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swissmargTitle: Cracks in the In-Between Places
Author:
swissmarg
Beta readers:
ruth0007, billiethepoet
Rating: PG-13
Relationship: John/Sherlock
Word count: ca. 93,500 when complete, this chapter 5,051 words
Summary: AU set in the universe ofnox_candida's Getting Better. John and Sherlock work together to flush out Mary's killers, and Tristram has to come to terms with what his father's new friend means for him. No series 3 spoilers (or series 1 or 2, for that matter).
Chapter note: Thank you to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladyprydian and thissalsify for acting as medical advisors for this chapter.
See chapter one for the complete header with warnings, acknowledgments, disclaimers, and notes.
Chapter 19 on AO3
Chapter Nineteen
Tristram is bored. There is, as usual, nothing on the telly. Uncle Mycroft's assistant brought him an e-reader loaded with a couple hundred books, many of which are pretty interesting, but Tristram's tired of reading. It's basically all he's done since the surgery. There's a play room down the hall with more games and books and toys, as well as the potential for diversion in the form of other children - even if they don't want to interact with him, he has always enjoyed observing - but it also has lots of windows and no curtains. So aside from the times when an aide comes to take him on a couple of circuits of the inner corridors, he stays in his room. It's funny, because the walks are meant to improve his circulation, and it's actually him circulating, not just his blood. He tried to explain that to the lady who went with him the first day, but either she didn't understand English very well or Tristram didn't explain it right, because she just gave him an odd look. He didn't try to explain it again after that.
His right hand is in a cast that extends halfway up his forearm, so he has to use his left hand for everything. However, the IV is still attached to his left arm, so he has to move slowly and be careful not to get the line caught on anything. This makes him feel clumsy and awkward and cross. At least he's allowed to sit up now, although he's not supposed to lean his back against anything, not even the pillow, because of the bandages. A nurse comes to change them for him once a day and check for infection. The nurse who checked him earlier today said the cuts are healing nicely, which makes Tristram oddly proud. Although he doesn't have much control over his body's healing processes, it makes him feel like he's upholding his end of the vow his father made to him.
His hand is another story. If he were Harry Potter, he could just take a dose of Skele-Gro and have it all fixed by tomorrow. But as he isn't, they had to put some metal rods in until the bones can grow back. That's incredibly cool but apparently going to take a long time.
Along with the e-reader, Uncle Mycroft's assistant brought a bunch of things from the flat, including several changes of clothes (soft, loose things that can go on over his cast and bandages), his phone (Tristram asked for it specifically), and some notebooks and things to write with. Tristram pointed out the uselessness of the latter to his father, given the state of his dominant hand. He expected his father to commiserate and make a derisive comment about the idiocy of the population in general and Uncle Mycroft's employees in particular, but instead, he said this was an excellent opportunity for Tristram to learn to write with his left hand. One never knew when such a thing might be useful, and he is going to have the cast on for seven weeks.
Apropos, Tristram is going to have a massive amount of work to catch up on when he is able to return to school, and penmanship counts. So he's been diligently practising. He's not very good yet, so he asked Mrs Hudson to help him write a letter back to Emily. Well, he told her what to write, and she wrote it.
Oh yes, there was a letter from Emily, also delivered by the assistant. It said:
Tristram's letter back to her is on the table now, waiting for Uncle Mycroft's assistant to come pick it up. Mrs Hudson's been to visit every day. She brought along a deck of cards the first day, but it's pretty much impossible for him to play anything with just one hand, so they usually just talk a bit and watch one of her soaps.
An orderly comes in with Tristram's dinner. She puts the covered plate on the table for him and asks if he needs help getting up so he can eat.
Tristram thinks he can manage. He's been up to use the loo several times by himself already, so he says it's fine, scooting himself to the edge of the bed to demonstrate. He just has to mind the IV line and remember to take the pole with him. She smiles and tells him to use the call button if he needs anything, then leaves.
Tristram makes his way over to the table, being careful not to let the wheels of the IV stand get caught on the legs of the bed or the chair next to it. He sits down gingerly on the chair at the table and makes sure the IV line isn't bent or wedged in anywhere. He hopes there's chocolate pudding again, like there was last night.
Tristram lifts the lid off his dinner plate and freezes. That is most certainly not chocolate pudding. The teeth he recognises right away, even with the long, curved roots, still bloody. It takes him a bit longer to identify the rectangular strip of greyish material, oozing red everywhere. It's the hairs that finally clue him in. That is a piece of skin. Not the thin, papery flakes that peel off when you get sunburnt, or the dry curls you can pick off around your nails, or even the rubbery, white flaps you can sometimes pull off a blister if you time it right. It's like a slice of turf, thick and layered, with the top side polite and neat and the bottom all full of twisted, dripping things.
Tristram does not scream. He does not make a sound. He does check that the curtains are drawn tight; they are, as they always are, even during the day, at Tristram's request. Insistence, really. Tristram knows the thin piece of material won't stop a bullet, but at least this way anyone who might be outside can't pinpoint his precise position in the room. His singular thought beyond that is that he has to contact his father. He usually arrives just as visiting hours are ending for the day, and then stays overnight, sitting at the table clicking away on his laptop or sitting hunched over his phone in the chair by Tristram's bed. It's pretty much like a typical evening at their flat, actually, from the days when Tristram had taken to sleeping on the couch, only without the violin. But he isn't there yet, and probably won't be for a couple of hours.
Tristram sets the lid back down over the plate with the utmost care. His heart is careening out of control. Doctor Watson told him and Emily to keep their phones with them at all times. Not to leave them in their jackets or bags. Again, Tristram has failed to heed that advice. He will have to make it over to the closet, where his bag is hanging. He needs to keep an eye on both the door and the window, though, and as he doesn't have eyes on both sides of his head, he's unable to move. Finally, he decides the door is the more immediate concern, so he angles himself such that he has a clear view of it and pushes the chair back from the table. It bumps into the IV stand, and the line gets caught on the corner of the chair arm, so by the time Tristram is finally free and standing, he's sweating lightly under his t-shirt.
Keeping close to the wall, Tristram moves as quickly as he can to his bag. It takes forever for him to get the plastic squeeze clasp open one-handed. He has to resort to using his teeth. The phone is powered off, and for one heart-stopping moment, Tristram realises he hasn't recharged it since he's been in hospital, but it lights up right away when he presses the power button. It takes another eternity to boot up. When he presses 1, he notes that his hand is shaking.
"Tristram?" his father answers almost immediately, his voice sharp.
"Teeth and skin," Tristram says, because that's the message. That's the important part. To his horror, his voice is shaking too. He hopes his father understands what he's trying to say.
"Where are you?" Father barks out.
"At the hospital. Someone put two teeth and a piece of skin on my tray." He focuses on remaining calm. Like Doctor Watson said Gents could do. Like his father does.
"Are you alone?"
"Yes."
"Are you hurt?"
Tristram knows his father means any new injuries, not his hand or his back, so he answers, "No." Being able to answer Father's simple questions promptly and accurately makes Tristram feel a bit better. A little more in control.
"Listen to me carefully," Father says, speaking quickly. "I want you to put your shoes and your jacket on and get into the closet. It may be a tight squeeze, but you'll fit. Pull the door all the way closed. Go do that now."
Tristram does not question his father. He will do exactly as he is told. He wedges his phone between his shoulder and ear so he can use his one good hand to take his shoes out of the closet and slide his feet in. Then he takes his jacket down from the hook, only to be confronted with the next problem: the IV line. He could probably get his left arm into the sleeve and drape the rest of the jacket over his right shoulder, but he won't be able to get the IV stand into the closet. Plus, the entire point of the exercise, he reckons, is so that no one will see him if they give his room a cursory check. Having an IV line hanging out of the closet would be a dead giveaway.
"I can't," he says desperately to his father. "The IV..."
"Damn, I forgot about that. Take it out." Tristram can hear from the jostling in his father's voice that he's on the move.
"I can't-" Tristram says, eying the device lodged in his arm with trepidation.
"It's easy," his father says in a tone that means he's losing his patience. "I've done it many times. Remove the tape and pull the port straight out. It may bleed a bit, so have a tissue ready and press it on the spot for a couple of minutes. You can do this, Tristram. It's very important. I'm on my way and I've alerted Mycroft, but it's going to be a while before either of us can reach you. Once you have the IV out, leave the stand with the loose line by the door. Make sure the door can open without bumping into it. That should be enough to fool the average idiot into thinking you've left." In other words, most people. Tristram hopes that whoever put the teeth and the skin on his tray are 'most people'.
He looks at the blue plastic valve sticking out past the plastic patch, like a see-through plaster, holding everything down. When he needs to change his clothes, the nurse somehow unhooks the IV line there, and then re-attaches it. Surely he could do that.
"Have you done it?" Father asks. His voice has a different, more distant quality to it now, and Tristram can hear the sounds of traffic in the background.
"Can't I just unhook it and leave the rest in?"
"Unhook it with what? Your teeth? Do as I say! Peel the adhesive off with your teeth and then pull the whole thing out. Make sure you keep it straight, and do it quickly. Now!" Father is right. He can't use his right hand at all, he obviously can't use his left to fiddle with anything on that arm, and he doesn't have enough finesse with his teeth to close the valve without possibly dislodging the part that's in his hand anyway.
Tristram hears footsteps out in the hall. Not the soft shoes of the nurses and orderlies; hard, brisk heels hitting the polished floor. It could be anyone, of course: someone visiting another patient, even Uncle Mycroft. He drops the jacket and puts the phone onto one of the shelves in the closet, then gets his teeth under the corner of the adhesive patch. He pulls as carefully as he can, but it jostles the catheter. He has to stop and get another hold, and then it comes away. He drops the patch into the closet. The footsteps in the hall have gone silent, but there are voices. He can do this. Father said he'd done it himself lots of times. He wouldn't tell Tristram to do it if it was beyond Tristram's capabilities, or if it would somehow make him sick or injure him even worse.
"Tristram?" he hears his father's voice faintly coming from the phone on the shelf.
"I'm working on it," Tristram says, hopefully loud enough that his father can hear him. "I have the plaster thing off."
"Quickly."
Tristram bites down carefully on the plastic tubing and draws his hand back as steadily as he can. It hurts-it hurts-it hurts! He gasps but manages not to drop the tubing, and then he is free. He did it! It's bleeding, but not too much. He forgot to get a tissue. He presses the back of his arm against his cast instead. "It's out!" he says, loud enough so his father can hear him, he hopes.
"The IV stand!" Father reminds him.
Still pressing the back of his left arm against his cast, Tristram shoves the stand toward the door with his foot, remembering to leave room for the door to swing open, then dashes back to the closet. There are four compartments on top of each other, each about half a meter on a side. His clothes and other sundries are distributed amongst them. He quickly sweeps everything out of the bottom compartment and stuffs it all in the next one up, grabs the phone, and kneels down. The jacket is still lying there on the floor. He puts it on and backs himself into the bottom section of the closet. It's a very tight squeeze, and the shelf above him scrapes his back as he squirms his way in. The jacket gives him an extra layer of padding, but he still hopes he hasn't torn open any of his cuts. He tucks his injured hand in against his chest and grasps the bottom edge of the door to pull it shut as far as he can. It bumps against his knee, leaving a crack of light, but he can't get himself any further into the closet. It will have to do.
"I'm in," he says breathlessly. He doesn't have room to raise the phone to his ear, so he just holds it in front of his face.
"I'm at Victoria right now, getting into a cab," Father tells him. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Stay where you are."
"Okay."
Tristram hears his father tell the cab driver where to go. Then he addresses Tristram again. "Don't talk anymore. Tap the phone once with your fingernail for yes and twice for no. If you hear anyone come in, tap three times. Do you understand?"
Tristram taps the phone once.
"Good. Did you see who brought the tray in?"
Tap.
"Was it a member of the hospital staff?"
Tap.
"Someone you'd seen before?"
Tap. She'd brought him his dinner the previous night as well. Was she one of the bad guys? Should he have noticed something about her then?
"Was there anything else on the tray?" Father asks. "Any other objects, a note, anything?"
Tap tap.
They continue in this vein, and Tristram actually begins to relax and enjoy the game. Father gives him updates of his estimated time of arrival, and he's still four minutes away when Tristram hears the door open. He taps three times on his phone. Father doesn't respond right away; maybe he tapped too fast or too light? He repeats the signal, trying to keep his finger steady. What is he supposed to do?
His father answers: "Someone's with you?"
Tap.
"All right... all right. Stay where you are. If they find you, don't fight them. Do whatever they say. I can see the hospital and will be there in two minutes."
"Tristram, it's me," the female voice of the visitor says. It's Uncle Mycroft's assistant! But Father said he alerted Uncle Mycroft, not his assistant. She might be a false ally, like Emily's Aunt Claire was.
Tristram remains silent. He hears her shoes clicking further into the room. The light shifts as she comes closer. Tristram tries to pull himself even further into the closet.
"It's all right, you can come out," she says. Her shoes stop in front of the closet. She opens the door.
Due to the angle his head's wedged in at, all Tristram can see are her shoes and her sheer black-stockinged legs from the knees down. She has on high heels, black, with sparkly bits. They look very fancy and utterly impractical. She drops down into a crouch to peer at him. She's wearing a sparkly black dress and her hair is piled up on top of her head with sparkly pins in it, and her face is made up with dark colours. She gets a little line between her eyebrows when she sees him.
"God, you poor kid," she says, sounding half pitying and half amused. She holds out her hand to him. "Come on, out you come."
Father said to do whatever she said, so he does. It would actually be easier for him to get out of the closet without holding her hand. He ends up sort of half falling out onto the floor.
"Is that Mycroft's peon?" Father's voice says from the phone. He sounds annoyed.
Tristram isn't exactly sure what a peon is, but he understands the context well enough to know that Father means the woman standing in front of him. He's been told to call her Miss Smith, although he suspects that's not really her name.
Tristram taps the phone once to answer his father's question. Then he realises that he can probably speak again now, and adds, "Yes."
"Put her on."
Tristram hands his phone to her. She lets go of Tristram and stands up, listening to Father. Tristram struggles into a sitting position. His neck hurts from being bent in an unnatural position, his back hurts from being pressed against the side of the closet, and his right hand just hurts, period. It occurs to him that the IV was probably delivering a steady dose of pain medication, which he is now cut off from.
"He's fine," Miss Smith - or whatever her name is - says. She walks away from Tristram and gives the room a quick sweep, checking under the bed, ducking into the bathroom, and flicking the curtains back to peek behind them. "He's on a plane to- Well, I can't tell you to where," she tells Father in a bored tone, apparently in answer to another question, "but he's on a plane."
She must mean Uncle Mycroft. Tristram scoots back against the wall and pulls his knees in, making sure there are several pieces of furniture between himself and the window, and that he isn't in a direct line of sight to the door.
She wanders over to the table and hooks her red-varnished fingernail under the handle of the lid covering the special message for Father. Tristram doesn't get further than thinking that Father will be unhappy if she picks it up when the door opens and Father's voice says sharply, "Don't touch that!"
She looks around with a cool smile and lowers the phone. "Sherlock."
"Prints," Father chides her as he strides into the room, already pulling on a pair of examination gloves.
Tristram is so relieved he nearly jumps up to throw himself at his father, but instead he hugs his own knees tightly with his good arm.
"Thank you for coming, now please leave," Father says to the assistant. Without waiting for a response, he comes over to Tristram and crouches down in front of him. He puts one hand on Tristram's knee. "You're all right."
Tristram nods. "I didn't eat any of it this time."
He intends for it to be a completely sober statement of fact - perhaps even a reassurance that he's learned from past mistakes - but Father grins as if he's made a joke. "Good." Father then bounces back up and rubs his hands together. "Let's see what we have then." He steps over to the table but doesn't lift the lid from the plate yet. "I said you could leave," he mentions over his shoulder to Uncle Mycroft's assistant, who's still there.
"You're not my employer," she returns archly.
"No, but I'm Tristram's father and I would like you out of his room."
"I walked out on the Royal Ballet and a dead sexy Swede to check on your son." Tristram finds it interesting how she nearly always manages to sound both amused and condescending.
"I'm certain my brother will compensate you." Father's lip curls a bit when he says that, as if the notion is in some way personally offensive to him.
Her lip curls as well, but the effect is more one of smugness than sneering. "Doctor Watson says... well, nothing about you, really. He did ask after Tristram." Her head tilts toward Tristram, who's still huddled on the floor. She smiles at him, but it's a fake-sad smile, and Tristram thinks it's meant more for Father than for him. And while he's flattered that Doctor Watson wanted to know how he was doing, Tristram finds it odd that he didn't say anything about Father. Did they have a row because of Tristram being shot?
Father rolls his eyes. "My God, is Mycroft feeding you these lines?"
At the mention of Doctor Watson, Tristram now also remembers the letter Mrs Hudson helped him with. "Could you please take a letter for Emily?" he asks before the assistant can leave. "I left it on the table."
She smiles at him. This time it's a real one. "Sure." She sets Tristram's phone on the table, and in return plucks the envelope up. She taps it once against the plastic lid that's still covering the plate. "Any messages from you I can pass on?" she asks Father innocently.
"You can tell him to piss off," he mutters, his fingers twitching on the handle of the lid.
She chuckles. "I'm not sure Doctor Watson will appreciate that."
Tristram isn't either. This is sounding worse and worse. Does Father blame Doctor Watson that Tristram was hurt? But that wasn't his fault! And he helped Tristram afterwards, even came to the hospital with him. Did much more than Father, to be honest. Maybe that is the source of their disagreement this time?
"Out!" Father growls. She winks at Tristram and walks out, giving the impression that it's completely coincidental to Father's order.
As soon as the door swings shut behind her, Father whips the lid off with a flourish, as if he were revealing a masterpiece of craftsmanship. Maybe, to him, it is. Tristram can't see the contents of the plate from where he's sitting, but he can see his father's face. His eyes glitter with possibilities.
"Teeth and skin," he murumurs, "teeth and skin." He closes his eyes and tilts his head, as if he's listening to something. "Skin and bones, skinflint, skin...sink! Sink your teeth in... no, no, no, skin and teeth, skin and teeth..." His eyes pop open. "By the skin of your teeth." The pleased expression at having solved the puzzle dissolves quickly into a grimace of distaste. "Oh, please. Yes, we knew that already." He covers the plate again and slides it off the table, balancing it on one hand. Only then does he look at Tristram again. "Let's go," he says and starts for the door.
Tristram scrambles to his feet. "Are we leaving?" he asks. Is he even allowed to leave?
Father stops in the middle of the room. "You can't think I'm going to leave you here. There's no reason for you to stay any longer, anyway. You can continue healing at home as well as here, and there's no sense you expiring of boredom in the meantime."
That makes sense. Tristram's left arm has a smear of blood down it where he pulled out the IV, but it's stopped bleeding. His back's still throbbing from scraping it on the closet, but maybe Mrs Hudson can re-do the bandages when they get home. And he's going to have the cast on his right hand for seven weeks. He certainly doesn't want to sit in this room for seven weeks waiting for it to heal. But above all, Tristram would much rather be at home, surrounded by familiar things and smells and sounds. At home with Father, and his violin, and the tent that Doctor Watson built for him and Emily. Tristram hopes his father hasn't taken it down.
"Can I take my things?" he asks, reaching for his bag from the shelf in the closet.
"We'll have someone send everything later," Father says. He is clearly impatient to analyse the new evidence.
Tristram doesn't want to hold him up, but he needs that phone. He quickly retrieves it from the desk, along with the notebooks he was practising left-handed writing in, and stuffs them into his bag. "Okay, I'm ready."
"Good. Stay close to me and do not speak to anyone." Father holds the door open for him, and they go out into the hall. Tristram expects he's going to have to stretch his legs to keep up with Father, as usual, but Father adjusts his stride and keeps Tristram close by his side.
Rather than heading toward the lifts across from the nurse's station, Father leads them to a door with a green 'Emergency Exit' sign on it. It also has a red bar on the handle that Tristram knows will trigger an alarm if it's depressed. There's a key hole in it, though, and Father already has one of his lockpicking tools in his hand. There can be no doubt by now that Tristram is not actually supposed to be leaving the hospital, but Father knows when it's best to take an unofficial route. This is obviously one of those times.
Tristram doesn't need to be told to stay flat against the wall, hidden from view by his father's big coat, while his father works on the lock. It takes perhaps thirty seconds before the door swings silently open and the two of them can slip through. Then they are running down the stairs. Father, still holding his prize, has to wait for him at every landing, as Tristram has to take a bit of care not to jostle his arm on the railings, but he doesn't once tell him to go faster or hurry up. They probably don't need to run - no one has noticed they've left yet - but Tristram's so excited about their escape that he doesn't think he could walk slowly anyway, and Father apparently feels the same way. Tristram is thrilled. It's like being on a mission together! This must be what it's like for his father when he is on a case.
They go all the way down to the basement level, and emerge in a poorly lit concrete corridor suffused with the hum of behind-the-scenes machinery. Tristram smells laundry and exhaust, but they don't see anyone. At the end of the hallway is another door, but this one's unlocked, at least on their side, and leads to the garbage bins behind the hospital.
And then they are free! Tristram experiences the thrill of illicit accomplishment. He wants to shout, or maybe run some more, but he knows they have to act casual now and not draw attention to themselves.
Father sneaks a sideways glance at Tristram, although most of his attention is still on the plate in his hand. "Are you all right carrying that?" Father asks.
It takes a moment for Tristram to realise he means his bag, which slid off his shoulder during their dash down the stairs, and is now dangling from his elbow. It's practically empty, so it's not heavy. Tristram hitches it up onto his shoulder, ignoring the way it pulls on his still-fresh cuts, and grins up at his father. "Yep," he says happily.
They walk several blocks away from the hospital before his father flags down a cab for them. Tristram is glad. Just that short walk has tired him and made his bag feel heavier than it is.
Once in the cab, Father sets his precious plate on his lap and gathers Tristram's bag up from the floor where Tristram has let it slide down, and tucks it in on his other side. Then he wraps his arm around Tristram and pulls him close. His arm is pressing rather uncomfortably on one of the larger cuts on Tristram's back, but that doesn't matter. Tristram immediately snuggles in and rests his head against his father's chest, pushing away the flutters of unease at the uncharacteristic behaviour and possible reasons for it. All that matters at the moment is that the unpleasantness of the past week has been swept away with the firm grip of his father's hand on his arm and the solid presence of his coat against Tristram's cheek.
Go to chapter twenty
Author:
Beta readers:
ruth0007, billiethepoetRating: PG-13
Relationship: John/Sherlock
Word count: ca. 93,500 when complete, this chapter 5,051 words
Summary: AU set in the universe of
nox_candida's Getting Better. John and Sherlock work together to flush out Mary's killers, and Tristram has to come to terms with what his father's new friend means for him. No series 3 spoilers (or series 1 or 2, for that matter).Chapter note: Thank you to
ladyprydian and thissalsify for acting as medical advisors for this chapter.See chapter one for the complete header with warnings, acknowledgments, disclaimers, and notes.
Chapter 19 on AO3
Chapter Nineteen
Tristram is bored. There is, as usual, nothing on the telly. Uncle Mycroft's assistant brought him an e-reader loaded with a couple hundred books, many of which are pretty interesting, but Tristram's tired of reading. It's basically all he's done since the surgery. There's a play room down the hall with more games and books and toys, as well as the potential for diversion in the form of other children - even if they don't want to interact with him, he has always enjoyed observing - but it also has lots of windows and no curtains. So aside from the times when an aide comes to take him on a couple of circuits of the inner corridors, he stays in his room. It's funny, because the walks are meant to improve his circulation, and it's actually him circulating, not just his blood. He tried to explain that to the lady who went with him the first day, but either she didn't understand English very well or Tristram didn't explain it right, because she just gave him an odd look. He didn't try to explain it again after that.
His right hand is in a cast that extends halfway up his forearm, so he has to use his left hand for everything. However, the IV is still attached to his left arm, so he has to move slowly and be careful not to get the line caught on anything. This makes him feel clumsy and awkward and cross. At least he's allowed to sit up now, although he's not supposed to lean his back against anything, not even the pillow, because of the bandages. A nurse comes to change them for him once a day and check for infection. The nurse who checked him earlier today said the cuts are healing nicely, which makes Tristram oddly proud. Although he doesn't have much control over his body's healing processes, it makes him feel like he's upholding his end of the vow his father made to him.
His hand is another story. If he were Harry Potter, he could just take a dose of Skele-Gro and have it all fixed by tomorrow. But as he isn't, they had to put some metal rods in until the bones can grow back. That's incredibly cool but apparently going to take a long time.
Along with the e-reader, Uncle Mycroft's assistant brought a bunch of things from the flat, including several changes of clothes (soft, loose things that can go on over his cast and bandages), his phone (Tristram asked for it specifically), and some notebooks and things to write with. Tristram pointed out the uselessness of the latter to his father, given the state of his dominant hand. He expected his father to commiserate and make a derisive comment about the idiocy of the population in general and Uncle Mycroft's employees in particular, but instead, he said this was an excellent opportunity for Tristram to learn to write with his left hand. One never knew when such a thing might be useful, and he is going to have the cast on for seven weeks.
Apropos, Tristram is going to have a massive amount of work to catch up on when he is able to return to school, and penmanship counts. So he's been diligently practising. He's not very good yet, so he asked Mrs Hudson to help him write a letter back to Emily. Well, he told her what to write, and she wrote it.
Oh yes, there was a letter from Emily, also delivered by the assistant. It said:
Dear Tris,
How are you? My dad told me you got shot in the hand and got some cuts on your back. But that the doctors fixed it. I hope you are felling better. We are fine. Its nice here. My dad said I can't tell you where we are. Theres a huge telly with lots of games. My favourite is Mario Kart 3. I beat my dad so much he dosen't want to play anymore. I wish you were here!! Last night we had pizza for dinner. Don't read the goblet of fire without me!!! Get well soon!!!
Love, Emily
Tristram's letter back to her is on the table now, waiting for Uncle Mycroft's assistant to come pick it up. Mrs Hudson's been to visit every day. She brought along a deck of cards the first day, but it's pretty much impossible for him to play anything with just one hand, so they usually just talk a bit and watch one of her soaps.
An orderly comes in with Tristram's dinner. She puts the covered plate on the table for him and asks if he needs help getting up so he can eat.
Tristram thinks he can manage. He's been up to use the loo several times by himself already, so he says it's fine, scooting himself to the edge of the bed to demonstrate. He just has to mind the IV line and remember to take the pole with him. She smiles and tells him to use the call button if he needs anything, then leaves.
Tristram makes his way over to the table, being careful not to let the wheels of the IV stand get caught on the legs of the bed or the chair next to it. He sits down gingerly on the chair at the table and makes sure the IV line isn't bent or wedged in anywhere. He hopes there's chocolate pudding again, like there was last night.
Tristram lifts the lid off his dinner plate and freezes. That is most certainly not chocolate pudding. The teeth he recognises right away, even with the long, curved roots, still bloody. It takes him a bit longer to identify the rectangular strip of greyish material, oozing red everywhere. It's the hairs that finally clue him in. That is a piece of skin. Not the thin, papery flakes that peel off when you get sunburnt, or the dry curls you can pick off around your nails, or even the rubbery, white flaps you can sometimes pull off a blister if you time it right. It's like a slice of turf, thick and layered, with the top side polite and neat and the bottom all full of twisted, dripping things.
Tristram does not scream. He does not make a sound. He does check that the curtains are drawn tight; they are, as they always are, even during the day, at Tristram's request. Insistence, really. Tristram knows the thin piece of material won't stop a bullet, but at least this way anyone who might be outside can't pinpoint his precise position in the room. His singular thought beyond that is that he has to contact his father. He usually arrives just as visiting hours are ending for the day, and then stays overnight, sitting at the table clicking away on his laptop or sitting hunched over his phone in the chair by Tristram's bed. It's pretty much like a typical evening at their flat, actually, from the days when Tristram had taken to sleeping on the couch, only without the violin. But he isn't there yet, and probably won't be for a couple of hours.
Tristram sets the lid back down over the plate with the utmost care. His heart is careening out of control. Doctor Watson told him and Emily to keep their phones with them at all times. Not to leave them in their jackets or bags. Again, Tristram has failed to heed that advice. He will have to make it over to the closet, where his bag is hanging. He needs to keep an eye on both the door and the window, though, and as he doesn't have eyes on both sides of his head, he's unable to move. Finally, he decides the door is the more immediate concern, so he angles himself such that he has a clear view of it and pushes the chair back from the table. It bumps into the IV stand, and the line gets caught on the corner of the chair arm, so by the time Tristram is finally free and standing, he's sweating lightly under his t-shirt.
Keeping close to the wall, Tristram moves as quickly as he can to his bag. It takes forever for him to get the plastic squeeze clasp open one-handed. He has to resort to using his teeth. The phone is powered off, and for one heart-stopping moment, Tristram realises he hasn't recharged it since he's been in hospital, but it lights up right away when he presses the power button. It takes another eternity to boot up. When he presses 1, he notes that his hand is shaking.
"Tristram?" his father answers almost immediately, his voice sharp.
"Teeth and skin," Tristram says, because that's the message. That's the important part. To his horror, his voice is shaking too. He hopes his father understands what he's trying to say.
"Where are you?" Father barks out.
"At the hospital. Someone put two teeth and a piece of skin on my tray." He focuses on remaining calm. Like Doctor Watson said Gents could do. Like his father does.
"Are you alone?"
"Yes."
"Are you hurt?"
Tristram knows his father means any new injuries, not his hand or his back, so he answers, "No." Being able to answer Father's simple questions promptly and accurately makes Tristram feel a bit better. A little more in control.
"Listen to me carefully," Father says, speaking quickly. "I want you to put your shoes and your jacket on and get into the closet. It may be a tight squeeze, but you'll fit. Pull the door all the way closed. Go do that now."
Tristram does not question his father. He will do exactly as he is told. He wedges his phone between his shoulder and ear so he can use his one good hand to take his shoes out of the closet and slide his feet in. Then he takes his jacket down from the hook, only to be confronted with the next problem: the IV line. He could probably get his left arm into the sleeve and drape the rest of the jacket over his right shoulder, but he won't be able to get the IV stand into the closet. Plus, the entire point of the exercise, he reckons, is so that no one will see him if they give his room a cursory check. Having an IV line hanging out of the closet would be a dead giveaway.
"I can't," he says desperately to his father. "The IV..."
"Damn, I forgot about that. Take it out." Tristram can hear from the jostling in his father's voice that he's on the move.
"I can't-" Tristram says, eying the device lodged in his arm with trepidation.
"It's easy," his father says in a tone that means he's losing his patience. "I've done it many times. Remove the tape and pull the port straight out. It may bleed a bit, so have a tissue ready and press it on the spot for a couple of minutes. You can do this, Tristram. It's very important. I'm on my way and I've alerted Mycroft, but it's going to be a while before either of us can reach you. Once you have the IV out, leave the stand with the loose line by the door. Make sure the door can open without bumping into it. That should be enough to fool the average idiot into thinking you've left." In other words, most people. Tristram hopes that whoever put the teeth and the skin on his tray are 'most people'.
He looks at the blue plastic valve sticking out past the plastic patch, like a see-through plaster, holding everything down. When he needs to change his clothes, the nurse somehow unhooks the IV line there, and then re-attaches it. Surely he could do that.
"Have you done it?" Father asks. His voice has a different, more distant quality to it now, and Tristram can hear the sounds of traffic in the background.
"Can't I just unhook it and leave the rest in?"
"Unhook it with what? Your teeth? Do as I say! Peel the adhesive off with your teeth and then pull the whole thing out. Make sure you keep it straight, and do it quickly. Now!" Father is right. He can't use his right hand at all, he obviously can't use his left to fiddle with anything on that arm, and he doesn't have enough finesse with his teeth to close the valve without possibly dislodging the part that's in his hand anyway.
Tristram hears footsteps out in the hall. Not the soft shoes of the nurses and orderlies; hard, brisk heels hitting the polished floor. It could be anyone, of course: someone visiting another patient, even Uncle Mycroft. He drops the jacket and puts the phone onto one of the shelves in the closet, then gets his teeth under the corner of the adhesive patch. He pulls as carefully as he can, but it jostles the catheter. He has to stop and get another hold, and then it comes away. He drops the patch into the closet. The footsteps in the hall have gone silent, but there are voices. He can do this. Father said he'd done it himself lots of times. He wouldn't tell Tristram to do it if it was beyond Tristram's capabilities, or if it would somehow make him sick or injure him even worse.
"Tristram?" he hears his father's voice faintly coming from the phone on the shelf.
"I'm working on it," Tristram says, hopefully loud enough that his father can hear him. "I have the plaster thing off."
"Quickly."
Tristram bites down carefully on the plastic tubing and draws his hand back as steadily as he can. It hurts-it hurts-it hurts! He gasps but manages not to drop the tubing, and then he is free. He did it! It's bleeding, but not too much. He forgot to get a tissue. He presses the back of his arm against his cast instead. "It's out!" he says, loud enough so his father can hear him, he hopes.
"The IV stand!" Father reminds him.
Still pressing the back of his left arm against his cast, Tristram shoves the stand toward the door with his foot, remembering to leave room for the door to swing open, then dashes back to the closet. There are four compartments on top of each other, each about half a meter on a side. His clothes and other sundries are distributed amongst them. He quickly sweeps everything out of the bottom compartment and stuffs it all in the next one up, grabs the phone, and kneels down. The jacket is still lying there on the floor. He puts it on and backs himself into the bottom section of the closet. It's a very tight squeeze, and the shelf above him scrapes his back as he squirms his way in. The jacket gives him an extra layer of padding, but he still hopes he hasn't torn open any of his cuts. He tucks his injured hand in against his chest and grasps the bottom edge of the door to pull it shut as far as he can. It bumps against his knee, leaving a crack of light, but he can't get himself any further into the closet. It will have to do.
"I'm in," he says breathlessly. He doesn't have room to raise the phone to his ear, so he just holds it in front of his face.
"I'm at Victoria right now, getting into a cab," Father tells him. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Stay where you are."
"Okay."
Tristram hears his father tell the cab driver where to go. Then he addresses Tristram again. "Don't talk anymore. Tap the phone once with your fingernail for yes and twice for no. If you hear anyone come in, tap three times. Do you understand?"
Tristram taps the phone once.
"Good. Did you see who brought the tray in?"
Tap.
"Was it a member of the hospital staff?"
Tap.
"Someone you'd seen before?"
Tap. She'd brought him his dinner the previous night as well. Was she one of the bad guys? Should he have noticed something about her then?
"Was there anything else on the tray?" Father asks. "Any other objects, a note, anything?"
Tap tap.
They continue in this vein, and Tristram actually begins to relax and enjoy the game. Father gives him updates of his estimated time of arrival, and he's still four minutes away when Tristram hears the door open. He taps three times on his phone. Father doesn't respond right away; maybe he tapped too fast or too light? He repeats the signal, trying to keep his finger steady. What is he supposed to do?
His father answers: "Someone's with you?"
Tap.
"All right... all right. Stay where you are. If they find you, don't fight them. Do whatever they say. I can see the hospital and will be there in two minutes."
"Tristram, it's me," the female voice of the visitor says. It's Uncle Mycroft's assistant! But Father said he alerted Uncle Mycroft, not his assistant. She might be a false ally, like Emily's Aunt Claire was.
Tristram remains silent. He hears her shoes clicking further into the room. The light shifts as she comes closer. Tristram tries to pull himself even further into the closet.
"It's all right, you can come out," she says. Her shoes stop in front of the closet. She opens the door.
Due to the angle his head's wedged in at, all Tristram can see are her shoes and her sheer black-stockinged legs from the knees down. She has on high heels, black, with sparkly bits. They look very fancy and utterly impractical. She drops down into a crouch to peer at him. She's wearing a sparkly black dress and her hair is piled up on top of her head with sparkly pins in it, and her face is made up with dark colours. She gets a little line between her eyebrows when she sees him.
"God, you poor kid," she says, sounding half pitying and half amused. She holds out her hand to him. "Come on, out you come."
Father said to do whatever she said, so he does. It would actually be easier for him to get out of the closet without holding her hand. He ends up sort of half falling out onto the floor.
"Is that Mycroft's peon?" Father's voice says from the phone. He sounds annoyed.
Tristram isn't exactly sure what a peon is, but he understands the context well enough to know that Father means the woman standing in front of him. He's been told to call her Miss Smith, although he suspects that's not really her name.
Tristram taps the phone once to answer his father's question. Then he realises that he can probably speak again now, and adds, "Yes."
"Put her on."
Tristram hands his phone to her. She lets go of Tristram and stands up, listening to Father. Tristram struggles into a sitting position. His neck hurts from being bent in an unnatural position, his back hurts from being pressed against the side of the closet, and his right hand just hurts, period. It occurs to him that the IV was probably delivering a steady dose of pain medication, which he is now cut off from.
"He's fine," Miss Smith - or whatever her name is - says. She walks away from Tristram and gives the room a quick sweep, checking under the bed, ducking into the bathroom, and flicking the curtains back to peek behind them. "He's on a plane to- Well, I can't tell you to where," she tells Father in a bored tone, apparently in answer to another question, "but he's on a plane."
She must mean Uncle Mycroft. Tristram scoots back against the wall and pulls his knees in, making sure there are several pieces of furniture between himself and the window, and that he isn't in a direct line of sight to the door.
She wanders over to the table and hooks her red-varnished fingernail under the handle of the lid covering the special message for Father. Tristram doesn't get further than thinking that Father will be unhappy if she picks it up when the door opens and Father's voice says sharply, "Don't touch that!"
She looks around with a cool smile and lowers the phone. "Sherlock."
"Prints," Father chides her as he strides into the room, already pulling on a pair of examination gloves.
Tristram is so relieved he nearly jumps up to throw himself at his father, but instead he hugs his own knees tightly with his good arm.
"Thank you for coming, now please leave," Father says to the assistant. Without waiting for a response, he comes over to Tristram and crouches down in front of him. He puts one hand on Tristram's knee. "You're all right."
Tristram nods. "I didn't eat any of it this time."
He intends for it to be a completely sober statement of fact - perhaps even a reassurance that he's learned from past mistakes - but Father grins as if he's made a joke. "Good." Father then bounces back up and rubs his hands together. "Let's see what we have then." He steps over to the table but doesn't lift the lid from the plate yet. "I said you could leave," he mentions over his shoulder to Uncle Mycroft's assistant, who's still there.
"You're not my employer," she returns archly.
"No, but I'm Tristram's father and I would like you out of his room."
"I walked out on the Royal Ballet and a dead sexy Swede to check on your son." Tristram finds it interesting how she nearly always manages to sound both amused and condescending.
"I'm certain my brother will compensate you." Father's lip curls a bit when he says that, as if the notion is in some way personally offensive to him.
Her lip curls as well, but the effect is more one of smugness than sneering. "Doctor Watson says... well, nothing about you, really. He did ask after Tristram." Her head tilts toward Tristram, who's still huddled on the floor. She smiles at him, but it's a fake-sad smile, and Tristram thinks it's meant more for Father than for him. And while he's flattered that Doctor Watson wanted to know how he was doing, Tristram finds it odd that he didn't say anything about Father. Did they have a row because of Tristram being shot?
Father rolls his eyes. "My God, is Mycroft feeding you these lines?"
At the mention of Doctor Watson, Tristram now also remembers the letter Mrs Hudson helped him with. "Could you please take a letter for Emily?" he asks before the assistant can leave. "I left it on the table."
She smiles at him. This time it's a real one. "Sure." She sets Tristram's phone on the table, and in return plucks the envelope up. She taps it once against the plastic lid that's still covering the plate. "Any messages from you I can pass on?" she asks Father innocently.
"You can tell him to piss off," he mutters, his fingers twitching on the handle of the lid.
She chuckles. "I'm not sure Doctor Watson will appreciate that."
Tristram isn't either. This is sounding worse and worse. Does Father blame Doctor Watson that Tristram was hurt? But that wasn't his fault! And he helped Tristram afterwards, even came to the hospital with him. Did much more than Father, to be honest. Maybe that is the source of their disagreement this time?
"Out!" Father growls. She winks at Tristram and walks out, giving the impression that it's completely coincidental to Father's order.
As soon as the door swings shut behind her, Father whips the lid off with a flourish, as if he were revealing a masterpiece of craftsmanship. Maybe, to him, it is. Tristram can't see the contents of the plate from where he's sitting, but he can see his father's face. His eyes glitter with possibilities.
"Teeth and skin," he murumurs, "teeth and skin." He closes his eyes and tilts his head, as if he's listening to something. "Skin and bones, skinflint, skin...sink! Sink your teeth in... no, no, no, skin and teeth, skin and teeth..." His eyes pop open. "By the skin of your teeth." The pleased expression at having solved the puzzle dissolves quickly into a grimace of distaste. "Oh, please. Yes, we knew that already." He covers the plate again and slides it off the table, balancing it on one hand. Only then does he look at Tristram again. "Let's go," he says and starts for the door.
Tristram scrambles to his feet. "Are we leaving?" he asks. Is he even allowed to leave?
Father stops in the middle of the room. "You can't think I'm going to leave you here. There's no reason for you to stay any longer, anyway. You can continue healing at home as well as here, and there's no sense you expiring of boredom in the meantime."
That makes sense. Tristram's left arm has a smear of blood down it where he pulled out the IV, but it's stopped bleeding. His back's still throbbing from scraping it on the closet, but maybe Mrs Hudson can re-do the bandages when they get home. And he's going to have the cast on his right hand for seven weeks. He certainly doesn't want to sit in this room for seven weeks waiting for it to heal. But above all, Tristram would much rather be at home, surrounded by familiar things and smells and sounds. At home with Father, and his violin, and the tent that Doctor Watson built for him and Emily. Tristram hopes his father hasn't taken it down.
"Can I take my things?" he asks, reaching for his bag from the shelf in the closet.
"We'll have someone send everything later," Father says. He is clearly impatient to analyse the new evidence.
Tristram doesn't want to hold him up, but he needs that phone. He quickly retrieves it from the desk, along with the notebooks he was practising left-handed writing in, and stuffs them into his bag. "Okay, I'm ready."
"Good. Stay close to me and do not speak to anyone." Father holds the door open for him, and they go out into the hall. Tristram expects he's going to have to stretch his legs to keep up with Father, as usual, but Father adjusts his stride and keeps Tristram close by his side.
Rather than heading toward the lifts across from the nurse's station, Father leads them to a door with a green 'Emergency Exit' sign on it. It also has a red bar on the handle that Tristram knows will trigger an alarm if it's depressed. There's a key hole in it, though, and Father already has one of his lockpicking tools in his hand. There can be no doubt by now that Tristram is not actually supposed to be leaving the hospital, but Father knows when it's best to take an unofficial route. This is obviously one of those times.
Tristram doesn't need to be told to stay flat against the wall, hidden from view by his father's big coat, while his father works on the lock. It takes perhaps thirty seconds before the door swings silently open and the two of them can slip through. Then they are running down the stairs. Father, still holding his prize, has to wait for him at every landing, as Tristram has to take a bit of care not to jostle his arm on the railings, but he doesn't once tell him to go faster or hurry up. They probably don't need to run - no one has noticed they've left yet - but Tristram's so excited about their escape that he doesn't think he could walk slowly anyway, and Father apparently feels the same way. Tristram is thrilled. It's like being on a mission together! This must be what it's like for his father when he is on a case.
They go all the way down to the basement level, and emerge in a poorly lit concrete corridor suffused with the hum of behind-the-scenes machinery. Tristram smells laundry and exhaust, but they don't see anyone. At the end of the hallway is another door, but this one's unlocked, at least on their side, and leads to the garbage bins behind the hospital.
And then they are free! Tristram experiences the thrill of illicit accomplishment. He wants to shout, or maybe run some more, but he knows they have to act casual now and not draw attention to themselves.
Father sneaks a sideways glance at Tristram, although most of his attention is still on the plate in his hand. "Are you all right carrying that?" Father asks.
It takes a moment for Tristram to realise he means his bag, which slid off his shoulder during their dash down the stairs, and is now dangling from his elbow. It's practically empty, so it's not heavy. Tristram hitches it up onto his shoulder, ignoring the way it pulls on his still-fresh cuts, and grins up at his father. "Yep," he says happily.
They walk several blocks away from the hospital before his father flags down a cab for them. Tristram is glad. Just that short walk has tired him and made his bag feel heavier than it is.
Once in the cab, Father sets his precious plate on his lap and gathers Tristram's bag up from the floor where Tristram has let it slide down, and tucks it in on his other side. Then he wraps his arm around Tristram and pulls him close. His arm is pressing rather uncomfortably on one of the larger cuts on Tristram's back, but that doesn't matter. Tristram immediately snuggles in and rests his head against his father's chest, pushing away the flutters of unease at the uncharacteristic behaviour and possible reasons for it. All that matters at the moment is that the unpleasantness of the past week has been swept away with the firm grip of his father's hand on his arm and the solid presence of his coat against Tristram's cheek.
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Go to chapter twenty
