Theobromine
Basil is a mouse of simple and specific habits. Sometimes, these habits can be quite dangerous in their simplicity.
Throwback to that time I wrote Great Mouse Detective fic about Basil's crippling drug addiction.
I spent many years beneath the floorboards of 221 Baker Street, sharing rooms with my friend and colleague, Mister Basil of Baker Street. He was a mouse unlike any I had ever met previously, and am likely to ever know again.
He was paradoxically tidy in his habits and chaotic in his methods, a point which would often drive our landlady, Mrs Judson, to despair. It was not an uncommon occurrence for the apartment to be littered with all manner of paper and pamphlets, seemingly thrown about at random. But if one were to ask Mister Basil of Baker Street to locate any one particular piece of information from the mess, he could find it almost at an instance, having remembered precisely where he had laid every last scrap of paper.
It was in this state that the apartments beneath Baker Street lay in almost perpetually during the winter of '90, and had rapidly grown to a point of contention between him and me. It's during the winter months that my war wound is the most painful, the cold air getting deep into the bone and muscle and making my entire side, ribs to knee, ache on a nearly constant basis. I was unable to navigate around Basil's madcap filing system, and more than once had very nearly tripped over something, which would have no doubt only made my existing problems with my leg all the more unbearable.
Winter was never a particularly pleasant time for Basil either, whether for him or to be near him. The weather was often so treacherous for our kind that going outdoors at all was a risk to one's body and health, the effect of which was to almost completely rid London of crime. During these times, Basil would take to more destructive habits, both of a chemical and physical nature. One morning, I was driven from my bed at the sound of gun fire from the front of the house to find him shooting holes in the wall to spell a crude VR in the plaster; damage which took several months to fully pay off.
It was a particularly cold and grey January morning that I found my friend in his chair by the fire, long limbs and tail spread out languidly in every direction. On the table beside him, I could see the paper wrapper of what I knew immediately to be a bar of chocolate.
"I say, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," I said, outraged that such an otherwise intelligent mouse should deliberately poison himself with such substances. While the substance was quite fashionable in some circles, myself and many of my colleagues in the medical profession felt that it was detrimental to the mental facilities of those who used it. I had watched my friend take steadily darker doses of the stuff for several weeks now, and had finally mustered the impetus to say something to him.
"I'm afraid I simply cannot be bothered to muster the emotion," said Basil simply. The faintest hint of a smile played on the edges of his mouth, and I knew that he enjoyed my outrage with the chocolate as much as he enjoyed the chocolate itself. He picked up a yellow novel and opened it at random, ignoring me.
His attitude angered me more than anything. "Have you any idea what that stuff is capable of doing to you?" I asked.
"Of course I have," said Basil, almost sickeningly casual in his attitude. "I simply choose to forget about it."
"How can you choose to forget it?" I asked. "The fever alone that you risk from careless habit of yours is at the very least astonishingly inconsiderate, as it is I who would have to nurse you."
"Would it?" asked Basil. "I never requested such services from you, or anyone else."
As if for no reason other than to spite me, he reached for the ever-dwindling supply of chocolate and broke off a considerable piece. I quickly rose to my feet, leaving the room so I did not have to witness him eating the cursed sweet.
I soon found our landlady, Mrs Judson, in the kitchen, busying herself with the daily chores in that area of our dwellings.
"Is Mister Basil giving you trouble again, Doctor?" she asked me upon my entry.
"He is most impossible," I said. "I'm most certain that he indulges in these behaviours just to be contrary."
I knew that it was not my place to be discussing these matters with Mrs Judson, but I must confess that Basil's own irrational actions had pushed me into irrational behaviour as a result.
"He isn't putting holes in my walls again?" Mrs Judson demanded, and I knew at once what she meant.
I shook my head, hoping to calm her and assuage her justifiable indignation. "No, nothing of the sort," said I, hoping to sound authoritative. "He's brought home a bar of chocolate again, and is at this moment poisoning himself by the fire. I couldn't bear to watch it."
Mrs Judson gave me an almost sad smile and patted me on the arm. "I'm sure once the weather warms up a bit, he'll snap out of it," she said.
Without waiting for a response, she gave me a scone and dismissed me from the kitchen. I went back upstairs, soothed by the warm bread.
Back in our rooms Basil was slumped in his chair, plucking his violin listlessly. When he saw me, he put bow to string and created a succession of terrible and discordant noises which sent the fur on the back of my neck stand on edge. The small block of chocolate still lay on the table beside him, no smaller than it had been when I left the room.
"Are you quite finished?" I growled. "You are behaving like a spoilt child."
Basil answered me not through words, but by reaching out with his long fingers and breaking off a piece from the chocolate bar and eating it, making a great show of showing me precisely just how much he was enjoying himself, licking his lips and settling back with a sigh. I could not, as a physician and his friend, sit by and watch him indulge in such careless habits, and short of physical force against his person would not have been able to stop him, so instead of staying to watch the obscene display, I left for the relative comfort of 221. As the weather had effectively limited my options in distancing myself from Basil by affording me only one direction, it was in that direction I ventured and headed up into the human portion of the house. I was relieved to find the humans were absent from this portion of the house, leaving Toby alone to sprawl lazily across the rug under the window.
I remained in that portion of the house for a short while - no more than maybe twenty minutes, during which I had settled on the dog's large ear and let the animal's own calm demeanour wash over me - before I heard Mrs Judson's voice echoing in through the small hole in the baseboard. Her distress was evident, and I knew of only one mouse capable of eliciting such emotion from anyone. I made quick progress to meet her in the wall, finding her near hysterics. She clutched my arm, pulling me in the direction of our rooms.
"I wasn't sure what else to do, Doctor," she said, panic evident in her voice. "I don't think he's breathing!"
I rushed in to find him on the floor, turned over onto his side, near the fire. It was apparent that he had, in my absence, tried to walk off the early effects of the alarming amount of chocolate he had consumed, but the drug had overtaken him more than he had realised. A quick survey of his vital signs found a pulse, weak as it was, which was enough to assure both myself and Mrs Judson that things were not quite as dire as they had first seemed.
The treatment for theobromine poisoning is simple: expulsion of the stomach contents and ingestion of a charcoal compound. Basil's own body had taken care of the first step, almost certainly as an automatic response to the amount of poison in his system, which left the remainder to my own trained hands.
"Mrs Judson!" I said, calmly and authoritatively as I could manage, cutting through her fluster. "Fetch a water pitcher! Quickly!"
I could hear her moving about in the kitchen as I used a fire poker to extract a small log from the bottom of the fireplace, making a mental note to myself to keep a ready-made compound on hand.
Mrs Judson arrived quickly with a large pitcher of water and a basin, which proved ideal for my purposes. With some degree of difficulty, I managed to make a grey slurry from the water and the charcoal I'd pulled from the fire, but even this was not the most difficult part of the process. Getting an unconscious mouse to drink the slurry without forcing it into his lungs is an exercise in patience and luck.
In the end, we endured a second round of involuntary vomiting and force-feeding before I felt safe enough to move him from the floor to his bed. I bathed his face, and with the help of Mrs Judson - who, now that the worst of the danger was over turned out to be a competent nurse - put him in pyjamas. After that all we could do was wait. He drifted in and out of consciousness, talking nonsense before drifting back into a fitful sleep. He ran a fever, and clawed at demons that were not present. He could not be made to eat, it was all I could do to make him drink water. For myself, I moved between blaming myself and then him, almost seamlessly; him for taking the vile substance in the first place, and myself for failing to curb his habit and monitor his intake. For three days, this drama played out before he finally emerged into the sitting room, his dressing gown tied loosely around him and barely hanging onto his much slimmer frame.
"It would seem," he said to me as he gingerly lowered himself into his customary seat by the fire, "that a great deal of excitement has occurred, and I have missed all of it." I could not be certain, but something about his tone sounded almost put out.
I tried and failed to keep my tone neutral. "You were the centre of it," I said, trying to hide my upset by taking his pulse and feeling his forehead. He batted my hands away, and I knew at once that he was on the road to mend. I sat back down, still cataloguing the boniness of his wrists, and the bright exhaustion in his eyes.
Basil hummed lightly as he reached for his clay pipe. "At least you still afford me my tobacco," said he. "Although, it's clear that you have removed my stores from the room, if not the entire house."
"Yes," I confirmed. That we both knew he would be perfectly capable of obtaining more was not discussed. "Discarded with the ash from the fireplace. You gave us quite a scare, you know. I was afraid our dear landlady may never recover from the fright."
"I assure you, she's a spry old stick. She'll recover," said Basil. His words did little to relieve my tension. "However, I do sincerely apologise for having forced you to witness such an event. It was not part of my grand plan."
I allowed myself a small smile. "I wasn't aware that there was any plan at all," said I warmly.
"There's always a plan." At that, Basil lit his pipe and leaned back into his chair, still maintaining something of his curled-up shape, with his knees drawn up to his chest. "And even the best of them can sometimes get away from me."
We sat in a companionable silence, myself simply glad that I still had my friend, and that he hadn't been taken by his own stupidity. Less than a month later, I began to find evidence of my friend's habit creeping back into the house, and while he made no honest effort to conceal it from me, it was also apparent that he had made efforts to watch his intake more closely.
However, despite his endeavour to control his use, he seemed to be unable to curb his addiction. For weeks, I troubled over the secretion of the sweet into the house, annoyed that despite the fact that we lived in such close quarters, I was unable to locate his source. In the end, I caught him out by pure chance, as circumstances of the day had me receiving our weekly provisions from Peterson. He, along with a particularly charming cormorant, was solely responsible for seeing to it that mice in the Westminster area of London were properly supplied for the harsher months of the year, when venturing outdoors by foot would often prove treacherous for anyone smaller than a common tabby cat.
It was as the two of us checked through the inventory that I discovered a small block of chocolate hidden amongst the firewood. I was outraged at the discovery, although I must confess that I wasn't quite sure at whom to direct it; Basil for so brazenly going against my every order on the subject, or Peterson for so willingly helping him.
My first course of action was simple, and I was almost surprised at how readily Peterson had agreed to stop that part of the order, as I was and still remain convinced that Basil had been paying him extra to make sure that the chocolate stayed hidden from Mrs Judson and me.
I was with Basil that I found the most resistance. Withdrawal had made him irritable and irascible, and nigh on unbearable to be around. This antagonistic behaviour of his lasted several days, and only worsened until the day I caught him attempting to leave the house, dressed in the heavy peacoat he'd often wear when his plans included being away for an extended period of time. The new hole in one of the interior walls was indication enough that like myself, he had reached the end of his tether. While I consider myself a patient mouse, I felt I had been pushed far enough.
"Basil, you are not in your right mind. I simply cannot permit you to leave this house!" I moved to put myself between him and the door, not entirely certain that I would prove an equal match for him, even in his weakened state, if he did decide to force his way out.
"Who are you to tell me what to do?" Basil snapped. "I am a grown mouse, and I will do as I please."
He made to barge past me, but he made the fatal error of telegraphing his motions, though whether it was from his own weariness or something else, I cannot be certain. As soon as I saw what it was he intended, I grabbed his arms with both hands. He tried to shake away from me, but I used the advantage in size that I held over him, and after some effort, managed to pin him to the ground and hold him there.
"For God's sake, Dawson, get off me," Basil growled between his bared teeth. He pushed against me, but I refused to budge.
"Not until you've come to your senses." Again, he struggled to free himself, and again, I held my ground.
"I'm beginning to think your actions have an ulterior motive behind them," he said, stilling suddenly. "You do rather seem to be enjoying this far too much."
I consider myself a respectable Englishmouse, and it did not become immediately clear to me just what his words meant. When the implication struck, I did remove myself from Basil's person, only to once again put myself between him and the door.
"You're unwell," I said levelly. "Basil, you need help, but I can't give it to you if you don't accept it."
"I never asked for your help, nor do I want it." Basil sneered as he rose to his feet, and finding his way out still blocked, stalked to his room and slammed the door behind him.
After that, an uneasy quiet fell over our rooms. I sat by the fire, restlessly reading the paper and occasionally casting glances at the door separating the two of us. I could hear him moving about in his room, though what he was doing, I could not divine it from the sounds alone. This continued for slightly more than a quarter hour before slowly falling to a heavy silence. It wasn't until well after nightfall that he emerged again, having changed from his peacoat and into his dressing gown. Without a word, he walked to his chair, throwing a small parcel into the fire on his way. He picked up his violin from the floor next to his chair, and idly adjusted the instrument's tuning. The rich smell of burning chocolate filled the room - almost pleasantly. I relaxed - traditionally, one could not benefit from the noxious effects of chocolate from inhalation.
"I say, old man," Basil said easily. "How do you feel about a bit of Bizet?"