"Leave No Man Behind" (JWP 2015 Prompt #9, BBC Sherlock, Rated PG)
Title: Leave No Man Behind
Author: gardnerhill
Universe: Sherlock BBC
Word Count: 1238
Rating: PG (language)
Warning: Major Character Death. Profanity. Also a major downer.
Summary: Sometimes you have to amputate a gangrenous limb.
Author's Notes: For the 2015 July Watson's Woes Promptfest prompt #9, Healer's Choice. One person Watson chose not to save. The basis for this story comes from a vivid dream a friend had last week and told me (minus the part in the dream where I apparently ran into the room screaming that that’s not how the story goes).
1348. 1665. 2015. Modern medicine had delayed the return of the horror by nearly a century, but this particular Horseman would not be halted.
King Charles and the princes’ families had been whisked away to parts unknown after the Queen and Prince had succumbed in two days. Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton became the wards for the dying, the grounded liners repurposed as mobile hospital wings. The M4 and northern segment of M25 was the unofficial quarantine fence for the Infection (what a very British way of referring to such a devastating epidemic). The only thing that spread faster was the hysteria and panic that engulfed London and a good part of the south of England and Europe (some British holiday-goers and exptatriates had been killed or isolated by French or Spanish fearful of the death returning to their shores). Long-abandoned furnaces and refineries had been restarted to accommodate the sheer numbers of corpses requiring immediate cremation.
This current strain of the Great Mortality laughed at antibiotics. It also brought new symptoms in addition to the traditional ones of enlarged lymph nodes under the arms and between the thighs, chills, fever, migraine and abdominal pain - chief among them the terrifying white eyes as vitreous haemorrhage blinded the sufferer, a precursor to the last hours of the fatal course (agonizing headaches, raving dementia, and then out on the kerb in a goddamn bin for the trucks to take away).
People had been repurposed as well, not just the old smelting furnaces and the dustman’s trucks. Greg Lestrade and other still-walking Yarders provided security and evacuation control; Lestrade’s eyes were not white but they saw only his children, both gone to the Coryton Refinery.
In the last three months John Watson regained the shell he had worn throughout his tours in Afghanistan, staring at Hell past the haz-mat suit and face mask he perpetually wore now, the modern oilcloth robe and leather beak of the plague physician. Sherlock was away all the time now too, locked in bouts of shouting with (at) Mycroft, or huddled in his chair buried in his mind-palace, racing to find information on vectors and triggers to uncover the mystery of this serial killer. John went armed every day, and he only came back to Baker Street for fresh ammo and tea; violent mobs and dying infected alike required this last doctor’s implement far too often.
Then came the morning when Sherlock winced when raising his tea-mug to his lips. John had no memory of dashing away the mug, nor of forcibly tearing open his shouting, struggling flatmate’s shirt as he crouched on top of him on the floor; he only remembered seeing the black buboes. Forty-eight hours from first manifestation his mind rattled out on autopilot, two days two days two days…
Sherlock’s eyes read his own - his diagnosis, his sentence, the click of the stopwatch in his mind. “John, go-“
“Fuck yourself, I’m staying here.” John slapped off his radio, cutting off the perpetual emergency chatter. He was already stripping off the rest of Sherlock’s clothes, dragging him upright.
“John this is the kind of thing that gets you tried for war crimes afterward -”
“Shut UP, Sherlock.” John hauled the taller man stumbling toward the shower in a grip he’d clearly learned in the Army for moving an unconscious body.
“John, I can wash myself!” As if cleanliness would do anything now beyond delaying the inevitable.
“Then do so. Head to heels, I want you covered in soap, bottoms of the feet and between the toes too before you’re done. I’m starting the kettle and you’re drinking everything I give you, no questions or I strap you down and goddamn IV you.” John started the shower before Sherlock had removed his pyjama trousers and was off to the kitchen to fill the kettle from one of the water-cooler jugs he’d salvaged from a warehouse. Both men had finally learned in the last month not to shout a dead woman’s name when they needed tea. John appeared with the teapot and large mug in time to see the naked man stumble getting back into bed, displaying the groin buboes as well.
Sherlock had beaten odds before, had tricked others into thinking he was dying or dead. This grinning beast would not be tricked. The Army-medic shell John wore ticked off the symptoms as they appeared, almost pleased that Sherlock was considerate enough to acquire them in precise order because it made note-taking on the latest vector so easy.
John ate and slept in the haz-mat suit, lying next to Sherlock on the bed for his cat-naps so that the shivers or twists of pain woke him instantly. Sleeping in one long piece of time, eating in social settings, had gone away with the first truckload to the smelting works.
Sherlock’s eyes stared at the ceiling as he raced through the mind-palace, searching for the cause as if seeking a bomb’s trigger before the countdown reached zero. John forced tea, broth, soup down him, washed him down, cleaned up the vomit, emptied the bedpan and his own excretions into a binbag in a plastic tub. He knew he was blowing on a damp lump of wood that bore a single feeble, flickering ember. He did not stop blowing.
“For god’s sake, John,” Sherlock whispered once, “protect yourself.”
“I’ll goddamn protect myself when I goddamn need it.” John was up to his knees in a flooding cellar, boarding up everything, trying to keep the water out even as it gushed in at every crack and seam, because he was going to need to function afterward and if he let any more in he would not function at all when, when. Everything on him was covered; his eyes were behind goggles, but that door he could never keep shut from the man dying under his hands. Sherlock saw, and because Sherlock was his friend he said nothing.
Four a.m. and Sherlock twisted himself into a cry, demanding paper, pencil, his phone, he had it he needed to tell Mycroft before before oh God my head my head John make it stop -
Paper, pencil slapped down. Sherlock turned his head to vomit onto the bedclothes to save the paper he scrawled with chemical symbols that Dr. Watson's mind translated - counter-agent, refinement, immunization. His body heaved, and two pain-tears landed on the paper, but then it was done and Sherlock fell back, moaning and arching. “Go. Go. Mycroft.”
“I’m not leaving you till you’re -” John’s mouth snapped shut behind the face-mask, the plague-doctor’s beak. He’d almost used the word.
“John, I am dead and you fucking know it. Get this to Mycroft. Stay here and die, or go and save London. Save. London. Oh G- !”
John looked down into white eyes as a scream of pain hit him full in the face.
Clang.
Dr. Watson snatched the paper from the dying man’s clenching hand, stuffed it into the suit’s front pouch. One last doctor’s implement; one last capsule for the patient, chambered.
Muzzle between the vector’s white open eyes.
Bang.
Suited, equipped, pack on his back, the answer in his belly, the plague-doctor left the ward. Slam, silver X on the door in spray paint under the brass street number, the number “1” beneath, circled, for the bin-men.
And the hero who would save 2 million lives set out for the Diogenes Club at a dead run.
Author: gardnerhill
Universe: Sherlock BBC
Word Count: 1238
Rating: PG (language)
Warning: Major Character Death. Profanity. Also a major downer.
Summary: Sometimes you have to amputate a gangrenous limb.
Author's Notes: For the 2015 July Watson's Woes Promptfest prompt #9, Healer's Choice. One person Watson chose not to save. The basis for this story comes from a vivid dream a friend had last week and told me (minus the part in the dream where I apparently ran into the room screaming that that’s not how the story goes).
1348. 1665. 2015. Modern medicine had delayed the return of the horror by nearly a century, but this particular Horseman would not be halted.
King Charles and the princes’ families had been whisked away to parts unknown after the Queen and Prince had succumbed in two days. Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton became the wards for the dying, the grounded liners repurposed as mobile hospital wings. The M4 and northern segment of M25 was the unofficial quarantine fence for the Infection (what a very British way of referring to such a devastating epidemic). The only thing that spread faster was the hysteria and panic that engulfed London and a good part of the south of England and Europe (some British holiday-goers and exptatriates had been killed or isolated by French or Spanish fearful of the death returning to their shores). Long-abandoned furnaces and refineries had been restarted to accommodate the sheer numbers of corpses requiring immediate cremation.
This current strain of the Great Mortality laughed at antibiotics. It also brought new symptoms in addition to the traditional ones of enlarged lymph nodes under the arms and between the thighs, chills, fever, migraine and abdominal pain - chief among them the terrifying white eyes as vitreous haemorrhage blinded the sufferer, a precursor to the last hours of the fatal course (agonizing headaches, raving dementia, and then out on the kerb in a goddamn bin for the trucks to take away).
People had been repurposed as well, not just the old smelting furnaces and the dustman’s trucks. Greg Lestrade and other still-walking Yarders provided security and evacuation control; Lestrade’s eyes were not white but they saw only his children, both gone to the Coryton Refinery.
In the last three months John Watson regained the shell he had worn throughout his tours in Afghanistan, staring at Hell past the haz-mat suit and face mask he perpetually wore now, the modern oilcloth robe and leather beak of the plague physician. Sherlock was away all the time now too, locked in bouts of shouting with (at) Mycroft, or huddled in his chair buried in his mind-palace, racing to find information on vectors and triggers to uncover the mystery of this serial killer. John went armed every day, and he only came back to Baker Street for fresh ammo and tea; violent mobs and dying infected alike required this last doctor’s implement far too often.
Then came the morning when Sherlock winced when raising his tea-mug to his lips. John had no memory of dashing away the mug, nor of forcibly tearing open his shouting, struggling flatmate’s shirt as he crouched on top of him on the floor; he only remembered seeing the black buboes. Forty-eight hours from first manifestation his mind rattled out on autopilot, two days two days two days…
Sherlock’s eyes read his own - his diagnosis, his sentence, the click of the stopwatch in his mind. “John, go-“
“Fuck yourself, I’m staying here.” John slapped off his radio, cutting off the perpetual emergency chatter. He was already stripping off the rest of Sherlock’s clothes, dragging him upright.
“John this is the kind of thing that gets you tried for war crimes afterward -”
“Shut UP, Sherlock.” John hauled the taller man stumbling toward the shower in a grip he’d clearly learned in the Army for moving an unconscious body.
“John, I can wash myself!” As if cleanliness would do anything now beyond delaying the inevitable.
“Then do so. Head to heels, I want you covered in soap, bottoms of the feet and between the toes too before you’re done. I’m starting the kettle and you’re drinking everything I give you, no questions or I strap you down and goddamn IV you.” John started the shower before Sherlock had removed his pyjama trousers and was off to the kitchen to fill the kettle from one of the water-cooler jugs he’d salvaged from a warehouse. Both men had finally learned in the last month not to shout a dead woman’s name when they needed tea. John appeared with the teapot and large mug in time to see the naked man stumble getting back into bed, displaying the groin buboes as well.
Sherlock had beaten odds before, had tricked others into thinking he was dying or dead. This grinning beast would not be tricked. The Army-medic shell John wore ticked off the symptoms as they appeared, almost pleased that Sherlock was considerate enough to acquire them in precise order because it made note-taking on the latest vector so easy.
John ate and slept in the haz-mat suit, lying next to Sherlock on the bed for his cat-naps so that the shivers or twists of pain woke him instantly. Sleeping in one long piece of time, eating in social settings, had gone away with the first truckload to the smelting works.
Sherlock’s eyes stared at the ceiling as he raced through the mind-palace, searching for the cause as if seeking a bomb’s trigger before the countdown reached zero. John forced tea, broth, soup down him, washed him down, cleaned up the vomit, emptied the bedpan and his own excretions into a binbag in a plastic tub. He knew he was blowing on a damp lump of wood that bore a single feeble, flickering ember. He did not stop blowing.
“For god’s sake, John,” Sherlock whispered once, “protect yourself.”
“I’ll goddamn protect myself when I goddamn need it.” John was up to his knees in a flooding cellar, boarding up everything, trying to keep the water out even as it gushed in at every crack and seam, because he was going to need to function afterward and if he let any more in he would not function at all when, when. Everything on him was covered; his eyes were behind goggles, but that door he could never keep shut from the man dying under his hands. Sherlock saw, and because Sherlock was his friend he said nothing.
Four a.m. and Sherlock twisted himself into a cry, demanding paper, pencil, his phone, he had it he needed to tell Mycroft before before oh God my head my head John make it stop -
Paper, pencil slapped down. Sherlock turned his head to vomit onto the bedclothes to save the paper he scrawled with chemical symbols that Dr. Watson's mind translated - counter-agent, refinement, immunization. His body heaved, and two pain-tears landed on the paper, but then it was done and Sherlock fell back, moaning and arching. “Go. Go. Mycroft.”
“I’m not leaving you till you’re -” John’s mouth snapped shut behind the face-mask, the plague-doctor’s beak. He’d almost used the word.
“John, I am dead and you fucking know it. Get this to Mycroft. Stay here and die, or go and save London. Save. London. Oh G- !”
John looked down into white eyes as a scream of pain hit him full in the face.
Clang.
Dr. Watson snatched the paper from the dying man’s clenching hand, stuffed it into the suit’s front pouch. One last doctor’s implement; one last capsule for the patient, chambered.
Muzzle between the vector’s white open eyes.
Bang.
Suited, equipped, pack on his back, the answer in his belly, the plague-doctor left the ward. Slam, silver X on the door in spray paint under the brass street number, the number “1” beneath, circled, for the bin-men.
And the hero who would save 2 million lives set out for the Diogenes Club at a dead run.