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Unbelievable. Of all the unbelievably stupid things…
She was going to kick Sherlock’s arse as soon as she could balance properly again. She was as big as a house, due any day now, she did not need to be driving out to the outskirts of London to be picking up her husband after he got banged up in the course of a case when certain consulting detectives couldn’t be arsed to pick up a phone. Sherlock sent him out there, Sherlock should have been the one to go pick him up but no.
Oh, he was a dead man, he truly was.
And she couldn’t really read her husband the riot act over this because he was so pathetically beat up looking. He’d put up a grand go of it, he had, but from what she understood before he’d simply passed out there had been five of them and one of him and even she knew he was lucky to still be standing upright for the most part with those odds, even though he was swaying something awful. She’d been doing all she could to keep him conscious but she felt funny. Very funny.
And when she felt the trickle of wetness between her legs and the strange feeling to push intensified, she damn near slammed on the brakes right then and there as the feeling on the nape of her neck perked up, that prickly feeling she got when things could go one way or the other. “John!” she called out.
“What?” he said, waking with a start.
“John, dear, the baby. No time for a hospital, I think the baby’s coming now,” she said as the prickly feeling intensified. Oh, she’d give anything for a nice hospital bed, sterilized room, her competent doctor (not that her husband wasn’t competent, but he wasn’t an OB/GYN and he was concussed) and drugs, but she’d been through worse and bloody hell, she’d be damned if she wouldn’t get through this.
She pulled into an alleyway and gingerly got out of the driver’s seat, trying not to let the pain get to her. She was dimly aware of John getting out of the back seat. Good. At least he wasn’t needing to be herded like cattle. Even concussed, he was alert enough to know he had work to do. After a moment she felt a somewhat steadying hand at her back and another take her hand, only removed momentarily after they guided her to the open door to help her in. “Looks like we’ll have a story to tell Claudia,” John said once she laid down on the back seat.
“Not the one we wanted, though,” she said, wincing at the powerful contraction. Bloody fucking hell, she wanted drugs.
“Break a hand,” he said, offering her a hand when she was settled.
“You need both, love. Can’t deliver a baby with a broken hand.”
“I’m doing it with a concussion and a few broken ribs. What’s one more injury.”
“Jinx yourself and I’ll divorce you,” Mary said with a glare.
John chuckled. “You say that now. When this is all over, you’ll have our beautiful daughter and you won’t care.”
“I won’t let you touch me again!” Mary said as another contraction hit.
“We’ll see,” he said as he began to take off Mary’s soiled maternity trousers. “She’s quite eager to make an appearance.”
“Unfortunately,” Mary said, gritting her teeth.
“Well, we’ll make sure she gets here safe and sound,” he said.
Mary felt the prickling at the nape of her neck get steadily more pronounced. “You better.”
–
It didn’t take long before a baby’s wail was heard and Mary, exhausted but pleased, shut her eyes. The prickling feeling at the nape of her neck faded as the faint sound of sirens filled the air. “Did you call for an ambulance?” she asked.
John shook his head, carefully setting his daughter on the seat. There hadn’t been time to look for something to cut the umbilical cord before labour started, so he had planned to rummage in the glove box them, but right now he was stripping off his jumper to wrap the baby in it. “No,” he said with a frown. “And it’s not alone.”
After a moment the ambulance pulled up and John directed them to mother and daughter even though they tried to insist on taking care of him. It wasn’t until Mary was out of the car, daughter swaddled in a blanket and in her arms that she saw Sherlock nearby, looking almost a bit ashamed. “You,” she said, slight glare on her face. “I should smack you upside the head.”
“I brought along an ambulance,” he said plaintively, gesturing to the boxy vehicle she was being wheeled to.
“But if you’d answer your bloody phone I could have had my daughter in a hospital! With drugs! And not been in pain!” she said, raising her voice.
Sherlock winced. “My apologies,” he said. “I was otherwise occupied.”
“Did you at least solve the case?” John asked.
He nodded. “Yes.”
Mary narrowed her eyes even more. “Be happy I like you enough to make you godfather still.” The paramedics wheeled her away then, but before they loaded her into the ambulance she heard the last snippet of conversation between her husband and Sherlock.
“Am I in serious trouble?” Sherlock asked.
“Oh, yeah,” John replied. “Serious trouble.”
Good, she thought to herself. Let him sweat. I survived quick and dirty childbirth without drugs, I can survive anything. I’ll figure out a way to make him pay later.