Chapter Text
John looks up, realising someone had spoken to him and was waiting for a response. His brows knit together and he glances at the speaker.
From his side, at his elbow actually, there is a presence. Excluding time in the shower, time in the loo, and occasionally a few minutes when John has been under someone else's supervision, Sherlock has been at his side. From his place next to John since this nightmare had happened, Sherlock spoke. "That's fine. We can be ready then." The confidence in the tone and the gentle touch at John's back are both comforting and cautionary. John heeds it, keeps his tongue.
He is exhausted, can tell his body is in survival mode, and barely at that. It has been forever since he's slept, and there is no appetite no matter what his well-meaning friends and co-workers hand him. Even now he is running on empty, nauseous, stomach roiling. He tries to remember what question had just been asked, and knows Sherlock will take care of it, fill him in. He also knows, with a sense of dread, that his day is about to get worse. Much, much worse. He is familiar with medical bad news, and can sense, taste, smell, and feel that it is coming. Plenty of times, he has given it, gently and with heartfelt apologies. This is, he knows, different. And this is personal, devastating, overwhelming.
The doctor and the social worker exchange a somber glance, both smile sadly at John, leave the room silently. "I'm sorry, I just didn't..." Sherlock watches John's face as sadness and confusion vie for top billing. He clears his throat.
Sherlock nods, backs up a few steps. "It's fine, John. They understand." The tone is cool and John feels moistness in his eyes again as his look snaps to Sherlock's face. "We -- I understand."
There is a melancholy minute, followed by another. John knows his brain is firing on empty, that he has not processed much over the last week, that he is missing something mission critical. He tries to concentrate on the room they're in, just a large conference room in lots of dark wood and a massive highly polished table. "What is it?" he finally says, the crack in his voice unstoppable and embarrassing, as is the need for the question. He is preoccupied, overloaded, and hasn't eaten substantially or slept more than brief intervals in days. His transport, as Sherlock would call it, is failing him.
"She's brain dead, John. The doctor explained all this to you." He waits for John to nod, and John recalls the words, the syllables broken down to sounds, gets distracted by the accent and the tone and misses some of the message. The more he tries to focus, watching the speaker's mouth, the less he hears. Sherlock's brows come together. "The EEG is flat, her brain is without bloodflow, and there are no reflexes, no brain stem function." Sherlock has witnessed over the last few days that despite his fried emotions, John is still able to communicate medically, fairly well at that, so he reverts to a language John understands. He speaks a few words about the apnea test, that the cerebral perfusion scan is completed, imaging shows profound cerebral edema, and that Mary has met brain death criteria. He uses the word irrecoverable and it sticks on an indefinite loop in John's head for a few moments. The words death certificate startle him back to the present room, and he is horrified by his stupidity - a bloody physician unable to put things together, connect the dots.
John feels his eyes start to dry as he looks at Sherlock, staring, wide eyed, the blink reflex temporarily suspended. Sherlock will fill him in completely, John knows, and is waiting for him to process a few details first. "Brain dead." The slow nod is punctuated by the gripping squeeze in the center of his chest, and he breathes, blinks, repeats, "Mary is brain dead." Saying it again seems to re-connect something, and John realises he was expecting this news, knowing there was only a few shreds of hope that the swelling inside Mary's skull would ease. It is apparently not to be. With a guilty twinge of shame, he feels something similar to relief in finally knowing the truth.
"Do you need to sit?"
"No."
"She is listed on the organ donor register. They want to go through what that means with you this morning."
"She would have wanted that." John thinks for a brief moment about the car accident, the recent surgery she's already had, the emergency c-section and his tiny little premature daughter in the NICU even now, connected to oxygen and a feeding tube and fluids, with her paper thin skin.
"We have an hour until then. We'll go back to the nursery." Sherlock has long stopped asking for John's opinion on most everything, simply deciding for them both, and since then, it's made for less stressful dynamics. John is unable to make even simple decisions, and Sherlock's frustration with John and the whole bloody situation is lessened by just taking care of it.
John only nods, realising vaguely what Sherlock is doing for him, that his mind is too numb and too fragmented, unable to decide even simple things like between a turkey or a ham sandwich. Or whom to visit, which nursing unit to go to first, what doctors to talk with, and when to drink the terribly made tea. Things have gotten better since Sherlock took over his reasoning capacities, stopped asking for his opinion, and John knows - deep down, when the processing was actually happening - that this will pass. He would find one day that the fog had cleared, and Sherlock would go back to being a right prick most of the time. He's been reduced to a sheep, with Sherlock as a shepherd. He follows Sherlock, frustrated at the numb mind, the mental acuity that has been hobbled. Sherlock pauses at the buzzer, smiles encouragingly at John, who presses the button. That much he knows to do.
The NICU staff meets them at the door, and although they are familiar, the nurse checks John's name band and Sherlock's against the band on the tiny ankle. The men pause at the sink to scrub, this behaviour already ingrained. She has not gained any weight, yet, but Janie, the nurse by her bassinet, greets him with a smile. "The doc says you should try Kangaroo care for a bit today, maybe try a feeding." Janie is watching him. John feels like he is a mobile human zoo - everywhere he goes he is being studied and dissected, with people who are watching him both afraid of his fragility and intrigued by his peculiar situation. Caged sums it up at the moment, he thinks. "If you're up for it."
John says "Okay," and eyes the baby, the monitors, and reaches out a tentative finger to lightly touch her tiny foot with the glowing infrared pulse ox sensor.
But Sherlock hesitates, questioning whether it is wise for John. "Explain."
John actually seems interested, and does not pick up on Sherlock's concern. Medical questions are at least something he recognises and clings to. He offers, "Skin to skin for the baby. It's normal, preemies need it. Usually..." and then it hits John anew, that there would be no breastfeeding mother, no maternal bonding to facilitate.
Nodding, Sherlock is already making plans. "Fine. Lose the jumper." There is a button front underneath, which Sherlock knows because he picked it, only deigning to allow the jumper in the first place because it is comforting to John. They are in the back of the NICU, with Baby Watson as the only critically ill neonate, next to a large rocking chair, which Sherlock gives John a gentle nudge toward.
His fingers clumsily work the buttons, exposing a vee of skin, a smattering of chest hair, and a healed scar barely peeking out over the shirt border. When the shirt is completely undone, John looks to Janie. In short order, Baby Watson's monitor leads and IV lines are tethered and the baby is placed, resting over John's sternum. Janie can't stop the slight lopsided smile, and when John looks questioningly at her, she freezes. "No, just..." She helps John unwrap the blanket between he and the baby to let his warmth be right up against her, helps him get sorted. "No, sorry."
For all the other emotions running amok in John's frontal lobe, he clings at something that made someone smile. "Go ahead, it's okay. I need..." and the sentence trails off and his eyes grow serious. John has talked with her a few times, and as healthcare providers they do share a common language and the ability to discuss really horrific realities while maintaining their sanity. The times John has been at his best was actually when he was distracted and forgot that the grave situation he was discussing was his own. He smiles at her, entreating her to speak.
Chagrined, Janie almost chuckles again, looks apologetically at John in the chair and at Sherlock who stands uncomfortably at his side. "Just an inappropriate observation about chest hair, is all. My apologies." John smiles at her, and she reciprocates, then moves the blankets aside so they can see the newborn face without obstruction. Janie adjusts the oxygen, wires, the pulse oximeter and the ECG leads. "She's good, and you're doing great with her." The temperature sensor on Baby Watson's abdomen alarms, and Janie silences it. "She'll warm up in a moment, sharing your radiant heat. The rest of her vitals," she nods at the monitor as they all look, "are good. We have her at the central station, too." Sherlock's head raises and he stares through the glass windows at the sections of the nursery, watching staff watching their tiny patients. John follows Sherlock's lead, looking over to the doorway, mimicking his friend as he's been doing for enough days that he barely questions it anymore. A pair of parents arrive at the door, John notes before turning back to the tiny bundle against him. He is struck by the fact that, were it not for Sherlock, he would be here alone.
The baby is awake, eyes open, small bore feeding tube in her tiny nose, the tube delicately taped to a hydrocolloid dressing on one side of her cheek to spare her fragile skin. Janie holds out a bottle of formula with tiny preemie nipple attached. "Upright for sure. Last feeding's a couple hours ago. She might like it better from you, with the lot of you bundled up." As other nurses have done a few times previously, she asks John for his mobile, snaps a few photos that show their faces, quirks a brow at Sherlock as if offering to include him which he quickly declines. Then Janie nods at the three of them, disappears through the doorway, wanders back to the computer in the central nursery. They are quite visible through the windows, Sherlock sees, and the baby and John are well monitored and supervised.
Sherlock mentally juxtaposes the large muscle groups of John's chest against the wee baby, and then the very small bottle in the solid fingers of John's hand. Her mouth opens against the offering, but both her suckle and her swallow are ineffective and most of the feeding runs down her chin into the flannel tucked there to catch the excess. They are quiet, the three of them there in the room. After the bottle is partially emptied, John sets it down, angles differently in the chair, patting her back to nudge loose any trapped air. She obliges, however, the burp comes up with more formula than John thought she'd actually taken in. Chin wiped, cleaned, she wiggles against him until her eyes drift closed again though she squirms, makes a face. Idly fascinated, Sherlock considers the baby in John's arms to have the most translucent skin he has ever seen or thought possible, as if, were he to hold her over a lamp, he might be able to see through her. He wonders randomly if the bluish hue of her liver may actually show through the thin skin of her abdomen, but is fairly certain John would not be amenable to him checking.
Sherlock offers him the dummy from the corner of the cot she'd been in, and he slides that in. If nothing else, it gives them both something to watch, the slightest little up and down movements, random, intermittent, as she falls asleep against John's chest, waking lightly to tug at it again, the rhythmic bobbing, just enough to keep them watching it, and her. It is mesmerising. Unable to look away, John considers the wisp of weight in his arm, resisting the urge to lean his head back, take his eyes off her. Somehow, he worries that she might break, vanish, or otherwise suffer harm if he doesn't watch her every moment. His eyes are dry, and he thinks that tears would help that but is unable to summon them.
Time drags and flies in John’s strange, timeless purgatory. "We should think about moving on, soon," Sherlock tells him, having consulted his mobile again for the time, knowing they had a commitment and that he would have to be the one to assure they were present. The quiet is broken, and John stares down at the baby, thinks of returning her to the cot. He tries not to think about the meeting looming over his head, to be held down the hall and across the building. The meeting is a line in the sand, a plan, a concrete description of how bad the bad actually is, and how bad it will still get. He feels like he is already abandoning the baby, in the nursery without him, already starting off life with a terrible handicap - to be motherless now a certainty - and then is wrenched with guilt over it all. Sherlock touches him on the shoulder. "Not your fault. Just stop it."
John swallows, looks away, his arms coming around the baby as he lifts her up and away, wrapping her in the receiving blanket with teddy bears and balloons. The blanket is too festive for his taste - none of this should be festive. He sets Baby Watson down on the cot, reconnects the monitor lead he'd jarred loose in the transfer, flips the heater switch back on to medium where it had been. Janie approaches then, having been watching them closely and seen the activity. "Taking off for a bit?" Carefully eyeing the baby, she makes a few adjustments and checks the isolette and seems satisfied that all is stable for the moment. "If you want to run home a few hours, that's fine, you know. We're keeping a close eye on her, and can ring you..."
John is unable to answer, helplessly looks over to Sherlock, who says gently, "I'll meet you in the hall. Go ahead." He will explain it out of John's hearing, out of compassion and to prevent him from having to endure the pitying looks that will certainly follow. They will follow eventually, he knows, regardless. And they both stare at him until he nods, grabs the jumper and redresses himself as he crosses the room to the exit. He feels eyes on the back of his head, the silence almost penitent as they wait for him to leave the room before speaking. He leans briefly against the wall opposite the door, closes his eyes, letting the grief and the guilt and the curious detachment keep him rooted to the spot. When he opens his eyes, one of the nurses from the postpartum section, visible from the desk, looks away quickly, a sorrowful expression. The door to the nursery opens then, and Sherlock is there. With long fingers, Sherlock takes John's elbow, steers him toward the exit, where the nurses release the door lock so they can leave the secure unit.
++
The meeting with the NHS Blood and Transplant, the organ procurement organization, is surreal. They discuss logistics of what will happen to Mary, of the recipients that will be matched and summoned to their local transplant centers. They ask permission to use major organs, eyes, skin, bone. John nods, "Fine. She agreed. I hardly think she needs any of it now."
John sees Sherlock and the coordinator exchange glances. "What?" John isn't quite sure if any response is actually appropriate, so he embraces the dark humour for a bit, thinking this was preferable to the stunned and stuporous condition he was in, earlier. "It's true. Someone else might as well get to see their children, find other things to do instead of spending time on dialysis or waiting for their heart to fail completely or some such." The nauseous feeling is back, and John is affirmed that he made a good decision refusing the last helpful person who tried to hand him sustenance. He is fairly certain he would have been sick. There is a warning glance from Sherlock, and John decides that he has said enough although a piece of him is ready to continue the rant about a new pancreas for the diabetic or the new lungs for the patient with pulmonary fibrosis. There is a bitter taste in his mouth, but it seems to ease off as Sherlock just barely touches the back of his arm, a gesture of support. Or a threat to shut up, John isn't sure. Either way, unspeaking, he presses his lips together.
A paper slides across the table and a pen is placed on top. A finger is pointing to an empty space where John signs on the bottom line, initials in a few various other spots as instructed. The coordinator has been gentle and matter-of-fact with them both, walking them through the steps of the process. It will likely be at least twelve hours, by the time they line up recipients, summon the transplant surgeon, and preliminary testing is completed. She doesn't actually use the word 'harvest' but John is familiar with the term in these circumstances, recalls observing organ retrieval in his surgical residency. Finally, she slides her paperwork away, shoulders the messenger bag and laptop. "Do you have any other questions?" When John wordlessly shook his head, she stood. "Dr. Watson... John," she corrects as he'd requested at the onset, "thank you so much. Your gift, Mary's gift, is very precious, and many lives will be changed - saved - as a result."
Sherlock is watching John closely, sees the reflexive swallow, the rapid blinking, the purse of his lips. He catches sight of John's hand, of the thumb that nervously fiddles with his gold wedding band. They hover outside the small consultation room by the ICU, and Sherlock is about to suggest stepping outside for a breath of fresh air when Lestrade rounds the corner. He sees Sherlock first, smiles, then hesitates when he sees John standing there. Sherlock deduces all kinds of things from that halting body language, makes a spur of the moment decision to spare John more bad news until he knows the extent of the impending damage.
"Why don't you go visit Mary? I'll be in as soon as I get rid of Geoff." He pokes at John just a bit with the name, just to see if John bites. He doesn't, but nods, lets himself into the ICU. His stride is surprisingly confident as he walks out of Sherlock's sight. Even after all these years, he is still a paradox, Sherlock considers again as he joins Lestrade.
++
Mary is a medical one to one, based on the nature of her injuries and the upcoming busyness of the plans for the afternoon. Her nurse is one John hadn't met before, and is a controlled flurry of activity tending medications, changing infusion rates, hanging intravenous bags, watching with acute clinical skills for the signs of organ dysfunction and preventing complications. He drags a chair close to the non-busier side of the bed, sits down. Mary looks the same, maybe a bit more swollen (understandable) and the bruising on her face a bit more green today. His clinician eyes take in the vital signs, the infusions of dopamine and vasopressin, trying to perfuse organs. The warming Bair hugger from yesterday for Mary's cold core temps has been changed to a cooling blanket today and presently registering a temp of 39, and John knows the fever is probably neuro in origin, not good. The urine bag, John notes in passing, is nearly full, the colour in the tubing almost clear. The providers are chasing her urine output every hour, he knows, with litres and litres of IV fluids, quarter normal saline, he sees, compensating for her sodium levels, then, his mind supplies helpfully. The endotracheal tube has been moved to the other side of her mouth since he'd been in the room last, and the ventilator cycles in a rapid rhythm, trying, he realises, to normalise her hypercarbia. There are foot pumps clicking as air is inflated and deflated, all designed to prevent stagnant blood, prevent DVT, minimize risk of pulmonary embolism. He stares at them a minute thinking about blood flow to her lungs and that if they sustained damage from a pulmonary embolism now, it would be tragedy on top of tragedy.
All of these findings register on one level of John's brain, but on the other level, he reaches for her fingers, finds them cool and motionless, and it is still disconcerting. The rise and fall of her chest are deceptive signs of life, as is the pulse at the base of her thumb, even as he knows the chest movement is artificial. It is hard, even for him with his understanding of physiology, to reconcile 'dead' with heart still beating and chest still rising, lungs still being ventilated. But it is true, and John looks at Mary's body, tells himself that Mary is no longer really here. All the things that made Mary, Mary, have ceased to exist. He avoids looking closely at the outline of the abdominal dressing visible beneath the thin gown.
The nurse eyes the bank of monitors in the room, the vent screen, the patient, the clock on the wall, and she takes a deep breath, not quite smiling at him but close. "I'm Jenn, Mary's nurse today." John nods, unable to really come up with anything appropriate to say in response - certainly 'nice to meet you' would be... John's mind derails as Sherlock comes to the door, and right behind him is one of the pulmonologists on staff and a respiratory therapist. Jenn considers them and looks back to John. "We'll be doing a bronchoscopy, just a quick study to make sure her lungs are in good shape."
John nods, "She was never a smoker. Well," he considers the truth of that, "at least nothing recent. Is that routine, I mean, for her age?"
Jenn's eyes are fixed on John's, briefly, before looking back at the pulmonologist, who speaks then, in a mildly apologetic tone, "Sometimes the transplant surgeon requests it. We'll be pretty quick. Sometimes they want a cardiac catheterisation, too, but her echo was pristine. The bronch is, yes, routine." The equipment and staff are at the door, and John stands up, knowing Mary won't feel anything but wishing none of this was necessary. Ever a constant and dependable presence, Sherlock is at his elbow again, touches him and then leads him out the door of Mary's ICU bay. He doesn't stop walking until they've actually exited the hospital's main entrance and are standing in the sunshine. John hadn't even questioned it, simply follows where he is being led, trusting that he was being cared for. That Sherlock is caring for him.
Their trips outside the hospital have been only long enough to accompany John to the flat he shares - shared - with Mary every day or so for him to shower and change, then return to hold vigil at the hospital. Sherlock has been doing much of the same, carrying a few changes of clothing in a bag, delivered and retrieved by his brother, John supposes. He hadn't really thought about it much. But outside the hospital feels almost scary, and he considers that he shouldn't get too far in case... in case something else happens. John blinks a few times in the natural light, takes a few breaths of fresh air, looks up at Sherlock.
Their eyes meet and hold as people manoeuver around them to one side or the other, getting on with their lives while John is stuck in a cycling nightmare of grief and the inability to move anywhere. Before the accident, he was working in a clinic, flexing his hours to find time to ready their flat for the baby and meet Sherlock a few times a week, on the occasional case if anything was on or simply sharing takeaway and watching TV there on Baker Street. His life now, has switched to a standstill, and it doesn’t even seem like he could possibly even be the same person. It isn’t really a standstill, he realises, come to think of it. It is being fully thrown full-speed into reverse, drowning, being both held under the water by forces above and sucked into the whirlpool by forces underneath. A week ago he had a wife, and a baby on the way, and now, John thinks, he is in the midst of losing the one and may still lose the other.
He stares at Sherlock, who had intuited somehow that he needed to breathe air outside the hospital, to get the slightest glimpse of life outside the hospital doors, out of the intensive care unit where his wife lay comatose, out of the NICU where his daughter lay under the warming lights. Sherlock stares back, those insightful eyes seeming to take in everything, to get a sense that John was being pulled under the water, drowning but still trying to surface, tired of fighting but not ready to give up. The Belstaff fans out at the hem as Sherlock, in a seldom seen - and most definitely not in public - gesture of solidarity, spreads his arms and drew John against him. From John's perspective, he can't see the moistness that has gathered in Sherlock's pale eyes - reflecting the pain he could see, sense, and feel in John's eyes. Sherlock is reminded of something he'd heard for years: caring, he could hear Mycroft saying, was definitely not an advantage. Not by a long shot.
++
The night of the accident, Mary had been on her way to a book club she'd been a long-standing part of, and John said he would take the tube so Mary could have the car. On another night, as he'd done many times before, he would have driven her to and fro, but tonight he begged off because Sherlock had something on, case-related, in the other direction across town. She'd fussed back a little, complaining that it seemed Sherlock was more important than their family and then threatened that those days were bloody well numbered, and he got ired up at that. The argument had escalated in both volume and emotion, and finally Mary just kind of threw up her hands, mildly frustrated, and stalked off, but even the back of her head seemed angry as she left, the door frame rattling after she'd slammed it shut. He'd caught the tube, met Sherlock in the park down the street and stood around watching Sherlock pick through the grass and consider cigarette butts he'd found at the scene in question. From time to time, he would stare upward, deep in thought, considering possible twists or explanations, and so he missed early signs of the impending disaster.
There had been a charged moment there at the park, Lestrade and Anderson there on the periphery, Sherlock crouched down, John standing. Had anyone been paying attention, they would have seen Lestrade on his phone and a devastated face and a frantically impatient gesture as he found another uniformed officer with a patrol car. He'd gone first to Sherlock, spoken a few quick sentences in his ear, and they'd both walked with serious intent over to where John was standing. John had been watching Sherlock with the attempt to predict where Sherlock may have been going with the details of the scene, trying to at least arrive in the same time zone with Sherlock's intuitive eye for facts. His mind had come up with a creative link between a few of the things Sherlock had just been looking at, and he grinned, smiling, for a very brief and fleeting moment ready to share his observation. Until he saw the faces looking at him. There was a little ripple in the fragile fabric of his reality, and he could feel an alteration about to occur in the very ground under his feet and in the air he was breathing. All thoughts halted abruptly as Lestrade spoke, "John."
"What is it?" his tone was already revealing on some level he'd already be dreading whatever came next. He'd looked from Greg to Sherlock and back again, wondered oddly if Mrs. Hudson had suffered an accident, a stroke, a break-in. His next thought was Mycroft. He was holding his breath, eyes wide, limbs frozen as he waited.
"There's been an accident." Greg spoke clearly and directly at John. "Mary's been in an accident." John's breath came hard and anything but reflexive, he could only do those two things - blink, and breathe.
A car pulled up behind where they were standing, close at hand. The officer driving opened his door, stood there a few moments. Lestrade nodded at the car. "Randy will drive you both over to the hospital."
A hesitancy had already seized John's throat, tightening, and time passed oddly, the few seconds since Lestrade said his name having taken an eternity. "It's bad," John said, unnecessarily. He wanted to swallow, his dry mouth too dry to allow it. "Oh god," he said quietly then.
Sherlock had been standing there at John's side, and cleared his throat then, decisively taking John's arm and leading him toward the open panda car door. "Yes," he said, sliding into the back seat behind his former flatmate. Seeing Sherlock in an actual police car was when John knew that the injuries sustained were life-threatening. "It's very bad."