Chapter Text
John's phone started ringing in the middle of the night. A case with Sherlock had held him up 3 days straight, so waking from this much needed sleep was more than infuriating to say the least. He fumbled after the phone, and finally got a hold of it. "Yes?" he mumbled into the phone. "I am so sorry for calling this late, Dr. Watson, but this is Dr. Rodriguez from The Princess Grace Hospital." John jerked awake, fearing it was about Sherlock. "How can I help", John asks, voice slightly trembling. Mary wakes beside him and look at him. " I am sorry, Dr. Watson, but your cousin has been brought in with several gunshot wounds and her hip his almost completely shattered. "My cousin? Which one?" There's a sigh at the other end. "Her name is Stacy, a former sub lieutenant in the Norwegian navy." John is already up from bed. "I am coming there right now!" He hangs up before the doctor can say anything else. "What is wrong, John?" Mary asks. "It is Stacy. She's in London. Residing at the hospital at the moment". With this, he left to find Sherlock.
"God damn it, Sherlock! You have wrecked the place!" John bursts into the living room of 221B Baker Street, seeing another one of Sherlock's experiments gone wrong. "John, what are-" He could nor finish. "Get dressed, you need to with me to The Princess Grace." He was already on the way out. "Now!" He said turning to take a look at Sherlock. Sherlock, seeing the desperation in his best friends voice, grabbed his coat and scarf to follow him. "Can you maybe explain to me why you are picking me up in the middle of the night? Is it Mary?" John shook his head hard, his face strained. "It is my cousin, Stacy. She is here in London. I got a call from a doctor there. It appears that she is gravely injured." Sherlock raised an eyebrow. Stacy. That was his Norwegian cousin, who had not been able to make it to the wedding due to a huge operation back home. It appeared that she too was a doctor, only graduating after military service. She was an excellent shot, a sniper to be precise. She was also well trained n hand to hand combat, and was just as deadly with a tube of toothpaste as with a gun.
It was almost 4 in the morning when John walked through the hospital corridors with Sherlock tailing behind. He saw a nurse rounding a corner, and he rushed over to her. "Excuse me, miss. I am looking for a Dr. Rodriguez. He called about my cousin." The nurse gave him a strained smile. "You are the sub lieutenant's cousin, then? She is unconscious but stable. I can show you to her, if you like?" John nodded, not daring to speak, afraid his voice would crack. It had been almost 10 years since he last had seen her, and she was quite worried now. How did a Norwegian doctor end up shot and hurt at a hospital in London? And without him knowing? This was more than he wanted to think about at the moment. Right now he just wanted to see her.
"What took you so long?" When the two men and the nurse enter, Stacy is awake, and looks mostly well. Her color is a bit grayish, and she looks tired, but in overall, she looks fine. The nurse gasps at the sight, running, most likely to get Dr. Rodriguez. "What was that about?" She asks, looking at the spot the nurse had been. She looked up at John and smiled, as well as she could, despite the pain. "John! I missed you", she says, still smiling. Sherlock takes a good look at her as John rushes to her bed, grasping her hands in his. There was something of with this woman. Sherlock could not read her. At all. Just like with Irene, he could not get a single read, other than the obvious. "You have to be Sherlock Holmes", said to Sherlock. He nodded in return. " Do not worry, I already know that you are not the handshake kind of man," She says with a mysterious look in her eye. Then to John, she says; "You brought him to find out what happened, did you not?" He grew a shade pinker and looked down. Stacy laughed, but stopped in a painful grimace. "Shit!" She mumbled under her breath. "I just found myself in a place I should not have been", she says, shrugging her shoulders. "There was not much I could do. Heels are so not my friend. Without them, I would have been able to get away without any injuries at all. A certain Detective Inspector Lestrade is supposed to stop by in the morning to take a statement." This piqued Sherlock's interest. "Really? I thought this was not his division?" John shook his head at him. "If Greg is on your case, you will be fine", he said squeezing her hand.
"Unbelievable!" They looked at the door, seeing Dr. Rodriguez standing there. "It is not, doctor", Stacy said smiling at him. " I have been through much worse, and I have never been out for more than two days, and I think being bombed is worse than taking a bullet." Rodriguez shook his head. "I am a former army doctor, and I have never seen injuries like the one in you hip. It is a miracle that you are alive!" She looked down at her hip, biting her lower lip, before pulling of the cover to examine her injuries. Gasping as she saw the area the tape covered. "How bad", she whispered, like she was admitting defeat. Rodriguez looked at her and sighed. "We will have to see in a few days. Worst case scenario, you will never be able to use your leg again. Best case, you will walk, but you will never run." Sherlock suddenly spoke; " I do not think either of those scenarios are possible in this woman's case." Both doctors looking at him in shock, Stacy grinning in her bed. "Doctor, did you do my x-rays?" He nodded, and Stacy smiled even broader. "The right side too?" "No, we did not." " Well, you should have. Then you would be able to see that this injury, will heal and I can do whatever I want to do." Still silence. "Mr. Holmes, you could not read me at all when you came in here, correct?" "As much as it pains me to admit, yes." John looked at him in surprise. " But you read me right now. My right hip was completely shattered just a year ago. There was nothing left to call a hip. I still walk and run, and I patched myself up."
"There is no way it can be true!" Not believing what Stacy told them, they did an x-ray of her whole body, and found injuries they never thought existed. This woman was no joke. She had been through more in her years in the force, than most people had been their entire life and more. Her records showed nothing of her true nature, and they knew that she was as dangerous as she was beautiful. Not only was she an excellent doctor, specializing in rehabilitation, but her service records were long. She had done 9 tours to different places. She had also done join ops with America and Britain, although they did not know the specifics. Her body should have been utterly destroyed, but yet she lived. She had a healing ability that you mostly never see. Stacy healed about 7 times faster than any other human, and she had sustained more injuries than John had ever seen. Or Rodriguez for that matter. "You should be dead," John whispered to her. "Yup. On more than one occasion. My life has been in serious danger more times than I can count, but I always come out alive and well. I do not know why, but I have my suspicions. That is the reason why I am in London at the moment. There is someone I need to see". She looked straight at Sherlock. "And you, Mr. Holmes, are going to help me get in touch with him. He is, after all, your brother."