Canon Story: The Devil's FootTitle: Consulting x 4
Author:
spacemutineerRating: PG
Author's Note: I had to try my hand at a conjecture about the "dramatic introduction" between Holmes and Dr. Agar, and it expanded out to four 60s.
He took over my consulting room as if he owned it. I'd never laid eyes upon him prior.
"This is Doctor John Watson, is it not?" I asked regarding the shivering, barely conscious man he'd laid on my cot. He was too busy digging through my cabinet to turn his head and too busy talking to himself to answer me.
---
"Two drops magnesium distillate, three haline. Half grain ferric sulphate. Ferric... Ferric... Where in the blazes is your ferric sulphate? Doctor,
where?"
For the first time, Sherlock Holmes looked at me. Or at least at my hands tending what was clearly
our patient.
"Top shelf, green glass bottle."
Without a word, he returned to his work, and I to mine.
---
"You're preparing an antidote," I said, reading both his mixture of ingredients and his frenetic motion. "To what toxin was he exposed?"
He drew his cloudy concoction into one of my largest syringes. "Moon tree sap. Crystallized in the mountains of Guangxi. Never before seen on these shores."
I didn't ask how he knew. He was Sherlock Holmes, after all.
---
"I'm ready when you are, as is he." I pulled a contorted arm straight to expose a vein.
On injection, our patient's condition began improving immediately. Doctor Watson's breathing eased; his erratic heartbeat steadied.
"I think he'll pull through now. Sir!" I turned to find Holmes doubled over in pain.
"Excellent, Doctor," he wheezed at the floor. "Now for me."