Broken Child

Chapter 6

Molly wasn't allowed to leave immediately. Sherlock was informed that she was to stay over night, four to five days. Maybe more, depending on how quick she was to recover. Sherlock had already come to this conclusion of course. Typical after caesarean delivery's. Sherlock couldn't, nor would he even dare to leave Molly during her revival.

"I'm not taking John home without his mum, that's absurd,"

Sherlock said when Molly suggested the idea of heading back to their flat without her.

"Besides you're supposed to feed him anyway, I couldn't leave even if I wanted to."

Their first night at the hospital, Molly was injected with a pump to deliver a very low dosage of narcotic into her system. Sherlock presumed it was something like morphine, whatever it was it caused her to become extremely drowsy and sensitive. Emotions Sherlock had learned to endure from Molly, especially when she began suffering from pregnancy symptoms. Nonetheless he kept her company, kept one eye on her while the other watched over their child. Whenever Molly wasn't cradling him in her stretcher, or feeding him, or quietly talking to John as if he could talk back, it was Sherlock who would pace around the room with little John lying in the crook of his elbow. Sherlock might not have had the exact concept of how to precisely handle a baby engraved into his brain, but when it came to comfort, he did know a few things. He knew that people like to be held as a way of comfort. Babies were like people in Sherlock's mind. People who were lacking the knowledge to survive life independently and unable to do much. And...smaller. Holding John in his arms Sherlock was aware that the baby was comfortable, and that made the part of him that was so inept to emotion, ring with happiness. It was a strange feeling, even with the few years with Molly he had never grown completely susceptible to that automatic feeling of, well, positivity towards something of this nature. It reminded him of flipping a light-switch on if you've been sleeping for years. It was sudden and unexpected and left you unprepared to react. But it was strangely intriguing for him, the man in hibernation. So he kept holding John and pacing the room until he would get fussy and Molly would complain through the morphine about how he's just a Mommas boy. Sherlock thought perhaps it was just because John grew tired of the repetitive motions, but of course he wouldn't protest.

After the first twenty four hours Molly was given fair portions of solid foods to digest. Before, she had been drinking sips of water when she felt up to it, and sometimes eating small amounts of applesauce, or yogurt. Sherlock sat at her bedside on the second day, having watched her eat half a biscuit, a couple of crackers and some cheese squares. A sign that her intestines are functioning normally. When she wasn't eating or playing with the baby, she was sleeping. She slept for hours, with little John snuggled up against her shoulder. Sherlock would often fall asleep too, at the foot of the bed, his head resting on top of Molly's legs. He was asked by the nurses if he wanted his own bed. Sherlock refused. He wasn't going to leave his family out of his sight, nor did he want to pass up the opportunity of spending as much time as possible with them, wether conscious or not.

Molly was eventually switched from the pump to an oral painkiller. Once the catheter was removed and she began taking medicine it was evident that the pain was beginning to surface more prominently than before. She kept demanding heavier doses of the prescribed painkillers which the doctors happily, yet cautiously, supplied. Sherlock thought it helped a bit. She was in obvious discomfort though, no matter how hard she tried to conceal it. Her cringing, her quick shifts in her bed, her knitted brows, he didn't have to be an expert at deduction to read the signs. It was mid-day when the nurses asked her to try and walk to the bathroom. Molly handed John over to Sherlock who began to wriggle from Sherlock's grasp. His beady eyes slowly opened, he was interrupted from a nap and didn't like waking up in someone else's arms. He wanted Mummy right now. As Molly was gripped by the arms and forced to sit up, John began to squint and grunt in Sherlock's arms. Sherlock hushed him. He bounced John up and down, trying hard to focus his full attention on the baby. He noticed out of the corner of his eye his wife's feet placed delicately on the tile floor as she lifted herself up. She sucked in a breathe quickly before taking one cautious step forward. Molly immediately gripped the fabric of her nurses uniforms. Bloody hell, she thought. Why is the bathroom so damn far away?