Work Text:
Recovery is, perhaps, the most tedious of activities a person can be forced into. There is little excitement about lying in bed, and there is no satisfaction to be found in completing such arduous tasks as sitting up in bed, or having a meal. Yet recovery is not passive. It requires active effort, the choice to rest, and more often than not, it is exhausting.
I loathed it.
I had loathed it the first time, when I had returned from Afghanistan, feverish and in agony, a bullet in my leg no surgeon could remove, with no knowledge whether I would ever be able to walk again. I loathed it just as much upon my return from the Dutch East Indies, and perhaps in a worse state. Weeks of captivity, of fever and starvation had left me too weak to keep my feet. Even after the fever finally broke shortly before our arrival back in England, the pain from my injuries, newly sustained and reopened due to me developing scurvy from inadequate nutrition, necessitated more pain relief than I was strictly comfortable with, and I spent another two weeks in a constant state of addlement, never quite able to remain awake more than a few minutes at a time. Only once I was able to endure without the help of laudanum and morphine could I truly begin to recover–and only then began the tedium of prolonged, unending, agonisingly boring rest.
And yet, through the entire thoroughly unenjoyable experience, I found myself not lonely. Even after the need for constant medical supervision had ceased, Holmes rarely left my side. When he was not ensuring I was eating and drinking, he was reading to me, or entertaining me by playing the violin. I encouraged him any number of times to carry on his work, to find a case, and not let my predicament detain him, and every time he assured me that there was nothing else he wished to occupy his time and mind with. I did not believe him, it could hardly be riveting to care for an invalid, but Holmes would not be dissuaded.
It was no surprise, then, that it was him who draped an additional blanket over me when I found myself with a sudden chill one afternoon. The window had been open during the day to allow in fresh air into the room, so it was not surprising to me that I should feel a little cold, given I had lost a great deal of weight in recent weeks. Holmes, however, fixed me with a gaze that spoke of deep concern, and I saw him check his pocket watch. I attempted a reassuring smile, but I knew it looked quite washed out in the gauntness of my face.
“I am quite alright, my dear friend. Perhaps a slight headache.”
“Of course, Watson.”
He seemed distracted, moving through the room, fetching another blanket, rummaging in the medicine cabinet that had appeared by the side of my bed in the first days after my return. I was about to ask what he was doing when a horrible shivering took over my body, making my teeth chatter and my breath come short.
It was then that I realised what Holmes’s brilliant mind had already concluded at the first appearance of evidence.
“I presume you acquired the disease in the Afghan War?”
As well as I could, I shook my head. “Africa. In the-” my words came out halting, cut apart by the shaking. “Zulu campaign.”
Holmes’s face darkened. “I see. The fever is quartan, then, not tertian?”
I managed to nod, but could not prevent the groan that escaped me. My muscles were beginning to hurt, and I knew this was only the beginning. Within an hour, I would be lying insensible with fever, likely for half a day, before it would break, leaving me drenched. Then, the illusion of respite, spent mostly sleeping, before the paroxysm would begin anew. I had been through it before, and it recurred while I was in hospital after Maiwand, but I had quite hoped that to have been the last of it.
I had not realised I had closed my eyes, but I opened them again when I felt Holmes’s hand on my shoulder. He was offering me a small cup, and I could tell the contents by the smell. Quinine. I quirked my eyebrow at him in question, words beyond me for the moment.
“I worried something like this might happen, so I took the liberty of making preparations. No gin for now, I am afraid, but it will speed the effects. Drink, and then try to rest.”
I swallowed the bitter concoction, then let Holmes ease me back into my pillows. He had stacked them up, leaving me lying with my chest elevated. I knew he had no medical education, but I was not surprised he had clearly been reading on the matter since he had decided a resurgence of malaria was a possibility.
The shaking had begun to subside and I could feel the headache settle behind my eyes, which heralded the onset of fever. I readily admit to some trepidation at the thought of what I was about to go through. I had seen better men than me weep in delirium, and had seen friends, comrades, and countless patients carried off by the disease. So perhaps I may be forgiven for reaching towards my friend’s hand, catching his cool fingers in mine, and asking him to stay, before I closed my eyes.
I barely remember the remainder of that day, or the next. The onset of fever was sudden, overwhelming my mind and body. I recall snatches of sights and sounds, yet I cannot tell which one of these were real, and which were spectres of the past, brought on by delirium. The only thing I am certain of, through those days and the days of feverish senselessness that followed, were Holmes’s cool, steady hands. Once, I woke to him gently wiping my face with a cloth. Another time, he smiled and muttered an apology while he placed blocks of ice wrapped in towels against my neck, armpits and groin. I must have said something though I cannot recall my words, for he shook his head, and replied: “I know, but you are frightfully feverish my dear, and this will help.”
The days between attacks, I mostly spent asleep, waking only briefly for food, water and medicine, all of which Holmes rather insistently supplied me with. Once, I believe I heard Mrs Hudson tell him to leave my care to her for a few hours so he could rest, but he guarded me rather jealously.
I would come to be thankful for that in very short order.
I do not know whether it was the third or fourth paroxysm that was holding me in its grip. I remember I was dozing, perhaps during the fever’s rising phase, as the previous nights had been fitful, between the pain in my joints and episodes of dry coughing. From one moment to the next, I was sitting bolt upright in bed, shaking hands pawing at my own throat.
I could not breathe. I tried, between strangling coughs, but barely any air wheezed into my suddenly constricting lungs.
I was suffocating.
Drowning.
“Watson!”
Holmes’s cry sounded anguished, and I heard his steps rush towards the bed. He must have been outside the room at that very moment, but now he returned, swiftly. My vision was swimming, but I could feel his firm hand between my shoulderblades as he supported me, then helped me lean forward, his other hand coming to rest against my chest, bracing me. The position opened my lungs enough that I could take a few gasping breaths.
“Oh my dear Doctor. I had feared this would occur.” Holmes’s voice had lost its usual steadiness. I let my eyes fall closed, trying to focus on the small breaths I could take, admiring the brilliant mind of this man. Of course he knew that the form of the disease from Africa was different than the one often picked up in the Middle East. And of course he knew that it was this most dangerous of variants that could rob its victims of breath, suddenly and without warning, and carry them off. A cool pressure on my face stirred me out of my thoughts.
“Do not fret, my dear,” came Holmes’s voice from beside my ear. “It is merely a mask, connected to a cylinder of pure oxygen I acquired. There are quite remarkable experiments coming out of Germany that have shown the efficacy of this sort of treatment. Try to breathe, as steady as you can.”
It was easier to breathe the pure gas, and yet I felt my body grow heavy against my friend. I knew that speech was beyond me, but I raised my gaze and found his eyes. I am sorry, I tried to tell him, and my hand found his as I slipped into darkness.
To be quite truthful, I did not expect to wake. I truly thought, in that moment, that my time on this earth had come to an end, and if I am honest, the only regret I felt was that there would be no more adventures by the side of Sherlock Holmes. I was, then, all the more surprised when I blinked my eyes open into the pleasant sunshine of an early afternoon. For but a second I wondered if this was the afterlife, but the amount of pain I found myself in and the uncomfortable stickiness of my drenched nightclothes rapidly put an end to this. I could still feel the mask upon my face, but when I raised a shaking hand to remove it, my fingers were quickly caught and guided back to my side.
“Leave it on, for now,” Sherlock Holmes murmured, his voice soft, as if he was afraid to startle me. “Just until we can be certain your lungs have calmed.” When I turned my head to look at him, I thought I could see tears in his eyes, but surely that was simply a trick of the light, or my addled brain.
“Your fever has broken,” he informed me, in the same gentle tone, and then he stroked the hair from my forehead with a tenderness I had never known from him.
The only response I could give was a weak smile, and he squeezed my hand.
I knew he would be there when I woke, and so I let myself slip into exhausted sleep.