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casualtheatrics2Here are my four fics from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
thegameison_sh Cycle One. Now the cycle is finished, I will own up to my terrible attempts!!
Title: Biscuits
Rating: PG
Word Count: 590
Notes: Challenge 1: Firsts.
--
John Watson considered himself a patient man. Growing up with a vicious-tempered little sister, who believed that fists were the solution if her words hadn’t convinced, he’d learnt to bite his tongue, to take one deep breath before speaking, to avoid the unpleasant arguments. His present flatmate was a clever man, who used words as a weapon and sometimes withheld them for days on end.
John, at first, thought this was some devious punishment, designed to drive John mad, until he apologised for everything he’d ever done wrong, including all of the pre-Sherlock activities.
When his garbled, humble apology was met with a raised eyebrow and the words, “Do shut up, John. I’m not angry with you. I’m thinking,” John Watson realised that, for the first time in his life, arguments were not going to be either loud and violent, or quiet and insidiously painful. Arguments simply were not going to be.
And the relief of this discovery was enough to see John through the head in the fridge, the eyeballs in the microwave, the deep scratch on the kitchen table, the destruction of his relationship with Sarah and even through the chip-and-pin-machine-row debacle. Through six months of living with Sherlock Holmes, John was profoundly relieved to live his life argument-free.
He even encouraged it, acquiescing to Holmes’ wishes and abiding by Holmes’ bizarre set of rules. His life was easy now, argument-free and peaceful. And if occasionally tripping over a severed hand in his kitchen was the price he paid, well, John Watson was a patient man and could handle that.
Their first argument, the first proper argument that rocked 221B, Baker St and left Watson shaking, was not about the severed head. It was not about the discordant violin music at 4am that kept Watson tossing and turning. It wasn’t even about Holmes’ total inability to be polite to Watson’s latest flavour-of-the-week. It was about chocolate Hobnobs.
“I very specifically told you, Sherlock, that I was keeping them for my mother’s visit!”
“You never said anything of the sort! Anyway, they’re only biscuits. Give her the Digestives!”
“She likes chocolate Hobnobs! And she doesn’t come to visit me very often!”
“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“She’s my mother! Of course it’s not a good thing!”
“Well, your sister only lives around the corner, but you never see her!”
“WHAT. ARE. YOU. GOING. TO. DO. ABOUT. MY. HOBNOBS?!”
“NOTHING!” Sherlock’s face twisted with a grim snarl. “THEY’RE JUST BISCUITS!”
“My God!” Watson replied, in blind exasperation. “No wonder you have arch-enemies!”
Sherlock looked him straight in the face and replied coldly, “Well, I certainly don’t have friends.”
The room vibrated with stillness, as the air ripples after the firing of a gun. Watson recoiled in shock. Sherlock turned and left the living room for his bedroom, the sharp clunk of the door closing drowning out Watson’s ragged breaths.
If asked, Watson would assure the enquirer that there were no hot tears pricking at the back of his eyes. There was no lump rising up in his throat. There was no sense of shame and self-pity enfolding him in a blanket of misery. There was simply the flat, ringing with hateful words and the sharp twanging of violin strings. It choked Watson, and he left the flat, walking blindly in the direction of his sister’s house.
*
The next day, there were six packets of chocolate Hobnobs on the kitchen table when Watson got in from work. And a note which read,
Apart from you, of course. SH.
Title: 221A
Rating: 12A/PG-13
Word Count: 616
Warnings: Kidnapping, graphic violence
Notes:: Challenge 2: Dark!fic
--
Mrs Hudson is enjoying a quiet cup of tea in her flat, when the knock sounds on her door. Frantic and rabbit-heart fast, it echoes through her living room. “Coming!” she calls brightly.
When she opens the door, Sherlock stands there, breathing heavily and with his shirt unbuttoned.
“Goodness, Sherlock,” Mrs Hudson purrs. “You do look a state. Come here,” she fusses, straightening his shirt, redoing the buttons and brushing lint from his hair.
Sherlock finally catches his breath. “Have you seen John?”
Frowning, Mrs Hudson shakes her head. “No, dear, not today.”
“When, when, did you last see John? Think, Mrs Hudson. When?”
Mrs Hudson can not recall. Perhaps after their last case, John has taken it upon himself to have a quiet break from the bustle and danger that surrounds Sherlock Holmes most of the time. She says as much, and Sherlock brushes her opinion aside.
He does that often, she notices with faint irritation. Brushes me aside.
Sherlock presses on with his questioning. “Are you sure, Mrs Hudson, that you haven’t heard from John?”
“Positive, Sherlock, dear. Not a peep.”
“I can’t think where he’d run off to! He’s not at Harry’s, or at Sarah’s. Where would he go? Think, Sherlock, think!” He slaps the palm of his hand against his forehead.
Mrs Hudson watches her tenant stalk up and down the main hallway for a few more minutes, before saying, “Sherlock, dear?”
“Yes?”
“Have you checked your emails? Perhaps he’s been in touch?”
“Since I last checked? Five minutes ago?”
“Well then, why don’t you phone your brother? If anyone can find John, it’ll be him,” Mrs Hudson folds her arms and glares at Sherlock sternly. “If you’re worried about John that much, you’ll put aside these petty differences with Mycroft and ask for his help.”
Sherlock sighs. “You’re right. I suppose I must phone Mycroft,” he mutters, fastening his scarf around his neck. “But it’ll be quicker if I go to see him. Don’t wait up, Mrs Hudson, I’ll be late!” And with that, he dashes out of the front door onto the street.
Mrs Hudson sighs with relief as she hears Sherlock hail a taxi. She is, of course, devoted to her tenant – thinks the world of him – but his pacing in her hallway is often rather distressing.
With relative peace restored to 221 Baker Street, Mrs Hudson slips the key from the chain around her neck, and unlocks the door to the basement flat, Flat A. She steps inside, and rebolts the door. Sherlock almost certainly won’t be back until late, but it is never worth the risk. The flat still smells musty, and slightly damp, despite the repairman’s efforts to ‘spruce the place up a little bit’. She flicks on the light, the bare bulb flickering slightly, unshaded and glaring in the stale air.
Descending the staircase, taking care not to jar her hip, Mrs Hudson arrives in the living room below her own. Her nemesis lies exhausted on the floor, broken, beaten and bruised. His eyes barely flicker as she approaches him. She scoops up the length of wood still resting against the door frame, where she had left it after her earlier exertions.
“Now, John, dear,” she says, eyes impassive. “Let’s…talk about Sherlock a little bit more, shall we?” And her fingers tighten on the short plank of wood in her hand.
The first blow is always difficult – John tends to cry out – so she usually begins with his face, to prevent him from speaking again. The sound of wood smacking into skin and bone eases the vague traces of guilt she supposes she ought to feel.
He sobs.
She smiles and raises the wood again.
Title: Lunchtime Routine
Rating: G/U
Word Count: 728
Notes: Challenge 3: Other Characters.
--
Mike Stamford has a routine. At 6am, his alarm goes off, classical music floating from the speakers and coiling its gentle fingers into Mike’s brain. He rises, completes his morning ablutions, dresses in a suit and tie, descends the stairs to the kitchen and eats the breakfast his wife has prepared for him, whilst drinking two cups of coffee – decaffeinated, of course. He kisses his children and his wife and leaves the house to catch the 7.14 train to Barts.
He arrives at work around eight in the morning, when the hospital staff are beginning to bustle around. At 9am, he collects his first group of students and takes them on rounds. At 11am, he drinks one cup of coffee – caffeinated - in the nurse’s staff room with the Matrons, where they joke about the first-year medical students and eat a packet of biscuits.
On a Tuesday and a Friday, Mike walks the ten minutes to the Barbican restaurant, and eats lunch with his departmental colleagues – his order is always the same: one small glass of Merlot and the grilled chicken breast, served with vegetables and new potatoes, no dessert, but yes, one small black coffee – decaf! – would be perfect.
On the other days, Mike eats a sandwich from the snack bar on the fifteenth floor – the girl who works there, Nicola, is young and pretty, lives with her sister, cycles to work, has a degree in fine art and always holds back Mike’s favourite sandwich flavour so he won’t be disappointed. Nicola’s sister is a pathologist in the hospital, and got her the job when Nicola had relocated to London. Nicola always makes Mike a latte – caffeinated – to go with his sandwich, even though Mike never drinks milk in his coffee. Her hair is blonde, but streaked with pink, and she has a small silver ring in her nose, whilst her t-shirts are too short and show off a strip of pale skin above the waistband of her trousers when she reaches for the decaf coffee on the top shelf.
At 6.30pm, Mike closes down his computer, turns off his office lights and locks the door behind him, before walking to the train station and catching the 18.52 train home. Forty minutes later, Mike shuts the door to his pristine London townhouse and waits for his elegant wife to make an appearance. As if on cue, Annabel glides from the kitchen, glass of whiskey in hand, and kisses his cheek.
“Here you are, darling,” she purrs, taking his coat and hanging it on the hat stand. “Dinner will be about thirty minutes.” Mike takes the whiskey, swallows it down and walks into the drawing room to find today’s paper. After a cursory glance at the headlines, Mike walks upstairs, talks with his children for a few minutes, before kissing his children goodnight and returning to the kitchen.
Dinner is always something with a fancy French name, served on exquisite white china and with an excellent Riesling. Annabel talks about the day’s events, the small society in which she moves and the fact that “Penny did the most adorable thing today, darling!”
This is his life, and if it is sometimes monotonous, that is simply the way things are. Dull, refined, posh, eating potato dauphinoise with silver cutlery from Wedgwood china – it is his life.
*
When Nicola pulls Mike behind the snack bar door and kisses him, he kisses her back immediately.
It is, after all, what he has wanted for some time. Her mouth tastes like the chocolate sprinkles she sometimes puts on his coffee. They arrange to meet at lunchtime the next day, in a small, affordable hotel down the road from the hospital.
On his way there, Mike encounters an old friend, John Watson, who had been invalided back from Afghanistan a few months earlier. John’s face is bleak, bleak and broken, and Mike cannot walk past him. A five minute chat turns into a forty-minute discussion and Mike is offering to introduce John to a friend of his, looking for a flat mate.
By the time Mike reaches the hotel, Nicola has fallen asleep, naked between the nylon sheets. He undresses and slides in beside her. She stirs and murmurs, “Where have you been?”
“I met an old friend,” Mike says, and presses a kiss to her bare shoulder. “It’s not important now.”
Title: Take 2mg And Call Me In The Morning
Rating: 12A/PG-13
Word Count: 712
Warnings: References to mental illness
Notes: Challenge 4: AU
--
The dark-haired man began to run through the hospital wards. “Have you seen Watson? Where is Watson? Has Moriarty got him? Where is he?”
Irene, the sister-in-charge of the ward, approached him cautiously. “Mr Holmes? Dr Watson is in a meeting. Perhaps you should sit down and have a cup of tea, whilst you wait for him.” She laid a hand gently on the man’s arm.
He threw it off. “Damn it, woman, no! Is he with Lestrade?”
“No! He’s with another doctor!” She turned to a nurse, Mary, who was hovering uncertainly nearby, and said in a low tone, “Mary? Fetch John at once.”
Mary scurried off down the ward, glancing back over her shoulder at the man who was raving and flailing his arms in the air.
--
“Dr Watson? Your patient? He believes he has only two days to rescue the black pearl from a bust of Napoleon. And he thinks Irene is an international jewel thief.”
“Is he? How inventive. I do apologise, Mary. He seems to burn through the sedatives more quickly each day.”
“Perhaps we should resort to a brick?” The blonde nurse quirked her eyebrow and smiled mischievously at Watson.
“Perhaps we should,” he smiled back. He paused and thought for a moment, checking something in the drugs formulary on his desk. He scribbled a note on a drugs pad. “Although perhaps an increased dose of Haloperidol – 5mg tablets orally – and of Diazepam – 2mg this time – would be equally as effective.” He held the note out between two fingers.
“Certainly, doctor.” She took the note, closed the door and her footsteps receded down the corridor. John Watson sighed, and pulled the file marked Arthur Doyle from his filing drawer.
Mr Doyle had been admitted to the unit in the spring of the previous year. For some time, he had recovered from his delusions of being “Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective”. But six months after Doyle’s arrival, a homeless man had smashed in the pharmacy window, attempting to lay his hands on any spare medication lying around. Doyle had overheard the break-in and the briefest sight of the man’s face triggered a relapse that had lasted some eleven months.
Dr Watson, celebrated and internationally renowned psychiatrist, was at a loss. Nothing now could aid the man’s recovery. With a sigh, he made a note in Doyle’s file:
26th August: Mr Doyle’s delusions increase daily. Becoming fully formed fantasy worlds, involving further outside agencies – Irene is an international jewel thief, black pearls are hidden in a bust of Napoleon. Haloperidol increased to 5mg TDS, rectal diazepam given BD (2mg). Review 7/52. J.W.
--
Holmes paced the ward impatiently. Where was Watson? The damned nurses kept getting in his way, delaying him with such trivialities as cups of tea and a nice magazine to read. It was imperative he spoke with Watson immediately: the housekeeper was the wife, the brother and his green ladder did it, it was poison pills, the thief was a traveller, the speckled band was a snake and it used the bellpull, the weather was terrible this time of year, the Duke’s son was at the pub, the Reichenbach falls were beautiful though, the smell of frying onions, the wax model bust, the silencing gun, the house, the tie, the pipe, the silence……the floor was rising up to meet him…
--
Dr Watson watched as Mary tucked Doyle back into bed. She brushed the hair away from the man’s forehead and whispered soothing words as his eyelids fluttered closed.
“He’ll sleep for a couple of hours now,” she murmured, rejoining Watson at the end of the bed. “The Diazepam always knocks him out at first.”
“Make a note of his lucidity when he wakes up, as well as how long he slept for.”
“Certainly, doctor.” She paused, and when Watson indicated she should speak, she added, “Would another round of therapy help?”
Watson sighed. “I don’t know. I think he is too delusional to benefit from any talking therapies. We may need to look at electro-convulsive therapies though.”
Mary shuddered. “Poor man,” she said, “It’s such a pity. And he has that nice wife waiting for him at home. Jean.”
Watson wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I know. But time’s a great healer.”
thegameison_sh Cycle One. Now the cycle is finished, I will own up to my terrible attempts!!Title: Biscuits
Rating: PG
Word Count: 590
Notes: Challenge 1: Firsts.
--
John Watson considered himself a patient man. Growing up with a vicious-tempered little sister, who believed that fists were the solution if her words hadn’t convinced, he’d learnt to bite his tongue, to take one deep breath before speaking, to avoid the unpleasant arguments. His present flatmate was a clever man, who used words as a weapon and sometimes withheld them for days on end.
John, at first, thought this was some devious punishment, designed to drive John mad, until he apologised for everything he’d ever done wrong, including all of the pre-Sherlock activities.
When his garbled, humble apology was met with a raised eyebrow and the words, “Do shut up, John. I’m not angry with you. I’m thinking,” John Watson realised that, for the first time in his life, arguments were not going to be either loud and violent, or quiet and insidiously painful. Arguments simply were not going to be.
And the relief of this discovery was enough to see John through the head in the fridge, the eyeballs in the microwave, the deep scratch on the kitchen table, the destruction of his relationship with Sarah and even through the chip-and-pin-machine-row debacle. Through six months of living with Sherlock Holmes, John was profoundly relieved to live his life argument-free.
He even encouraged it, acquiescing to Holmes’ wishes and abiding by Holmes’ bizarre set of rules. His life was easy now, argument-free and peaceful. And if occasionally tripping over a severed hand in his kitchen was the price he paid, well, John Watson was a patient man and could handle that.
Their first argument, the first proper argument that rocked 221B, Baker St and left Watson shaking, was not about the severed head. It was not about the discordant violin music at 4am that kept Watson tossing and turning. It wasn’t even about Holmes’ total inability to be polite to Watson’s latest flavour-of-the-week. It was about chocolate Hobnobs.
“I very specifically told you, Sherlock, that I was keeping them for my mother’s visit!”
“You never said anything of the sort! Anyway, they’re only biscuits. Give her the Digestives!”
“She likes chocolate Hobnobs! And she doesn’t come to visit me very often!”
“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“She’s my mother! Of course it’s not a good thing!”
“Well, your sister only lives around the corner, but you never see her!”
“WHAT. ARE. YOU. GOING. TO. DO. ABOUT. MY. HOBNOBS?!”
“NOTHING!” Sherlock’s face twisted with a grim snarl. “THEY’RE JUST BISCUITS!”
“My God!” Watson replied, in blind exasperation. “No wonder you have arch-enemies!”
Sherlock looked him straight in the face and replied coldly, “Well, I certainly don’t have friends.”
The room vibrated with stillness, as the air ripples after the firing of a gun. Watson recoiled in shock. Sherlock turned and left the living room for his bedroom, the sharp clunk of the door closing drowning out Watson’s ragged breaths.
If asked, Watson would assure the enquirer that there were no hot tears pricking at the back of his eyes. There was no lump rising up in his throat. There was no sense of shame and self-pity enfolding him in a blanket of misery. There was simply the flat, ringing with hateful words and the sharp twanging of violin strings. It choked Watson, and he left the flat, walking blindly in the direction of his sister’s house.
*
The next day, there were six packets of chocolate Hobnobs on the kitchen table when Watson got in from work. And a note which read,
Title: 221A
Rating: 12A/PG-13
Word Count: 616
Warnings: Kidnapping, graphic violence
Notes:: Challenge 2: Dark!fic
--
Mrs Hudson is enjoying a quiet cup of tea in her flat, when the knock sounds on her door. Frantic and rabbit-heart fast, it echoes through her living room. “Coming!” she calls brightly.
When she opens the door, Sherlock stands there, breathing heavily and with his shirt unbuttoned.
“Goodness, Sherlock,” Mrs Hudson purrs. “You do look a state. Come here,” she fusses, straightening his shirt, redoing the buttons and brushing lint from his hair.
Sherlock finally catches his breath. “Have you seen John?”
Frowning, Mrs Hudson shakes her head. “No, dear, not today.”
“When, when, did you last see John? Think, Mrs Hudson. When?”
Mrs Hudson can not recall. Perhaps after their last case, John has taken it upon himself to have a quiet break from the bustle and danger that surrounds Sherlock Holmes most of the time. She says as much, and Sherlock brushes her opinion aside.
He does that often, she notices with faint irritation. Brushes me aside.
Sherlock presses on with his questioning. “Are you sure, Mrs Hudson, that you haven’t heard from John?”
“Positive, Sherlock, dear. Not a peep.”
“I can’t think where he’d run off to! He’s not at Harry’s, or at Sarah’s. Where would he go? Think, Sherlock, think!” He slaps the palm of his hand against his forehead.
Mrs Hudson watches her tenant stalk up and down the main hallway for a few more minutes, before saying, “Sherlock, dear?”
“Yes?”
“Have you checked your emails? Perhaps he’s been in touch?”
“Since I last checked? Five minutes ago?”
“Well then, why don’t you phone your brother? If anyone can find John, it’ll be him,” Mrs Hudson folds her arms and glares at Sherlock sternly. “If you’re worried about John that much, you’ll put aside these petty differences with Mycroft and ask for his help.”
Sherlock sighs. “You’re right. I suppose I must phone Mycroft,” he mutters, fastening his scarf around his neck. “But it’ll be quicker if I go to see him. Don’t wait up, Mrs Hudson, I’ll be late!” And with that, he dashes out of the front door onto the street.
Mrs Hudson sighs with relief as she hears Sherlock hail a taxi. She is, of course, devoted to her tenant – thinks the world of him – but his pacing in her hallway is often rather distressing.
With relative peace restored to 221 Baker Street, Mrs Hudson slips the key from the chain around her neck, and unlocks the door to the basement flat, Flat A. She steps inside, and rebolts the door. Sherlock almost certainly won’t be back until late, but it is never worth the risk. The flat still smells musty, and slightly damp, despite the repairman’s efforts to ‘spruce the place up a little bit’. She flicks on the light, the bare bulb flickering slightly, unshaded and glaring in the stale air.
Descending the staircase, taking care not to jar her hip, Mrs Hudson arrives in the living room below her own. Her nemesis lies exhausted on the floor, broken, beaten and bruised. His eyes barely flicker as she approaches him. She scoops up the length of wood still resting against the door frame, where she had left it after her earlier exertions.
“Now, John, dear,” she says, eyes impassive. “Let’s…talk about Sherlock a little bit more, shall we?” And her fingers tighten on the short plank of wood in her hand.
The first blow is always difficult – John tends to cry out – so she usually begins with his face, to prevent him from speaking again. The sound of wood smacking into skin and bone eases the vague traces of guilt she supposes she ought to feel.
He sobs.
She smiles and raises the wood again.
Title: Lunchtime Routine
Rating: G/U
Word Count: 728
Notes: Challenge 3: Other Characters.
--
Mike Stamford has a routine. At 6am, his alarm goes off, classical music floating from the speakers and coiling its gentle fingers into Mike’s brain. He rises, completes his morning ablutions, dresses in a suit and tie, descends the stairs to the kitchen and eats the breakfast his wife has prepared for him, whilst drinking two cups of coffee – decaffeinated, of course. He kisses his children and his wife and leaves the house to catch the 7.14 train to Barts.
He arrives at work around eight in the morning, when the hospital staff are beginning to bustle around. At 9am, he collects his first group of students and takes them on rounds. At 11am, he drinks one cup of coffee – caffeinated - in the nurse’s staff room with the Matrons, where they joke about the first-year medical students and eat a packet of biscuits.
On a Tuesday and a Friday, Mike walks the ten minutes to the Barbican restaurant, and eats lunch with his departmental colleagues – his order is always the same: one small glass of Merlot and the grilled chicken breast, served with vegetables and new potatoes, no dessert, but yes, one small black coffee – decaf! – would be perfect.
On the other days, Mike eats a sandwich from the snack bar on the fifteenth floor – the girl who works there, Nicola, is young and pretty, lives with her sister, cycles to work, has a degree in fine art and always holds back Mike’s favourite sandwich flavour so he won’t be disappointed. Nicola’s sister is a pathologist in the hospital, and got her the job when Nicola had relocated to London. Nicola always makes Mike a latte – caffeinated – to go with his sandwich, even though Mike never drinks milk in his coffee. Her hair is blonde, but streaked with pink, and she has a small silver ring in her nose, whilst her t-shirts are too short and show off a strip of pale skin above the waistband of her trousers when she reaches for the decaf coffee on the top shelf.
At 6.30pm, Mike closes down his computer, turns off his office lights and locks the door behind him, before walking to the train station and catching the 18.52 train home. Forty minutes later, Mike shuts the door to his pristine London townhouse and waits for his elegant wife to make an appearance. As if on cue, Annabel glides from the kitchen, glass of whiskey in hand, and kisses his cheek.
“Here you are, darling,” she purrs, taking his coat and hanging it on the hat stand. “Dinner will be about thirty minutes.” Mike takes the whiskey, swallows it down and walks into the drawing room to find today’s paper. After a cursory glance at the headlines, Mike walks upstairs, talks with his children for a few minutes, before kissing his children goodnight and returning to the kitchen.
Dinner is always something with a fancy French name, served on exquisite white china and with an excellent Riesling. Annabel talks about the day’s events, the small society in which she moves and the fact that “Penny did the most adorable thing today, darling!”
This is his life, and if it is sometimes monotonous, that is simply the way things are. Dull, refined, posh, eating potato dauphinoise with silver cutlery from Wedgwood china – it is his life.
*
When Nicola pulls Mike behind the snack bar door and kisses him, he kisses her back immediately.
It is, after all, what he has wanted for some time. Her mouth tastes like the chocolate sprinkles she sometimes puts on his coffee. They arrange to meet at lunchtime the next day, in a small, affordable hotel down the road from the hospital.
On his way there, Mike encounters an old friend, John Watson, who had been invalided back from Afghanistan a few months earlier. John’s face is bleak, bleak and broken, and Mike cannot walk past him. A five minute chat turns into a forty-minute discussion and Mike is offering to introduce John to a friend of his, looking for a flat mate.
By the time Mike reaches the hotel, Nicola has fallen asleep, naked between the nylon sheets. He undresses and slides in beside her. She stirs and murmurs, “Where have you been?”
“I met an old friend,” Mike says, and presses a kiss to her bare shoulder. “It’s not important now.”
Title: Take 2mg And Call Me In The Morning
Rating: 12A/PG-13
Word Count: 712
Warnings: References to mental illness
Notes: Challenge 4: AU
--
The dark-haired man began to run through the hospital wards. “Have you seen Watson? Where is Watson? Has Moriarty got him? Where is he?”
Irene, the sister-in-charge of the ward, approached him cautiously. “Mr Holmes? Dr Watson is in a meeting. Perhaps you should sit down and have a cup of tea, whilst you wait for him.” She laid a hand gently on the man’s arm.
He threw it off. “Damn it, woman, no! Is he with Lestrade?”
“No! He’s with another doctor!” She turned to a nurse, Mary, who was hovering uncertainly nearby, and said in a low tone, “Mary? Fetch John at once.”
Mary scurried off down the ward, glancing back over her shoulder at the man who was raving and flailing his arms in the air.
--
“Dr Watson? Your patient? He believes he has only two days to rescue the black pearl from a bust of Napoleon. And he thinks Irene is an international jewel thief.”
“Is he? How inventive. I do apologise, Mary. He seems to burn through the sedatives more quickly each day.”
“Perhaps we should resort to a brick?” The blonde nurse quirked her eyebrow and smiled mischievously at Watson.
“Perhaps we should,” he smiled back. He paused and thought for a moment, checking something in the drugs formulary on his desk. He scribbled a note on a drugs pad. “Although perhaps an increased dose of Haloperidol – 5mg tablets orally – and of Diazepam – 2mg this time – would be equally as effective.” He held the note out between two fingers.
“Certainly, doctor.” She took the note, closed the door and her footsteps receded down the corridor. John Watson sighed, and pulled the file marked Arthur Doyle from his filing drawer.
Mr Doyle had been admitted to the unit in the spring of the previous year. For some time, he had recovered from his delusions of being “Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective”. But six months after Doyle’s arrival, a homeless man had smashed in the pharmacy window, attempting to lay his hands on any spare medication lying around. Doyle had overheard the break-in and the briefest sight of the man’s face triggered a relapse that had lasted some eleven months.
Dr Watson, celebrated and internationally renowned psychiatrist, was at a loss. Nothing now could aid the man’s recovery. With a sigh, he made a note in Doyle’s file:
26th August: Mr Doyle’s delusions increase daily. Becoming fully formed fantasy worlds, involving further outside agencies – Irene is an international jewel thief, black pearls are hidden in a bust of Napoleon. Haloperidol increased to 5mg TDS, rectal diazepam given BD (2mg). Review 7/52. J.W.
--
Holmes paced the ward impatiently. Where was Watson? The damned nurses kept getting in his way, delaying him with such trivialities as cups of tea and a nice magazine to read. It was imperative he spoke with Watson immediately: the housekeeper was the wife, the brother and his green ladder did it, it was poison pills, the thief was a traveller, the speckled band was a snake and it used the bellpull, the weather was terrible this time of year, the Duke’s son was at the pub, the Reichenbach falls were beautiful though, the smell of frying onions, the wax model bust, the silencing gun, the house, the tie, the pipe, the silence……the floor was rising up to meet him…
--
Dr Watson watched as Mary tucked Doyle back into bed. She brushed the hair away from the man’s forehead and whispered soothing words as his eyelids fluttered closed.
“He’ll sleep for a couple of hours now,” she murmured, rejoining Watson at the end of the bed. “The Diazepam always knocks him out at first.”
“Make a note of his lucidity when he wakes up, as well as how long he slept for.”
“Certainly, doctor.” She paused, and when Watson indicated she should speak, she added, “Would another round of therapy help?”
Watson sighed. “I don’t know. I think he is too delusional to benefit from any talking therapies. We may need to look at electro-convulsive therapies though.”
Mary shuddered. “Poor man,” she said, “It’s such a pity. And he has that nice wife waiting for him at home. Jean.”
Watson wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I know. But time’s a great healer.”
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no subject
Date: 2011-01-02 11:17 pm (UTC)*wibbles*
no subject
Date: 2011-01-03 04:21 am (UTC)Awesome, hun. I love the glimpse into Stamford, the twist on the Doyle-being-subjugated-by-Holmes thing (which is utterly heartbreaking, really), Mrs. Hudson is BLOODY EVIL, and Sherlock's sweet apology...
*hugs them all* ^_^