Title: We'll Call It A Draw
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Alternate Postings:
AO3Rating/Content: PG13, pre-series, John Whump, ACD references, blood, Major injury, Monty Python, possibly ooc
Warnings: none
Word Count: 365
Disclaimer: Not my world.
Notes: Written for
watsons_woes July Writing Prompt #16:
Incorporate humour into your entry in some way - even grim or black humour (characteristic of both medical people and police). I misread the prompt as being solely gallows humour for some reason, so this quite unfunny thing is the result. Title and quote used in story from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
Summary: John knew the type. Jovial, trying to make the medics laugh, go out making everyone smile, even a little. He didn't think he'd be one but you discover a lot about yourself when you're dying.
We'll Call It A Draw
"We're in! Go, go, go!" The chopper door hadn't even slid shut behind the evacuating fire team.
The raw pain didn't leave John much breath to speak, even through the heavy morphine fog, but speaking kept him from screaming and begging, and he'd rather be the jovial charming type than the other. It also kept his mind off the constant refrain of schoolboy-Anglican prayer in his own head
"'ve you put on weight, Bill?" John grunted, teeth gritting in his rictus smile, tears streaming from his eyes as Murray all but knelt on his shoulder, trying to stop the bleeding. Not feeling it much, bad sign. Don't think about it.
"Don't try to talk, Doc. We've got you, you're gonna be fine. You know the drill, just breathe." Lieutenant Murray shouted urgently at someone; John took it as a bad sign that he couldn't understand what Bill had said, since they were no doubt orders he'd shouted himself several times this past few years.
"'S'fine." John grated out. "Just a flesh wound."
Some part of him expected Murray to at least laugh, or one of the fire team surrounding them to echo his own habitual response of "Yeah, mate, you're a badass." John wasn't sure if anyone except him was speaking other than to shout orders. What he could see of the team from his position on the floor, with Bill snapping out commands for more morphine and wound packing, was a ring of heads, some looking distressed, some looking away.
"Hey, hey," John lifted the arm his field nurse wasn't kneeling on to bat at Bill's leg. "Hey. ''Tis but a scratch.'"
Bill cursed and directed one of the fire team to hold down John's right arm, which John only then noticed trailed an IV line. "Dammit, John!" he shouted roughly. "Keep still!"
John shook his head. "Nnn- S'not how it goes. King Arthur's supposed to say 'A scratch? Your arm's off-'" John barely got the rest of the line out as he started choking on rust-flavoured fluid.
"Christ, it's nicked the lung!" Bill shouted, and then faded out, leaving the underlying constant refrain of 'Please God, let me live,' to fill John's mind until that too faded away.
-.-.-
(that's it)