If Moffat would have put me in the writers’ room…
I’m making John an ER doctor. Probably after Reichenbach.
You’re telling me the combat-trained army doctor isn’t throwing himself into trauma and emergency medicine after losing Sherlock? You’re telling me this man, who treated blast injuries in the field, performed chest tubes in a tent, and sutured wounds under fire, isn’t going to thrive in a place where patients are crashing every hour?
John is devastated. His best friend is gone. His partner. Does he even know what Sherlock was to him?
He copes the only way he knows how. Intubations. Central lines. Running traumas back to back.
He zones out and loses himself in the chaos of the ER. No thinking. No grief. Just the next patient. GSW to the abdomen. RTA rolling in. Code blue in the ICU.
Maybe he takes an attending position at St. Bart’s. Maybe he likes the familiarity of the halls. Maybe he passes the spot where Sherlock fell to his death every day and tells himself it doesn’t matter. Maybe if he saves enough people, he’ll feel something again.
At first, he struggles. The equipment is too much. Too many resources. In the war, he had pressure dressings, ketamine, and luck. Now he has thoracotomies, ECMO, a whole trauma team. It feels excessive. It feels wrong. But he adapts.
Soon, he is the one barking orders. 16-gauge IVs in both arms. 1:1:1 transfusion. Push Epi. Get me a thoracotomy tray. His hands don’t shake. His leg doesn’t hurt. He works fast. He doesn’t go home. He picks up extra shifts. He’s always there.
Sherlock was the genius in the morgue. John is the one keeping people out of it.
Anyways I’m still mourning the bbc Sherlock we could have had.
