Three hours after John had fallen asleep the doctor came back to check his monitors and to Sherlock's amazement said that he was doing well.

'He just woke up in horrific pain. How can you say that he is doing well?' Sherlock snapped at the man. Incompetent idiots the bunch of them.

'His blood pressure is up and his heart rate is down. Can you tell that he's breathing more easily?' The doctor asked.

Sherlock nodded but he couldn't help but push the doctor. 'What if he's breathing more easily because he can't feel the pain? And don't everyone's heart rate go down when they're asleep? He's still running a temperature.' He urges and the doctor smiles.

'It's normal to worry but these things are good signs. He's responding to the treatment for sepsis. Come here. Put your hand on his stomach, carefully.' The doctor orders and Sherlock is surprised to find himself obeying. 'Does that feel like his stomach normally does?' The doctor asks and Sherlock doesn't know quite what to say. He has no idea what John's stomach normally feels like.

'I can feel his muscles being tense.' Sherlock settles for. It's a non committal answer and the best he can really come up with.

'That's right. It's his body reacting to protect itself. You'd be surprised to find that it is actually quite soft now compared to when he came in. It means that the peritonitis is receding. Give it another six hours and then feel it again. You'll find it has gone even softer. Don't hold your hand there the whole time though, it will be harder to tell the difference.' The doctor instructs.

'But what about the pain?' Sherlock asks again his hand still lightly pressed against John's bandaged stomach.

'He's just had his stomach cut open and a piece of his intestine removed. That and he's suffering from a major inflammation of his insides. It was always going to hurt. It will ease off. Just give him time.' The doctor smiles replaces John's almost empty IV bag and leaves the room again.

Sherlock doesn't know if he wants to hug him or punch him. Even though he isn't supposed to use it he surreptitiously brings out his phone and quickly researches the symptoms the doctor had described. They seem to all been correct. He should have researched more of the symptoms of recovery as well as the possible complications. Well now he knows.

Against the doctor's suggestion he slips his hand back under the sheet on John's bed and rests it carefully over his stomach. Then he settles in to wait.

Waiting for John to come back from the brink of death shouldn't be boring but the case was solved. Sherlock had informed Lestrade of the three possible locations they could possibly be hiding after the breakin at the library and Lestrade had phoned up the hospital and left a message to inform him that they were now apprehended. That left Sherlock with nothing to do. Not really. There was the tentative study of recovery rates in patients with acute appendicitis but it was not exactly all consuming. Further more Sherlock was hungry, and exhausted. The case was closed and Sherlock's body had it's own internal rhythm, one that told him that, since the case was cracked, right now he needed to eat and sleep.

A nurse kindly brought him tea and biscuits but it wasn't really satisfying. By four in the morning John's temperature was markedly lower and Sherlock could tell that the doctor was right, John's abdomen felt just a tiny bit softer. Sherlock fell asleep in his chair with the rather frivolous question in his mind of whether John would end up feeling more pudgy than washboard if he kept his hand there long enough.

When John woke it was to a dull throbbing in his stomach accompanied by a very warm sensation and he felt a tinge of fear wondering if the wound was becoming infected. Then he blinked his eyes open and found that the warm sensation was not in fact internal as much as external and caused by Sherlock's hand rather intimately shoved under his sheet while the detective slept with his head on the side of John's bed. John was rather instantly awake.

'What the hell are you doing?' he asked poking the sleeping detective who sat up and swiftly removed his hand replacing it instead at the back of his own neck.

'Ow, my neck hurts.' He moaned. That had been a stupid position to sleep in, even for him.

'I asked you a question. What do you think you were doing?' John didn't know if he was angry, frustrated or just plain confused.

'Sleeping obviously.' Sherlock responded with a yawn.

'That is not what I meant and you know it.' John yelled but it didn't come out quite as strong as he would have liked it. Yes frustration was definitely the strongest sensation at this point and yelling was doing nothing for the pain in his stomach. 'Why, was your hand, under by sheet?' He asked trying to sound more calm.

'The doctor told me to. I was checking for rigidity.' Sherlock looked completely nonplussed. He did not seem to understand that your flat mate sleeping with his hand resting on your naked stomach might be construed as just the tiniest invasion of privacy.

'You weren't checking anything, you were asleep.' John told him sternly.

'It was an experiment. I just fell asleep during. Feeling you breath is surprisingly relaxing.' Sherlock shrugged and John really couldn't tell if Sherlock was trying to manipulate him or not. He couldn't read Sherlock and in the end his stupid git of a flat mate had performed more offensive experiments on John before.

He gave in. Instead of trying to come up with a suitable response he just shook his head a bit. 'Go and make yourself useful and go ask the nurses if I can have the nasal tube out and have a cup of tea. I suspect I don't have more than an hour before I'll need more morphine and I'm already feeling more than exhausted enough that the pain's the only thing keeping me awake.

'Are you in pain?' Sherlock asked with a frown.

'Of course I'm in pain. I suspect you are too going by that black eye. But the sooner I can start to eat again the sooner I will recover so go and ask the nurse if I'm allowed.' John ordered in what would have been a stern voice if it did not hitch ever so slightly in the middle.

Sherlock nods and disappears but returns soon enough with the doctor from the day before. He has a playful smile on his face.

'Ah, doctor. I was just wondering...' John started but the doctor held up a hand to stop him.

'Don't even try it.' The doctor chuckles. 'My name is doctor William Maples and I thought you were supposed to be a doctor too. A former surgeon no less.' He says and extends his hand to John who shakes it.

'Doctor John Watson.' John replies politely.

'Now what would you say to a patient who asks for the nasal tube out twelve hours after a laparotomy? What would you say to a patient who is supposed to be on nil by mouth after a major surgery who asks for food and morphine in the same breath?' He gives John a stern but kind look and John actually blushes.

Sherlock finds he actually doesn't mind this doctor. There is something about him, something that is just a little reminiscent of John himself. He isn't John of course, no one can be that but as doctors go he isn't as idiotic as most of them.

'I only asked for tea.' John tries apologetically.

'Well the answer is no.' The doctor says but he still has a kind smile on his face. 'I'm giving you some more pain relief and then 'Susan our head nurse will be I with some breathing and leg exercises for you. If that goes well you can go for a short walk around the room in the afternoon. ' He takes at breath and plunges on figuring it best to get it all out in one go. 'Now if that goes well, and only then and provided any liquids brought out by the tube look good we can remove the tube this evening. Tea will have to wait until tomorrow.' He says the last sentence with the firmness of a parent telling his child that it cannot have ice cream until after supper.

John nods and Sherlock can't help but smile at the effect Dr Maples has on John. He is rather forgetting the way the man had been able to get Sherlock to stop argue and follow orders the previous night.

'You should have been in the army. Would have made a great officer' John tells the doctor as he pushes a clear liquid into Johns drip.

'Nah, I'm a doctor so I get so spend all my days ordering people around anyway and I am the single parent of two teenage boys so I see enough conflict and sometimes even armed warfare to not need the army.' The doctor grins.

John laughs and then immediately regrets it when pain blossoms in his stomach. 'I know exactly what you mean.' He hisses with a glance at Sherlock who does not miss the insinuation.