Theatrical_Muse 224 - Mad
It is foolish to believe that doctors are immune to madness. Foolish to think that their knowledge of minds and how bodies function somehow render them invincible to what so many perceive as an utterly ridiculous disease. And it has to be a disease, as it can be nothing else. It cannot be a state of mind, a thing that no one can cure or fix. It must be a disease. It must be preventable. There must be a treatment. Mad people are just as frowned upon and avoided as lepers or the disfigured, left to their own devices with a cloud of pity and disgust emanating from the people who observe them.
Doctors, in an intuitive assumption, had to be sane. They had to be sensible and intelligent, something that was not typically expected among the depraved of mind. Mad people were not sensible or intelligent; they were the exact opposite, frothing at their mouths, talking to trees and screaming about ghosts only they could see. Doctors could never be in such a state. Doctors must be the calm faces in their worlds of panic, the clear of heads in the rush of battle. And if one were a properly prudent doctor, then they must know how the brain functions, they must know what causes madness and they must know how to avoid it. Such an outrageous assumption, something most intellectuals would mock as they sipped their wine.
An outrageous assumption that he had so idiotically believed, if only to deny his own deteriorating mental state. He had believed so steadfastly, so whole-heartedly, that he had completely failed to notice the fallibility of the argument. He had believed that his ability to tend to other people would somehow make it possible to tend to himself. He could not go mad. He was not someone who would go mad. He was Dr. John Watson, a former army surgeon who could always keep a clear train of thoughts and whose professors had always lauded for his practicality and pragmatism.
Perhaps that was why he had not noticed the signs. Perhaps this irrational belief that he had taken into what was left of his mind had left him with a completely erroneous conclusion that had only covered up his grief and desperation until he could no longer deny the obvious. Doctors could not be mad. He was a doctor. So he was not mad.
He would normally have laughed at himself for such a ridiculous notion, but he had certainly not be 'normal' in any sense of the word at the time.
Friends were hard to come by. In all his years, what he had known as friendship had never grown beyond a more advanced type of acquaintance. He had met with people, he had spoken with them and had remembered their names for the future, but that was the furthest companionship could ever reach, typically hampered by his own never wavering stiff-necked politeness. Friends would write letters to him on occasion, attend his weddings when he called and perhaps even support him in a time of need, but they were not people who would defend him with their lives.
Holmes had been his friend. He had never been a mere acquaintance, and it would be a disgrace to claim as such. Holmes had been his friend, his colleague, his companion, even his brother. Yes, he had been exasperating and had been filled to the brim with a wholly unique type of hubris, but he had always a friend. It might have seemed to others as naive, but one should not need evidence to know the loyalty of their friends. Holmes had been as loyal to him as he had been to Holmes and the doctor's loyalty was not an object to be taken lightly. Holmes had been a man Watson would have defended to his dying day, if he had only been given the chance.
He had cursed himself repeatedly on the train back to London, cursed himself for the stupidity of his actions, for his inability to leave an injured person and to notice the clear falseness of the note that had led him away from his companion.
The anguish that the doctor had felt standing on top of that cliff had only been comparable to what he'd felt sitting beside a sweat covered bed, holding a clammy hand and watching as his beautiful Mary breathed her last.
It had been very simple to convince himself that Holmes was not dead. It had been very easy to watch Inspector Baynes work and imagine that the officer moved upon Holmes' astute instructions. The smooth, tempered voice was crystal clear from memory, as was the image. It was amazingly facile to see the tall, thin figure of Holmes sitting in his chair with his fingers tented in thoughtful silence, tobacco smoke billowing out of the carefully crafted bowl of his favourite pipe. The personality, however, was flawed, aspects of the doctor's own opinion of the diligent inspector bleeding through the cracks in the wall between imagination and rational mind.
It was that flaw which haunted him, which reminded him that the brilliant brain and personality that should be sitting across from him was not there. It was a flaw he somehow managed to ignore so well that he could hardly remember the story of Wisteria Lodge in its true form, twisted and overwritten as it was in the album of his memory. Reality had cracked in his mind and hopeful fabrications had anchored themselves into his very thoughts.
His professors had exalted him for his rationality, but he had always been criticised about his fragile heart.
It had only been after Mrs. Hudson's alarm that he began to relearn reality in its authentic state. It was only after her words and observation that he began to genuinely notice that the sitting room he was speaking to had no company inside it. It was startling and disheartening to suddenly see the quarters with the rose coloured glasses removed, especially after such a long time thinking that the world itself was rose coloured. There was no smoke, no bubbling of beakers on the table, and the entire place was left eerily empty without their other half.
Holmes was dead, he finally admitted with a weary sight. And doctors were quite capable of going mad.
He had left Baker Street shortly after, no longer able to bear the stillness of the rooms, the absence of violin music filling the air. He continued to pay his share of the rent despite his continuing determination to stop, still unable to prevent himself from indulging the corner of his heart that whispered of his friend's survival.
In the years that were to come, after the posthumous publication of Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes that he had sent in a burst of sentimentality, after Holmes' reappearance as a wizened old book collector in Park Lane, the only memory of his less than beneficial time would lie in the few out of place adventures that lay buried in his papers, telling stories that Holmes would deny having ever experienced.
Dr. John Watson
Sherlock Holmes
1,175 words
Based on a theory put upon by Sherlock Peoria's Chronology Corner.
Doctors, in an intuitive assumption, had to be sane. They had to be sensible and intelligent, something that was not typically expected among the depraved of mind. Mad people were not sensible or intelligent; they were the exact opposite, frothing at their mouths, talking to trees and screaming about ghosts only they could see. Doctors could never be in such a state. Doctors must be the calm faces in their worlds of panic, the clear of heads in the rush of battle. And if one were a properly prudent doctor, then they must know how the brain functions, they must know what causes madness and they must know how to avoid it. Such an outrageous assumption, something most intellectuals would mock as they sipped their wine.
An outrageous assumption that he had so idiotically believed, if only to deny his own deteriorating mental state. He had believed so steadfastly, so whole-heartedly, that he had completely failed to notice the fallibility of the argument. He had believed that his ability to tend to other people would somehow make it possible to tend to himself. He could not go mad. He was not someone who would go mad. He was Dr. John Watson, a former army surgeon who could always keep a clear train of thoughts and whose professors had always lauded for his practicality and pragmatism.
Perhaps that was why he had not noticed the signs. Perhaps this irrational belief that he had taken into what was left of his mind had left him with a completely erroneous conclusion that had only covered up his grief and desperation until he could no longer deny the obvious. Doctors could not be mad. He was a doctor. So he was not mad.
He would normally have laughed at himself for such a ridiculous notion, but he had certainly not be 'normal' in any sense of the word at the time.
Friends were hard to come by. In all his years, what he had known as friendship had never grown beyond a more advanced type of acquaintance. He had met with people, he had spoken with them and had remembered their names for the future, but that was the furthest companionship could ever reach, typically hampered by his own never wavering stiff-necked politeness. Friends would write letters to him on occasion, attend his weddings when he called and perhaps even support him in a time of need, but they were not people who would defend him with their lives.
Holmes had been his friend. He had never been a mere acquaintance, and it would be a disgrace to claim as such. Holmes had been his friend, his colleague, his companion, even his brother. Yes, he had been exasperating and had been filled to the brim with a wholly unique type of hubris, but he had always a friend. It might have seemed to others as naive, but one should not need evidence to know the loyalty of their friends. Holmes had been as loyal to him as he had been to Holmes and the doctor's loyalty was not an object to be taken lightly. Holmes had been a man Watson would have defended to his dying day, if he had only been given the chance.
He had cursed himself repeatedly on the train back to London, cursed himself for the stupidity of his actions, for his inability to leave an injured person and to notice the clear falseness of the note that had led him away from his companion.
The anguish that the doctor had felt standing on top of that cliff had only been comparable to what he'd felt sitting beside a sweat covered bed, holding a clammy hand and watching as his beautiful Mary breathed her last.
It had been very simple to convince himself that Holmes was not dead. It had been very easy to watch Inspector Baynes work and imagine that the officer moved upon Holmes' astute instructions. The smooth, tempered voice was crystal clear from memory, as was the image. It was amazingly facile to see the tall, thin figure of Holmes sitting in his chair with his fingers tented in thoughtful silence, tobacco smoke billowing out of the carefully crafted bowl of his favourite pipe. The personality, however, was flawed, aspects of the doctor's own opinion of the diligent inspector bleeding through the cracks in the wall between imagination and rational mind.
It was that flaw which haunted him, which reminded him that the brilliant brain and personality that should be sitting across from him was not there. It was a flaw he somehow managed to ignore so well that he could hardly remember the story of Wisteria Lodge in its true form, twisted and overwritten as it was in the album of his memory. Reality had cracked in his mind and hopeful fabrications had anchored themselves into his very thoughts.
His professors had exalted him for his rationality, but he had always been criticised about his fragile heart.
It had only been after Mrs. Hudson's alarm that he began to relearn reality in its authentic state. It was only after her words and observation that he began to genuinely notice that the sitting room he was speaking to had no company inside it. It was startling and disheartening to suddenly see the quarters with the rose coloured glasses removed, especially after such a long time thinking that the world itself was rose coloured. There was no smoke, no bubbling of beakers on the table, and the entire place was left eerily empty without their other half.
Holmes was dead, he finally admitted with a weary sight. And doctors were quite capable of going mad.
He had left Baker Street shortly after, no longer able to bear the stillness of the rooms, the absence of violin music filling the air. He continued to pay his share of the rent despite his continuing determination to stop, still unable to prevent himself from indulging the corner of his heart that whispered of his friend's survival.
In the years that were to come, after the posthumous publication of Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes that he had sent in a burst of sentimentality, after Holmes' reappearance as a wizened old book collector in Park Lane, the only memory of his less than beneficial time would lie in the few out of place adventures that lay buried in his papers, telling stories that Holmes would deny having ever experienced.
Dr. John Watson
Sherlock Holmes
1,175 words
Based on a theory put upon by Sherlock Peoria's Chronology Corner.