Was she crying?
You must realize, dear reader, that I had yet to discover Hall Pycroft’s contributions to my journal. As such, you have already received a great deal of insight which I lacked. The clues I had to my missing months were sparse and frustrating.
I could have buried myself in my work, I suppose, to hide my pain. Could have being the operative term, as my professional standing was in ruins. It seems that suddenly refusing to care for your patients, on the grounds that you are now a different person, then one day announcing you are yourself again and let’s-go-ahead-and-have-a-look- at-that-gammy-leg-shall-we? is not the optimal way of inspiring the confidence that is so fundamental to the doctor–patient relationship.
This phenomenon was driven home to me during a chance meeting with one of my patients who had just been struck by a carriage. Walking down the street one day, I encountered a knot of horrified spectators shouting for a doctor. Pushing my way through the crowd, I encountered my old patient, Mr. Widders, lying by the side of the road with a hideously broken leg. The moment he saw me, his eyes went wide with fear and he tried to drag himself away from me, which—since I was approaching from the sidewalk—meant he would rather return to the flow of traffic than to my care.
Thus, only a few short days after my return, I found myself with nothing to do but sit in my chair by the hearth, sipping tea and wondering what had happened to my world. Even the tea could not comfort me as it once had. I stared resentfully down at it, wondering if it might not be wiser to try half a pint of cheap gin instead.
My left hand began its old habit. Often, when my mind would wander, it would unconsciously probe the crater on my thigh, from the jezail bullet I’d had at Maiwand. However, on this occasion, the practice caused me to give a sudden cry of alarm.
A few seconds later, Joachim appeared in the doorway. “Are you all right, sir?”
“Sir” the reader may note; not “thir”. Apparently, his Madrid lisp had lost its novelty in Mary’s eye while I was away. Though he had assured me he could not rectify it, my own displeasure was not nearly as frightening to him as Mary’s. He’d been doing his utmost to expunge it. It still came through, from time to time, but the vocal badge of his individuality was nearly gone. By God, he was almost a proper English butler.
As he neared, I cried, “My wound! The scar! It’s gone!”
“Oh, but that was a very small wound, sir,” he told me. “We had it seen to while you were… erm… not yourthelf. It mended quite well.”
“No, no! Not that little scratch I got from the misadventure with Garrideb Grub! The whacking great one from Afghanistan! Look! It isn’t here!”
He gave me a very strange look. “No, sir, it isn’t there.”
“But why?”
“Because it’s on your thoulder, sir.”
I stared at him, incredulous. “Is this some kind of joke? I was shot! Right here!”
Joachim’s look of sympathy and concern deepened. He drew near and asked, “Sir… if I may?” He patted my back, until he found what he was looking for. Then, almost apologetically, he slid his finger into the deep scar on my left shoulder blade.
“Aaaaigh!” I cried. “What the hell?”
“Sir has many times recounted the battle,” Joachim assured me, “and always—we have been told—sir was wounded in the thoulder. Sir nearly died of a severed artery. Forgive me, but I cannot remember the name of it.”
“Left subclavian. It would have been the left subclavian…” I muttered. And there was a flash of familiarity to the words. But no. I shook my head. “But… right here! I remember falling, Joachim! I remember clutching at my leg! The pain… the fear…”
All my poor butler could do was shrug and suggest, “Perhaps sir is mistaken. Can I refresh sir’s tea? I fear this cup has grown cold.”
“No. Absolutely not,” I said, then rose, went to the window, opened it, flicked my stupid cold tea out into the garden, walked to the side service, filled the teacup with brandy, and returned to my seat.
I had a whole new, wonderful worry now. Because, you see, it had been a few days. My bedroom door remained closed—save for when Mary rang for one of the servants to bring her food or bear away one of the shocking quantity of letters she was suddenly writing. That is to say: Holmes’s curse, binding me to Mary, had not manifested itself yet. But why? And might it have something to do with the fact that I could not remember my own wounds?
Do you see my concern?
What if, when he had erased John Watson to make room for Hall Pycroft, Warlock Holmes had killed John Watson? What if I was a brand-new creature designed to think it was the missing man, and—based on my incorrect memories—poorly designed, to boot? What if I was no longer bound to Mary because my soul was not genuinely John Watson’s?
Was I a counterfeit me?
The only way to know was three more brandies. Of this, I was certain. Sadly, no clarity lay in the bottom of those teacups. Somewhere towards the end of the third one, Joachim came in again. He was pale; he knotted and unknotted his fingers repeatedly. I was deep enough in my cups that it made me cross to see him so.
“You shouldn’t frown, you know. It lessens your beauty. I feel like you should be smiling on a sunny beach somewhere, surrounded by a throng of admirers. I feel like that’s your natural state.”
He wrinkled his brow at me.
