're old, cold ones, so it doesn't matter if it takes a while before you can tell me who's done it," Lestrade says, and gives the case files to John.
John flips the cover off the first one. "I'll start reading them to you tonight," he says encouragingly.
John thinks he's getting a bedsore. After all the mortifications Sherlock has already been forced to suffer through, this one feels minor. He's quite certain the red blotch is nothing but irritation from the dreadfully low thread count of the hospital sheets, but John is suspicious - and royally pissed off. "How fucking difficult can it be to see that he gets turned?" is what Sherlock hears him yell in the hallway at some hapless nurse he finds wandering past Sherlock's room.
John's yelling is doing nothing to make him feel better, because the inventory of agony is extensive today. There's his back, which is killing him, his shoulders, which feel as though they're being branded with fire and his throbbing head, which feels like it's being shrunk by a Papuan cannibal.
Sweat glistens on his forehead and his frantic heartbeat is echoing in his ears.
John stomps back into the room, huffing with indignation. He takes in the sight of Sherlock on the bed and there's a change in his breathing. He isn't angry anymore, he's worried, practically holding his breath now as he steps closer to inspect the situation. "What is it?" he asks in a hurried manner until he catches himself, "Sorry. Right. Options. Too warm? Do you want the blanket off?"
He looks down.
"You're awfully pale. Something hurts?"
He looks up and leaves his eyes pointed at the ceiling. God, he hates that ceiling.
John rocks on his heels and presses the call button. "Hold on. We'll get you something. Headache?"
He decides to answer no, because it isn't the full answer.
"Neck?"
No and yes.
"Back?"
No and yes.
"You're confusing me."
Sherlock stares determinedly forward, then looks left.
John doesn't look insulted - instead he looks as though he's been given a challenge. "Is it... everything?"
He looks up and then lets his eyelids droop. Hopefully John will decipher that as relief.
The speech therapist assigned to the ITU finally returns from sick leave, and John wastes no time in marching up to his offices to demand an immediate consult.
He comes back with what he's convinced will be a much better system for communication, one based on six directions for Sherlock's line of sight. Sherlock's inferior oblique muscles have been affected by the GBS, but he can still look up, down, left, right and in the both lower corners. He'll first signal a number on the horizontal plane, then one on the vertical, the six direction of his sight corresponding to numbers from one to six.
That gives them a grid of six by six phrases, which they now need to decide on what to fill with. The therapist had given John a list of common ones that most patients need, such as pain, nausea, sleep, where is...? sit up, book, music, TV, go away, nurse, doctor, I don't understand, cold, hot, need help, turn. These are pre-printed on a white marker board John has brought from the speech therapist. "If you've no objections to these, all we need to do is come up with stuff for the remaining fifteen slots," John says.
John makes some suggestions. First he proposes a set of names: John, Mycroft, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, Molly, parents.
Sherlock tries to protest to Mycroft on principle, but John is having none of it. Since Sherlock doesn't say no to any others, they get scribbled down on the small white marker board.
With a knowing look, John then suggests bored, idiot, case files, danger, shut up and 'disgusting lemon stick, please'.
Four slots left.
This time John doesn't say anything, doesn't actively seek Sherlock's approval for his remaining suggestions. He writes them straight down onto the marker board.
Slightly hesitantly, he turns the board so that Sherlock can see the four things he has written down.
scared
get John
hold hands
I don't know what's happening to me
John's expression is hard to read. He looks somewhat determined - he has, after all, just written all that down with the permanent marker - but he clearly fears Sherlock's reaction. He's watching Sherlock intently, looking for any movement of his eyes, any slightest hint of an expression.
Sherlock, on the other hand, finds it hard to actually look at John at the moment. He feels exposed, put on the spot.
"Please promise," John says, putting down the marker board on the tray table beside the bed, "to use those if you need to. Because I hate it when you lie to me."
It's been a month and a half since he got sick.
There's a routine in place.
John comes in at around nine in the morning, if he doesn't have a shift at the surgery. Sherlock had heard bits and pieces of phone conversations between Mycroft and what is probably John's boss. A system is in place allowing John to take as much time off as he needs - it had been short-notice locum work anyway, temping for GPs who had called in sick. Living with Sherlock hardly allows for planning ahead.
John probably takes those shifts for his own sanity. To Sherlock, it's a sobering thought that John might need time off from him. John keeps insisting that this is not it, that it's no trouble at all, that he enjoys spending time here, but his smile has a sad edge and he clearly isn't sleeping very well.
John keeps putting words in his mouth. 'You'd probably tell me that...', 'You always say...', 'I know, I know, you don't like..., 'I know what you'd say...'.
There are misunderstandings based on these assumptions. Most of those things he wouldn't actually have addressed at all, would not have dignified such useless chitchat with an answer.
The talking board works fine, most of the time, although John is clearly getting exhausted trying to explain it to all members of staff that set foot in Sherlock's room. Some of them are bank nurses, only here for a shift or two, and uninterested in catering the very specific needs of a patient they'll probably never see after their bank shift.
Consequently, John leaves the first note they'd devised taped to the wall: yes, no, MAYBE/? go away. It's enough, most of the time, for Sherlock to get by with the staff.
John has begun to believe Sherlock now has routines, too.
He doesn't. They are merely hospital routines that have been imposed on him. Still, John thinks he wants things done at a certain time.
Unpredictable is better. It prevents him from living by the clock, waiting for a certain time and a certain event and driving himself crazy with how slowly the clock turns its hands.
There aren't many things he looks forward to now, anyway. He hardly cares when they empty his catheter bag, or when they inject him with an anticoagulant to keep the blood pooling in his legs from clotting and clogging up an artery somewhere. He can't feel them being done, nor do they make him feel any better - or anything, for that matter.
He has also discerned that staring at the west wall is precisely as boring as staring at the east wall or the ceiling.
They watch a lot of nature documentaries. They get Sherlock's mind off things, offer perspective.
In one word, it's a form of escapism. For the first time Sherlock finds himself, if not sympathizing, then at least understanding housewives who get hooked on soap operas.
They also provide facts he can file away in The Mind Palace. As do the copious number of books Mycroft has provided. John reads them to him out loud. So does Molly. She favours the forensic ones whereas John tends to pick something fictional.
On the thirty-fifth day of this proverbial prison sentence, Mycroft picks up one of the books he'd brought earlier - a biography of Robert Stewart, the Viscount Castlereagh. He examines the dust jacket, clears his throat and begins reading it out loud. Sherlock does not find Mycroft's interest in the man surprising: a skilled diplomat, the Viscount had been instrumental in many turning points of 18th and 19th century politics. Probably a childhood hero of Mycroft's.
Sherlock doesn't give a toss about this Viscount, but there's something pleasing, something reassuring about hearing his brother's steady voice reading the first pages.
Sherlock doesn't ask for his head to be turned to face Mycroft. Mostly it's because it's a huge chore to get his point across when he tries to communicate so he prefers not to invite such opportunities. It's also because not seeing Mycroft but hearing his voice helps him imagine they've been transported someplace else: his room when he was small, and Mycroft was visiting from Eton.
Sherlock could already read at that age, of course, but Mycroft had had a habit of reading him bedtime stories, because that way he could get Sherlock to find out about books Mycroft had deemed necessary for his brother to be familiar with. Know-it-all busybody, even at the age of 13.
They had never played together much. Too big an age difference. Those reading sessions are Sherlock's only memory of them doing things together on a regular basis.
Mycroft naturally sounds very different now, but his voice still helps Sherlock pretend, even if just for a moment, that he's not there at all, not in this hospital bed, but at his childhood home. His only real home - before Baker Street.
He wonders what it feels like for John, now, when the man briefly stops by at home before returning to his bedside at the hospital. Does John feel his absence there as painfully as he misses John when he isn't here?
Whenever John is absent - some medical conference or seeing his family, the flat doesn't feel the same as it does when John is merely at work or shopping.
For Sherlock, homes have always been something that are made of people, not of bricks and wood and material possessions.
Mycroft leaves after a few hours, and John takes over. They're doing this in shifts. It's obvious, really - did they really think he wouldn't notice?
The only time he's left to his own devices is at night, when the sedative infusor is turned on.
Sherlock wonders who has initiated this system. Mycroft or John?
Who has the least amount of confidence in his ability to get through this?
Who doubts his sanity the most?