There is a ruby of blood blossoming from my violently invaded chest and sternum. It is so innocently tiny and nondescript, I could easily have scratched myself with a ragged nail…
I look down at it in calm dismay, then up at Molly Hooper. She is wearing her lab coat. And no lipstick. It comes and goes…
She smiles at me and her brown eyes look a little – disappointed.
Walking around me. Surveying me. "It's not like it is in the movies. There's not a great big spurt of blood and you go flying backwards."
I screw up my eyes in the dazzling, cornea-blasting whiteness. The bright light doesn't seem to bother Molly Hooper. She comes and she goes...
"The impact isn't spread over a wide area…It's tightly focussed, so there's little or no energy transfer…"
I am seeing her in the mortuary. A drawer is pulled open and my pathologist pulls back the sheet.
Oh.
I lie white – bleached by the lights; by the bloodlessness. A bullet hole is in my lower chest, as tiny and innocent as a drawing pin head. How can I be dead? How can this be? I look down upon my dead self, but Molly cannot see my living self; standing behind her. She cannot hear my inner voice – screaming at her to make it right – don't let me be dead, Molly…
" You – " She pulls the white sheet further back – " stay still ..."
Don`t let me be dead…
"... and the bullet pushes through…"
She is calm and business-like. Eyes assessing my corpse as a pathologist would assess her newest – patient? And I know this is no dream. A pain like no other is radiating from my chest like a searing, burning annihilation of my flesh and nerve endings. This is my end game…
This is how it feels to die.
Don't let me be dead…
"You're almost certainly going to die, so we need to focus."
I feel a panic, raw and new, rising up through my brain stem and seeping into every pore and cell. I can`t be dying because then, how will you know…?
Molly draws back her hand and slaps my dead, white face – hard and just like she practised with me. Good girl. Giant amongst women… doe-eyed goddess with the alabaster skin of a Grecian statue…what?
And I breathe in a huge, dragging breath and my eyes snap open.
Molly looks slightly cross. Have I done something wrong? I was right to protect you Molly…Mary had a little lamb; it`s fleece was white as…
"It's all well and clever having a Mind Palace, but you've only three seconds of consciousness left to use it. So, come on – what's going to kill you?" I was right. She IS cross with me…Mary, Mary, quite contrary – how does your garden grow…?
"Blood loss."
"Exactly." She is so stern. I frown at her a little.
"So, it's all about one thing now…" Don`t let me be dead…
"Forwards, or backwards?"
Don`t let me be…"
"We need to decide which way you're going to – fall."
Don`t let me…"
"Is the bullet still inside you ...?"
Don't let…
"... or is there an exit wound?"
Don`t.
Xoxoxoxoxoxox
Bright overhead lights. Stink of disinfectant. Machines beep-beep-beep-beep… Briskly walking people - walking briskly down hard corridors; people mopping the floors – why are people in hospital always mopping floors? Oh…
Molly Hooper`s adrenalin levels have been spiking to dangerous heights for the last twenty four hours.
Spike One: Molly, come to the hospital; Sherlock has been shot…it`s bad…
Spike Two: He died on the table. Somehow we brought him back…
Spike Three: Someone out there hates Sherlock Holmes so much, they want him gone…and they are still out there…
Spike Four: Mycroft Holmes has been in, with a red flower for his brother. He looked – broken…
Spike Five: Parents at bedside; sobbing mother (holding Molly`s hand, very tight, despite the fact they had never met…)
Spike Six: Sherlock`s heart monitor, racing off the spectrum, after an unidentified visitor had left. Molly missed them by three minutes. Security cameras had picked up no strangers…
Spike Seven: Wanting to try her new found slapping skills on Janine, but finding out she was, in fact, hilarious, and probably justified in selling Sherlock down the river…
Spike Eight: Sherlock escaping from hospital…
Spike Nine: Sherlock re-admitted, with internal bleeding…
God, she hated fucking hospitals…too much uncertainty. Will he make it? Will she survive the night? Will the results be clear this time? How many weeks left? Hell, she preferred the Morgue. Nothing was as certain as death. She needed a certainty. Too many ups…too many downs…stop, already.
When Molly had been a medical student, she had become acquainted with the Study of the Prairie Vole. Apparently, scientists and endocrinologists had discovered that two main hormones are responsible for attachment – the longer lasting bond that causes partners to become committed to one another. Whereas norepinephrine and serotonin are responsible for the `love-struck` state of newly paired lovers; it is oxytocin and vasopressin which influence the long-term relationship. Studies showed that the male Prairie Vole, when deprived of vasopressin, lost his devotion and, indeed, all interest in his female, and didn't even bother to protect her from new suitors.
Sherlock Holmes lies on his hospital bed. White sheets; white pillow; white face. Stable, at last, after a further two transfusions. He hadn't been able to speak to her, of course, but from the look on John Watson`s face and the complete absence of his new wife, Molly knew Sherlock had proved himself right – again. She sometimes really hated it when that happened. John was even greyer than his best friend. She touched his shoulder and told him to leave and get some rest. He told her (quietly) to sod off. They both sat, opposite to each other; either side of the bed. Silence. For close on half an hour, then –
"I hate to use song lyrics in times of great trauma, but, have you ever fallen in love with someone…"
"You shouldn't have fallen in love with?" Molly finishes for him. "Well – yes. You?"
John puts his face in his hands and exhales the breath of a million cares.
"I just can`t – " Rubbing his closed eyes – "I am – broken down, Molly." Her heart lurches in her chest. She idly wonders if John has lost his vasopressin – or just his belief in what he thought he had. He sighs again and his hands are shaking.
"I`m sorry, but this has been a very bad day."
No shit. "I know." Pause. "A really bad week, to be honest." John looks up, properly seeing her for the first time.
"I know he stayed with you. After he jumped. I know he stayed at your house." Dammit – is there ever an appropriate time to go scarlet?
Looking down. "Yes; he did. Just that one night."
John is looking at Sherlock`s inert form; being kind, again.
"So I know you understand – "
She waited.
"What it`s like to love a person – "
Just say it.
" – who can never love you back."
And there it is.
xoxoxoxoxoxox