The hospital was a good half hour away, and with the traffic that was now building up on the high way John reached the large parking lot about an hour later. He found a spot and walked into the hospital, the balloons wrapped firmly around his wrist so that they didn't blow off, the wind knocking them around and forcing him to swat them out of his face. He said hello to the secretaries who simply gave him some pitiful smiles in return, for they knew exactly who he was and why he was here. John did his best to make it to the hospital every day to bring Rosie a present or to cheer her up a little bit just by his being there. He knew that he had to make do with the time he had, and despite the hours he worked he always made a point to be sitting at her bedside at least once a day, even if it was at eleven o'clock at night. He usually let her sleep, sitting in a chair beside the bed and either reading her a story that she would never hear or falling asleep himself, leaning against her bedside and collapsing with the exhaustion he had been feeling since he had last woken up. Today, however, it was only two o'clock, and he was certain that Rosie would be awake. She was on the second floor, a couple of doors down from the elevator. He had decorated her door a couple of days after she had been declared a permanent resident, bringing up all sorts of streamers and pictures to paste on the outside so that everyone who walked in was reminded that she was a human being and not just some slab of meat they were trying to preserve. He had pictures of the happier times, of Rosie when she was healthy with both of her parents, smiling into the cameras when they were on vacation, or on her first day of school. Most of the streamers had either ripped or fallen down, and yet most of the pictures remained intact, stuck to the wood just so that John could stare back into the long forgotten face of his smiling wife. John knocked softly at the door, to which a nurse quickly opened it, smiling widely when she saw the big bundle of balloons John was carrying.
"Oh Rosie your father is here!" she said happily, opening the door wider so that John could walk into the dimly lit hospital room, pulling all the balloons along with him and finally letting them float up to the ceiling. Rosie lay there in bed, wearing a pink flowered bandana over her recently shaved head. She looked so small, tucked under the white blankets with her bony arms exposed, seemingly in the middle of coloring a picture with big boxy crayons.
"Daddy!" she cried happily, throwing aside her coloring book and holding out her arms for a hug. John laughed happily, his heart warming tremendously to see his daughter smile. He swooped over and gave her a big hug, feeling her thin little arms wrap rather tightly around his neck in glee.
"Hey there sunshine, how are you?" John asked happily, looking over at the nurse, who had been watching the scene with something of a tear in her eye. He pulled over his chair ot the side of the bed, collecting the strings of the balloons he could reach and bundling them all up in his hand.
"Are those for me?" Rosie wondered hopefully, ignoring John's previous question as she gazed up to where the balloons were bouncing silently along the ceiling tiles.
"No I brought them for the secretaries down the hall, I hope you don't mind." John said sarcastically, and Rosie simply laughed, obviously used to this type of mindless humor from her father.
"They're for me, aren't they daddy?" she asked with a knowing laugh, and John simply smiled, holding out the strings of the multicolored balloons for his daughter to take.
"Of course they are. I thought they'd brighten up this drab old hospital room a little bit more." John decided with a smile, looking around the room at his previous attempts to liven the place up. There were vases of flowers, old and new, lining both the dresser and the window sill, posters of Rosie's favorite TV shows and bands (all of which were much too multicolored and childish), stuffed animals, dolls, and even some weird animated cat that sat in a little pillow and looked like it was breathing. That thing creeped him out, especially at night, and yet it seemed to amuse Rosie, since she had always wanted a cat.
"They're beautiful." Rosie said happily, letting the strings go one by one and watching as they bounced against the ceiling and rolled along the lights.
"I thought you might like them." John agreed softly. He took up the coloring book that Rosie had been working in, looking at her half-finished picture of a princess that had been very haphazardly colored in with obnoxious shades of blue and purple. Nevertheless he smiled, making a mental note to tear that picture out and put it up on his fridge.
"You smell like the diner again." Rosie observed, leaning over so that she could get a better whiff of the lingering smell of grease on her father's clothes.
"That's because I was just there." John admitted with a smile, and Rosie nodded in satisfaction.
"Did you do anything exciting?" she wondered hopefully. She always thought that John's work was a lot like SpongeBob's work at the Krusty Krab. Since he had told her that he was a grill cook she always wanted to know if he went through any of the shenanigans that happened on the show (it just so happened that she had a large SpongeBob SquarePants poster plastered on her wall) and John always made up these lovely tales to make his adult life sound much more interesting.
"Oh yes well of course! Today...my boss made me go get the burger patties from our supplier, deep on the other side of town. I had to go up to the mother patty and chop of each and every burger patty from the frozen meat, stored in a container so cold I had to wear a winter jacket and goggles, just so that my eyes didn't freeze inside of my skull!" John exclaimed excitedly, to which Rosie just gaped, believing every word.
"Does every restaurant in the world get their burgers from the mother patty?" she wondered in fascination, to which John shook his head pitifully.
"No Rosie, there are a couple of the mother patty's siblings all over the world, because it wouldn't really be fair if people on the other side of the globe had to travel all over just to get their hamburger patties would it?" John asked with a pouty face. Rosie thought for a moment before shaking her head, deciding that yet, that would be rather unfair.
"Are you warm now?" She wondered nervously, looking at John's eyes as if to make sure they hadn't frozen on the drive over.
"Oh yes, I'm very warm now. Once you collect the patties you're able to drink a nice warm cup of hot coco and you get a nice fuzzy blanket." John assured softly, to which Rosie nodded thankfully.
"Like my blanket?" she wondered, gesturing to the obnoxiously fuzzy blanket that John had bought for her way back when. It had some sort of rainbow print on it, with unicorns dancing around the pattern and an extremely fuzzy underside. Hospitals got cold, especially in the summer when they consider it necessary to blast the air conditioning, and so John wanted to make sure his little Rosie was snuggled up nice and warm. There was a small silence; John took to flipping through the rest of the coloring book to see Rosie's other creations while she collected her crayons into her small hand.
"Do you want to color one?" she asked hopefully. John just laughed, pausing his flipping on a page with a black and white dragon with hardly any details at all.
"Well if you insist. Do you want to pick it out for me?" John asked, handing her the coloring book while she nodded. Rosie flipped around for a moment, settling on a picture of a large tower with a princess hanging out the window, sort of like a rip of Rapunzel.
"Do this one." she decided finally, handing John the coloring book and the crayons. For a moment John sat there coloring, finding these big blocky crayons to be virtually impossible to fine tune any of the colors and stay in the lines, however he was quite sure his colorful atrocity would only make Rosie feel better about her own attempts at coloring. When John was finished he handed the coloring book back over to Rosie for her approval, and she looked over it like a very harsh critic. John was actually nervous for a moment, worried that his own daughter wouldn't approve of his artful masterpiece, until finally she nodded and he sighed in relief.
"You like it?" he asked hopefully.
"Of course I like it daddy!" she assured with a very high pitched voice, hugging the coloring book to her chest before attempting to rip the picture out.
"Here, let me do that." John interrupted quickly; worried that while she tried to rip it out of the book she would in turn rip the whole thing in half. John carefully tore at the edge of the page until finally it ripped cleanly off, shutting the book and handing it to Rosie.
"Would you like me to sign it? That way when I'm famous you can sell it online." John suggested with a teasing smile, to which Rosie just laughed and nodded. John signed the coloring page in the biggest, most obnoxious way possible, just like movie stars who have no sense of respect for the blank space and the picture. They always made sure to sign right over their own face or something stupid like that when there was obviously all this white space at the bottom of the page. However John's haphazard signature made Rosie laugh even more, and he helped her tape it to her bedpost where it fluttered ever so slightly as the heater began to turn on. There was a slight knock on the door, and a nurse poked her head rather reluctantly into the room.
"Mr. Watson I'm so sorry, but it's time for Rosie's medication." She muttered sadly. John just nodded, clearing his throat a little bit and getting to his feet, tucking the chair back against the wall and giving Rosie a quick kiss on the forehead in farewell. When they gave Rosie her medication they didn't like people in the room, in fact when Rosie did most anything they didn't like to have a witness. Maybe they thought that John would interfere somehow, or maybe his presence would upset Rosie. Either way it didn't matter, he wasn't allowed, and after all this time he knew how to take the hint.
"You be good sunshine, I'll be back tomorrow." John muttered softly, and Rosie simply nodded, looking upset that her father had to leave so early.
"Bye bye." She muttered mournfully, frowning slightly as she watched the nurse roll in the little cart where they kept the pills. John moved out of the way, nodding once more in farewell before slipping noiselessly out of the room. The door shut behind him and he stood for a moment in the harsh white hallway, collecting himself and staring blankly at the plain white wall in front of him. No parent should ever have to go through this, it was a crying shame that he had to dedicate so much time because his daughter was in the hospital, it was a shame that he only got to see her for an hour at most, thrown out because of a simple little pill. It was a shame that he had to go home alone.
Sherlock POV: Since grocery shopping seemed like such an impossible feat, Sherlock had volunteered to accompany Greg to the supermarket to ensure he bought food that was actually edible this time. Greg had a bad habit of going to the store and buying only microwavable macaroni and cheese and beer, which only satisfied him while the other two priests were forced to either get take out or starve to death. He really wasn't the most responsible man, nor was he the most reliable, and Sherlock knew that Father Turner liked it when Sherlock was his babysitter, just to keep him under control. Greg was kind of moody this afternoon because his date, Sharon, had stood him up last night. It turned out that she wasn't interested in him romantically; she had only wanted to do confessions. And so Greg had sauntered home around nine o'clock last night, grinding his teeth and swinging a six pack of beer, still full, on his arm. Sherlock was the designated driver and so he loaded Greg into the sputtering blue station wagon the church provided them with. Father Turner was doing mass, and so they were free to stay out however long they wanted. Greg pouted in the front seat, frowning at the yellow lines in the middle of the road with a blank expression on his face, pulling at his white collar as if irritated by the way it scraped against his scrunched up chins.
"I think this is good for you." Sherlock admitted with a shrug, steering his way through the small back streets to get them to the supermarket in one piece.
"What, getting stood up?" Greg asked with a snap. He seemed rather grumpy today, and as much as Sherlock was worried that he would snap all together it was only too much fun to rub his defeat in his face. If this Sharon girl had turned out to be satisfactory that would be all they heard about for the next week, and so it was only fair that, since she didn't work out, Greg should hear about it at least for a car ride.
"Getting a flash of reality! Greg you're a priest, you're not supposed to be meddling around in romantics you need to be focused, to dedicate yourself to God!" Sherlock insisted flatly.
"I know, but that's just so...boring." Greg admitted in a whiny voice, pulling his knees up to his chest as if trying to look like a helpless child. However Sherlock just thought he looked stupid, so it was even more entertaining to brutally make fun of him.
"It's what you signed up for!" Sherlock defended in exasperation.
"It's what my parents wanted for me, not what I wanted! I didn't want to take a stupid vow of chastity, I didn't want to alienate myself from the rest of the world just because I wore this scratchy white collar on my shirt, I want to be normal, I want to have fun!" Greg defended, sounding like an irritable teenager in an edgy teen novel. Sherlock simply sighed, taking the role of defensive parent in this situation, but obviously he knew that no little talk would ever convince Greg to change his ways. Even Father Turner had tried to talk sense into him; however Greg was simply an immovable object, stuck so deep in his own ways that he couldn't see the sun shining above.
"You're disobeying God every time you so much as look at a woman." Sherlock pointed out.
"Oh sorry Sherlock, I'll just shield my eyes from now on." Greg said with a laugh, to which Sherlock just frowned, not entirely amused. "You're telling me you've never even considered being with a woman? Never even thought about it with someone?"
"No I haven't I'm loyal!" Sherlock insisted flatly, laughing since he didn't know why this was so hard for Greg to understand. They had a commitment, they had vowed to God that they would be his servants, that they would refrain from distracting themselves with romantic partners and that vow alone was enough to keep Sherlock's mind away from the female race for now. Now of course there was that fantasy of finding a soulmate, and yet those romantic novels and books simply didn't fill the hole, they didn't meet his expectations. In Sherlock's mind love was supposed to be flawless, and even the heroines in his books weren't enough to convince him that women were something so desirable that he had to break his vows to the church. He couldn't even imagine a woman who alone would be more tempting than the reward of all the years he had dedicated his life to God.
"Sherlock there's something wrong with you, that's not natural we were made to fall in love, we're humans not angels!" Greg defended, sounding like he was going to start yelling soon.
"Maybe I'm just special then, maybe God made me differently so that I can't fall in love." Sherlock shrugged, deciding to just leave the conversation there. And so he stopped talking, turning on the radio to drown out the awkward silence, and pretended to ignore Greg as he sat slouched moodily in the passenger seat. When they arrived at the grocery store they didn't even make it into the building before someone recognized them, a middle aged couple who had a baby in their shopping cart, rolling it down the parking lot to start to load up their car with their food. Greg and Sherlock said polite hellos, talked about how old the baby was and all that (Sherlock had been the one to christen her, or so he suspected), of course the oblivious couple seemed to think that these two priests had come to the supermarket just so that they could talk about the baby's first words. It took Greg dropping his phone and spewing a stream of vulgarity to finally tear the family away, giving him a rather disgusted look before pushing their cart and baby away from the two priests. Sherlock didn't want to say anything because he knew that Greg realized what he had done was wrong, so he simply shoved his hands in his pockets and wished that Greg would mature someday, even though he was well over twenty five.
"I challenge you, Sherlock, to find one woman who you find attractive. I've not saying that you would go off to the motel with her or anything like that, just attractive. Someone you would date if you could." Greg said as they were getting their shopping cart from the long snakelike line up in the entry way.
"Greg that still sounds rather...wrong." Sherlock admitted timidly, glancing around to make sure that no one else witnessed Greg's rather shaky sacredness.
"No come on man, just prove to me that you're human at least." Greg pleaded. Sherlock steered the shopping cart through the doors and into the store, getting a blast of air conditioning that chilled him to the bone. People were milling around everywhere, some in packs, some alone, some families, some parents, some grandparents. Their carts were filled with all different arrangements of food, some carts filled to the brim with children's cereals and snacks while others just carried a basket around with celery, it was always a very odd melting pot of people in the grocery store. Greg, however, was trying to find Sherlock a date, or at least the possibility of a date, because he was constantly picking women out of the crowd and getting Sherlock's opinions on them. All Sherlock wanted to do was weigh the dang red peppers for the labels and Greg kept badgering him about some blonde who was over in the carrot section! It was tedious; to say the least, yet rather eye opening all the same. For some reason every single woman that Greg pointed out had some sort of flaw to her, whether it be her hair, or her nose, or the way she held her self, or simply the negative aura Sherlock felt when he glanced over. They must've spent an hour in that grocery store and yet all they left with was food and the sneaking suspicion that maybe there was something inhuman about Sherlock after all.