They arrive swiftly at the clinic they had been at previously, surprisingly ending up in the same room they had been in during their first visit…
They keep john on the ventilator and he is still on it when Lestrade arrives the next morning looking more than a little concerned.
'We got a message, Christ how is he doing, he really doesn't look great' Lestrade offers nodding toward John's sleeping form. The ventilator is sticking out of John's throat making him look alarmingly unwell.
'He's not.' Sherlock gasps pain ripping through his sore throat 'He has pneumonia. It doesn't look great. He mumbles his face a decided shade of grey.
'Sherlock how are you doing Lestrade urges pushing the consulting detective down into his own bead.
'I'm fine, mild case of bronchitis, it's highly annoying, doesn't matter though.' Sherlock argues as he pushes up to get to his friends bedside.
'What message?' Sherlock asks his face going rather red as he manages the question.
'I'm sorry Sherlock. There was a murder yesterday and we got a note.' Lestrade hesitated not wanting to upset the obviously ill consulting detective.
'Just bloody well tell me' Sherlock quipped his face as stern as it had ever been as he argued with Lestrade.
'There was a murder the other day. A nasty one, a stabbing in the back, and well there was a note… for John, it said sorry it had gone too far, it was some sort of an apology… it said 'he' and I'm assuming he is the man we found killed, was not supposed to hurt john this badly the note said, he had only been told to cut him, not to stab him in the back. I'm really sorry Sherlock.' Lestrade offered making himself sound rather sad and hesitant.
Sherlock blinked hesitantly up at Lestrade, highly annoyed at the way that his own illness was preventing him from being at his friend's side and simultaneously annoyed that Lestrade seemed to think that the death of the man who had caused John to be in this place was in fact a bad thing.. Being in the same room as John helped but the constant shivering caused by an annoyingly high fever and the frustrating rattling cough kept him strapped to his bed and annoyingly distracted from the matter at hand.
'Dead, is he dead' comes the hesitant gasp from the bed that held Jon's weak body.
Both Sherlock and Lestrade turned to look at him. 'John, stay calm, let the ventilator work for you.' Sherlock argues as he approaches his friend who blinks up at him unsurely.
'Christ… Sherlock… it hurts.' John gasps and Sherlock is worried enough to push the alarm button on his bedside table immediately.
The bell brings a young nurse who looks terrified at Sherlock's hard glare but it results in nothing more than a silent call to the security staff who turn up and leave equally quickly. John is quickly sedated and told to let the ventilator do it's work and Sherlock is forcefully pushed back into bed to Lestrade's great comfort. He finds himself much less worried when he has John and Sherlock both fixed into their beds with appropriate apparatuses affixed to them.
The nurse usher's Lestrade out of the room telling him to come back later and Greg is honestly relieved at the excuse to leave as he has no idea of how to help the two men in the room he has just vacated. The situation is beginning to feel decidedly out of hand, especially with the illness he can't even begin to explain the origin of.
A doctor arrives in short order but no change is made to John's treatment. However a nurse appears every half an hour to check on his condition, making a small note on his chart which Sherlock constantly checks. Each time it gives John's temperature which is always above 39 degrees but not reaching 40 and describes his laboured breathing which, even with the ventilator, is causing Sherlock to stay awake even with his own illness, there is just no way he can sleep with John being so ill.
Sherlock sits curled up in his chair shivering uncomfortably as fever wracks his body making him feel increasingly weak. He really doesn't want to go to sleep and leave John alone but he is getting increasingly weak as his body gives in to the illness he can no longer deny.
When Mycroft arrives it is therefore a surprising relief and not the impediment that Sherlock would have expected. He doesn't like to admit it but Mycroft is probably the only person he feels safe to let guard over John in his place. 'Don't leave, keep John safe.' He mumbles to his brother as he allows himself to drift off to sleep finally allowing the illness to claim him.
Mycroft sits watching the two men sleep. He has a long list of things he should be doing but worry for his brother's welfare overrides them all. Sherlock is running an alarmingly high temperature not to mention the fact that Mycroft can tell he has not been eating or sleeping for some days, his frame has been dwindling at a rate almost as fast as his flatmates and Mycroft knows that the cause is the same. It is not news to him that his brother has grown decidedly attached to the small doctor who currently lies beside him with a machine doing all of his breathing.
Mycroft has more understanding of sentiment than his brother gives him credit for and he knows with painful certainty that if it had been Sherlock hooked up to that machine he would have been panicking inwardly. He also knows that that John is just as precious to Sherlock as his younger it brother is to Mycroft, maybe even more so and therefore it is with a heavy heart that he watches John as his breaths are mechanically forced into him.
Mycroft knows that there is nothing more he can do for either Sherlock or his flatmate. He has already arranged for the best doctors and the facilities are top notch and still it feels inadequate. He wants more than anything to be able to save his brother from this ordeal. He knows all to well what it is like to know that the person you care for most in the world is constantly suffering… he had lived through it himself for years watching Sherlock slowly self-destruct in his younger years and he does not wish that on anyone, and absolutely not on his younger brother.