Lessons in Friendship 7 – Needing something

Standard disclaimer: Sherlock, John and all other mentioned characters belong to BBC or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I just borrowed them for fun. I wrote this for my personal delight and improving my English, no copyright infringement intended. No money changed hands and no profit is being made.

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Chapter 12

Sunday early evening

John headed into the kitchen and opened the fridge, to jog his recollection of what Sherlock might have ingested and that he didn't. He fetched a tray and started to put the ingredients of their Friday night meal onto it. Of course there were loads of other ways how Sherlock could have gotten infected, the casework was another likely cause, but right now the most important thing was to rule out their home and prevent further spreading of the sickness. Or maybe it was the only thing John could actively work on, and he needed to work on something right now.

There was toast, they could rule that out, he had eaten it on Friday and Saturday.

Some vegetables… but Sherlock had not eaten those.

The dip?

He fetched what he had used to make it, yoghurt, mayonnaise, fresh herbs, etc.

"You want some tea? He hasn't touched it," the housekeeper entered the kitchen, a mug in her hand.

"No, I want coffee… wait… sugar… put the sugar on a tray, I try to sort out what he ate and I didn't, he put it in his coffee. It was a new package."

"I want coffee, too," Sherlock announced coming from the bathroom.

"No, you sit down and drink that," Mrs Hudson ordered before John could say anything and put the mug on the table, dragging the sick detective into the nearest chair.

"What did you eat since Wednesday?"

"I remember… four, no, five cups of tea… some tab water, a… bottle of mineral water… Sandwiches with dip."

"That's it?"

"Yes."

Mrs Hudson rolled her eyes, probably wondering why he hasn't died of starvation yet.

"Okay, I made the sandwiches, they were identical, we both ate the same. But you snapped up all the dip and left me none… I ate about a tablespoon of it and I didn't have any symptoms at all…"

No, wait, he had had an uneasy stomach for some hours… could it have been in the dip?

"All right, I put all the stuff that might be contaminated on here," he put it on the table in front of Sherlock while Mrs Hudson was busy making coffee.

"I need you to add all and everything you consumed that I didn't, whenever you remember it, okay?"

"What for?"

"First: so that we don't consume the rest of it by accident, and second: there is an obligation to report this infection… Okay, so think about what else you might had. Did you have a snack somewhere in between? Scotland Yard? Vending machine?"

"Thinking about solid food is not what I want to do right now."

"Well, we need to investigate this."

"Fine, can I have some coffee, now?" Sherlock still wore the blanket and was a picture of misery, dark circles under his eyes and his hair sticking to his skull.

"I would not recommend that," John tried.

"I don't really care."

"Fine. It's you who risks puking your guts out again, I'll stop giving advice since you're not interested at all."

"Obviously," Sherlock wrapped the blanket tighter around his shoulders.

He was still not himself, not really concentrated or focused… and irritated, but at least he seemed to be fully aware and a lot better than in the early morning.

"I'll get a new package of sugar, then," Mrs Hudson headed for the stairs.

"We might need to have those analysed," John pointed to the tray.

"Why don't we throw them all away?"

"... or that, yes. I don't know how accurate we need to file that report, I have to look it up. Procedure is a bit different to the military way of doing things like this. Saving troops from being incapacitated is somewhat serious. What tea did you have? Put it on the tray if you remember which brand and flavour it was… Did you experiment with anything that might have been infected?"

Sherlock gave John a weary look, "No."

"Nothing that might have been contagious"

"Didn't experiment."

"Right, okay."

John sat down at the table and drank his coffee in silence.

When Mrs Hudson came back with a paper bag of sugar, Sherlock poured at least three tablespoons into his steaming mug.

"Okay, boys, I'll go do some laundry, call if I can do anything."

"Thanks, Mrs H."

They sat there in silence, both staring tiredly ahead, deep in thoughts.

"You want some more paracetamol?" John finally broke the silence.

"No."

"You could have some more now, you'd feel much better with it."

"Leave me alone."

"I won't."

"What do you want?"

"Nothing, except making you better."

"Everyone expects something in return when offering something positive."

"Ehr… no!… Is that supposed to mean you think I'm doing this for some cheap favour?"

"I… I didn't mean to insult you," Sherlock stirred back, when he heard the doctor's odd tone, "…but usually people want something when they're nice."

The consultant still looked extremely exhausted and stared blindly ahead, his voice kind of distant.

"Sherlock, I'm offering some friendship here, did you get that?"

"Oh, I wasn't aware…"

He was silent for a long moment, "What do I do then?"

"Take it if you like… or otherwise tell me you're not interested?"

"And how do I take it?" Sherlock looked into his eyes.

"Maybe opening up and answer my following questions honestly would be a step in the right direction… You know, showing a bit of trust…" John narrowed his eyes and moved his head from one side to the other.

Sherlock nodded minutely and John interpreted it as a sign for him to continue.

"Why aren't you able to ask for help?"

"So, to anatomise my behaviour is considered an offer of friendship?"

"Not necessarily."

"I do that all the time with other people, do they think I offer them friendship?"

"No, definitely not," John stated.

"So what is different here?"

"I ask because I'm interested in what you think… and want to understand it, not because I want to solve a case."

"You're sure this difference is a difference?"

"Yes. So would you just answer the question?"

"I am able to ask for help, I just usually decide not to try, because it's a waste of time."

"You're not evading this because you're ashamed to do it?"

"I don't know… but whenever I did it, in the end it was far worse than having not called for help at all… or I realised that the person I asked proclaimed fully confident about being able to help and in the end turned out to be less qualified than I was… and I had wasted my time."

"Can you make an example?"

"Does it needs to be a real one?"

"Not if that's too hard on you."

"It is not hard on me to describe what happened."

"I meant more in the sense of being ashamed… or inhibited talking about feelings."

"This is not about feelings."

John smiled inwardly. Was he not getting this, or purely denying it?

"I'd prefer a real example then."

"When I was in school I wanted to build a mechanism to… doesn't matter. I assumed building it partially of wood and partially of metal would suffice the wanted outcome. Since I didn't have a clue how to work any metal I asked some of my teachers. They told me to see the handicrafts teacher and ask him how to saw and shape several metal pipes… This man then told me it would be better to build the whole thing out of wood; a lot easier and the outcome would be the same. I argued that wood was not hard enough and too easy to break at several spots of the construction. He convinced me that he was the grown up and knew better what would work best, then instructed me how to do it. I spend a long time trying to figure out how wood was better… and I had several areas in mind that might become tricky and weak spots in the whole construction when made of wood. I knew the pressure on several parts felt just too much for the kind of wood I had at hand. My parents told me the man was the expert and since they couldn't help that I needed to decide to trust him or find someone else… The internet wasn't available back then, so I build it like he said… Spend most of my holidays with it… When I finally was ready to try it for the first time, it broke… at one of the spots I had feared it might…"

Sherlock took a break and his gaze wandered through the kitchen.

"The teacher asked me later how the project went and I told him I gave it up… I didn't tell him I thought he was incompetent and the reason it failed, because my mother warned me not to be impolite and that it might not be the wisest decision to be honest about this. So, I didn't tell him it failed because he had urged me to use a faulty design… He was kind of angry or something with me, although I was very polite… He even accused me of stealing his time, a phrase that meant little to me, and he explained that he had spend half an afternoon to explain to me how he'd do it… and that he was angry because I was too lazy to finish it. So I was given wrong advice, put my trust in the wrong person, tried it nevertheless because said person explained he was an expert, was told I'm too young to understand when I pointed out the problems I saw… then failed… and spend days trying to locate the fault in my thinking…" Sherlock looked kind of lost in thoughts now.

John decided to let his friend talk.

"Some time later a colleague of my father came over… and it turned out he had some understanding of what I wanted and told me there was no way to do that, except with extremely hard high quality special wood. But he wanted to encourage me, and told me it was okay to make mistakes choosing the wrong materials when you were young and that this was how one learned… and that I must have learned a lot building that amazing apparatus… and… he told me to use metal and that tools were expensive but I could borrow his if I wanted. I was frustrated about the teacher, of being considered inexperienced… and… my trust in people proclaiming they were experts, just because they had some training on a topic, went downhill ever since. I was criticised by the same teacher for giving up much to early and therefore having no impetus to work through problems, just because I was too polite to tell him…"

"That's not all, isn't it?" John tried to encourage him to continue after some long moments of silence.

"Oh, dear lord, if you must know…Two years later the man became my teacher in two subjects, my grades where pretty bad," Sherlock continued, his expression had become a bit harrowed, but he continued.

"He claimed I was lazy, misunderstood good intentions, not willing to understand the point of things and unable to follow instructions… For a long time I didn't understand why he would do that, but finally - when I learned more about human behaviour - it was obvious he had transferred his misconceptions from that one event to everything I did, not able to observe neutrally. Just because my demands to the outcome where higher and I tried to figure out how to do it to my quality requirements, I was considered unwilling… and because I saw much more patterns in everything than anybody else… Because I took my time to try several ways of reaching a goal with the best possible outcome I was considered slow and unwilling… Was this understandable or do I need to find more examples?"

"No, I got the point. It was the same when you saw doctors in your youth, wasn't it?"

Sherlock was silent for a long time.

When John was cursing inwardly to have rushed forward too fast and expected to be pushed back a soft "Yes," reached his ears.

He looked at Sherlock again, who looked down, almost ashamed.

John feared if he'd say something a normal person would find soothing, Sherlock wouldn't take it very well, so he said nothing.

"Do you trust my skills as a physician?"

"Yes, of course…"

"Then why do you send me away?"

"I don't know…"

"You fear to get worse by being misunderstood."

"You mean I still work by the procedures I wrote in my childhood?"

Sherlock had obviously skipped the answer and even the next question, but to this John was finally getting used to.

"Of course you do, everyone does. Childhood is when we learn the most… though some things need to be overwritten with time."

"I know. I thought I overwrote all old programs," Sherlock didn't sound good, his voice was even more hoarse than before.

"That's not possible."

"I don't know…" Sherlock's speech faltered.

John frowned.

Sherlock's tone had become more distressed within a few moments.

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A/N:

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