She was crying nonstop, like one of those fake plastic babies they used to hand out in a 9th grade health class. Her eye makeup had smeared and mixed with her salty tears and painted a nasty globbed mess straight down her face.

Still…Blonde Doctor was pretty, even if she looked like a harassed frog on a sinking lily pad right now. She managed to somehow pull off the look.

"Wh-what even h-h-h-ah-penned?" Blonde Doctor blubbered as she sat on one of the washers beside me as I worked. I was busy soaking Angry Doctor's Scooter-blood-drenched duds and looking through the cupboards for some kind of cleaner to get the dried blood out somehow. Normally I would have left this to housekeeping, but I was a man on a mission.

And I need something to keep my hands and head occupied…

"Like, d-d-d-ooOOOooooo…!" Blonde Doctor wailed again mid-sentence in her cries. "We-*gasp* kn-kn-know wh-who sh…shhhh….shhhhhh…." she lost it again, not being able to complete the thought.

"Who shot him? Nah." I finished for her and answered. I must have sounded less-than-caring or maybe because I uttered the unthinkable reality that we were living in right now, but Blonde Doctor started a new wave of unintelligible shrieks and cries. She curled up in herself, sitting crisscross on top of the washer and burying her face in her lab coat she had taken off. Snot was running out her nose like Niagara Falls and her raccoon face was kind of giving me the creeps.

But like I said, she was still pretty. For a doctor, anyway.

I had finally found the cleaner I needed and began my work silently and with more effort than I had done anything at this lousy hospital—including my little prank war with Scooter. I was determined to scrub my knuckles raw if it meant getting any lingering Scooter-blood out of the once pure white coat. Not for Angry Doctor—the jerk—but instead for Scootster—the jerk. The difference was I liked Scooter, secretly that is. He was an annoying, oddly likeable, kid with his dumb flower-smelling head in the dumb fluffy clouds he seemed to think held some kind of weird Lesbian Heaven he would be allowed to oogle in when he died.

When he died…

"JANITOR!" Blonde Doctor shrieked so shrilly I almost jumped out of my skin.

"WHAT?" I shouted back. Great, now she was eyeing me in some hurt way and because she startled me (a VERY hard thing to do…must be losing my touch…) I sloshed the water and half of it now rested on my jumpsuit front.

"I ASKED—what are you DOING?" I scoffed softly at her demanding tone all of a sudden. Jesus Lady had seen me walk by the cafeteria on my way here (I had left the mess to soak while I mopped up a bit—anything to keep my hands busy. I finally finished and decided to bite the bullet and get to this…) and so she left Blond Doctor with me so she could calm down enough to go back to work. Whining I can tolerate…to a point. Chatting, however…

"I'm washing Scooter's blood out of Angry Doctor's coat." I simply replied after a moment. I decided I wasn't in the mood to be evasive or make up some wild lie that somehow intertwined with my personal life like I did with Scooter. I didn't realize though how this information would affect her as her eyes bulged out of their bleary, swollen state and immediately stared at my current progress with the clothing; pink spots still remained, poking out with the white in the red-stained water. She stumbled off the washer and broke into a drunk-looking sprint, hand on her mouth and wailing like a banshee out of the room and down the hall toward the nearest bathroom.

I turned from the doorway and her fading shrieks and back to my work. I had been able to stomach a lot in my lifetime, but in this moment I saw what she had seen…what I had been trying to be blind to; the precious blood of Scooter splattered all over the coat and seeping into the water. It reminded me of that Bible story where the seas had turned into blood. The combined thought made me dry-heave a moment, the smell of it for the first time actually getting to me now that I allowed myself to realize who it came from. Why it was there.

Working in a hospital you become desensitized to that sort of thing. The stink of illness, bodily fluids and even death are subdued only just by the overwhelming aromas of sterile cleaning chemicals, various plastics and stale cafeteria foods. You learn to hate it with a passion until you're around it so long it simply becomes a way of life.

But this was different, and I wouldn't let myself see it until now. This wasn't the normal sludge coughed up by some nameless sap. This was the liquid life-force of Scooter. My Scooter.

I closed my eyes for what felt like a hundred years, blocking out any other weird emotion-like thoughts of the kid. I then held my breath, gripped the coat, and continued to scrub.


My body felt…heavy. I wanted to move but my limbs felt too heavy to do anything I wanted them to do. Then, in the fog of a mind just beginning to awaken from a drug-induced slumber, a shocking thought came to the forefront. Was I paralyzed?

A stab of piercing fear struck my middle with such intensity that I immediately jolted awake. I heard a spike in my heart monitor somewhere off to the side but I couldn't see it. The only sight greeting my fearful eyes was the ceiling. My breathing increased ten-fold and I began to feel dizzy. There was some kind of tubing down my throat that now felt had been there for ages, but only now was beginning to bother me. My throat constricted around it and I found it harder and harder to breathe! Oh man…I knew in the back of my mind that I was overreacting. But it developed into a full blown panic attack within seconds, and that stupid beeping of the monitor kept going faster and faster!

Would it stop?!

Please stop it!

Anyone!

I couldn't breathe anymore, but I was so petrified I wouldn't move. I was afraid if I tried that I couldn't. All rational thought vanished in a second, and nothing came to me then; no memory of why I was there, … nothing. Zip. Nadda. I was functioning on my five senses and that was it.

"Hey hey hey! Calm down, ya big girl!" came that slightly scratchy, manly voice I instinctively trusted. Or at least, at one time I did. Right now I was too preoccupied to really listen.

In what seemed like a blur of motion, I recognized Dr. Cox as he bent over me. I couldn't help the tear that escaped my eye in my delusional fear and finally found the strength to close them and turn away. I didn't need him to call me any more names at the moment, or be told how weak I had been—or am. I just wanted him gone, I suddenly thought, and it was a bit shocking to realize…

But that thought was shoved to the side in favor of the realization that at least I could move my neck.

"Calm down!" Cox's microscopic patience for me had just run out it seemed, but I could have cared less. I couldn't breathe!

I felt him give me a firm little shake at my shoulders, right below my deltoids. But this did nothing other than jolt my anxiety into an all new level of petrified.

"Look at me." Dr. Cox asked me but I wouldn't, I couldn't! Didn't he realize how small the room was getting? And that beeping! It was like it was pounding in my ears, bumping against my skull!

"NEWBIE!"

I knew this was bad, but I couldn't move, or so I thought. I was living in the millisecond, and as they ticked by I felt closer and closer to a darkness I couldn't describe but felt was there. Everything in this room was shrinking in on me and—

"J.D.!"

My mind went blank. It was like a deeper part of my core knew the gravity of Dr. Cox speaking my actual name. Though, for some reason, he had been doing that more now than all the years we've known each other put together.

That I remembered, no problem. Pathetic, right? Tell me about it.

"Ah-ah, look at me Newbie." I felt his callused hand grab my chin and jaw back forward, facing him and the ceiling. His tone was more breathless than authoritative, but I wasn't too in-tune with the nuances of his mannerisms at the moment like I usually was.

"Open those dopey eyes, Newb."

His voice was different, and a part of me was dying to see his face and calculate just what was going on with him that facilitated such a change. But another part of me, a darker and steadily growing part of me, said that he was just tired and I was keeping him here by refusing and I might as well do what he says. The sooner I do, the sooner he can leave.

So I did.


"There ya go." I said, but I don't know what I was even expecting. For some reason, when Tamera finally opened her eyes, there was a blank emptiness there that I had only seen in the soulless minions that still stalked these halls. Like Beezlebob. Or that What'shisface Lawyer.

Newbie's eyes had lost hope.

Now, not that I notice what his stupid eyes look like on a na-hormal day, but it's kind of hard nawt to when he's all up in my man-space and looking as if I'm the one that holds all the answers of life. I swear, sometimes his eyes downright sparkled. That usually made me want to punch him in the face and vomit and kick puppies all at the same time.

But not today. Today I wished they looked like that; anything but what I was forced to look into now.

"I'm gonna' take this breathing tube out, so don't be a Nancy about it." I cringe inwardly, I didn't mean for that to actually come out. And I notice him flinch but otherwise doesn't react.

I instruct him to cough, even though I know he knows to do that without being told. But I need something, anything, to say. And it's better when it's medical related—less chance for me to say something asinine.

I'm told I'm a real jerk when I'm upset. And any other time it would be a strength, but not now, not like this.

Newbie smacked his lips while I put the ventilator tube aside, turned off the machine that had been breathing for him, and made a grab for the water.

There were so many tubes. Newbie was just swimming in a web of them. It made my heart beat almost as fast as his to see it and I had to clench my jaw to will myself to get ahold of my idiotic emotions. As a doctor—or anyone who works in a hospital—you get used to things like that. The first day is always the worst because mechanical medical dummies don't prepare you for what this stuff actually looks like on a real, living and breathing human being. A person. No matter what soulless, corporate demons may try to put on paper in this hospital, I treat people nawt numbers. And I made myself get over what it looks like; drip-tubes, PICC lines, TPNs and nasal cannulas, not to mention those good, old-fashioned catheters. So you deal with it by ignoring it—though you're still aware they exist. Just obstacles to work around when treating the patient. That's all. That's it.

But it felt all kinds of wrong to see the mass of wires and tubes entering and exiting Newbie's body. He wasn't a sim clinic dummy, but he also wasn't just a person. He was my annoying little sidekick in this forsaken hole.

And I felt like I had stepped foot in my own personal hell.


A/N-it's been a hot minute huh guys? :'3 Thanks to those still reading this fic! And for the awesome reviews I've been getting (I have been reading each and every one!) I have been having Life stuff to deal with but I have not abandoned this story. I hope to continue to update it...hopefully faster haha! But we shall see. If nothing else, enjoy this smol chapter!

~Ron