Lessons in Friendship 1 - A Glimpse at PTSD

Takes place after what happened at the pool with Moriarty, in the beginning of SiB. John is having a flashback and Sherlock is confronted with his PTSD, he wants to know what happened. No Slash, no Johnlock.

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Standard disclaimer: Sherlock, John and all other mentioned characters belong to BBC and the people who invented them. I just borrowed them for fun. I wrote this for my personal delight and improving my English, no copyright infringement intended. No money changed hands and no profit is being made.

Many thanks to my beta reader Graveofthefireflies!

I have no medical knowledge and do not know if i followed the right procedures!

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For everybody who has read this story before/is following:

I rewrote small parts of the story and added a few things. It's the same story, so don't wonder if this doesn't feel new to you. I just divided it into two chapters.

This story was originally posted and completed on September 23, 2013.

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Chapter 1

Nightmares

Sherlock had known what PTSD was in theory before he had met John Watson. Had probably known even more than most people, but not more than what would have fitted on fifteen pages in a psychology journal. He had known what events might cause a trauma of that kind and that symptoms might be flashbacks, panic attacks, triggers and physical reactions to mental pain. He also knew that there were several totally different ways to approach the problem. Many therapies contained elements of traditional Chinese medicine, some EMDR, some tried to evade reliving the traumatic events and kind of triggers, and some were about constantly confronting the patient with both.

When John had moved in he briefly mentioned his diagnosis (which Sherlock had already guessed himself) but they never really talked about it in detail.

Because John never showed any signs or symptoms related to PTSD-issues, Sherlock hadn't considered it a serious problem, especially not after John's limp had gone a lot better during their first case.

John was somewhat close-lipped about the topic, he never spoke about it and evaded anything that had to do with Afghanistan when asked, at least the few times Sherlock had been present.

Now and then the detective saw a hint of hobbling when John was in emotional stress, but it vanished within days and he doubted anybody else saw it. After the cabby-chase, the crutch had been deposited in the hallway and hadn't been used since.

The first time the detective ever got a small glimpse of what might have been a symptom of posttraumatic stress was after the end of the banker-case. When John, Sarah and Sherlock had come home, Sarah urged John to go to the hospital for x-rays and observation but he refused.
Sarah had been shaken pretty badly herself but had taken care of cleaning and bandaging the wound on John's head.

While she did John had just sat there, staring blindly ahead, unmoving. Sarah had obviously been confused by that and Sherlock asked himself if she knew about John's diagnosis, or to recognise the signs at all.

At some point, the Sarah had clapped her hands in front of the former army doctor's face and he had slightly jerked and expressed he had been somewhere else for a moment, deep in thought. His date had raised her eyebrows but left it alone.
John had tried to convince her to stay if she didn't want to be alone but she insisted she wanted her own home. Before she left, she made sure to instruct Sherlock to check on John every two hours minimum, and to call if he showed any odd behaviour. Sherlock made her recite every symptom that might fall into the description of odd.
It left him a little flattered that she had told him it was his task to care for his friend now, since she was too shaken and exhausted and Sherlock was obviously fine and knew John better and longer than she did.
He considered John a friend, he had since the end of the pink-case, but when he had introduced John to Sebastian earlier as his 'friend' John had corrected him with the word 'colleague'.
The remark made Sherlock very insecure and he wondered if it was because John wasn't sure if Sherlock was friendship material.
…Or maybe John didn't like to be mistakenly considered Sherlock's boyfriend?
Or might it have been inappropriate to introduce John like that? Better to say colleague at their work because it sounded more professional?
Maybe it was just too early for him to define their relationship as friendship… There was something about trust issues, right?
Sherlock had no other friends, but John's behaviour was kind and caring so he had interpreted it as friendship… but the doctor was kind to everybody else, too… maybe it was just part of his personality? Confused by the incident the detective decided to start a sub-routine running in the back of his mind that observed John's view of the topic friendship and stored it in close proximity to the program that monitored signs of PTSD

The latter had been idle since the day he had started it. The program hadn't written even a single entry into his mind's manila folder, which was in the file cabinet that was labelled 'John'. He wondered why John had a file cabinet in his mind while almost all other people (except Mycroft, who also had a file cabinet) had a kind of database without a physical association in his mind.

Sherlock had started using the image of a file cabinet for storing facts about people as a child. Everything from behaviour patterns in varying situations, their favours, and everything else was in there. He remembered when he had seen on of those large storage objects at a library and had immediately converted the concept for his mind's use. He had been about five at that time, computers hadn't been an everyday occurrence back then. But as soon as he had learned how to use them as a teenager, he had started transferring concepts of operating systems and programming.

Mycroft's cabinet was made out of dark wood and looked like some very pricy piece from an antique shop. In contrast, John's was made out of ivory painted metal and looked solid, efficient, and rather new.

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About two hours after Sarah had left his PTSD-monitoring-routine kicked in for the first time.

As instructed, he had gone into John's room to wake him and check him for symptoms of a concussion. He was a bit at a loss when he found John breathing rapidly in his uneasy sleep; Sarah had not told him anything about the possibility of breathing issues.

For a long moment, Sherlock just observed the man in the bed and compared what he saw with all the things he knew about concussions. When he found nothing finally he realised it might be a nightmare.

"John?" he tried, standing next to the bed, "John, wake up!"

But his flatmate didn't seem to notice him.

Sherlock leaned closer, seeing sweat on John's brow and a clenched jaw.

He hesitated, not sure on how to go on.
Was he allowed to touch him?

Up to now, he hadn't really touched John, at least not without gloves or other fabrics in between.

He remembered that he had grabbed John's head earlier, when trying to help him remember the graffiti.

In hindsight, he realised that the touch had been quite intimate and he came to the conclusion it had been inappropriate. John had grimaced and tensed up, clearly in discomfort, but had not pushed him away.
Why not?

Only after noticing the discomfort he caused, Sherlock had shifted his hands to his upper arms, but continued to spin him around. It had taken several turns until John had pushed past his stunned immobility and had escaped his hands.

In general, Sherlock preferred not to touch people, but being touched was far worse. He had only mad physical contact with John because he had worn gloves and assumed this would turn down both their discomfort in equal measures.

Standing there and watching his flatmate's uneasy sleep, he wondered if he should belatedly tag this behaviour as might-go-into-the PTSD-rubric? He kept his distance now because he didn't know how to proceed.

Had John been stunned by being held back then because it was a trigger?

No, John was used to touches and had not shown any signs of distress.

But PTSD caused nightmares, that much he knew for sure.

"John?" he asked again, louder this time.

The only response was a muted whimper.

"Wake up!"

John jerked awake and sat up, obviously distressed.

Clearly not the best choice to wake him like that, the detective made a mental note to try different next time.

"God, Sherlock, what is it?" John panted, lifting his hand to his throbbing head.

"I want to check if you are coherent and wake normally," Sherlock informed, still keeping his distance.

"I am fine, okay? So leave me alone," he turned his back to his flatmate.

"Would you please tell me today's date?" Sherlock asked, using 'please' to be nice.

"Leave it, I'm fine… Just let me sleep, please."

Sherlock hesitated a moment but was sure if John was in a bad way he'd not have answered like that.

He returned to his computer and set his alarm clock for two hours.

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02:08

Sherlock switched off the alarm before it had a chance to ring.

Seconds later he stood in front of John's bed again, he seemed to be sleeping normally this time.

The detective leaned closer and tried to speak more soothingly than last time.

"John?… Would you wake up for me?… John?"

The doctor blinked awake.

"Uh, dammit, Sherlock, what is it now?"

"Want to know if you are alright…"

"I would be if I could get some decent sleep. Would you stop that! I am fine, you do not need to wake me up every hour, my concussion does NOT need monitoring!" he sounded unnerved.

So, he knew where he was and knew what had happened.

Good.

Sherlock left the room.

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04:08

Two hours later he returned to the upstairs bedroom.

John's face was sweaty once more and he looked noticeably pale.

Sherlock briefly considered taking his pulse but stepped back when John moved.

"God, no… She'd dead… God, no…" John whispered, almost not understandable.

"John, are you with me?"

No reaction.

John's head moved from one side to the other as if he was trying to shake whatever he was dreaming about.

"John!" trying louder this time.

John opened his eyes and blinked, obviously only half awake.

"Can you hear me?" Sherlock started, but then decided it was time to be less superficial. A diversion from having woken John up again was in order.

"What did you dream about?" he continued.

"Nothing," John mumbled and sat up.

"You seemed distressed."

"Leave it…"

"I want to know."

John rolled his eyes, "Soo Lin."

"What about her?"

"She is dead for god's sake!"

"Yes. Obviously."

"Shit, do you care at all?… We should have stayed with her… Maybe she'd be still alive if we did!... Or at least if I did."

Oh, now Sherlock understood. John was feeling guilty, blaming himself or something?

What would be an appropriate response to that?

He searched the database and it took some moments until he came up with a reply.

"You can't change what happened. It's no use to- " Sherlock informed.

"Why do you ask, then? Just to tell me I'm wrongly having emotions?" John interrupted him.

"I…" Sherlock was not sure what to say, he had only wanted to say something nice.

"Let me sleep, Sherlock." The doctor turned away once more.

"Sarah told me to look after you."

"So, you're doing this not because I mean anything to you as a human being, but just because she told you to?"

"No, I do it because it is my duty as a friend."

Sherlock turned and headed downstairs to the kitchen, wondering what he did wrong. Apparently, however he did try to be a friend was misunderstood - or not the right thing at the right time.

It appeared John's nightmare had not been directly related to PTSD and the fact that John felt bad about losing a life was probably more a doctor-thing than a trauma-thing.

Once more he wondered what exactly had traumatised John.

Losing too many friends or patients and the circumstances of that process might cause trauma, so maybe it was a PTSD thing after all?

Unsure how to handle the mental database-entry, he left it in the PTSD section and added a subfolder in which to store things that had a question mark written over the information.

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6:08

The next time Sherlock should have woken his flatmate turned out to be unnecessary because John was already up and in the bathroom, having a shower.

To have something to do Sherlock prepared a pot of tea for breakfast.

A bit later they met at the kitchen table where John sat down to stare at the picture of the graffiti again.

"So nine mill…. Nine million…" he read out loud what Sherlock had written over the picture while Sherlock filled their cups with tea.

They agreed to go to the bank again and ask the PA about the pin.

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