Mrs Hudson died.
Though neither of us cried, we didn't go out that day, afraid that somebody might see our grief and… what? Think it inappropriate for two men who weren't her sons but her lodgers? We didn't dare ask one another whether we were any more than that, though we both considered her more than just a landlady. The conversation circled this topic and similar ones like a ceaseless vulture around the corpse we both had seen.
When she got the pain in her left arm she called our names, from the verge of death, not because Watson is [for he remains in present tense] a doctor, not because we were only one's there, but because we were a family of sorts. I kneeled, making fists in Watson's clothes like a young boy, and he held her, taking the responsibility of the older brother. Though we'd never been her sons before, as the blood coursed through her for the last time, it could have been ours.