Sherlock - The Game Is On!

The Lying Detective- Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Third POV

A hospital room

A drip is attached to a drug stand and a monitor stands beside it. A steady beeping can be heard, presumably indicating a heartbeat. Michelle lies in bed, her eyes closed. The top of the bed is raised to an angle of 45 degrees. John stands at the foot of the bed. He braces his hands on the bed frame in front of him and now leans forward a little, hunching his shoulders.

Outside the room, Nurse Cornish approaches and smiles to the two MI6 agents who are guarding the room. They were in black suits paired with black shaded glass. "Identification." One agent stated coldly. Fiddling with her uniforms pocket, she withdraws her ID card. A moment later she is given the clear to enter. Nodding her head, one of the agents open.

"Oh, hi." The door closes. John, his eyes fixed on Michelle, turns his head only briefly and opens his mouth a little but then closes it again. "Just in to say hello?"

"No. I'm just in to apologise."

"I'm sure she'll pull through. She's been doing well. She's no longer on life support." She tries to shed some light to the situation. John smiles tightly, still watching Michelle. "And yeah, Mr Holmes has made a terrible mess of himself, but he's awfully strong, so must look on the bright side. They will pull through."

She walks around him to the other side of the bed. John is a couple of paces back from the end of the bed. There's something wrong about the way he's standing; He's slightly hunched over, as if his psychosomatic limp is back.

Michelle lays there. Peaceful. Almost too peaceful. After a moment John looks down and brings his hands together only to separate them again. "Well..." Clearing his throat, he walks towards a chair near the left side of the bed. Stopping at the chair, he holds up the cane to show the nurse. "A gift. For when she comes around." He braces it against the back of the chair. "Oh, that's nice. A walking stick."

"Yeah, it was mine from... A long time ago." She smiles to him, awkwardly. He turns to walk away and just then the phone on the bedside table rings.

The nurse turns to it, clears her throat and picks it up and holds it to her ear as John opens the door. "Hello? Ward seventy-three." Listening for a moment, she calls out softly. "Oh, uh, Doctor Watson? It's for you." John frowns, then makes an exasperated sound.

Walking back into the room he takes the phone which the nurse is holding across the bed to him. He puts the phone to his ear. "Hello, Mycroft."

"There's a car downstairs. We need to talk."

Not long afterwards, a black car drives under Admiralty Arch and heads into The Mall. John sits in the back seat with Mary distantly sat next to him. "I'm sorry." John mutters sadly. Mary looks to her side of the window, watching her husband's reflection sadly. "It's not his fault, you know." She turns to face him. He raises his head. "I know."

"Therefore, it's not me you should be apologising to. No one told Michelle to take that bullet. I happily would have taken it and called it even for shooting Sherlock, but no, Michelle took it." She twists her body towards him. He does the same. "John, he's hurting too. You may of known Michelle longer than him but he loves her. She was pregnant. All this... It's breaking him. He needs you because right now, at this moment, your all that matter." She's sighs heavily. "Michelle impacts all our lives. It's only now that we realise it. We take her for granted."

John clasps onto Mary's hand.

In Sherlock's hospital room, this time, Nurse Cornish finishes whatever she's doing with the equipment beside the bed and walks to the door.