15

Author's Note: This is coming to you a little early. I had some work I wanted to avoid. I have to tell you that there is some irony to my last name that I will reveal to you in the last chapter. For now, enjoy the bromance. Clearly, you are aware that reviews make a difference. I hope you continue telling me what you think.

Fevers

Chapter 5

"Easy now, Holmes. I've got ya'."

Watson shook his head, trying to lose the exhaustion that had settled so deeply.

"We'll make sure you get the best care possible."

Watson forced his eyes open and twisted his body toward the voices. The pain in his leg exploded and he howled.

"That's alright, Dr. Watson, we'll be to you in just a minute." Clarky patted his shoulder. The constable stood outside the wagon. Holmes stood there too, propped up on Lestrade's shoulder.

Watson blinked. "What the devil! Put him back in here. We're going to Baker Street."

Lestrade shook his head. "Queen Victoria herself couldn't pass this line if she was carrying spots."

"It's not smallpox!" Watson tried to sit up and the electricity of the movement shook his body.

"For God's sakes, Watson, sit still." Holmes managed to inject some energy into his voice. "They know. I showed them. It is here that I stay."

Watson considered this for a moment. "Okay, then we stay. I'll need someone to lift me out of here."

Holmes shook his head. "Don't listen to him, Inspector. His own recovery will be compromised. Take him home. His fiancée is there. She'll see to his needs."

"I'm not a child! If I say I want out of this wagon, I mean it." Watson started dragging himself to the back.

Constable Clark hurried over and secured the flap. "I'm sorry, Doctor. We're going to take you home."

"I am his physician!"

Holmes nodded to Lestrade, and the inspector brought him up to the wagon. Holmes put a hand on Watson's shoulder. "It's okay now, Old Boy. I'll get good care. The inspector will see to it."

"Indeed I will." Lestrade nodded.

Holmes continued. "I know you. You won't get better without proper rest, and you can't get that here, fussing like the old mother hen you are. Go home. Mary's been waiting. You can't do this to her, you know. She deserves better than a fiancée who's always in harm's way."

"I'm your doctor, Holmes. They don't know you."

"I've got the last of Sister Michael's broth. You're only mad that you'll not have the pleasure of feeding it to me."

"Perhaps, I could arrange for a photographer. We'll post it above the fireplace."

Holmes squeezed his shoulder. "There's my old friend now. We'll both be as right as rain in a few days."

Watson clamped his hand over Holmes'. "You'll do everything they say. Drink every bit of that cesspool of a broth. Insist on plenty of liquids. Get a good bed and complain like the Duke of North Cumberland if you get any less attention than the next fellow."

Holmes smiled.

Watson pointed a finger at Lestrade. "You'll watch him. If there is the tiniest worry, I'll need to know. I'm still his doctor. You'll not forget that."

Lestrade nodded. "I'll have Clarky here give you regular updates."

"I don't like it." Watson frowned.

Holmes let go, stepped back, and gestured to Clark. "Get him home now. But you hit a pothole with his leg like it is, and I'll have your head."

Clark swung himself into the back again and signaled to the driver. The wagon jerked forward and Watson grimaced, but he hung on, watching Holmes and Lestrade turn and slowly make their way to the aid station. The wagon lurched as it turned the corner and Watson bellowed his discomfort.

The nurse pinched her nose with two fingers while she carried the steaming cup to the doctor. "He insists that we feed him this. Says it's medicinal."

The doctor wrinkled his nose. "What in the name of all that's holy is this?"

"The gentleman says he got it off a Catholic nun with the Sisters of St. Joseph."

He rolled his eyes. "Sister Michael and her gang of spiritual wenches. What they practice is closer to witchcraft than anything we modern practitioners recognize as medicine."

"He's quite insistent."

"He has a fever, Nurse. His requests are delusional."

"I am not to feed this to him then."

"Not unless you plan to answer at his inquest. The last thing the man needs is spoiled soup. Throw it all out. We'll none of us be responsible for it."

"John, just another spoonful."

He grunted at her impatiently. Once the spoon was free of his mouth, he scowled at her. "I am not a child, Mary."

She pursed her lips. "That's certainly true. If you were a child, I would have rapped your knuckles by now and wiped that sullen look right off your face."

"I feel better," he mumbled.

"You've only been home for three days and your skin still looks the color of death. What do you expect me to do?" Her blue eyes filled with tears.

His face softened and he reached for her hand. "I'm a wretch. It's best you know it now. You'll be marrying a sinful creature to be sure."

She pulled away, tears falling. "I can't make you happy, John. I try everything."

"I'm a horrible patient. Plus, when Clarky was here yesterday, he was absolutely useless. He could tell me almost nothing."

"You're always thinking of him."

"Of course, I am. He has smallpox, and I'm not there to help."

"I'm keeping you from him."

"Not hardly, my dear."

"It'll always be like this though. I will forever be in competition with Holmes for your affections."

Watson guffawed. "I wouldn't say that. I like you for very different reasons than I do Holmes."

She looked away.

"Mary, one of the reasons I fell in love with you is that I believe that you're generous and brave enough to love me and still make room for him."

"Oh, John." She got up and walked to the window.

"I know him so well and he knows me. We accept each other as we are. When he has a case, I feel alive. I am part of righting wrongs. He's the genius, but he needs me to give him direction, keep him focused. I complete him and together, we accomplish the most extraordinary things."

She let her fingers play on the windowpane but said nothing.

"You can make me choose, and I will choose you. I will do it because I believe it's the right thing to do, but…it will be at a price."

"Every woman wants to be enough for her husband."

He sat up as straight as his stiff body allowed. "You are enough for me, Mary."

"John, if it wasn't just Holmes sick. If I were too, and you could only go to one of us, who would you choose?"

He sat quietly for a moment. "I suppose I would go to whichever of you needed me most."

She shook her head.

"That was…I should have said…I'm sorry."

She turned. "I think that might be what I love best about you. You have no capacity for pretense. You are exactly what I saw the first day: loyal, brave, honest, caring. You don't know how to be anything else."

His brow furrowed. "Is that good or bad?"

"You settle for nothing but the best out of yourself. You settle for nothing but the best out of your wife."

"Mary?"

"The truth is I can be generous enough to let you have both of us. Sometimes I slip, I suppose. The nights that you were gone were very hard for me. It was hard for me too that he was the one who could go to you. Believe me when I tell you that the fairer sex does not have the fairer life."

He reached out his arm. "Come here, Mary. I believe that my heart bursts every time I look at you."

She let him pull her in. "It's okay to love both of us."

"Thank you," he held her to him.

"You're scared for him. I can feel the tension in your body."

"It's like I'm breathing fear, Mary. I don't know how to just lie here and not help him."

She wrapped her shawl tightly around her as she approached the quarantine line. She'd taken her time and observed from afar, and now she walked with as much confidence as she could manage.

"Miss! Miss!"

She nodded. "I'm due with the London Medical Aid Society. I believe they have a station behind your lines."

"You ain't dressed like none of the nurses."

She swallowed. "I…my uniform is inside. Please…they are expecting me."

"Ain't found too many eager to get in."

She looked down and hurried past him. Within the station, she found doctors and nurses walking amidst rows and rows of cots that extended to the far wall. They all seemed to be moving with such purpose. She knew she would stand out unless she did the same. She dropped her coat on a chair, grabbed an apron from a table, and wrapped it around tightly.

Groans and cries rose from most of the cots. Her heart caught at the looks of fear and desperation she saw in the faces of the victims. She had to steady her breathing as the life of a governess does little to prepare one for a calamity of this scale. She heard someone calling for a nurse but she kept looking in front of her. If she stopped, she knew she would never find him.

She must wandered the better of half an hour before she finally found him curled up on a cot, face to the wall. He was shaking and she felt the heat radiating from him when she sat down at his side. "Holmes," she said, shaking him lightly. "Holmes."

He finally turned and looked at her with glassy eyes. "Nurse?"

"It's Mary. Watson's Mary."

"Watson? Where is he? I need Watson."

"He's still recuperating. I'm here on my own."

Holmes frowned at her. "How…why…I don't understand."

"He's so worried. He rests only in fits and starts. I thought that if I saw you and you were better…"

"Hah!" He gave a hollow chortle. "No such luck."

She looked down. "It was silly."

"His leg?"

"Improving. The wound is closing, but he's not right."

"Hmmm," Holmes scrubbed at his fevered cheeks. "He's a man of action. Needs to be up and helping."

She spotted a basin of water in the walkway between cots. She got up, dipped some rags, and returned to him.

He shook his head. "He'd never forgive either of us if he found out that you snuck into hell itself to satisfy your curiosity about me."

"Shhh!" She found that ignoring him worked far better than engaging in his verbal games.

He grabbed her wrist and hissed, "Go home!"

She pulled away from his weak grip. "You don't scare me anymore."

"This isn't about you and I. If anything happens to you, it will destroy him…especially if it has something to do with me."

She grabbed his arm and pushed it to his chest. It shocked her how easily he succumbed. "Stop fighting. I'll never survive a marriage with you and your friend without learning how to stand up for myself."

His watery eyes widened. "I don't remember being part of any engagement."

She busied herself applying wet cloths to his forehead. "Clearly, marrying John includes you. It's a package deal."

"Will you do my shirts then?"

A grin tugged at her lips. "Not until you learn how to behave yourself."

"Then all hope is lost…for my shirts."

She looked around. "John told me you'd be taking a broth, something with a smell that would wake the dead. He seemed quite confident about it."

"They have refused me. Said it would hasten my demise. Threw it out."

"John won't like that."

"Nor do I. I had faith in that nasty brew."

She stood up. "How could they refuse you? It is your right."

"Mmmm," he murmured. She noticed his eyes were closing.

"Holmes! Where can I find more of the broth?"

"The sisters…Sisters of St. Joseph. A woman named Michael…"

He drifted back into unconsciousness. She sat with him for a while, pressing cold towels on his body. And when she looked up around the room, she found them all to be so distant, so removed from the pain she could feel she could feel on his hot skin. There was no real help here. They had taken the man's broth from him, and left him abandoned in a corner where his life was being stolen from him in fevered inches. Tears stung her eyes and she scrubbed at them angrily. She realized that Holmes needed her right now more than even her dearest John.

Watson lost all semblance of patience. Mary left half a day ago for bread and hadn't returned. Her eyes always twinkled too brightly whenever he regaled her with his tales of adventure. While he couldn't quite imagine what she was thinking, he felt a sense of dread not present since Blackwood's last resurrection.

He summoned for Mrs. Hudson and soon had her ferrying supplies to his bed. It took forty minutes of gritting teeth and muffled howls before he was able to stitch close the rest of the wound on his leg. He finished with a lightheadedness that threatened his consciousness.

Mrs. Hudson generally fussed and paced, and he was about to banish her when the bell below rang. She returned moments later with Constable Clark in tow.

Watson wagged a finger at him. "I've had it up to here with you! You tell me nothing every time I see you. My fiancée left six hours ago for groceries and nary a word from her since. You better have something to say or so help me God…"

Clark took off his helmut. "Well, Sir, you'll be happy to know that I am full of information on all fronts."

"What's going on!?"

"Mr. Holmes is not doing well."

"You've been to see him?"

"No, I heard it from Miss Morstan. She is at the aid station with him at present."

"Mary is within the quarantine zone?"

"Yes sir!"

"Why?!"

"I don't know the particulars, Sir, but she's there and she's quite upset."

"She's with Holmes right now?"

"Yes sir, and she wants you to know that he is quite ill and that the doctors refused him the Catholic broth. She says he is all alone there, and needs her more than you. She says that you'll understand."

"Help me out of this bed, Clark!"

Clark gripped his helmut tightly. "Are you sure that's wise?"

Watson suddenly wrenched his leg over the side and tumbled to the ground with a thump and then a howl.

"Sir!"

Watson looked up, breathing heavy. "Don't just stand there!"

"Inspector Lestrade specifically ordered me—"

"Blast Lestrade!" Watson pounded the hard wood floor with his fist. "I will get there, Constable, with or without you. Shall I crawl or will you assist me?!"

The constable squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and then muttered a curse. He strode over and grabbed Watson around the middle. "I hope you'll still acknowledge me when I'm busted back down to street copper."

"Save your tears for later, Clarky," Watson said with gritted teeth. "I got bigger things to worry about."

Clarky leaned his against the bed and without another word he threw Watson over his shoulder.

Watson howled and beat his back. "There has to be another way. I'm not some drunkard!"

The constable ignored his complaints all the way down to the wagon.

His face was too hot, and the pink on his cheeks had become an angry red. He panted more than breathed, and the cloths she pressed to his face and chest lost their cool within minutes. Twice, she called for doctors. Both times, they came, shook their heads, and told her to continue what she was doing.

He'd become prone to verbal outbursts: yelling incoherently about Blackwood, Irene, Moriarty, Queen Victoria, Gladstone, liberal chambermaids; it was obvious that no subject was sacred to him. When his thoughts turned to Watson though, his voice lowered and took more of a pleading tone. He was looking for Watson, asking for him, begging for him to come. It was clear to her that he was trapped inside a fevered nightmare full of perils and monsters and the only key to survival was Watson.

She took hold of his hand and squeezed it tightly. He tried to pull away, but she held tightly and leaned down to his face. "Watson is coming, Holmes. I promise you. He shouldn't but you need him now so very much. I couldn't in all conscience let him stay ignorant of this. He'll come. Mark my words. He'll come and we'll set this right for you. I promise you."

Last chapter on Friday