CHAPTER 33: IF YOU STAY
All hospital waiting rooms feel like the gates of Hell, Giulia reflects, twisting her hands spasmodically, incapable of staying still in those torture chairs. The most pessimistic part of her already wallows in sorrow and heartbreaking loss. The memory of an ancient pain resurfaces violently from the deep ends of her soul. She has lost enough people in her life; Sherlock cannot leave her as well. He can't do that to her, not him, too.
The recollection of a Latin sentence comes back to her: Spes ultima dea, meaning 'Hope is the last goddess'. It refers to the Greek myth, according to which the goddess Hope was the last one to remain among men to console them, even when all the other gods abandoned the Earth to retire to Mount Olympus. It means that hope should never fail, and it is always possible to be hopeful until the very end.
But what if that's the end?
Giulia hunkers down next to a wall of the waiting room and silently cries buckets of bitter tears. Why did she allow herself to cater to the delusion that her life could ever be granted a happy ending?
Five hours later, she is still in the same position, crouched down by the wall, her head sunk into her crossed arms. She hasn't moved, she hasn't drunk or eaten anything. She isn't living anymore—stuck in that limbo at the gates of Hell. She feels inconsolably lonely. The worst part is, she could avoid being on her own. She knows John arrived at the hospital a few hours ago. She saw him inquire about Sherlock at the main desk while nervously passing a hand through his hair, a grief-stricken expression on his face. He didn't notice the hunched figure in a corner of the room, though; he didn't see her. And he wasn't good at waiting idly, so he left. He probably went for a walk in the garden around the hospital, because once every half an hour, he reappeared at the desk, frantically asking if his friend had gone out of surgery yet: asking, hoping, getting more desperate by the hour. She has been staying there on the floor, quietly studying his movements, unseen. She never once questioned why he didn't look for her. She reckons he is too worried about his best friend to think about her. Still, he must imagine that she is at the hospital too—not a difficult deduction given the panicked voicemail she left him. So, why hasn't he tried to find her to seek consolation in the sharing of those endless moments of agony?
To be fair, she hasn't reached out to him either. Why couldn't she bring herself to stand up, run to him, and plunge into his arms? She can't really say, but she feels incredibly distant from John, as if a thousand-mile abyss separates them, even when standing in the same room. There is an inexplicable yet almost tangible void between them.
What has happened? She doesn't have the answer, but she hasn't yet found the strength to raise her head to him and call him over to her hiding spot.
A tap on her shoulder snaps her out of her thoughts. Her head shoots up, ready to meet John's eyes, but the kind gaze that greets her doesn't belong to any familiar face. A nurse is towering over her and smiles warmly at the broken woman.
"Mr Holmes is out of danger. He just got out of surgery."
She hasn't even finished her sentence when Giulia springs to her feet, as the sound of those velvet words still echoes in her brain. Sherlock is out of danger. Out of danger as in 'still alive'. He didn't leave her. He survived.
"May I see him, please?" She begs, still dazed by that good news she didn't dare to hope for.
The nurse shakes her head. "I'm sorry, only members of his immediate family are allowed in."
"Please, I need to see him, just for one second. Please."
The nurse looks around furtively, then lowers her voice.
"I might let you in for a little while. That's all I can do."
"It'll be more than enough. Thank you, thank you so much." She shoots her a grateful smile.
The nurse's eyes scan her appearance from head to toe, and her face clouds in a grimace of concern.
"Maybe you'd like to change your clothes first."
Giulia lowers her gaze to her hoodie caked in dried blood and suppresses a shiver. She slowly nods, and the nurse leads her to the Lost and Found. After rummaging through a pile of forgotten clothes, she fishes out of the stack a jumper in her size. She goes to the toilet to get changed and almost jumps, startled in front of her reflection in the mirror. She hardly recognises herself: her ruffled hazelnut hair falls messily on her shoulders to frame her hollow-eyed, pinched face. She takes a deep breath and washes her face with ice-cold water that slowly brings her delicate features back to life. She quickly changes into the found jumper and goes back to the nurse who guides her along several corridors up to Sherlock's room.
"I must warn you: he is still unconscious. You can go in, but I don't know how long you'll be able to stay until someone kicks you out." The nurse winks at her and leaves her alone in front of the door. Giulia holds her breath as she lowers the handle and steps in.
Sherlock lies peacefully on dazzling white sheets. His chest raises and lowers rhythmically while the regular beeps of the machines attached to him resound in the bare room. She fights back a waterfall of tears and shuffles towards the bed. She drags a chair closer and sits down next to him, taking one of his hands between hers.
When a doctor comes in to check Sherlock's life functions and sends Giulia out, she wanders into the hospital ward without a purpose: she doesn't want to sit, and sleeping is out of the question. Not until Sherlock wakes up, anyway.
She mindlessly takes her phone out of her pocket and stares blankly at the notification of 15 missed calls from an unknown number. She needs to blink repeatedly at the screen before her brain can process that information, then she automatically unlocks the phone and calls back that presumably rather worried person.
Someone picks up almost immediately.
"Hello, Giulia?"
She recognises the hoarse voice at the other end of the line and melts in a fond smile.
"Detective Inspector Lestrade—I mean Greg, is that you?"
"Yes. Thank goodness, you finally called me back," he breathes out, relieved. "How's Sherlock?"
She brushes the back of her hand under her watery eyes. "Still kicking."
She can clearly hear a deep sigh, then Greg says, "When we got to the Admirals' house, we found all the signs of a shooting. There were bloodstains on the rear door, and it was evident that things went horribly wrong. I phoned John and learned that he wasn't with Sherlock: you were. I'm sorry to ask this of you right now, but are you ready to tell me what happened?"
They spend the next hour on the phone as she gives a full statement of the events. When she finally hangs up, still reeling from her account, she spots the kind nurse leaving Sherlock's room. She walks up to her and doesn't even need to say a word; the nurse smiles sympathetically and keeps the door open for her, whispering, "You're going to get me in trouble today."
Eight hours later, when Sherlock regains consciousness for the first time, Giulia is right beside him in the room. The doctors noticed her presence, but somehow those angels in white coats let her be. Not even John was allowed in. She has heard him protest fervently twice right outside the door.
When Sherlock flutters his eyes open, she jumps out of the armchair in the corner and runs to his bed with bated breath, stealing a glance at the flickering monitors.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Sherlock," she forces out a whisper through the sudden lump in her throat. Her lips tremble open in a wide smile.
He blinks, confused. As soon as his eyes focus on her, a feeble smile bends the corner of his mouth but quickly disappears, replaced by a grimace of pain.
Her face clouds over and she can't mask the quivering in her hands. All the emotions she has tried so hard to hold back for the last hours are pouring out forcefully, overwhelming her. There is everything in it: boundless joy, visceral fear, a merciless feeling of abandonment, and the ecstatic sensation of relief.
"It's alright. You'll be fine soon," she hastens to say.
He turns his head to look straight at her and murmurs, "I already told you: you are terrible at reassuring."
She bites down on her lower lip to choke back tears at that playful comment, and she puts on a crooked smile, sitting down on the chair by his side.
"You're definitely back now."
He takes a few deep breaths, ignoring the burning jolts of pain that spread all over his body, and tries to become fully active again. He glances at her.
"What happened to you? You look like hell."
Giulia chuckles. "You're one to talk."
"I have a good reason: I almost died. What's your excuse?"
She lowers her gaze, muttering, "You almost died."
She instinctively takes his hand in hers and caresses softly the bony back of his hand without thinking; she has been doing it so often when he was in a pharmacological coma that now it comes like a conditioned reflex. He doesn't know, though. He can't know. He can't know that she likes the simple touch of his hand, that she finds the frailty of his skin among her hands oddly soothing, like a promise-filled sign of life. The life that she had desperately held on to for the longest night, hoping, praying.
And yet, every time she took his hand, he was always unconscious. Now, though, he is sentient and responsive, and she realises it one second later, expecting him to recoil. To her surprise, he doesn't withdraw his hand as he did in the car when they brushed their fingers while reaching simultaneously for the radio. He doesn't even flinch at the human contact as he did back in Baker Street, just the day before. He plays with her hand and strokes her palm, trailing his fingers up to her wrist. She lifts her eyes to him with a timid smile.
He smirks at her. "Why is your heart rate elevated?"
Her eyes widen as if he caught her red-handed, and she lowers her eyes to his slender fingers resting on the inside of her wrist, taking her pulse.
He looks at her and studies her reaction as she blushes slightly and bites down on her lip for the second time. Why does she do that? That's unnecessary, he thinks. She is going to make it bleed under her pearly teeth. That would be such a shame. The curve of her lips is perfectly plump, looking so gentle, so soft... his thoughts wander off.
She looks around the room and clears her throat awkwardly, awakening him from his daydream.
"Actually..."
He tilts his head in anticipation.
"I could ask you the same thing." She arches a brow, hinting at the increasing value of his heart rate as shown by the machines attached to him. The rhythmic beep is growing faster and the strip of peaks and valleys on the screen is getting more frequent.
Sherlock instinctively turns his head to stare at the monitor, and his jaw almost drops. He wasn't expecting such a reaction from his own body.
He swallows and casually leans back against the pillows.
"You're lucky that I still have a heart rate."
"I am lucky?"
He stares back at her, no humour in his expression now.
"You asked me for a favour, remember? You asked me to survive. I hope you realise you owe me one now. It's massive debt."
At his mention, painful memories of the tantalizing moments of their race against time vividly come back to the surface, and they both feel as if they were in Mrs Hudson's car once again, desperately trying to outrun death. He glances at her, and all the memories rush back to his mind as a sudden realisation dawns on him with a one-second delay.
"Hold on, you- you are alive," he mumbles, confused.
Giulia frowns at him. Did he hit his head or experience memory loss?
"Of course I am. You were the one who got shot, not me," she affirms matter-of-factly.
He keeps staring at her, bewildered.
"Why aren't you dead after what happened?"
"You mean my reckless way of driving?" She jokes.
"No, I mean the explosion at the Italian Consulate. How did you survive?"
She gapes at him, speechless. It takes her a few instants to process his question, and then she blurts out, "How do you know?"
He shrugs lightly, wincing in pain at the swift movement.
"John found an old newspaper article about it and told me on the phone, seconds before I got shot."
"Oh. So that's what distracted you during the shooting and made you the perfect target," she realises and gives him a reproachful look.
He fixes his eyes on hers and says gravely, "Giulia, I almost died, and I was leaving this world without knowing who you are and what happened to you. Now I want the truth, and I want it complete. I think you owe me a story."
She nods and sighs. "I do. But I'd like John to be present, too. He deserves to know as well."
She stands up but doesn't budge; she looks down at him and whispers, "Before he comes, there's something I have to tell you... Thank you."
"What for?"
Giulia furrows a brow, ill at ease. "Staying, surviving."
"I did it for you," he murmurs, his voice softer than usual.
A smile tugs at her lips.
"Yeah, I managed not to kill you in a car accident and get you to the hospital just in time. You are very welcome."
Inappropriate irony: her armour—the insurmountable defensive wall all around her heart. Whenever things threaten to become a bit too personal, she seems to shy away, terrified of the consequences of unchecked feelings.
He doesn't play along and remains serious.
"No, I didn't mean thanks to you—even though I'm quite grateful for that part, too. What I wanted to say is, I struggled to survive just for you. I did it for you. I'm glad to be still alive, but I'm even more pleased that you can see me like this."
She runs her eyes all over him with a sarcastic face. "In a hospital bed?"
"Would you have preferred on the mortuary table?" He cocks his brow at her, then waves all sarcasm away. "Honestly, I could have died, and it'd be fine by me. No regrets," he declares serenely. He is not kidding: that's his truth.
"Aren't you afraid of dying?" She asks with sincere curiosity.
"You know me: I'm quite the logical person. Why would I fear something that isn't either bad or good? Death is eternal silence and dooming darkness: nothing more, nothing less. Nothing to be afraid of. There was only one problem: I couldn't stand the idea that you would have lived the rest of your days thinking that you didn't save me. You tried hard not to lose control. I know, I noticed the signs of panic in your behaviour; I saw how lost you felt. But you kept trying relentlessly. I owed you at least my survival."
She smiles. She was wrong about him, some hours before. He isn't the Tin Woodman. He does have a heart hidden deep inside, under all his logic and cold reason. And on some very rare occasions, such as this one, it can be heard beating timidly.
"No debts, then?" She teases him.
He shakes his head. "No. No debts."
She stands awkwardly next to his bed, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She makes him more comfortable and props up some pillows behind his curly head.
"You could make me that cup of tea anyway when you come home," she jests. She bends over him to adjust the cushions, mentally cursing her clumsiness.
"I don't think so," he replies jokingly as his breath blows over her face.
She raises her gaze to his mesmerising eyes: they are so close. He is so close.
He lifts a hand as far as his stiffened muscles let him and brushes a tuft of messy hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear. His hand slides gently behind her neck, and he draws her closer. She leans forward: their faces are an inch from each other. He can feel her breath on his lips as she moves to close the infinitesimal distance that separates them.
Their lips are about to touch when the door handle is lowered with a loud click. They quickly pull away as their heads whip simultaneously toward the door. One second later, John's face peeps out of the doorway.