A Desperate, Painful Kind of Love

8

Blue eyes darkened by anguish turned to the man on the bed.

Sherlock.

Pulling himself together after the explosion that hushed a voice he might never hear again was akin to forcing together mismatched puzzle pieces. He had been experiencing too much at once and it was overwhelming to the point of shock.

He closed his eyes against the internal onslaught, though the reality of this situation was not something to be ignored simply because he couldn't handle the pain. He opened them again and the hospital room was before him as always, the sight no less dismal.

Looking at Sherlock's form was difficult to do, yet his gaze never lingered away for long. The man was broken, so very broken, teetering on the brink of death, a place so far and dark that none could reach him to pull him back to safety. John bowed his head, hands gripped together to keep them from crushing something under his despair.

He kept his eyes on the haggard rise and fall of Sherlock's chest, one of the many machines in the room forcing his lungs to work so that he may survive. John had barely left this room in the past three days. The adjoining room could have contained the secrets to the universe and in the days he'd been here, he would never have known. Only once, early on, had he left . . . when the silence became rope around his neck and the sight of Sherlock so helpless started pulling it tight.

The pull between the need to stay and the urge to leave threatened to rip him in two, but desolation and powerlessness had become close companions and walking away from Sherlock's bedside hadn't offered the reprieve he'd sought. He hadn't made it three yards, emotions plaguing every nerve ending down his very core, before turning back, weaving around the doctors and nurses crowding the hospital's hallway.