Failing Upward

Chapter 7 (part 1): The Universe is a Computer

I still felt cold. Cold and dry. My nerves brittle--I felt like I'd snap at any moment, standing on Sherlock's stairs or "our stairs" as he called them. We started up them as fast as possible. We didn't want to frighten Mrs. H with my gory zombie look. I never believed in miracles. But what was this? I reached my hand inside my blood-soaked shirt, still disbelieving. I was there, and I was alive not the walking dead.

We staggered up the stairs. Like all the times before, I supported Sherlock more than he supported me. He was truly confounded from all he'd seen. It flew in the face of all rational thought, and Sherlock hugged logic and deduction to him like a blanket. Even with all the biology classes I've taken, I was more prepared to accept the insanity of it all than Sherlock.

This was also a turn about in other respects. I was the one injured. After all the close calls Sherlock had over the years, I'd managed to go relatively unscathed. I couldn't count the times I'd helped him up these very stairs, looking much like I did now. Over the years, he'd been shot once and stabbed twice (not that seriously though--once was a slash to the arm and the other was his thigh, and both I stitched up myself). I'd also mended innumerable sprains and spent many an evening in the ER broken ribs and arms.

Ironic that I'm not going to the hospital after all the times I forced him to go over the years.

Sherlock brow furrowed, the concern on his face transparent, as he turned the key to the front door and kicked it open with his foot.

"I feel fine, and besides," I said, toeing off my shoes, "they'd ask too many questions that I can't answer if we had gone into the hospital."

"Not nearly as many as are racing through my head."

I nodded. I couldn't answer this or any other of the incalculable questions. How could I explain this impossibility? Nothing that I've learned in my organic or general chemistry, anatomy or any biology class ever alluded to healing this rapid--that would take cell regeneration on at a rate unknown to man. Yes, some reptiles regenerate eyes, legs, and other body parts, but not at the speed I'd healed. It made me wonder if I was even human.

Instead the logical ramifications, it was how it happened that played in an endless loop in my head. God, I remembered every fucking detail. No shock, no memory lapse this time around. Every aspect glinted and blinded. And like the knife that sliced and ripped at my flesh, it sliced and ripped at my memory. I wanted to know why he did it.

And Sherlock's words. I haven't said I love you yet . What did he mean by yet , and how might I answer back if he said those same words again?

Never so happy to see the inside of 221B and never so thirsty as this, I motioned for Sherlock to turn on the kitchen tap, and I grabbed the nearest glass and filled it to overflowing. I drained it, then refilled and gulped it down again. The glass filled a third time. I slowed and sipped it.

"I think I'm good for now," I said. "I don't want to get sick."

Sherlock took the glass from me. We hobbled the to couch where I flopped back with a sigh, and Sherlock sat down next to me, putting the water on the coffee table within arm's reach. I stripped the offending shirt up and over my head and set it on the coffee table next to my glass. After all the blood-borne pathogen training, you'd think I set my blood-soaked shirt anywhere but there, but I was too tired to give a fuck. And Sherlock had set much worse on that table like kidney stones and human eyes.

Sherlock grabbed an old tattered quilt, and he cocooned inside it along with me. My teeth chattered, my body shivered, but that was all okay because Sherlock just wrapped tighter around me. He touched my bare belly and shoulder, leaning close and inspecting where the wounds had been.