He woke from an uneasy sleep several hours later. From the light filtering though the curtains it must have been late afternoon. There was a note from Mary on the pillow beside him. 'Gone to work. They've cancelled your clinics for the rest of the week. Give yourself a break, you've got enough to worry about. See you later, M x'

He smiled. His beautiful, beautiful wife. Pregnant with his child. He was fortunate, wasn't he? He should be counting his blessings. Wasn't this what he had always wanted? And then feeling guilty for that brief moment of contentment when Sherlock was still on the proverbial critical list, he checked his phone quickly for missed calls. There weren't any. Good. No news was good news, as they say. If he had deteriorated then they would have phoned him.

Sitting up in bed, he googled for the number of the Royal London, and got put through to intensive care. The news was good. Sherlock was stable. They were weaning down the inotropes. There hadn't been any rebleeding. John let out a breath that he hadn't realised that he'd been holding.

'Sherlock's brother came to see him,' the nurse said cautiously.

'Ah,' John said. 'I probably should have warned you about him.'

'He was very - forceful,' the nurse said. 'Especially about security.'

'He's very protective of Sherlock,' John said.'Did he talk to James, too?'

'Yes, he did. And to our intensive care consultant here, as well. And to the head of security at the hospital. Among others.'

'Sorry,' John said. 'And did he try to move Sherlock to a private facility somewhere?'

'He proposed it. He seemed slightly - put out, to discover that you had Power of Attorney. I suspect that he'll be in touch.'

'I'm surprised that he hasn't already,' John said dryly. 'So are there specific visiting hours? I was planning on coming in shortly.'

'Any time until ten o'clock this evening,'

'Then I'll be in in an hour or so.'
...

Walking onto the intensive care unit that evening, he noticed the two plain clothes security men flanking the entrance doors. The ear pieces would have given them away as being part of Mycroft's team, even if their snappily cut suits hadn't. 'Good Evening, Dr Watson,' one of them said pleasantly, as he pressed the buzzer to be let into the unit.

He was shown into the relatives room, where he found James MacPherson deep in conversation with Mycroft. He looked somewhat relieved at John's entrance.

'Everything okay?' John asked.

'We were discussing the possibility of transferring Sherlock to another unit,' Mycroft said.

'For safety?' John asked, deciding it was wisest not to let in that the was aware that this was the second conversation of the day on this topic.

'Of course. I know of a secure, private hospital with intensive care facilities, which we could move Sherlock too as soon as Mr MacPherson* is happy to sign the release papers.'

'And does the secure private hospital have a cardiothoracic surgeon on site 24/7?' John asked pleasantly.

'Well no, but I'm sure that-'

'Then he stays here,' John cut in. 'There's safety and safety, Mycroft. I think that the threat to Sherlock from rebleeding necessitating immediate further surgery, is greater at the moment than the chance of an assassin gaining access to Sherlock past all the layers of security that you've put in.'

'The shooter got into Magnussen's office past all of his security.'

'But they weren't expecting him. Your men are. And besides, I don't for a second think that Sherlock was the intended target. He was after Magnussen. Sherlock was just the accidental victim.'

'Then explain to me, if you can, why Sherlock is the one lying in a hospital bed, while Magnussen remains virtually unscathed?' Mycroft said, apparently oblivious to James' presence. 'If Magnussen was the intended victim, then why not kill them both? Why shoot Sherlock and leave?'

'I don't know why,' John told him. 'But that's not the point. The fact remains that moving Sherlock from here would, in my opinion, be dangerous. James? What do you think?'

'I wouldn't advise it,' James said. 'In a few days, maybe, when he's off intensive care and is more stable, but not now.'

'Then that's settled,' John said, firmly. 'So how is he doing, James?'

'Pretty well, all things considered. We've been weaning down the inotropes, he's maintaining his blood pressure, the output from the pericardial drain has been minimal. If all goes well they're going to try to get him off the ventilator and wake him up tomorrow.'

'And neurologically? Any clues there?'

'No way of knowing until we try to wake him up, I'm afraid, but for what it's worth we did a CT head as part of a whole body scan earlier, and that was clear.'

'To check for other injuries?'

'Exactly. We would have done it last night, but he was too unstable.'

'To risk the doughnut of death?' John asked, remembering the old name for the CT scanner from his SHO days. Corridors and lifts were the most dangerous place in the hospital for an intensive care patient, let alone the scanner room itself. 'Of course. So just the thoracic injury then.'

'That's right. We did an echo earlier too. Cardiac function is looking good, and that's backed up by his reduced need for inotropes. Renal function is starting to pick up. His kidneys took a fair knock from the drop in blood pressure, but we've got him on a renal dose of dopamine, and that's helping.'

John caught Mycroft's set expression out of the corner of his eye. He doesn't have a clue what we're talking about, he realised. But he's too proud to ask for an explanation.

'So you're going to be able to avoid haemofiltration do you think?' he continue. Let Mycroft be on the back foot for a while. It made a nice change.

'Looks like it,' James said.

'Good,' John said. 'That's good. It's very good in fact. So now we just have to see if he wakes up.'

'Exactly.'

John nodded. 'So is that you finished for the day?' he asked.

'Certainly is. Switchboard have got my number though. I've asked theITU staff to contact me direct and not the on-call if there are any problems with Sherlock.'

'Did you contact your parents?' John asked Mycroft after James had left.

'No.'

'You mean you couldn't, or you decided not to.'

'John, believe me, it is better for my mother not to know until the danger is past.'

'But surely -'

'Sherlock and I agreed long ago, that if either of us was either temporarily incapacitated, we would prefer not to have our parents - concerned - until after the event.'

'You mean you don't want your mother flapping.'

'She can do nothing, John. Why ruin her holiday?'

'Of course - they're in the States aren't they. And your father? Are you going to tell him?'

'My father is more - saguine. I would tell him if I thought that he could keep the information from my mother. However, in the circumstances, it seems wise to allow them to remain in ignorance.'

'But you would have told them about Sherlock's drug use.'

'Only because I felt they could bring some useful pressure to bear on the situation. Speaking of which, you may find this interesting.'

He slid a lab report across to John. The results of Sherlock's toxicology report. Heroin, cocaine, ketamine. He groaned. 'They shouldn't have given this to you, Mycroft. It should have been confidential.'

'They didn't give it to me. I procured it via - other means. Are you surprised by the results?'

'Not really, no. Is this what he used before?'

'The ketamine is new. I was aware that he'd dabbled in the past with various pharmaceutical substances, although heroin and cocaine were always his drugs of choice. So what do you suggest that we do about this, John?'

'He's intubated on intensive care, Mycroft. I doubt that he's going to be able to access drugs from here. When he wakes up, then we'll have to address it with him, I presume. He said it was for a case, though, didn't he? Isn't that possible - that it's just for the case?'

'Three drugs, John? One might have been enough to convince Magnussen. Even witnesses to the action of him buying drugs, of frequenting those places that they can be obtained would have been enough. There was no need for him to actually take them. Two drugs would speak of indulgence, but three? Three drugs to me spells addiction. Again.'

'They cut heroin with ketamine all the time though, don't they?' John said, wondering why he felt the need to defend Sherlock. 'He might not have known what he was taking.'

Mycroft raised an elegant eyebrow. 'This is Sherlock Holmes, we're talking about, John. Do you honestly believe that is possible.'

John swore softly under his breath. 'Let's just take this one step at a time, shall we? Get him off intensive care first, then we can find out exactly how deep this goes.'

...

Sherlock looked slightly better when he went in to see him. Less pale, although that was no doubt partly helped by the bag of blood hanging up by his bed.

'Haemoglobin was 8.6 when we rechecked it,' the intensive care nurse told him. We're topping him up by a couple of units.'

There was still a trickle of blood into the chest drain, John noticed, but the dressing across Sherlock's chest looked dry and clean. 'May I?' he asked, indicating Sherlock's charts, clipped to the stand at the end of the bed.

'Of course,' the nurse said. 'Mr MacPherson has told us to share any information with you that you need.'

The numbers were looking good, although John could see that the previous night certainly hadn't been all plain sailing. Sherlock was being well looked after, that was clear. But John had seen too many patients deteriorate at Day 2 or 3 post-operatively to be counting his chickens yet. The road to recovery would be far from easy, he was only too aware of that from his own experience. Medical complications aside, getting well required patience, and that was one quality that Sherlock rarely exhibited. John predicted tantrums and set backs, and all of these he was more than happy to cope with. If Sherlock would just wake up and start grumbling about how bored he was, then John would know that he was on the mend.

The drugs - the drugs were something else entirely. Despite his reassurances to Mycroft, John had no idea how deep this addiction went, if an addiction it already was. John still had problems believing that, but the large doses of fentanyl that the staff had been having to use to keep Sherlock comfortable spoke a different story. They were two or three times that which John would have expected for a man of his age and build, suggesting that Sherlock had built up quite a tolerance to opiates. Had he been using for the whole of the month since John had last seen him? And did that, perhaps, explain why he had been avoiding him? John had been waiting for his text, summoning him to help on a case, but his phone had been strangely silent. His phone calls had gone unanswered, and when he had dropped in on 221B, Mrs Hudson had invariably told him that Sherlock was out.

So why did John feel so guilty? He couldn't help but feel that he had been a poor friend to Sherlock since his marriage, and even before, since his return. Having him as best man had helped. Sherlock had thrown himself so headlong into wedding plans, no wedding organiser could ever have been more dedicated. Mary had told him that it was all about control - Sherlock felt uncomfortable with the position of best man, and more so with the position of best friend that John had presented him with, and so he overcompensated by micromanaging everything. Models of the venue. Napkin folding, for heavens sake. John should have known that something was wrong at that point.

After the wedding - after the honeymoon, things had seemed off kilter somehow. He couldn't persuade Sherlock to visit their new house out in Kew (Mary, it turned out, had inherited a tidy sum from her parents, enough for the deposit on a small house in a reasonable area. Far nicer than anything he could have afforded on his own). He had seen him a couple of times when they had got back from honeymoon, but since then - nothing until he had found him in that squat the previous should have tried harder, should have contacted Mycroft, maybe, but if he was honest with himself, he had enjoyed the respite. He hadn't expected getting married to change anything, but it had, or maybe the baby had. Either way domesticity was surprisingly enjoyable. Did he miss the excitement of the cases? He hadn't thought so. Not until that morning, when suddenly going to rescue Isaac from that place had seemed like the best idea in the world. Sherlock was right, he had enjoyed it. He had missed it.

'You'd better wake up soon, you annoying bastard,or I'm going to start getting myself into even more trouble on my own,' he told Sherlock. Odd to have him so quiet, so unresponsive. Even during those long periods of silence in 221b, Sherlock had never been as motionless and still as this. It was unnerving somehow. The profound silence, broken only by the beeping of the cardiac monitor, showing less ectopic beats today, John was pleased to note, and by the hiss and click of the ventilator.

'And thanks for leaving me to deal with your brother on my own, too. You're in trouble, by the way, but I'll tell you about that when you're feeling a bit better. The good news is that he hasn't told your parents yet, so you won't get your mother weighing in - not yet anyway.'

'Oh and a card arrived for you. From one Charles Augustus Magnussen. Wishing you a speedy recovery - the cheek of the bloke - and a quote, 'When one man strikes at the heart of another, he rarely misses.' What does that mean do you think? You'd better wake up Sherlock, and tell us what happened and why. Because Mycroft is dead set at finding out who shot you, and I know you'd hate it if he worked it out before you woke up to tell us why we've got it all wrong.'

'He's trying to work out why the shooter targeted you and left Magnussen with nothing more than a nasty bump on his head.' John's brain was working overtime as he talked, but he continued to think aloud. 'But he didn't exactly target you, did he? Two bullets to the host and one to the head, that's what we were taught in the army. That's how to kill somebody. So unless I disturbed the shooter, then why not do it properly? Why shoot you once in the chest and leave it at that?'

John sighed. There was so much information going round in his head, he had no idea what to do with it all. 'Wake up, Sherlock, please. I need you to help me work all of this out. Because I can't help feeling that there's much more to this than a bungled burglary, or someone trying to get to Magnussen. None of this makes sense, and you know that I'm crap at working through this stuff on my own.'

* In the UK, surgeons are known as Mr or Miss, not Dr (even if female surgeons are married, they're still known as Miss). It's something to do with the fact that surgeons used to be barbers, and not medical doctors, and now it's a sort of badge of honour...

Big thanks to sevenpercent for the fine tuning!