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charleygirlTitle: Jottings from a Doctor's Journal 29/?
Author: charleygirl
Rating: G
Words: 1321
Characters involved: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Mrs Hudson
Genre: Friendship, fluff
Disclaimer: These characters, while out of copyright, were created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and do not belong to me.
Summary: A collection of scenes and fragments that are too long to be drabbles and too undisciplined to be 221Bs.
CABIN FEVER
“Watson, this is intolerable!” Sherlock Holmes exclaimed, flinging the blind back into place and turning from the window in disgust.
I sighed inwardly and tried not to grimace as I sipped my black coffee. It was nearly five days since we had first been confined to the house by a prolonged snowfall, and the strain was beginning to show in my friend. Unable to pass the front door without taking a shovel to the drift which had blown up to it (and unfortunately said tool was in the garden shed, out of reach due to a similar occurrence at the back of the house), we were running low on fresh food, there had been no milk delivered since Friday and Holmes was almost climbing the walls because of his enforced inactivity.
“There is nothing you can do about it, old man, so you may as well sit down and finish your breakfast,” I said, nudging his plate towards him. We had been through this performance every morning since he descended the stairs, hot on the scent of a housebreaker, only to find that he could not pass the threshold. He ignored the unappealing offering of scrambled eggs and the last of the black pudding and went to the fireplace to recharge his pipe.
“Five days,” he announced, more for dramatic effect than for my benefit I was sure, for I was well aware how long we had been trapped inside. With Holmes prowling the sitting room like a caged beast, those hours had seemed more like months. “Five days caught between these four walls. It is more than flesh and blood can stand!”
“I can always return to my room if you would prefer to have these four walls to yourself,” I told him, laying aside my napkin.
He flapped a hand at me, which I interpreted as a ‘don’t be so ridiculous’, and returned to drumming his fingers on the mantel. I was well aware that the reason for his foul mood was more complicated than the simple fact of our incarceration within the house. As we had been unable to go out, so those familiar, daily services upon which we depended had been unable to get in. The last post was delivered on Friday afternoon, and I had not seen a newspaper since the previous morning – the lack of information was wearing upon Holmes’s nerves. He could not bear to be left in ignorance regarding the comings and goings of the metropolis, to have his finger forcibly removed from the pulse of criminal investigation.
Nothing more was said until Mrs Hudson arrived to collect the breakfast things. She rolled her eyes at Holmes’s untouched plate and I made an apologetic face.
“I know that we should not be wasting food,” I said quietly.
Our landlady sighed. “Not to worry, sir, I’ll put it in the soup.”
I brightened, for the prospect of a warming, hearty luncheon was something to look forward to. “I had no idea you were making soup, Mrs Hudson.”
“Oh, I’ve had a pot boiling down there for days,” she replied. “All of Mr Holmes’s leftovers are going into it. I thought I might call it ‘Mystery Broth’ – he can amuse himself trying to deduce the ingredients.”
I hid my smile with my hand, glancing at Holmes. He was smoking furiously – if he did not begin to ration his consumption then his tobacco would run out sooner rather than later. When it did he would begin chain-smoking his cigarettes, and when he had no more of them…I had no wish to share the room with a Sherlock Holmes who was not only bored and frustrated but also suffering from nicotine withdrawal. “I think he may be in need of the distraction if we are all trapped in here for much longer,” I said.
Mrs Hudson gave a very unladylike snort. “Just like a fractious toddler,” she announced, loud enough for Holmes to hear. “I’ve seen five year olds more able to entertain themselves than some in this room.”
Unfortunately, the world’s only private consulting detective was too caught up in his own inability to work to pay any attention to her and so our landlady picked up her tray and sailed from the room, telling me to be careful with the coal for we were running low and she had no idea when the coalman might put in an appearance. I promised we would and shut the door behind her, turning to my friend.
“Are you going to spend another day feeling sorry for yourself?” I enquired. “You are not the only one who is being denied the necessities of your life, you know. How am I to make a living if I cannot get to my patients?”
Holmes started at my tone, but quickly recovered himself and swung round to face me. He exhaled smoke through his nose like an irritable dragon and said, “Do forgive me, Doctor – I had thought that you were relishing being snowed in. I do believe you termed it ‘quite romantic’.”
“That was before I spent eighty hours trapped in here with you. Honestly, Holmes, you would try the patience of a saint at times!”
He bristled at that, but instead of the sharp response I was expecting he sighed and sank down into his chair. “Quite so,” he said, discarding his pipe upon the table at his elbow. “You have no idea, Watson, how it feels for one who has the city running through his veins; who relies upon action, incident, occurrence, for his very lifeblood, to be cut off from the outside world like this. In five days anything could have happened, and I would be incomplete ignorance!”
“If we are cut off, then there is a high probability that the rest of London is, too,” I pointed out. “I doubt if anything of momentous importance has occurred. However, we are trapped, so we just have to make the best of it.”
“So easy to say,” he muttered, as morose now as he had been furious a few minutes ago. Though such activities were beginning to pall upon me, I at least could lose myself in a good book, or concentrate upon finishing my latest story for The Strand. Holmes did not have hobbies, regarding any activity which had no definite purpose, or which did not mean the satisfactory resolution of some problem to be of no practical use. The sole exception to this view was his violin, but as the instrument was currently having its bridge altered there could be no recourse to music to soothe my friend’s savage breast. In earlier days he would have submitted to the lure of the cocaine bottle, but no longer had such recourse and I was grateful for the drug’s continued absence from our lives.
“Why do we not play a game?” I suggested, clutching at straws in my determination to distract him from his increasingly dark mood.
He looked at me without enthusiasm. “Chess? I will only beat you four times out of five and where is the amusement in that?”
“Something else, then.”
“Do not suggest Patience, Watson, for I have none,” Holmes said in a warning tone as my eye alighted upon the pack of cards I had left lying on my desk.
I scanned the room, desperately trying to think of something, and then I suddenly recalled Mrs Hudson’s words before she left: I’ve seen five year olds more able to entertain themselves than some in this room. A lamp ignited in my brain, and I smiled. “Actually, I have an idea…”
***
I believe that, two hours later, no one wished for a thaw more fervently than our long-suffering landlady when she came upstairs to ask whether we were ready for our luncheon to find me counting to a hundred on the landing and Holmes trying to squeeze himself into the linen cupboard…
Author: charleygirl
Rating: G
Words: 1321
Characters involved: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Mrs Hudson
Genre: Friendship, fluff
Disclaimer: These characters, while out of copyright, were created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and do not belong to me.
Summary: A collection of scenes and fragments that are too long to be drabbles and too undisciplined to be 221Bs.
CABIN FEVER
“Watson, this is intolerable!” Sherlock Holmes exclaimed, flinging the blind back into place and turning from the window in disgust.
I sighed inwardly and tried not to grimace as I sipped my black coffee. It was nearly five days since we had first been confined to the house by a prolonged snowfall, and the strain was beginning to show in my friend. Unable to pass the front door without taking a shovel to the drift which had blown up to it (and unfortunately said tool was in the garden shed, out of reach due to a similar occurrence at the back of the house), we were running low on fresh food, there had been no milk delivered since Friday and Holmes was almost climbing the walls because of his enforced inactivity.
“There is nothing you can do about it, old man, so you may as well sit down and finish your breakfast,” I said, nudging his plate towards him. We had been through this performance every morning since he descended the stairs, hot on the scent of a housebreaker, only to find that he could not pass the threshold. He ignored the unappealing offering of scrambled eggs and the last of the black pudding and went to the fireplace to recharge his pipe.
“Five days,” he announced, more for dramatic effect than for my benefit I was sure, for I was well aware how long we had been trapped inside. With Holmes prowling the sitting room like a caged beast, those hours had seemed more like months. “Five days caught between these four walls. It is more than flesh and blood can stand!”
“I can always return to my room if you would prefer to have these four walls to yourself,” I told him, laying aside my napkin.
He flapped a hand at me, which I interpreted as a ‘don’t be so ridiculous’, and returned to drumming his fingers on the mantel. I was well aware that the reason for his foul mood was more complicated than the simple fact of our incarceration within the house. As we had been unable to go out, so those familiar, daily services upon which we depended had been unable to get in. The last post was delivered on Friday afternoon, and I had not seen a newspaper since the previous morning – the lack of information was wearing upon Holmes’s nerves. He could not bear to be left in ignorance regarding the comings and goings of the metropolis, to have his finger forcibly removed from the pulse of criminal investigation.
Nothing more was said until Mrs Hudson arrived to collect the breakfast things. She rolled her eyes at Holmes’s untouched plate and I made an apologetic face.
“I know that we should not be wasting food,” I said quietly.
Our landlady sighed. “Not to worry, sir, I’ll put it in the soup.”
I brightened, for the prospect of a warming, hearty luncheon was something to look forward to. “I had no idea you were making soup, Mrs Hudson.”
“Oh, I’ve had a pot boiling down there for days,” she replied. “All of Mr Holmes’s leftovers are going into it. I thought I might call it ‘Mystery Broth’ – he can amuse himself trying to deduce the ingredients.”
I hid my smile with my hand, glancing at Holmes. He was smoking furiously – if he did not begin to ration his consumption then his tobacco would run out sooner rather than later. When it did he would begin chain-smoking his cigarettes, and when he had no more of them…I had no wish to share the room with a Sherlock Holmes who was not only bored and frustrated but also suffering from nicotine withdrawal. “I think he may be in need of the distraction if we are all trapped in here for much longer,” I said.
Mrs Hudson gave a very unladylike snort. “Just like a fractious toddler,” she announced, loud enough for Holmes to hear. “I’ve seen five year olds more able to entertain themselves than some in this room.”
Unfortunately, the world’s only private consulting detective was too caught up in his own inability to work to pay any attention to her and so our landlady picked up her tray and sailed from the room, telling me to be careful with the coal for we were running low and she had no idea when the coalman might put in an appearance. I promised we would and shut the door behind her, turning to my friend.
“Are you going to spend another day feeling sorry for yourself?” I enquired. “You are not the only one who is being denied the necessities of your life, you know. How am I to make a living if I cannot get to my patients?”
Holmes started at my tone, but quickly recovered himself and swung round to face me. He exhaled smoke through his nose like an irritable dragon and said, “Do forgive me, Doctor – I had thought that you were relishing being snowed in. I do believe you termed it ‘quite romantic’.”
“That was before I spent eighty hours trapped in here with you. Honestly, Holmes, you would try the patience of a saint at times!”
He bristled at that, but instead of the sharp response I was expecting he sighed and sank down into his chair. “Quite so,” he said, discarding his pipe upon the table at his elbow. “You have no idea, Watson, how it feels for one who has the city running through his veins; who relies upon action, incident, occurrence, for his very lifeblood, to be cut off from the outside world like this. In five days anything could have happened, and I would be incomplete ignorance!”
“If we are cut off, then there is a high probability that the rest of London is, too,” I pointed out. “I doubt if anything of momentous importance has occurred. However, we are trapped, so we just have to make the best of it.”
“So easy to say,” he muttered, as morose now as he had been furious a few minutes ago. Though such activities were beginning to pall upon me, I at least could lose myself in a good book, or concentrate upon finishing my latest story for The Strand. Holmes did not have hobbies, regarding any activity which had no definite purpose, or which did not mean the satisfactory resolution of some problem to be of no practical use. The sole exception to this view was his violin, but as the instrument was currently having its bridge altered there could be no recourse to music to soothe my friend’s savage breast. In earlier days he would have submitted to the lure of the cocaine bottle, but no longer had such recourse and I was grateful for the drug’s continued absence from our lives.
“Why do we not play a game?” I suggested, clutching at straws in my determination to distract him from his increasingly dark mood.
He looked at me without enthusiasm. “Chess? I will only beat you four times out of five and where is the amusement in that?”
“Something else, then.”
“Do not suggest Patience, Watson, for I have none,” Holmes said in a warning tone as my eye alighted upon the pack of cards I had left lying on my desk.
I scanned the room, desperately trying to think of something, and then I suddenly recalled Mrs Hudson’s words before she left: I’ve seen five year olds more able to entertain themselves than some in this room. A lamp ignited in my brain, and I smiled. “Actually, I have an idea…”
***
I believe that, two hours later, no one wished for a thaw more fervently than our long-suffering landlady when she came upstairs to ask whether we were ready for our luncheon to find me counting to a hundred on the landing and Holmes trying to squeeze himself into the linen cupboard…
