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John made his way back to the flat slowly, walking instead of taking the bus in order to give himself time to think about what had happened. He considered telling Sherlock about the meeting with the man in the pub, but it felt very wrong to play into the criminal's desires so in the end he didn't.

A purple bruise had developed on his back by the next day, but even though it hurt it was not too hard to hide from Sherlock. John was never one to walk around the flat with his top off, and now he hid his discomfort under his collection of jumpers.

At first he was not aware that anything strange was going on, it was just annoying little things that seemed to be going wrong all the time. In the week following the meeting he had three downright abusive patients, which eventually had him asking Sarah if she had purposefully sent him all the nutcases.

The first one, on Monday afternoon, had been a woman that, when he refused to renew her prescription for painkillers, had yelled that he was useless and pathetic and slapped him with a ring clad hand. The diamond on her finger had cut a red line across his cheek that bled, but did not need stitches.

He filed the necessary report for the clinic, but refused to report the woman's behaviour to the police. Despite the fact that she was an upper middle class house wife, she was also an addict and in need of some serious help to detox and get her life in order. John put all of that into her file and, according to surgery policy after an altercation, handed the case over to another doctor.

Two days later, just before lunch, he had a routine appointment for a young man who needed his stitches taken out. The boy was obviously nervous, but hiding it behind a thick veneer of pretended cool cockiness. He showed off and insulted John at intervals, but John could tell that he was probably more terrified of having his stitches taken out than he had been of the knife that caused the original wound.

'It is going to be fine. It won't hurt, I promise. Just sit as still as you can' John instructed as he got his instruments and started to remove the sutures. The boy flinched with the removal of each stitch and after the third he burst to his feet, pulling at the injury and making a small cut open up in the almost healed scar tissue.

'You incompetent bastard!' he yelled and as John rose to his feet the boy punched him solidly in the stomach, making him double over in surprise. He backed away, expecting another blow, but none was forthcoming. The young man just stormed out of the room, two stitches still left in his arm, and John stumbled back and sank into his chair drawing shallow breaths and cursing himself for losing control of the situation.

Once again he filed the necessary report, taking full responsibility for the incident, and passed the client on. In fact, before reporting what had happened he went into Sarah's office to tell her that if she wanted to report him for underestimating the need for anesthetics he would understand. She shook her head and laughed at him, telling him that he was being ridiculous, but he still felt a little uncomfortable when he went home. It had nothing to do with his sore stomach and everything to do with the feeling that he had, in fact, misjudged the situation.

By Friday afternoon John was tired. He had worked every day that week, trying to get his finances back on track after a stint of having to take time off to work cases with Sherlock, and he wanted nothing more than to get home and enjoy his weekend.

The last patient of the day was noted in his calendar merely as an ear ache, and he expected it to be simple. When the man turned up he was surprisingly twitchy, but John put that down to being in pain. After examining the man's ears however, he found absolutely nothing wrong.

'I can't see anything wrong with your ears, Mr Everet' he said in his most sympathetic doctor voice. 'Are you sure that was what you wanted to talk to me about? It isn't something else?' The twitchiness was beginning to suggest nerves rather than pain, and John felt a little sorry for the man's obvious discomfort. 'You don't have to be embarrassed about anything. I'm sure that whatever it is I have seen worse.' He smiled in that particular way that he used only on patients and Sherlock when he was being more unreasonable than usual.

'You don't believe me.' The man stood staring at John with frightened eyes. 'You're one of them, you're in on it, you want to kill me!' John approached the man with his hands held out in a disarming manner and crouched before the man's chair. Paranoia and hypochondria, he was going to have to get the man a referral for psychological evaluation. He just needed to get him calmed down first.

'Get off me, lover boy!' the man snarled even though John had not touched him. The glint of metal carving through the air caught John's attention fast enough for him to bring his hands up and stop the descent of the knife. It was not a large blade, just a small pocket knife, but it sliced through his palm with painful ease.

The cut was not deep, and John had the man restrained and the knife out of his hands in a matter of seconds as he yelled for help from his colleagues. Sarah wanted to call the police, but they compromised with having a security guard bring the man in for an emergency admission to the psych ward and John allowing Sarah to put four stitches in his palm, even though he thought it was probably excessive under the circumstances.

He returned home that evening later than expected and completely exhausted. Sherlock looked up from his book with a bored look on his face until his eyes landed on John's bandaged hand and he bounced out of his chair. Curiosity, only very mildly tempered by concern, was plainly written on his face.

'What happened, John? That's the second time you've been hurt at work this week. I thought the surgery was supposed to be safe and boring' He grabbed Johns hand, but John pulled it back with a tired sigh.

'Third, actually…' he corrected, 'I've had the week from hell.' He meandered into the kitchen and Sherlock watched him with raised eyebrows.

'I missed something, what did I miss?' John chuckled softly as he put the kettle on.

'There was nothing to see, so you didn't miss anything.' He put two mugs on the bench, plonked teabags into them and went to get the milk out of the fridge. 'I got punched by a frustrated teenager with a fear of having his stitches out, that's all. It didn't even leave a mark.' That was a bit of a lie, but not much of one and he really didn't want Sherlock asking to have a look like he had so often before when John had gotten himself hurt. The bruise across his back had turned from blue to black and was now progressing to yellow, but it was still clearly visible and he didn't want any questions from Sherlock.

In fact, all this drama at work was probably a good thing as it meant that he had not thought about the strange meeting in the toilet for days. Maybe it had just been a hollow threat. After all, he had not seen anything from the strange man all week.

'I told Sarah that she was giving you a run for your money as far as getting me into trouble, she didn't like that!' John joked as he handed Sherlock his tea. 'So, what have you been doing all day? Any word from Lestrade?' he asked and Sherlock's face twisted into a grimace.

'Nothing, absolutely nothing. I'm soooo bored!' Sherlock whined as John smiled and sipped his tea. Sherlock was so predictable… he would have to call Lestrade and see if there wasn't something, anything, to keep Sherlock occupied or the entire weekend would be a disaster.