CHAPTER 9: THE BURYING (Part 4)
Consuming despair invaded the doctor the first time he saw Sherlock after he was found. Heavily sedated and laid unconscious on a clinic bed he seemed so much younger than he was, but the bruises and bandages highlighted just how much he was still suffering, even while sleeping. Almost a week later, John was still purely allowed to catch a glimpse of him through the small window on the door to his room; and only when there was absolute certainty that the detective would not wake up and see him.
John understood why they had to do this, yet it killed him inside to know that his best friend believed him dead, even if he wasn't. He had past experience with that, and all the horrors he had seen in war could never compare to the pain and hollowness that his loss had given him. The soldier may selfishly not like it, but he would do it, for Sherlock. He would stay away until they were sure the boffin would benefit from his presence and not a moment sooner.
That is to say that such sacrifice did not mean he would not be there whenever he was needed. It was not easy, of course; this "hospital" did not necessarily encourage visiting; and the nurses, although already very much accustomed to him and his day-long stays, were not precisely happy to see him aimlessly wander the premises everyday. Still, the soldier felt he had no choice, he was physically unable to stay away. While Sherlock was gone, he had vowed to never leave the musician's side again should they ever found him, and now that they had, he refused to back down on that promise come hell or high water. Let him burn or drown, but he won't abandon his friend to his fate. Never again.
John knew deep down that Sherlock was clearly displaying some distressing symptoms whenever he was conscious, yet he denied the diagnosis they provided. No matter how many times Mycroft listed the markers to him with an exasperated expression, the doctor simply rejected the mere idea that his friend could be anywhere near as bad as they made him to be; the detective was not like that, they might as well be the ones which are crazy.
However, if the soldier were being true to himself, he would say what the british government told him sounded exactly like what they were describing, and that's what terrified him the most. How accurate the conclusion was, yet how very wrong it had to be: because Sherlock was not demented, and he did not really need to be on constant watch by the nurses.
Clearly, the blonde's typical synderesis was proving lacking in the face of the violent assault that his friend's predicament had provided. Clouding his objective reasoning with what said friend would designate as crippling sentiment; if he were still himself, that is. John was stuck in an unusual state between mourning the loss of what his friend used to be, and questioning if his old self would ever be returned from the ashes once it was all done.
Lies and delusions were enough to break a man, never mind the source of said illusions; and if the metaphorical lobotomy inflicted on the boffin's brain by past events had been tampered and his recollection of reality shattered, the doctor worried immensely if there would even be anything left of him to salvage now that they had finally managed to exhume him from that hell.
Shadow figures, and whispered words teared Sherlock's fragile psyche everyday, while his instinctual responses were edging him more and more towards a definite diagnosis from which they would not escape. Somehow, the detective had convinced himself of the army doctor's demise -or maybe someone had granted him that favour- and was managing to rip the final rift between him now, and the life he used to live in the process. John wondered who had put those thoughts in his head, all the while Sherlock struggled against invisible threats. Both broken by the separation that the sheer codependency their shared lives caused; taking turns at coming apart thread by thread.