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randomweavingTitle: Imaginary Friend
Characters: JD/Cox
Rating: R for language and some violence
Description: About a month into his internship, JD starts having some unusual dreams.
It wasn't Perry's home, but JD knew it was one of those dreams; there was a gritty, realistic feel to them that was unmistakable, and instantly distinguishable from the others.
He was standing in what was clearly an elementary schoolyard, on the sidelines of a baseball diamond. Around him, six-year-olds scampered madly about, giggling as they raced around the bases or came up to bat. The batting helmets were absurdly large on them, sliding over their eyes half the time and probably creating more of a hazard than they were preventing, but that didn't seem to bother the kids.
JD felt a smile slip onto his face, watching, trying to discern which grubby child was Perry. After a moment, however, a slow, rhythmic creaking noise from behind him caught his attention, and he turned, feeling his heart plummet.
Perry sat alone on a swing set, legs barely long enough to let his feet touch the dirt beneath him idly kicking, letting him swing a little bit back and forth. His head was ducked down, and he was picking at a hangnail; he hadn't noticed JD's arrival.
JD sighed, heart aching, passing a hand over his hair. He'd hoped Perry at least had friends at school, could be a normal kid away from the hell his father put him through. It was a good thing, he reflected, that he couldn't touch that man. He might've had to kill him, Hippocratic oath be damned.
He walked over in front of the swing set, sitting down before Perry, heart tightening and anger stirring when he saw the large fading bruise across the small boy's forehead, over his right eye. "Hi," he stage-whispered.
Perry jumped, lifting his head, and his face broke into a tremulous smile when he saw JD--one that didn't quite hide the embarrassed flush that spread across his cheeks. "Hi," he whispered back.
JD wondered what he could say, again feeling the pressure of keeping Perry's spirit's up. It was harder, now that he was older, and would only get worse, the more Perry saw, the more he lost the idealism and hope of his childhood.
He sighed internally, again pushing away the wish to fix everything for the boy. There was only so much he could do, and he'd have to settle for doing that as best he could. Just like at the hospital...
"Want a push?" he asked finally.
"No thank you," Perry murmured. He bit his lip, eyes flickering up to his classmates on the baseball diamond then quickly back down again. "They had too many people," he explained.
JD sighed, nodding. "They had too many people when I wanted to play, too," he confided. "My brother always said so."
"Really?" Perry finally looked up at him, a shock of curly hair falling onto his forehead and partially obscuring the bruise. "They wouldn't let you play either?"
JD reflected ruefully that he'd never before been grateful for being the dorky, unpopular kid whose older brother wouldn't let him hang out with his friends. "No," he said solemnly. "I'd try to play by myself, but it's not the same, huh?"
Perry shook his head, looking down at his shoes. "No," he said quietly. "I don't wanna play on the swings. I wanna play baseball."
JD looked around, but there were several adults keeping an eye on things. And a boy playing catch with an invisible person was sure to attract notice... Damn. "I'm sorry, Perry. I wish I could make this better, too."
"It's okay," Perry said, shrugging. "I can play baseball in gym. Coach almost always makes them put me on a team." He frowned. "Sometimes I have to be the scorekeeper, but sometimes everybody has to be the scorekeeper, so that's okay, I guess. Except Davey Patterson. He's never scorekeeper." Perry sighed, frown deepening. "I don't like him very much," he admitted.
JD nodded in sympathy. "Are you good at baseball?" he asked.
Perry shrugged. "Sort of, I guess. I'm not bad, so I don't know why they don't let me play...I'm a pretty good catcher."
"I wasn't any good," JD said ruefully. "I wanted to be, but I couldn't run fast enough, and I always dropped the ball."
"That's 'cause you got to practice," Perry informed him, face quite serious. "If you never play you can't get no better 'cause you can't practice." He emphasized the word 'practice' subtly, voice taking on a slightly different tone, and JD bit back a smile, wondering just who the young boy was parroting. His gym coach, perhaps? Certainly not his father.
Thoughts of Perry's father made the smile fade a little. "That's true," he said, nodding. "I guess I never got enough practice, because they didn't usually let me play in gym, either."
Perry looked at him, eyes wide. "How come?"
"My mom was afraid I'd get hurt," JD replied, shaking his head. "I had trouble breathing, sometimes, when I was real little, and she didn't want me to make it worse. So I had to sit and watch."
"Oh," Perry said, frowning. "Well, then I guess it'd be hard to get good at it if you never got to play at all. I sometimes get to play. And also sometimes I can get a ball at home and throw it up really high and practice catching it. It's not a real baseball ball," he confided, "but that's probaly good 'cause I don't have a glove to catch it and catching a real baseball ball without a glove hurts sometimes."
JD nodded. "It really does. But maybe sometime we can play catch, when we're at your house, if no one's watching. I'm still not really good at baseball, but I'm better than when I was little."
Perry's eyes went huge. "Really?" he breathed, a grin growing slowly on his face. "You mean it? We can play catch?"
JD nodded. "Yeah! We just have to make sure no one's watching." Not that that was hard. Perry was left almost completely to himself, at home, his parents not seeming to care what he got up to, as long as he didn't break anything. Or make too much noise.
"Okay!" Perry grinned, squirming a little in the seat. "We can go in the back yard 'cause there's more room and it's got a tree we can make pretend is a base and find some rocks for the others and maybe a stick for a bat, too!"
JD grinned widely, about to respond, when suddenly a female voice spoke up from behind them. "Hey, weirdo, who are you talking to?"
He turned to see a girl with brown pigtails and a pink-and-white flowered dress sneering at them, freckled nose wrinkled disdainfully.
Perry flushed, scowling. He didn't turn around, but JD could see the way he stiffened, fingers gripping the rusted chains so tightly his knuckles turned white. "Nobody," he muttered.
"Yuh-huh, I heard you!" The girl countered, and a couple other girls came up behind the first, giggling. They moved around the swingset, standing in front of Perry. The first girl planted her hands on her hips. "Is it your magnaniary friend?"
"No!" Perry said, flushing darker. "Leave me alone, Bethany."
"I bet it is. I bet it's DJ!"
"JD!" Perry corrected automatically, then cringed, realizing he'd fallen into their trap.
The girl giggled, and started chanting, "Crazy Perry, Crazy Perry!"
"Shut up!" Perry shouted, springing up from the swings and darting forward, hands curled into fists.
"Perry!" JD hissed, eyes wide; he jumped from his own swing and moved forward, putting one arm around Perry to hold him while the girls scattered, shrieking.
Perry was trembling beneath JD's arm, tears of anger slipping down his face.
JD held him close as he slumped back, sitting on the ground. No yard duty seemed to be interested in the sudden scattering of girls, since none of them kept screaming, and soon no one was paying attention to them any longer. "You know you're not crazy, right?" JD asked softly, rubbing one hand over Perry's arm. "They're wrong." He slid his hand down, cupping it around one of Perry's small fists, rubbing and massaging gently until the boy's fingers opened again. "But hitting is wrong, too, even if they do make you angry. It's never okay to hit someone."
Perry swallowed. "I know," he said softly. "I'm sorry, JD. Please don't be mad at me."
"I'm not mad," JD said softly, hugging him closer. "I'm not mad at you at all. A little mad at the girls for being mean to you, but not at you. But you have to promise me to remember not to hit. It's hard sometimes, even for me, even now. But you have to keep from doing it. You can't ever take it back, if you hit someone. You can say you're sorry when you say something mean, and fix it. But hitting...it's different. It's harder to fix."
Perry's hand went unconsciously to the bruise on his face, and he nodded, biting his lip. "Okay," he promised softly.
Just then the bell rang, and the kids on the playground began to reluctantly file back toward the building. Perry swallowed, looking at JD. "Do I have to go?" he whispered.
JD nodded, hugging him again. "You do. I wish you didn't, but you do. But I'll be back soon, and we can play catch."
Perry smiled, tremulously. "Promise?"
JD nodded again. "Promise," he said. "And Perry? I'm really proud of you. You're a really good kid, and I'm lucky to be friends with you."
Perry squirmed, looking embarrassed but pleased at the praise, then glanced over his shoulder. When it was clear no one was watching him, he reached into his pocket. "I made you something," he said, pulling out a thrice-folded piece of bright yellow construction paper. "But don't open it yet, okay?"
JD took the paper, wishing there was some way he could take it with him. "Okay," he promised. "Now go into class, Perry. I'll see you later." He watched the small boy trudge away, hands buried in his pockets, and sighed, lowering his eyes to the still-folded piece of paper. Now he had to add the other kids to the list of people who'd hurt his boy. As though that list weren't long enough already.
JD could only pray it didn't get any longer.
* * *
The sound of his alarm clock pulled him rapidly to consciousness, and he groaned, rolling over to hit the snooze button. He closed his eyes, trying to get the dream back, wanting desperately to see what was on the yellow piece of paper, but he couldn't fall back asleep. He sighed, opening his eyes and staring at the ceiling.
He knew this was getting to be a little bit ridiculous. He'd been having these... well, visions, for lack of a better word, for over two months now, and he'd been studying medicine long enough to know that symptoms like these weren't to be taken lightly. He wondered if it were some sort of stress-induced acute onset schizophrenia. There were medications for that, he knew, but... he couldn't help feeling he'd be betraying Perry, if he took them. Perry got called crazy for believing in him, after all...surely he owed the kid that much in return?
Oh, fuck, Dorian... He moaned, bringing his hands up to cover his face. Please tell me you're not feeling loyalty to a hallucination...?
But he was. He sighed, knowing he needed help. Maybe he'd talk to the hospital shrink today...
He sat up, blinking, trying to decide if it was worth the extra effort to shower, when his fingers brushed something, knocking it onto the floor.
He frowned, reaching for the lamp ad flipping it on, then froze.
Half-hidden beneath the bed lay a folded piece of bright yellow construction paper.
"No fucking way," he whispered, half afraid to reach for it, certain if he did it would vanish. But when a minute passed, then two, then five, and the paper was still there, he reached forward with trembling hands and scooped it up. Then, slowly, he unfolded it.
A crayon drawing of two figures, one short with curly red hair, one tall with dark spiky black hair, smiled back up at him. They were holding stick-figure hands, waving under a brightly colored rainbow, a sun that had been defined with a black outline, a few puffy clouds, and some v's JD assumed were birds. Underneath, in a childish scrawl, Perry had written, "Best friends."
But that wasn't what made JD's breath catch in his throat, or what made him yelp, dropping the paper as though it had caught on fire.
Beneath the words "best friends," written in silver crayon, were the words: "To JD, love Perry Cox."
JD closed his eyes again, shaking his head. He had to have read it wrong, that was all. It'd be a different last name when he opened his eyes.
Hesitantly he cracked one eyelid, then the other. Then opened his eyes fully, reaching down and picking up the paper gingerly and unfolding it once more.
It was still staring up at him. Perry Cox. And how many Perry Cox's were there in Pittsburgh, in the late 1960s? He'd been ignoring the anachronisms in his visions, most of the time, but he'd known from the start that whenever they were taking place, it wasn't now.
And Perry wasn't exactly a common name. JD could even recognize a resemblance, in the angry father he'd seen more often than he wanted to, now that he thought of it. No wonder Dr. Cox's rants had reminded him of Perry's father...
"No. No, dude, you're just going nuts," he murmured to himself, wondering if that was true. Wondering if maybe he'd drawn the picture himself, just to fill in the sick fantasies he couldn't get rid of. Didn't want to get rid.
But God, if the visions were real...no wonder Cox was an ass, if that had been his childhood. JD felt a sudden sharp ache, seeing his mentor's behavior in an entirely new light. Seeing the efforts to ward off friendly advances not as the gesture of a prickly social recluse, but as the defensive strategy of an abused idealist. The rants, the name-calling, all of it...they were ways to drive people away, to keep them from getting close enough to hurt him the way he'd been hurt time and time again as a child.
JD's eyes suddenly went wide, as another memory struck him. "Oh holy fuck..." he whispered to himself. "I told him he'd be a good doctor..." He looked at the paper again, and his alarm clock, then did the only rational thing he could think of.
He called in sick.
* * *
JD knew he had to talk to someone about this. He was going to go nuts, if he couldn't. Well...more nuts than he probably already was, at least. And he could only think of one person who wouldn't immediately call the psychiatric hospital and have him admitted.
It still wasn't going particularly well.
"Are you crazy?" Turk asked him for the fifth time. He was sitting on the couch, holding the crayon drawing in his hand and staring at JD, who was pacing like a caged animal.
JD ran a hand back through his hair, shrugging. "Maybe? I don't know. I'd swear I didn't draw that, but then how did I get it? I mean...time travel's impossible, anyway, and I don't go anywhere, right? You would've noticed if I did; it's happened often enough when you're around..."
"You mean when you stare off in the distance and whatnot, then come back and blurt something totally random?" Turk frowned. "I thought you said those were just weird daydreams."
"Sometimes they are," JD admitted, sighing and plunking down into the armchair. "But these...they're faster. I don't lose any time, just the thread of the conversation...And God, Turk, he's such a sweet little kid, and he needs someone to care about him so badly..." He shook his head, pushing himself up to pace again. "I can't see how I would've made him up. My dad wasn't great, but he never hit me. If he had an older brother beating up on him, I'd totally think it was just my own delusions, but this..."
"Perry Cox?" Turk said, staring at the paper again. "You're telling me that Perry Cox drew a picture for you with sunshine and rainbows and birdies and fluffy white clouds? Dr. Cox?"
"Give him a break, he's six..." JD almost laughed, when he'd realized what he'd just said. "And...yeah, I guess I am. It all...all adds up, in a really twisted way. He never calls me by my real name, I know he grew up in Pittsburgh, he's the right age...And I did tell the kid he could be a doctor if he wanted to. But what do I do now? I could drift off into one of those things any time, and I'll have to go back to work eventually..."
"For the record, I think this is crazy," Turk said, waving a finger at JD. "But look... you said these visions are going chronologically, right?" When JD nodded, Turk pursed his lips. "I think they'll end, at some point," he finally said. "I mean... if he's getting older, then eventually you'll catch up to now, and they'll be over. Right?" He spread his hands, eyebrows lifted.
JD considered, wondering why the thought of not seeing little Perry again was such a painful one to him. "I guess so..." he said, running a hand through his hair again. "But... what the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime? Pretend nothing's happening?"
"Exactly," Turk said. He stood, taking JD by the shoulders. "Look, man, I love you," he said. "But if you tell anyone about this, they'll put you away so fast there'll still be a JD-shaped hole in the air in front of whoever you decided to tell."
"Can't argue with that," JD agreed, slumping a little. "Okay. I guess..." he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I guess I just pretend I'm not clinically insane." He half-smiled. "Maybe it won't be too hard. It's not like Cox acts much like Perry, anyway..."
Still, part of him ached deeply, knowing that Dr. Cox might be that sweet, helpless little boy. JD wanted so much more for him, than that bitter, lonely existence...
It occurred to him, as he wandered into the bathroom to shower, that he wasn't sure if he meant Perry the child, or Dr. Cox the man.
* * *
Next Chapter
* * *
Characters: JD/Cox
Rating: R for language and some violence
Description: About a month into his internship, JD starts having some unusual dreams.
It wasn't Perry's home, but JD knew it was one of those dreams; there was a gritty, realistic feel to them that was unmistakable, and instantly distinguishable from the others.
He was standing in what was clearly an elementary schoolyard, on the sidelines of a baseball diamond. Around him, six-year-olds scampered madly about, giggling as they raced around the bases or came up to bat. The batting helmets were absurdly large on them, sliding over their eyes half the time and probably creating more of a hazard than they were preventing, but that didn't seem to bother the kids.
JD felt a smile slip onto his face, watching, trying to discern which grubby child was Perry. After a moment, however, a slow, rhythmic creaking noise from behind him caught his attention, and he turned, feeling his heart plummet.
Perry sat alone on a swing set, legs barely long enough to let his feet touch the dirt beneath him idly kicking, letting him swing a little bit back and forth. His head was ducked down, and he was picking at a hangnail; he hadn't noticed JD's arrival.
JD sighed, heart aching, passing a hand over his hair. He'd hoped Perry at least had friends at school, could be a normal kid away from the hell his father put him through. It was a good thing, he reflected, that he couldn't touch that man. He might've had to kill him, Hippocratic oath be damned.
He walked over in front of the swing set, sitting down before Perry, heart tightening and anger stirring when he saw the large fading bruise across the small boy's forehead, over his right eye. "Hi," he stage-whispered.
Perry jumped, lifting his head, and his face broke into a tremulous smile when he saw JD--one that didn't quite hide the embarrassed flush that spread across his cheeks. "Hi," he whispered back.
JD wondered what he could say, again feeling the pressure of keeping Perry's spirit's up. It was harder, now that he was older, and would only get worse, the more Perry saw, the more he lost the idealism and hope of his childhood.
He sighed internally, again pushing away the wish to fix everything for the boy. There was only so much he could do, and he'd have to settle for doing that as best he could. Just like at the hospital...
"Want a push?" he asked finally.
"No thank you," Perry murmured. He bit his lip, eyes flickering up to his classmates on the baseball diamond then quickly back down again. "They had too many people," he explained.
JD sighed, nodding. "They had too many people when I wanted to play, too," he confided. "My brother always said so."
"Really?" Perry finally looked up at him, a shock of curly hair falling onto his forehead and partially obscuring the bruise. "They wouldn't let you play either?"
JD reflected ruefully that he'd never before been grateful for being the dorky, unpopular kid whose older brother wouldn't let him hang out with his friends. "No," he said solemnly. "I'd try to play by myself, but it's not the same, huh?"
Perry shook his head, looking down at his shoes. "No," he said quietly. "I don't wanna play on the swings. I wanna play baseball."
JD looked around, but there were several adults keeping an eye on things. And a boy playing catch with an invisible person was sure to attract notice... Damn. "I'm sorry, Perry. I wish I could make this better, too."
"It's okay," Perry said, shrugging. "I can play baseball in gym. Coach almost always makes them put me on a team." He frowned. "Sometimes I have to be the scorekeeper, but sometimes everybody has to be the scorekeeper, so that's okay, I guess. Except Davey Patterson. He's never scorekeeper." Perry sighed, frown deepening. "I don't like him very much," he admitted.
JD nodded in sympathy. "Are you good at baseball?" he asked.
Perry shrugged. "Sort of, I guess. I'm not bad, so I don't know why they don't let me play...I'm a pretty good catcher."
"I wasn't any good," JD said ruefully. "I wanted to be, but I couldn't run fast enough, and I always dropped the ball."
"That's 'cause you got to practice," Perry informed him, face quite serious. "If you never play you can't get no better 'cause you can't practice." He emphasized the word 'practice' subtly, voice taking on a slightly different tone, and JD bit back a smile, wondering just who the young boy was parroting. His gym coach, perhaps? Certainly not his father.
Thoughts of Perry's father made the smile fade a little. "That's true," he said, nodding. "I guess I never got enough practice, because they didn't usually let me play in gym, either."
Perry looked at him, eyes wide. "How come?"
"My mom was afraid I'd get hurt," JD replied, shaking his head. "I had trouble breathing, sometimes, when I was real little, and she didn't want me to make it worse. So I had to sit and watch."
"Oh," Perry said, frowning. "Well, then I guess it'd be hard to get good at it if you never got to play at all. I sometimes get to play. And also sometimes I can get a ball at home and throw it up really high and practice catching it. It's not a real baseball ball," he confided, "but that's probaly good 'cause I don't have a glove to catch it and catching a real baseball ball without a glove hurts sometimes."
JD nodded. "It really does. But maybe sometime we can play catch, when we're at your house, if no one's watching. I'm still not really good at baseball, but I'm better than when I was little."
Perry's eyes went huge. "Really?" he breathed, a grin growing slowly on his face. "You mean it? We can play catch?"
JD nodded. "Yeah! We just have to make sure no one's watching." Not that that was hard. Perry was left almost completely to himself, at home, his parents not seeming to care what he got up to, as long as he didn't break anything. Or make too much noise.
"Okay!" Perry grinned, squirming a little in the seat. "We can go in the back yard 'cause there's more room and it's got a tree we can make pretend is a base and find some rocks for the others and maybe a stick for a bat, too!"
JD grinned widely, about to respond, when suddenly a female voice spoke up from behind them. "Hey, weirdo, who are you talking to?"
He turned to see a girl with brown pigtails and a pink-and-white flowered dress sneering at them, freckled nose wrinkled disdainfully.
Perry flushed, scowling. He didn't turn around, but JD could see the way he stiffened, fingers gripping the rusted chains so tightly his knuckles turned white. "Nobody," he muttered.
"Yuh-huh, I heard you!" The girl countered, and a couple other girls came up behind the first, giggling. They moved around the swingset, standing in front of Perry. The first girl planted her hands on her hips. "Is it your magnaniary friend?"
"No!" Perry said, flushing darker. "Leave me alone, Bethany."
"I bet it is. I bet it's DJ!"
"JD!" Perry corrected automatically, then cringed, realizing he'd fallen into their trap.
The girl giggled, and started chanting, "Crazy Perry, Crazy Perry!"
"Shut up!" Perry shouted, springing up from the swings and darting forward, hands curled into fists.
"Perry!" JD hissed, eyes wide; he jumped from his own swing and moved forward, putting one arm around Perry to hold him while the girls scattered, shrieking.
Perry was trembling beneath JD's arm, tears of anger slipping down his face.
JD held him close as he slumped back, sitting on the ground. No yard duty seemed to be interested in the sudden scattering of girls, since none of them kept screaming, and soon no one was paying attention to them any longer. "You know you're not crazy, right?" JD asked softly, rubbing one hand over Perry's arm. "They're wrong." He slid his hand down, cupping it around one of Perry's small fists, rubbing and massaging gently until the boy's fingers opened again. "But hitting is wrong, too, even if they do make you angry. It's never okay to hit someone."
Perry swallowed. "I know," he said softly. "I'm sorry, JD. Please don't be mad at me."
"I'm not mad," JD said softly, hugging him closer. "I'm not mad at you at all. A little mad at the girls for being mean to you, but not at you. But you have to promise me to remember not to hit. It's hard sometimes, even for me, even now. But you have to keep from doing it. You can't ever take it back, if you hit someone. You can say you're sorry when you say something mean, and fix it. But hitting...it's different. It's harder to fix."
Perry's hand went unconsciously to the bruise on his face, and he nodded, biting his lip. "Okay," he promised softly.
Just then the bell rang, and the kids on the playground began to reluctantly file back toward the building. Perry swallowed, looking at JD. "Do I have to go?" he whispered.
JD nodded, hugging him again. "You do. I wish you didn't, but you do. But I'll be back soon, and we can play catch."
Perry smiled, tremulously. "Promise?"
JD nodded again. "Promise," he said. "And Perry? I'm really proud of you. You're a really good kid, and I'm lucky to be friends with you."
Perry squirmed, looking embarrassed but pleased at the praise, then glanced over his shoulder. When it was clear no one was watching him, he reached into his pocket. "I made you something," he said, pulling out a thrice-folded piece of bright yellow construction paper. "But don't open it yet, okay?"
JD took the paper, wishing there was some way he could take it with him. "Okay," he promised. "Now go into class, Perry. I'll see you later." He watched the small boy trudge away, hands buried in his pockets, and sighed, lowering his eyes to the still-folded piece of paper. Now he had to add the other kids to the list of people who'd hurt his boy. As though that list weren't long enough already.
JD could only pray it didn't get any longer.
* * *
The sound of his alarm clock pulled him rapidly to consciousness, and he groaned, rolling over to hit the snooze button. He closed his eyes, trying to get the dream back, wanting desperately to see what was on the yellow piece of paper, but he couldn't fall back asleep. He sighed, opening his eyes and staring at the ceiling.
He knew this was getting to be a little bit ridiculous. He'd been having these... well, visions, for lack of a better word, for over two months now, and he'd been studying medicine long enough to know that symptoms like these weren't to be taken lightly. He wondered if it were some sort of stress-induced acute onset schizophrenia. There were medications for that, he knew, but... he couldn't help feeling he'd be betraying Perry, if he took them. Perry got called crazy for believing in him, after all...surely he owed the kid that much in return?
Oh, fuck, Dorian... He moaned, bringing his hands up to cover his face. Please tell me you're not feeling loyalty to a hallucination...?
But he was. He sighed, knowing he needed help. Maybe he'd talk to the hospital shrink today...
He sat up, blinking, trying to decide if it was worth the extra effort to shower, when his fingers brushed something, knocking it onto the floor.
He frowned, reaching for the lamp ad flipping it on, then froze.
Half-hidden beneath the bed lay a folded piece of bright yellow construction paper.
"No fucking way," he whispered, half afraid to reach for it, certain if he did it would vanish. But when a minute passed, then two, then five, and the paper was still there, he reached forward with trembling hands and scooped it up. Then, slowly, he unfolded it.
A crayon drawing of two figures, one short with curly red hair, one tall with dark spiky black hair, smiled back up at him. They were holding stick-figure hands, waving under a brightly colored rainbow, a sun that had been defined with a black outline, a few puffy clouds, and some v's JD assumed were birds. Underneath, in a childish scrawl, Perry had written, "Best friends."
But that wasn't what made JD's breath catch in his throat, or what made him yelp, dropping the paper as though it had caught on fire.
Beneath the words "best friends," written in silver crayon, were the words: "To JD, love Perry Cox."
JD closed his eyes again, shaking his head. He had to have read it wrong, that was all. It'd be a different last name when he opened his eyes.
Hesitantly he cracked one eyelid, then the other. Then opened his eyes fully, reaching down and picking up the paper gingerly and unfolding it once more.
It was still staring up at him. Perry Cox. And how many Perry Cox's were there in Pittsburgh, in the late 1960s? He'd been ignoring the anachronisms in his visions, most of the time, but he'd known from the start that whenever they were taking place, it wasn't now.
And Perry wasn't exactly a common name. JD could even recognize a resemblance, in the angry father he'd seen more often than he wanted to, now that he thought of it. No wonder Dr. Cox's rants had reminded him of Perry's father...
"No. No, dude, you're just going nuts," he murmured to himself, wondering if that was true. Wondering if maybe he'd drawn the picture himself, just to fill in the sick fantasies he couldn't get rid of. Didn't want to get rid.
But God, if the visions were real...no wonder Cox was an ass, if that had been his childhood. JD felt a sudden sharp ache, seeing his mentor's behavior in an entirely new light. Seeing the efforts to ward off friendly advances not as the gesture of a prickly social recluse, but as the defensive strategy of an abused idealist. The rants, the name-calling, all of it...they were ways to drive people away, to keep them from getting close enough to hurt him the way he'd been hurt time and time again as a child.
JD's eyes suddenly went wide, as another memory struck him. "Oh holy fuck..." he whispered to himself. "I told him he'd be a good doctor..." He looked at the paper again, and his alarm clock, then did the only rational thing he could think of.
He called in sick.
* * *
JD knew he had to talk to someone about this. He was going to go nuts, if he couldn't. Well...more nuts than he probably already was, at least. And he could only think of one person who wouldn't immediately call the psychiatric hospital and have him admitted.
It still wasn't going particularly well.
"Are you crazy?" Turk asked him for the fifth time. He was sitting on the couch, holding the crayon drawing in his hand and staring at JD, who was pacing like a caged animal.
JD ran a hand back through his hair, shrugging. "Maybe? I don't know. I'd swear I didn't draw that, but then how did I get it? I mean...time travel's impossible, anyway, and I don't go anywhere, right? You would've noticed if I did; it's happened often enough when you're around..."
"You mean when you stare off in the distance and whatnot, then come back and blurt something totally random?" Turk frowned. "I thought you said those were just weird daydreams."
"Sometimes they are," JD admitted, sighing and plunking down into the armchair. "But these...they're faster. I don't lose any time, just the thread of the conversation...And God, Turk, he's such a sweet little kid, and he needs someone to care about him so badly..." He shook his head, pushing himself up to pace again. "I can't see how I would've made him up. My dad wasn't great, but he never hit me. If he had an older brother beating up on him, I'd totally think it was just my own delusions, but this..."
"Perry Cox?" Turk said, staring at the paper again. "You're telling me that Perry Cox drew a picture for you with sunshine and rainbows and birdies and fluffy white clouds? Dr. Cox?"
"Give him a break, he's six..." JD almost laughed, when he'd realized what he'd just said. "And...yeah, I guess I am. It all...all adds up, in a really twisted way. He never calls me by my real name, I know he grew up in Pittsburgh, he's the right age...And I did tell the kid he could be a doctor if he wanted to. But what do I do now? I could drift off into one of those things any time, and I'll have to go back to work eventually..."
"For the record, I think this is crazy," Turk said, waving a finger at JD. "But look... you said these visions are going chronologically, right?" When JD nodded, Turk pursed his lips. "I think they'll end, at some point," he finally said. "I mean... if he's getting older, then eventually you'll catch up to now, and they'll be over. Right?" He spread his hands, eyebrows lifted.
JD considered, wondering why the thought of not seeing little Perry again was such a painful one to him. "I guess so..." he said, running a hand through his hair again. "But... what the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime? Pretend nothing's happening?"
"Exactly," Turk said. He stood, taking JD by the shoulders. "Look, man, I love you," he said. "But if you tell anyone about this, they'll put you away so fast there'll still be a JD-shaped hole in the air in front of whoever you decided to tell."
"Can't argue with that," JD agreed, slumping a little. "Okay. I guess..." he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I guess I just pretend I'm not clinically insane." He half-smiled. "Maybe it won't be too hard. It's not like Cox acts much like Perry, anyway..."
Still, part of him ached deeply, knowing that Dr. Cox might be that sweet, helpless little boy. JD wanted so much more for him, than that bitter, lonely existence...
It occurred to him, as he wandered into the bathroom to shower, that he wasn't sure if he meant Perry the child, or Dr. Cox the man.
* * *
Next Chapter
* * *
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 28 May 2007 00:20 (UTC)My goodness, please update often and soon! I can't take not knowing more of what happens.
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Date: 28 May 2007 00:37 (UTC)Anyhoo, there is just something about this story that makes me both happy and sad at the littlest details.
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Date: 28 May 2007 00:42 (UTC)(Also, than you for posting because scrubsfic's been very slow lately and it's driving me crazy XD.)
My heart, it melts. ;3;
Date: 28 May 2007 00:52 (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2007 01:12 (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2007 01:15 (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 28 May 2007 01:15 (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2007 02:35 (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2007 04:42 (UTC)But this one intrigues me so much! I love the idea of JD comforting "little" Perry in some supernatural sort of way. Almost like JD comforting Jack, so to speak.
Great job, by the way, on SPaG, not to mention pure context and flow of story. It's awesome, and difficult to find in fics these days.
I do have one small confusion, however. I'd read in another comment or other that JD didn't know Perry's first name yet. I'm not very well-versed on Scrubs and nitpicky details just yet (only been in the fandom since late March), but the question is that if JD didn't know Perry's first name, how would he know where the man grew up...?
I'm sorry if I'm being dense or *too* nitpicky; I know how irritating that is XD
But still, amazing story; I absolutely adore where you've both gone with this. And again, the flow of the story and SPaG is just incredible-definitely in the top two I've read thus far.
Great story, and I'll love to see more :)
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Date: 28 May 2007 05:49 (UTC)i can't wait for the next chapter ^^
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Date: 28 May 2007 06:34 (UTC)I want so badly to read more of this story ^^;
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Date: 28 May 2007 08:13 (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2007 10:43 (UTC)Awww, I just felt so sorry for little Perry when he wasn't allowed to play baseball. ='(
I'll be keeping an eye out for the next update! =D
Lucy xxx
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Date: 28 May 2007 17:15 (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2007 17:41 (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 May 2007 17:47 (UTC)no subject
Date: 29 May 2007 10:47 (UTC)no subject
Date: 29 May 2007 14:43 (UTC)*Races to next chapter*
--Alissa
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Date: 30 May 2007 20:36 (UTC)Finally JD found out it was Dr. Cox. It was a little weird that he didn't think that it was maybe Dr. Cox before he saw the note.
Great chapter.
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Date: 14 Jun 2007 02:34 (UTC)So. Goddamn. CUTE!!!
I love this fic arc!
~m
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Date: 25 Jun 2007 03:12 (UTC)And the story doth unravel, and yea, it is so foretold to our young hero that the childe in his Visions is none other than Percival Cox, our hero's Mentor. Wond'rous, aye.
Erm. Anyway. I thought the schoolyard scene was extremely well-written; Perry being left out of school games and being bullied for having a magnaniary friend was very touching. Next chapter, stat!