As promised - Saturday, second chapter.
Enjoy.
Not Meant to Be
2
John had originally intended to switch off his mobile phone as soon as he went to bed. The fact that he was looking forward to start investigating another case with Sherlock in the morning didn't mean that he was particularly eager to be woken in the middle of the night by a text saying something along the lines of 'how large would a bruise caused by a cricket bat be?'
He realised that he had indeed forgotten to take this measure as soon as he was woken by the sound of his mobile ringing, ringing vehemently and not stopping, although he decided to turn over in bed and ignore it after the first few tacts of his ringtone.
"Go away and ask me in the morning, Sherlock," he mumbled to his pillow. "'m trying to sleep!"
No use. Simply didn't stop.
Sleepily grabbing his phone and distantly noting the reading on the clock - 5.03 am -, he finally managed to accept the call.
"Yeah?" he croaked rather hoarsely, expecting to hear Sherlock's voice, excited and fast as always, telling him something about an unbelievably important piece of evidence he had just found, despite having insisted about six hours earlier that he had not startedinvestigating already.
When a forgein voice answered instead, he was alarmed instantly. "John Watson?" the voice asked.
"Yeah," John croaked again, suddenly far more lucid. Calls in the middle of the night were never any good. Never, and most definitely not if he was called by someone he didn't know.
"You're the emergency contact of a certain Sherlock Holmes, is that correct?" the impersonal sounding woman - for a woman it was - wanted to know.
Sherlock.
Out of nowhere, there was a lump in John's throat, making it impossible to breathe. "Yeah," he carked for the third time, the phone beside his ear suddenly trembling. "What…" Clearing his throat did not have any effect at all. "What's happened…"
He barely managed to catch the following words over his own heartbeat drumming painfully loud in his ears. "There was an accident involving your acquaintance and resulting in his hospitalisation. If…"
John's duvet flew away, his entire body shooting up in his bed. "What!" he yelled into the phone, not caring that he had interrupted the woman on the other end of the line. "What happened, is he alright? Is he alright?"
The silence was all he needed. "Oh my god…" He didn't even realised he had formed those words until a few seconds later. "Where is he?" he demanded, already fumbling with his trousers. "Which hospital? I'm on my way."
x
John had never before in his life been so impolite to a cabbie. He noticed his rudeness distantly, yes, yelling at the man to not stop at traffic lights and threatening not to pay him and threatening him to do other things…, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Treating a cabbie rudely definitely belonged to the category 'not important' at the moment.
John's guts twisted painfully when he remembered the phone call, and how little information the woman had been able to provide. She had kept talking about an accident, but hadn't elaborated of which kind, and no matter how often he had asked her, she had never known anything about Sherlock's condition. Anything at all. As soon as he had been storming out of Mary's and his flat, attempting to distract himself by trying to find a cab in the early morning, he had ended the call, his head spinning and his insides churning.
It took him less than a minute to get out of the cab, toss a hundred pound note at the driver, together with shouting 'keep it' before dashing off in the direction of the hospital entrance.
Sherlock, he needed to get to Sherlock as fast as possible.
Although the woman on the phone hadn't mentioned it, John knew that it had to be serious. A foreign woman had called him, had called him because he was Sherlock's emergency contact, not because of Sherlock complaining and demanding for John to pick him up and take him home. Unconscious then, most likely. Head injury. Accident.
John's thoughts were swirling in circles, uselessly. He needed to see Sherlock, needed to be there, and only then he could start dealing with what had happened.
Finding the A&E department took more effort, John jogging down several corridors and breathing heavily afterwards.
"I'm looking for Sherlock Holmes," he breathlessly addressed the first doctor-like looking person he met. "I was told he was brought in after an accident…"
The greying man shook his head. "I'm the wrong one to ask," he told John. "Ask over there, trauma team. Likely to know more. Now excuse me, please."
Trauma.
John's hands clenched into fists as he approached the desk the man had pointed him towards.
"I'm looking for Sherlock Holmes," he began again, tensing his jaw.
God, Sherlock. He needed to get to Sherlock.
"Are you family?" the woman asked him, typing something on her computer.
Unbidden, an image appeared inside of his head, the image of Sherlock on the sidewalk, after having jumped from a bloody roof top. No fakes this time, John was sure of.
"What?" he asked distractedly, barely succeeding in focusing his gaze on the woman. "Fam… No, no, I'm not. I'm… he's my best friend. I'm his emergency contact, someone phoned me and told me… John Watson."
Did what he had said even make sense? John couldn't be certain.
"Yes, Holmes, Sherlock. Admitted at 4.18 am." She looked up to meet his gaze, and what John saw in her eyes made his heart miss a beat. "He's in surgery."
Surgery. Jesus, surgery. The world started spinning around John, spinning violently. "Surgery…" he repeated dazedly. What for? Jesus, please let him have broken his leg. "Surgery for what injury?" he managed to ask in his best soldierly voice, keeping himself together.
Another sympathetic look that caused his guts to clench agonisingly. "Skull fracture," was the reply he got.
It would make me happy if you told me what you think!
Thank you.