"I really hit him Greg, hit him hard."
John sits in the interrogation room, folding and unfolding his right hand. The knuckles are bruising red, the numb ache reminding him of his outburst, of Sherlock bleeding on the floor, and the look in his eyes.
"This isn't a hit. This is physical assault," Lestrade's voice is wrapped in disbelief and concern.
"I'm pretty sure Sherlock won't press charges," John says to his hands.
Lestrade gapes at him.
"Sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean—" John looks up, then away, shaking his head. "I ju—I don't know what's wrong with me, and I'm so, so sorry. Am—am I under arrest?"
"Well I could arrest you, but—I'm talking to you as a friend," Lestrade says genuinely. "Look, I know you're going through a lot, mate, but I really don't understand—how could you do it, to Sherlock? How could you even DO IT?"
John remains silent. He's already asked himself the question a thousand times but can't seem to find the answer. Lestrade tilts his head trying to catch John's eyes but fails, and then reclines back in his seat. He is of course, shocked hearing that John had beaten Sherlock to gravely injured. He was there when Mary died. He knows how much it's been for john and he understands that John blames Sherlock for Mary's death, but he never know that it would get this far. This is crime, a crime that no doctor should ever commit. And he takes up the cudgel for Sherlock, whom has been a great man ever since he met him, and is becoming a good one with John and Mary and Rosie.
"I'm sorry," John has said it so many times that the word no longer means anything, but what does it matter when he is long deluged in guilt of which he can't see a way out.
"Sorry won't help," Lestrade sighs.
John looks up and Mary is leaning against the concrete wall of the room. He meets her gaze, "Are you mad at me?"
"No, no. I'm just disappointed," Mary answers plainly.
"I am, a bit, yes," Lestrade's voice pulls him back to reality.
The DI seems slightly surprised by the blunt question but answers still. When John looks to the wall again Mary is gone.
He lowers his head and concentrates on his bruised hand. Inside he feels empty, like someone has torn out all his insides, like what he felt when Mary died in his arms, but unlike then this is not hurting, just hollow, except there's something that keeps his heart hanging in his throat and beating faster and faster that it gets hard to breathe. He fails to figure out what that is until—
If Sherlock Holmes dies too, who will you have then?
The voice, Mrs Hudson's voice, seems to come from somewhere remote, and begins to echo around the room, or in his head. It's hard to tell the difference. It's getting more intense by every resound that John has to screw his eyes shut and press his hands into his ears.
The beeping of Lestrade's phone extinguishes all the voices and as if splits John's head in half, leaving him panting in sweat.
Lestrade clicks on the phone screen and brings it to his ear, "Hello?"
All of John's focus is on the DI's face. Compared with the torturing hallucinations, the last thing he wants is to face the cruel reality.
Lestrade's brows unfurrow as he nods and exhale in relief, "Good, good. On our way."
John has never been so relieved in his life that he nearly smiles. Lestrade stands up with a reassuring look, "He's out of surgery. Let's go."
In the car John cannot bring to joy that Sherlock is alive. Disturbing details of Sherlock's injuries begin to kick in. he tries to figure out how bad it is by recalling the assault, but doing so makes his limbs cramp all over again as a stronger wave of guilt rolls over him.
They meet Sherlock's attending at the nurse station. She's still dressed in her surgical gown and hat, and looks up from the chart as Lestrade calls her, "Dr Grey, this is John Watson."
"How is he?" the words slip right out.
"He's not out of the woods yet," Dr Grey sounds somewhat indifferent, looking John over. "He had four fractured ribs which led to haemothorax and tension pnuemothorax. His spleen had ruptured, and as the result of massive blood loss he coded on the table for over five minutes, so we had to remove his spleen. His blood toxicity has shown over 20 different drugs. Both of his kidneys are shutting down and we've started him on dialysis, but it could be too late. I'm sorry."
"Jesus," John puts his face in his hands for a moment. "Can I—can I see him?"
"I'm afraid not," Dr Grey states. "The patient is suspected to have been physically assaulted. Contact is not allowed between the suspect and the victim. That's for protection of the patient."
John's heart twists at the word 'victim', and no one knows better than himself that he's the criminal, not a suspect.
"What if under the surveillance of the police?" Lestrade bargains. "Please, Sherlock is his friend."
For a second Dr Grey widens her eyes with surprise. Then she nods and looks away. "Fine. Follow me."
They leave the nurse station and goes through the waiting area, stopping before the long narrow corridor of the ICU. "Second room on your left," Dr Grey gives Lestrade a warning look. "He's only allowed to look at the patient. Keep him out of the room."
"Thank you," John nods to her politely.
"Just one thing, personally," she adds and John turns to look at her. "You're a doctor too, and I'm surprised that one of us could ever do this to his friend, to any human being, to be honest." She turns to leave.
John retract his eyes from her furthering blue figure as they stop by the window, and looks into the room, and sees Sherlock lying unconscious, pale as the white dotted hospital gown that disappears into the dark blue blanket at his waist. Wires stuck out of the gown ending up into a 6-lead heart monitor. The central line in his shoulder is connected to morphine and other medications and two thick tubes goes into his right arm, delivering blood between his body and the dialyser. A nasal cannel is placed across his bruised and slightly swollen face. And those are just the visible ones of all sorts of tubes that are keeping him alive.
John finds himself subconsciously going over every piece of medical knowledge about the myriad of machines and wires and tubes which he is only way too familiar with. Being able to tell how alive a patient is from a heart monitor was a thrilling wonder in medical school, but at the moment ONLY being able to tell that Sherlock is alive through the screen is desperate. John presses his head against the glass, then his forehead, yearning to feel the warmth of Sherlock instead of the coldness of the glass. In a trance he feels the urge to treat this patient, to heal the injuries and to soothe his pain, like what he always felt as a doctor. He fixes his stare on the patient's face. Sherlock's eyes are peacefully closed, but John remembers the tears in them, pain, fear and the last-moment guilt.
Yeah, guilt. I should be the one felling guilt. I'm not a doctor. I'm a criminal. I hurt people instead of healing them. I nearly killed my best friend.
"John?" Lestrade says in a soft voice, almost inaudible, but pulls John out of his thoughts. "Can I take you home?"
John nods, and takes one last look at Sherlock, letting yet another swell of guilt flush over himself.