Chapter 9
It was nearing mid-morning when John finally found himself wandering through to the blue plastic chairs in the waiting room of whichever private hospital it was that Mycroft had ordered them to be driven to. The room was silent and nearly empty; the only occupants a set of parents sitting in the far corner with glazed over worrisome eyes, their hands clasped neatly in their laps. The father looked up as John entered the room, his brown shoes tapping quietly on the lino beneath his feet. For a second the fair-haired man held a look of apprehension before his expression drooped as he realised that it was only another worried family member.
John felt his heart leap as he crossed the room, knowing only too well the disappointment felt by parent when they realised that whoever had come couldn't tell them that their child was safe and would be home and well soon. Just by glancing at the couple he could tell they were waiting for their daughter who was about the age of five judging by the small violet bear clutched in the mother's hands and the size of the tiny coat that rested on her lap. The surgery was unexpected, probably brought on because of a sudden illness to the child judging by the shocked, pale face of the mother and the fact that the father was still wearing a suit, obviously called straight from the office and having no time to stop at home on the way.
John shook his head, pulling himself from the deduction he had just run through in his mind; deducing was Sherlock's job, not his. The man across the room was still looking up, his gaze now fixed on John as he stood frizzed in the middle of the room. After a second the father dipped his head in polite understanding, knowing the shared feeling of heavy dread in all their stomachs that came just from sitting in that very room.
John nodded slightly in return and looked away, politely averting his gaze as he selected a chair in the corner of the opposite side of the room to the parents. He crossed the room as quietly as he could, the only sound in the room belonging to the gentle taps of his shoes on the floor. Carefully he placed the bag that was filled with Sherlock's things on a chair, mindful of the respectful quiet in the room before sitting down next to it on another equally blue chair.
He leant forwards, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, watching numbly as the bright lino patterns slowly blurred beneath his gaze. The thoughts in his brain were swirled and muddled with exhaustion and worry, the only focused thought being Sherlock and the surgery he was now being prepared for. John knew the operation would be quick, a couple of hours at most and that it was only a simple procedure, one that he had performed himself countless times before the army, but there were still risks, of infection and nerve damage and even just the risk of the aesthetic. After all, all surgery held risks.
The silver ticking watch on John's wrist let out a metallic beep into the silent room, signalling the arrival of a new hour. Slowly the ex-army doctor lifted his head and glanced at the three tiny hands on the watch. He paused for a second as he counted back the hours, remembering the beep that had made Sherlock jump back in Mycroft's black Mercedes. He shuddered involuntarily, thinking back to the silent car journey that had seemed so long but in reality had been barely twenty minutes through the illuminated London streets. Sherlock had sat on the back seat, his back ramrod straight and his left hand clamped around his right, the grip tightening every minute until they had reached Mycroft's chosen hospital. He had hidden his expression back behind the famous mask but it was obvious to all who knew him the fear he had buried just below his skin.
John glanced back down at his watch, actually remembering to take in the position of the silver hands on the dial as he did. It was just past eleven, making it over four hours since they had left the flat just after dawn. It was a strange moment for John when Sherlock had finally admitted that he was ready to leave. He had been feeling relived, obviously, but had been determined to hide it from his friend, something he needed to do but was unsure why. Sherlock must have seen through his attempt at a mask though, because the detective had raised one dark eyebrow in a forced kind of humour at his doctor's confused, relieved and weary face.
All sense of humour, either forced or true, had left Sherlock as they had neared the hospital and he had once again become the small, scared boy John had seen back at the flat, his shoulders tensed as he stood half-hidden behind his brother when they had spoken to the dark-haired nurse at the desk. She hadn't said much at first, telling them only to wait for their turn to see a doctor like everybody else. It was only when Mycroft had stepped forwards and leant over the desk, speaking in a hissed whisper to the startled nurse that she jumped to her feet, her eyes wide as she hurried them through a separate door at the end of the waiting room, muttering garbled apologies as she went.
They had still had to wait though, even if it was in a small, carpeted room with soft armchairs and a telly, and John knew that time must have been pure torture for his friend. Sherlock he sat stiffly in a chair in the corner of the room with his feet flat on the floor and his hands in his lap. He had stared blindly at the wall before him with unfocused eyes, oblivious to the worried glances that came his way as he fiddled with the numb fingers in his lap.
For over an hour they had sat in that room, Sherlock's fiddling becoming faster and rougher until John had been forced to call out his friend's name, simply to get him to stop so as not to damage the unfeeling fingers of his right hand further. Sherlock had glanced up for a fraction of a second, his eyes refusing to meet John's, before they returned to his lap, watching as he sharply slid his left hand up, tightening it around the injured wrist instead.
The next time Sherlock had looked up was when a stout, middle-aged man pushed open the doorway, his balding hair prematurely mottled with grey. Mycroft had leaped up from his chair in an instant, ushering the startled doctor from the room and gently shutting the door behind them. They had stayed out there for over five minutes, the faint mumble of hushed voices drifting through the thin whitewashed walls as they spoke. John had sat with Sherlock the whole time, watching as his friend simply went back to thoughtfully staring at his hands, or more likely at his right wrist.
When the door had opened again the doctor had looked much less jolly than before, a hint of concern and worry hidden behind his professional expression, leaving no doubt in John's mind of what Mycroft had been telling the balding middle-aged man. He had called Sherlock from the room, an instruction which Sherlock had followed with little resistance, and had taken them down to the orthopaedic department, an area of the hospital filled with long white corridors which had appeared to stretch on for miles to John's tired brain.
His thoughts wavered and merged, the stark, bright corridors of the hospital in his memories dimming into the dark and deserted ones of Roland Kerr further education college where Sherlock had been taken to on their first ever case. John stood now alone in the dark corridor, the yellow light from the streetlights outside casting long shadows on the tiled floor. Instinctively he broke into a run, sprinting towards the room where he had seen his friend through the window all those months ago. He knew he was yelling, as he had been that time before but his ears were numb to the sound that echoed off the shadowed walls of the collage.
As it always is in dreams, it was a strangely short time before John found himself standing in a long corridor, looking up at the door to the room he had shot Jeff Hope from nearly half a year ago. With his heart racing he pulled open the door, expecting to see the curly haired figure of Sherlock through the window at the far end of the room and that dreaded pill hanging from his fingertips as he slowly drew it towards his parted lips.
But as John ran into the room he found himself back in the pool, in the place he had stood in less than a month before, the brightly coloured changing rooms to his left and the glistening water of the pool on his right. There were no windows across the pool though, only the stark greyness of concrete where the reflections of that stupid meeting in the darkened glass should have been. The pool was empty too, only John in a small dark room surrounded by concrete and the memories of the last time he had been standing at the poolside and the phone call that had saved them all.
A slam of a door behind John made him turn to see that dreaded man standing in his classic Westwood suit, his eyebrows raised in a look of unimpressed boredom. He rounded on John, words falling from his mouth in that Irish lilt but making no sense at all to the doctor's deaf ears. The man advanced, Sherlock's skull-friend in his hand and John found himself pulling a gun he didn't know he possessed from the waistband of his jeans and pointing it at the psychopath before him. He fired once, twice, the bullets hitting the man with a dramatically sickening squelch.
Moriarty swivelled at the impact, bending at the waist as blood blossomed from the gaping black holes in his side. He stumbled, hurling himself at John with his last ounce of strength and pushing them both into the pool with a splash which filled the room, spinning both men until all sense of which way was up was lost entirely. The two men struggled, both hitting out furiously through the water as they tumbled and turned, the water roaring in their ears. John fought harder still, thrashing blindly at the man who held him until they were gone from his grasp, lost in the bubbles and swirls of the pounding water.
Suddenly the water calmed and the bubbles dispersed to a blinding clarity only achievable in dreams. John blinked the water from his eyes only to find Moriarty gone and the boy from Mycroft's pictures in front of him, his dark curls drifting freely in a halo above his head. The boy was wearing his school uniform but it was obvious even through the thick green blazer, heavy and misshapen with water, that the boys right arm was badly broken, his wrist bent at sickeningly unnatural angle.
The small, pale boy looked up and opened his silver eyes as reached out a hand, the green blazer sliding up his arm to reveal the extensive bruising that marred his wrist. He opened his mouth, letting out a stream of bubbles and a single name that made John push himself desperately through the water towards the silent boy.
Little Sherlock was sinking quickly, his tiny body drifting downwards at a rate so much faster than it could be in life. John tried to yell, to tell the child to swim, to kick his legs, to do anything but the boy stayed still, his arms reached out in front of him as a call for rescue and salvation against whatever was dragging him down. John kicked harder against the water, trying to drive himself towards the boy before him, the child that was now his friend.
Then there was an arm suddenly clasped around his shoulder, pulling him away from the tiny, drowning child, relentlessly holding on through his desperate struggles to get free. But Sherlock was still drifting downwards, his blazer-covered arms held above his head in a silent call. He cried out, the tears that crept from his eyes swallowed by the water that engulfed him, begging to be saved, to be helped, but only bubbles of desperation escaped his lips.
"John!"
John awoke with a start, a sharp gasp escaping his lips as he jumped upright from his slumped position on the chair. Mycroft's hand was still on his shoulder, gripping just tight enough to be painful even through the thick cloth of his woollen jumper. Seeing John was awake, Mycroft stepped back, taking his hand from the shorter man's shoulder and settling it on the handle of the dark umbrella held with its point just balanced on the lino hospital floor. He was tired, a fact visible in both his posture and expression, and had obviously been home at some point to change as his suit was fresh and ironed unlike the one he had worn to the hospital the night before, crumpled and dusty from his time spent on the floor in Sherlock's room.
"They just took him into Recovery," Mycroft announced from where he stood, his eyes fixed on John who nodded in acknowledgement, his head drooping as he let out a sigh of relief. He hadn't seen Sherlock since he had been asked to leave by the anaesthetist when she had needed to prepare his pale and silent friend for the surgery. Mycroft had stayed, of course, but John hadn't wanted to complicate things with his presence of make Sherlock even more uncomfortable with what was going on around him than he already was.
"How did it go?" he asked a moment later, his voice gently probing for an update as he rubbed the grit from his eyes. They felt heavy and the lids were sticky from sleep as they normally were after a too-early morning or an overly-late night.
"There's not much to say really," He replied somewhat stiffly, pushing himself up taller on his umbrella, his mask held firmly in place and all emotion and thoughts deeply hidden. John huffed softly, reading Mycroft's expressionless face in an instant and knowing that the elder Holmes brother was unwilling to reveal the information he had for whatever reason it was he held. The ex-army medic was used to Mycroft keeping secrets and normally he found he could care less, but when that information was about his friend it was unacceptable.
"Well tell me what you do know then," insisted John, his voice strong and demanding. It was the type of voice he had used back in his army days, the voice of reason that was respected and obeyed without question. There was a pause, both men holding their breath as Mycroft's eyes ran over John, taking in everything they could before he let out a sigh and sat down, angling his legs so he could face his little brother's only true friend.
As it turned out the surgery had gone well, according to Mycroft, and the bone had been straightened and pinned with relative ease. As John had thought back at Baker Street the metal already inside Sherlock's arm had complicated things, but not nearly as much as he had originally feared. He was also thankful to know that his procedure in straightening the arm had not caused any further damage to the muscles or tendons in the wrist, but the results from the tests on the nerves in Sherlock's fingers were not exactly brilliant as it was.
"However, the surgeons can't be sure until he wakes," Finished Mycroft, his eyes fixed as he watched the doctors response. John nodded slowly, running the new information through his mind, his medical knowledge telling him that the nerve damage in Sherlock's wrist was likely to be the Ulnar Nerve or the Median Nerve as both could be caused by a break caused by the person falling on outstretched hands. Damage to either of the nerves could cause loss of motion and feeling, a highly unwelcome complication for anyone, let alone Sherlock.
He would be frustrated, initially by the cast and the lack of movement he was allowed and the pain that any use of his arm would cause. He would be annoyed by any fussing too, any break in the normality of their flat. He wouldn't be able to go on cases properly either, not for a couple of months at least for the risk of damaging the bone again would be high. That was even if there wasn't any nerve damage to deal with.
John sighed, a sudden feeling of guilt setting in his stomach as it finally fell on him how much pain and frustration he had inadvertently caused for his friend. He had tried to help Sherlock but all he had succeeded in doing was upsetting him and disturbing the break in his arm. If only he had left the detective alone. The arm would have healed on its own, to some degree at least, Sherlock would be calm and mentally well, and the two of them would still be sitting in their chairs, watching rubbish on the telly like every other night.
"John, don't be too hard on yourself," Said Mycroft, his voice strangely soft as he easily caught on to the doctor's train of thoughts. "You weren't to know he would react like that."
John sighed, rubbing a hand over his forehead in frustration. "I know, I know," He muttered, his voice strangely aggressive as if he held no agreement in what had been said to him and was just agreeing out of necessity .
Mycroft thought for a moment before turning back to the exasperated man beside him. "John, you're the only friend that Sherlock has, and right now I think he will need you more than ever."
John grunted, his eyes fixed on the floor as he replied. "What he needs, Mycroft, is family." He said simply, his voice quiet voice filled with a hint of deflation. Sherlock had spoken briefly about his family, although only once. John had always know the importance of family as a child but even more as an adult when his parents were dead and his sister had become a drunk.
Apparently though, the Holmes family had never been close, hiring nannies for their children and then sending them off to boarding school during their teenage years. It was only on that first case that Sherlock had ever spoken of his mother, during the short conversation they had held with Mycroft in which he had referred to her in past tense, giving John the impression that she had passed away at some point earlier in her son's life.
When there was no reply he glanced up to see that the man beside him had silently risen to his feet, his body turned to look down the bleak white corridor. John leant forwards, looking round the elder Holmes to see the same young nurse that had been sat at the reception when they had arrived walking towards them, her rubber-soled shoes making little noise on the lino floor. Mycroft was watching her too, his body tense as she hurried towards them. She came to a halt in front of them, her shoulders rising and dropping sharply as she caught her breath.
"Sir, could you come with me please," She asked urgently, her wide eyes fixed on Mycroft.
