John felt as if the whole room was turning sideways and when he spoke his voice sounded as if was coming from across the room, “Mycroft, wasn’t Sherlock vaccinated as a baby for Polio?” John said as he sank to the ground clutching his chest.
Mycroft ran across the way to the Pharmacy and came back with a paper bag, “Here, John breathe in this bag, you’ve got to get your breathing under control or you’re going to hyperventilate or pass out.”
John nodded and we he got his breathing under control, he looked up at Mycroft with tears, “Mycroft, please answer my question.”
Mycroft looked out in the distance and when he spoke his voice was soft and speculative, “Sherlock did get all his vaccinations as a baby, but we are all changed in this timeline,” Mycroft said as he looked over at John’s chest. “So, it would make sense that our bodies are different. After all you no longer have that deviated septum nasal tone in your voice that I have always found annoying and that Sherlock had always found so adorable. For every time you spoke back home in London it sounded as if you had a head full of mucus and I would glare at you in disgust and Sherlock…Sherlock would smile…that half…sideways…smile that Sherlock reserved only for you and perhaps Redbeard.”
John sniffed as he took Mycroft’s outstretched hand and clumsily stood up, “So, Sherlock would smile at me?”
Mycroft nodded affirmatively.
“And you think I have the same status with Sherlock as Redbeard?” John asked as he blew his nose on a lace hankie he pulled out of his purse.
“Yes, John, you mean the world to Sherlock; you are his center, the heart of his existence.” Mycroft said as he smiled sadly at John, for it seemed that one of the weaknesses of the human condition was that many individuals didn’t realize what they meant to each other until the existence of one or the other was compromised.
John looked at Mycroft with that wide eyed innocent look that Mycroft despised and said, “Mycroft, if I mean the world to Sherlock, then why does he treat me the way he does? Telling me not to talk, get another cab, leaving me to get arrested, drugging me, insulting my intelligence, how can Sherlock really care and treat me that way? He takes me for granted.”
Mycroft clasped his hands behind his back and looked down at the floor, “That is the tragedy of it all, John. For Sherlock knows how he feels about you and yet he fights it, afraid to let his soul be taken by another and what Sherlock doesn’t know is that by doing so he will be bereft-alone, like me.”
John had no time to contemplate Mycroft’s words as the Doctor and the Mom both approached. “Girls,” the Mom began in a shaky voice. “Sheryl is being observed but the Doctor believes that due to her severe symptoms that she has Paralytic Polio...and that…” The Mom’s voice trailed off as she burst into tears again.
The Doctor stepped forward; his face haggard and bitter from not having the tools to fight for his patients, for all he could do was helplessly watch as the disease ravaged them and twisted their limbs like a biological tornado. “Girls, Sheryl is very ill, but there is nothing you can do to alleviate the situation, so you must go straight home and remember you are under quarantine until we can be certain that you have been spared. Funny thing, this case I don’t understand why this occured in January, for it is always virulent in the summer. It’s almost as if someone or something injected her…” The Doctor’s voice trailed off as he looked at the terrified faces in front of him. “Now is the time to pray for nothing on earth can help her now,” the Doctor said and then he turned and left not able to endure the devastation that his diagnosis had upon yet another family.
John’s face was pale as he looked at Mycroft and mouthed the word, “Moriarty.”
