The Emotional Children

XLVIII

"SHERLOCK!"

John bolted upright, breathing like a wounded elephant. He inhaled sharply as a searing pain reverberated through his shoulder and neck. Then he remembered everything at once.

His head pounded with the nightmare he had woken from. His stomach flew into his mouth. Looking out the window and into the night, he saw the stars beginning to disappear. The sky was turning a dull, pale gray. Dawn was coming, and it was coming swiftly.

June 18. It's June 18.

The phone. Where was the bloody phone?

"Nadya! Nadya!" he called out, his head splitting from the pitch of his voice. The dimly lit hospital room echoed. Cold, soulless lights buzzed eerily. The gray walls were almost closing in.

The image of Jim Moriarty standing in the open hotel door was still in his head. A slight shiver ran up his spine and he exhaled vigorously. His right shoulder ached with what he felt was failure.

Gingerly, he raised his arm and felt for the pocket that had last held the device. But he was wearing a hospital gown, and his jacket was nowhere in sight. His heart fell into his toes.

Perhaps Nadya had taken the phone when he had lost consciousness, but he couldn't be sure. Today was the day.

"Hello? Can anyone hear me?" he called out, slowly getting out of his bed. He wobbled for a bit before finding his balance, and his good right arm held the bandages on his left one. Pain still throbbed threateningly beneath.

Suddenly, a sharp intake of breath caught his attention and he turned. There was a thin curtain beside his bed. Behind it, the rhythm of someone's breath came out all shaky, like a feather balancing on the edge of a knife.

John's eyebrows met above his nose. His curiosity mastered him, and he took a few short, cautious steps toward the thin sheet. Timidly, he lifted his good arm and pulled it back.

Horrified, his mouth stood ajar. He blinked a few times to be sure what he was seeing was real.

Irene Adler was lying there, completely motionless. He would have thought her dead if those few breaths a moment ago had not interrupted the fragile silence. Her usually glowing complexion was almost white with death, and her thin mouth eerily resembled a flatline. He cursed himself for even making the connection.

"Oh God . . . Irene?" he began, staggering forward almost drunkenly and taking her wrist.

"Irene."

He didn't remember ever having said her name before. As the water stood in his eyes, he wrapped a thick finger around her arm and felt for a pulse.

Slow, steady, but there nonetheless. She wasn't dead. Not yet.

He stared at her arm in silence. He looked along the white length of flesh for a vein, and he saw it: purplish blue, too thin for comfort and snaking into her palm. He was almost forgetting to breathe. His eyes glazed over.

All of a sudden, she took a harsh breath through her mouth and it startled him. He drew back instantly, dropping her arm at her side and grappling with an outstretched hand for the curtain.

His flailing fingers finally found it, and he concealed her once again as she had been before. Heaving a sigh of relief, he fell back on his own bed. His consciousness was muddled, drunk.

Then he remembered the phone. He rose again and staggered to the door at the opposite end of the room, intent on finding a doctor. Before he could make it there, it burst open of its own accord.