Prompting Part XXXII
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GUIDELINES
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Things Moriarty did for fun apparently included fanning the flames of war in the bordering African countries of Chad and Sudan. Though the countries had only recently attained some form of peace, various rebel factions continued the conflict with violent clashes at points along the border.
Sherlock Holmes found himself caught in the very middle of this conflict through some poor timing and the promise of a job finally finished.
It had been years since his defamation, his fall, his death - and rebirth. It had been years since Moriarty had died, and piece by piece Sherlock had pulled apart the crime web he had established. This was one of the final pieces: with most of Moriarty's work kept to European countries (barring a trip to America), Sherlock had not yet visited the warlord who continued Moriarty's purposeless fight in Sudan.
And now Sherlock had.
Up until now, everything had gone surprisingly smoothly. Sherlock should have known that something, eventually, would go wrong - especially when tackling the final key piece in Moriarty's web.
These men were not like the ones Moriarty usually hired - they were wild, feral people. They fought not for money, but for their own honour. They were ruthless, and all these traits came together to make a deadly force.
They did not waste time, but they did not kill him either.
They hung him in a tree, wrists trussed together and the rough rope looped over a high bough. Fingers had been snapped, broken carelessly, and Sherlock had tried to restrain his cries. Fingernails were missing, leaving bloody, crooked stubs in their place.
That was not the worst part.
From Sherlock's hands was a path of cuts and bruises, many of which were sustained when he was dragged from the location he was found to the base of the tree he now hung in. His entire torso ached from kicks and punches, and Sherlock could feel his lungs struggling - from the heat or the abuse, who knew?
The femur was the strongest bone in the body, which is why it hurt so much when it was forcibly separated from the parts that made up his knee. Medial condyle, lateral condyle, he knew the names though his foggy brain refused to place which was where - no doubt they were no longer in their proper place. Bone had broken the skin, and blood coated Sherlock's left leg - flies buzzed around the open wound, and Sherlock had heard birds cawing, awaiting a carcass to pick apart.
Well, if some predator didn't get him, the heat certainly would. Every inch of Sherlock burned, his head pounded, and when he heard voices approach it was relief more than terror that flooded his body.
A mercy killing was not dignified, but Sherlock had lost all dignity in London four years ago. What he was now was a body awaiting the final blow, and that was that. He would die ashamed, of that Sherlock had no doubt - he could not fail and live with that knowledge, but then, death was his failure.
They spoke in a dialect Sherlock knew, but could not translate. Their hands, though warm with life, were cool against his skin. They cut him down, and dragged him away.
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It wasn’t the corpse John had seen on occasion around London - a sudden turn, and he’d be face-to-face with Sherlock’s snow white face, blood smeared from the crown of his head down his cold, sharp cheeks. This corpse was different: Sherlock’s skin was red where it had been left out under the unforgiving sun, peeling away in places, and to try and take stock of his injuries was no easy task. The number of cuts and bruises Sherlock possessed were too high for John to want to think about, and the sight of his leg (bloodied bone coated in sand; loose, jagged hangs of flesh) was one that made the seasoned doctor nearly ill.
Why now? What would possess his mind to invent such a torturous image for him now? It wasn’t fair - Sherlock was long dead. John had confirmed that himself, two fingers desperately seeking a pulse despite what he already knew.
“What are we going to do?” The volunteer, Maria, asks. She is not a trained professional - far from it. The reason they had established this clinic was simply to provide sexual education to those of age, and vaccinations to improve the quality of life for many children. They had had their fair share of people requiring medical attention, all of which fell to the handful of doctors on board for this mission. Maria herself was simply an educator caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and left to look upon the mutilated corpse bought to them.
“Bury him?” John replies, defensively sarcastic, carefully approaching the figure lying on the hard stretcher. It is so visibly Sherlock, despite the burnt colour and swelling in his face. His hair has grown out, but is now matted with blood, dirt, and twigs. As John comes closer, his fingers extended towards Sherlock’s hand - only to pull back. In place of those long, elegant, violinist fingers, there are bloodied stubs. Sherlock’s entire hand - both of them, a quick look verifies - has swollen to grotesque size, and rope burn around his wrists explain why.
Maria hovers behind him. “He’s alive.” Her voice is frantic. “We have to do something.”
John wants to laugh at her. How could a man like this survive such torture - especially after jumping from the roof of a building had killed him years ago.
It is with a sense of déjà vu and, perhaps, a touch of trepidation, that John reaches out to check Sherlock’s pulse. He already knew what he would find - absolute nothingness, as he had done that agonizing day at the foot of St Barts. Then, he had had hope. Now John simply felt ill. He wanted it to end for good.
Then he could stop being haunted everywhere he went.
Beneath John’s fingers was a frantic pulse, beating faster than it had any right to - as if it was making up for lost time.
There would be time for shock later. John’s hand moved from wrist to throat, and again sought out a pulse. It was there. It wasn’t a trick of the mind, but Sherlock Holmes actually alive beneath his hands.
Though not for long, if John continues to delay.
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“Check his blood pressure.” John instructs, pushing the stretcher away from the wall so that he might access the body from all angles. His fingers move quickly, now, without any sign of a shake - the breathing is rapid, shallow. The hands look dead - may require amputation, but John will have to see what he can do. The cuts and bruises are, for the most part, easy to deal with. Any internal injuries John will not know about, not without feeling along the torso for anything out of place.
It is the knee, though, that truly brings him concern. Compound fractures prove difficult, even in places with outstanding medical facilities. Here, there is little John can do. No doubt it will be infected - septic, if the other signs John has picked up on are accurate. John can certainly make do and get the bone back in place, get the skin stitched back together, but that would simply condemn the patient to an agonising death. He can’t seal the infection inside and allow it to tear the person apart - he simply can’t.
Though John has been running on autopilot ever since feeling that painfully alive pulse, he now has time to stop. Maria has obediently been doing the basic tasks John left her with, though when his running commentary stops, she looks nervously up at him.
“He needs to be moved.” John says seriously, returning his attention to the swollen hand closest to him. These he can try and do something with - save them, maybe. “We don’t have the facilities to treat him here.”
Maria stares at John, looking very much out of her depth - and for a woman whose sole task is to preach birth control, that much is to be expected. “Will he survive?” She asks, eyes wide.
“He won’t if he stays here.”
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I love that John has to detatch from being too personal about it and then gets all logical, and I can't wait for the next part.
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you're such a sweet op :)
i hope you keep enjoying this!
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and thank you so much for the lovely comment!
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Nothing scares John more than knowing Sherlock may very well die beneath his hands.
Nothing can prepare you for something like that, especially when your mind is still scrabbling to come to terms with the fact that someone you once thought dead is actually alive.
John still doesn’t know if he can believe it now, as he sits at Sherlock’s bedside - critical, unstable Sherlock.
Not too much different from how he’d always been, really, but given the context it’s far too morbid to even crack a smile at that kind of joke.
In one hand, John holds Sherlock’s own, mutilated one. There is little he can do now but try and keep Sherlock from giving up on himself too soon. John has done his best to make Sherlock comfortable and, more importantly, keep him alive - two functions served by the intravenous lines snaking into his bruised wrists. Fluids, painkillers, antibiotics. It sounds like a lot, but it isn’t. John could do more, he knows he could - he just doesn’t have the facilities on hand to do so.
And, after finding Sherlock the way they had, the facility no longer had John.
When John wasn’t at Sherlock’s bedside, he was making calls - they had to hurry, they had to get someone here, now, he’s not going to make it otherwise. He was doing what he could, because whatever time John spent sitting idly by, gently holding Sherlock’s hand, was time he wasn’t doing anything else.
What kind of doctor is he, that he can’t even save the life of his best friend?
The thoughts plague him, torture him, chase themselves around in his head. What if he lost a hand - lost both of them? His leg was as good as gone because John hadn’t done enough. The cuts and bruises would heal, physically, but how would Sherlock be after this was all over?
How is Sherlock now?
John had gotten little out of him during his stay. At times when the painkillers had begun to wear off, John would watch Sherlock open his eyes and struggle to make them focus. If John was in a good mood, this was where he would start up the doses again, and let Sherlock return to the nothingness he inhabited.
When John was feeling bad he would wait and let Sherlock’s eyes focus on him. It took time, but when it happened it was like a spark catching in his stomach and setting his whole body alight. The way Sherlock’s pupils dilated and his brows twitched - how his mouth opened on a silent, revelatory sigh, and then his lips struggled to form the soundless John he sometimes groaned when in particularly torturous throes of pain.
Those were the moments that gave John some amount of hope, as he once more allowed Sherlock freedom from the pain that attacked him from all sides.
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It takes a day from when he first touches Sherlock for the ambulance to arrive.
It is called an ambulance optimistically, because it is little more than a van with some equipment inside to help sustain life. They have this to take them to Nyala, a three hour drive away, where they will then be transported by helicopter to Khartoum.
John doesn’t confess to anyone around that he doesn’t think Sherlock will last the journey.
They load him up, John takes what supplies he can carry, and they are gone. He barely stops to apologise for leaving the crew without one valuable team member, because he can’t bear to leave Sherlock’s side.
The road is bumpy from the get go. It’s uncomfortable for John, but no doubt worse for Sherlock.
John tries to steady the stretcher as best he can, and - drowned out by the sounds of the two men talking loudly in the front - he tells Sherlock everything he can think of.
Things Sherlock knew, things Sherlock didn’t (though no doubt five minutes at his observational peak would have John’s post-Sherlock secrets all laid bare), things that didn’t matter. John spoke because it helped to speak.
He spoke because if he stopped speaking, he’d have to think again.
He’d have to think about the temperature in the van reaching agonising levels. He’d have to think about how Sherlock’s burnt, peeling skin twitched as he tried to massage warm lotion onto it. He’d have to think about how every single bump jarred his knee a little more, and how the makeshift splint John had arranged to keep it still could only do so much.
John couldn’t afford time to think, so he spoke.
When Sherlock made it alive to Nyala, John was surprised.
And when the paramedics in the helicopter took over from him, he was relieved.
Another two hours by air-conditioned, well-stocked rescue helicopter, and they’d be at a real hospital. No shelter set up near a border village. Sherlock just had to make it a little longer, and then someone would finally be able to help him.
John repeats this over and over to himself in his head - almost there, not long now, everything will be alright.
“Were you the doctor?” One of the people staffing the helicopter asks him, interrupting John’s thoughts.
John can’t draw his eyes away from Sherlock’s form as people with proper tools work on saving his life. If she’s hit small talk so soon in the flight, maybe there’s little that can be done. “Yeah.” John replies, though his voice is cracked. He hasn’t had anything to drink in a while - spent too long trying to get some fluids into Sherlock’s body in the van that the thought to tend to his own body fell by the wayside.
Her hand is firm on his shoulder. “You’ve done well.” The smile she offers him lights up her face, and her reply (in heavily accented English) is strangely reassuring.
John’s sigh is shaky.
Is doing well good enough?
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I love that you've updated. *waves pom poms*
I think you are doing fine with medical terms - Google can be a valuable resource :)
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you're such a wonderful op leaving me all this feedback~ <3
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