Time: 3:00am Location: Sherlock's Home

Joan rolled over to her side and looked at the clock. It seemed as though the clock hadn't moved since the last time she looked.

It wasn't that she wasn't tired; which she was, it was because every time she drifted into dreamland, the same dream surfaced.

"Maybe if I shut my eyes and count down from 100, it will calm me down enough and I won't dream at all…" She shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and started counting down from 100. "100, 99, 98, 97, 96…"

It's 5pm and Joan is standing in the hospital lobby drinking coffee with her newest assistant Aimee. They are laughing and don't have a care in the world…It's a normal New York Saturday; same old, same old. Joan finishes her coffee, checks the time, and tells Aimee it's time. They take the elevator up to the 4th floor and see the awaiting family in the waiting room. She goes down the hall and into the Doctors Lounge. Her friends see her and they exchange jokes and stories as she gets dressed in her scrubs. Aimee appears at the door and points to her watch. Joan hurries and dashes out of the room and into the surgery prep room. Aimee informs her that the patient has been put on anesthesia about ten minutes ago and is fully under. Joan puts her cap on, washes her hands, puts gloves on, and washes her hands again. She looks through the glass in front of her separating her from the operating room. She breathes deeply and steps into the room while tying the surgical mask behind her head. Her patient is a middle-aged married man with four kids. The surgery is a routine liver transplant; something Joan had done plenty of times before. She educates the newbie's on the procedure and tells them to watch her closely and listen to everything she says. They nod. She starts to make incisions and after awhile, she is almost done. Surgeries like these take hours, but to Joan, they fly by. She is about to start closing him up when the monitor in which his heart rate was measured started beeping rapidly. Joan looks up at the assistants and they have shocked looks on their faces. Joan starts to bark orders at them and the heart rate increases. The operating room was in chaos and Joan started to panic. 'I'm losing him…I'm losing him!' she yells.

Meanwhile, Sherlock was going over cold cases with Captain Gregson in the parlor downstairs. They were completely focused on their work until they were suddenly interrupted by noises upstairs. Sherlock looked over to Captain Gregson and shrugged.

They both returned to their work and forgot about the noises.

'What's happening?' Aimee was shouting over all the chaos. Joan didn't respond, she was too busy with trying to stitch him up. She didn't know what was wrong but she needed to stitch him up before anything got misplaced in his body in all the chaos. An unfamiliar noise made her pause. She looked at the monitor…he had flat-lined. Pure panic settled in her. The whole room spun around her; she was frozen. Aimee tried to ask her a question but it was like Joan was in a different world. Before she knew it, Aimee was pushing her away and performing CPR on the man on the operating table while the others were getting the defibrillator ready. She was frozen against the wall watching her assistants doing HER job… 'CLEAR!' *Shock* Check the pulse. 'CLEAR!' *Shock* Check the pulse. Joan could see that there was no way the man would make it. After the 30 compressions and two breaths from Tia, the other assistant, the man was declared dead. After that one statement, all the chaos in the room stopped…Joan looked down at the middle-aged father and husband…The patient was dead…HER patient…

Joan sat up screaming and crying. She looked around the room at her few belongings and her gaze traveled to the clock. 7am.

Captain Gregson burst into the room, gun raised and sweeping the room.

"Ms. Watson, are you okay?!" He asked still sweeping the room with his pistol.

"Uh-yeah-h I'm-ok-ay." She managed to choke out between sobs.

Gregson lowered his gun and fully came into the room. Sherlock walked in behind him.

"Why'd you scream?" Gregson asked while walking closer to the bed.

"Nightmares?" Sherlock asked curiously.

"Something like that…" She had finally managed to pull herself together. She got up out of her bed and grabbed her robe that was hanging on the wall hook.

Gregson noticed her reaching for her robe and started exiting the room. "I'll let you have your privacy, sorry I burst in. I didn't know what was happening in here."

"No, it's alright. I just…well…" She started.

"Had a nightmare?" Sherlock asked again.

Joan slipped on the robe and tightened the robe around her. She looked to the ground and nodded.

"That must've been one scary dream…" Gregson suggested from the doorway.

"Traumatic, actually…" She whispered. She looked up at the two faces who were masked with genuine concern. She wiped her eyes to get rid of the last few tears. "So, you stayed here overnight?" She just had to change the subject; she wasn't ready to talk about what happened. They must've noticed because they immediately switched the subject and didn't ask questions as to why.

"Yeah, I hope you don't mind. Since it's really slow at the office, Sherlock offered for me to spend the night and look-over old cases to see if there was any incriminating evidence that we may have missed." Gregson explained.

"I don't mind. Did you find anything?" She asked.

"Indeed we did. We found something odd in the old Mackson file." Sherlock stated matter-of-factly.

"The Mackson file? You mean the creepy old dude who stalks kids and kidnaps them leaving a bouquet of flowers behind?"

"Precisely. Now, get dressed, breakfast is downstairs." He started to leave the room.

"Well, I need to shower Sherlock…" She replied dumbly.

"Well shower then get dressed. Breakfast will be cold by then though. Please hurry, we must share our new-found knowledge with the NYPD." He turned and pulling Gregson with him, swiftly exited the room.

"Can you please start making coffee for me?" She called after him.

"Already done!" He called back.

Joan headed out the door and into the bathroom down the hallway. She shut the door and locked it (like she always did) and started the water. She undressed and went to the mirror. She primped and admired her slim figure. She leaned in close and tilted her head up, down, left, and right. She smoothed out her hair and parted it.

"I've heard people say I'm pretty but I just don't see it." She mumbled to herself. She stepped away from the mirror and stepped into the shower. She tilted her head back into the water and let it wash over her face. The warm water and comforting smell of light lemon soap made her forget all about the dream that has haunted her ever since that day. After she had washed her long black hair and conditioned, she turned the water off and stepped out. She grabbed two towels out of the bathroom closet and dried off. She picked her robe off the ground and made a mad dash to her room. She picked out a black tank-top and a grey V-neck to go over it, pink undies, a black bra, a pair of black pants, socks, and her fuzzy Ugg boots. After she was dressed, she hurried to the bathroom and brushed her teeth and combed her hair.

"Should I blow-dry my hair?" She asked herself looking at her messy damp hair.

"No." Sherlock spoke from the doorway.

"Ah! Jesus, Sherlock! Don't you ever knock?" She composed herself and put her hair behind her ears.

"It's my house, why should I? You do take an awful long time to get ready." He leaned on the door frame.

"I'm almost done. I'll be down in ten minutes." She opens the drawer and pulls out a hair-dryer. She plugs it in and is about to start it when she sees Sherlock still watching her. "Privacy?" She asks half-annoyed.

"My house, remember? As long as we live together, there is no privacy." He smirked.

"Ten minutes? Please?" She half-asses a smile and says in a forced sweet-sounding voice.

"Fine. But you would've been done sooner if you hadn't admired yourself for 5 minutes before your shower." He smiles at her confused expression. "Oh come on Watson. I know it doesn't take that long to shower." He winks and walks away leaving her in a state of confusion mixed with shock and surprise.

She abandons the hair-dryer and decides to put her hair up. She unplugs the hair-dryer and walks downstairs. Sherlock and Gregson are waiting by the door with three cups of hot coffee. Joan grabs her coat from the hallway closet and puts it on. She takes her hat out from her coat pocket and puts it on. Sherlock hands her her coffee and smiles.

"Ready?" He asks, still smiling.

"Ready."

CLICK NEXT CHAPTER TO CONTINUE READING THE SERIES

thanks for reading! Please continue, the story gets better!