Pain. Not the pain I had been living through recently, but not the sensation when that wretched bullet had first torn through my flesh. It was somewhere in between, and not at all pleasant.
"Are you wake, doctor?" questioned a voice, my recent fellow lodger. He had been smoking that tobacco of his, but he was not lit at the moment.
I murmured an affirmative response, not trusting my speech any more than my ability to move my neck. "What...?"
"You took a fall down the stairs, I'm afraid. You must have fainted. I often forget you are a recovering man. Your weak leg no doubt complicated matters. You tried to grab the banister; it was weak and gave way. I was fetched by Mrs. Hudson, and we carried you to her settee. You gave her quite a scare, old man."
Venturing from my sightless homeostasis, I cracked open a single lid. Judging by the tight, pulled expression on his sharp face, our poor landlady was not the only one I had worried.
He apparently deduced my thoughts from the slightest expression. "Oh, she would not admit as much more than I, my good doctor. We were both quite shaken, but while I vocally fretted for your condition, the good lady merely wondered what it would cost to replace the banister."