Within less than five minutes, Sherlock was intubated, he and Nicky were loaded into an ambulance, and John climbed in the back with them. John was profoundly glad that he knew one of the paramedics personally—his presence probably wasn't technically allowable, but he wasn't about to let the ambulance leave without him.
As the paramedics pumped air into Sherlock while assessing the rest of his injuries, John focused on Nicky. Despite her apparently good physical condition, her distress level rose with every minute that Sherlock failed to wake. John, under the guise of taking her vitals, tried to distract her from what was going on behind them (while admittedly trying to distract himself as well).
"I'm John," he said. "I'm Sherlock's friend, but I'm also a doctor. What's your name?"
"Nicky," she said shakily, trying to look back over her shoulder. "What's wrong with Locket? Why hasn't he woken up?" Her heart rate, audible on the monitor John had attached, sped up noticeably.
"I think he may have had a problem with the smoke," John said soothingly. "They're just going to help him breathe for a bit, until his lungs catch back up." And John really, really hoped that was true.
"But why doesn't he wake up?" she fretted. "He's getting air now. I want him to wake up," she said in a wobbling voice.
"That's what we're going to hospital to find out," John said, still trying for a soothing tone. "He may have hit his head when he was thrown as well. We'll sort it all out for him."
"But he just got back," Nicky stuttered, beginning to sob. "He…we thought he was dead. And then he wasn't, and we were so…he just got back." And as she came apart, and John made nonsense sounds and wrapped her in blankets, he found himself fighting tears as well. God, he couldn't do this again.
It was a very long night. Sherlock proved to have a collapsed lung as well as a moderate concussion. He woke, unfortunately, during the process of having a chest tube inserted, panicked, confused and combative. John, who had been trying to stay out of the way to avoid being evicted from the room, slid over to hold Sherlock's head still. It wasn't clear if Sherlock actually recognized him, but it did calm him enough that the staff were able to continue their work.
At just before midnight Sherlock had been moved to a room, hooked up to oxygen and a drip with a laundry list of medications flowing in his veins. John sagged, exhausted, on the pull-out chair. Mary, who had arrived an hour or so before, drowsed on the second cot.
John hadn't planned to stay the night—once Sherlock was awake and oriented, he was planning to go home and come back in the morning. But the concussion had left Sherlock fearful and reactive—every time he woke he would make a concerted effort to climb out of the bed. In the end, even John agreed that soft restraints on his arms were necessary. Once that was established, there was no way he could leave Sherlock to wake and find himself tied. John pulled the chair around so that he was next to Sherlock's head, and every time those pale eyes opened he immediately began to talk. "I'm here; you're safe; you were injured but you're getting better."
They'd gone through it five times by 3am. At that point Mary sighed, stretched, trotted over and forced John to cede his spot at Sherlock's side, while John staggered woozily over and sprawled on the spare cot in her place. He was just drifting off when he heard movement, and then Mary's soft voice: "We're here; you're safe…"
John woke just after dawn to Sherlock's painful coughing. He caught Mary's eye, and she went for the nurse while John grabbed the water pitcher and held the straw for Sherlock, who took it gratefully. After several sips and another bout of coughing, Sherlock laid back and sighed. "How long?" he rasped, in a wrecked voice.
"About 12 hours," John said. "How are you feeling?"
"Hurts," Sherlock said faintly, moving as if trying to find a comfortable position and glaring at the wrist restraints.
John reached over to rearrange pillows and remove the restraints. "Yeah, I know. Mary went to get the nurse—you're due for pain meds, I'm sure. And I'm pretty sure you'll also have a breathing treatment in a bit." He took a quick look at the chest tube, and called it to Sherlock's attention. "You need to leave that alone, all right?" Sherlock scowled but pulled the hand that had crept towards his side back to his stomach.
"So what are the damages?" he asked, still in a breathy, quiet voice. He laid back and closed his eyes again briefly, a pained expression on his face.
"Collapsed lung," said John. "That's what the chest tube is for, and where most of your pain is coming from, most likely, as well as the shortness of breath. And a moderate concussion—you were pretty confused last night, hence the restraints. Are you having pain in your head?"
"Christ, yes," Sherlock sighed. "And before you ask, yes, I'm nauseous, and yes, I'm dizzy. Not exactly a shock." His fingers worked fretfully across the blanket edge. Then, in a deceptively toneless voice, "Did they find the remains yet?"
John's heart lurched in his chest. He had hoped to delay this conversation a bit longer. "No," he said quietly. "They have to wait just a bit for everything to cool. Greg says it will probably be this afternoon."
Sherlock's face worked just a bit before he got control of himself. "Have you seen Nicky? What have her doctors said?" he finally managed.
A much happier topic, thank God. "She popped in very briefly last night when they were getting you settled here. She's basically fine—they just want to keep her a couple of days for observation and some tests. She said she'd be back after breakfast this morning." John smiled. "She's a bright little thing. I can see why you like her."
Sherlock gave a slight smile. "She's also profoundly stubborn. Just wait until you ask her to do something she doesn't want to do."
John smirked. "Can't imagine where she learned that." Sherlock ignored him.
The next hour was busy. Sherlock's pain medication arrived and was accepted with a grateful sigh. But immediately thereafter the respiratory technician arrived and worked a reluctant Sherlock through a necessary, but painful, breathing treatment. No sooner was that completed than the breakfast tray came, but Sherlock got a whiff of it and turned his head away with a gagging cough. "Please…just take it…" he gasped. Mary quickly picked it up and took it across to the table on the far side of the room.
John walked down to the nurse's station and asked what light snacks they kept on hand, and came back with a small tub of tinned peaches, something he knew Sherlock would usually eat if pressed. When he got back to the room Mary was nibbling on the contents of the tray while a drowsy Sherlock kept his head averted. John pulled the side table over and set the fruit down. "Here," he said. "You need to eat something—it'll settle your stomach. And you like these." Sherlock opened one eye suspiciously, but ultimately ate half of the tub. Then he yawned, closed his eyes, and went gratefully back to sleep.
Once they were sure he was really down for the count, Mary bundled up her things to go home. John planned to stay the day, in part because he wanted to be there when Greg Lestrade arrived with whatever news he chose to share. It was clear that Sherlock was taking Daisy's death very hard.
After two hours in the uncomfortable chair John's shoulder was screaming, and he was expiring from boredom—watching Sherlock sleep was reassuring but dull. So he wrote a little note and propped it up on Sherlock's table, then headed downstairs to the café for an early lunch.
When he came back ninety minutes later, he was surprised to find Nicky, in bare feet and pajamas, sitting cross-legged on the foot of Sherlock's cot. She gave him a beaming smile. "I didn't realize last night. You're that John, aren't you?" she said cheerfully. "He talks about you a lot." She stopped short. "Well, a lot for him, anyway."
John grinned back. "That's me." He held out his hand and gave a theatrical bow. "We weren't formally introduced—John Watson, at your service." Her smile broadened. "I would curtsey, you know, but I'm not wearing skirts at present," she said, sweeping her arm over her fuzzy pajama pants. "In fact, the only skirts I own are dance skirts. Nicolette Hardy. Better known as Nicky."
She was good company. They chatted comfortably while Sherlock let out the occasional light snore—Nicky mentioned that he'd had a second dose of pain medication shortly before, so he was likely down for a while.
After a bit, though, her conversation trailed off, and John could tell she was working herself up to something. She tilted her head down and looked up through her lashes. "He thinks it's his fault, you know," she finally said. "Daisy. I told him it wasn't—he wasn't the one who pumped her up on that fucking medicine. But he's very…he was upset." Her mouth worked and her eyes filled. "You'd have to know him to tell. But he's upset."
"Yeah, I know," John said quietly.
"Uncle Myc was here for a few minutes," she continued, after a shaky little breath. "He was nice, but Locket was horrible to him." She looked at John earnestly. "That's how you can tell he's really unhappy. When he gets angry if someone's nice to him." And John realized she was right—he'd never thought about it in exactly that way, but it was quite true.
"He thinks…because of the fire, you know. That he did that," she went on. "But I tried to tell him. They were never going to let us go. They told us that. And they'd already hurt him, really badly. So we really had no choice." She looked at John fiercely. "We didn't."
"Of course you didn't," John said stoutly. And that seemed to satisfy her.
Nicky wandered back to her own room shortly after that—she was due for some additional tests. Sherlock stirred and opened his eyes sleepily when she climbed off the cot, and she leaned over and gave him a kiss on the forehead, laughing at his disgruntled expression. "Don't be so stroppy," she said. "I'll be back in a bit. And Uncle Myc is coming back as well, I think."
Sherlock's mock gags chased her out the door.
It was a quiet afternoon—almost pleasant, if you forgot the circumstances. Sherlock was just drugged enough to be content to stay in bed with nothing more than the occasional whine, and John found an interesting nature documentary on telly that kept both of them marginally entertained. As sunset approached, though, things changed. Sherlock was due for additional pain medication but summarily refused it—Lestrade had texted shortly before to say he was on his way, and Sherlock wanted his mind clear for the conversation to come. John could see him tensing, either from pain or stress, but could think of nothing to relieve it.
Nicky came back just before 5. She took one look at Sherlock's tight, fake smile and turned a worried face to John, who just shook his head. She settled back on the foot of Sherlock's cot with a frown.
Shortly afterward, the door swung open to admit Greg Lestrade, Molly Hooper and Mycroft. John saw Mycroft take note of Sherlock's brittle calm, but the older Holmes said nothing, though he gave a fond smile to Nicky.
Greg and Molly each carried an assortment of folders, which they dropped thankfully on the spare cot. Molly, being Molly, asked Sherlock how he was feeling, and received the requisite "fine," in the breathy voice that was all Sherlock could manage today. Her face mirrored Mycroft's earlier look.
"I guess we should just jump right in, if you're ready, Sherlock," Greg began. His only response was a jerky nod, but that was enough, under the circumstances.
"So, we managed to round up everyone from the operation, and they're singing like larks—including some weaselly sod that crawled out of the loo and claimed he'd been assaulted by some mad curly-haired serial killer." He looked significantly at Sherlock, who rolled his eyes. "I'll let Molly get into the medical specifics of it, but short version is, a Korean researcher had come up with a new drug that caused women to produce lots of eggs, very quickly. But when the Korean officials realized that the doc's research subjects weren't all, shall we say, completely willing, they stripped his license and his funding." He paused and looked to his right expectantly.
Mycroft took up the tale. "Enter Allan Cumberland. His investment fund had been one of the donors to Dr. Lee's operations, with the promise of first shot at the eventual patent for the UK and US markets. When it became clear that that market would never materialize—because the new drug was lethal to a high percentage of patients—the focus changed. Cumberland had a contact in the illegal fertility treatment world—buying women's eggs and selling them at ruinous prices, which is illegal in most of the developed world—and that contact was extremely interested in procuring the drug and the future services of Dr. Lee. But they first required a true field trial under controlled conditions."
Greg picked up the reins again. "But according to Dr. Lee, this is where Cumberland got greedy. The initial plan had been to secure 'donors' off the streets—offer homeless women a nominal amount in exchange for accepting the treatment and giving up their eggs. That had a lot of appeal—no need to worry about nonsense like 'informed consent' when no records were going to be maintained in the first place. But at some point Dr. Lee mentioned that the eggs from this test round would simply be discarded at the end of the trial, since the bulk of the participants had exposure to diseases, drugs, malnutrition, the lot."
At that juncture the story was picked up by a very surprising source. Nicky had, to this point, been sitting quietly on the end of Sherlock's cot. But it was clear that having Sherlock Holmes as a childminder had led to unexpected benefits. "So they decided to find a high-end market—go to the type of people who wouldn't want to wait to go through normal channels, and had the money to burn. People who probably wouldn't be very concerned about checking the bona fides of the facility." Lestrade blinked in surprise, but nodded. Nicky, encouraged, continued. "But to cater to that crowd they had to be able to claim that they were providing the very best—the caviar of eggs, as it were." She gave a sardonic grin, and startled a crack of laughter from Sherlock, while the others looked some mixture of shocked or appalled. She noticed their response. "Look, this happened to me—and now I'm OK, and I refuse to wallow in it any further. I'm glad these bastards were stopped. I'm glad that Aislinn and Melanie are OK …," she stopped abruptly and looked anxiously to Mycroft. "They are, Uncle Myc, aren't they?" Mycroft nodded, and she continued, relieved. "And I want to do anything I can to put everyone who was involved away for the rest of their nasty, short lives."
"Bravo," Molly said softly, and every head swiveled to look at her, at which point she blushed violently but stood her ground. "Well, it is, I mean, I wish everyone was that strong after, well…" she trailed off. She abruptly picked up her folders and changed the subject.
"Right. Well, the medical side. I checked with some friends of mine who work in fertility medicine to get some help on evaluating the test results of the drug itself once we had the samples. It's similar to some of the other drugs legitimately used in clinics today. But the difficulty with those drugs is that they are tied to a woman's natural cycle, so that it takes about 2 weeks for eggs to mature from the ovary, even though there are many more eggs than usual. This drug accelerated that process dramatically, so that there could be as little as 3 days between administration of the drug and retrieval of the mature eggs."
She looked cautiously at Nicky, then continued. "But the problem was, not every woman's body could tolerate that kind of manipulation. Some women have dangerous complications even with the standard drugs—at least 10% of all patients who try the process have to stop for one reason or another. This drug, though—it's hard to be sure given that Dr. Lee destroyed all of his records from Korea, so we only have anecdotal evidence from some of his staff. But it's fair to say that at least 45% of those who take the drug have some kind of problem, and a significant percentage of those develop life-threatening complications. Deadly complications, unless someone takes the right actions very, very quickly."
Nicky had gone very quiet, her eyes a little too bright. But she spoke up, in a soft voice. "Can you tell us what happened to Daisy now?"
Molly fluttered, unsure how to proceed. "Um…maybe you should step outside for that bit?" she asked uncertainly. "It's not…I mean it's really…"
Nicky shook her head solemnly. Sherlock had tensed beside her, and her hand moved over to rest lightly on his blanket-covered leg. "I need to know. We need to know."
Molly looked helplessly at Greg, but when he nodded slowly she sighed and picked the folder back up, flipping it open, speaking directly to the papers rather than her audience. "Um, OK then. She had most of the same things we found in the last body, oh, sorry, Andrea. Total kidney failure, ruptured ovaries, internal bleeding. Her liver had also taken some damage, but I'm not as sure about that, since I don't know how long she'd been dead when the fire started. The temperature can make a difference…" she trailed off in response to the shocked reaction from across the room. Nicky had latched onto Sherlock's leg hard, her eyes round and stunned. And Sherlock's breathing and heart rate had sped up to the point that one of his monitors was going off, which launched John out of his chair. Molly was horrified. "Oh my God. I thought…you didn't know? She was, she'd already… You thought the fire?"
And it was probably because she'd known him the longest that Nicky was the first to realize. She had already launched herself from the foot of the cot to twine her arms around him tightly when Sherlock gasped, and shook, and, eyes wide and mouth working, shoved his head into Nicky's neck and sobbed like his heart was breaking.