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Mycroft has never put much stock in deja vu, having read years ago that it was regarded as nothing but a passing malfunction in the neural network that is the human brain. Yet, no better description offered itself as he listened to the Director of The Hobbs at Bramshott Grange rehabilitation centre describe what she called an altercation.
Altercation, fight, argument, misunderstanding, getting one's arse kicked — Sherlock's habits had landed him in conflict with others numerous times before. His sharp tongue, his lack of consideration for the consequences of using it, and his heightened irritability and impulsiveness when under the influence of practically anything illicit had resulted in bloody noses and concussions. Now, in his… diminished state, Sherlock could do little but rant and rave, but even without the use of most of his body, he can be a frightening apparition.
They weren't kicking him out of the rehabilitation unit, not for this. Their leaflets and website and word-of-mouth lauded them as the experts of all aspects of rehabilitation, including the psychological sequelae of severely debilitating injuries. It's not their fault. No, the fault for what has happened lies with the driver of the car that hit his little brother. They had stopped to help. There would be no prosecution. Sherlock had run into traffic without any regard for his safety. The speed the car had been travelling at was within the inner city limit, and the driver was not intoxicated.
The same could not be said for Sherlock, whose tox screen had been positive for cocaine and methamphetamine. Trace amounts of the latter; Sherlock had told Mycroft nonchalantly that the cocaine must've been cut with it.
No one had been surprised, except for the Detective Inspector of Scotland Yard who had hovered at the hospital until Mycroft had insisted that he leave. He wasn't a friend — Sherlock didn't make or keep friends. Sherlock had been injured during one of the pro bono cases he worked with the Metropolitan Police. Mycroft had never understood such charity.
Sherlock, the consummate actor, had managed to convince this DI that the way he behaved was entirely normal for him. There had been no suspicion of drugs. To Mycroft, Sherlock had insisted that he didn't need them when there was work. The Work, as he called it. Other people spoke of their spouses and children and hobbies, Sherlock spoke of the criminals he chased as though they were family members akin to some embarrassing, cross-dressing uncle or the cousin who never could fit in. His brother's taste for company, when it came which was rarely, had to be termed odd. He mingled with the homeless, perhaps somehow identifying with those cast out by society.
Now, he was an outcast in a place designed to help him. Instead of making use of everything Bramshott Grange could offer to help him regain as much function in his limbs and torso as he could, he wasted his time on petty squabbles about pain medications he shouldn't be even needing, and now he'd been caught buying ADHD medications off another patient. The money had been delivered by some London lowlife after Sherlock had managed to transfer funds to that unsavoury character's account. The Director had half a mind to call the police; they could hardly have a resident patient running drug deals on the premises.
It would only be a matter of time before Sherlock began ordering in illicit substances and not money. Thankfully, his currently debilitated dexterity would not allow for anything but tablets to be consumed.
Things were not improving. If anything, they were getting worse. At least the preparations at the Court were almost done. It was time to have to conversation Mycroft had hoped he'd receive their mother's backup for, but Sherlock hardly spoke to her, either, and she'd had to return to the States. Their father's illness had advanced to dementia, and he no longer recognised his wife on the phone. He was increasingly distressed by her absence, and since her presence here was doing little to help her younger son…
Mycroft shook his head as he strode down the familiar corridor designed to look as un-hospital-like as possible in a place that catered to people barely out of one. How was he to have this conversation, to tell Sherlock Mummy had left, without making it sound like punishment?
The Chancellor of the Exchequer had been irritated with Mycroft for postponing their meeting again. He had already used the excuse of a family emergency with the man twice. But it couldn't be helped. This was family.
I'm not angry, he told himself, hand hovering above the handle of the door to room 56. He's always been so emotional, and this acting out is merely an emotional reaction to his accident. Mycroft had become used to abuse being hurled at him recently; in fact, he welcomed it, because it was marginally better than withdrawal and apathy. And so much better than seeing his baby brother on a respirator, unable to speak because of a tracheostomy and struggling to prove that he didn't need a machine to breathe for him. He'd tried to scribble notes, but with his decimated dexterity, they had been mostly illegible.
Mummy never could adjust to this version of her son, not even when they were little. She never could understand why he couldn't regulate his behaviour, why he couldn't understand that it was important not to embarrass his family. Mycroft had to fulfil those expectations for both of them, to act as the stage whisperer to Sherlock for whom the world was not a good fit.
He opened the door and only then remembered he should have knocked. There were no locks on the doors, here, so it would have been just a courtesy, anyway. There will be locks in the doors at the Court. And a code for the medication cabinet.
As had become the norm in the past weeks, he didn't find his brother in the basic model of a power wheelchair which was parked in the corner. No, Sherlock was in bed — at four in the afternoon — with the head raised and a duvet topped with the heirloom tartan throw Mummy had insisted he should have here covering him up to his chest. His curls, grown long, were messy, fanning out on his pillow like a stain spreading. He had admitted to sleeping badly with the bed raised into almost a deck chair position, but he also couldn't tolerate lying on his back, especially not waking up that way. He wouldn't discuss the specifics, but Mycroft had gleaned it had something to do with memories of receiving intensive care.
"I know it's you. Go away."
Mycroft took in the fact that he was still in pyjamas. It wasn't the first time Sherlock had refused even to get out of bed, and Mycroft was certain it wouldn't be the last. "Apologies if I interrupted your nap. Though I do believe the definition of one would require being out and about between it and the preceding night's sleep."
"Fewer pressure sore checks and nobody tries to drag me off anywhere." Sherlock kept his eyes firmly shut. "Visitors should also take their cue from it."
The conversation was likely over if Sherlock had a say in the matter. Many times, Mycroft had relented, but it was time for decisions. "Mummy has gone home. Father is not well."
Sherlock's lids crack open, then his bright, angry eyes which had lost their sparkle precisely four months earlier open and fix on Mycroft. "He's not been well in ten years."
"You'd do well to appreciate the difficult situation we are all in."
There was no response.
"This cannot go on. If you cannot see a reason to make use of this place, then this room should be given to someone who will." The weight of the words tightened Mycroft's chest, but Sherlock would verbally slice through any attempt at consolation or mollycoddling. He valued the truth and only the truth.
No response. I know you can hear me. He continues, "I've made preparations at the Court. You will be marginally more comfortable there; at least there will be more privacy. Since you didn't bother to select one, I have chosen a wheelchair for you, which should serve you well. Your measurements have been sent for a custom fit."
"I'm not going to the Court. I'm going home."
"You cannot live at Baker Street."
"Who says I want to live?"
There it was. The truth. A challenge. A knife designed to stab deep. All of these things, and none of these things. He's not thinking about anyone else in this. He reacts. He's never deliberately malicious.
Mycroft stifled the impulse to call his brother out for being childish, for acting childish, for being ungrateful and unfair. For hiding in his bed, acting out at the nursing staff, for perpetrating such cliched stunts as refusing to eat. Sherlock has always been dramatic, because the questionable logic and language of emotions eludes him, and he cannot contain his own, especially not now. He fumbles in the dark, pounds at doors and screams up the walls until someone finds him.
Mostly so far, it has tended to be Mycroft's task in life.
"I have your Power of Attorney, and I find no joy in using it. It's time to cut one's losses."
"You mean you've given up on your plan of thinking I am about to stiffen up the lip, give those PT exercises some wellie and then get out of your hair so that you can go back to micromanaging Indochina or wherever has struck your fancy these days."
"I dislike arguing with someone who is still effectively under the covers. Shall I call your nurse so that we might have this conversation properly?"
"Even you're disgusted."
"Excuse me?"
"If you want me to sit, just prop me up. That's what the rest of them do. I could be a crash test dummy or a Resusci-Anne for all they care."
"It is not their job to care, not the way family does. It is, however, their task to help you care. I would be glad to assist you if my prior attempts wouldn't be met with such resistance."
Mycroft suspected that neither of them ever wanted to revisit those moments. Things could have been alright, tolerable even if the ashamed rage burning on Sherlock's features when Mycroft so much as offered a hand with a mug of tea hadn't pierced through his defences so profoundly. If they only could have reached some sort of an agreement of being on the same side.
Mycroft often had the sense that since Sherlock could not punish the entire universe for what had happened to him, he'd decided that a big brother was a convenient stand-in.
"I can try."
"Excuse me?"
"I'll get on with it."
"Get on with what, exactly?"
"The useless, nauseating nonsense they try to make me do."
"Why the sudden motivation?" Mycroft didn't seek to remove scepticism from his voice.
"You'll bury me alive in the bloody countryside if I don't. You won't let me—"
"Staying here has not proven beneficial. You need an environment where you can regroup, gather your strength, reassess pri—"
"You're going to take me home, and you're going to close the door behind you and not look back," Sherlock's baritone snarled from under the duvet. "No one is going to hold you accountable."
"This is not Sparta, where the weak are thrown off a cliff," Mycroft said firmly. "You need time, that has become abundantly clear. And you need a place where you cannot distract yourself with these schemes which have the whole centre in an upheaval."
The duvet is dragged down to Sherlock's waist, and the fresh fury on his gaunt features is unsurprising. "I wouldn't have to resort to any kinds of bloody schemes if they gave me what I need!"
"Which would be what? Enough opiates and benzodiazepines to knock out an elephant?"
"Lecturing me about pain. You have no idea what it's like in here. In fact, incomprehension is more infuriating than the pain itself. I don't want you here."
"No, I suppose you don't. And that likely applies to anyone who attempts to rouse you from the depths to which you are stubbornly clinging. I have hired a home nurse to coordinate your care—"
Sherlock rolled his eyes.
"—because I assumed that is what you would prefer instead of a changing rota of agency nurses. Her name is Natalia Mullan, and I am confident that she can withstand whatever you throw at her. She comes highly recommended, and her services are not cheap."
"So that's why you're not letting me stay. I'm depleting the funds."
Mycroft sidesteps that rather illogical barb — creating the right conditions at Musgrave Court has cost much more than Sherlock's stay at Hobbs, but none of it matters. He ploughs on. "Miss Mullan is going to visit you here, speak to your therapists. Do receive her. She has worked with people in your situation before."
"Unlike the idiots in this place?"
Mycroft cannot deny his disappointment in the results of these months. Much of the fault lay with the prior bout of pneumonia, of course, but not all of it. He was loath to blame Sherlock for wasting this opportunity, but admittedly he wasn't giving this a fair chance. He wasn't giving it a chance at all. "Since we cannot escape the need for such staff, I assumed you'd prefer one person to take over most duties. Hence hiring Miss Mullan on a separate contract."
"Is she some minion, then, one of your shadow staff who just happens to have a nursing degree? A hand-picked prison guard? Is she well-schooled in suicide watches?"
"Sherlock." Mycroft stood up, anticipating where the conversation was leading. "Let me make one thing clear. You may make as many references to certain… permanent solutions, but that will not happen. As a logical being, you must accept the premise that you're still recovering, and being still within that process may affect your mood and motivation. You don't have an objective view of the situation because you're too close, and if measures need to be taken to prevent you from executing impulsive plans with permanent consequences, they will be taken."
He was relieved by a knock on the door. He'd said his piece and Sherlock was always going to hate it, so now Mycroft could just get on with things. The subject of the plan has been thus informed.
Sherlock did not respond to a second knock — any more than he had to the first — but the door did soon open, revealing who Mycroft's outstanding memory for names and faces informed him was nurse Jamie Hall.
"What say we give it another go with this getting dressed and ready for your sessions?" Jamie, who Mycroft could tell was a twenty-five-year-old fitness enthusiast with a crew cut and a scar from a collision with a swing set in his youth, suggested, directing his words at Sherlock. "Afternoon, Mister Holmes," he added politely, nodding towards Mycroft.
"Mister Hall," he acknowledged. "Sherlock may be going home soon."
"'s not home," his brother muttered into the throw he'd gathered under his chin, head turned away from Mycroft who was standing by the window.
"I do apologise," Mycroft told Jamie. "It appears it's not a good day."
Jamie sighed. "It's okay."
"Stop apologising," Sherlock snarled through his teeth. "It's all you do. Lord forbid you having a relative who wasn't obedient and endlessly responsible for Queen and Country."
"That's good news, at least," Jamie tried, "Getting to go home."
Sherlock didn't respond. Mycroft saw that his breathing had picked up, and his eyes were pinched tight.
"Is that lunch?" He asked, looking at the grey plastic tray with a plate covered with a transparent plastic lid. The food was supposed to be if not gourmet then at least of very good quality, and there were always several options offered. He could tell the portion hadn't been touched.
"We do have a policy of encouraging residents to come to the dining hall," Jamie said.
"But you can hardly let them starve."
"Yeah."
"I assume assistance has been offered for eating?" Mycroft asked needlessly. Of course, it would have; this place was run impeccably, but he couldn't help but worry and give in to his need to micromanage. No, he would have hardly been able to get Sherlock to eat, either, but it was getting harder and harder to control his frustration and fear. What would he have to do before there was a breakthrough? Threaten Sherlock with a feeding tube? This was indirect suicide, through the only means currently at Sherlock's disposal.
It was good that Mummy had left. She had talent in selective blindness, of sidestepping how bad things had become. Her hovering obliviousness had made it difficult to address things head-on in a way that would have forced Sherlock to respond instead of just shutting down or acting out. It was a balancing act, not stressing him out so much that it became too much; of not forcing him to confront things which brought on a panic attack.
"Yeah, of course. I'll just take this back," Jamie sighed, collecting the tray and leaving the room.
Mycroft took a seat beside the bed, addressing the back of his brother's head. "We'll regroup at the Court, give you some time to decide how to move forward." Unlike before, he did not comment on the golden period of rehabilitation after a spinal injury, did not praise the possibilities offered by this wonderful facility, did not remind Sherlock of his family's presence and support. There had to be a limit. There had to be a moment when someone said it: that this wasn't working for Sherlock, that it was only making things worse, being here. He wasn't ready for this and Mycroft had a terrible fear that he never would be.
Obtaining Power of Attorney, condoning restraints to keep Sherlock from ripping out his tracheostomy and his IVs, returning him here after the pneumonia had put him back in intensive care… Every time, Mycroft had feared that he'd exchanged an irreplaceable piece of their sibling relationship for security and survival, but what else could he have done?
Sherlock's chest was heaving with ragged breaths, now, his hands shaking as he fingered the frayed edge of the woollen throw.
"It's alright," Mycroft said in a low voice. "We'll get you home and decide what to do."
"I can't— can't do anything," Sherlock struggled to get the words out. He opened his eyes, unfocused, just as his fingers began to twist into his duvet. "I need to get out––"
What is it I've said? Mycroft wondered. These panic attacks seemed to follow no particular pattern, no logic at all. At night, waking up still disoriented from sleep, unaccustomed to the reality of the paralysis was a logical trigger, but why now?
He had no idea what to do, and Sherlock was in no state to offer answers. "You know what this is, and you know it'll pass. You're not in danger," he said, congratulating himself for sounding as professional as the doctors he'd heard trying to coax Sherlock to attempt to break this logjam of misinterpreting emotional turmoil as a physical threat. "Undoubtedly you'd be much less prone to these episodes if you ate and hydrated properly and attempted to acclimatise back to having some resemblance of a daily schedule." It was like talking to a brick wall, but Mycroft had been tasked with being the voice of reason, so that is what he would do. He would do everything in his power to establish some routine and healthy nutrition once they got to the Court. The nurse, Natalie Mullan, seemed to understand and accept Mycroft's frank and determined position on these things and agree that in such a situation, temporarily limiting a patient's autonomy was necessary until they came to their senses.
Sherlock was hyperventilating now, attempting to claw himself into a sitting position. His fingers convulsed clumsily around the remote control of the bed, and he raised it even higher, eventually nearly slumping forward due to the weakness of his back and abdominal muscles. It was only Mycroft's intervention which kept him from ending up doubled over. He held firmly on to Sherlock's shoulders, pressed him back against the mattress now at a nearly ninety-degree angle, and gave him a slight shake. "Slow breaths; count to ten. You're lowering your carbon dioxide levels to where they interfere with your judgement. You have plenty enough oxygen. Examine the facts."
Mycroft knew from the research and medical texts he'd perused that the old paper bag trick was not backed with sound scientific evidence. It was more important to fix the pathological breathing pattern. Thankfully, both of them had always valued science and logic.
Eventually, Sherlock calmed down, the panic attack having drained his energy to the point where summoning his anger was akin to trying to strike fire from spent matches. "Mummy did the right thing," he breathed out. "I told her to leave me alone. Why won't you do me the same favour?"
"That's not why she returned to the States, Sherlock." Only half a lie. Her resilience leaves something to be desired. There was the issue of Father, but the course of his illness was predictable and could not be reversed, only slowed down. Sherlock was young, and there was so much that could be done to help if he'd only accept it. It was a relief not to have to endure Isobel Holmes' misguided fussing, but it did leave Mycroft solely in charge.
"What do you get out of this, torturing me? Why does this have to be like talking to a bloody brick wall? Why can't you just do what I want, to just leave me alone so I can go to Baker Street to die! Hear that, Mycroft? This is what I want!"
Sherlock pushed the now nearly balled-up tartan off the side of the bed in frustration.
"Suicidal ideation is a sign of depression." Thankfully, Nurse Mullan seemed wholly unsurprised and unfazed when we discussed this topic. The woman had told Mycroft that she had faced such issues with her prior patients.
"You get six months," Sherlock said, face now emotionless, and he appeared to be looking right through Mycroft. "Six months to play my keeper. If things haven't changed, will you believe then, that this is my plan and my will?"
"And during these six months, you will eat, take your medications, and acquiesce to other necessary interventions?" It was a tall order, but worth a try. If he could surprise Sherlock by agreeing to some arbitrary timeline, then maybe there was a compromise that could be made. Mycroft was loath to admit it, but he felt reassured by having hired someone like Natalia Mullan. Perhaps she might devise ways in which to get Sherlock to keep his side of the deal.
"If that's what's needed to prove that my opinions on my life are not borne out of dehydration or a lack of bloody multivitamins, then so be it," Sherlock scoffed.
"You are also to interact with people, not shut yourself in your bedroom all day. We'll spend time together, and you will have Nurse Mullan and others for frequent company. You won't be left alone."
"I don't know if that's more of a threat than a promise," Sherlock commented.
— The End —