He felt tired, safe, warm, and comfortable all at once; a welcome feeling after half-imagined nightmares of being helplessly chained to a cot in a dank room, shivering and alone…of cold combined with heat to produce the most unpleasant of opposites…of voices over his head, unintelligible, invisible. He had thought they would never stop, and was quite happy to find they had been just that – dreams, nothing more. He was in his own bed, his headache reduced to a dull throbbing, no longer straining for air that stung like splinters being driven into his lungs.
He gave a tiny yawn of contentment and sighed, wriggling under the blankets to a more comfortable position, thus drawing the startled attention of the half-dozing consultant in the bedside chair. He blinked as Holmes rubbed eyes that were so shadowed it looked as if he had been in a street-brawl (and lost badly) and offered him the weariest of smiles.
"I am very glad to see you, old chap," Holmes said quietly.
He frowned, perplexed.
"And I swear before heaven, Watson, if you ever frighten me like that again I might just kill you myself," the detective whispered.
He was still not quite sure what exactly had happened, but somewhere there had to be a gap in that chain of logic, he puzzled in bewilderment.