Chapter 4: Visitors

I'm bored.

Sherlock remained lying on the hospital bed, his figure perfectly still. Even with his eyes closed, he was not sleeping; he refused to sleep. He had been unconscious for two days, according to John, and the last thing his mind needed was more sleep. What he needed was intellectual stimulation, something to jump-start his thoughts again. Deducing Dr. Frobisher had been a good start, but it wasn't enough to quell his restless mind to suffer through the night. Ideally, he could have just snuck off to the basement of St. Bart's to run some experiments in the lab, but leaving the room in nothing but a hospital gown… he wasn't desperate enough to sink to that level.

So there he was, at two in the morning, with nothing else to do but think I'm bored.

Sometime around midnight, Sherlock gave into the scientific temptation of what Dr. Frobisher had said earlier: "there seems to be a correlation between sociopathic disorders and the width of the corpus callosum. Your friend here has a longer, narrower corpus callosum than the average specimen…" He had pulled his charts from the foot of the bed and analyzed the charts for himself, satisfying his curiosity. His corpus callosum was indeed narrower than any other brain he had ever dissected (the assumption being that the previous owners were considered "normal" people; a safe enough generalization), and he made a mental note to look further into the topic. The information could prove useful in any cases involving supposed psychopaths.

But something else had caught his eye: a singular dark spot on his frontal lobe, just under the gash on his forehead. It was minor, not any bigger than a pinhead, and nothing he would worry about in the moment. If Dr. Frobisher hadn't said anything about it, it was irrelevant. Obviously John would have worried incessantly if there was any real danger; he would have worried even if the threat were non-existent. Regardless, he ran over the major functions of the frontal lobe: personality, emotional comprehension, idea manipulation, thought-processes, long-term memory…all of which still functioned perfectly.

He had revisited the explosion many times that night, playing the memory over and over in his head. It had become a video, each moment a crystalline picture of the panic, the people, the destruction that had ensued. The images, though, felt…strange, too perfectly maintained. It was an impossible sensation to describe: nothing was wrong, but something was missing. It certainly wasn't a memory issue, but a sensation that was impossible to describe. He wasn't sure what it was, but there was something. He just had to find it.

In the darkness, Sherlock allowed his senses to take over, intensifying the physical stimulation surrounding him. The steady beep of the machine by his bedside; the tick of the analog clock above the door; the rush of the breeze outside his window; the cars passing by the hospital; the muted thumps of a male nurse's tennis shoes walking down the tiled hall; the sliding of plastic as an automatic door opened; machines whirling; squeaking wheels of rolling hospital beds; crinkling sheets over his chest as his lungs expanded with each breath; the drip of an IV; the beating of his heart; the—

Stop. He had been listening to the same sounds for the past two hours; he had been aware of every human being that had passed by his door. There was no way he could have missed the sound of someone entering his room, much less walking down the hall. It was impossible…but there was no mistaking the feeling that suddenly reverberated through his body: there was someone in the room.

Sherlock opened his eyes. From the far-back corner of the room in which the bed and machinery had been placed, he could clearly see the entirety of his small room within a single glance. On the wall directly in front of him was a sink and small counter; to the wall on his left, two or three plastic chairs and the door to the hall. On the wall to his right was a window to the outside world, through which the light of the streetlamp outside streamed in, shading the room in an orange tone. It was open, allowing cool air to flow in through the rustling leaves of a nearby tree. The only other source of light was through the door itself; a narrow viewing window that opened out to the harsh artificial white of the hospital wing.

A figure stood by the window, its shape divided in two by the difference of light: one side orange, one side black. A female in a loose shirt and dark jeans had suddenly appeared in his room. The parts of her that were illuminated glowed, the lamp reflecting off her skin. She was waiting, her arms wrapped around her small waist and one hand held up to her mouth with in calm thought. A cool breeze rushed in from the window, making strands of her long hair float off her small face. Sherlock studied the features illuminated from the outside, but her dark eyes, cast down towards the floor in thought, was what caught his attention; they were distraught, troubled by something he couldn't read. Actually, he couldn't read anything about her at all. It was as if she were neutral; so insignificant that there was nothing to be deduced about her.

He shifted his body so he was sitting up. At the sound of his sheets ruffling, the girl's eyes shifting up towards him. She pulled her hand away from her lip and took a deep breath. Sherlock's eyes narrowed as they darted up and down her outline, his mouth tense with focus; there had to be something about her, something that would tell him who this really girl was. Why couldn't he think? He felt the answer lingering in his back of his mind, brushing the edge of his consciousness. It was frustrating beyond anything else he had ever tried to piece together; not because he wasn't capable of knowing answer, but because he knew it already.

The girl walked towards him, each muffled step aggravating Sherlock further and further. She sat on his bedside, and Sherlock could feel the weight of her body shifting his position on the flimsy mattress. She smiled weakly, trying to diffuse some of the tension that was building between them, but his cold glare remained. With a small sigh, she reached up towards the bandages on his forehead, brushing them lightly with her fingertips. He flinched slightly at the unexpected twinge that followed, which caused her to pull away.

"You should have left when I told you to; this wouldn't have happened," she said quietly, her voice breaking between a whisper and a low mutter. "I'm just glad you're okay. It took me a while to find you, though. I was getting scared…"

When Sherlock said nothing in reply, the girl's eyes grew wide with horror. Her lips parted as if to say something, gaping for a moment as she tried to read Sherlock's blank expression.

"You don't remember me," she trembled. It wasn't a question; she said it like it was a fact.

"I know everything about you, Alice Claireborne," Sherlock uttered with cruel articulation. It was the truth; he knew he knew everything about her. Everything he had deduced about her when they met in the explosion, he just couldn't reach it. But at least he remembered her name. "How did you find me?"

"It wasn't that hard," she shrugged. "It was simply a matter of checking patient registrations in the surrounding emergency rooms."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed as he cocked his head in a momentary thought. "I never told you my name."

"You're the infamous Sherlock Holmes; after your suicide stint, your face was all over the news for weeks. You didn't think I wouldn't at least recognize you, did you?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Just checking up," she smiled weakly.

"No," he snapped. "If you were just checking up, you wouldn't have bothered climbing up a tree to see me. In fact, you should be avoiding me; I can place you at the scene of the crime, and I run the risk of establishing you as a person of interest in the detonation of the explosion. I am the last person you should be contacting right now, which means you're desperate. You need me for something; something on my persons or in my memory. Judging by the fact that your first remark towards me was about my ability to remember things, I would assume the latter. Why did find me?"

She paused, studying him with a dark gaze in the dim room. "I need your help," she whispered.

"Not until you explain to me the full extent of your involvement in the explosion," he muttered.

"That's absurd. You already know all that."

He glared, waiting for her to admit it was a sarcastic remark or an inane statement.

"You already know all that," her voice choked slightly as she repeated it.

Sherlock looked into the darkened face, still trying to read her expression, when he stopped. Her eyes were panicked; he felt her heart rate rising as she clutched onto his wrist. In their silence, there was something too familiar about her expression. The machine's beeping sped—

No, Sherlock finally paused, is that her pulse or mine?

Simultaneously, they turned to the heart monitor, watching as its metallic beeping sped momentarily and then slowed, returning to its normal pace. The girl sighed, releasing his wrist as she stood up. But Sherlock's eyes never left the heart monitor; there was something wrong. She had influenced his heart rate, but he was positive that the sensors on his chest wouldn't be able to pick up the pulse from her hand.

Alice was about to say something when something caught her ear. After a quick glance towards the hallway door, she stroked the bandage on his forehead lightly.

"I'll see you later," she murmured into his ear. With that, Sherlock listened as she walked back to the window. The familiarity, the sensation of falling, burned deep within him, but his thoughts were slowed, processing things through a strangely dulled lens. There was something faded about their experience together; something that didn't make any sense.

"Wait," Sherlock called out. But when he looked to the window, she was gone; probably having climbed down the tree outside the open window.

Sherlock flopped back onto his bed, resuming his original position. His thoughts raced through that whole encounter, but nothing made any sense. He recalled the Alice Claireborne of the explosion, as well as the Alice Claireborne of the hospital, but the images barely connected. It was as if they were two separate entities, warped by some sort of twisted fault. His mind returned to the hospital, each stimulant pulsing with its regular continuity, but the thoughts of Claireborne stabbed through. She was just a girl; why couldn't he deduce a thing about her—

Sherlock's eyes flashed shut, and he let his body go limp. There was someone outside his door, and he knew exactly who it was the moment he had entered the hall. The heavy clicks of tailored work shoes; the slow, singular pace of movement; the rustle of a tight suit: only one person could walk down the hall of St. Bart's emergency ward after visitor hours without being escorted, and Sherlock had no desire to speak to him.

There was a squeak as the door was silently pushed open. Sherlock could smell his presence; the scent of men's cologne faintly permeating the air. For good measure, Sherlock allowed his nose to twitch before rolling onto his side, away from view of the intruder. Feigning sleep was more appealing than conversing with his brother, despite the fact that only ten minutes ago he was desperate for stimulation. In no way would he allow the likes of Mycroft to see his puzzled mind; he would deal with the Alice girl on his own.

Mycroft stood in the doorway, watching his brother. While part of him had expected Sherlock to still be awake at two in the morning, he knew that his brother had been through quite an exhausting ordeal. According to the paramedics, Sherlock had been buried so far underneath all the rubble of the explosion that, if it weren't for Mycroft's directions, he would have died of asphyxiation before anyone else could find him.

Then again, he was part of the reason Sherlock had even been caught in the shockwaves of the explosion; a contributing factor to a series of circumstances that placed his younger brother in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time. The only reason Sherlock had left 221B Baker Street that day was because he found the hidden security cameras that had been installed in John's absence. A heroic attempt at caring, but a failure nonetheless. Suddenly, Mycroft found himself feeling a strange melancholy. It wasn't that he regretted putting his brother under surveillance; it was the fact that he could not protect Sherlock even under the highest of security levels. One day, he would be too late to save him; nothing to show for the effort but a compilation of security footage and a dead body on a hospital bed. But for now, Sherlock slept.

With a sigh, he found himself over Sherlock's bedside, a hand over his bony shoulder. It hovered, unsure whether or not to make contact. Sherlock's dark curls flounced over his head, making Mycroft chuckle softly. Perhaps it was better that his brother was asleep; there would be no petty arguments or battle of wits or snide comments, only peaceful existence. And, for the moment, that was enough. The relief that his brother was indeed alive, that he had found him in time, was enough.

"I'll come back later," Mycroft mumbled under his breath, pulling his hand back. Then he was gone; out the door and down the hallway with nothing but the click of his shoes against the tile to mark his movement.

Leaving Sherlock awake in his bed once more; alone and quite unsure what to make of his late-night visitors.