Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2006-06-19 06:15 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2006-06-19 06:15 pm
Entry tags:
That Scrubs/Silent Hill Crossover, Fourth and Final Part
Possibly two parts of this fic in one day may seem a bit much, but the feedback I’ve been getting made me want to run off to work on it as much as I could. So I did.
This is, in fact, the final part of that Scrubs/Silent Hill crossover, which is good, because now I can focus onwriting Scrubs/House revising. Obviously.
‘My Screwup’ and ‘My Lunch’ spoilers (er, I’m aware that it probably wasn’t necessary to say that at the beginning of every section), and this section also contains brief and utterly non-explicit slash.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
After half an hour of ascending creaking staircases, inspecting broken hospital equipment and being shouted at, mocked and on one occasion dragged bodily out of the way of an apparently invisible monster that Dr. Cox insisted had been about to stab him with a hypodermic needle, JD was thoroughly sick of Brookhaven Hospital. They were still there, though, because Dr. Cox refused to leave, and JD couldn’t go without him. All he could do was hope desperately that he would come to his senses soon.
At the moment he was standing in front of yet another rotting door in a darkened corridor, trying not to be too unnerved by the sound of heavy breathing. He was probably just imagining it. Either that, or Dr. Cox was doing it deliberately just to frighten him. Jerk.
“Might be an idea to get in there before that thing comes back and tries to eat us,” Dr. Cox suggested. JD, having resigned himself to the fact that Dr. Cox was apparently insane and it would probably be best just to humour him until he could convince him to get out of here, pushed open the door and walked in.
They were standing in a large, well-lit room, with a number of remarkably comfortable-looking beds set out. The sheets were rumpled, and there was a film of dust over everything, but it was all extremely tempting nonetheless – it didn’t feel nearly as airless and claustrophobia-inducing as most of the rooms in this hospital. Maybe they could turn the sheets over or shake them out and stay here, just for the night. JD was feeling pretty exhausted. They’d be able to go back to Sacred Heart in the morning – if he could ever persuade Dr. Cox to leave this place.
He turned to suggest his idea to Dr. Cox – and forgot what he was about to say when he saw his expression. His entire body had stiffened, and he was staring fixedly at the wall as if it were the most terrifying thing he’d ever seen.
JD looked at the wall. It looked harmless enough.
“Why – ” he began, but Dr. Cox had already bolted out of the room. JD followed, slightly reluctantly.
“Couldn’t we have stayed in there? It looked like a pretty nice place to rest. I mean, I know it was a bit dusty, but compared with the rest of this place...” and then he trailed off, because Dr. Cox was staring at him with the expression that meant that he had just said the stupidest thing in the world.
“The walls were bleeding,” Dr. Cox said, incredulous. “You didn’t notice? What the hell is wrong with you?” He threw his hands up. “Or, hey, maybe you did notice and you just thought that bleeding walls were the perfect addition to any bedroom, but I’ve got news for you: I think that you just might be in the minority on that one, sweetheart.”
“The walls weren’t bleeding,” JD said, starting to get angry himself. “You’re seeing things. Dr. Cox, we have to get you back to the hospital.”
“Okay, I’ll just summon up that incredible ability to leap over gaping chasms while carrying two people that I’ve been keeping in reserve for situations like these. Just – ” He closed his eyes, put a hand to his head. “Just – leave us alone for a moment, okay? I need some time to rest and think and stop wanting to kill myself, and I’m sure as hell not going to manage it with you climbing all over me.”
“What?” JD asked, bewildered. “But you can’t – ”
– but Dr. Cox had already gone, leaving him standing in the darkness of the corridor. In the sudden silence, the sound of dripping water seemed very loud.
‘Us’. So obviously he still thought that Ben was with him. This had happened before, just after his death, and he was sure that it couldn’t end well this time.
He glanced around, and shivered, and set off in the direction in which Dr. Cox had gone.
-
When JD eventually found Dr. Cox, he was lying back on one of the hospital beds, staring at the ceiling. He jerked upright as the door swung open and grabbed the handle of the knife, but when he saw who it was he just rolled his eyes and relaxed a little. Maybe he felt slightly relieved to see that JD hadn’t been killed yet – he shouldn’t have left him on his own like that, didn’t know what he was thinking – but there was no way in hell he was going to let him know that.
“Okay, Newbie, what part of ‘leave us alone’ did you not understand? Given your complete inability to accept that Ben’s here I’d say it’s probably the ‘us’, but I’m open to suggestions.”
JD looked a little startled, shifted awkwardly. “No, I was just wondering whether you – I wanted to know whether you were feeling okay.”
Dr. Cox bared his teeth in a grin that didn’t have a hint of friendliness or warmth behind it. “Well, Linda, let’s see. I’m responsible for the deaths of three patients. I am trapped in a town that seems to be constantly trying either to kill me or to drive me completely insane, and you of all people have followed me here in what I can only assume is an attempt to destroy my sanity even faster. The only thing that’s making my life remotely bearable at this point is my friend here, and guess what? You won’t stop insisting that he’s dead. So riddle me this, Rapunzel: how do you think I feel?”
“...sorry,” JD said, after taking a moment to recover from the speech. “I guess – ” and then something occurred to him, and he frowned. “Wait a second – what do you mean, you’re ‘trapped here’? We were just going to leave – you said we had to come back.”
“Oh, yes, of course we can walk out of here any time we want. There’s just the little matter of the rift in the road.”
“What rift?”
Dr. Cox stared. “Okay, Lydia, I know you’re not the most observant girl in the world, but I’d like to think even you would notice when there’s a huge gap in the path right in front of you. When we were on the way out of here? Are there any bells ringing in that empty head of yours?”
JD blinked. “...there was nothing wrong with the path.”
“What, so you couldn’t see that, either? Because I’d be happy to prove its existence to you by pushing you over it.”
“He could be right,” Ben said. “I don’t know, we could check. I’m getting a little tired of this place. Which is, you know, it’s incredible because you never think you can get tired of being chased by slimy things, but somehow it’s happening.”
“We’re not leaving until we’ve checked up on your cancer. Anyway, he says he can’t see you, so what makes you think he’d be right about this?”
“Do you think you’re talking to Ben?” JD asked, looking uneasily around the room.
“I am talking to Ben,” Dr. Cox said, a warning note in his voice. “How about you just shut up and let the people who aren’t insane talk, okay?”
“Dr. Cox,” JD said, carefully, “you told me that you’re seeing monsters. You said that the walls were bleeding. If anyone’s having hallucinations, it’s you.”
Dr. Cox glared at him. “Okay, you have exactly three seconds to shut the hell up, Angelina, or I’m going to have to perform major surgery on your throat.”
“Ben’s been dead for two years.”
He stood abruptly, his fists clenched by his sides. “Shut up, Newbie. I’m warning you. I know what’s real.”
“You know, maybe he’s right,” Ben said.
Dr. Cox spun to face him, furious. “Don’t say that.”
“I don’t know, Per,” he said, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably and looking from him to JD. “I can’t remember how I got here. I can’t really remember anything from the last couple of years.”
“So you’ve got amnesia,” Dr. Cox said, as casually as he could. “We should probably check that out as well.” He sat back down on the side of the bed, gritted his teeth. “People who died two years ago don’t get up and start walking around again. You’re not dead.”
“Yeah, but the kid said that he can’t see me.” Ben sat down next to him. “So, you know, maybe I’m not really here. Maybe you are seeing things.” He put an arm around Dr. Cox’s shoulders, and it felt warm and solid, and Dr. Cox stared at the floor and thought how can this not be real?
“Come on,” he said, shrugging off Ben’s arm and standing up. “For God’s sake, Ben, I thought you were sensible. It’s hard enough trying to stay sane without having both of you being crazy at me.”
-
Dr. Cox was finding it harder and harder to stay awake. Sleep was impossible, obviously – he knew he would have trouble sleeping anyway this soon after the accident, even when he wasn’t in a town full of slimy monsters that were trying to kill him – but his reflexes were getting slower, and it was getting difficult to think clearly, and if he didn’t get some rest soon he was just going to collapse, probably at the most inconvenient time possible.
...maybe sleep wasn’t such a bad idea after all. The dusty hospital beds were looking more and more appealing.
“Why are we still here?” Ben asked, leaning against the doorframe and glancing absently around the room.
He kind of had a point.
“I don’t know,” Dr. Cox said, yawning. “Even if we manage to find a way of testing your blood here – and I doubt the monsters will have been thoughtful enough to sterilise the equipment – there probably wouldn’t be any way to treat you if you needed it. We should probably try to get you somewhere with better medical facilities, but I’m really not in the mood to go rift-jumping right now.”
“JD said he couldn’t see it.”
“Jenny said she couldn’t see you. I’m not going to trust my life to anything she says.”
“Well, then, we can look for another way around.”
While that was a reasonable suggestion, the prospect of spending any more time wandering around in the fog when he was this tired made Dr. Cox want to collapse and die. “Yeah, okay. Just – give me a moment to sit down.”
“If you want to get some sleep, I could keep an eye out for those slimy things,” Ben offered.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I don’t feel tired.”
Dr. Cox folded his arms, looking carefully at him, and then grinned. “Thanks. C’mon, Newbie, let’s get some sleep.” He paused for a moment, surveying the single bed in the room. “You can take the floor.”
“Can’t I sleep in one of the other rooms?” JD asked, looking uneasily at the stained tile floor.
“Well, only if you don’t mind the monsters getting you, because it’ll be much easier if Ben only has to play lookout for one room. And if you say that there aren’t any monsters, or that Ben isn’t here,” he continued, raising his voice and speaking over JD’s protests, “I’m going to hurt you.”
-
He slept better than he had thought he would. When he woke up he saw that JD had curled up on the end of the bed, like a cat. He debated kicking him off, but decided against it – he couldn’t blame him for wanting a more comfortable place to sleep.
“Are we going to try getting out of here, Ben?” he asked, rubbing the back of his hand across his eyes. There was no answer, and he swallowed, suddenly sick with fear, when he noticed the crumpled shape by the door.
Ben was lying on the floor, his eyes open and glazed, one side of his face covered with blood. Dr. Cox scrambled over to him, dislodging JD, who fell off the bed with a yelp.
Ben wasn’t breathing. There was no pulse, and his body was cold, and no, oh God no –
Dr. Cox picked him up and heaved him onto the bed, stumbling and almost hyperventilating, and he breathed into his mouth twice and then he started pressing his chest, and he repeated it again and again and again while Ben lay there, not moving.
“I’m not going to let you die,” he said, even though he knew that it was hopeless. “God, Ben, you can’t – you can’t – ” and his voice cracked and he kept on desperately trying to resuscitate him, even though he knew that it was impossible, that he was already dead, because if he stopped it would be admitting to himself that there was nothing that could be done and he couldn’t face that, he couldn’t.
Eventually he let Ben’s body fall back onto the bed and he stumbled back, exhausted, and then he seized the lamp from the bedside table and flung it at the door. It shattered, littering the floor of the room with china shards.
“Dr. Cox!” JD was gripping his shoulders, but he was barely aware of it. “Dr. Cox, Ben was never here.”
He stood there without speaking, staring at Ben’s body, breathing too fast. He couldn’t think, couldn’t focus on what was being said to him. Some part of his mind was screaming.
“Dr. Cox. Dr. Cox, look at me.”
He eventually looked up and saw JD standing in front of him, wide-eyed and panicked, his dark hair dishevelled, and something inside him snapped.
-
The fog outside had cleared, but it was pitch-black now and raining hard. The wall at his back was cold and slick with water – he could feel it soaking into his clothes.
“God,” Dr. Cox whispered feverishly, his hands under JD’s shirt and his nails digging into JD’s sides. “God – Ben – ”
JD inhaled sharply at the name, but he said nothing. This was how Dr. Cox dealt with things, and he was going to help him in whatever way he could.
-
Dr. Cox had gone when JD woke up, curled up in the doorway of the hospital. He wasn’t really surprised.
He wasn’t surprised when he found him, either, sitting on the bed in the room where Ben hadn’t died.
“Dr. Cox?”
He said nothing for a long time, keeping his eyes on the floor. JD began to wonder whether he had heard him.
“I shouldn’t have used you like that,” Dr. Cox muttered.
“It’s okay.” He wished that he would look at him.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
“...he wasn’t here,” Dr. Cox said, almost inaudibly, and then he looked up at him and laughed brokenly. “So I guess you were right. I was imagining things.”
There was another long silence. Dr. Cox’s breathing seemed a little harsher than usual.
“He shouldn’t have died,” he said eventually.
“He didn’t,” JD said, confused. “He was never here.”
“No,” Dr. Cox said. “I mean – two years ago, I shouldn’t – ”
“It wasn’t your fault,” JD said quietly.
Dr. Cox stared at him for a long time, saying nothing.
“He was away for two years – you couldn’t have made sure he visited a doctor. You told me to run the blood tests on him as soon as he got back. And – and even if you had stayed and made sure that he was tested, he died twenty minutes later. There wouldn’t have been time to do anything. It would have happened whether you were there or not.”
“I should have been able to save him,” Dr. Cox said, his voice slightly hoarse. “I should have noticed something, or – ”
“You already saved him.” It felt so strange to be the one reassuring Dr. Cox for once. “If you hadn’t noticed the leukaemia in the first place, it could’ve happened two years earlier. You know that.”
Dr. Cox said nothing. JD waited for a moment, and then spoke again.
“The thing is – I’ve seen so many people who would’ve died if you hadn’t been there. If you slip up once, it doesn’t change that.” He paused. “Like – like with the transplant patients. You didn’t know when another kidney might turn up. Anyone would have done what you did.”
Dr. Cox was silent for a moment longer, and then he stood up abruptly.
“C’mon, Newbie. Let’s get back to the hospital.”
This is, in fact, the final part of that Scrubs/Silent Hill crossover, which is good, because now I can focus on
‘My Screwup’ and ‘My Lunch’ spoilers (er, I’m aware that it probably wasn’t necessary to say that at the beginning of every section), and this section also contains brief and utterly non-explicit slash.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
After half an hour of ascending creaking staircases, inspecting broken hospital equipment and being shouted at, mocked and on one occasion dragged bodily out of the way of an apparently invisible monster that Dr. Cox insisted had been about to stab him with a hypodermic needle, JD was thoroughly sick of Brookhaven Hospital. They were still there, though, because Dr. Cox refused to leave, and JD couldn’t go without him. All he could do was hope desperately that he would come to his senses soon.
At the moment he was standing in front of yet another rotting door in a darkened corridor, trying not to be too unnerved by the sound of heavy breathing. He was probably just imagining it. Either that, or Dr. Cox was doing it deliberately just to frighten him. Jerk.
“Might be an idea to get in there before that thing comes back and tries to eat us,” Dr. Cox suggested. JD, having resigned himself to the fact that Dr. Cox was apparently insane and it would probably be best just to humour him until he could convince him to get out of here, pushed open the door and walked in.
They were standing in a large, well-lit room, with a number of remarkably comfortable-looking beds set out. The sheets were rumpled, and there was a film of dust over everything, but it was all extremely tempting nonetheless – it didn’t feel nearly as airless and claustrophobia-inducing as most of the rooms in this hospital. Maybe they could turn the sheets over or shake them out and stay here, just for the night. JD was feeling pretty exhausted. They’d be able to go back to Sacred Heart in the morning – if he could ever persuade Dr. Cox to leave this place.
He turned to suggest his idea to Dr. Cox – and forgot what he was about to say when he saw his expression. His entire body had stiffened, and he was staring fixedly at the wall as if it were the most terrifying thing he’d ever seen.
JD looked at the wall. It looked harmless enough.
“Why – ” he began, but Dr. Cox had already bolted out of the room. JD followed, slightly reluctantly.
“Couldn’t we have stayed in there? It looked like a pretty nice place to rest. I mean, I know it was a bit dusty, but compared with the rest of this place...” and then he trailed off, because Dr. Cox was staring at him with the expression that meant that he had just said the stupidest thing in the world.
“The walls were bleeding,” Dr. Cox said, incredulous. “You didn’t notice? What the hell is wrong with you?” He threw his hands up. “Or, hey, maybe you did notice and you just thought that bleeding walls were the perfect addition to any bedroom, but I’ve got news for you: I think that you just might be in the minority on that one, sweetheart.”
“The walls weren’t bleeding,” JD said, starting to get angry himself. “You’re seeing things. Dr. Cox, we have to get you back to the hospital.”
“Okay, I’ll just summon up that incredible ability to leap over gaping chasms while carrying two people that I’ve been keeping in reserve for situations like these. Just – ” He closed his eyes, put a hand to his head. “Just – leave us alone for a moment, okay? I need some time to rest and think and stop wanting to kill myself, and I’m sure as hell not going to manage it with you climbing all over me.”
“What?” JD asked, bewildered. “But you can’t – ”
– but Dr. Cox had already gone, leaving him standing in the darkness of the corridor. In the sudden silence, the sound of dripping water seemed very loud.
‘Us’. So obviously he still thought that Ben was with him. This had happened before, just after his death, and he was sure that it couldn’t end well this time.
He glanced around, and shivered, and set off in the direction in which Dr. Cox had gone.
When JD eventually found Dr. Cox, he was lying back on one of the hospital beds, staring at the ceiling. He jerked upright as the door swung open and grabbed the handle of the knife, but when he saw who it was he just rolled his eyes and relaxed a little. Maybe he felt slightly relieved to see that JD hadn’t been killed yet – he shouldn’t have left him on his own like that, didn’t know what he was thinking – but there was no way in hell he was going to let him know that.
“Okay, Newbie, what part of ‘leave us alone’ did you not understand? Given your complete inability to accept that Ben’s here I’d say it’s probably the ‘us’, but I’m open to suggestions.”
JD looked a little startled, shifted awkwardly. “No, I was just wondering whether you – I wanted to know whether you were feeling okay.”
Dr. Cox bared his teeth in a grin that didn’t have a hint of friendliness or warmth behind it. “Well, Linda, let’s see. I’m responsible for the deaths of three patients. I am trapped in a town that seems to be constantly trying either to kill me or to drive me completely insane, and you of all people have followed me here in what I can only assume is an attempt to destroy my sanity even faster. The only thing that’s making my life remotely bearable at this point is my friend here, and guess what? You won’t stop insisting that he’s dead. So riddle me this, Rapunzel: how do you think I feel?”
“...sorry,” JD said, after taking a moment to recover from the speech. “I guess – ” and then something occurred to him, and he frowned. “Wait a second – what do you mean, you’re ‘trapped here’? We were just going to leave – you said we had to come back.”
“Oh, yes, of course we can walk out of here any time we want. There’s just the little matter of the rift in the road.”
“What rift?”
Dr. Cox stared. “Okay, Lydia, I know you’re not the most observant girl in the world, but I’d like to think even you would notice when there’s a huge gap in the path right in front of you. When we were on the way out of here? Are there any bells ringing in that empty head of yours?”
JD blinked. “...there was nothing wrong with the path.”
“What, so you couldn’t see that, either? Because I’d be happy to prove its existence to you by pushing you over it.”
“He could be right,” Ben said. “I don’t know, we could check. I’m getting a little tired of this place. Which is, you know, it’s incredible because you never think you can get tired of being chased by slimy things, but somehow it’s happening.”
“We’re not leaving until we’ve checked up on your cancer. Anyway, he says he can’t see you, so what makes you think he’d be right about this?”
“Do you think you’re talking to Ben?” JD asked, looking uneasily around the room.
“I am talking to Ben,” Dr. Cox said, a warning note in his voice. “How about you just shut up and let the people who aren’t insane talk, okay?”
“Dr. Cox,” JD said, carefully, “you told me that you’re seeing monsters. You said that the walls were bleeding. If anyone’s having hallucinations, it’s you.”
Dr. Cox glared at him. “Okay, you have exactly three seconds to shut the hell up, Angelina, or I’m going to have to perform major surgery on your throat.”
“Ben’s been dead for two years.”
He stood abruptly, his fists clenched by his sides. “Shut up, Newbie. I’m warning you. I know what’s real.”
“You know, maybe he’s right,” Ben said.
Dr. Cox spun to face him, furious. “Don’t say that.”
“I don’t know, Per,” he said, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably and looking from him to JD. “I can’t remember how I got here. I can’t really remember anything from the last couple of years.”
“So you’ve got amnesia,” Dr. Cox said, as casually as he could. “We should probably check that out as well.” He sat back down on the side of the bed, gritted his teeth. “People who died two years ago don’t get up and start walking around again. You’re not dead.”
“Yeah, but the kid said that he can’t see me.” Ben sat down next to him. “So, you know, maybe I’m not really here. Maybe you are seeing things.” He put an arm around Dr. Cox’s shoulders, and it felt warm and solid, and Dr. Cox stared at the floor and thought how can this not be real?
“Come on,” he said, shrugging off Ben’s arm and standing up. “For God’s sake, Ben, I thought you were sensible. It’s hard enough trying to stay sane without having both of you being crazy at me.”
Dr. Cox was finding it harder and harder to stay awake. Sleep was impossible, obviously – he knew he would have trouble sleeping anyway this soon after the accident, even when he wasn’t in a town full of slimy monsters that were trying to kill him – but his reflexes were getting slower, and it was getting difficult to think clearly, and if he didn’t get some rest soon he was just going to collapse, probably at the most inconvenient time possible.
...maybe sleep wasn’t such a bad idea after all. The dusty hospital beds were looking more and more appealing.
“Why are we still here?” Ben asked, leaning against the doorframe and glancing absently around the room.
He kind of had a point.
“I don’t know,” Dr. Cox said, yawning. “Even if we manage to find a way of testing your blood here – and I doubt the monsters will have been thoughtful enough to sterilise the equipment – there probably wouldn’t be any way to treat you if you needed it. We should probably try to get you somewhere with better medical facilities, but I’m really not in the mood to go rift-jumping right now.”
“JD said he couldn’t see it.”
“Jenny said she couldn’t see you. I’m not going to trust my life to anything she says.”
“Well, then, we can look for another way around.”
While that was a reasonable suggestion, the prospect of spending any more time wandering around in the fog when he was this tired made Dr. Cox want to collapse and die. “Yeah, okay. Just – give me a moment to sit down.”
“If you want to get some sleep, I could keep an eye out for those slimy things,” Ben offered.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I don’t feel tired.”
Dr. Cox folded his arms, looking carefully at him, and then grinned. “Thanks. C’mon, Newbie, let’s get some sleep.” He paused for a moment, surveying the single bed in the room. “You can take the floor.”
“Can’t I sleep in one of the other rooms?” JD asked, looking uneasily at the stained tile floor.
“Well, only if you don’t mind the monsters getting you, because it’ll be much easier if Ben only has to play lookout for one room. And if you say that there aren’t any monsters, or that Ben isn’t here,” he continued, raising his voice and speaking over JD’s protests, “I’m going to hurt you.”
He slept better than he had thought he would. When he woke up he saw that JD had curled up on the end of the bed, like a cat. He debated kicking him off, but decided against it – he couldn’t blame him for wanting a more comfortable place to sleep.
“Are we going to try getting out of here, Ben?” he asked, rubbing the back of his hand across his eyes. There was no answer, and he swallowed, suddenly sick with fear, when he noticed the crumpled shape by the door.
Ben was lying on the floor, his eyes open and glazed, one side of his face covered with blood. Dr. Cox scrambled over to him, dislodging JD, who fell off the bed with a yelp.
Ben wasn’t breathing. There was no pulse, and his body was cold, and no, oh God no –
Dr. Cox picked him up and heaved him onto the bed, stumbling and almost hyperventilating, and he breathed into his mouth twice and then he started pressing his chest, and he repeated it again and again and again while Ben lay there, not moving.
“I’m not going to let you die,” he said, even though he knew that it was hopeless. “God, Ben, you can’t – you can’t – ” and his voice cracked and he kept on desperately trying to resuscitate him, even though he knew that it was impossible, that he was already dead, because if he stopped it would be admitting to himself that there was nothing that could be done and he couldn’t face that, he couldn’t.
Eventually he let Ben’s body fall back onto the bed and he stumbled back, exhausted, and then he seized the lamp from the bedside table and flung it at the door. It shattered, littering the floor of the room with china shards.
“Dr. Cox!” JD was gripping his shoulders, but he was barely aware of it. “Dr. Cox, Ben was never here.”
He stood there without speaking, staring at Ben’s body, breathing too fast. He couldn’t think, couldn’t focus on what was being said to him. Some part of his mind was screaming.
“Dr. Cox. Dr. Cox, look at me.”
He eventually looked up and saw JD standing in front of him, wide-eyed and panicked, his dark hair dishevelled, and something inside him snapped.
The fog outside had cleared, but it was pitch-black now and raining hard. The wall at his back was cold and slick with water – he could feel it soaking into his clothes.
“God,” Dr. Cox whispered feverishly, his hands under JD’s shirt and his nails digging into JD’s sides. “God – Ben – ”
JD inhaled sharply at the name, but he said nothing. This was how Dr. Cox dealt with things, and he was going to help him in whatever way he could.
Dr. Cox had gone when JD woke up, curled up in the doorway of the hospital. He wasn’t really surprised.
He wasn’t surprised when he found him, either, sitting on the bed in the room where Ben hadn’t died.
“Dr. Cox?”
He said nothing for a long time, keeping his eyes on the floor. JD began to wonder whether he had heard him.
“I shouldn’t have used you like that,” Dr. Cox muttered.
“It’s okay.” He wished that he would look at him.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
“...he wasn’t here,” Dr. Cox said, almost inaudibly, and then he looked up at him and laughed brokenly. “So I guess you were right. I was imagining things.”
There was another long silence. Dr. Cox’s breathing seemed a little harsher than usual.
“He shouldn’t have died,” he said eventually.
“He didn’t,” JD said, confused. “He was never here.”
“No,” Dr. Cox said. “I mean – two years ago, I shouldn’t – ”
“It wasn’t your fault,” JD said quietly.
Dr. Cox stared at him for a long time, saying nothing.
“He was away for two years – you couldn’t have made sure he visited a doctor. You told me to run the blood tests on him as soon as he got back. And – and even if you had stayed and made sure that he was tested, he died twenty minutes later. There wouldn’t have been time to do anything. It would have happened whether you were there or not.”
“I should have been able to save him,” Dr. Cox said, his voice slightly hoarse. “I should have noticed something, or – ”
“You already saved him.” It felt so strange to be the one reassuring Dr. Cox for once. “If you hadn’t noticed the leukaemia in the first place, it could’ve happened two years earlier. You know that.”
Dr. Cox said nothing. JD waited for a moment, and then spoke again.
“The thing is – I’ve seen so many people who would’ve died if you hadn’t been there. If you slip up once, it doesn’t change that.” He paused. “Like – like with the transplant patients. You didn’t know when another kidney might turn up. Anyone would have done what you did.”
Dr. Cox was silent for a moment longer, and then he stood up abruptly.
“C’mon, Newbie. Let’s get back to the hospital.”