Preceja wrote:

Willow wrote:

Preceja wrote:

People are kept in hospital only when it is necessary, they are not released fully recovered but in the state they do not need present medical care any more.

At the Christmas dinner Sherlock seemed to be OK, it must have taken at least one month after the hospital to get to that condition so it seems to me more probable that he stayed there only one month for the second time and spent November and December at home.

He was not able to do much but was working on the case, preparing plan for Christmas. He could not have predicted Mr. Smallwood suicide and it was hard to speed it up as he needed to separate Mycroft from his computer.

 
The difficulty with that interpretation is that it requires three elements:

Sherlock's mother must be wrong when she says that they are celebrating Sherlock coming out of hospital,

Sherlock's injury must have been minor enough to allow him to come out of hospital quickly following him almost dying again, and

Sherlock completely ignored his obligation to his client, Lady Smallwood.

I don't think there is evidence to support those three elements...

His mother did not say that he just returned from the hospital only that he returned. It means that he was there and now his health is good enough for family celebration. 

What the mother said might not be connected with the time but just with the fact. As I wrote before: if Sherlock who meets parents very rarely says her mother that in hospital, close to death he realized that the family should meet more often (manipulation from his side to have Mycroft where he needs him), it is just natural that mother organizes family Christmas and refers to Sherlock in hospital.

Sherlock was not dying the second time, he just wanted to assure morfin. He said something about bleeding, almost fainted and then suddenly spoke to John with only small problems caused by pain? He could not do it dying. He just did not feel well due to pain. So one month in hospital should be enough. And then at least one month at home, maybe with John's help.

Sherlock did not ignore his obligation to Ms. Smallwood  but needed to recover first. At the  time he arranged the meeting with Magnussen, he did it also for lady Smallwood. He learned about her husband's suicide only the day he went there, then it had no sense to want his letters too,  any more.
 

 
I appreciate that you are entirely free to interpret Sherlock's comments as they appear to you, but Sherlock did say to the paramedics that he thought he had started bleeding again, which is what one would expect from a bullet wound in that part of his body.

I also appreciate that you may believe that he was lying, and that he simply wanted morphine, but that then leaves us with the question of why he should have detached himself from the morphine pump in the first place; addicts don't do that.

And if you are well enough to come out of hospital then you are well enough to plan some means of assisting your client; I do not believe that given a month or more Sherlock would have done nothing, it's simply not his style. Why meet with CAM to plan something many weeks in the future when he could have set up something in a few days? Why would CAM accept a meeting that far in the future? It simply doesn't make sense to me, which is why I accept that his mother was being perfectly truthful in response to Mycroft's question...

Preceja wrote:

Even addicts detach themselves from empty morphine pump  But I do not think Sherlock is an addict, he just has pains. 

I saw it again, now, and Sherlock really does not look well when the ambulance is coming. But almost dying twice , three months in hospital...it is somehow too much for just immobilizing somebody, does not seems to me that it was ment this way.

When we do not know about what Sherlock was doing it does not mean that he was not doing anything. Why CAM accepted the meeting far in the furture? Sherlock promised him Mycroft as a Christmas present and that can be given only at Christmas.

But it is nice that we all watch the same story and everyone sees  something else, interprets it in the way it is acceptable for him. And then that films do not leave space for imagination......

 
I agree entirely; one of the great joys of Sherlock is that there are so many possible interpretations. And, sadly, putting a bullet into that part of the body is most likely to result in death, so I suppose we should be glad that he survived at all But I do have faith in Sherlock managing to find an earlier date if it were possible; I really don't like the idea that he would let Lady Smallwood down. I know he says he's not a hero, but I think he is...

besleybean wrote:

He's just a clever man...

 
Who would not let down a client if there were any way he could possibly avoid it...

I do believe he'd only just got out of Hospital at  Christmas.
Quite why such a long period of time was "hidden" from us I don't know - yet.
We have absolutely no idea, for instance, how Mycroft reacted to the shooting - we didn't even see he and Sherlock talk about it afterwards, which may or may not be significant.

Last edited by Tinks (February 13, 2014 5:59 am)

Wiggins wrote:

[...] Even if he hadn't just been discharged immediately before Christmas he surely had a few weeks of taking it easy (especially if he didnt take pain killers at home so as to stay sharp and not fall into addiction) so he wouldn't have been up for get togethers- or doing a whole lot for the Smallwood case for that matter.

Maybe we should also consider the fact that Sherlock, Mycroft and the extended family was over there for Christmas. As we learned in TEH, Sherlock doesn't exactly have a loving relationship with his parents (does he ever? *g*). Neither does Mycroft, I'm assuming. Also, the parents seem to be out of the country a lot.

Christmas presented Sherlock with a reason to gather the whole family together to execute the plan he had:
1) Easy access to Mycroft and his laptop
2) A way to easily incapacitate everyone but John to have that meeting with CAM, and have Billy there for the medical monitoring
3) Facilitate John and Mary's reconciliation by having them witness domestic marital bliss

Christmas presented the perfect opportunity, and everything else would have just looked strange. "I'd like to invite you all to visit my parents. You know, just for kicks. Oh, and I'm bringing some random homeless guy too. Also, Mycroft, can you please bring your laptop with all your government secrets?"

It would have to be a huge coincidence if Sherlock being released from the hospital happened to coincide perfectly with Christmas, though of course that's possible. I choose to believe there was at least three to four weeks between his release and Christmas, because he just doesn't look and move like someone who had been lying in a hospital bed for several weeks until very recently. And if the release was a few weeks prior to Christmas, it makes a certain kind of sense that Sherlock would have waited until the holidays to gather everyone for the above mentioned reasons.

Last edited by TeeJay (February 13, 2014 8:51 am)

Tinks wrote:

I can't bring myself to watch HLV again just yet, but when I do, I need to take more notice of what's said about the month apart; I thought John had just been concentrating on married life and hadn't been in touch with Sherlock, and this still makes sense to me, because as soon as John shows up, Sherlock is asking him to join him on the case, so he's not trying to keep him out of it.

There wasn't a whole lot said on the subject.

JOHN: Look, is it Sherlock Holmes you want? Because I’ve not seen him in ages.
MARY: About a month.
KATE: Who’s Sherlock Holmes?

And then, later:

SHERLOCK (still softly): You were a doctor who went to war. You’re a man who couldn’t stay in the suburbs for more than a month without storming a crack den and beating up a junkie. Your best friend is a sociopath who solves crimes as an alternative to getting high. That’s me, by the way. (He raises his left hand and waves at him.) Hello. Even the landlady used to run a drug cartel.
MRS HUDSON: It was my husband’s cartel. I was just typing.

And the scene at the parents' house:

MYCROFT: Why are we doing this? We never do this.
MRS HOLMES: We are here because Sherlock is home from hospital and we are all very happy.
MYCROFT: Am I happy too? I haven’t checked.
MRS HOLMES (picking up the basket): Behave, Mike.
MYCROFT: ‘Mycroft’ is the name you gave me, if you could possibly struggle all the way to the end.

I think that's all there is.

Last edited by TeeJay (February 13, 2014 8:56 am)

Tinks wrote:

I don't think though, that there would've been any detoxing going on in the Hospital - they tend to treat what they've taken you in for and that's that - there's no reason for his Doctors to even notice that he needed detoxing, even if he did.

If he was so dependent that he needed a detox his doctors would notice (as long as they have eyes). Opioid withdrawal is pretty obvious and they would have idea for the doses he would require for pain relief that he developed tolerance one way or another.

I agree though that they wouldn't detox him in hospital. Normal practice would be to stick patient on maintence methadone and if they want to get of drugs they get passed to the community drug service for detox. There is no need to stay in hospital for it.

I think she may have realised how much John misses Sherlock and their life together. Imagine lying next to your husband who is dreaming of going back on the chase with his best friend. Maybe it was not the first of those dreams and maybe she knew what they were about.
Whatever the reason may be, in HLV we do not get a single scene in which she shows the same warmth and friendliness towards Sherlock we saw in episode 1 and 2.

Tinks wrote:

Thanks, Teejay - so no conclusive answer really as to why Sherlock and John hadn't seen each other or how long he'd been out.

Nope, nothing in TV canon that we can work with, unless I missed something. Guess we can all just make up our own timelines in our heads and no one will be able to conclusively dispute them.

Can I bring up another question? Do you think it's plausible that Mary would have visited Sherlock in the hospital? I'm working on a little fanfic piece where that happens, but I think I'm still debating in my head whether that's not completely out of character.

In my head canon, she might have two reasons for it. 1) She's genuinely sorry that she shot Sherlock but didn't see another way out at the time. 2) She wants to know what's going on with John, and she hopes she can coax some info out of Sherlock, seeing how it was hinted at the fact that Mary and John weren't on speaking terms right up until the Christmas outing.

Last edited by TeeJay (February 13, 2014 12:23 pm)

This Is The Phantom Lady wrote:

Maybe Mary did that to distance herself from what she had to do? Maybe even tried to get John a little less attached as she knew what she would have to do to Sherlock, and therefore to John later? But then again I don't know.

 
But that would require her to plan killing Sherlock at the outset; whilst that is certainly possible it would be a bridge too far for some in fandom. On the other hand Moftiss write for a much bigger audience than those in fandom, so I can't dismiss it out of hand.