Within seconds of arriving at A&E, the rear doors of the ambulance had been flung open by the technician, and there were suddenly a crowd of people around the trolley as they ran with it in the Resuscitation Room. Trauma Calls at The London were run with an efficiency that reminded John of his army days. Handover from the paramedics was rapid, even as Sherlock was slid over onto the A&E trolley; monitors were reattached, and there were people everywhere; anaesthetists checking his airway, preparing to intubate, listening to his chest, inserting more lines, taking blood; A&E doctors performing a primary survey; nurses cutting off his clothes, his precious coat for heavens sake. John really hoped that he had a spare. Sherlock loved that coat. Surgeons were assessing his abdomen and deeming the injury likely to be thoracic only; the Team Leader was shouting questions and the designated scribe documenting replies, observations and drug doses on the white board in the corner. And through it all, John could only fixate on the monitor showing Sherlock's heart rhythm and pray for it to keep beating.

Feeling suddenly redundant he stumbled to one side, just shaking his head at the nurse's suggestion that he should take a seat in their relatives room. He couldn't leave Sherlock, why couldn't they see that?

Searching the room for a familiar face, for someone who might understand that, he spotted an old medical school colleague standing calmly on the periphery of the bustle. James Macpherson, a quiet spoken Scot, who had been the toast of Bart's rugby team and had drunk John under the table on more than one occasion; but then Mary could drink John under the table, let alone a six foot two rugby player. John had bumped into James at a medical school reunion the previous autumn, only a few weeks before Sherlock's return. He was a cardio-thoracic surgeon here now, John remembered, with an international reputation. If he was the surgeon on call, then Sherlock had a good chance, the best chance that he could have of survival.

'James!' he called across to him, even as the nurses guiding and on his arm, trying to persuade him to leave the room, became more insistent. Relatives, even medical ones, weren't generally encouraged to linger in resuscitation rooms.

'John Watson - what are you doing here?' James asked, coming over to him and nodding to the nurse that she could leave him where he was.

'It's Sherlock,' John said simply, his voice catching slightly as he looked at the still figure on the bed. The anesthetist was tying an endotracheal tube in already - that had been fast, and he noticed that blood was already flowing from the rapid infuser into his friend's arm.

'Were you with him - when he got shot?' James asked, focused on the task at hand, with no time for meaningless platitudes. John was grateful for that.

'Did you see the trajectory of the bullet?' James asked. 'It might be important. Give us an idea of the likely area of damage'

John shook his head. 'I was in another room,' he said, then unable to suppress the medic in him, despite his confidence in the team, 'He's got a cardiac tamponade, James, I'm sure or it. Shouldn't you be...'

'The tamponade is only part of his problem,' James said, indicating the screen of the portable scanner next to he bed, which John hadn't noticed until now. Another shorter man, also dressed in surgical greens, was holding an ultrasound probe on Sherlock's chest wall with one hand, clicking buttons with the other, taking measurements. John could see Sherlock's heart beating on the screen, with a thick black line around the pulsating chambers.

'What is that?' he asked fascinated, despite the situation.

'Bedside ultrasound,' James told him. 'You need to get back to the sharp end John. He has got a tamponade, or rather he's got fluid in his pericardium, but it's not massively compromising his cardiac function. What worries me more is the massive volume of blood he's got in his mediastinum and in both sides of his thorax. It's a miracle he didn't bleed out before he got here.'

'Have we instituted the major haemorrhage protocol?' This last sentence was directed to the leader of the trauma team, who nodded. 'Absolutely. Platelets and FFP about to be hooked up as soon as we get the central line in.' John noticed the anaesthetist had draped a surgical sheet over one side of Sherlock's neck and was expertly inserting the guide wire for a line. His friend was disappearing beneath a swathe of lines and people, and John could only feel grateful for that.

'Tranexamic acid?' To help clotting, of course. They were giving it to all major trauma victims now, John remembered reading something about that last year in a journal. How fast things changed.

'Already in,' came the reply. 'Theatres ready to go?'

James looked across at the Operating Department Practitioner waiting by the phone, who nodded back at him. 'Ready and waiting,' he said. ' Let's get that line in, get the FFP running and then go.'

'Pericardial drain?' John asked, unable to forget that thin black layer of blood around his friends heart. If it got much larger, then the pressure of it would stop his heart from beating altogether, he knew, but James shook his head.

'Not worth the delay,' he said. 'Turn off the tap, John, that's the only way to deal with bleeding, you know that. He needs a thoracostomy - we can have his chest open in theatre within ten minutes, before we'd even have time to set up for a drain.

Sherlock was being connected to the transfer monitor even before the dressing had gone on the central line, the murky coloured bags of fresh frozen plasma, crammed full of the clotting factors that Sherlock so badly needed, were hung from the drip pole, and then they were clicking the brakes off the trolley, a nurse pushing the rapid infuser alongside, and they were running again towards the lift. So many lines, so many people, so much equipment, all focused on keeping one frail human body alive. Sherlock had been wrong. He had told John long ago that the mind was what mattered and that everything else was transport. But his mind needed the rest of him, needed the body that he was frequently so negligent of and careless with. In the presence of danger, it was ironic that his mind had been the first thing to shut down. When the blood had started to pour out of the hole that the bullet had ripped in his chest, his heart had continued to beat, his lungs to breathe, but his mind - his precious mind had disappeared somewhere else entirely. And John knew that there was no guarantee that it would ever be the same again. His body wasn't just transport, it was what kept his brain perfused with blood and fed with glucose and oxygen. Breathing might be boring, but it was also necessary.

John walked along with the trolley, accompanied Sherlock into the lift, watched the monitor with it's frequent ectopic beats, and the blood pressure which still read frightening. 'I want to scrub in,' he said to James, unable to face the prospect of leaving his friend.

James shook his head. 'Not a good idea,' he said. 'No offense John, but you're not a surgeon anymore.'

'Can I observe then, at least.'

James hesitated for a second, and then asked. 'Do you know who did this?'

'I've got a fair idea, yes.'

'And do the police know? Have you told them? The ambulance crew called them, you know. They always do - protocol. They're down in A&E waiting to talk to you.'

'I - no,' John said. 'There wasn't time.'

'Then I suggest that you go and talk to them. Find the bad guy, isn't that what you and Sherlock do?'

'I-' John started as the lift doors opened and the trolley was being pushed through the already open doors into the operating theatre complex directly opposite.

'Go and do your job, John,' James said kindly with a hand on his shoulder, 'And let us do ours. Go and catch the bad guy. We'll take good care of him.'

John could do little more than look at the ground, and nod, knowing that James was right. And as the doors flapped shut behind the surgeon, his last view of Sherlock was of him lying ashen white on the trolley as he was wheeled into the inner sanctum of the operating theatre.