Title: Human Contact
Universe: BBC Sherlock
Rating: R (for implied adult relations)
Summary: John learns a hard lesson. Or two.
A/N: "Blind Banker" does a scan of John's CV. John is one medically trained man!
Doctors Without Borders was an excellent opportunity for a surgeon-in-training to get some real world experience. And in the summer of 2001, between taking his Bachelor of Science from King's College and starting his courses for Bachelor of Surgery from the same, John joined up as an intern.
Strictly speaking, he was not there in a medical capacity; he was there to function as a communicator. Just how he was meant to do that when he spoke exclusively English and most of their Republic of South African patients spoke only Bantu was beyond him, but they muddled through.
After the first week, John was getting used to the long, impossibly hot days; and the smell of humanity when infections were left to rampage as they would and wash water was a, no pun intended, pipe dream; and the roller coaster of human babble combining with animal squawks and chirps. What he hadn't got used to was the image of one woman in an orange-red veil that hid all her face except her eyes.
Those eyes were larger and darker and sadder than any John had encountered, ever. They prompted him to smile kindly if ineffectually at her whenever he caught her eye. There was never any crinkle to indicate she smiled back at him. Nor did she interact with anyone. Rather, she hovered like an oversized butterfly at the edges of the tent compound, looking for a place to alight.
Then one evening, as the extra mosquito nets went up, she appeared at John's elbow and stood still, looking at him. One small, brown hand crept out of the folds of her veil and grasped his wrist. She gave a gentle tug. John followed.
He tried to make his movements slow, his attentions gentle, his kisses affectionate. He wanted to drive out of her mind whatever had caused her eyes to carry such unfathomable misery. She resisted; or rather, she resisted his attempts to give her pleasure and focused her attention on John's pleasure.
The next morning the woman was back in her orangy veil, once again hovering at the sidelines. She started to approach John during a lull but fled when one of the doctors drew near.
"You'll want to watch out for that one, mate," he advised John with an Aussie accent worn thin from years spent away from his homeland.
"What's wrong with her?" John demanded, assuming the sadness in those doe eyes was partially due to some bigotry or callousness for the foreign physicians.
"As best we can figure, she's this village's Patient Zero. HIV. Got raped by an infected man near ten years ago, spread it to her husband, and when he died she turned prostitute. Nobody knows how she's still alive after all this time, but Lord knows her partners aren't. She tries to ply her trade with all the fresh fish. Don't let her get too close but try to nice about it. Poor little sheila, nobody in the village even lets her within twenty feet of them without spitting on her or yelling curses at her."
John's blood turned to ice water and stayed that way throughout his internship. Even after he recalled they had used a condom, even after he had quietly sought out testing – negative, thank God!, even after he'd seen and experienced worse things in Afghanistan, the thought of the veiled woman still chilled him. It wasn't just his brush with HIV. It was imaging how desperately lonely a life she had led, and possibly still led. He rather hoped she hadn't lived much longer after her encounter with him. He couldn't imagine how much more misery her eyes could contain.