FIC: Of Seasonal Change (Part 3a)
Title: Of Seasonal Change (Part 3a)
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Rating: PG (for the moment)
Length: WIP
Summary: Doctor Watson, having just come home from the war, is desperately trying to bring up his practice again. While trying to make contacts in the medical field, he comes upon a group of doctors studying a strange, mute boy: 8-year-old Sherlock Holmes. Watson quickly finds himself muddled in the intrigue of the Holmes family.
Originally posted for the Sherlockkink Meme
I am beginning to dread my morning slew of telegrams. I'd bemoan the very existence of the telegram system if I didn't fear I'd receive the same messages delivered instead in person, and there is no author of these notes with whom I am eager to meet; I am stalked by enough members of Holmes's extended family as it stands. I am used to being the sort of wreck to jump at shadows and loud noises, assuming pots banging together is a gun fired at my head or two fellows whispering as I walk past mean to accost me in a subsequent alleyway. Now I need merely glimpse a pair of gray eyes to lose every shred of composure. Now I am terrified of a few scraps of paper in my hand. Pathetic, I think to myself.
Pathetic and paranoid, but perhaps not unjustifiably so. The three notes are equally dreadful. The first is from my father, demanding to know what sort of crowd I am keeping these days; a “disgracefully forward” gray-eyed woman had confronted him at his favored club - a club in which women are expressly forbid. This woman had asked a series of bewildering questions regarding my childhood habits, and when my father attempted to have her evicted, was informed that her father owns the establishment.
The second letter is from Dr. Cooper. He at least has the grace to not bother with pretense any longer; Sherlock is experiencing fits today, and I am not to show. I of course have every intention of showing, now that I have somewhat of an ally in that particular nurse.
I can still only marginally believe the third and final telegram, as it is from Siger Holmes himself. I wonder if it is accident how he echoes Mycroft's initial telegram to me; the senior Holmes complains of an ache in his side, and having heard so much of my skill requests I make a house visit the next morning. I do not delude myself into thinking the request is anything short of command. They are all of them so arrogant! I cannot help but wonder if it is a blessing Sherlock was removed from Siger's no-doubt harmful influence.
I fan out the three letters in my hands, looking from one to the next. There is a pattern to them beyond the obvious, a connection just beyond my capacity to see it. Or perhaps not. Perhaps I am being fanciful and mad and seeking intrigue when there is only the mundane. I throw down the letters upon my desk. All I know is how thoroughly the Holmes family has wound its way into my life, and in how short a time.
And how empty my life would be this minute if they had not. How utterly without direction.
My contemplation is interrupted by a firm knock at the front door. As I'm not expecting my first patient for at least half an hour, I can only imagine it is a Holmes. It might be the same woman come to ask further about my childhood; as if whether or not I ate my vegetables without fuss when I was young has some dire relevance to her. Or Mycroft come to insult me further and to throw at my feet another string of defamatory insinuations. Why I bother to attempt to predict the outcome of any encounter of this sort I haven't the slightest clue; masochism is of course obvious by this juncture, but maybe also a deeper psychological illness. At another knock I take a few long strides to the door and swing it firmly open.
The woman on my doorstep is not gray-eyed, nor raven-haired. She does not have the strict bone structure I'd expected, nor the pale, pale complexion. She is beautiful and young and if I had ever to imagine a creature the exact opposite of a Holmes I would think of her image to the last detail; and I am slack-jawed in my startlement.
Thin eyebrows raise over her egg-blue eyes. “I'm sorry,” she says. “I was expecting someone else to answer.
A relieved chuckle escapes me. “To be perfectly honest, miss, I was also. May I help you?”
“I believe that depends. Are you rooming with Mark?”
“The name isn't familiar, no,” I say.
She looks to a piece of paper in her hand, and then to the number by my door. “This is the correct address, isn't it?” She shows me the paper, and I confirm that it is. “I don't understand. Mark is my cousin, you see. I mean to room with him while I am in London. I've been traveling.”
“To where?” I ask. “If you - if you don't mind.”
“Many, many places,” she says. “Places much nicer than this, though somehow this city is still home. But if you've no idea of where I might find my cousin, I should -”
“You could step inside,” I say quickly. “I could help you. I have no pressing engagements for the moment.” There are many reasons that flicker through my mind of why I want to remain in her presence; it is above all a deep breath of fresh air to speak with someone so utterly without Holmesian guile and artifice.
“Sir, that would not be proper,” she says, but she tilts her lips up in a smile that belies her tone. “And it is also not proper that I have imposed upon you without introducing myself. Mary,” she says, extending a hand.
I take her hand and touch my lips briefly to the lace glove. “Dr. John Watson,” I say, feeling a foreign need to impress.
“It's a pleasure, Doctor,” Mary says. “But I really must see if I can find my cousin.” She hesitates, then adds, beginning to worry the paper in her small hands, “I wonder if this was a - a joke, of some fashion. Mark may still be upset with me. We parted last on poor terms.” She blinks rapidly, a slight sheen of wetness welling in her eyes.
I feel a cad, though I cannot fathom how I could be in any way at blame. “I'm terribly sorry.” She begins to turn, but I stop her with a hand to her elbow. “Where will you stay? If you cannot find your cousin?"
Her eyes are wide and lost, and without an answer. “A - a hotel, I suppose,” she says at last. “Or maybe I won't stay here at all. I've family in the country.”
Leave? Already? “I know of a kind couple who might help you until you can find him,” I tell her, wondering if I am overstepping the graciousness the Hudsons have given to me. I say, “They live at 221b Baker Street. Mr. And Mrs. Hudson are dear friends of mine. Say I sent you. They're kind people.”
Mary considers me for a moment, then says, “Thank you. Perhaps I will do just that.” With a soft smile, she turns and leaves.
When I close the door behind her, I find the image of her is not so quick to depart.
In between appointments I peruse my small collection of texts, trying to find one I think Sherlock may enjoy. The piece of lewd literature I tuck away in a bookshelf; I couldn't bring myself to toss it in an alleyway as I'd meant, for fear a Holmes was trailing me and would immediately discover what I was so eager to dispose of. What kind of pervert would they think me! And to have that pamphlet on my person as I left the hospital; Lord knows what they would conclude. Which only leads me to think that I am placing too much emphasis on how a strange, eccentric family regards me, particularly as with each day I have less and less regard for all of them save Sherlock.
Forget them, I tell myself. They are bees buzzing around your ears; loud bees, and persistent, but on the balance irrelevant. I flip through a piece of fiction of which I'm fond, but dismiss it, along with the other works of fiction. Perhaps one day I can broaden Sherlock's horizons, but surely it would be counterproductive to force such a thing upon him now. Soon I am left with only a half dozen medical books. The standard books are too similar to those at his ward, so in the end I choose what had actually been a gift from my father to me; a book dealing with medical oddities, the sort for which the manifestations are rare and the explanations uncertain.
The very moment my last appointment leaves I think I should head to Baker Street to see if Mary took my advice, or to at the least inform Mrs. Hudson of the possibility of her arrival. But without quite waiting for direction, my feet are already on the streets and heading for the hospital, the book a heavy weight in my bag. I enter through a side door of which my nurse had informed me, which leads to corridors she assured me Sherlock's doctors were unlikely to travel, and made my way to a particular corner she'd instructed me to wait. She promised me she passes by there often, and it would be better for me to wait for her there than to attempt to track her down in the large building.
Several other nurses pass, some vaguely familiar, and several openly stare. Others whisper to one another when they walk pass, having the audacity to point at me as if I cannot see them. I check repeatedly to ensure that I am, in fact, wearing clothes and that I have nothing disgraceful on my shirt or face, but can conclude nothing that would explain the attention.
Just when my leg is beginning to ache with the strain of standing still in one place for so long, my nurse is beside me and linking an elbow through mine. “However can I be of service, Johnny?” she asks, as she directs us to what appears to be a storage closet. Medical equipment line the walls, and an old cot is propped against a corner.
“Johnny?” I repeat. I cannot think of a single person in my history who ever called me such.
Nurse Irene Adler has a wide, indecent grin. She tightens her hold on my elbow, so that she is pressed against my side. I wonder how insulted she would be if I were to push her away. I could shove her so she strikes the cot and isn't injured ... No, I need her help.
“You object?”
“I think I do,” I tell her. “It's rather familiar.”
“According to most of the nurses here, we are rather familiar.”
“We - what?”
“I assume you will be calling upon me often for my help. How else to explain our, ah, close relation?”
“Why explain anything at all!”
“We mustn't be scandalous, Johnny,” Nurse Adler says. “Think of my reputation.”
“I - of course. I see,” I say, though I cannot, in fact, see how the pretense of regular mid-afternoon trysts will in any manner help either of our reputations. “About Sherlock-”
“Of course you're here about Sherlock,” she says. “Whyever else do you see me?”
“If you could-”
“See if the doctors are with him? You leave things to me, Johnny. I'll take care of everything.”
“And the garden?”
“It's perfect. From Sherlock's ward you merely turn left and down the first staircase you cross and turn left, and then left at the next juncture and left once more, and you'll reach a long, long corridor with many unmarked doors. The seventh down will have a small plaque engraved with the name Mrs. Alston. Do you know of the Alstons?”
“I don't -”
“Mr. Alston - or, rather, Dr. Alston, founded this fine hospital. Behind that door is a small garden. It was hers. It was a gift to her from him. They had a troubled marriage, and she spent most of her time there, even as he spent most of his time elsewhere in the very same building. Many people would frequent the garden - friends of hers, patients who were strong enough. But she passed years and years ago, and now no one ever uses it. There is nothing else of use in that entire corridor, so you and Sherlock will be quite undetected.”
“Why do people no longer use it?” I ask. “Is it locked?”
There is a strange relish in her eyes when she says, “It's locked, but the key is on a hook by the door, and it's well kept, though no one admits to keeping it. They say it's haunted.”
“Haunted?”
“I've never been, but I've heard many wonderful rumors - ghosts of disturbed patients, disgruntled doctors ... my favorite is that it's the old bat herself. Died before the husband, and she wanted to stay around just to spite him.”
“That's an awful thing to say,” I say reprovingly, not a superstitious man. Ghosts! How absurd.
“She is hardly around to defend herself,” Nurse Adler says. “Unless she is, in which case she either has poor hearing or else hasn't bothered to raise a fuss yet. He emptied the corridor within weeks of her passing - decreed no one was to use the rooms or to enter the garden. She was supposedly buried with the key.”
“If you're quite done?”
“Oh, you are a bore, Johnny,” she says. “But such a distinguished bore you are...” I am stunned as she has the boldness to run a hand over my chest. Before I can do more than gape, she pulls away. “I will help you anyway. I shall see if Cooper and his brood are still with your boy.”
There is nothing in her manner that would persuade a man to trust her ... nothing, except a willingness to help me to help Sherlock, and that is more than almost any other person I've come across here can claim. “Those doctors,” I say, before she can leave. “They're not - do they strike you as odd?”
“Odd? In what way?”
“Not Dr. Cooper, I suppose. But most of them - I guess it is merely that they don't strike me as doctors...”
I know how strange this sounds, and Nurse Adler merely chuckles and taps me on the nose. “Not doctors! You are a card, Johnny. Next you'll say I'm only pretending to be a nurse.”
“Why on earth would anyone pretend to be a nurse?”
“Why indeed?” she says. “I'll go one further. Why would anyone care so much about a troubled boy who is of no relation to them?”
I admit, “I don't entirely know the answer to either of those questions.”
“Of course you don't,” Nurse Adler says. “You're not very good with 'why's', are you?” She taps my nose again. “That's why I like you. Such a straightforward man. You will make some lovely, straightforward lady a very happy wife. Now you wait here and don't move. I'll be back straightaway once Sherlock is by his lonesome.”
Nurse Adler leaves, but she has left behind enough to consider that I hardly feel alone in the storage closest. I wonder if she actually believes the garden is haunted; she does not strike me as the sort to hold much with superstition, but somehow I feel that that is exactly the reason to think she does. In any event that woman has twisted me and my thoughts around, insinuating insults to my person without bothering to acknowledge that I might take offense, and she seemed to have enjoyed herself thoroughly doing so.
She should find herself in Mycroft Holmes's company; the two would either murder one another or make famous companions.
Despite her promise to return quickly, I find myself still waiting almost an hour later. I pass the time inspecting the medical equipment, noting that most of it is quite modern - and much too expensive to be tossed carelessly in a little-used closet. I think to lay the cot down and sit upon it, but find its backside molded and infested. I am soon bored and irritable, and my shoulder beginning to act up, and yet the thought of leaving never once crosses my mind as an acceptable choice.
“Johnny, I didn't mean you actually had to stay in the closet,” Nurse Adler says, as I turn around, startled. “You're clear. The doctors are all elsewhere occupied. Sherlock is all yours.” She winks and then is gone, leaving the door to slam shut before I can follow.
I really do need to acquire an ally here with less ... character.
When I enter Sherlock's ward, I find him sitting cross-legged on his bed, surrounded by strips of leather. He twists one strip in his hand, repeatedly curling the leather into a tight ball and then straightening it out. He makes no acknowledgement of my presence, even as I move to stand right next to him. The thick belts used to secure him to the bed dangle down the sides of the cot to rest on the floor. If they bother Sherlock he does not show it.
“Sherlock,” I say in greeting, but his focus remains on the leather strips. “How are you doing?” The question is inane, but his unusual hostility is leaving me flat-footed.
“I have something for you,” I say when he doesn't answer, hoping to brighten his mood, and reach into my bag. “It's-”
“A book,” Sherlock says. “I know.”
If I expected him to be pleased I remembered, I am disappointed. “I thought-”
“That we could read outside,” he says. “It's beautiful out.” He gestures carelessly to the painted window by his bed.
“Well, yes-”
His eyebrows are drawn, and his tone increasingly bitter. “And if I shouldn't want to, that's fine. You'll leave and come back tomorrow. Maybe I'll want the book more then.” He is pulling more forcefully on the strips of leather. “Mycroft was right about you.”
“Mycroft?”
“Well I can't. I would need shoes to go outside, and I haven't any.” He nods at the leather strips, which I realize are a thoroughly dismantled pair of shoes.
“I see,” I say quietly. “But-”
“You may leave now, John,” Sherlock says.
Sherlock's dismissal is a sharp pain in my heart, but if he wishes me to leave I'll do as he asks; likely few people have ever heeded Sherlock's desires.
“Maybe tomorrow,” I offer, and place the book on the small bedside table. My plans to head to a bookstore later in the week and see if I might find more subjects with which to interest Sherlock seem unnecessary. Perhaps his interests are more fleeting than I'd imagined? Perhaps his interest of me is equally so?
I am at the door when thin arms are suddenly around my waist and Sherlock's face is pressed to my back. “Sherlock?”
He shakes his head against my back, remaining silent. His hands each take a fist-full of my waistcoat. Taking a guess, I say, “I don't have to leave, if you'd prefer.”
After another moment of tenseness, Sherlock relaxes enough to allow me to turn and face him. Any hostility has vanished, and he looks adoringly upon me. “I will try,” he says, and then holds up both arms.
“Try?”
“Outside,” he clarifies, his arms still outstretched. When I don't understand, he sighs and says, “You will have to carry me. I have no shoes.”
“Sherlock, I don't think -”
“I'm light,” he says. “And you're capable, even with...” His gaze moves unerringly from the exact place of the wound on my shoulder to the wound on my leg, and then once more upon my face.
Good Lord, but I cannot deny him. “Very well,” I say, leaving my cane against a wall so that I might use both arms to lift him. He immediately wraps his legs around my waist and his arms around my neck, pressing his nose to my throat. “Huh,” I say, finding that I can hold his slight weight quite comfortably. Even so, I warm him, “It will be a short trip if I'm to carry you.”
He lifts his head to smile at me beatifically, and then again bends his head to my throat. I laugh, an honest, loud sound, realizing his game. “You're a clever little fellow, aren't you?” I feel him grin. When I reach out a hand to open the door, the grin begins to feel fixed, and when I fully step through the doorway, it has disappeared entirely. The hallway is thankfully empty, and I begin following Nurse Adler's directions. Sherlock's grip around my neck increasingly tightens with each step until he is nearly choking me, and by the time I reach the staircase, he is shivering.
I stop, debating if I should turn around. Is this progress at all? Or merely torture? But Sherlock has not ordered me to return to his ward, and I feel he wouldn't hesitate to do so if it's what he wished. What he needs, I decide, is more distraction. He enjoys listening to me talk, I recall, so I reach for the first subject to come to mind. “The garden we're heading towards,” I say, “It's haunted. Did you know?” He stills against me - or freezes is perhaps more accurate. I begin to tell him every detail I can remember of what Nurse Adler told me, adding embellishments as I can see him clinging to my voice. The way down the short flight of stairs is laborious, and I am breathing heavily by the time we reach the bottom.
Even so, I keep talking. When I can think of no more to say about the garden while walking three left turns and ending up in a long, empty corridor, I tell Sherlock about my patients this afternoon, going into detail of their medical conditions and how I mean to treat them. I tell him again about the most recent meal I'd eaten with the Hudsons, and describe their house in great detail. I carefully make no mention of Mary or Nurse Adler.
We at last - though truly only ten minutes at most have passed - reach the plaque reading simply Mrs. Alston. I see a tarnished, heart-shaped key on a hook level with the doorknob. Sherlock is tense in my arms, his face buried still in my collar. “Sherlock? Would you prefer to return now? We don't have to go farther.”
He takes several deep breaths, and I feel his mouth work silently before he says, his voice shaking, “No. We must.”
Though this is hardly a reassuring answer, I nevertheless manage to take the key and turn the lock without dropping him. Through the door, we are in a small garden separated from the outside by mesh walls, overrun with tall trees and overgrown bushes and a dizzying mix of flowers, few of which I think are native. The air is thick and musty. Leaves snap underfoot at my first step outside, and Sherlock tenses terribly at the sound.
This is not exactly what I'd pictured when I sought to take Sherlock outside. I wanted him to have fresh air and sun - or as much sun as a London sky ever has. I walk until we are several feet inside, hoping the path might clear up only to find it remains crowded and dreadfully warm. “I'm sorry, Sherlock,” I say. “I thought this would be more ... pleasant.” Or at all pleasant. “If you'd like, we can-”
Sherlock suddenly slides down, but still keeps a tight hold of one of my hands. He tugs me along as he walks a few steps forward, and then he drops to his hands and knees and I accordingly am bent almost in half, as he does not relinquish my hand. He brushes around in the soil, touching this and that, moving long branches out of the way until he finds what he apparently has been looking so intently for. He makes a strange, pleased noise and then straightens. In his hand is a small, elegant copper button.
He turns the button over and over, and then carefully tucks it away in a pocket.
When a raven lands on the other side of the mesh ceiling and caws loudly, Sherlock freezes entirely, his eyes widening as he looks frantically around and seems to suddenly remember he is no longer in his safe, familiar ward. His hands spasm, and his mouth drops open. I hurriedly kneel in front of him, wrapping one arm tightly around him and pressing his face to my neck with my other hand.
“Sherlock, you're safe, I'm here, I promise,” I say, and then murmur a long steady string of repeated assurances. I ignore that I'm kneeling in soil, and the suffocating heat of this garden, and the cramps beginning to form in my leg.
He does not calm for twenty minutes, and my voice is hoarse by the time he slowly drains of tension. “John,” he whispers, and without another word I rise, taking care to keep hold of one of his hands. I take a moment to regain my balance and feeling in my legs, and then carefully lift him in my arms. I lock the garden door behind us, and keep murmuring reassurances as I make my slow way up the stairs and to his ward.
By the time we are through the door and I place him on his feet, I am utterly exhausted - my throat is raw and my muscles aching. While I sit on one of the stools and attempt to regain my breath, Sherlock heads to the small washroom. He returns in a set of clean clothes, and stuffs the set he wore outside into my bag. He places a finger against his lips, and mouths, “Shhhh.”
Clever little fellow, I think again.
He has the copper button still in his hands, and he walks over to his side table and places the button carefully on top of the medical text, and then places both equally carefully into a drawer. Then he walks back over to me and sits on the stool beside mine, leaning against me. “May we again tomorrow?” he asks.
Here I thought how this small adventure of mine turned out would have turned him off the idea of going outside entirely! “Of course we can,” I say before he can retract the statement. Never mind that I will be unbearably sore. Never mind the “garden” is a fetid scrap of a room. Realizing it may soon be time for the doctors to return, I tell Sherlock, “I will see you tomorrow. And we will go again.”
Sherlock's hand tightens around mine, and then reluctantly loosens. “Mycroft is never right,” he says. “I should not regard him.”
“I wasn't aware that you and Mycroft speak,” I say.
Sherlock looks surprised. “We don't,” he says, and will not say another word on the subject.
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Rating: PG (for the moment)
Length: WIP
Summary: Doctor Watson, having just come home from the war, is desperately trying to bring up his practice again. While trying to make contacts in the medical field, he comes upon a group of doctors studying a strange, mute boy: 8-year-old Sherlock Holmes. Watson quickly finds himself muddled in the intrigue of the Holmes family.
Originally posted for the Sherlockkink Meme
I am beginning to dread my morning slew of telegrams. I'd bemoan the very existence of the telegram system if I didn't fear I'd receive the same messages delivered instead in person, and there is no author of these notes with whom I am eager to meet; I am stalked by enough members of Holmes's extended family as it stands. I am used to being the sort of wreck to jump at shadows and loud noises, assuming pots banging together is a gun fired at my head or two fellows whispering as I walk past mean to accost me in a subsequent alleyway. Now I need merely glimpse a pair of gray eyes to lose every shred of composure. Now I am terrified of a few scraps of paper in my hand. Pathetic, I think to myself.
Pathetic and paranoid, but perhaps not unjustifiably so. The three notes are equally dreadful. The first is from my father, demanding to know what sort of crowd I am keeping these days; a “disgracefully forward” gray-eyed woman had confronted him at his favored club - a club in which women are expressly forbid. This woman had asked a series of bewildering questions regarding my childhood habits, and when my father attempted to have her evicted, was informed that her father owns the establishment.
The second letter is from Dr. Cooper. He at least has the grace to not bother with pretense any longer; Sherlock is experiencing fits today, and I am not to show. I of course have every intention of showing, now that I have somewhat of an ally in that particular nurse.
I can still only marginally believe the third and final telegram, as it is from Siger Holmes himself. I wonder if it is accident how he echoes Mycroft's initial telegram to me; the senior Holmes complains of an ache in his side, and having heard so much of my skill requests I make a house visit the next morning. I do not delude myself into thinking the request is anything short of command. They are all of them so arrogant! I cannot help but wonder if it is a blessing Sherlock was removed from Siger's no-doubt harmful influence.
I fan out the three letters in my hands, looking from one to the next. There is a pattern to them beyond the obvious, a connection just beyond my capacity to see it. Or perhaps not. Perhaps I am being fanciful and mad and seeking intrigue when there is only the mundane. I throw down the letters upon my desk. All I know is how thoroughly the Holmes family has wound its way into my life, and in how short a time.
And how empty my life would be this minute if they had not. How utterly without direction.
My contemplation is interrupted by a firm knock at the front door. As I'm not expecting my first patient for at least half an hour, I can only imagine it is a Holmes. It might be the same woman come to ask further about my childhood; as if whether or not I ate my vegetables without fuss when I was young has some dire relevance to her. Or Mycroft come to insult me further and to throw at my feet another string of defamatory insinuations. Why I bother to attempt to predict the outcome of any encounter of this sort I haven't the slightest clue; masochism is of course obvious by this juncture, but maybe also a deeper psychological illness. At another knock I take a few long strides to the door and swing it firmly open.
The woman on my doorstep is not gray-eyed, nor raven-haired. She does not have the strict bone structure I'd expected, nor the pale, pale complexion. She is beautiful and young and if I had ever to imagine a creature the exact opposite of a Holmes I would think of her image to the last detail; and I am slack-jawed in my startlement.
Thin eyebrows raise over her egg-blue eyes. “I'm sorry,” she says. “I was expecting someone else to answer.
A relieved chuckle escapes me. “To be perfectly honest, miss, I was also. May I help you?”
“I believe that depends. Are you rooming with Mark?”
“The name isn't familiar, no,” I say.
She looks to a piece of paper in her hand, and then to the number by my door. “This is the correct address, isn't it?” She shows me the paper, and I confirm that it is. “I don't understand. Mark is my cousin, you see. I mean to room with him while I am in London. I've been traveling.”
“To where?” I ask. “If you - if you don't mind.”
“Many, many places,” she says. “Places much nicer than this, though somehow this city is still home. But if you've no idea of where I might find my cousin, I should -”
“You could step inside,” I say quickly. “I could help you. I have no pressing engagements for the moment.” There are many reasons that flicker through my mind of why I want to remain in her presence; it is above all a deep breath of fresh air to speak with someone so utterly without Holmesian guile and artifice.
“Sir, that would not be proper,” she says, but she tilts her lips up in a smile that belies her tone. “And it is also not proper that I have imposed upon you without introducing myself. Mary,” she says, extending a hand.
I take her hand and touch my lips briefly to the lace glove. “Dr. John Watson,” I say, feeling a foreign need to impress.
“It's a pleasure, Doctor,” Mary says. “But I really must see if I can find my cousin.” She hesitates, then adds, beginning to worry the paper in her small hands, “I wonder if this was a - a joke, of some fashion. Mark may still be upset with me. We parted last on poor terms.” She blinks rapidly, a slight sheen of wetness welling in her eyes.
I feel a cad, though I cannot fathom how I could be in any way at blame. “I'm terribly sorry.” She begins to turn, but I stop her with a hand to her elbow. “Where will you stay? If you cannot find your cousin?"
Her eyes are wide and lost, and without an answer. “A - a hotel, I suppose,” she says at last. “Or maybe I won't stay here at all. I've family in the country.”
Leave? Already? “I know of a kind couple who might help you until you can find him,” I tell her, wondering if I am overstepping the graciousness the Hudsons have given to me. I say, “They live at 221b Baker Street. Mr. And Mrs. Hudson are dear friends of mine. Say I sent you. They're kind people.”
Mary considers me for a moment, then says, “Thank you. Perhaps I will do just that.” With a soft smile, she turns and leaves.
When I close the door behind her, I find the image of her is not so quick to depart.
In between appointments I peruse my small collection of texts, trying to find one I think Sherlock may enjoy. The piece of lewd literature I tuck away in a bookshelf; I couldn't bring myself to toss it in an alleyway as I'd meant, for fear a Holmes was trailing me and would immediately discover what I was so eager to dispose of. What kind of pervert would they think me! And to have that pamphlet on my person as I left the hospital; Lord knows what they would conclude. Which only leads me to think that I am placing too much emphasis on how a strange, eccentric family regards me, particularly as with each day I have less and less regard for all of them save Sherlock.
Forget them, I tell myself. They are bees buzzing around your ears; loud bees, and persistent, but on the balance irrelevant. I flip through a piece of fiction of which I'm fond, but dismiss it, along with the other works of fiction. Perhaps one day I can broaden Sherlock's horizons, but surely it would be counterproductive to force such a thing upon him now. Soon I am left with only a half dozen medical books. The standard books are too similar to those at his ward, so in the end I choose what had actually been a gift from my father to me; a book dealing with medical oddities, the sort for which the manifestations are rare and the explanations uncertain.
The very moment my last appointment leaves I think I should head to Baker Street to see if Mary took my advice, or to at the least inform Mrs. Hudson of the possibility of her arrival. But without quite waiting for direction, my feet are already on the streets and heading for the hospital, the book a heavy weight in my bag. I enter through a side door of which my nurse had informed me, which leads to corridors she assured me Sherlock's doctors were unlikely to travel, and made my way to a particular corner she'd instructed me to wait. She promised me she passes by there often, and it would be better for me to wait for her there than to attempt to track her down in the large building.
Several other nurses pass, some vaguely familiar, and several openly stare. Others whisper to one another when they walk pass, having the audacity to point at me as if I cannot see them. I check repeatedly to ensure that I am, in fact, wearing clothes and that I have nothing disgraceful on my shirt or face, but can conclude nothing that would explain the attention.
Just when my leg is beginning to ache with the strain of standing still in one place for so long, my nurse is beside me and linking an elbow through mine. “However can I be of service, Johnny?” she asks, as she directs us to what appears to be a storage closet. Medical equipment line the walls, and an old cot is propped against a corner.
“Johnny?” I repeat. I cannot think of a single person in my history who ever called me such.
Nurse Irene Adler has a wide, indecent grin. She tightens her hold on my elbow, so that she is pressed against my side. I wonder how insulted she would be if I were to push her away. I could shove her so she strikes the cot and isn't injured ... No, I need her help.
“You object?”
“I think I do,” I tell her. “It's rather familiar.”
“According to most of the nurses here, we are rather familiar.”
“We - what?”
“I assume you will be calling upon me often for my help. How else to explain our, ah, close relation?”
“Why explain anything at all!”
“We mustn't be scandalous, Johnny,” Nurse Adler says. “Think of my reputation.”
“I - of course. I see,” I say, though I cannot, in fact, see how the pretense of regular mid-afternoon trysts will in any manner help either of our reputations. “About Sherlock-”
“Of course you're here about Sherlock,” she says. “Whyever else do you see me?”
“If you could-”
“See if the doctors are with him? You leave things to me, Johnny. I'll take care of everything.”
“And the garden?”
“It's perfect. From Sherlock's ward you merely turn left and down the first staircase you cross and turn left, and then left at the next juncture and left once more, and you'll reach a long, long corridor with many unmarked doors. The seventh down will have a small plaque engraved with the name Mrs. Alston. Do you know of the Alstons?”
“I don't -”
“Mr. Alston - or, rather, Dr. Alston, founded this fine hospital. Behind that door is a small garden. It was hers. It was a gift to her from him. They had a troubled marriage, and she spent most of her time there, even as he spent most of his time elsewhere in the very same building. Many people would frequent the garden - friends of hers, patients who were strong enough. But she passed years and years ago, and now no one ever uses it. There is nothing else of use in that entire corridor, so you and Sherlock will be quite undetected.”
“Why do people no longer use it?” I ask. “Is it locked?”
There is a strange relish in her eyes when she says, “It's locked, but the key is on a hook by the door, and it's well kept, though no one admits to keeping it. They say it's haunted.”
“Haunted?”
“I've never been, but I've heard many wonderful rumors - ghosts of disturbed patients, disgruntled doctors ... my favorite is that it's the old bat herself. Died before the husband, and she wanted to stay around just to spite him.”
“That's an awful thing to say,” I say reprovingly, not a superstitious man. Ghosts! How absurd.
“She is hardly around to defend herself,” Nurse Adler says. “Unless she is, in which case she either has poor hearing or else hasn't bothered to raise a fuss yet. He emptied the corridor within weeks of her passing - decreed no one was to use the rooms or to enter the garden. She was supposedly buried with the key.”
“If you're quite done?”
“Oh, you are a bore, Johnny,” she says. “But such a distinguished bore you are...” I am stunned as she has the boldness to run a hand over my chest. Before I can do more than gape, she pulls away. “I will help you anyway. I shall see if Cooper and his brood are still with your boy.”
There is nothing in her manner that would persuade a man to trust her ... nothing, except a willingness to help me to help Sherlock, and that is more than almost any other person I've come across here can claim. “Those doctors,” I say, before she can leave. “They're not - do they strike you as odd?”
“Odd? In what way?”
“Not Dr. Cooper, I suppose. But most of them - I guess it is merely that they don't strike me as doctors...”
I know how strange this sounds, and Nurse Adler merely chuckles and taps me on the nose. “Not doctors! You are a card, Johnny. Next you'll say I'm only pretending to be a nurse.”
“Why on earth would anyone pretend to be a nurse?”
“Why indeed?” she says. “I'll go one further. Why would anyone care so much about a troubled boy who is of no relation to them?”
I admit, “I don't entirely know the answer to either of those questions.”
“Of course you don't,” Nurse Adler says. “You're not very good with 'why's', are you?” She taps my nose again. “That's why I like you. Such a straightforward man. You will make some lovely, straightforward lady a very happy wife. Now you wait here and don't move. I'll be back straightaway once Sherlock is by his lonesome.”
Nurse Adler leaves, but she has left behind enough to consider that I hardly feel alone in the storage closest. I wonder if she actually believes the garden is haunted; she does not strike me as the sort to hold much with superstition, but somehow I feel that that is exactly the reason to think she does. In any event that woman has twisted me and my thoughts around, insinuating insults to my person without bothering to acknowledge that I might take offense, and she seemed to have enjoyed herself thoroughly doing so.
She should find herself in Mycroft Holmes's company; the two would either murder one another or make famous companions.
Despite her promise to return quickly, I find myself still waiting almost an hour later. I pass the time inspecting the medical equipment, noting that most of it is quite modern - and much too expensive to be tossed carelessly in a little-used closet. I think to lay the cot down and sit upon it, but find its backside molded and infested. I am soon bored and irritable, and my shoulder beginning to act up, and yet the thought of leaving never once crosses my mind as an acceptable choice.
“Johnny, I didn't mean you actually had to stay in the closet,” Nurse Adler says, as I turn around, startled. “You're clear. The doctors are all elsewhere occupied. Sherlock is all yours.” She winks and then is gone, leaving the door to slam shut before I can follow.
I really do need to acquire an ally here with less ... character.
When I enter Sherlock's ward, I find him sitting cross-legged on his bed, surrounded by strips of leather. He twists one strip in his hand, repeatedly curling the leather into a tight ball and then straightening it out. He makes no acknowledgement of my presence, even as I move to stand right next to him. The thick belts used to secure him to the bed dangle down the sides of the cot to rest on the floor. If they bother Sherlock he does not show it.
“Sherlock,” I say in greeting, but his focus remains on the leather strips. “How are you doing?” The question is inane, but his unusual hostility is leaving me flat-footed.
“I have something for you,” I say when he doesn't answer, hoping to brighten his mood, and reach into my bag. “It's-”
“A book,” Sherlock says. “I know.”
If I expected him to be pleased I remembered, I am disappointed. “I thought-”
“That we could read outside,” he says. “It's beautiful out.” He gestures carelessly to the painted window by his bed.
“Well, yes-”
His eyebrows are drawn, and his tone increasingly bitter. “And if I shouldn't want to, that's fine. You'll leave and come back tomorrow. Maybe I'll want the book more then.” He is pulling more forcefully on the strips of leather. “Mycroft was right about you.”
“Mycroft?”
“Well I can't. I would need shoes to go outside, and I haven't any.” He nods at the leather strips, which I realize are a thoroughly dismantled pair of shoes.
“I see,” I say quietly. “But-”
“You may leave now, John,” Sherlock says.
Sherlock's dismissal is a sharp pain in my heart, but if he wishes me to leave I'll do as he asks; likely few people have ever heeded Sherlock's desires.
“Maybe tomorrow,” I offer, and place the book on the small bedside table. My plans to head to a bookstore later in the week and see if I might find more subjects with which to interest Sherlock seem unnecessary. Perhaps his interests are more fleeting than I'd imagined? Perhaps his interest of me is equally so?
I am at the door when thin arms are suddenly around my waist and Sherlock's face is pressed to my back. “Sherlock?”
He shakes his head against my back, remaining silent. His hands each take a fist-full of my waistcoat. Taking a guess, I say, “I don't have to leave, if you'd prefer.”
After another moment of tenseness, Sherlock relaxes enough to allow me to turn and face him. Any hostility has vanished, and he looks adoringly upon me. “I will try,” he says, and then holds up both arms.
“Try?”
“Outside,” he clarifies, his arms still outstretched. When I don't understand, he sighs and says, “You will have to carry me. I have no shoes.”
“Sherlock, I don't think -”
“I'm light,” he says. “And you're capable, even with...” His gaze moves unerringly from the exact place of the wound on my shoulder to the wound on my leg, and then once more upon my face.
Good Lord, but I cannot deny him. “Very well,” I say, leaving my cane against a wall so that I might use both arms to lift him. He immediately wraps his legs around my waist and his arms around my neck, pressing his nose to my throat. “Huh,” I say, finding that I can hold his slight weight quite comfortably. Even so, I warm him, “It will be a short trip if I'm to carry you.”
He lifts his head to smile at me beatifically, and then again bends his head to my throat. I laugh, an honest, loud sound, realizing his game. “You're a clever little fellow, aren't you?” I feel him grin. When I reach out a hand to open the door, the grin begins to feel fixed, and when I fully step through the doorway, it has disappeared entirely. The hallway is thankfully empty, and I begin following Nurse Adler's directions. Sherlock's grip around my neck increasingly tightens with each step until he is nearly choking me, and by the time I reach the staircase, he is shivering.
I stop, debating if I should turn around. Is this progress at all? Or merely torture? But Sherlock has not ordered me to return to his ward, and I feel he wouldn't hesitate to do so if it's what he wished. What he needs, I decide, is more distraction. He enjoys listening to me talk, I recall, so I reach for the first subject to come to mind. “The garden we're heading towards,” I say, “It's haunted. Did you know?” He stills against me - or freezes is perhaps more accurate. I begin to tell him every detail I can remember of what Nurse Adler told me, adding embellishments as I can see him clinging to my voice. The way down the short flight of stairs is laborious, and I am breathing heavily by the time we reach the bottom.
Even so, I keep talking. When I can think of no more to say about the garden while walking three left turns and ending up in a long, empty corridor, I tell Sherlock about my patients this afternoon, going into detail of their medical conditions and how I mean to treat them. I tell him again about the most recent meal I'd eaten with the Hudsons, and describe their house in great detail. I carefully make no mention of Mary or Nurse Adler.
We at last - though truly only ten minutes at most have passed - reach the plaque reading simply Mrs. Alston. I see a tarnished, heart-shaped key on a hook level with the doorknob. Sherlock is tense in my arms, his face buried still in my collar. “Sherlock? Would you prefer to return now? We don't have to go farther.”
He takes several deep breaths, and I feel his mouth work silently before he says, his voice shaking, “No. We must.”
Though this is hardly a reassuring answer, I nevertheless manage to take the key and turn the lock without dropping him. Through the door, we are in a small garden separated from the outside by mesh walls, overrun with tall trees and overgrown bushes and a dizzying mix of flowers, few of which I think are native. The air is thick and musty. Leaves snap underfoot at my first step outside, and Sherlock tenses terribly at the sound.
This is not exactly what I'd pictured when I sought to take Sherlock outside. I wanted him to have fresh air and sun - or as much sun as a London sky ever has. I walk until we are several feet inside, hoping the path might clear up only to find it remains crowded and dreadfully warm. “I'm sorry, Sherlock,” I say. “I thought this would be more ... pleasant.” Or at all pleasant. “If you'd like, we can-”
Sherlock suddenly slides down, but still keeps a tight hold of one of my hands. He tugs me along as he walks a few steps forward, and then he drops to his hands and knees and I accordingly am bent almost in half, as he does not relinquish my hand. He brushes around in the soil, touching this and that, moving long branches out of the way until he finds what he apparently has been looking so intently for. He makes a strange, pleased noise and then straightens. In his hand is a small, elegant copper button.
He turns the button over and over, and then carefully tucks it away in a pocket.
When a raven lands on the other side of the mesh ceiling and caws loudly, Sherlock freezes entirely, his eyes widening as he looks frantically around and seems to suddenly remember he is no longer in his safe, familiar ward. His hands spasm, and his mouth drops open. I hurriedly kneel in front of him, wrapping one arm tightly around him and pressing his face to my neck with my other hand.
“Sherlock, you're safe, I'm here, I promise,” I say, and then murmur a long steady string of repeated assurances. I ignore that I'm kneeling in soil, and the suffocating heat of this garden, and the cramps beginning to form in my leg.
He does not calm for twenty minutes, and my voice is hoarse by the time he slowly drains of tension. “John,” he whispers, and without another word I rise, taking care to keep hold of one of his hands. I take a moment to regain my balance and feeling in my legs, and then carefully lift him in my arms. I lock the garden door behind us, and keep murmuring reassurances as I make my slow way up the stairs and to his ward.
By the time we are through the door and I place him on his feet, I am utterly exhausted - my throat is raw and my muscles aching. While I sit on one of the stools and attempt to regain my breath, Sherlock heads to the small washroom. He returns in a set of clean clothes, and stuffs the set he wore outside into my bag. He places a finger against his lips, and mouths, “Shhhh.”
Clever little fellow, I think again.
He has the copper button still in his hands, and he walks over to his side table and places the button carefully on top of the medical text, and then places both equally carefully into a drawer. Then he walks back over to me and sits on the stool beside mine, leaning against me. “May we again tomorrow?” he asks.
Here I thought how this small adventure of mine turned out would have turned him off the idea of going outside entirely! “Of course we can,” I say before he can retract the statement. Never mind that I will be unbearably sore. Never mind the “garden” is a fetid scrap of a room. Realizing it may soon be time for the doctors to return, I tell Sherlock, “I will see you tomorrow. And we will go again.”
Sherlock's hand tightens around mine, and then reluctantly loosens. “Mycroft is never right,” he says. “I should not regard him.”
“I wasn't aware that you and Mycroft speak,” I say.
Sherlock looks surprised. “We don't,” he says, and will not say another word on the subject.