The Doctor Part 2
Title: The Doctor
Rating: R(or M?) (For blood guts, gore, cursing and the like.)
Warnings: Blood, serious injuries, the fixing of injuries. John is a Doctor after all. Violence, I suppose.
Characters: John/Sherlock (No romance, but a strong connection. I hesitate to call it friendship...)
Wordcount: 14,000 (give or take)
Summary: I went to war to save people, and learned how to kill. I left the war because of an accident, but the war didn't leave me.
Beta/Britpick: The lovely lizzlie whom I can't thank enough!
Author's Notes
Part 1
John has been at this current camp for two weeks now, with no sign as to why he is here. There don't seem to be any insurgents, or fishy groups in the area, or really any problems at all. In fact, it rarely sees any action and he gets the odd feeling that he has just been placed out of the way to stay out of trouble.
John isn't a stupid man, but when he finally receives a small slip of paper from a messenger, it takes him a moment to puzzle out. He thinks it over as he strikes a match, lights the paper, and watches it burn to ash in the sand outside his tent. He had already figured out that this crap placement has been a test of sorts. To see how patient he is, how trustworthy, whether he can keep his head in a boring situation. He can, but he doesn't like being manipulated. The message he has just received, though, more than makes up for that. It's ostensibly from Mycroft, if he judges by the cryptic wording it bears, and is interesting as well. A friend of our mother is in danger. Find it. He decides the note refers to a friend of the Queen. He tilts his head, considering. A relative? Perhaps someone in the limelight currently? Whoever it is, it's clear to John that this is the most monumental mission he has yet been given. If he's interpreting things correctly. He can't help but feel uneasy. He's spied on dignitaries, defused bombs meant to take out royalty, rescued operatives, led soldiers on impossible extermination missions...
But the carefully crafted message, the subject, and the unsaid threat ruffle his feathers in a nameless way. His hand twitches for his knife, then falls to his side.
But for Queen and Country, he'll take this mission.
~~
“Not even Queen and Country,” John snarls to himself, staggering out of a rusty warehouse, “Could get me to go back in that building.”
He had tracked down the sect who planned on kidnapping the friend of the Queen, and found out several things altogether.
One. The group was larger than he had thought. He had expected to be able to waltz in, take out the boss, and as the lackeys ran around like panicked chickens, pick them off one by one. Instead, he dropped straight into a hornets nest of over 20 angry men.
Not good odds.
Two. At least one of them was a crack shot. His left arm is now entirely useless, and hangs at his side. Two bullets hit home and he'll have to dig them out soon.
He pulls his pack around to his front, rummages for a grenade, pulls the pin and tosses it over his shoulder towards the warehouse. Where it lands doesn't matter: he trailed petrol inside the rusty metal hulk so the whole thing is guaranteed to go up.
Three. When the grenade goes off, he does indeed feel the heat of flames as the building goes up like a torch. The surprise is that a second explosion rips apart the whole building and slams into him.
So that's what those kegs were...
His last thought is that at least he “defused” things before they got the Greek. Whatever that's worth.
~~
When he awakens, he's face down in a nearby alley, the roar of the warehouse behind him. The wail of sirens approach in the distance and he can hear shouts nearby of frantic locals approaching the fire. He groans, and twitches each of his muscles at a time, taking as good an account as he can with his face practically buried in a rubbish pile.
His arm is nearly useless, screaming with pain and dead from blood loss. His fingers twitch at his command, but only reluctantly. His back was scorched by the blast, his shirt torn away, and might have shrapnel embedded in it, judging by the abominable stinging when he flexes his shoulder blades. Questing fingers find a gash and large chunk of shrapnel in his right thigh, but other than that and some minor scratches and abrasions, he seems relatively uninjured.
A cut on his forehead is streaming blood onto the ground, so John heaves himself onto hand and knees. His entire body screams in displeasure as he awkwardly twists his pack from his front to his back, but he kneels up and smears dust across his head wound, a rudimentary clotting technique.
He has more things to worry about than dirt in a superficial wound.
John opens his eyes, uses a finger to track, and looks up towards the sun. He doesn't seem to have a concussion, so heaves himself to his feet. He's a little dizzy but the blood loss accounts for that. He turns but can't see the warehouse, or the emergency crews from his position, so he walks away.
No one expects someone to walk calmly away from a catastrophe.
He still has two knives strapped to his thighs, his garrote, and his Browning in a shoulder holster under his tattered shirt, which he keeps on only because the front hides his gun and he needs to get out of here.
Fast.
They'll figure out it's not an accident, soon, and then they'll lock down the city.
He stumbles down the alley, good hand trailing against the wall beside him, in search of defenseless laundry.
He's in luck. A few corners away from where he woke he finds a line strung overhead. He laboriously drags himself up on a bin, then snatches a sheet and shirt off the line. Sliding awkwardly off the bin, he leans against it as he struggles out of his pack and shoves the sheet into it. His shirt he shrugs out of, letting it pool at his feet, and replaces it with the long sleeved shirt he stole. He hopes the dark color won't show the blood from his back or his arms, as he can't afford to treat them yet. Not until he gets out of the city. He then steps on his discarded shirt, bends over, pulls a knife from his boot, and proceeds to crudely slice it up by dragging the knife through the thin cloth.. The first strip goes around his head in imitation of a sweatband, the next he ties tightly above the shrapnel in his thigh, gritting his teeth and hissing in pain, the rest he stuffs into the pack with the sheet. Attached to his belt is a small first aid kit, and inside it is some walnut oil, which he uses two fingers to rub into his face and neck. The residue he grinds into his palms then massages more onto the back of his hands and halfway up his forearms.
With his skin dark, no on will look twice at him.
From his pack he withdraws a cap, which covers his blond hair. He carefully threads his injured arm through the strap of his pack, then lets his hand rest in his trouser pocket to keep it from being jostled. Satisfied with his disguise, he leisurely strides away from the alley.
The city is a maze, especially the slums that he finds himself in. One minute he can be in the dirtiest and most disturbing area, and the next be strolling by the poshest houses he's ever seen. John only ducks his head, the brim of his cap shadowing his face, but silently shakes his head at the horrid state of this South American country. He hopes he never has to visit it again.
Even in his dazed and dizzy state, he navigates the twisting alleys and streets without pause, eventually coming to a beaten up car he parked in the outskirts days before. He fumbles the keys, unused to unlocking things with his right hand, but eventually gets the door open. Starting the ignition nearly stumps him, but eventually he pulls out and drives slowly down the dirty street.
As he leaves the city, he greets the guards flawlessly in their dialect, producing fake papers when asked. They peer in the car and at him, but somehow he passes muster. They wave him on after a few brisk questions in Portuguese, which he thankfully knows how to answer, and he holds in a relieved sigh.
He's good, but he travels so often that he mostly knows only common phrases in local dialects. He's nowhere near fluent.
He drives away from the city, striking for the countryside. At a random point on the dusty country road, he parks the car to the side, leaving the keys on the seat. Whoever finds it is welcome to it. He stumbles off the road over the grassy plain, heading for a point he found when scouting days before. When, hours later, he finds the abandoned shack he marked as a possible hideaway, he shuts the door, and collapses straight onto the floor.
He sleeps soundly through the night.
In the morning, he wakes with a fever.
Cursing, he squints in the bright sunlight streaming through the basic slatted walls.
“Infection,” he mutters.
He drags himself to the sleeping pallet, piled with musty old straw, assuming that abandoned means no fleas, and struggles out of the purloined shirt. The cap and strip of cloth about his head go next, and he sets to tearing the fresh sheet into long strips. He has to tear with one hand and his mouth, but he manages well enough. The well outside has a little clean water, which he brings inside in a rusty metal pail.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
He might have spent the last few years wandering the countryside for this “Mycroft,” but first and foremost: he is a doctor.
He treats each wound one at a time, starting with the less serious first. Dozens litter his body, and even through the haze of his fever he treats each one.
On a tiny fire in the center of the hut, he boils his water in a small clay bowl he found on the floor. As he boils each small batch, he dips into another bowl of warm water and gently washes the blood and sand from his body. He treats his back before his shoulder and thigh, soaking a large cloth and gritting his teeth as he squeezes it over his shoulder straight onto his back.
He screams.
“Shit!”
There isn't much that he can reach back there, but he does his best to wash the grime away before wrapping his torso tightly.
He confronts his thigh next. There's a large chunk of metal embedded in it straight through his cargo pants, so he cuts a hole around it to make sure the metal isn't caught on the fabric, then tugs his trousers off. He balls up some remnants of his shirt, stuffs them in his mouth, and yanks out the shrapnel with his bare hand before he loses his courage.
He yells behind the gag.
With the small set of tweezers from his belt kit he pulls out other small pieces. Stitching up the hole, he wraps his whole upper thigh in gauze before binding it with strips from the sheet. John wriggles back into his worse-for-wear trousers, lacking anything else. Fighting off fever chills is sending stinging sweat down his shoulder and into other uncovered scrapes.
He shucks both of his straight blades, laying them beside the pallet, and fishes out a smaller folding blade from his abandoned boots. With a flick, he opens it, and sterilizes it in the hottest part of the flames, dousing it in peroxide after for good measure.
Gag still in his mouth, he turns to his shoulder, peeling off the makeshift bandage, and lays the flat of the blade on his skin. Taking a deep breath, he digs the tip under the first bullet.
He wakes on the floor, the glinting blade in the dirt in front of his nose.
He groans, spitting out the gag.
“Let's try that again, shall we?”
He shoves himself up, aware that the wound is bleeding again as his vision swims and dims.
But the first bullet lies on the floor as well as the knife. He huffs a laugh in relief.
“Good lad,” he tells himself. “One more to go, mate.”
He holds onto consciousness this time, barely, but blood starts gushing out of his arm so fast he can feel his strength waning. Fumbling for one of his larger knives, he unsheathes it and shoves it into the fire. He props it in the flames and leaves it there, then shoves the gag back into his mouth, and cleans the wound as best as he can. First he uses a bowl of water dumped straight on, then the rest of the little bottle of peroxide.
He clamps his teeth down and huffs through it, but stays awake.
He mops up the bloody water, trying to keep his arm as still as he can, then grabs the knife from where he left it in the fire. He closes his eyes, swallows, then cauterizes the wound.
The sizzling sound and smell of burnt flesh bring to mind meat on the grill, a comparison that will infect his dreams and waking life for months to come.
~~
John fades in and out of consciousness for two days, judging by his brief glimpses of the sun, subsisting on only water. On the third day, Mycroft appears like the devil himself.
John is just a bit too fuzzy to see what's wrong with that contrast, so he lets it stand.
“John,” Mycroft frowns down at him. He tsks.
John knows that he is a wreck. His vision is out of focus, sweat pours out of him faster than he can drink water, leaving his mouth cottony and dry, he's shaking constantly, now with the occasional full-on shudder, and he's curled up on a dirt floor without any covering.
I must look a sight.
“Yes,” Mycroft agrees. “You do.”
He hooks his umbrella onto his arm, and steps closer to the doctor. “Do you think you can stand, doctor?”
“Infection,” he chatters. “Bullet wound. Didn't cauterize in time.”
Mycroft's face pinches as he gazes around the hut, taking in the abandoned knives, burnt out fire, rusty pail, and scattered first-aid supplies.
“You'll be taken care of, doctor.”
John's heart chills. “I did it,” he gasps. “I stopped the sect. No innocents were hurt.”
“Yes, you did.” Mycroft frowns, thinking. “Ah, yes. Don't worry, good doctor. You're being taken to hospital. When I say taken care of, I mean it.” He pauses. “Do you still trust me?” he wonders aloud.
“You haven't given me any reason no to,” John readily replies, but shivers harder.
“You have nothing to worry about, doctor. You did your job very well. Now it's time for you to go home.”
Mycroft bends down and lifts John up by his armpits, allowing John to lean on him heavily as they stumble outside to a helicopter.
“Home?” John wonders. “I don't have a home.”
“You, John Watson,” Mycroft admits quietly, “Are a man in whom I have a great amount of faith. You will find your way.”
As they load him up into the helicopter, he deeply regrets how wrong this mission went. He made a mistake, and now he's broken. Mycroft can't use a broken man who makes bad choices. He's doing the right thing by sending him back. But there's nothing and no one there for him. His parents are dead, Harry has Clara, and his “job” precludes any army buddies he might meet again in the homeland.
He has none.
This is his life. The danger, the intrigue, the protecting of his country: he lives for this. This is what he looked for when he became a surgeon and did his residency in Accident and Emergency. He's useless without war.
“John. John.” Mycroft insists, leaning over the gurney and gripping his right hand. “You are the least useless man I have ever met. You will find a purpose.”
John chuckles mirthlessly as an IV is threaded into his arm and a sedative is prepared.
“I have no purpose in the real world.”
As they inject the sedative, and unconsciousness floods over him, he dimly hears Mycroft murmur.
“You will find one, John. I'll make sure of it.”
~~
When he awakens, Mycroft and the operatives are gone, he is in a medical hospital back Home, and the nurse refers to him as Major Watson.
Lovely, get shot in the shoulder, get sent home like a recalcitrant child, and receive a promotion.
When the curious nurse asks how he got injured, he just says “I got shot.”
She doesn't ask about his thigh wound, nor the botched cauterizing job. In fact, after his curt answer, she stops talking to him at all.
He tells himself that it doesn't bother him.
The hospital is dull. The people are dull. In the beginning, he presses the button for the morphine every time he has enough of the dullness and slips away into a drug induced stupor. Eventually they cotton on, and from...somewhere, a laptop that is apparently “his” appears.
He's never bought himself a computer before, but he won't look a gift horse in the mouth as long as someone wants to claim it's his.
He's gently prodded by the staff psychologist to “write about his experiences,” but instead he plays plenty of Solitaire. When he gets bored of that, he switches to Spider Solitaire.
“The next step before we release you,” the elderly male psychiatrist says, it's Dr. Edwards, he thinks, “Is for you to decide what you would like to do out in the real world.”
“If I said I wanted to be a bum and live on the streets,” John tests, “What would you do?”
Dr. Edwards smiles. “We would give you pamphlets detailing hostels for you to sleep at, kitchens to eat at, and various charities that would help you out. But you must know that you will receive a pension from the Army, John, although it might not be much. So unless living on the streets is your heart's desire, it doesn't have to be an option.” He leans forward. “Is that what you want?”
“No. Definitely not.”
“Good.”
The silence stretches, broken only by the ticking of the wall clock. John refuses to look up at it and let the quack make another note about his anxiety or impatience.
“I am a doctor...” John ventures tentatively. “A surgeon. I can still fix people.”
“We'll see,” Dr. Edwards says.
That's what his parents always used to say when he wanted something they couldn't afford. It isn't very reassuring.
~~
“Goddammit,” John's temper finally snaps. “Why can't I do this?”
He wants to throw the ball at the physical therapist's sympathetic face, but instead he drops it to the floor. “Why can't I do this?” he repeats quietly, putting the therapist on the spot.
“You just need to practice and get your strength up,” the young man soothes. “The more you do this, the easier it will be.”
“I don't really think-”
“I think you need to speak to your psychologist about that,” the man interjects kindly but firmly. “Not me.” He stands quickly. “Just keep squeezing the ball, it will help.”
John wants to growl under his breath, but he knows he has his irrational temper under control, stuffed under the plain facade of John Watson. Also, he's aware that it's just not the thing to do.
Normal. Normal. Normal.
John wheels his chair to the door where a nurse takes hold and pushes him down the hall. He resents that he doesn't have enough mobility or strength in his shoulder to even work a wheelchair. But he knows it will get better. He'll make it get better. John asks the nurse to stop outside the door, and puts his own hands on the wheels.
“I can get myself inside.”
She nods and walks away.
Taking a deep breath, he pushes the door in and rolls through.
“Hullo,” John says,
“Hello, Dr. Watson,” Edwards stands. “Let me get the door for you.”
“Thank you.”
John sits quietly until the other man has sat down, then speaks.
“There's something wrong.”
Edwards quirks a smile. “Not good at self-diagnosis?”
“I am a surgeon, not a psychologist. If I'm in here speaking to you, and not one of my peers, it has less to do with an injury than the mind.”
“We have reason to believe that your non-functioning leg is psychosomatic..."
Part 3
Rating: R(or M?) (For blood guts, gore, cursing and the like.)
Warnings: Blood, serious injuries, the fixing of injuries. John is a Doctor after all. Violence, I suppose.
Characters: John/Sherlock (No romance, but a strong connection. I hesitate to call it friendship...)
Wordcount: 14,000 (give or take)
Summary: I went to war to save people, and learned how to kill. I left the war because of an accident, but the war didn't leave me.
Beta/Britpick: The lovely lizzlie whom I can't thank enough!
Author's Notes
Part 1
John has been at this current camp for two weeks now, with no sign as to why he is here. There don't seem to be any insurgents, or fishy groups in the area, or really any problems at all. In fact, it rarely sees any action and he gets the odd feeling that he has just been placed out of the way to stay out of trouble.
John isn't a stupid man, but when he finally receives a small slip of paper from a messenger, it takes him a moment to puzzle out. He thinks it over as he strikes a match, lights the paper, and watches it burn to ash in the sand outside his tent. He had already figured out that this crap placement has been a test of sorts. To see how patient he is, how trustworthy, whether he can keep his head in a boring situation. He can, but he doesn't like being manipulated. The message he has just received, though, more than makes up for that. It's ostensibly from Mycroft, if he judges by the cryptic wording it bears, and is interesting as well. A friend of our mother is in danger. Find it. He decides the note refers to a friend of the Queen. He tilts his head, considering. A relative? Perhaps someone in the limelight currently? Whoever it is, it's clear to John that this is the most monumental mission he has yet been given. If he's interpreting things correctly. He can't help but feel uneasy. He's spied on dignitaries, defused bombs meant to take out royalty, rescued operatives, led soldiers on impossible extermination missions...
But the carefully crafted message, the subject, and the unsaid threat ruffle his feathers in a nameless way. His hand twitches for his knife, then falls to his side.
But for Queen and Country, he'll take this mission.
~~
“Not even Queen and Country,” John snarls to himself, staggering out of a rusty warehouse, “Could get me to go back in that building.”
He had tracked down the sect who planned on kidnapping the friend of the Queen, and found out several things altogether.
One. The group was larger than he had thought. He had expected to be able to waltz in, take out the boss, and as the lackeys ran around like panicked chickens, pick them off one by one. Instead, he dropped straight into a hornets nest of over 20 angry men.
Not good odds.
Two. At least one of them was a crack shot. His left arm is now entirely useless, and hangs at his side. Two bullets hit home and he'll have to dig them out soon.
He pulls his pack around to his front, rummages for a grenade, pulls the pin and tosses it over his shoulder towards the warehouse. Where it lands doesn't matter: he trailed petrol inside the rusty metal hulk so the whole thing is guaranteed to go up.
Three. When the grenade goes off, he does indeed feel the heat of flames as the building goes up like a torch. The surprise is that a second explosion rips apart the whole building and slams into him.
So that's what those kegs were...
His last thought is that at least he “defused” things before they got the Greek. Whatever that's worth.
~~
When he awakens, he's face down in a nearby alley, the roar of the warehouse behind him. The wail of sirens approach in the distance and he can hear shouts nearby of frantic locals approaching the fire. He groans, and twitches each of his muscles at a time, taking as good an account as he can with his face practically buried in a rubbish pile.
His arm is nearly useless, screaming with pain and dead from blood loss. His fingers twitch at his command, but only reluctantly. His back was scorched by the blast, his shirt torn away, and might have shrapnel embedded in it, judging by the abominable stinging when he flexes his shoulder blades. Questing fingers find a gash and large chunk of shrapnel in his right thigh, but other than that and some minor scratches and abrasions, he seems relatively uninjured.
A cut on his forehead is streaming blood onto the ground, so John heaves himself onto hand and knees. His entire body screams in displeasure as he awkwardly twists his pack from his front to his back, but he kneels up and smears dust across his head wound, a rudimentary clotting technique.
He has more things to worry about than dirt in a superficial wound.
John opens his eyes, uses a finger to track, and looks up towards the sun. He doesn't seem to have a concussion, so heaves himself to his feet. He's a little dizzy but the blood loss accounts for that. He turns but can't see the warehouse, or the emergency crews from his position, so he walks away.
No one expects someone to walk calmly away from a catastrophe.
He still has two knives strapped to his thighs, his garrote, and his Browning in a shoulder holster under his tattered shirt, which he keeps on only because the front hides his gun and he needs to get out of here.
Fast.
They'll figure out it's not an accident, soon, and then they'll lock down the city.
He stumbles down the alley, good hand trailing against the wall beside him, in search of defenseless laundry.
He's in luck. A few corners away from where he woke he finds a line strung overhead. He laboriously drags himself up on a bin, then snatches a sheet and shirt off the line. Sliding awkwardly off the bin, he leans against it as he struggles out of his pack and shoves the sheet into it. His shirt he shrugs out of, letting it pool at his feet, and replaces it with the long sleeved shirt he stole. He hopes the dark color won't show the blood from his back or his arms, as he can't afford to treat them yet. Not until he gets out of the city. He then steps on his discarded shirt, bends over, pulls a knife from his boot, and proceeds to crudely slice it up by dragging the knife through the thin cloth.. The first strip goes around his head in imitation of a sweatband, the next he ties tightly above the shrapnel in his thigh, gritting his teeth and hissing in pain, the rest he stuffs into the pack with the sheet. Attached to his belt is a small first aid kit, and inside it is some walnut oil, which he uses two fingers to rub into his face and neck. The residue he grinds into his palms then massages more onto the back of his hands and halfway up his forearms.
With his skin dark, no on will look twice at him.
From his pack he withdraws a cap, which covers his blond hair. He carefully threads his injured arm through the strap of his pack, then lets his hand rest in his trouser pocket to keep it from being jostled. Satisfied with his disguise, he leisurely strides away from the alley.
The city is a maze, especially the slums that he finds himself in. One minute he can be in the dirtiest and most disturbing area, and the next be strolling by the poshest houses he's ever seen. John only ducks his head, the brim of his cap shadowing his face, but silently shakes his head at the horrid state of this South American country. He hopes he never has to visit it again.
Even in his dazed and dizzy state, he navigates the twisting alleys and streets without pause, eventually coming to a beaten up car he parked in the outskirts days before. He fumbles the keys, unused to unlocking things with his right hand, but eventually gets the door open. Starting the ignition nearly stumps him, but eventually he pulls out and drives slowly down the dirty street.
As he leaves the city, he greets the guards flawlessly in their dialect, producing fake papers when asked. They peer in the car and at him, but somehow he passes muster. They wave him on after a few brisk questions in Portuguese, which he thankfully knows how to answer, and he holds in a relieved sigh.
He's good, but he travels so often that he mostly knows only common phrases in local dialects. He's nowhere near fluent.
He drives away from the city, striking for the countryside. At a random point on the dusty country road, he parks the car to the side, leaving the keys on the seat. Whoever finds it is welcome to it. He stumbles off the road over the grassy plain, heading for a point he found when scouting days before. When, hours later, he finds the abandoned shack he marked as a possible hideaway, he shuts the door, and collapses straight onto the floor.
He sleeps soundly through the night.
In the morning, he wakes with a fever.
Cursing, he squints in the bright sunlight streaming through the basic slatted walls.
“Infection,” he mutters.
He drags himself to the sleeping pallet, piled with musty old straw, assuming that abandoned means no fleas, and struggles out of the purloined shirt. The cap and strip of cloth about his head go next, and he sets to tearing the fresh sheet into long strips. He has to tear with one hand and his mouth, but he manages well enough. The well outside has a little clean water, which he brings inside in a rusty metal pail.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
He might have spent the last few years wandering the countryside for this “Mycroft,” but first and foremost: he is a doctor.
He treats each wound one at a time, starting with the less serious first. Dozens litter his body, and even through the haze of his fever he treats each one.
On a tiny fire in the center of the hut, he boils his water in a small clay bowl he found on the floor. As he boils each small batch, he dips into another bowl of warm water and gently washes the blood and sand from his body. He treats his back before his shoulder and thigh, soaking a large cloth and gritting his teeth as he squeezes it over his shoulder straight onto his back.
He screams.
“Shit!”
There isn't much that he can reach back there, but he does his best to wash the grime away before wrapping his torso tightly.
He confronts his thigh next. There's a large chunk of metal embedded in it straight through his cargo pants, so he cuts a hole around it to make sure the metal isn't caught on the fabric, then tugs his trousers off. He balls up some remnants of his shirt, stuffs them in his mouth, and yanks out the shrapnel with his bare hand before he loses his courage.
He yells behind the gag.
With the small set of tweezers from his belt kit he pulls out other small pieces. Stitching up the hole, he wraps his whole upper thigh in gauze before binding it with strips from the sheet. John wriggles back into his worse-for-wear trousers, lacking anything else. Fighting off fever chills is sending stinging sweat down his shoulder and into other uncovered scrapes.
He shucks both of his straight blades, laying them beside the pallet, and fishes out a smaller folding blade from his abandoned boots. With a flick, he opens it, and sterilizes it in the hottest part of the flames, dousing it in peroxide after for good measure.
Gag still in his mouth, he turns to his shoulder, peeling off the makeshift bandage, and lays the flat of the blade on his skin. Taking a deep breath, he digs the tip under the first bullet.
He wakes on the floor, the glinting blade in the dirt in front of his nose.
He groans, spitting out the gag.
“Let's try that again, shall we?”
He shoves himself up, aware that the wound is bleeding again as his vision swims and dims.
But the first bullet lies on the floor as well as the knife. He huffs a laugh in relief.
“Good lad,” he tells himself. “One more to go, mate.”
He holds onto consciousness this time, barely, but blood starts gushing out of his arm so fast he can feel his strength waning. Fumbling for one of his larger knives, he unsheathes it and shoves it into the fire. He props it in the flames and leaves it there, then shoves the gag back into his mouth, and cleans the wound as best as he can. First he uses a bowl of water dumped straight on, then the rest of the little bottle of peroxide.
He clamps his teeth down and huffs through it, but stays awake.
He mops up the bloody water, trying to keep his arm as still as he can, then grabs the knife from where he left it in the fire. He closes his eyes, swallows, then cauterizes the wound.
The sizzling sound and smell of burnt flesh bring to mind meat on the grill, a comparison that will infect his dreams and waking life for months to come.
~~
John fades in and out of consciousness for two days, judging by his brief glimpses of the sun, subsisting on only water. On the third day, Mycroft appears like the devil himself.
John is just a bit too fuzzy to see what's wrong with that contrast, so he lets it stand.
“John,” Mycroft frowns down at him. He tsks.
John knows that he is a wreck. His vision is out of focus, sweat pours out of him faster than he can drink water, leaving his mouth cottony and dry, he's shaking constantly, now with the occasional full-on shudder, and he's curled up on a dirt floor without any covering.
I must look a sight.
“Yes,” Mycroft agrees. “You do.”
He hooks his umbrella onto his arm, and steps closer to the doctor. “Do you think you can stand, doctor?”
“Infection,” he chatters. “Bullet wound. Didn't cauterize in time.”
Mycroft's face pinches as he gazes around the hut, taking in the abandoned knives, burnt out fire, rusty pail, and scattered first-aid supplies.
“You'll be taken care of, doctor.”
John's heart chills. “I did it,” he gasps. “I stopped the sect. No innocents were hurt.”
“Yes, you did.” Mycroft frowns, thinking. “Ah, yes. Don't worry, good doctor. You're being taken to hospital. When I say taken care of, I mean it.” He pauses. “Do you still trust me?” he wonders aloud.
“You haven't given me any reason no to,” John readily replies, but shivers harder.
“You have nothing to worry about, doctor. You did your job very well. Now it's time for you to go home.”
Mycroft bends down and lifts John up by his armpits, allowing John to lean on him heavily as they stumble outside to a helicopter.
“Home?” John wonders. “I don't have a home.”
“You, John Watson,” Mycroft admits quietly, “Are a man in whom I have a great amount of faith. You will find your way.”
As they load him up into the helicopter, he deeply regrets how wrong this mission went. He made a mistake, and now he's broken. Mycroft can't use a broken man who makes bad choices. He's doing the right thing by sending him back. But there's nothing and no one there for him. His parents are dead, Harry has Clara, and his “job” precludes any army buddies he might meet again in the homeland.
He has none.
This is his life. The danger, the intrigue, the protecting of his country: he lives for this. This is what he looked for when he became a surgeon and did his residency in Accident and Emergency. He's useless without war.
“John. John.” Mycroft insists, leaning over the gurney and gripping his right hand. “You are the least useless man I have ever met. You will find a purpose.”
John chuckles mirthlessly as an IV is threaded into his arm and a sedative is prepared.
“I have no purpose in the real world.”
As they inject the sedative, and unconsciousness floods over him, he dimly hears Mycroft murmur.
“You will find one, John. I'll make sure of it.”
~~
When he awakens, Mycroft and the operatives are gone, he is in a medical hospital back Home, and the nurse refers to him as Major Watson.
Lovely, get shot in the shoulder, get sent home like a recalcitrant child, and receive a promotion.
When the curious nurse asks how he got injured, he just says “I got shot.”
She doesn't ask about his thigh wound, nor the botched cauterizing job. In fact, after his curt answer, she stops talking to him at all.
He tells himself that it doesn't bother him.
The hospital is dull. The people are dull. In the beginning, he presses the button for the morphine every time he has enough of the dullness and slips away into a drug induced stupor. Eventually they cotton on, and from...somewhere, a laptop that is apparently “his” appears.
He's never bought himself a computer before, but he won't look a gift horse in the mouth as long as someone wants to claim it's his.
He's gently prodded by the staff psychologist to “write about his experiences,” but instead he plays plenty of Solitaire. When he gets bored of that, he switches to Spider Solitaire.
“The next step before we release you,” the elderly male psychiatrist says, it's Dr. Edwards, he thinks, “Is for you to decide what you would like to do out in the real world.”
“If I said I wanted to be a bum and live on the streets,” John tests, “What would you do?”
Dr. Edwards smiles. “We would give you pamphlets detailing hostels for you to sleep at, kitchens to eat at, and various charities that would help you out. But you must know that you will receive a pension from the Army, John, although it might not be much. So unless living on the streets is your heart's desire, it doesn't have to be an option.” He leans forward. “Is that what you want?”
“No. Definitely not.”
“Good.”
The silence stretches, broken only by the ticking of the wall clock. John refuses to look up at it and let the quack make another note about his anxiety or impatience.
“I am a doctor...” John ventures tentatively. “A surgeon. I can still fix people.”
“We'll see,” Dr. Edwards says.
That's what his parents always used to say when he wanted something they couldn't afford. It isn't very reassuring.
~~
“Goddammit,” John's temper finally snaps. “Why can't I do this?”
He wants to throw the ball at the physical therapist's sympathetic face, but instead he drops it to the floor. “Why can't I do this?” he repeats quietly, putting the therapist on the spot.
“You just need to practice and get your strength up,” the young man soothes. “The more you do this, the easier it will be.”
“I don't really think-”
“I think you need to speak to your psychologist about that,” the man interjects kindly but firmly. “Not me.” He stands quickly. “Just keep squeezing the ball, it will help.”
John wants to growl under his breath, but he knows he has his irrational temper under control, stuffed under the plain facade of John Watson. Also, he's aware that it's just not the thing to do.
Normal. Normal. Normal.
John wheels his chair to the door where a nurse takes hold and pushes him down the hall. He resents that he doesn't have enough mobility or strength in his shoulder to even work a wheelchair. But he knows it will get better. He'll make it get better. John asks the nurse to stop outside the door, and puts his own hands on the wheels.
“I can get myself inside.”
She nods and walks away.
Taking a deep breath, he pushes the door in and rolls through.
“Hullo,” John says,
“Hello, Dr. Watson,” Edwards stands. “Let me get the door for you.”
“Thank you.”
John sits quietly until the other man has sat down, then speaks.
“There's something wrong.”
Edwards quirks a smile. “Not good at self-diagnosis?”
“I am a surgeon, not a psychologist. If I'm in here speaking to you, and not one of my peers, it has less to do with an injury than the mind.”
“We have reason to believe that your non-functioning leg is psychosomatic..."
Part 3