Once they'd bundled John into the ambulance Sherlock is forced to release him. The medics work efficiently. They ask Sherlock questions. They don't ask John's name, Mycroft must have already told them, instead they ask practical questions about his condition as they struggle to keep him alive.

'How long has he been unconscious?'

'I don't know but I spoke to him… I think… twenty minutes before I found him and that is now nearly ten minutes ago.'

A tube goes into John's mouth once again and oxygen is promptly pumped into it.

'Do you know what he's taken?'

Sherlock blanches. He hadn't checked. The pills he had been urging on John for the past days had been OxyNorm. Slow acting Opioids the ex-addict in Sherlock fills in, he also knows that John had been given another bottle of pills, for emergencies, but not more than once a day the doctor had urged and lord knew what other vastly more terrifying drugs John might have squirreled away in his medical kit. Sherlock had somehow just assumed. He never assumed he always observed but no matter how much he tried to picture the little bottle on the sink its label remained blank.

While Sherlock panics one medic is stuffing heating pads around John covering his legs below the cut and his chest above it in blankets while the other administers an IV impressively into the little bit of John's hand that is sticking out below the crude bandages Sherlock had fashioned out of John's bathrobe.

'Maybe OxyNorm, but I don't know… he's a doctor… and I… I didn't check.' Sherlock's voice is very small and the medic next to him pats him on the arm. 'Do you know his blood type?'

'A positive.' Sherlock is relieved at a simple and practical question that doesn't show off how utterly lost he feels, how his deductive powers seem to have gone out the window the moment he entered that bathroom. If they hadn't then he surely would have seen this for the placating gesture it was. If they knew John's name they surely also knew his blood type. Along with any and every other medical history that could be put into a file and therefore be stolen and stored by Mycroft.

And of course they do. The don't ask how he comes to be marred by old and recent scars. They don't ask why his hand is mottled by fresh surgery scars and yet not in a cast. They do however start to whisper to each other in urgent voices as one of them pushes wads of gauze between John's legs as surreptitiously as he can.

Sherlock shivers. 'I know about the rape, stop protecting me and do your job.' He snaps and they share a worried glance.

'Do you know what he used to cut himself?' one of them asks trying to restore some calm.'

'Scalpel.' Sherlock mumbles his voice quiet again and then he falls entirely silent. One hand on John's calf, the calf is safe, the medics don't need to work there, but his eyes determinedly fixed on John's face where one medic is stoically working to ensure that John keeps breathing. A heart monitor starts to beat a slow rhythm and at least that is something.

Sherlock doesn't like to see how the medics leave John uncovered from the hip to just above the knee, it seems to leave too much of John's privacy bared for them to see. Then he realises that he has done the same. Oh God, he actually carried his friend naked into a London street for all the world to see. John will kill him… but then John might not be able to kill him, because John might not wake up and he begins to tremble more violently, his breathing coming in short puffs. His vision seems to swim and he feels a soft blanket land on his back. It's not orange, just thick and warm. He isn't aware of the medic who rolls up his sleeve and pushes a sedative into the crook of his arm but he does feel the world going foggy around the edges and all that remains is the slow beat of John's heart Monitor and the rushing of his own blood in his ears.

Mycroft is waiting at the clinic when they arrive and he hears the medics' shouts for help. He also sees as a nurse all but lifts his brother out of the ambulance and he starts toward him. Damn all this caring lark. He thinks as he moves forward and takes over from her supporting Sherlock who is swaying on his feet clearly drugged with glassy eyes and a confused look. 'He was panicing they had to sedate him.' The little nurse informs before she rushes to help bundle John out of the ambulance something which is made more difficult with heart monitors and oxygen and IVs tangling, but they are professional and experienced and when John is swiftly wheeled into the clinic Mycroft urges his brother to follow which he stoically does.

They're showed to a waiting room where Mycroft pushes Sherlock into a chair and looks him over. He is drenched from having hauled John out of the bath and smeared with blood, not only on his hands and clothes but on his face and in his hair where he has been rubbing at himself. Ten minutes ago when he was still tripping with adrenaline Mycroft has no doubt that he would have been looking terrifying, like some deranged axe murderer. Now sedated to the point where he can barely stand he just looks utterly lost. He's shivering, whether from the cold of being out in wet clothes or from shock Mycroft can't say. He wraps the blanket more tightly around Sherlock and goes in search of a change of clothes and some very sweet tea.

When he returns with a clean set of pyjama bottoms and an overly large sweater and two cups of tea Sherlock hasn't moved. He is sat staring at his hands mumbling under his breath. Mycroft was going to force the tea down him first but he can see what the sight of the blood is doing to his younger brother so he drags Sherlock into a nearby bathroom and strips him down to his boxers. They are wet like the rest of him but really there are limits so they will have to stay. He urges Sherlock to wash and Sherlock scrubs ineffectively at himself. After some ten minutes Sherlock is mostly clean. They can't do anything about his hair. That will have to wait until he can have a shower but it is so dark that it is hard to tell anyway. Mycroft hands him the items of clothing one at a time and stoically Sherlock puts them on.

Mycroft has never seen him like this. But then again the times that he has seen Sherlock drugged he has either been angry or so strung out he is more or less unconscious, or in fact completely unconscious, never sad or as Mycroft feels more inclined to describe it, utterly distraught. He pushes Sherlock back into a chair and puts one of the cups of tea in his hands. Sherlock is still trembling and he retrieves another blanket which he wraps around him with the order 'Drink, I'll see what I can find out.'

Ok I wish I could include in this chapter what happens when Mycroft gets back but then it will end up far too long. Sorry. I'll see if I can get it too you tomorrow…