Patches: Short Stories

John | BBC Sherlock

John was used to war.

Used to it.

Even... dare he say it... comfortable with it.

Comfortable with the bleeding, the pain, the screams, and the smell. But the dying still hurt.

Please, no! 

He laboured many long hours, stitching and tying and cleaning and filling and comforting. Whispering choked reassurances to faces that were locked on his, faces that would never see home.

Stay with me, soldier.
Keep your eyes on me!

And it hurt.

Burning, searing, cutting...

It really did.

But he got used to that sort of pain eventually, too. He was numb, and he knew it.

Can you hear me?
Sir, can you hear me?

He didn't know how he had gotten into this mess. Was it pressure? Lack of funds? An interest? Some twisted sense of duty?

He didn't know.

Did he?

But he knew how he got out of it. Leg shattered, barely healed, he knew with absolute certainty how he got out.

Get him on a stretcher.
He's going home.
I'd say lucky him, but that leg...

But others didn't.

The men...

No, they didn't.

His friends, his brothers...

And it was his fault.

If only he hadn't volunteered to go out, if only that man hadn't needed an emergency surgery in the field, if only he hadn't stood up, if only...

The man was dead, now. Thanks to John.

Volunteer,

soldier,

target,

boom.

They called to him, in his dreams. Screamed at him, begged him to save them, stared reproachfully at him as the dirt gradually covered them.

He didn't talk about it.

Oh, he talked about other things. The barracks, the camps, the sounds and smells of war. But never the dreams.

The silence hurt the most.

He thought the therapist knew that, somehow. He never mentioned them, but he sensed that she knew.

When she sat in her chair, smiling softly, nudging him to open up, was she thinking about them? About the dreams? Did she imagine what his brain conjured up while he was paralyzed with sleep, unable to break free from the clutching, grasping hands? Did she?

Did she know?

She had to.

She read it in his eyes, in the way he sat, in the way he held his hands, clasped far too calmly in his lap.

Cutting, stitching, grasping, pain.

She read it in the limp that wouldn't go away.