A/N - I can say with complete honesty that this chapter owes its life to JolieBlack and sevenercent, and my medical beta who prefers her role as anonymous benefactor but whose contributions are vital (small medical pun). -GW
Trudging up the stairs in the wake of Sherlock's two-at-a-time bound provides an unnecessary reminder that John is seriously in need of refueling. When he reaches the living room he finds Sherlock already busy at his laptop, his coat and scarf tossed in a heap on the coffee table.
"Jessica Wallace, 31, was the victim of a brutal attack in her home Thursday evening," Sherlock reads from the screen. "She is the wife of Detective Sergeant Harry Wallace of the Metropolitan Police Service." He turns to John. "4th September, 2005 Daily Mail."
John drops into his chair. "Any mention of a suspect?"
As if on cue, Sherlock's phone pings a text notification. He picks it up from the table to check the display, then lifts it in John's direction like a toast. "It's from Lestrade." He scrolls through the message. "Timothy Lawson, found dead of a drug overdose in his flat on New Year's Day, 2006. He had a history of drug abuse. They ruled it death by misadventure."
"Coincidentally involving an injection." John raises a hand to forestall the correction he knows is coming. "I know. The universe is rarely so lazy. It was misadventure, just not the kind they thought."
"He was Ellis' first victim. The one who set the pattern for the rest, although my original query would not have found him. He would have been at the top of the list from the revised version."
"Too bad we didn't have a chance to run it before the database was shut down," John offers, trying unsuccessfully to smother a yawn.
Sherlock turns in his seat and studies him for a moment. "You should go home."
John straightens immediately. "I'm fine, and I'm not leaving now. Not when we've almost got him."
"'Almost' might be overstating. We still have a lot of work to do."
The typing resumes, and John watches him for a bit. "What are you looking for?"
"Anything that mentions Callum Ellis." He gives John a look that adds 'obviously'. "Aside from his computer business, there's not much. I'm going to have Lestrade restart the database in the morning long enough to run the query. We need the rest of his victims. One of them is going to link back to Ellis. Somewhere along the line, he's made a mistake. We just have to find it."
"Greg seemed pretty confident that he won't have left any evidence for us to find."
Sherlock snorts. "Lestrade is giving him too much credit because he was a DI."
"And you may be giving him too little for the same reason," John observes, smiling back at the expected scowl. "He has gotten away with it for eight years."
"No one was looking for him. Murder victims as unsympathetic as the ones Ellis took down rarely merit an aggressive investigation. What did Molly call them? Public service homicides? He's not a criminal mastermind, John. He's just a killer who picked victims no one would care about."
"So, what turned a dedicated law enforcement officer into a serial killer? Even given the attack on his partner's wife, that's quite a transformation."
"Maybe he just reached his limit for seeing the guilty go free. You heard Lestrade. They've all considered taking the law into their own hands at some point. Ellis isn't the first to actually go through with it, and he won't be the last. The legal system is stacked in favor of the accused. That isn't likely to change."
"At least Ellis isn't an active duty officer. That would have been another black eye for the Yard, and for Greg because he let us run with it instead of starting an internal investigation."
Sherlock waves that comment away. "We gave him plausible deniability. His reputation would have been intact either way."
John is surprised by an abrupt flash of anger. "I know you don't have a-" He pulls it back, but not fast enough.
Sherlock's gaze narrows. "I don't have a...what?" His voice is carefully even.
...a fucking clue what you did to us. Deep breath. "You didn't see what Greg went through after you... left. I did. He nearly lost his job, Sherlock. He never doubted you, and it nearly cost him everything."
Sherlock's expression is unreadable. "Not as much as it cost you."
No. Not going there again. "Look, just forget I said anything, okay? I'm out of practice working on four hour's sleep. It makes me touchy." Let it go, Sherlock. Just let it the fuck go.
John's stomach chooses this moment to produce a comically loud gurgling growl that makes them both smile.
"And hungry," Sherlock observes drily. "Why don't you go down to Speedy's and grab some food?"
"That's not a bad idea." And a timely break. "Do you want anything?"
"Sure. Whatever you're having," comes the surprising response.
"Okay, then. I'll be right back."
He returns ten minutes later with sandwiches and two cups of soup to find Sherlock on his phone.
"He's just walked in," he tells the caller, then holds the phone out to John. "It's Mary. You weren't answering."
John sets the bag down on the desk next to the laptop and takes the phone. "Sorry, Mary. I forgot the ringer was muted. What's up?"
"I wanted Sherlock to just give you the message, but he insisted that I talk to you. I seem to have caught that stomach bug we've been treating all week at the clinic. I need you to stop on the way home and pick up an antiemetic." Her voice is thick with misery.
"I'll come now."
"No, don't do that. I can wait."
"Don't be silly. I'm not going to stay here while you're sick. Try to sip some water. I'll be there in an hour." He gives the phone back to Sherlock. "Sorry, I have to go. Mary's sick." He sniffs the aroma of hot soup and his stomach growls again. "I'll take that with me."
"Of course. It's fine." Sherlock is already back on the laptop.
John digs out his phone and calls in a prescription for Mary's nausea and vomiting to the chemist down the street who he has had on speed dial for years, for obvious reasons. It's only a five minute walk, and he can hail a cab from there. Before he leaves, he takes Sherlock's food out of the takeaway bag and sets it next to the laptop. "Don't forget to eat."
Sherlock hums a noncommittal response.
John walks to the door with an odd sense of unease. "Do you want me to do anything online tonight?" He pauses in the doorway.
"We've got nothing to work with until we run the query." He looks up from the laptop. "Tell Mary I said hello."
"I will. Call me if anything comes up." He closes the door and sets out for the chemist's.
The queue at the prescription counter is disappointingly long and, as he soon discovers, barely moving. He's eleven people from the front, stuck between a woman with two unhappy toddlers, and a man who is making no attempt to cover his bone-racking coughs. It's likely to take so long to reach the front of the queue that he would probably get to Mary faster if he just hailed a cab now and called in another prescription to a chemist closer to home. And that's exactly what he would do, if he could just shake this feeling that he made a terrible mistake in leaving Sherlock alone. Mary told him not to rush home, and he should have taken her up on it. She's miserably sick, but she isn't the one who stood toe to toe with a serial killer a few hours ago and all but called the man out. That was Sherlock.
What if Ellis slips out of his flat and manages to evade the surveillance team? Greg seemed to have the same concern going by what he said when they were leaving. 'Keep your guard up, just in case.' But Sherlock won't do that because he thinks he's fucking indestructible. He won't watch his own back because that's John's job. But John isn't there to do it.
He should call Mary and tell her what's going on. That he needs to stay with Sherlock until they get the list of victims in the morning. It won't take Sherlock long to find what he's looking for, John is certain of that. They might not be able to charge Ellis immediately, but it will give Greg enough leverage to bring him in for questioning. Once Ellis realizes that the evidence has been found, he'll know he can no longer save himself by eliminating Sherlock, and the threat will be gone.
Which is all well and good, except for the fact that John knows the reaction he'll get from Sherlock if he abandons his ailing fiancé to rush back to Baker Street based on nothing but a gut feeling. It would make no sense to Sherlock that this overprotectiveness has an identifiable cause. That John is still trying to wrap his head around the fact that the man he mourned for two years is back among the living, and there's still some part of John that expects him to vanish like a ghost at cockcrow the minute he turns his back.
"Oi. Ya wanna move it, mate?" It's the man behind him, and his tone suggests this isn't the first time he's tried to get John's attention.
"What?" John looks up to find that the queue has shortened by at least three people, leaving a large gap in front of him. "Oh, sorry."
Twenty minutes later, he finally reaches the front of the queue, only to find that the chemist has put up the wrong prescription. It only takes a few minutes to sort out, but it's enough to give his anxiety a push that it didn't need. He moves to the queue to pay, and then remembers that he wanted to pick up some Dioralyte to keep Mary hydrated, and has to surrender his spot in the queue to go get it.
By the time he walks out to hail a cab, he's running on pure adrenaline. It must show, because the cabbie gives him one glance and wisely dispenses with any small talk. Five minutes into the drive home, John is fighting an urge to turn the bloody cab around and prove to himself that Sherlock is fine. The sensible thing to do is call him and just tune out the inevitable sarcasm. He pulls out his phone.
"Yes, John." He's not in the flat. John can hear traffic sounds, and Sherlock is breathing like a man who has been walking at a brisk pace for some minutes.
"Where the hell are you?" It's a lot closer to a shout than he intended.
Sherlock chuckles in his ear. "What did you do, install a trip wire on the front door when I wasn't looking? I'm going to meet Daniel Manning in Regent's Park."
"What? Why?" Short and sharp. His command voice. The cabbie give him a wary look in the mirror, and John signals him to pull over and stop.
"He called a few minutes ago. He said he's found something that he can't talk about over the phone."
"Did you tell him we've already found what we were looking for? Why can't this wait until morning?"
"I didn't tell him anything. I don't want to prejudice whatever he has to say. He's already convinced that his life is in danger, which I strongly suspect is the product of a vivid imagination inspired by his collection of crime novels. He says it can't wait until morning."
"I don't like this."
"Which is why I didn't call you."
John takes a deep breath. "Wait for me. I'm coming with you."
"Don't be an idiot. You're nearly home."
"No, I'm not. It took a long time at the chemist's. I'm barely ten minutes away from you." Less, if his driver can be persuaded to overlook a few traffic laws.
"I will be fine, John. Go home."
"Where are you meeting him? Specifically."
Sherlock exhales exasperatedly into the phone. "Across the bridge near the entrance. I'm almost there. Go home, John." He ends the call.
John pulls out his wallet and hands the driver a twenty pound note. "Turn around. Regent's Park. Break laws." Sherlock is going to think John has lost his mind, and John plans to spend the next ten minutes praying that Sherlock is right.
Sherlock puts the phone back in his pocket as he crosses Outer Circle and enters the park. The bridge is a dozen yards to the right, and Manning is supposed to be on a park bench at the opposite end of it, but Sherlock doesn't see anyone at all. It's well after sunset, and the temperature has dropped as the wind rose. Not exactly a night for a leisurely stroll in the park, but Manning had insisted. He said meeting in an open area outdoors was the only way to avoid electronic eavesdropping, an irrational bit of melodrama which further confirms Sherlock's belief that Manning has read too many spy novels.
As he crosses the bridge, a gust of icy wind makes him pull his collar closer to his throat. He can see that the park bench is empty, but it's impossible to see down the path to the right because of the shrubbery lining both sides. There's no one coming from the left.
When he reaches the opposite side, he stops as soon as he can see past the shrubs. The path is empty all the way to the point where it curves away from the water. Manning had said he was only a few minutes away when he called. So, where is he?
Minutes tick by. Just as he begins to consider the possibility that John may have had a point, he sees movement midway down the path. A figure emerges from the shadows and starts walking toward him. When he's near enough for Sherlock to verify that it's Manning, he steps into the center of the path to wait for him. Manning is carrying a file folder, glancing all around as he comes closer.
"Mr. Holmes?" His voice is even shakier than it was on the phone.
"Sherlock," he responds, setting the tone to elicit trust.
Manning stops in front of him, alternately glancing back over his shoulder and looking down the path behind Sherlock. "Can we sit down?"
They go to the bench, and Manning sits uncomfortably close, hunkered down like a frightened child.
"What did you want to tell me?"
Manning has the folder in his lap with his right hand spread protectively on top. "I don't want you to think I had anything to do with it. I-I didn't have a clue until an hour ago."
"A clue about what?"
"You were right," Manning says softly, looking down at the folder.
Apparently, it's going to be like pulling teeth. "Right about what?"
"You came to see me because you thought the database had been hacked."
Manning goes silent again, and Sherlock elects to wait him out. A minute passes.
"I put a lot of time into making it as secure as anything out there. No one outside Scotland Yard is even supposed to know the database exists. I never thought this could happen." He sighs heavily, shaking his head. "They'll never believe me."
"You'll have to be a bit more specific, if you want my help. What are you afraid of?"
"Not what. Who." He looks up at Sherlock, openly studying his face. "You already know, don't you? Isn't that what you do? See what no one else can? What do you see when you look at me?"
"Despite what you may have heard, I don't read minds. Let's start with the folder. What's in it?"
Manning scoots away a bit so he can face him. "What were you and Dr. Watson looking for when you came to see me?"
Sherlock catches a very subtle change in Manning's tone, and angles his body to face him more directly. "What's in the folder, Daniel?"
Manning closes his eyes, and Sherlock reaches for the folder, intending to look for himself.
Manning's whole body jerks as Sherlock's hand touches the folder, and his left hand flies up from underneath, flipping the folder from his lap and onto the ground at their feet. Manning quickly bends forward at the waist to grab it.
At the same time, Sherlock shifts his foot to trap the folder so the wind doesn't blow it out of reach. It takes less than a second for his brain to register the sharp pain in his left calf as a needle jab.
Manning springs up from the bench and takes a step backward.
"Wha-" is all Sherlock can get out as the drug seems to hit everywhere at once. The smattering of brain cells that aren't already blazing with useless panic begin to shout at him in John's voice as he topples from the bench while his failing lungs pull frantically for a breath that he knows is going to be his last.
The cabbie, as it turns out, is quite willing to place profit above safe motoring. He pulls the cab up at the entrance to Regent's Park in just under eight minutes. His bonus includes the sandwich and soup that John abandons on the seat.
John gets out as soon as the cab stops rolling and breaks into a run, then forces himself to pause behind a clump of shrubbery just short of the bridge to assess the situation. If Sherlock and Manning are really in no danger, and John comes running up on them, Manning might panic and flee his best hope of staying alive.
John takes a deep breath and pokes his head out to look across the water. It takes his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness on the far bank, but only an instant more to spot the figure lying on the path to the left of the bridge. He breaks into a run, pulling out his phone and cursing the wasted seconds.
The 999 operator answers before he reaches the halfway point, and he can already see that it's Sherlock on the ground as he fires the words into the phone- ambulance, police, attempted murder (attempted, please God)- and then drops it on the ground as he sinks to his knees next to Sherlock's motionless form.
"Sherlock, can you hear me?" His eyes are open, staring at nothing. Wide open. "Sherlock!" Carotid pulse rapid and bounding. No respiration.
No respiration.
The shock of recognition takes his own breath for an instant before reflex takes over. He gives Sherlock six full breaths, talking to him in the seconds between, desperate to let him know he's not alone.
"Sherlock, you know what this is." Breath. Breath. "You'll be okay." Breath. "Just hold on."
He can't imagine what this must be like for him.
What it's like for John is a nightmare of deja vu. All that's missing is blood splashed pavement and hands that keep trying to pull him away-
Check the carotid. Back to the breaths. No more talking now because he can't breathe for them both and talk in between if he wants to stay conscious himself. He's already getting light headed but that's from shock too and no food and the way this looks so much like what it can't be because Sherlock won't be the only casualty if it is-
He can hear the 999 operator's tinny voice coming out of his phone somewhere on the ground nearby but he doesn't have the air to talk to her either.
Where the hell is the ambulance? It feels like he's been at this for hours but knows it can't be more than a few minutes no matter how hard it's getting to be just to stay upright and blow hard enough to make Sherlock's chest rise and keep his heart beating and the lights on in that brain-
Running footsteps from behind. Medics? Hope flares, and he starts to turn- Full body slam and he rolls with it, over Sherlock and onto the path.
Gets to his feet as his attacker does the same and he sees a flash of something in the hand coming toward him. Knocks it away. Too small for a knife. It skitters across the path.
He ducks a fist thrown clumsily at his head and returns the favor. Connects hard and keeps at it because he has got to end this threat and get back to Sherlock before it's too-
The attacker drops to the ground, and John straddles him long enough to make sure he's out-- fucking Manning.
Back to Sherlock, facing Manning while he gives Sherlock four, five, six full breaths, then checks his pulse and panics for a moment until he finds it.
Sirens in the distance.
Sherlock, don't you dare do this, don't you fucking dare.
He can see the flashing emergency lights now, a lot of them. Men running toward them across the bridge.
His knuckles are wet with blood, and he hopes it's Manning's. Hopes he killed the bastard.
Two medics reach them, and the rattling wheels of the gurney send him rocketing back to Bart's all over again-
"Succinylcholine injection," he gasps the words. "Need to bag him."
"Got it," one of them says and the mask is placed over Sherlock's mouth and nose. John sags back on his heels and tried to get his own breathing under control.
More running footsteps. Police, uniforms and a detective coming across the bridge.
The medics lift Sherlock to the gurney and strap him in while it's in motion, racing for the ambulance with one medic pulling and the other pushing while he works the bag with one hand-
John staggers to his feet and runs after them.
"He should be coming around," he tells the medic who is bagging Sherlock in the back of the careening ambulance two minutes later.
"How long was he down?"
He can't think. Twenty minutes since they talked on the phone? How long before Manning hit him with the drug? How long before he found him?
"I don't know."
"Must have been a major overdose."
"No, it's not an overdose. It was sux." And then he realizes that's not what the medic meant. "I don't know how much he was given."
Sherlock is motionless. Staring. Too long. It's been too long.
The ambulance slows down. Stops. The rear doors open, and John scoots back against the side wall of the van to get out of the way while they pull out the gurney, the medic right behind them and John right behind the medic.
Through the double doors and into the Resuscitation room. Too busy to stop him from following them in, as if they could.
He leans against the wall next to the door and watches a scene straight out of his worst nightmare.
The heart monitor is beeping erratically. PVCs. Runs of three and four. Tachycardia. Bradycardia. Too fast, then too slow. This shouldn't be happening.
Hypoxia. Cerebral injury.
Brain death.
Come on, Sherlock. Come on. Come on.
They've been at for eighteen minutes. He should be conscious. Moving. Breathing. The drug can't be the problem now. Not after eighteen fucking minutes.
Out of nowhere, a young woman in blue scrubs is standing in his line of sight, blocking his view of Sherlock.
"Sir, you have to leave the room."
"No." He starts to step around her, and a tall, broad man joins her. "You have to leave, sir."
He hears another run of PVCs and starts to push past them.
The man takes his arm and tugs him away from the wall. "Come with me, please."
John doesn't realize that the wall was the only thing keeping him upright until his knees abruptly unlock, and the man's grip tightens.
John finds himself being steered through the double doors and back into the waiting room. The man backs him up to a chair. Sits him down, and squats in front of him. "Someone will come out to talk with you as soon as we know what we're dealing with. Is there someone I can call for you?"
John leans to the side so he can see the doors he just came through. "No."
The man straightens and goes back into the room. The doors close.
"John?"
Greg Lestrade comes through the ambulance entrance and takes a sharp left toward him. He follows John's gaze toward the double doors, then squats in front of him in the same pose as the man who put him in this chair.
"John, how is he?"
"I don't know."
There must be something in his voice that precludes any more questions. Greg takes the chair next to him. "Manning's in custody."
John nods. Not dead. Too bad. He looks down at his hands and finds split knuckles on his right hand that are oozing blood. His left is undamaged, but also bloody. Good.
He can feel Greg's restraint. There are questions that will need to be answered, but not now. Not until he can talk to Sherlock. Not until then.
He could have prevented this. After all this time, he fucking knows better than to question his own instincts. The time he wasted trying to talk himself out of acting on them put Sherlock where he is right now. The minutes it took to find him could well have destroyed his mind. Even the best case scenario with a brain injury would be catastrophic to him. Cognitive impairment. Aphasia. Blindness. Paralysis.
Sherlock would prefer death.
Just thinking the word makes it hard to breathe.
Greg tenses beside him. "John."
He realizes he has his eyes closed, and opens them to find a woman in a white lab coat standing in front of him. Greg's hand is on his arm.
"Are you waiting for word on the man who was just brought in?" She nods toward the door where Sherlock is being treated.
John gets to his feet. "His name is Sherlock Holmes. How is he?"
Greg is standing next to him, shoulder to shoulder.
"He's breathing on his own, but he's still unresponsive. I'm told that someone tried to kill him with a dose of succinylcholine."
"Yes."
"That would explain his condition on arrival, but it doesn't account for his current status. Were you the one who found him?"
"Yes."
"Do you know how long he was deprived of oxygen?"
"No."
She frowns. "I see. I've ordered a neurological assessment, but I can already say with some certainty that there is more going on here than the aftermath of an unsupported dose of succinylcholine. His cardiac irritability suggests cocaine, but there are also indications of heroin or morphine. We'll have his lab results shortly, and that should sort out the combination."
Manning must have been trying to make it look like a self-administered drugs overdose. Given Sherlock's history, it might have worked. "Can I see him?" When she doesn't answer immediately, he squares his shoulders. "I'm his doctor."
"His doctor?"
"Yes. John Watson. I'm a GP with admitting privileges at this hospital, and I would like to see my patient now."
She studies him for a moment. "Very well. Come with me," she says unnecessarily since he's already ahead of her, pushing through the doors.
He's standing next to the bed with both hands gripping the safety rail when she catches up to him.
"Dr. Watson, is there anything in his medical history that might account for the symptoms we're seeing? For example, could he have been under the influence of drugs before he was injected with the succinylcholine?"
John turns to face her. "I'm sure you can tell that the needle marks are old. He has used heroin and cocaine, but not for years."
She purses her lips. "I'm sure you're aware that addicts can be quite creative in choosing injection sites to hide-"
"He's not using drugs. If there's anything other than sux in his system, he didn't put it there." He's angry, and not trying to hide it.
Her posture stiffens. "I wasn't questioning your abilities. It's not always easy to see these things, and-"
"Please let me know when the neurologist arrives." He turns his attention to Sherlock. The pause lengthens into an awkward silence.
"I will note his chart accordingly." She leaves the room.
"I seem to have pissed off your doctor. Just filling in for you until you can speak for yourself." He knows his feeble attempt at humor is falling on deaf ears, but it felt good for a moment.
Sherlock's eyes are closed, and his breathing is back to normal. Unfortunately, it's the only thing that is.
His heart rate is still not steady. John reads the monitor: Pulse 60...72... 103. Another run of PVCs, three of them, happen while John watches the ECG readout.
And of course there's the fact that he's essentially in a coma. The possibility that his brain has been irreversibly damaged increases with every minute that he remains in this state.
There's a scrape on his right cheekbone, and it's starting to darken into a bruise. John touches it gently with two fingers, then opens his hand and cups his face. It's cool in the room, and Sherlock's skin feels clammy. His hair is sticking to his forehead, and John gently brushes it back with a hand that's not quite steady.
"Sherlock, open your eyes." He carefully turns Sherlock's head to face him. "It's John. I need you to look at me." He pinches a good inch of Sherlock's trapezius muscle between his right index finger and thumb and twists it hard enough to make himself wince in sympathy. No response.
Suddenly the full weight of what's happened- and what may lie ahead- hits him hard, and he really needs to sit down. Without moving his hand from Sherlock's shoulder, he glances about in search of a chair, and spots one in the corner. He lets go of his friend long enough to go get it.
The bed is cranked up to its full height, and sitting down puts him at eye level with the raised railing. Sherlock's left hand is lying next to his body on top of the blanket, and John wraps both of his around it.
If they try to throw him out again, it's going to take more than one brawny orderly to do it.
End of chapter six
Note: In this context, PVCs are premature ventricular contractions, not poly vinyl chloride. :-)