Tales From 221B

The Adventure of the Comatose Blogger

"Where is he?" The detective's voice rang out like a shot. His eyes were wild, scanning the hospital waiting room over and over as if the smallest detail would answer his question. Yet for only the second time in his life Sherlock's brilliant mind was failing him. The pale woman sitting on a couch across the room was just another useless obstacle and a smudge on the floor was a mindless detail.
Sherlock raked his fingers through his dark curls. The room stayed devastatingly empty of sound. No one dared approach him, fearing he might attack if provoked, like a cornered animal. When he spoke again his voice was raspy and punctuated with ragged breaths.
"Please... please tell me that he's alright."
At last the silence was broken as a door opened off to the right. From behind the door came Lestrade. He seemed to have aged ten years in the last hour; lines and shadows painting his face in a depressing canvas. Sherlock rushed over to his friend and grabbed his shoulders. He leaned in close until his face was centimeters from the detective inspector's. Etiquette and personal space were thrown out the window. Sherlock needed answers and he needed them now.
"What's happening, Lestrade? Where is he?" Sherlock said with urgency, his blue eyes not once blinking or glancing away from Lestrade's brown ones. The officer only sighed, exhaling deeply into Sherlock's face.
"The doctors say his chances of survival are slim. Surgery's due to end in a couple hours and after that we can only pray and hope for the best." Lestrade said.
"Not good enough!" Sherlock shouted. He spun away from Lestrade and started to pace violently back and forth across the white linoleum.
Just when the nurse at the desk began to worry that Sherlock would wear a hole in the newly waxed hospital floor the detective collapsed into a black armchair. His long fingers tapped frantically on the leather sides of the chair and his eyes blinked rapidly. To anyone who didn't know him the man appeared to be deep in thought, but Lestrade knew that his friend only fidgeted in this way when he was too overwhelmed to think.
No one else in the room spoke, the only sounds were the methodical tapping of Sherlock's fingers and the ticking of a clock on the wall. Each jerking turn of the hands was like the twist of a knife in Sherlock's gut.
Seconds dragged on into minutes and minutes dragged on into hours. The dark of night outside the window gave way to the rosy beginnings of sunrise. Inside the waiting room Lestrade was sprawled in a quite unprofessional way across a beige loveseat. Mrs. Hudson had arrived some time ago and was now dozing in a plush red armchair. The nurse kept checking her watch in between yawns, clearly awaiting the end of her long shift. Only Sherlock was alert; he was sitting ramrod straight and his eyes were fixed unblinkingly at the door to the operating room as though if he stared hard enough it would incite a miracle.
It was close to 7:00 am when the surgeon finally walked into the waiting room. His face was gaunt and his eyes had dark circles like tombstones. The second the door handle began to turn Sherlock leapt from his chair to greet the doctor.
"How is he?" Sherlock demanded. The doctor gave him a grim smile.
"Honestly, it's not looking good right now. We were able to remove all three bullets, but the damage was severe. His right lung collapsed, and the piercing of several organs led to internal bleeding. Luckily the third bullet missed his heart, but he lost nearly 4 pints of blood. We did all that we could; from here it's just a waiting game."
Sherlock steepled his fingers underneath his chin. His chest heaved in and out as he took a moment to compose his answer to the surgeon.
"Could I see him?" He asked in a voice as distant as marble. The doctor nodded and gestured back to the door. He led Sherlock down a hallway. The air smelled strongly of antiseptic but underneath the sterile perfume lie the undeniable copper stench of blood.
The doctor directed Sherlock to a room at the end of the hallway: number 221. When he saw the sign on the door the detective let out a humorless chuckle. Of all the numbers it could have been. Sherlock never believed in coincidences, the universe was rarely so lazy, but all previous logic no longer applied to this new world.
Without so much as a thank you Sherlock pushed past the doctor and into the room. He was greeted by the rhythmic beeping of a pulse monitor and the blindingly white walls of a hospital sickroom.
Sherlock's breathing hitched as his eyes settled upon the man lying in the hospital bed. John. His John. But all of the things that Sherlock liked best about John were lost. In place of John's clarion indigo eyes there were only dark, sunken pits. His normally lustrous silver hair was lank and dull against the pillows. Bandages covered his torso instead of a wooly jumper.
The room suddenly seemed too small, too bright. Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut as if somehow if he wished hard enough it would erase the events of the past 24 hours. But when he opened his eyes he saw only the empty, sharp lines of the hospital instead of the cushy armchairs and peeling wallpaper of home.
He grabbed a rickety metal chair and dragged it to the bedside; screeech. The chair made a deafening cacophony against the floor but John didn't stir, and neither did Sherlock.
The detective flopped into the chair with all the grace of a corpse. His gaze was unfocused, his eyes glazed and expressionless. The sickroom blurred around him until it was made of shapeless colors.
For hours, days, centuries maybe, the detective sat at the bedside of his comatose friend. In the distance he could hear someone coughing and someone else crying, but he registered these sounds like a stoned person might. Whenever doctors came in to check on John they left quickly, like they thought their presence would somehow set Sherlock off.
Judging by the little window in the corner, another three nights had come and gone since Sherlock began his vigil, but he still had yet to move. It was sometime during this fourth day that Mrs. Hudson came into the room, wearing a clean beige blouse and smelling of Baker Street. She placed her hand on Sherlock's shoulder.
"Why don't you come home for a bit, dear? He wouldn't want you to stop taking care of yourself." The landlady said in a gentle voice. Without even looking at her, Sherlock shook his head.
"I don't want him to wake up alone." He said.
"It'll be any minute now, I'm sure of it." Mrs. Hudson said, but the frown in her eyes told a different story. She lingered for a few minutes longer, the debate about leaving Sherlock obviously raging in her head, but ultimately she ducked out the door alone.
Sherlock's only reaction to the click of the closing door was to pull his coat closer around his shoulders. At some point he had removed it from his arms and was now using it as a sort of blanket, but he had no recollection of this change. He had eyes only for John.
The monitor in the corner beeped steadily and yet John's face grew more ashen and his breaths shallower. It seemed to Sherlock's sleep-deprived, and deeply paranoid brain that he would never wake up.
"Don't think like that!" He shouted aloud. "He will wake up, he will."
After a few moments of ringing silence the detective leapt from his chair, sending it clattering to the ground. His coat collapsed into a puddle of black at his feet. He pointed an accusatory finger at the man on the hospital bed.
"Of course you'd have to go off and do something like this! Sacrifice your life for innocent people like some sort of hero," He paused, the rage filling his entire body like a deadly virus, "But didn't you think that I'd trade every single one of their lives if only you'd wake up?"
Phlegm gurgled in Sherlock's throat as he dropped to his knees at John's side.
"That sounds evil, doesn't it? Worthy of Moriarty or some other villain. But it's true, I'd trade any number of lives for yours. Even mine. Especially mine. If you'll just please wake up."
Sherlock enveloped John's hand in both of his. "Please, please," he whispered. He stood up and pressed a gentle kiss to John's forehead. Sherlock's lips were chapped from over 72 hours of neglect, but John's skin was smooth and soft.
"One miracle for me, John. Don't. Be. Dead."
It was then John's hand twitched in Sherlock's.
"You always did steal my best lines." John said in a raspy voice. Sherlock jumped up and grabbed John's shoulders. His face was all business.
"How are you feeling?" He asked.
John attempted a smile that quickly gave way to a grimace. "Hurts like hell, but I've had worse."
Sherlock cleared his throat. "Ahem, well, I'm glad to hear it."
"Knock it off, idiot. I heard your dramatic speech." John said.
"You did?"
"Of course... and I just want you to know... I love you too."
Sherlock physically stepped back at this declaration of emotion. He waved his hands in the air as if somehow it would erase John's words.
"I... I never said..." the detective stuttered. John laughed, though the movement made him wince again.
"You didn't have to say anything, Sherlock. I'm not as stupid as you think." He said.
At last Sherlock's anxious expression melted away and he locked eyes intensely with John as though trying to transmit the entire depth of his feelings with his eyes.
"You're the most brilliant person I know, John." The detective said and his voice was dangerously soft.
"Even you?" John said with a small chuckle, trying to make light of the situation.
"Especially me," Sherlock replied, as though this statement was a known fact and he was surprised that John hadn't detected it.
Neither broke their gaze, studying each other's eyes like new lovers do. Sherlock's lips broke into a smile and he reached out to cup John's face in his hand.
"I love you too, John." He said.
The pair drew together, slowly, peacefully, like they had all the time in the world. This moment had been long anticipated and both wanted to savor it.
Just before Sherlock's mouth reached John's he hesitated, his eyes asking, Is this what you want? In response John lifted his face up to Sherlock's, at last uniting the two's lips in a gentle embrace. It was a singularity. It was the tide brushing against the shore; the sun caressing the horizon at dusk. It was walking through the door to a flat and realizing you had finally found a home.
Sherlock was as gentle as possible, scared that any movement would worsen John's condition. So when the monitor in the corner started pinging like a pinball machine Sherlock pulled away like he had been scalded. When John's heartbeat slowed to normal Sherlock raised one cocky eyebrow.
"Don't get too excited." He said through a smirk.
As if on cue a team of doctors burst through the door. The rushed to John's bedside to find him perfectly awake and grinning like a madman, if still as pale as a ghost.
"Quite alright, lads." He assured the harried looking medical professionals, "Just a spot of excitement that's all."
This statement did nothing to appease the tall salt and pepper haired man holding a clipboard that must be the head doctor. He proceeded to ask John an endless stream of questions, each answer prompting a head nod and a scribble on the clipboard. Sherlock watched out of the corner of his eye as the rest of the doctors scurried about the room checking various machines. These figures were mere blurs, smudges of paint that only served as a distraction from Sherlock's primary focus- the flushed and beaming man lying on the hospital bed.
Eventually the doctors began to file out one by one, until John and Sherlock were alone again. The window was dark and only tiny pinpricks of light, stars hundreds of light years away, could be seen of the outside world. Sherlock was sleeping at last, slumped over in his chair with his head against the wall and his hand locked reassuringly in John's, who lie in the hospital bed. Their breathing moved in sync as their chests rose up and down, at last free from the weight of stress and pain of the past couple days. Life wasn't perfect, but in this moment, a moment where they were together, it may just have been.