Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter LV - Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

-Emily-

~~~~~~

I have become very familiar with hospital interiors, as of late.

They're all similar, regardless of the changes those in charge of refurbishment deem personal: all of them sterile, all of them reeking of disinfectant and stale breath, all of them bearing walls of varying shades of white, sometimes cream, sometimes a cloying yellow like milk gone sour. A hospital would not be complete without plastic bouquets stagnating in unchanged water. They always seem to select the most artificial flowers at their disposal, as if they're designed to make the spectator understand just how intangible the living world is from their sickbed.

I look around, cynically speculative, then focus on my new, unfamiliar attire – the replacement to the wretched hospital gown, stiff and papery, the colour of bleached mints. My formality has been stripped down somewhat, and it feels strange; this ensemble is equally expensive, equally well-made, but the smooth satin of the Westwood skirt is gone, replaced by fitted trousers and a silk blouse. I've missed wearing trousers – although putting them on was a challenge in itself, what with my plaster cast restricting movement. I have Ivan to thank for the new clothes. He brought them with him on his last visit.

Jim hasn't been once.

The first time I saw Ivan in my ward room was, in fact, my first day of consciousness. I'd been kept in a controlled comatose state for the initial two weeks of recovery. From what I've been told, the metal struck the back of my head and fractured my skull – along with lacerating a good quarter of my total skin expanse and shattering my elbow to the brink of disrepair. I'd woken up terrified, disoriented past reassurance and sick with panic, because one moment I was watching Millie retreat from the table in wide-eyed horror, and the next I was there, in that hospital room, alone, lights bright, my neck in a brace and my life monitored by the slow rotations of a blood transfusion.

Ivan stepped in before my disorientation escalated into some panic-induced aneurysm: his face focused, his hand was a source of grounding on my own – an anchor of sorts; a tether – and I dimly remember him trying to explain where I was and how I'd got there.

The second time is also a hazy recollection. I came round, sweating in my casts and retching, dry retching, unable to speak between the heaving of bile from the lining of my stomach. He was sitting in a nearby chair, shuffling a pack of cards, his fingers moving unfathomably quickly: arching the cards, the curved spine of a dancer, running his thumbs across their widths and flicking them, cardboard rectangle by cardboard rectangle, into his waiting palm. I noticed the stitches across his forehead for the first time, too – a thin line just below his hairline, sealed with delicate sutures in pale blue. He dropped his cards on seeing my sorry state and called the nurse. She brought me my bright needle. All was blissfully quiet for another twenty-four hours.

The third time I woke up to see Ivan Yakovich, however, I remember with crystalline clarity. He was spinning a single card between his fingers and I was slipping in and out of sleep when the police arrived. The conversation sticks in my head; fragments of dialogue snagged in my memory.

It wasn't Lestrade – which, in hindsight, worked in my favour. The man heading the arrest had stopped at the door in a moment of perplexity; I don't think he was expecting to see another person in my ward. He introduced himself as Inspector Johnson, and, since I was too satiated with drugs to formulate a coherent response, turned to Ivan and said, almost apologetically, "I'm here with a warrant to arrest Emily Schott."

Ivan stopped spinning his card and looked up, blankly.

Inspector Johnson repeated the statement. He got no response.