Chapter 24

A/N: We never learn whether or not Bill is a doctor or a nurse in the other fics. Originally, I was going to have him as a nurse, but it makes more sense for him to be a doctor, I think. Bill and his wife are both Scottish, so it seems logical to me that they would move back up there, especially if they've still got parents and other family living there; the Western General is a hospital in Edinburgh, staffed by wonderful people who are fantastically dedicated and knowledgeable, and they saved someone very close to me indeed, so I wanted to include it as a kind of homage.

Extra trigger warning: drug dependency.

A few days after their meeting in the park, Sherlock strode along the corridors of the Western General Hospital looking for the staff room. A flustered-looking and blushing young Health Services Assistant was leading him through the maze of corridors behind the A&E department, and dropped him in front of the door. She knocked, poking her head 'round the door and chirruping, "Dr Murray, there's a gentleman here to see you."

She turned and left, looking rather like a 19-year-old version of Molly as she scurried away. A tall, broad man with light brown hair and kind green eyes appeared in the doorway, beckoning him in. He seemed completely unconcerned by Sherlock's appearance at his workplace; John had sent off a flurry of texts before leaving for a nanosurgery conference in Stockholm, and he suspected they had been to warn Murray of his impending arrival.

"Mr Holmes, I take it? Bill Murray-come on in. You want to know about John's injury."

Sherlock nodded tersely.

"This may be shocking, even for someone used to the most baffling and disturbing of crime scenes, so I would advise you to make sure you really want to know what happened to John."

"I need to know. I keep...imagining how it must have been."

What Sherlock didn't say was that ever since John had nodded off that night, he himself had not slept well at all. He'd been having what normal people might explain as nightmares; the more accurate term would be night terrors. He had seen his best friend, cold and alone, covered in blood and crying out for salvation to a God he didn't believe would help him; seen how it could have played out. John Watson's name on a white stone cross, read out in front of the Cenotaph and he, Sherlock Holmes, still alone and half-mad in his dark flat, shooting the walls to try and drive away the White Lady that clung to his heart and made him want. He would never admit it to anyone, but John made him stable, made him want something bigger and deeper and more useful than a fine white powder to push into his veins.

Bill seemed to know all this anyway, and didn't say a word on the subject.

"So, John's told you what he remembers, yes?"

Sherlock nodded.

"I'll start from my side of it, then."

"We were just finishing up with transfers to surgery. We'd been very lucky and not many had been seriously hurt. The last patient came in, a Para by the name of Mason, and the paramedics said that John had stayed behind and he was hurt, but it didn't seem too bad. Lots of blood, but he'd told them he was fine. That set the alarm bells ringing; John's always been a bad one for telling people he was okay when he'd actually been hurt badly. I spoke to the commander of the Paras at the scene, and they had no idea any of us were still there. We all looked at each other and knew we had to get out there, because John knew protocol, and protocol was to present yourself as a medic to the CO of whatever bunch of people was still hanging around in case they needed you. For him not to have told them meant he couldn't.

Me and two other medics from Bastion, Jack Goodall and Sarah Weston, flew out to start looking for him. We knew he hadn't gone far, and the Cherry Berries were helping, and one of them yelled that they'd found someone. When even the Paras are scared, you know the shit's hit the fan. We got over the dune, and John was laying face down. There was...so much blood. He'd lost at least three pints, and when you get to that level of haemorrhage your circulatory system starts to shut down. The entry wound wasn't too bad, considering it was an AK-47, but when we turned him over..."

Bill swallowed, shuddering.

"When we turned him over there was a socking great hole in his shoulder. The artery was almost busted, and John had managed to patch it but it was still oozing blood. His lung was collapsing and his face...his face was just transparent white. He was barely breathing, and his collarbone was shattered, all the nerves disjointed...it was the worst shoulder shot I've seen in fifteen years of soldiering. I just remember shaking his shoulders and screaming at him to wake up. It looked like we were too late. He woke up a little bit, then went under again; we put a central line in and pushed some artificial blood through, intubated him, and loaded him onto the stretcher. As we were loading him into the chopper, he went into cardiac arrest.

We got him back, but he was hanging by a thread. When we wheeled him into Resus, everyone was just standing there aghast; they hadn't wanted to believe it was him. He'd worked at Bastion before and he was so friendly it was impossible to dislike him, so everyone was distraught when we pulled in.

We pushed the blood through and packed the wound with 4x4s; they're cloths soaked in a clotting solution. He was really ill, and I mean really ill. At one point, it didn't look like he was going to make it to theatre. When we cut his shirt away, it had stuck to him, and you could smell the iron of it. He had eight pints when we were down there and another five in surgery, and I lost count of how many they gave him in Intensive Care. He crashed on the table, and once they were finished they transferred him into the ICU. He made it through the first night, but then the wound went septic. They had to debride it three times in all, and each time they had to take more function-it was in his muscles, and it almost went into the bone.

By the third day, the wound was starting to heal, but the fever was so high that he was still critical. I'd stayed around and got my leave shifted, and stayed next to him for a few days as Mary took care of him. We were getting a cup of tea together when one of the nurses ran up. He'd crashed again; he'd woken up and he was hallucinating that he was dead and in Hell, and his heart had gone into arrhythmia from the stress. He looked at me at the foot of the bed, shook his head, and his eyes rolled back into his head. He went under, and they only just managed to get him back. They had to put him under a freezing blanket just to get his fever under control. It was five days before he was stable enough to transfer, and he was in and out of consciousness for two weeks in the Queen Liz. I went to see him after, when I was on leave and he was near being transferred to Headley Court, and I never want to see anything like that again. His clothes were hanging off him and he was so depressed I thought he might try something...he made it back to London, and kept writing back to me, then he met you"

Looking at him intently, Bill raised his eyebrows.

"You saved him from feeling useless, Sherlock. You saved him, gave him a purpose, helped him get back all his confidence in his abilities. You might feel like he saved you, but I can tell you the feeling's mutual. Men like me are ten-a-penny, but men like John Watson are like gold; they don't come along very often, and you treated him like he had qualities you needed. You might not want to admit it, but you cherish him and his friendship, don't you?"

White and mute, Sherlock nodded. Smiling, Bill squeezed his shoulder.

"Come on. Come to mine for tea-my wife's making her gnocchi bake. My girls'll both want to hear how you met their Uncle John, too..." Bill chattered away as Sherlock felt the tension ebb away from between his shoulderblades. He didn't have to imagine anymore, thank God, but he could always keep a few of the images of John before he had known him, to remind him of how close their bond had been to never reaching fruition.

When John got home from Sweden, he found two bottles of milk in the fridge, a packet of his favourite biscuits in the cupboard and a box of specially-blended silver-leaf tea that made the finest cup of Assam he'd ever tasted. When he went to leave the kitchen, he noticed a CD box on the arm of his chair. Pressing play on his laptop, he started as music began to play. There were four movements; the first was andante, and conjoured up images of clouds scudding across a clear blue sky. The second was almost Oriental, full of the musical hum of bazaars and the endless burnt umber of an Afghan sky, and the third scherzo, a perfect microcosm of frenetic London. The last was calm and soothing, beautifully mellow, like a cosy front room and a cup of tea. He loved it, and was intrigued to see from whence it had come. The CD read' For John'. The note taped to the front, which he hadn't noticed as he was checking his e-mails, read simply:

'You mean very much to me. You are my first best friend, and I very much hope you will be my last.

-SH'