He'd fainted from sheer inanition. I'd had the quickness to catch him before he crumpled to the ground, but not the presence of mind to consider the strain the sudden dead weight would be to my still mending leg. With a grunt I threw out an arm to steady myself against the wall at my back, the other wrapped around the body of my flat mate, limp and heavy as a bundle of wet rope in my grasp. I attempted to put more weight on the leg I had been favoring and regain my balance, but it was little use. I gasped as pain flared in my hip, falling back against the wall. Finally, for lack of any better option, I merely allowed myself to slide down it to the floor. I sat with my back against it and my knees drawn up, panting and defeated. Holmes, insensible as the dead, lay still against my chest.

I looked down at him, as I caught my breath. Of course I had known of the caseload he'd been working under, those past weeks. I knew as well the recklessness of the disregard in which he held his own health. I had observed how keen and pale he'd grown of late, and how he was rarely at home. Rarer still was the occasion he took the time for any approximation of a meal - never mind a decent night's rest. In some recess of my mind I knew that I had expected such a collapse in his health to occur, if he persisted in this state of affairs. And yet, now that it had happened, I was surprised.

I had known Sherlock Holmes for nigh on six months.

And after all I had known of him, it came as a shock to me to discover that the body in my arms was weak, and vulnerable, and human.