Ex Files


Expunge /ɪkˈspʌn(d)ʒ,ɛk-/

verb - to strike out, obliterate, or mark for deletion

- to efface completely : destroy

- to eliminate (as a memory) from one's consciousness


Author's note: This follows on from the events in Chapter 49, Execute.


"Do you have any idea what kind of narcotics he's taken?"

The absurdity of the question was made even more surreal by the context. Mycroft was standing in the Resuscitation Room of the Worthing Hospital Accident & Emergency Department. The paediatric consultant had just explained why a doctor in scrubs who Mycroft assumed was an anaesthetist was squeezing a bag and into a mask clamped over Sherlock's nose and mouth to breathe for him.

"Narcotics? Don't be ridiculous. Why on earth do you think he's taking drugs?'"

"It's the only possible explanation of all the facts. At 10 breaths a minute, he's not breathing properly on his own. His blood pressure is too low, so we've started an IV, pushing fluids. He's deeply unconscious and, most telling of all, his pupils are pinpoints. The only possible explanations for all of these are either a pontine stroke or an overdose of opiates. And pontine strokes don't often happen in children."

The explanation shocked Mycroft into momentary silence. Then he found his voice again; "But, he's only twelve years old…"

"Constricted pupils don't lie, and the tox card test we've done on his blood shows clear evidence of opiods. We'll have to wait for a full GC/MS test to find out whether it's heroin or morphine."

"That's just not possible."

The doctor squeezing the bag shrugged. "It's not that rare. These are the 'naughty nineties'. You'd be surprised at what kids get up to at school. One of his friends could have supplied them- kids love to experiment."

"Not possible," Mycroft repeated. "He's home-schooled. And he has no contact with other children." The junior doctor gave him an odd look, so he felt compelled to explain. "He's autistic; doesn't deal well with other people, especially children."

"Someone else in the house, then? Prescription drugs? Sometimes kids get their hands on someone else's medication. But that would probably show paracetamol- and there was none."

The consultant was looking at him now, in a slightly wary appraisal, and then said, "Or he might have found someone else's stash."

"Not mine; I can assure you that I have never used drugs." Mycroft delivered a self-righteous glare to accompany his steely retort. "However, there are over seventy people employed at Parham, and I cannot vouch for them all." At this point, his gaze shifted to Mrs Walters who looked as shocked as he felt.

The junior doctor by the side of the trolley injected something into the IV line. "In two minutes, when he wakes up from this naloxone, we'll be sure. It's an opiod antagonist- stops the narcotics from working."

Mycroft glanced at the clock on the wall- 9.28 am. Time stood still.

Mycroft's mind was moving too slow, and he had to make an effort to concentrate long enough to make sense of all this. Only three days back from Nicaragua, jet lag was still an issue for him.

The car phone had rung in his father's car on his way back to Oxford. The man himself was on yet another business trip to the USA, so Mycroft had contacted Wilson, the chauffeur based at the London townhouse, and got him to come down to Parham last night. The alternative- a train journey - would have taken him nearly three hours- into London, then onto Paddington, changing at Reading for Oxford. The driver would get him there in half the time, so he could spend an extra night at home and still make his 12.30 seminar.

When Mycroft had left the house this morning, Sherlock was still asleep. He'd looked in briefly, but let him sleep.

If only I'd tried to wake him then. At the time, his reluctance to wake Sherlock had been half cowardice, half pragmatism. After their first brief exchange upon his arrival, Sherlock had not spoken to him again, or to anyone else for the past three days. The boy's tutors had been stood down; regular lessons postponed. It would appear that Sherlock's disastrous experience with the death of the red setter meant he was on strike.

Never in his wildest nightmare had he thought Sherlock might have been distressed enough to do something like take drugs. It raised a memory of a time eighteen months before when Esther Cohen had called him to say that Sherlock had done just that- taken an overdose of antidepressants in order to escape the Kings Court Clinic*.

Before he could say any of that, the doctor asked the anaesthetist, "Any improvement in respiration?" When the question was answered with a shake of the head, the older man leaned over and pinched Sherlock's ear lobe hard. There was no reaction.

"Let's try the same dose again and see if that does anything." The consultant's calm order was immediately implemented by the junior doctor, and the clock watching resumed. For a moment, Mycroft hoped that the lack of response would prove that his brother had not taken drugs, but that train of thought led him to wonder what a pontine stroke was.

A minute later, the silence was interrupted by the beep of a monitor and the nurse looking at the ECG read-out. "Arrhythmia." Another beep occurred before the consultant could respond, and the nurse called it out, "…and now It's definitely VT."

The consultant swore under his breath. The anaesthetist looked up at the junior doctor and asked, 'Exactly how much naloxone did you give him?"

Mycroft didn't understand what the letters VT stood for, but he heard the worry in the doctor's tone of voice.

Something rattled and Mycroft looked back at Sherlock. His brother's hand had twitched and banged into the bar on the trolley, but his eyes weren't open yet.

"Good."

Mycroft could hear the junior doctor's relief in that one word.

"He's waking up. Let's start him on a naloxone infusion - sixty percent of the total dose he's just had per hour." The anaesthetist stopped squeezing the airbag and loosened the mask.

Then Sherlock's hand grabbed onto the bar, and he started to pull himself upright. Coughing and gagging, he pushed the mask away from his face and spat out a strange piece of plastic. Then with his eyes still shut, he collapsed back down, his body relaxing again.

"Sherlock, can you hear me? Time to wake up!" The consultant's voice was loud and insistent. He rubbed a knuckle across the boy's sternum.

Sherlock's eyes snapped open, and all hell broke loose.

He pulled away from the consultant's touch, thrashed violently to the other side of the trolley and smacked into the bars with a great crash. His eyes were totally unfocused, shocked wide with terror. Throwing his arm up in a panic, the cannula on the top of his hand caught on one of the ECG leads and ripped out. Blood started dripping down the flailing arm, as the monitor's pulse beeps escalated dramatically.

"Whoa there! Take it easy; just calm down." Nurses and doctors stepped in on both sides to restrain his arms, just as Mycroft interjected, "Don't touch him!"

Their training already fully engaged, five of the medical staff ignored Mycroft's instruction, and took hold of Sherlock to stop him from hurting himself. The result was pandemonium, as the terrified boy started screaming at the top of his lungs, wrestling violently to get away from them. When a flailing fist connected with one of the nurses' faces, she let go and suddenly he was halfway over the bars and off the trolley, while at the same time yanking at ECG wires.

The consultant grabbed a syringe and started filling it. "Hang onto him while I get lorazepam in him." Mycroft realised the time for talking Sherlock out of fighting had passed, and waded in, grabbed his brother and shoved him back into the bed. He watched the doctor stab the syringe into Sherlock's right upper arm, held down by the anaesthetist's weight on the bony shoulder and one of the nurses trapping the forearm against the bars.

For the next four and a bit minutes, they just held on as the fight slowly went out of the screaming boy.

When they finally stepped back from the trolley, the anaesthetist lifted an eyelid. Sherlock's pupil was now very dilated.

"Right." The consultant was back in charge. "All that palaver might be result of a hallucinogenic. God only knows what he's managed to get into- ecstasy or even LSD, as well as the narcotics. An RSI and intubation is the only option until the drugs wear off enough to wake him up safely. And get that IV back in with the naloxone infusion."

The resus team got back to work with the rapid sequence induction and intubation.

The consultant stood aside from the trolley and glared at Mycroft. "We need to talk. Was that little display of energy typical of his autism? Do you know if he has any atypical or paradoxical reactions to drugs? Does he have any other medical problems? Taking any medicines?"

"I don't know. I've been away from home since the summer, and overseas for the past month." Mycroft looked to Mrs Walters, who shook her head and said "Only melatonin to help him sleep. That's it." Mycroft resumed, "I can contact the psychiatrist who has been treating him over the years; she'll have a better idea of his medical history in terms of drugs reactions."

The consultant nodded. "Well, the good news is that he won't remember a thing about this when he does wake up. And once he gets sorted here, he's going straight up to ICU where the ventilator will do his breathing for him. We'll keep him under until tomorrow morning at the earliest, then extubate and use lorazepam at a lower dose to keep him calm when he wakes up."

The doctor looked back at the team working, keeping an eye on their progress. "How severe is the autism?"

Mycroft sighed. How to sum up his brother? "He's high functioning in many areas. Highly intelligent, too. But he has sensory issues, and communication is…um, problematic at times. He doesn't like being touched, but he's never been violent or aggressive to hurt anyone but himself, even in meltdown." He looked at the nurse, who was rubbing her chin. "…at least not intentionally."

The consultant noted something on the clipboard. "Overdoses can so easily be lethal in children; there's truth in the saying "one pill can kill". We've stopped the narcotics from killing him, but he's not out of the woods yet. The naloxone infusion will take care of the opiates, but we've no idea what else he might have ingested, and he's in no position to tell us." He tapped the clipboard with the first drug test results. "It's not ideal to sedate without knowing what he's already taken. So, I want you to go back home and do your best to find out what it was. It's really important- not just what it was, but how much, how long ago, even how it was taken- swallowed or inhaled. If you find any evidence that it was deliberate, we need to know that, too. Until we know, we have to keep him on a psych hold. We will run tests to find out the drugs at our end, but they take a week."

Mycroft's mind made an important connection. "I can get it done faster."

That got him a raised eyebrow from the doctor. "How?"

"I have access to laboratory services that you don't have. Just get me a couple of blood samples and tell me what tests you need." His father's pharmaceutical companies would be able to do something in a rush, time they did something useful for the family, other than make money. He tried to remember which American time zone Chicago was in- six or was it seven hours behind? In either case, it was the middle of the night.

Good; it will serve him right to be woken up for once; at least he can't claim to be in a meeting at this hour.

He had a number of calls to make, so he went back to the car and used the phone there. Rachel Simmonds was his father's PA, and provided the phone number. "He's in Deerfield Illinois. That's 25 miles north of Chicago, staying at the Marriott Suites Hotel. But, it's the middle of the night there."

"I know."

The hotel reception was clearly manned even at night, and put him through to Room 212. He found himself wondering how big the place was when it took six rings before the call was picked up.

"Hello."

His father sounded both cross and slightly out of breath.

"Father; it's me. I trust this isn't inconveniencing you?" His imagination was willing to put another person in the room being the cause of the delay in answering.

There was an intake of breath. "What's happened, Mycroft? Why are you calling at this hour?" He wasn't angry; the tone was more worried.

"I need your assistance. I'm at the Worthing Hospital and I need a contact name at one of your UK laboratories, someone who is willing to conduct a private blood test faster than the NHS is able to do so."

"Are you unwell, son? You were looking a little peaky when I saw you at Parham- that field trip of yours to Costa Rica was too tiring. Damn it, you should have come straight to the townhouse and not wasted time with your brother. What's wrong; what do the doctors say?" There was clear concern in Richard Holmes' voice**.

Mycroft took a tactical decision. "I won't know until the test is done. Can you advise me of the person I should contact for a rather complicated blood test?"

"Yes, yes, of course, but I'm not going to send you to one of my chemists- they aren't diagnosticians. No – you go straight to Dr Richard Kaczmarski at the London Clinic, on Devonshire Place. They can get any test done that you need within hours. I'll get Rachel to phone ahead and set up the appointment. Get Wilson to take you there. And tell me the results as soon as you know them. Should I fly back?"

"No need for anything so dramatic, father. It's just a blood test." He hoped that his nonchalance would carry enough weight to calm the man down; now that Mycroft had got when he needed, he didn't want to rouse his father's suspicions. Distraction was called for- "Why are you in America? You just got back from Italy."

"I'm here working on a deal for Fujisawa Pharmaceuticals; they've bought Lyphomed. It's a nine hundred million dollar deal – and one of my company patents is involved, so I want to make sure we get our rights protected in the merger. But if you need me to get home, I can drop everything."

Mycroft realised that his tactical decision to mislead his father into thinking the test was for him meant he was going to get more co-operation. Sadly, if he'd said it was Sherlock, the reaction would have been different. That fact annoyed him no end, but now was not the time to address that problem. So, he continued to mislead, saying calmly "Not necessary. It's just important to get this done today. Tell the clinic that I won't be there for another couple of hours. I have to get the specifics of what I need from the hospital, and then go back to Parham to collect my things and say goodbye to Sherlock. I'll go onto Oxford after the test."

"Don't waste any time on Sherlock. Wilson can just nip in to collect your things from Walters on the way past. Get up to London as quickly as you can for the test and call me when you get back to Oxford."

And there, in a nutshell, is our childhood. He made his excuses to get off the line, and then called Professor Robert Adams to tell him that he wouldn't be making that seminar today. Regrettably, "a family emergency" would keep him away for a few days yet. Unlike his father, Mycroft knew where his priorities lay.

oOo

The next call was to Doctor Cohen. Mycroft made that in the car on the way back to Parham. He explained what he knew about what had happened to Sherlock and then had to ask the obvious question, point-blank:

"Do you think this is another suicide attempt, like the one at Kings Court?"

There was a pause on the line, and Mycroft wondered if he had lost the signal. Car telephones were not the most reliable, especially when the line of sight masts had to deal with the South Downs, up which the car was climbing.

After a burst of static, "…Mycroft? Are you still there?"

"Yes, Doctor Cohen- but I missed anything you said. Reception's not brilliant."

"Right, I'll repeat it. I haven't seen Sherlock myself since September, so a lot of this has to be conjecture. But, what happens next matters. The ICU will keep him sedated a bit when he next wakes up- that's probably tomorrow morning now. I will be there to see if he needs a psych assessment. From your description, Sherlock was just…silent and sad about the dog's death. At the clinic, he was diagnosed as clinically depressed- which is why they had him on lithium and they used ECT. That provoked anxiety and agitation which led, in my view, to his conscious attempt to escape from what he saw was an intolerable situation. I'm not picking that up from what you said now. We need to ask the question when he is calm and able to answer."

There was another burst of static, then the signal resumed. "…mustn't think the worst; there may be another answer. It would help…" The signal cut out again, and Mycroft closed his eyes in frustration.

"…what he took."

He cut in, hoping that his reply would reach her. "Doctor Cohen, when I know the answer to that, I will get back in touch. Goodbye for now." He put the phone receiver back in the cradle and glared at it. A useful invention, but someone was going to have to get more masts put in if the signal quality was to be consistent enough. That led him off on a tangent of thought, wondering how the police and fire services managed to communicate in times of emergencies. If they were as dependent as he was on the phone system working while on the move, then it was an issue that the government needed to consider fixing- soon.

oOo

"So, we have something of a treasure hunt on our hands."

He and Mrs Walters were standing in Parham's Great Hall, facing the ten house staff, wondering how on earth they were going to find what Sherlock had taken.

The housekeeper was explaining what was needed. "I've already looked in his bedroom, while the ambulance was here, because they seemed certain he must have taken something- but there was nothing there."

Mycroft added, "We need you to help us; we'll split up in pairs and take one of the wings on each floor. We'll start at the top. You need to search thoroughly for anything that looks like a medicine bottle, tablets, syringes or a packet of powder- really, anything out of the ordinary. He's likely to have hidden it, so look in drawers, behind things, out of sight."

A little intimidated by Mycroft, one of the house maids asked a question, but directed it to the Parham Housekeeper instead; "Mrs Walters, could he have taken something…um… one of them chemicals- you know, the bottles in his room?"

She nodded. "Good thinking, Daisy, but I did check to see if anything had been moved since yesterday afternoon. You know he doesn't like anything moved, so I'm quite aware of exactly what's there. And, no, it didn't look like he's hidden anything like that amongst his chemistry things." The prim grey-haired woman looked up at Mycroft, and then asked, "…but better safe than sorry? Perhaps we should send them off for testing?"

Mycroft considered, then shook his head. "Unlikely. We are looking for some kind of narcotics- that much we know from the drug test at the hospital. I have to leave for London in an hour to get the next test done on the blood samples, which may give us more clues. If we don't find anything in the house, then we'll go onto the annex. Frank Wallace has got the grounds staff looking in the outbuildings." He turned to the servants. "I want you to try to think like Sherlock does- try to imagine what he would do; go first to the places you know he likes- especially when he's trying to hide. If any of you have seen him recently anywhere unusual, then now's the time to say it."

"Begging pardon, your lordship, but I've seen him somewhere strange- a couple of weeks ago, it was." Daisy spoke again. "He was coming out from behind the tapestry–in the long gallery. There's a cupboard there, built into the panelling."

Mrs Walters looked surprised. "That's locked. It's always locked."

Mycroft's eyebrows rose. He was already in motion, heading for the stairs. "Then we'll start there. The rest of you start your search in the other rooms."

As they climbed the first flight of stone steps, Mycroft asked the housekeeper. "Which tapestry?"

"The Susanna***."

Mycroft knew it well- it was a large, quite striking seventeenth century Belgian tapestry, and unlike most of the embroidery in the house, his mother had been responsible for buying it soon after she got married.

He'd reached the second floor before she caught up with him. Pausing to catch his breath, he puffed out, "I didn't know there was storage behind the tapestry. What's in there?"

"Your father has been using it for his files recently and told me to keep out," Mrs Wallace replied. "I haven't been in there for years anyway. Your mother used to put your tricycle in there. Do you remember? You used to tear up and down on the wood floors when it was too wet to play outside."

Yes. An image came back into his mind, from an old filing cupboard in his Mind Archive. He was very young; pre-Sherlock for certain. With the memory came a voice he missed so much…

"We'll hide it back here. Daddy won't know."

"Why?"

Violet ruffled his hair and smiled. "Because he wouldn't approve, my darling. Too noisy! You know how he hates it when he can't work. It will be our secret- mustn't tell."

Mycroft closed his eyes…sometimes the pain of his mother's death crept up on him and just sideswiped him. The tricycle memory retreated, to be replaced by another, more current one.

"Promise me, Mycroft. You will look after him, won't you?"

The image of his brother lying on the trolley in the hospital resuscitation room screamed failure at him, making his chest hurt.

Do something. Mycroft strode down the long gallery, ignoring how the painted leaves on the ceiling changed from green to brown. He took one side of the heavy oak chest, Mrs Walters took the other. "Are you sure you can manage? I'll get some help."

She just laughed. "I've been moving this thing away from the wall since you were able to walk- and your mother took the other side. Although how a twelve year old is able to do it on his own, I can't imagine."

That made him stop. "Oh…" Mycroft looked down and realised that instead of pulling it out from the wall, Sherlock probably just shoved it along the floorboards. There would be less friction or resistance, and no lifting. He went over to Mrs Walters' side and then spotted the scratch on the wooden floor less than a foot behind where she was standing.

"He's smarter than we give him credit for- just pushed it along. Stand aside and let me try."

The polish of centuries meant that the chest slid remarkably easily along the wooden floor- easily enough for a boy. Mycroft stooped to where he could get his hands on the bottom edge of the tapestry.

"Where is the key? You said it was locked."

Mrs Walter went across the long room to the tallboy bureau- a fine piece of Jacobean furniture. The third drawer from the top – probably just within reach of Sherlock- yielded a tiny skeleton key.

Mycroft took it and ducked under the tapestry. The door cut into the panelling opened easily and his nose detected the tell-tale scent of WD40- a recent application.

Behind his right shoulder came a question, "Shall I get a torch, m'Lord?"

The space was pitch black, so he started to reply in the affirmative when his eye spotted a small object set against the panelling to the left, less than a foot from the door, and just visible. "No need- he's left one rather conveniently here."

Dust motes danced in the beam of the torch as he played it over stacks of boxes and trunks, nearly to the ceiling. The wall of boxes started barely a meter away from the door, leaving only a narrow corridor. Mycroft walked along and saw his father's neat handwriting on a filing box- Jan 1989. He wondered what could have attracted Sherlock to such a place.

"Oh, look; down there- at the bottom of that stack, it's her ladyship's trunk." Mrs Walters had followed in behind him and her finger pointed further down the line. He walked to it, with her in his footsteps. She sighed. "So, this is where he stored her things. I wondered."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he wouldn't let me touch her things, after the funeral. He locked her bedroom door and said I wasn't to go in at all. It was after you'd gone back to Oxford, and he'd sent Sherlock away. It was his butler, Wilson, who came down from London and helped him sort through the bedroom. Masses of her clothes went to charity; I remember that. All the things from her childhood- clothes, her toys, things her mother put in the attic, even her favourite books. Your father just gave them all away. The only thing he kept aside was her jewellery; you got that from her solicitor, if I'm not mistaken?"

"Yes, of course. So, what's in this trunk?"

"I don't know. But I am glad that he didn't get rid of everything. He went through the house and took it all away as if he couldn't bear to see anything that reminded him of her. He even re-decorated her bedroom and the Morning Room that was her favourite. When he was done, it was like she'd never lived here. Poor Sherlock, when he got back from that awful clinic he spent hours wandering the house looking for some sign of her."

In the torchlight, he could see four cardboard boxes of his father's files on top of the trunk, wedged tightly in by the boxes either side. He could barely reach the top one, and couldn't get his fingers between it and the next box to pull it out. Pushing it seemed easier; perhaps there was space between it and the back wall, allowing him to tip it up. Mycroft gave it a shove and it slid backwards, disappearing into the darkness and then landing in a great crash.

"Mrs Walters, there appears to be a space behind these boxes. I'm going to climb up and over, but I'm going to need to take the torch with me. Will you be all right in the dark?"

"Yes, m'Lord. My eyes are getting used to it now- I can wait. Do you think there is something back there?"

"Possibly." He was now able to reach over the next filing box down from the top and pulled it towards him, placing it down on the ground. The next three boxes followed, and then he clambered over the trunk, awkwardly slipping on the papers that had spilled out of the box he'd pushed over. Once he got his balance sorted, he shone the light down the hidden space.

"Oh, Sherlock…" It came out almost as a whisper, but it was loud enough that the housekeeper asked, "What is it? What've you found?"

The light of the torch reflected back from a mirror, propped on another trunk. It was the mirror that had been on his mother's vanity table, a three panelled French art deco piece that belonged to her grandmother. In the reflected light, he could see other things. His mother's favourite shawl, a bronze coloured paisley from India, draped over a smaller box with a silver candle holder on it and a box of matches. On the trunk in front of the mirror, a bottle of her perfume, a tea cup and saucer with a spoon. There were cushions from her bedroom, off the Edwardian walnut framed nursing chair that was still there, low enough for a little boy to be able to clamber up into a maternal lap. One of the cushions had a dent in it, just the size of an twelve year old's bottom.

He drew a shaky breath. "It's a shrine, of sorts. Some of Mummy's things, out where he can see them, feel them, and remember."

"Oh, the poor mite. He does miss her so."

Then Mycroft was down on his knees, opening the small wooden box that served as a table for the candle. He put the torch between his teeth, so his hands could push through the collection of oddments- letters, a book of poetry, a brooch from her riding jacket, handkerchiefs, a bottle of her shampoo, another of conditioner, one of skin cream, a bar of her soap from Florence. Then he spotted a glass bottle and pulled it free. A third full of a clear liquid, the shape of the bottle reminded him of a cough syrup rather than a toiletry. When he turned it around to read the plain label, he knew he'd found what he was looking for: up to 50mg, every twelve hours.

But there wasn't a doctor's name, no sign of a dispensing chemist shop or prescription details. Most peculiar.

oOo

"Explain it to me, please, Doctor Kaczmarski."

"Despite what the hospital thought, the standard GC/MS test came up negative for heroin, morphine or codeine. That's the good news. I've faxed the results to Worthing, so they can record it as a false positive and delete it from your brother's records. No need to put something like that in the public domain."

The doctor that his father had sent him to see was one of those Harley Street physicians- public-school educated, probably Oxbridge, and just the sort to be greatly concerned over appearances, exercising the utmost discretion on behalf of a client whose drugs test had shown a positive for narcotics. The well-dressed consultant continued, "Their EIA test did show antibodies for opiates, so we've tested for other things. Initial thoughts were it was most likely oxycodone. But that turned out to be negative, too. Eventually we realised it's something called hydrocodone- and that's decidedly odd."

"Why?"

"Because it's illegal in the UK; you certainly can't get it prescribed by any doctor, despite what you found."

"Does the blood sample match the syrup in the bottle? It's this hydrocodone, too?"

"Yes. We tested it, too, though how your brother got it, we just don't know. It's certainly not a street drug in the UK. It's a semi-synthetic opioid derived from two of the naturally occurring opiates codeine and thebaine. It's usually combined with paracetamol and marketed in the USA as Vicodin and a dozen other trade names."

"An American drug?" Mycroft felt a glimmer of understanding starting to form.

"Well- I can assure you that this version is definitely not on sale, either here or in the USA, legally or illegally. We've never seen anything like this formulation of it - the FDA over there would never have approved it."

"Why not?"

"First of all, it's got no paracetamol- well, acetaminophen to be precise- and that's what stops Vicodin from being abused- take too much of that and it destroys your liver. Take the paracetamol or ibuprofen out, as this sample has, bump up the concentration to a 50 milligram dose as the bottle said, and this stuff would be five times stronger than anything on the market- and as addictive as hell. It's got the diagnostic pathology team here really intrigued because it's got some sort of weird slow release mechanism they've never seen before. Instead of crashing the system with an instant high, and probably killing the recipient in the process, it's been engineered to release slowly over twelve hours****, otherwise the boy would have been very dead within minutes of taking it. Whatever it is- it's highly illegal both here and in the US, and very… experimental."

The glimmer grew brighter, and understanding followed. His father must have produced something to help deal with Violet's pain. Pancreatic cancer was hellishly painful, and her husband must have used his labs to concoct something special, something better able to deal with the pain in the last few weeks of her life. It was illegal, and so unlabelled.

Oh, Sherlock. Why did his brother take it?

oOo

"I'm sorry, m'Lord to wake you up at this hour, but it's your father on the phone." Mrs Walters was in a dressing gown, and standing in the doorway of his bedroom at Parham.

A quick glance at the bedroom clock showed it was 2.12am. Mycroft got his own dressing gown on and went down the hallway. There was an extension in his father's bedroom; he'd take the call there.

"Hello, Father."

"Mycroft. Why didn't you tell me it was Sherlock, not you? I called Doctor Kaczmarski. I don't like being lied to."

"I didn't lie. You assumed, and I did not see a reason to enlighten you."

"Don't play games, Mycroft."

Perhaps it was the hour of the morning, but he decided the time for being polite had passed. "The fact that it makes a difference to you that it was Sherlock rather than me is the reason why it seemed more sensible to leave you to your assumptions. How can you be so blasé?"

There was an intake of breath. "I'm not blasé. Not at all; that idiot brother of yours stuck his nose in something he shouldn't have. If he's so stupid as to take a medicine that wasn't prescribed for him, then he bloody well gets what he deserves."

"He nearly died, father."

"It just goes to show that you need to put him into a secure institution where he can be looked after round the clock. Neither you nor the staff at Parham can control him. For God's sake, if he's not getting into things he shouldn't, the moron's ridiculous chemistry experiments are going to burn the house down at some point. He's a danger to himself and to others. The sooner he's locked away, the better."

Mycroft rubbed his forehead and tried to stay calm. "We're not having this conversation now, father. What matters is that I found the evidence- the bottle of experimental hydrocodone, according to the London Clinic. Was it something you concocted for mother?"

There was a pause on the line, filled with the static of the transatlantic cable. Then Richard Holmes' baritone snapped out, "Whatever may or may not have helped your mother survive the last six weeks of her life without being in agony is not the issue. I've made sure the Clinic will deny all knowledge of the contents of the bottle you brought them today. It's been deleted from their records.- they won't even mention it, nothing apart from the blood sample, in which they found no heroin, codeine or morphine. They've sent a report to Worthing to that affect- and nothing more, do you hear me? Whatever you found, destroy it immediately."

"And might that be because it is extremely illegal and might cause you some difficulty in explaining it should the authorities find out about it?" He was not afraid of his father.

"Mycroft…" It was like the warning growl of a cornered animal. "You were at Oxford until the Christmas before she died. You have no idea how horrible it was to watch her suffer. I don't regret doing everything in my power to make her final days more bearable. I have no idea where your brother found it; I gave explicit instructions to Wilson that every bottle be destroyed. All records of its manufacture were expunged from the lab files. If you were to try to make anything of this, I will deny all knowledge of it- and there will be no evidence to justify an investigation. Don't be a fool- public disclosure would benefit no one."

"Knowing what it is will help the doctors treat Sherlock, so I have no choice but to tell them."

"And what good would that do? If he's had naloxone, then it would have dealt with it."

"You know he has atypical reactions to drugs. If I don't tell them the truth, then there could be repercussions."

"Wrong. The hospital doctors won't recognise the chemical construction of the drug- it's not available in the UK, nor even in the USA yet, in this slow release form. No drug trials have been authorised. It's invisible…and irrelevant to his treatment."

Regrettably, Mycroft realised that his father was probably right. Now that the naloxone had stopped the hydrocodone in its tracks, finding out why Sherlock had taken the drug was actually more important than what he took, now that the effects had been dealt with. But he loathed dropping this…negotiation, for that was what his relationship with his father had become. What could he extract from his father, in exchange for letting this illegal drug matter slide?

"Very well, Father. I have to focus on what is best for Sherlock, since you clearly have no intention of doing so. In exchange for not revealing the drug details, I will expect you to stay away from Parham for the rest of January and February. Let him recover in peace."

"Done. I have enough business trips already planned to sort out this Japanese deal that I'm not likely to be in the country long enough to care. My only regret in this is that you have once again allowed a sentimental attachment to your brother get in the way of our relationship. Destroy that bottle. Goodbye for now, Mycoft."

The line went dead, followed by the howl of static from a transatlantic call abruptly severed at one end.

oOo

When Mycroft got to the hospital the next morning, he was directed up to the paediatric ward- Sherlock had already been moved there as soon as he woke up and was extubated. Looking down the room, he could see only one bed had the curtains pulled around it, and guessed it would be Sherlock- an attempt to shield him from the sensory stimulation from the other patients.

Dr Cohen was in there with Sherlock, and she gave him a taut smile of greeting but then turned her attention back to the boy on the hospital bed. "Maybe you'll talk with your brother, given that you won't talk with me." Esther pulled the curtain back enough to slip through, murmuring as she passed him, "he's still on diazepam, to ease the anxiety."

Mycroft found the idea bizarre that the flimsy curtain pulled around the bed actually gave any measure of privacy; anyone with a set of ears would be able to know what was happening. So he had to be careful; Doctor Cohen would certainly be listening, and he didn't want to compromise her professional ethics by revealing too much about the drug.

Grey green eyes were warily scanning him. Surprisingly for one who had just been accused of mutism, it was Sherlock who started the conversation, "Why aren't you at Oxford?"

"Because of this." Mycroft pulled out from the canvas bag he'd brought with him the medicine bottle with the odd label on it. He held it up so his brother could see it- and the fact that it was now empty. He'd taken the precaution of pouring the contents down the sink and washing the bottle out.

Sherlock was still too young to hide his surprise. "Where did you find that?"

Mycroft snorted. "Where you left it, obviously. It doesn't take the Brain of Britain to know what it was; the question is why would you take medicine that wasn't for you? Or didn't you realise that? You do tend to make silly mistakes on occasion." He kept his tone as light as he could, under the circumstances. He didn't want to frighten the boy into silence.

Sherlock frowned. "I'm not stupid. I know it wasn't for me. Mummy told me that often enough. But she took it for the pain, and she said it helped."

"Are you in pain, Sherlock?"

The twelve year old looked away. Silence fell. The boy picked at something on the sheet, then scratched his arm, rather aggressively. "These sheets make me itch. Can I go home now?" His tone was an abrupt mix of irritation and petulance.

"Not until you answer the question. The doctors here are worried that you might be trying to…do what you did to get out of Kings Court." Mycroft found it hard to say the word 'suicide', as if mentioning it might plant a seed that he devoutly wanted never to sprout.

Sherlock snorted. "That's stupid. I didn't want to die; I just wanted to stop thinking. Mummy said that her medicine was good for that. Thinking too much made her sad; and she said she didn't want to waste any time being sad. I don't either."

Mycroft could feel the muscles across his shoulders relaxing. At least it wasn't suicidal ideation. "Why are you sad?"

His brother was still avoiding him by looking down at the offending sheet. He shrugged. "What's there to be happy about?"

Mycroft tried not to wince at that and decided to take another tack. He pulled the second item out of the bag, and put the paisley shawl down on the hospital bed. "I thought you might want this."

Sherlock reached out and stroked the soft cashmere, closing his eyes for a moment.

"Was yesterday the first time you took the medicine?"

The boy shook his head.

"How many times, when and how much? Why was it different this time?"

Sherlock seemed a little dazed at the barrage, and muttered, "Too many questions…"

Mycroft knew he had to be patient, but it was hard. "Then let's start with when was the first time and how much did you take then?"

"A week after I found it, half a spoonful."

Mycroft rolled his eyes. "When was that, Sherlock? I need a date."

His brother's brow furrowed. "It must have been in August."

"Can you be more precise?"

He watched the boy's lower lip quiver a bit. His right hand let go of the paisley shawl, and he started rubbing his thumb against his index finger. Even through the haze of the diazepam, Sherlock was stressed enough by the question to have to resort to stimming.

"I overheard you on the phone. I wasn't trying to, really. You were talking to Father about me, and telling him what was going to happen when you had to go back to Oxford. It made me scared, so I ran up to my hiding place. Mummy said she took the medicine when she needed to stop worrying about what was going to happen. Well, so did I, so I took a bit."

"Did it work?"

Sherlock nodded. "What you said didn't matter anymore, so I guess, yes it must have worked."

"How often have you taken some since then?"

There was another shrug.

"Be specific; it is important."

"Whenever I get angry or upset."

Mycroft thought about it, and recalled his brother's volatile mood in September, before he went up to Oxford. "As much as once a week?"

Another nod.

"How much each time? Still just a half teaspoon?"

Sherlock bit his lip. "More. A spoon by the end of September. It didn't seem to work unless I took more."

My twelve year old brother, the drug addict. "And how often have you been taking it recently?"

Sherlock shrugged. "Whenever I need it."

"And you've been needing it more and more, haven't you? The drug is addictive, Sherlock; and in a large enough dose, like the one you took yesterday, it can kill you."

"It didn't kill Mummy. The cancer did. The medicine helped her."

"You have to stop this foolishness. There is no more of Mummy's medicine, and Doctor Cohen is going to figure out how to stop you feeling like you need to keep taking it."

"Why? It's the only thing that makes me stop being sad. Why do you want me to be sad?"

Mycroft shook his head. "I don't want you to be sad, but the drug doesn't solve anything, Sherlock. It's artificial. I should explain addiction. It means you have to keep taking it, and more and more each time, as your body gets used to it, for it to have the same effect. Eventually you need to take so much that it kills you. It didn't matter for Mummy when she became addicted to it, because she was going to die anyway. But you shouldn't have taken any, none at all."

Sherlock didn't answer.

"Why did you take it again yesterday, and in such a large dose?"

Sherlock wouldn't look at him.

Mycroft sat down in the chair beside the bed. His eyes were now on the same level as his brother's, but even so, Sherlock avoided looking at him.

"Was it because you heard me talking to Professor Roberts about going back to Oxford?"

"Why should that matter? You're always leaving. I'm always alone now."

Mycroft considered this. "You have Mrs Walters and all the Parham staff, not to mention the five tutors and your violin instructor. That's not alone."

"You don't understand. Those people- they're just there because they are paid to look after me. I don't like any of them. None of them are my friend. Redbeard was. He cared about me. And now he's dead, because of me."

Mycroft sighed. "I will talk to Frank Wallace so he'll let you select a puppy from the next litter."

Sherlock slapped his hand down on the bed in frustration. "You don't understand. I don't want a puppy! How can you not understand? You're supposed to be the smart one."

Mycroft gave him a condescending look. "I am the smart one, Sherlock. I'm not the one who took someone else's medicine because I was sad."

Then suddenly, the boy's anger was replaced by stunned surprise, and he stared at Mycroft as if seeing him for the first time. "OH! You don't know what it means, because you don't have any friends."

Mycroft's eyebrow rose on his forehead. "Of course I have friends."

"Who?"

"People I know from Eton and now from university, people who are useful. Fellow students, professors, important contacts in Central America who have given me access and trusted me in ways you cannot begin to understand."

Sherlock shook his head. "You don't understand- they aren't your friends. You use them and they use you. That's not friendship. That's why you never get sad."

"You have no idea what you are talking about, Sherlock. Worrying about you all the time makes me sad."

"Why? You don't care about me."

"Yes, I do."

"Then why do you always go away? You always leave me. So you can't care about me."

"It isn't that simple, Sherlock."

The two brothers looked at each other across the gulf of their seven year age difference, and ran out of words.


Author's notes: This is the very beginning of the reason why Mycroft always wants a list.

*The story is covered in Periodic Tales, Chapter 13.

**In real life, Parham House has the finest collection of Tudor and Stuart embroidery in the UK- even better than the Queen's! The tale of Susanna would have particular meaning for Violet Holmes as it recounts the Old Testament story of a beautiful woman spied upon by two elders, who demand she have sex with them or they would accuse her of adultery. She refuses, is tried and convicted but Daniel saves her from execution.

*** Richard's concern is based on the fact that Mycroft had childhood leukemia when he was six- but at this stage Mycroft is unaware of the fact. The story is told in Sidelined.

**** OxyContin, the extended release formulation of oxycodone, was not released until 1996. The "…Contin" suffix is a pharmaceutical patent, and used on Hydrocodone now. Back when Violet Holmes was dying of pancreatic cancer, it would be experimental indeed, and illegal to use it on a human subject, even in testing, because drug trials on human patients had to be authorised by the Department of Health in the early 1990s. Despite widespread Medical advice against it, the FDA in America in 2014 licensed Zohydro, an extended release prescription painkiller that is made of pure hydrocodone, not mixed with acetaminophen. Hydrocodone in any form remains a Class A drug outlawed in the UK.