My Reality

Chapter One

It almost never rained here. There were no drips against the window, and no incessant beeping of monitors filling the air. The floor was cold, hard wood that seemed to absorb any heat put into it, no matter how warm the rest of the room was. The overhead light hung from a chain in the ceiling of the small storage area, and there was only one small, blurry window that didn't let enough light in to warm it very well.

It was always cold.

January held the weather in cold, relentless air and snow. The room itself was little more then a large closet, with a crooked hook attached to the wall.

All in all, it was a rather normal space.

It would have been normal, if it hadn't been for the broken man lying in the corner, arms wrapped around his knees. He was skinny, barely holding enough weight on his bones to support basic function to his body. His hair was cut short to his head in a near military style. A few of the longer strands curled tightly to his ears. He wore filthy blue jeans that had faded over time, and were frayed at the cuffs and stress points.

The man rested his head against the wall, eyes still closed as his forehead registered the cold of the drywall paneling. He wasn't sure if he actually felt the chill, or if he just knew it was there.

The hooded sweatshirt he wore had once been a dark green, but had faded out. Like the jeans, it was also frayed at the stress points, and the pocket in front had started to come apart at the seams. The hood was pulled over his head in an effort to keep from shivering. His hands shook inside the front pocket, and he swallowed hard.

He opened eyes the color of ice to look outside the permanently shut window. Dark circles marred the high cheekbones on his angular face, and his eyes cast a hollow look through the tempered, blurry glass. Like the glass, his eyes were also clouded over and hazy.

Distantly, he heard a door slam. It made him jump slightly. A shiver ran down his back out of habit, and the fear gripping his chest was familiar.

The door to the small room opened. A rather healthy-looking man in his mid-twenties smiled as he entered. He wore his brown hair long to his chin, and his eyes were green and clear.

"Pacing Perry," he greeted as he leaned against the wall.

Perry Cox only looked up in silence. He rarely spoke anymore. It did little to ease the ache in his heart, and didn't improve his situation. Sometimes when he was alone, he did remind himself why he was here and how he had gotten there in the first place.

"No words for me today then?" the other man asked. Joshua Andrews, who had once looked as haggard as the man in the floor, now glowed with health and vigor. He had been clean now for nearly six months.

And while Perry hadn't seen the withdrawal Joshua had been through, he had the distinct impression that the sober man wasn't okay in the head anymore.

Elijah had been outright eerie in the pleasure he had taken. He had derived a twisted joy of torturing Perry into the brink of darkness, had grasped happiness in driving him to insanity.

If Perry looked at it in a roundabout way, he supposed it was Elijah who had brought him here now.

Joshua had taken a decidedly different turn from his twin brother, Elijah. Joshua could and often did get angry or sad. He spoke with Perry as one talks to an old friend not seen for years.

"So quiet today," Joshua said when Perry still didn't speak.

Joshua, for the most part, seemed grateful and appreciative of Perry. Joshua often said that it was because of him that Elijah was gone. Since Elijah was gone, he was now free to do as he wished and stop taking the drugs.

Perry had snorted at that at the time. Now, he knew better.

There was nothing creepy about Joshua's stance, or even his presence. He looked at Perry fondly, as one might look at a pet.

Perry knew he was more then a pet to Joshua. To Joshua, Perry was simply a friend that was always around, a confidante even.

Joshua sat down on the floor casually, rolling his backpack to the ground with him so that he could reach it.

"I had the standard day, Elijah; you?" Joshua went on as he crossed his legs in front of him.

Perry didn't reply.

"School was okay, but I tell you; my English professor's a real ball-buster. Then work was just the same tired crap."

The talking was sometimes the worst. Joshua talked a lot these days, often about how close he was to getting his GED, or how work was awful. Sometimes he talked about his twin, and the people they had driven to suicide.

Other times, Joshua would come in and simply stare at him as Perry's body shook every other week with withdrawal.

In the beginning, Perry suspected Joshua drugged him half the time in order to sedate him so he couldn't escape. Perry couldn't remember now what the reason had actually ended up being.

For the past two months, Joshua would keep him steady on drugs for a week, and then leave him alone for another. It was odd, the way Joshua sometimes cared for him as one takes care of a younger sibling.

But the other times, the man would lose his temper in a state of fury, and beat the daylights out of him, all the while calling him Eli. In both moments of love and hate, the raping had started.

Perry wasn't sure he even registered it as rape anymore. Half the time, he didn't know what was going on around him, let alone what was being done to him.

But those he cared for most were safe. No one was coming to get them anymore, and they could at least sleep at ease without pushing a chair beneath the doorknob.

As steady and sure as ever, though, Perry saw Newbie's blurry, faded image against the wall near Joshua's own usual place. Newbie went through moods in that small room. Sometimes he was angry. Sometimes he was sad. Other times, his earnest face was desperate as he screamed at him not to give up and to just hang on a little longer. Joshua had to let him go eventually, right?

Joshua never asked about what Perry stared at, and Perry never told.

But Perry realized very early on why Joshua's moods fluctuated so much around him, and why sometimes Joshua talked to him as an old buddy, and other times called him hateful names and threw painful blows to his battered body. The fly in the ointment, as it were, had been the unusual addition of sex.

Joshua was insane; Perry had little doubt of that.

Even that, however, wasn't the reason. It was simple to Perry when Joshua didn't give him drugs, and blurred beyond recognition when he was high.

Joshua had become the captor now. And when his moods went to the stars and back, he didn't see Pacing Perry lying in the floor.

He saw the brother who had died six months prior, the brother who up until then, had been there for him and with him all the time.

When Joshua had picked St. Paul, Minnesota, he had simply said that he missed the lights, and this city had plenty of lights for him to talk to.

It wasn't long before Joshua rarely called him Pacing Perry anymore. It wasn't long before Joshua started pumping his system full of the toxins Perry had desperately tried to quit.

Joshua stared at Perry idly now as he fell silent. This was an off week for Perry, and his system felt wired from withdrawal and need.

"You're being too quiet," Joshua complained as he stood and hitched his backpack over his shoulder again. "Brothers are supposed to talk to each other. I mean, I won't lie, Eli. God knows we haven't been there for each other in the past; and then you were gone for a couple of months back then. But we're twins. We're brothers."

Joshua slid a clean hand down Perry's neck, feeling the other man shudder in protest.

With a sigh, Joshua stood back up. "I'll come and see you again in the morning, Eli. Good night."

Clutching his hands harder in the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, Perry leaned his head against the wall again with a broken sigh.

Newbie gave him a wave.

XXXXXXXXX

The first time he had attempted to escape, it had been borne from an intense desperation that clawed at his starving belly.

It hadn't gone over well with Joshua, who accused him of trying to leave him all alone in the dark with no lights to talk to. The stars weren't kind to Joshua, and what was Eli trying to do to him, exactly?

The second time, it was a simple fear for life and limb. By that time, Perry had been weak from dehydration and his system had been swirling with narcotics. Joshua had been clean at the time, but angry at his "brother" for trying to leave him alone.

And after two months of being there, Joshua didn't have to use restraints anymore, simply because he began using the threat of going back to California. He missed the little boy sometimes; did the little boy miss him?

Fear had seized his heart and throat at that, and Perry just brokenly agreed that he could stay a little longer.

Perry looked up at the window gain. Icy frost had begun to coat the glass. He hadn't felt real air and weather on his face since he'd arrived to this tiny room.

But this tiny room had become his home and life to him. He struggled for senses of routine and normalcy, but Joshua never came in at the same time, and Perry couldn't, for the life of him, remember what month it was. He only knew it had been cold when they left California, and it was still cold here.

Hope was something surreal to him, and he rarely did it anymore. He had even begged for death more times then he could remember, but apparently, the "higher powers that be" wouldn't release him to it.

During those times, Newbie was often angry with him. When the moments passed, Newbie was nearly as broken as he was.

It had been hard, keeping his mind intact. He struggled to keep some sort of routine as he woke in the morning and slept at night. He counted whatever he could, even if it was as small as the number of times Joshua came in during the day. He flipped the overhead light on and off, and counted how many times he did it. He banged a wrist into the hardwood floor, keeping the number in his head all the while of how many times he did it.

A permanent bruise had bloomed across the skin of his wrist where he repeatedly thumped it against the floor or wall.

Four days with Elijah had been a torturous hell of Elijah's making. Joshua seemed to prefer leaving Perry to his own devices, punishing a dead brother for years of abuse.

Perry wasn't sure if he even understood Joshua's motives anymore. He wasn't sure how much more he could take of it. He wasn't sure if Joshua's neighbors even knew what the man kept in the small apartment.

He was sure that he could get out. He had to. Newbie was waiting for him, Jack was getting older. He was a doctor; didn't that count for something?

Perry didn't trust to hope anymore, but some part of him wouldn't let him give up and just throw in the towel of life all together. He'd thought about it more then a few times, and those times also resulted in Newbie being angry with him in the room.

He'd promised; he couldn't just break that promise because of how long he'd been there.

Somewhere in his hazy, clouded mind of numbers, Perry knew that Newbie hadn't given up. And Perry knew that he couldn't throw it in either.

XXXXXXXXXX

JD looked outside as he stood at the nurse's station. It was cloudy and humid today, with a warm breeze that smelled of rain rolling off the trees. His knee ached with the promise of precipitation, and the cane had become a necessity for the day.

"Here's Ms. Patterson's blood test results, Bambi." Carla looked at his dazed face as he stared and snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Earth to Bambi; you with us?"

JD shook his head and took the proffered lab results. "Yeah. I was daydreaming."

"What else is new?" Carla asked with a warm smile. She had taken to mothering him more then usual over the six months Perry had been gone. "You okay today?"

JD frowned as he glanced over the lab results. "I am, but Ms. Patterson's not going to be."

"Lung cancer?"

Nodding, JD leaned on the cane as his knee protested putting weight on it all together.

"Hey, Carla…do me a favor?"

"Depends, Bambi. What is it?"

"Can you snag an orderly somewhere to take Mr. Roberts to Radiology? He needs a belly scan."

Carla sighed. "Bambi, I'm kind of swamped here."

"No problem," JD replied idly as he started heading for the room belonging to the newest addition to the oncology floor. He mentally tried to knock himself in the head in an attempt to focus as he flagged down an intern named Derek. "Yo, Lucy."

Derek turned with dread in his stomach. "Yes, Dr. Dorian?"

"Go tell the freight train in room 305 that she's being transferred to the oncology ward." JD slapped the chart against the intern's chest. "Let her know she's got lung cancer on the way."

"But I've never given news like that before!"

"Get used to it, Jenny." JD turned and walked off, leaving a stammering intern behind.

A fellow intern and friend, a brown-headed girl named Susan, stopped beside of him.

"God, I hate giving bad news," Derek muttered, looking over the chart. "And he's not even going to come with me."

Susan shrugged at him. "I heard when the old attending physician went missing about six months ago that Dr. Dorian had a nervous breakdown or something, and now he's not quite all there anymore."

"Who believes rumors in hospitals?" Derek asked witheringly. "Besides, I don't think that guy's ever had a nervous moment in his entire life."

Susan shrugged. "They said it wasn't just the attending physician though; that it was his boyfriend."

"What do you know, Susie?" Derek muttered, though he knew she hated the name.

"Hey, have fun telling that patient she's got lung cancer. She threw a water pitcher at a nurse's head about an hour ago."

"Come on, Susan…help a guy out here," Derek replied.

"So anyway, about Dr. D," Susan went on as they headed for the patient's room. "You remember about six or seven months ago when that doctor went missing?"

"Yeah. I don't remember his name…"

"Who cares? The police think he's dead now anyway. Some crazy patient kidnapped him is the rumor, and that Dr. Dorian was hooked up with him. They were even taking care of some kid together. But then he just vanished! One of the nurses said that ever since, Dr. Dorian's been an ass from hell."

"He's not too bad. He's gotta teach us somehow though."

"And rumor has it that it's also why he has to use the cane sometimes," Susan went on, the gleam of gossip in her brown eyes. "Because the crazy guy shot his knee out. They say when it hurts and he has to use the cane, that it's because he's trying to hold his mind together so he doesn't have another nervous breakdown at work."

"Hey, dumb and dumber," a sharp voice whistled at them both.

Feeling much like a deer in the headlights, both interns whirled around reluctantly.

One of the board members stood there, arms firmly crossed against her chest. Her smile was slow and easy, but reminiscent of a jungle cat getting ready to pounce.

"Let me tell you guys some gossip secrets," she said, the grin becoming feral. "In this hospital, I heard about these two kids who thought it would be fun to talk about the private lives of people they don't know about. You want to know what happened to them?"

Derek gulped, and wondered if shaking his head would help. Susan, ever the brave one, stepped forward and crossed her own arms.

"No; what?" she asked.

The woman raised an eyebrow. "I'm not sure. They never found the bodies. Don't you two have something better to do with your time then stand around and talk about other people?"

"We're on our way now."

"Delightful, Smurfette, really," Jordan Sullivan mentioned. "But I could use some help in another room. Dr. Reid sent me. As you're not the one carrying the chart, I've got a job for you."

Derek sped off as quickly as possible.

Elliot looked up when Jordan returned with a reluctant intern. "Susan, just the girl for the job."

Susan didn't talk about Dr. Dorian anymore after she washed out bedpans for the next six hours.

XXXXXXXXX

"I think it's time, Eli. I'm tired of Minnesota," Joshua complained that night as he sat in the small room with Perry.

Perry looked at him tiredly. "Where do you suggest you move to?"

"You don't want to come with me?"

He didn't know later why he suddenly felt today might be the day. "I want to go home, Josh. I'm not your brother. Your brother died over half a year ago."

Joshua looked at him. "You're not making any sense, Eli. I think you need your shot again."

"I don't want another shot."

"Don't be hateful," Joshua admonished him as he stood and retrieved the necessary equipment.

"I want to go home," Perry said again as Joshua entered the room. "You can't keep me here forever. I am not your brother. I'm the doctor that tried to help you."

"That was a long time ago. Pacing Perry's not even alive anymore."

No, I don't suppose he really is…Perry thought with a grimace.

"I want to go home."

Joshua seemed agitated by the words as he rolled up the dirty green sleeve of Perry's sweatshirt to get to a vein. He tapped the darkly bruised skin. "Your veins are hiding today, Eli."

"I'm not your brother. Your brother is dead."

"No, he's not," Joshua argued and slid the needle into the vein. "You are very much alive."

It was an old argument that Perry had given up on three months ago. Tonight, he felt he could make it one more time.

And it resulted in a lot of yelling, which resulted in a rather vengeful beating that left Perry lying in the floor with blood streaming from his nose and mouth. His hand hurt the worst, indicating that it might be broken. The pain that had been excruciating at the time but was now a dull ache made him wonder if he'd bruised a lung or broken a rib. Both were probable injuries that he didn't want to think about too closely.

Then Joshua had restrained him again, snagging the too-tight cable ties over the hook that had been shoved unprofessionally into the closet wall. More drugs had come after that, pushing Perry into a dizzying world that he wasn't sure he could even bear to look at anymore.

Joshua had raped him again.

Perry closed his eyes and thought of home.

When Joshua returned to the room hours later, he hoisted Perry over his shoulder unexpectedly. Perry groaned in drugged pain, not even bothering to ask what was going on.

Joshua dumped him into the backseat of the car, looping another cable tie tightly around his ankles. Perry tried to form words with his mouth, but between the drugs and the split lip that still bled, he could only form a grunt.

Joshua didn't reply to it. "I hate you, Elijah."

Perry didn't answer as the concussion finally got to him, and he passed out in the backseat.

XXXXXXXX

The humidity was beginning to drive JD insane. He wiped a thin layer of sweat from his face, and leaned on the counter with his head bent to his arms.

"Hasn't Janitor fixed the AC yet?" JD groaned.

"You'll live, Bambi," Carla replied, patting him on the head, even though she felt like she was going to melt before too long.

JD sighed as he closed his eyes. The clouds were just begging to rain; it did absolutely nothing for sore joints.

The odd pain hit him then, centering at the long-healed wound in his shoulder and collarbone. He stood up at that, rubbing the scar in thought. That one almost never hurt.

"Bambi, you okay?"

"Yeah. Just some heartburn," JD muttered, sensing bitter irony in his words. "You seen my two not-so-dumb as the rest interns?"

"One of them is still babying Ms. Patterson," Carla replied absently as she filed a few charts into the cabinet. "The other one's taking a smoke break."

JD snorted at that. "How original," he grumbled. He hopped up to sit on the counter and study the chart in front of him.

It was when Susan, still reeking of cigarette smoke, came peeling out of the elevator.

"Dr. Dorian," she said breathlessly as she struggled to breathe normally.

"Smoke another one, Brownie," JD remarked as he didn't look up. "And then run your marathon for organic lunchmeat not taken from cows."

"Injured…man…lying…hospital…" Susan managed to pant out as she leaned over to try and catch her breathing.

JD did look up at that. "Excuse me?"

Susan finally stood back up, trying to get her lungs to function normally. "There's a patient…concussion and broken bones…lying in front of the hospital."

JD hopped off the counter, limping along with the cane as Carla came with him. Susan still breathed slightly hard as they walked outside.

Carla gasped harshly, and JD inhaled sharply. Susan looked at them both as she began to ascertain the injuries.

"Dr. Dorian, are you going to help?" Susan asked, but the stricken pale face that stared back at her looked terrified and shocked. "Dr. Dorian!" she tried again.

Carla looked from JD to the broken man lying in the ground. "Bambi, snap out of it and help!"

JD opened his mouth to speak when the gunshot rang through the air, and a sickening thud of bones and flesh bounced the ground beside his feet.

Susan screamed and almost immediately vomited into the bushes at the body that had landed in the ground beside of JD's feet.

JD felt the overwhelming shock hit his system all at once as Turk and Elliot exited the building after hearing from a patient that something was going on outside.

Elliot pushed the scream down as JD collapsed on the sidewalk.

Turk caught him before he could hit the ground as his cane clattered on the cement.

"Susan," Elliot snapped. "Go grab a gurney and another nurse. Turk, take JD inside and get an orderly to get this body off the walkway." Her system shook as she spat out the orders, but everyone else seemed well and truly shocked.

The voices were blurred above his head, but Perry looked up to the warm, brown face above him.

"Perry?" she asked gently.

Perry didn't answer. He looked around still and saw Turk holding a collapsed JD. He must be hallucinating again. The exhaustion kicked in once more, and his head rolled back to the cement in unconsciousness.

"Someone needs to call Jordan and the police," Turk mentioned as he carried JD back inside the hospital.

Elliot nodded. "Thanks for volunteering." She and another nurse rolled the gurney outside, an orderly on their heels to raise Perry to the bed.

Turk groaned, but complied as he found a room to put JD down in. He picked up the bedside phone to make the necessary calls.

Fading in and out of consciousness, Perry felt like something was slipping away from him. As he focused on the faces in front of him as best he could, he tried to say their names, but they wouldn't force themselves from his mouth.

Blood tasted bitter on his tongue, and he coughed to the side.

"It'll be okay, Perry. It will," a kind voice said warmly beside of him.

Perry frowned and smiled at the same time at that. He had forgotten what it was like to be warm.

Continues with Chapter 2