CHAPTER 33: IF YOU STAY
All hospital waiting rooms feel like the limbo at the gates of hell, Giulia reflects, spasmodically twisting her hands, incapable of staying still in those torture chairs. The most pessimistic part of her already wallows in sorrow and heartbreaking loss. The memory of an ancient pain resurfaces violently from the deep ends of her soul: she has lost enough people in her life, Sherlock cannot leave her too. He can't do that to her, not him too.
The recollection of a Latin sentence comes back to her: Spes ultima dea, meaning "Hope is the last goddess". It refers to the Greek myth, according to which the goddess Hope was the last one to remain among men, to console them, even when all the other gods abandoned the Earth to go to the Olympus. It means that hope should never fail, and it is always possible to be hopeful until the very end.
But what if that's the end?
She hunkers down next to one of the walls of the waiting room and silently cries buckets of bitter tears. Why did she allow herself to cater to the delusion that her life could ever be granted a happy ending?
Five hours later, she is still in the same exact position, crouched down by the wall, her head sunk into her crossed arms. She hasn't moved, she hasn't eaten, she isn't living anymore, stuck in that limbo at the gates of hell. She feels inconsolably lonely. The worst part is, she could not be. She knows that John reached the hospital, too. She saw him inquire about Sherlock at the main desk, then nervously pass a hand through his hair, a grief-stricken expression visible on his face. He didn't notice the hunched figure in a corner of the room, though, he didn't see her. And he definitely wasn't good at waiting, so he left. He probably went for a walk in the garden around the hospital, because, once every two hours, he reappeared at the desk, frantically asking if his friend had gone out of surgery yet: asking, hoping, getting more desperate by the hour. She has been staying there on the floor, quietly studying his movements, spying on him.
Why couldn't she bring herself to stand up, run to him and plunge into his arms? Why wasn't she trying to find consolation in the sharing of those infinite moments of agony? She didn't possess the answers to her unexpressed questions. She felts incredibly distant from him as if they were thousands of miles away from each other even when they were standing in the same room. There was an inexplicable and yet almost tangible void between them. What had happened? She couldn't say, but she never found the strength to raise her head to him and call him over to her hiding spot.
A tap on the shoulder snaps her out of her deep thoughts. Her head shoots up ready to meet John's eyes, but the kind gaze she crosses doesn't belong to any familiar face. A nurse is towering over her and smiles warmly at the broken girl, "Mr Holmes is out of danger. He just got out of surgery."
She hasn't even finished her sentence that Giulia springs to her feet, as the sound of those velvet words still echoes in her brain: Sherlock is out of danger. Out of danger, as in 'still alive'. He is still alive... He didn't leave her. Sherlock survived.
"May I see him, please?" she pleads still dazed by that good news she didn't dare to hope for.
The nurse shakes her head, "I'm sorry, only members of the immediate family are allowed in."
"Please, I need to see him, just for one second, please," she begs her.
The nurse looks around furtively then smirks at her, "I might be able to let you in for a little while; that's all I can do."
"It'll be more than enough. Thank you, thank you so much," she throws her a grateful smile.
The nurse's eyes scan her appearance from head to toe, then she grimaces concerned, "Maybe you'd like to change your clothes, first."
She lowers her gaze on her hoodie caked in dried blood and suppresses a shiver. She slowly nods, and the nurse promptly leads her to the Lost and Found. After rummaging through a pile of forgotten clothes for a couple of minutes, she fishes a jumper in her size out of the stack. She goes to the restrooms to get changed and almost jumps startled in front of her own reflection in the mirror. She hardly recognises herself: her messy hair falls on her shoulders to frame her hollow-eyed, pinched face. She takes a deep breath and washes her face with ice-cold water that slowly brings her delicate features back to life. She quickly changes her clothes and goes back to the nurse who guides her along several corridors up to Sherlock's room.
"I must warn you: he is still unconscious. You can go in, but I cannot estimate how long you'll be able to stay until someone kicks you out," the friendly woman winks at her and leaves her alone in front of the door. Giulia holds her breath as she lowers the handle and steps in.
The consulting detective lies peacefully on dazzling white sheets. His chest raises and lowers rhythmically while the regular beeps of the machines attached to him echo in the bare room. She fights back a waterfall of tears as she shuffles to the bed. She drags a chair closer by and sits down by him.
When a doctor comes in to check the detective's life functions and sends her out, she finds herself wandering in the hospital ward without a purpose: she doesn't want to eat, she absolutely cannot sleep, not until Sherlock wakes up. She mindlessly takes her phone out of her pocket and stares blankly at the notification of 15 missed calls from an unknown number. She needs to blink repeatedly at the screen before her brain can process that information, then she automatically unlocks the phone and calls back that presumably rather worried person.
"Hello, Giulia?"
She immediately recognises the hoarse voice that picks up and melts in a fond smile upon hearing a friendly voice, "Detective Inspector Lestrade... I mean, Greg, is that you?"
"Yes. Thank goodness, you finally called me back," he breathes out relieved. "How is Sherlock?"
"Still kicking."
She can clearly distinguish the sound of a deep sigh coming from the other end of the line, then Greg comments, "When we got to the Admiral's house, we found all the signs of a shooting. There were bloodstains on the rear door; it was evident that things went horribly wrong. Are you ready to tell me what happened?
They spend the next hour on the phone as she gives him a full statement of the events. When she finally hangs up, reeling from her own account, she spots the same nurse who had let her in the first time, leaving Sherlock's room. She walks up to her and doesn't even need to say a word: the woman smiles sympathetically and keeps the door open for her while whispering, "You are going to get me in trouble, today."
Eight hours later, when Sherlock regains consciousness for the first time, Giulia is right next to him in his room. She knows that some of the doctors must have noticed her presence, but somehow one of those angels decided to let her be. Not even John was allowed in. She has heard him protest fervently a couple of times right outside the door.
When Sherlock flutters his eyes open, she jumps out of the armchair in the corner and runs to his bed with bated breath, stealing a glance at the flickering monitors.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Sherlock," she forces out a whisper through the sudden lump in her throat. Her lips tremble open in a wide smile.
He blinks repeatedly; as soon as he focuses on her, a feeble smile bends the corner of his mouth but quickly disappears replaced by a grimace of pain.
Her face clouds over and she can't mask the quivering in her hands. All the emotions she has tried so hard to hold back for the last hours are pouring out forcefully, overwhelming her. There is everything in it: boundless joy, visceral fear, a merciless feeling of abandonment and the ecstatic sensation of relief.
"It's alright, you'll be fine soon," she hastens to tell.
He turns his head to look straight at her and murmurs, "I already told you: you are awful at reassuring."
She bites down on her lower lip in a desperate attempt to choke back tears at that playful comment, and she puts on a crooked smile sitting down on a chair by his side, "You're definitely back now."
He takes a few deep breaths ignoring the burning jolts of pain that spread all over his body, and tries to become fully active again, "What happened to you? You look like hell."
She chuckles, "You're one to talk."
"I have a good reason: I almost died. What's your excuse?"
She lowers her gaze muttering, "You almost died."
She instinctively takes his hand in hers and starts caressing softly the bony back of his hand without even realising it; she has been doing it so often when he was in a pharmacological coma that now it comes like a conditioned reflex. He doesn't know, though. He can't know. He can't know that she likes the simple touch of his hand, that she finds the frailty of his skin among her hands oddly soothing and reassuring, like a promise-filled sign of life. That life she had desperately held on to for the longest night, hoping, praying.
And yet, every time she took his hand, he was always unconscious. Now, though, he is sentient and responsive, and she realises it one second later, suddenly expecting him to recoil. To her surprise, he doesn't withdraw his hand as he did in the car when they brushed their fingers while reaching simultaneously for the radio. He doesn't even flinch at the human contact as he did back in Baker Street. On the contrary, he plays with her hand and strokes her palm, trailing his fingers up to her wrist. She lifts her eyes on him with a little smile, something between an embarrassed grimace and a timid grin.
He smirks at her, "Why is your heart rate elevated?"
Her eyes widen as if she was caught red-handed, and she rushes a joke, "Maybe the adrenaline is still pumping in my veins."
Irony: her armour, the insurmountable defensive wall all around her heart. Will she ever let it down?
He looks at her studying her reaction: she blushes slightly and bites down on her lip for the second time. Why does she do that? That's really not necessary; she is going to make it bleed under her little pearly teeth. That would be such a shame. The curve of her lips is perfectly plump, looking so gentle, so soft...
She looks around the room and clears her throat awkwardly awakening him from his daydream, "Actually..."
He tilts his head in anticipation.
She inhales deeply. "Actually, I could ask you the same thing," she sneers hinting at the increasing value of his heart rate showed by the machines attached to his body. The beep synchronised with the rhythm strip of peaks and valleys is growing faster.
He instinctively turns his head to stare at the monitor and his jaw almost drops: he wasn't expecting such a reaction from his body. He swallows hard and casually leans back against the pillows, "You're lucky I still have a heart rate."
She raises a brow sarcastically, "I am lucky?"
"You asked me for a favour, remember? You asked me to survive. I hope you realise that you owe me one, now. It's massive debt."
At his mention, painful memories of the tantalizing moments of their race against time vividly come back to the surface, and they both feel as if they were in Mrs Hudson car once again, desperately trying to outrun death. He glances at her and all the memories come back to his mind as a sudden realisation dawns on him with a one-second delay. "Hold on, you...you are still alive..." he mumbles confusedly.
She frowns at him: did he hit his head or experience a memory loss? "Of course I am. You were the one who got shot, not me."
He keeps staring at her, bewildered, "Why aren't you dead after what happened?"
"You mean my reckless way of driving?" she jokes.
"No, I mean the explosion at the Italian Consulate. How did you survive?"
She gapes at him, speechless. It takes her a few instants to process his question, then she blurts out, "How do you know?"
He shrugs lightly wincing in pain at the swift movement, "John found an old newspaper article about it and told me on the phone, seconds before I got shot."
"Oh! So that's what distracted you during the shooting and made you the perfect target," she realises and gives him a reproachful look.
He fixes his eyes in hers and pronounces gravely, "Giulia, I almost died, and I was leaving this world without knowing who you really are and what happened to you. Now I want the truth and I want it complete. I think you owe me a story."
She nods and sighs, "I think I do. But, if we are really doing this, then I'd like John to be present, too. He deserves to know, as well."
She stands up but doesn't take any step away. She looks down at him and whispers, "However, before he comes, there's something I have to tell you..."
His eyes dart across her face trying to deduce her confession, but before he has the time to read her, she adds, "Thank you."
He frowns, "What for?"
Giulia furrows a brow ill at ease, "Staying, surviving."
"I did it for you," he murmurs, his voice softer than usual.
A smile tugs at her lips, "Yeah, I managed not to kill you in a car accident and get you to the hospital. You are very welcome."
Her inappropriate irony, again. Whenever things threaten to become a bit too personal, she seems to wave the reality aside, terrified of the consequences of unchecked feelings.
He doesn't play along and remains serious, "No, I didn't mean 'thanks to you'; even though I am quite grateful for that part too. What I wanted to say is, I struggled to survive just for you. I am glad to be alive, but I am even more pleased that you can see me like this."
She runs her eyes all over him with a sarcastic face, "In a hospital bed?"
"Would you have preferred on the mortuary table? Honestly, I could have died, and it would be fine by me. No regrets," he declares serenely. He is not kidding: that's his truth.
"Aren't you afraid of dying?" she asks with sincere curiosity.
"You know me: I'm quite the logical person. Why would I fear something that isn't either bad or good? Death is eternal silence and dooming darkness: nothing more, nothing less. Nothing to be afraid of. It's the end, and endings are just the final chapters of a story. There was only one problem, though: I couldn't stand the idea that you would have lived for the rest of your days thinking that you didn't succeed in saving me. You tried hard not to lose control; I know, I noticed the signs of panic in your behaviour, I saw how lost you felt. But you kept trying relentlessly. I owed you at least my survival."
She smiles at him. She was wrong about him, many hours before; he isn't the tin man. He does have a heart hidden deep inside, under all his logic and cold reason. It can't be seen, but in some very rare occasions, such as this one, it can be heard beating timidly.
"No debts, then?" she teases him.
He shakes his head, "No. No debts."
She feels awkward standing there next to his bed, shifting from one foot to the other, embarrassed. She decides to make him more comfortable and props up some pillows behind his curly head cursing her clumsiness under her breath.
"You could make me that cup of tea anyway when you come home," she jests referring to the ironic reply he gave her when she had asked him for that last favour. She bends over him to adjust the cushions.
"I don't think so," he replies jokingly as his breath blows over her face.
She raises her gaze on his mesmerising eyes: they are so close, he is so close.
He lifts a hand as far as his stiffened muscles let him and brushes a tuft of messy hair off her face tucking it behind her ear. His hand slides gently behind her neck as he draws her closer. She leans forward: their faces are at an inch from each other. He can feel her breath on his lips as she moves further to close the infinitesimal distance that separates them.
Their lips are about to touch when the door handle is lowered with a loud click: they quickly pull away as their heads whip simultaneously in the direction of the door. One second later, John's face peeps out of the doorway.