Chapter Eight

The sting of a bad trip rattled my cortex. Even without opening my eyes, I could tell my surroundings had dulled. I did so regardless.

The room was oppressively dark, bordering on sensory deprivation. A reddish hue beamed from a heart monitor, casting an outline around the hospital bed. A clock hung from the opposite wall, its hands obstructed by distance and my own limitations.

Metal cuffs strapped my wrists to the bed. An IV attached to my arm, running a drip. Even in this lack of light, there were no distortions in coloration between the liquid and the plastic, and no labels on the bag—a saline drip or dextrose, not blood.

There was a consistent throbbing at my lower arm, slightly stronger than the generalized soreness. The finely netted texture of gauze wrapped around the spot I remembered a mouth.

The lack of hospital guards roaming my door did mean, whatever occurred, it hadn't been interpreted as suicidal. The restraints clinked, hardly more forceful than a bell against bone. The hallway outside was silent, nigh-deserted, without as much as a suppressed rubber sole smacking the tile.

Logistically, a substantial percentage of what I remembered had to be hallucinations. The trick would be deciding which parts, if any, weren't.

I doubted the conversation with Mycroft was a false. My phone log would confirm it. I could retread the conversation with him later. Everything after that was worth questioning.

Based on my prior patterns of behavior and the methods of treatment, the most probable cause was an overdose. The scenario aligned at least roughly with prior patterns of behavior. I looked for father. He didn't show. Bored, I slipped in a public bathroom, used my emergency supply, and, by negligence or intent, entered a physical or emotional state that necessitated treatment. The tactile and visual hallucinations, while uncommon, could've been provoked by anxiety prior to ingesting the drug. Careless, but admittedly plausible.

Still, there were alternatives. I couldn't see without removing the bandage whether the injury matched teeth. If it did, then, that still didn't dismiss the possibility it was self-inflicted. I needed my phone. Which meant I needed out of the restraints.

There were three differences between being handcuffed in my prior probable hallucination and this moment. No witnesses were present. I wasn't disoriented. I had an IV.

I was cognizant enough that its intended purpose, which, in this context, would be to expedite the elimination of the drugs from my system, was no longer necessary.

I planted one foot along the bed, angled my head to grab the cord between my teeth, and pulled. The sheets rustled lightly with each tug. I repeated the motion, the cord nudging slightly up and my arm slightly down each time. On the sixth pull, I'd extracted the IV.

Fortunately, the needle wasn't particularly thick. Ordinarily, handcuff locks were picked with bobby pins or paper clips. Needles were approximately equivalent in size and material. The malleability was unideal, but workable. After all, it wasn't unheard of for technicians to bend an IV needle fifteen degrees or so for ease of insertion. An extra seventy five was within reason.

I gripped the corded end between grit teeth. My ears stayed as open as I could will, checking for disruptions. Thus far, none.

I lowered my head level to my wrist and dipped the needle halfway into the lock, to bend the needle in the angle of the keyhole. At the desired point, I leaned left, molding the needle to the shape of the corresponding key. I retracted the needle, repeated the motion at an earlier point in the lock, and removed it again. Still no disruptions.

I jabbed the bent needle into the double lock and turned my head counter-clockwise, away from the lock's direction of travel. At first, nothing. Second, same. The fourth attempt, the needle's tip knocked against the correct bar in the handcuff's housing, disabling the lock. I then adjusted my mouth's grip on the needle, moved it into the now-accessible hole for the single lock, and turned clockwise. The lock released.

Some three minutes later, with my right hand, I unlocked the left side. I stabbed the IV into the top of my pillow, where it'd be moderately unobtrusive, and staggered to the fabric pile at my bedside.

Approximately forty three seconds of quiet rummaging later, I had my mobile in hand. The SIM card was still inserted, so, either I'd been aware long enough to put it back in, or I'd never removed it. I turned on the phone and waited for the answer.

Fifteen messages flashed on the lock screen, all but two of them from unlisted numbers, Mycroft's presumably. The listed number was Mrs. Hudson's. I flicked past them to my texts. Nine messages. Seven from Hooper, entering varying numbers of question marks and methods of inquiring what I meant. The last two were from John, both three words. 'Where are you?' and 'On the way'.

My thumb hovered over my contacts list. I could call someone. My phone had access to send a message when I recalled being in father's car, so, Mycroft would've triangulated my location during the incident. John may have been present. Wherever I'd been, whatever had happened, someone brought me here. It was just as obvious as the other glaring truth—that telling the wrong person would get me branded high, mad or a hybrid thereof.

A vibration passed through my phone. The sound bounced off the wall. I'd had to answer to stop from alerting the hospital I was conscious. The instant the connection stabilized, my options were limited. Either I turned off the mobile until they'd stop trying to call, or I stayed on, kept hushed, and coped with Mycroft.

I'd come to terms with these options until I heard something on the other side—not a person, but atmospheric sound. The whir of a rotating fan, swaying on crescendo towards the receiver. A squeak of a chair against wood floorboards. Padding patting by a surface, maybe paws. Flies buzzing. Interior sounds, and not ones I'd heard in months.

"Sherlock, are you there?" Sherrinford's enunciation had shifted. There wasn't as much fluctuation in his voice as at the funeral, deadpan, mildly sardonic—a tone he adopted when speaking around a beard. Why he allowed himself to grow one so often, I'd speculated as frequently as it occurred. Probable cause, laziness.

"Mycroft spoke with you," I muttered.

"Don't hang up, I'm not on orders. Tried to reach you of my own accord. And succeeded by pure luck and your evident present mercy."

"No commands from Mycroft? Must be the sole man in Britain without them," I dismissed, a touch less sarcastic than I intended. Sometimes, the country did seem Mycroft's personal playset.

"That he called in the first place shows how desperate he was for someone to speak to. Doesn't bother with me, much." A hint of Sherrinford's trademark melancholy skipping across the satellites to my ears. He meant to sound lighthearted. He was just terrible at matching his intent.

"Honestly, I'm surprised he relinquished the dessert tray that long."

"He didn't, really. Hadn't needed to. My second language is garbled-by-dessert."

"This isn't what you called for," I stated, blunt. It wasn't as if teasing Mycroft, or, for that matter, anyone but himself, was a habit of Sherrinford's. He was a bleeding heart far before a brain.

A long inhale crackled against the receiver. Each moment's pause betrayed futile concerns. "You have so much potential, Sherlock. I'm not sure you see it, since it's so innate to you, since you're so close to Mycroft—"

Had I no other motive, I'd hang up. Sentimentality was imminent. I was sure I could infer the obligatory supportive pleas. Except, Sherrinford's pleas were informed by Mycroft's interpretation of events. Whatever other people believed had happened, it was something Sherrinford would perceive as terrible enough to prompt whatever he was about to say.

He cleared his throat, giving my last warning for the length of the speech to follow. "You might not expect it, might not believe me, but, I swear, I do know what it's like to be constricted. Alone. I—" he paused, swallowing, to gather words he wasn't sure how to articulate without sounding as ridiculous as he invariably would to me.

I sat on the bed, at a moment's notice from the position the staff anticipated I be in. The ear I kept away from the receiver attended to the hall, listening for anyone at all. Still, nothing. I didn't bother speaking. Sherrinford had lectured vegetable gardens. He didn't need affirmation to ramble.

"It's the nature of youth to have false clarity. Every man, person, at that age, we know just enough to assume we know everything worth awareness, that the world doesn't fit, and the ills and ignorance are all so vile, that either you ignore it, or the rage overtakes you. For most of them, their presumptuousness is stupidity. They do something dumb, and it fades. But for you, disillusionment has evidence. It's so palpable, so real, you either burn in rage that gets dismissed by others' ignorance, or you drown in pointless idleness, in distractions, in ways to stop the sting.

"Because everything is dumb. Everything is relatively defined and wrongly prioritized. Our bodies mean nothing, our values are arbitrary and culturally constrained, and the answers to our problems are so obvious, so close, that no one else sees them. And it seems easier to stop there, to quell the anger or the lonely, to mask it by corroding ourselves in the same way as everything else, lost in deterioration, a placated, beautiful waste. Sherlock, did you put the phone down?" Sherrinford's pitch raised at the inquiry, marginally less patient than before.

In summary, Sherrrinford was desperate to connect with me, most likely from suspicion I was going to do something exceptionally dangerous and/or stupid. Furthermore, he wanted affirmation that he had a basis through which to understand me.

My eyes trailed back to the mobile and the faint glow the screen cast amidst the dark. "Yes."

Sherrinford tensed right back to his train of thought and the increasingly deliberate gloom. "I used to feel that, adrift in the wasteland. It took a drink to pull me in, to dull the resentment, the dwelling, to cloud myself until thought had no hold nor meaning. I still want that feeling. Every time the pressure rises, that memory calls. But I hold back. I already squandered so much. So many opportunities. So many futures, worlds where those obvious solutions meant something, where what I hated so much, in some tiny way, I stopped.

"I'll always, think, exist as this person I twisted into. There will always be a part of me that belongs to drinking. And I know it's not quite the same, what you found, but, you don't need to hide the problem, that you have that fraction of you, as long as you don't think it is you. You can be so much more than that. You're already more. Not just than me, but, of Mycroft, too. You're not just smart, you're curious. Don't squander your mistakes by copying mine. They're not as worth making as it feels. Please."

So, the current interpretation of events was an overdose via something ingested deliberately. Whether the hospital had received any blood test results or not had potential for being worth seeing. I doubt they'd have tested for nerve agents, though.

"I understand," I answered, not bothering to show much change. It didn't seem worth the bother to placate his delusions of helping. "You look better as an inactive alcoholic. An inflamed nose didn't suit you."

"That was my immune system, allergies. It was never consistent."

"Your liquid concealer wasn't, either. A shade off from your skin tone. Re-appropriated from, which was it, then, Beth?"

Sherrinford's ex-fiancee was renowned in our family for two things. She was the remarkably terrible person who left him at the altar. Also, she was a great way to derail any unwanted conversation with Sherrinford into an instant sulk. It'd marginally improved since he'd started dating someone who wasn't obviously cheating on him with a dive bar band guitarist, but, it was the difference between a serial and a spree killer. Quicker, but nonetheless problematic.

The deflation in his self-confidence was so quick, it bordered on audible. It took an extra fifteen seconds for him to speak. "I'm not even talking about it."

I checked the empty hallway, the pulled the phone off to check the screen. The time flashed three thirty seven—afternoon for Sherrinford. Here, it explained the lack of supervision. Night shift, shorter staff. One accident downstairs would stop everything.

I took advantage of the pause as the build up to an excuse. "I have to go. Nurses."

Sherrinford's tongue stumbled to catch up with something I'd not realized he hadn't known. "Wait, Sherlock. You're still in the hosp—"

I considered that the time zone shift had slipped Sherrinford's mind. He'd at least know I was in overnight, or he wouldn't have called. In any case, it wasn't worth correcting. I'd gotten enough to infer most of what Mycroft knew. From that, there was only one person who could know the truth—the one who'd either found or called me in.

I changed from my hospital gown back to my tattered clothes. A few stains were still visible upon inspection. Sweat and deodorant beneath the arms. Mud of varying consistencies caking my shoes. Grass on my jeans, two small tears and blood flecks on my jacket, and, most tellingly, no t-shirt left. Whatever condition it is, the staff hadn't wanted to scavenge it.

I chewed off the hospital bracelet, buttoned the coat, flipped through my smartphone to the browser and plugged in a number to the search. My eyes stayed on the screen while I walked through the hall, straight out the front door. Only one nurse stopped to wave at me. I asked her for directions to another ER, claiming the wait was too long and the cut I wanted looked at not quite that urgent. She let me go without another thought.