My Shattered Reality

Chapter 1 Drunk

I, sighed as he leaned forward on the railing of the wheelchair ramp and looked out into the parking lot, seeing it without really seeing it.

That seemed to be my whole life, now.

It started when Kim had told me she was pregnant.

With my kid.

It wasn’t something I could easily handle, knowing I was a father.

But that problem was solved when she got an abortion. Neither one of us was ready. After that, she moved to New York and we hadn’t talked to each other in the two months since.

I missed her. And it didn’t matter.

But I had also finally taken a good look at my life, and I was starting to realize things I should have realized years ago.

But I heard some beeping from my hip and looked at my pager.

Damnit…

I turned on his heel and ran up to room 206 in the ICU and ran into Mr. Donakelli’s room, with Elliot already there.

“His heart stopped!” She called out. “JD, get the paddles…Carla, get the adrenalin. NOW!”

Both of us did as we were told, for the 87-year-old man wasn’t the strongest of men, and he needed our help right NOW.

We were back there a moment later.

“CLEAR!” Elliot cried out.

She started to try and revive him, and Carla was right behind her. I helped wherever I could. Which wasn’t much.

Figures.

But after a few minutes, the heart monitor started beeping again, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

“That was close,” Elliot said. “Cardiac Arrest. Carla, get Dr. Cox down here, he’s gonna want to know about this.”
They all went their separate ways, and I went back to the roof.

It was my little spot. It was a single corner of the roof. It had a great view, and I loved it, especially the view of the mountains. But it was private, secluded, in the shade, making it unfavorable to everyone.

Except someone who wanted to be alone to think.

Like me.

I sighed when I got there and spent a little while simply watching the city buzz around.

At one point, I wondered if I was starting to spend too much time around the hospital, for I was starting to see the city as a body. The streets were blood vessels, the buildings were organs, the cars were one blood cell, the people the other. I chose the cars to be the white ones today. The street vendors were cholesterol, and traffic was clots, and the many awnings were skin. The big new Intel building at one end was the head, and there were two long parks at the other end, for legs, with the trees being hair…

Yep. Too much time. And yet, in my head, I was trying to think of how to spend more time here.

I looked back on my recent life once again, something I seemed to be doing a lot recently.

But I heard my pager beep and sighed once again.

I went down and saw Dr. Cox awaiting me.

“Listen up, Carol, I am about to watch the one-hour movie version of my favorite soap, for that next hour, you will take on any cases for me. No questions, no arguments.”
“Why should I have to take on your cases so you can watch TV instead of recording it like the rest of us have to?” I asked.

Uh-oh, gonna have to work on ‘thinking before speaking’…he’s redder that the blood on Turk’s shirt this morning…

“Listen here, Angie, I don’t give a damn what you or anyone else here thinks or feels. I have had one hell of a day, and I have been looking forward to this all week, so I am going to go now, and when I come back, everything better be in order. Got it, Newbie?”

Blank face, blank face, blank face…

“Yes, sir.”

He gave me his really weird look, but simply went back to the lounge for whatever it was he was doing.

I shook my head sadly at several charts with my name on them. Soon to be literally.

I kept up my new little blank face. I used to use little daydreams and random words to break tension and such, to get through awkward moments, things like that, around here.

I gave up on those very recently. As in, I gave up on them a few days ago.

Now I just opted for something that so far seemed to be suiting me much better. Whenever one of those unwanted moments came, my face became blank. I was just a little emotional void that happened to have legs.

I went through my rounds robotically.

Funny, you save three people’s lives in one day and yet you don’t seem to care. I used to feel so proud at the end of the day.

Weird.

I guess this is how everyone else feels. You save someone’s life, and you feel great. But if you screw up, you still feel terrible, like you should have done something. Just like always.

That would explain so much.

I finished my day with not only a blank face, but a slightly blank mind, as well.

I went outside and looked for my bike.

Janitor, being the bastard he is, completely trashed my scooter. Rather than getting a new one, I got a whole new bike. It was a sleek, metallic, black, thankfully wasn’t that loud, and it was definitely much faster. I loved riding it for no real reason. It was calming, in a really twisted way. Maybe feeling the wind rush around me, or maybe the speed, the feeling that any second now you’re going to die. That slight adrenalin rush, I think that’s what I like.

So I threw my small black backpack (also new) into the compartment, hopped on, and drove off.

I started to go back, jumped through the skate rats’ flaming hoop, and actually made it with a total indifference, and I took the longest way home I could think of.

But eventually, I did reach my apartment and walked in to see Elliot rushing around, trying to get ready for work. I didn’t bother to tell her to calm down. It would just make her more frantic.

I vaguely wondered why it took me years to figure that out.

Was I really that stupid?

She rushed out the door, leaving me to myself.

Thank God. I was starting to be a little overwhelmed.

And people also seemed to have troubled grasping the concept that I wanted to be alone, recently. I guess it’s because in recent years, I was always the clingy guy who was desperate for someone to be there.

Not any more. I just wanted to be alone, so it’s easier to keep to myself. So it’s easier to not get hurt.

Losing Kim then Jamie – the gender-neutral name they had given the baby before the abortion – had been hard. Maybe it was because I had a lot to deal with along with that. Maybe it was because I was looking forward to finally being someone important: a father. Or maybe it was the sense of loss. Loss of love, loss of life, loss of control.

And that was also exactly how I felt: lost.

But there wasn’t much I could do. So I sucked it up and kept to myself nowadays.

So I opened my backpack and spent the next few hours going through paperwork.

I had just finished it when Turn walked in.

“Wazzup, Vanilla Bear?”
“Nothin’ large. Wazup wit you?”
“Nothin. Gonna watch ESPN with me?”
I shrugged. Personally, I didn’t really care.

Turk took that as a yes and pulled out two beers and tossed on at me, and I caught it effortlessly, and Turk turned the TV to something about basketball or something like that. I wasn’t really paying much attention.

But after a while I grew tired of this, and I got up.

“Vanilla Bear?” Turk asked, shutting off the TV.

“I think I’ll take a ride on my bike.”

Oh, that’s another thing. I finally became realistic and stopped naming my stuff.
“Are you sure? What’s wrong?”

I knew he was worried. Most people expected me to just collapse at any moment, which was dumb. I mean, I’ve been rejected before. Why should this be any different? Why would Kim be any different?

Because you lost a lot more this time…

I had that thought when my hand touched the doorknob.

“JD?” Turk called out. “You didn’t answer.”

“I just felt…I dunno…I just need to get out of here.”
“JD, can you at least talk to me? We haven’t said more than a few words back and forth ever since Kim and Jamie.”

I froze.

“Don’t. Mention. Them. To. Me.” I said a bit dangerously. I knew it was kind of stupid, but I didn’t really care. I already felt tainted with that venom in my voice, but I didn’t care. Yet.

“JD, you need to talk and get through this.”

So far I was still looking at the door. I didn’t change my view.

“There is nothing to ‘get through’. Kim and I had something, and then it was lost. Just another lost girlfriend. Rejection isn’t new to me. It’s been there all my life.”
“Then why are you so touchy about them? This is different and you know it.”
I gave up and opened the door.

“John Dorian, come back here right now!”
“Since when do you talk to me like that?” I said, finally whipping around to face his best friend.

“Since you started withdrawing. Right now it may not be much, but it’s getting worse and worse. We’re all worried that you’re heading down a dangerous path.”
“You know what? This is my apartment. Get out of it. Now.”
“JD-”

“Now!” I glared at my currently ex-best friend.

Turk grabbed his bag and glared at me. He was about to hand something over, the key to the apartment that I had given him a long time ago, but then he held his hand back and continued to walk out and down the hall.

I sighed and went out to my bike and got up, and drove to the ‘Hospital Bar’, as we started to call our popular spot.

I walked in and groaned at who was there.

Is it just me, or does Dr. Cox always seem to follow me?

But I decided to just ignore him and took a stool a few seats down, and he came over and sat next to me anyway.

“What are you doing here, Michelle?”

“Why the hell do you keep calling girls’ names?”

“Because that’s what you are, right?”

“Or is it just because you’re some sort of sadist? Love seeing others in discomfort and pain?”

Cox stared at me but simply swiveled in his seat and turned to the bartender, who smiled at me, as I was a regular.

“Appletini?” she offered.

“No. Two beers.”
Candy looked at me, having already turned around think I would order an Appletini.

“Since when do you take actual alcohol?”

“Since I had a reason to.”
She frowned but nodded. She got me the beers, while Cox looked, on a little surprised, and I didn’t take long to drain the first bottle, but I looked up as I opened the second bottle.

“Is there any reason why you’re staring at me?”

“Since when do you actually drink?”

“Since when do you actually care?” I asked. “In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t’ have some stupid little hospital crowd to try and impress or anything. So lay off and stop pretending to care. And remember: out here, we all on the same damn level.”

He just stared at me in shock while I drained my drink. Candy came back.

“Anything else?” she said.

“Same order,” I requested. “In fact, make it a double.”
She stared but nodded, and I made my way though those, too, thankfully feeling my mind go numb.

This went down a few more times, with Cox just ordering a few more drinks, definitely not as much as me.

I finally swiveled my seat, making me incredibly dizzy.

“Wassu’ with you, Cox Doctor?” I asked.

“Newbie…you’re drunk. How were you planning on going home?”
“I swear to drunk I’m not God.”

That didn’t come out right.
He just stared.

“I was gonna ride my…ride my…bike…yeah, my metal baby.”

“No, way, Newbie.”

He turned back around.

“Candice!”

“It’s Candy,” she said, whipping around, her black and blue hair going everywhere.

“Whatever. I’m going to have to take Newbie here home tonight and you are going to not tow his bike outta here until he comes back tomorrow afternoon. Got it?”

She rolled her eyes and nodded.

“Perry, my man,” I wheezed out. “I am so perfectly fine…”

But when I got up, I nearly fell right back over. This did not bode well.

“Right Newbie, you’re juuuuust fine.”
“Thank you. See…was that too hard to say?”
“Newbie, that didn’t even make sense. Come on, upsy daisy.” He held onto my arm and dragged me out of the bar and into his car.

“Coxy, I am so fine-”

“Not that again,” he said. “Come on, you’re going home. Now.”

I finally just gave up, not feeling up to fighting my mentor, and he shoved me into the car. I didn’t really care when I hit my head, so I just sat there as he got in, as well, and started driving, me ranting, most of it something about my fantasies.

At one point, I figured out we were walking again, and he was dragging me someplace.

We reached Turks and Carla’s place, and he pounded on the door. A very pregnant Carla answered.

“Dr. Cox! What brings…you…here…” She finally realized I was standing there, and I was only still standing only because Coxy here was holding me up.

“I found Newbie here at the bar, and he just rushed himself right through about eleven beers and now he’s the most wasted I have ever seen him. Here’s the deal: you get him into his apartment, and get him to rest. He’ll take the afternoon shift tomorrow and after work you’re going to take him back to our bar and get his bike back, got it?”

She looked back at me and nodded, and Cox followed her, dragging me to my apartment, and me just yelling or singing or something like that again.

She Carla opened the door, Cox pushed me in and started to walk off.

“Come on, Bambi,” she said,

“Why do you always call me Bambi?”
“Because you are a Bambi. Now come,”

She grabbed my arm and gently pulled me to my room.

She set me down in the bed and leaned over me.

I put on my best sexy face (which wasn’t that good for being drunk) and said, “Care to join me in here?”
Her eyes shot up.

She reached out her hand, and even though I flinched back from experience, she managed to smack me. Hard.

“A lesson for flirting with me and getting drunk.” Her features then switched from angry to concerned (damn pregnancy mood swings). “Bambi, why are you getting drunk?”

“Because it makes me numb,” I said, before I finally passed out.

Third Person

Carla sighed when she heard the door bang open and two footsteps walked in.

“JD?” Turk called. “Have you seen Carla?”
“In here,” said nurse called out.

Elliot and Turk walked in and look back.

“Why are you here with him asleep?” Elliot asked.

“He’s not asleep, he passed out drunk. Cox found him at the bar and got him back here. Elliot, tomorrow he’s getting the afternoon shift and Turk sometime just before that try and get him back to the bar so he can get his bike back.”

They both nodded and looked at JD a little sadly.

“I told him,” Turk said.

“Hm?” both woman said, looking at him.

“I told him we could all see he wasn’t doing so hot, and he was only going to just get worse. And he obviously did.”

They all just shook their head sadly at him and left.

Back To JD

I slowly, ever so slowly, started to pull myself out of the darkness of my mind called sleep.

Go for the light, go for the light…

But when I finally reached consciousness, I wished I hadn’t. My headache felt like someone was bashing my head in with a hammer and I swear to God there was something jumping around my stomach, some animal trying to kill me.

I jumped out of bed and soon found myself dazedly flushing my puke away, and afterwards just sitting there staring at the toilet bowl.

“JD?” Elliot said. I winced.

“Not so loud,” I asked her. She nodded, and started to whisper gently.

“You have the afternoon shift, and we’ll get your bike back later.”
“What?” I asked. What happened? The last thing I remember clearly was the conversation of asking Dr. Cox why he was staring at me.

“Last night,” she said gently, finally slipping into the bathroom, me thankfully still in street clothes instead of half naked like the last time I was drunk…five months ago. “Dr. Cox brought you back and Carla got you into your bed. You passed out. He drove you home because you were too drunk to drive yourself home. We’ll take you to the bar later to get it back.”
I sighed, already making some other plans in my head.

“Come on, back to bed with you,” she said once again. But I just shook her off and lay down on the bathroom floor, feeling exhausted.

“JD?”
“I’ll stay here a bit. There’s still a little monster somewhere inside my stomach, trying to kill me.”
She nodded.

“I’ll bring you come coffee.”
She left before I could respond and I relaxed at the touch of the cool tile on my face.

I didn’t know how long I was there, but at one point I looked up at the clock and saw it was 8:45 in the morning. The afternoon shift was at about two.

But I didn’t want to be here all alone until then. So I decided to do something about it.

I pulled myself off the floor and groaned when a few bottles flew down and clattered to the floor from the medicine cabinet. How could a sound as simple as that hurt so much?

But after I put them all back I saw the headache painkillers. I took one pill, one quarter of the dosage, and he felt barely batter.

I got dressed and slowly walked out of the door, I ran right into Carla.

“Bambi? What are you doing up?”

“Oh…um gonna go to the bar and get my bike back.”

“Rest, Bambi.”

“Carla, I can’t. I’m gonna walk back to the bar and get my bike. I’ll see you at the hospital in about an hour.”

“An hour? JD you don’t have to work until two and you’re still in a hangover. You need to get back inside…”
But I was already walking away.

“Bambi, get back here right now!”

But I ignored her. I continued to do so until she grabbed my arm and made me face her.

“JD, what’s the matter? It’s one thing to just get drunk for a celebration, but you just went out of the blue and came back home wasted? What’s happening?”

“Nothing.”
“JD…” then her face brightened with thought. “This is about Kim, isn’t it? And Jamie?”
I stared at her. How come women can see other people’s emotions so well?

“No.” I said simply.

“It is and you know it.”
That doesn’t mean I want to admit it.

“Look…I’ll be fine…right now I’m going to go and get my bike back.”
“JD, you need to rest and get over what happened. Kim and Jamie aren’t coming back and you know it, so stop dwelling in the past and move on!”
“This isn’t something I can just get over,” I finally cried out. She stepped back, a little surprised that I would stand up to her. “Look down, right now. What do you see? Your stomach, and your baby. Well guess what, that was what I lost, all right? Can you lose that baby inside of you right now, knowing it was yours, and just be happy? I wanted that baby, but it’s lost. I know I can’t bring it back, and I know life wouldn’t have been better, and probably would have been worse. But that doesn’t make our choice any easier to accept.”

“How do you think you’d fell right now if you kept it?”

I finally looked back down at my shoes. Damnit, why did it take me so much to scratch her surface, and yet it took her only a dozen words to break through mine?

“The same,” was all I could say. “Exactly the same.” Because it was true.

“Exactly. But at least this way, you can still have a free and open life ahead of you.”
I just shook my head.

“I’ll talk to you later, Carla. I’m getting my bike back.”

“Bambi-”

But this time I just kept going. I flinched away from her touch on my shoulder and left the building.

I walked through the many city blocks, wincing for every little sound, and there were a thousand at any moment, caused my headache to multiply by a million.

I finally reached the bar, though, and walked in to see Candy look up.

“I thought you weren’t coming until this afternoon?” she said, making her statement a question.

“Can I just have my bike back? I have to get to work.”
“JD, don’t you have the morning off?”
“Yeah…I just need something to do.”

She sighed and shook her head.

“You had eleven beers last night. Don’t push yourself.”
“I’m fine, don’t worry.”

So she let me take my bike back and I cruised through to work. There I went through my usual thing with it: Inside the handle I now had a hidden camera. I told janitor that I parked in the same place everyday so the right camera would get the perfect view of it if he bashed it. If he tried to pull it away, I could still sue him for theft.

That did the trick.

Afterwards, I walked into the hospital, and walked right up to Laverne.

“Honey, what ya’ll doing here this early? I was told you got a shift off.”

“I needed something to do,” I said simply. “I’ll be in the on-call room finishing up some paperwork.”
“If you got some time off, take it!”

“I’ll be fine, Laverne. I’m just going to be an extra helping hand for right now. Tell everyone if they need a free hand they can page me.”

“Are ya sure, hon?”
“Yeah. I’ll be in room three.”

She nodded, while I grabbed a few charts and folders and went to ‘my room’.

The thing is, I was starting to slowly spend more time sleeping here than at home. So my bed, while having the usual sheets, had my own little pillow that no one touched and there was even a small cardboard box there with some clothes and office supplies and a few bags of chips for me, and my stuffed vampire-puppy, Jamie. Elliot had gotten me the black and red dog a few days after Kim left. I made him a vampire puppy instead of a normal one, and called him Jamie.

So I sat on my top bunk bed and leaned against the wall and started the tedious work. Names and numbers. After a certain point, that was all these people were reduced to. These people, their hearts, souls, hard work, lives, spirits…everything. It always ended up just being another name, another number.

No wonder.

But I went ahead anyway. Before I knew it, it was 1:30, and I had been sitting here for three hours, my muscles a little sore.

I was just putting it all away when the door banged open.

“Newbie!”

I flinched. One of the reasons I came to work in here was that it was quiet. Hangovers and angry doctors: they do not mix.

“What in God’s name are you doing here, Chelsea?”

“Paperwork, sir.”

“Listen, Newbie, I gave you this lovely morning off so you could get over that damned hangover and come to work completely fresh. What are you doing here an half an hour early?”

“I just needed something to do,” I said listlessly.

“How long have you been here?”

“Um…” I thought back for a second. “Since about ten thirty, sir.”
“What in God’s name were you thinking, Claire?”

“I wasn’t, sir,” I said. Regardless of what I said, that was how he would twist it, so I just beat him to the punch. But he was surprised.

“You’re actually admitting that? My, God, Daisy, what is wrong with you?”

“You tell me. According to you, I’m not a doctor, so who am I to judge?”
He stared at me in apparent shock.

“All right, that’s it Newbie. Did you have anything to drink this morning?”

“No, sir, just coffee.”

He stared at me.

“You better not have had poppyseed muffins this morning because I am getting a drug test because something is not right. Is that clear, Newbie?”
“I didn’t have anything this morning. Except coffee.”

I finally groaned when I looked at my watch again.

“Sir, I have to go, my shift starts in fifteen minutes, since I’m here I think I’ll go get…a head…start…”

I wonder if he’s landed in prison before, for that piercing look could kill and burn your soul.

“Newbie, what is wrong with you?” he said as I was right in front of him in the doorway.

“Everything.”
With that I slipped under his arm and walked out, him still staring at the inside to the room.

“Hey, Q-Tip.” Laverne said.

“Got anything for me?”

“Sorry, no. Before he went looking for you, Dr. Cox made sure you couldn’t get a new case, and even got Blondie to take one from you.”
“What?” I asked. Why the hell would he do this?

“Newbie! Yeah, over here.”
I hide the scowl that just appeared on my face and turned to face him with a neutral look.

“Why did you do that?” I asked him in the blank monotone sound that had become my voice.

“Simple, here, Newbie: if you came here after some serious drinking and hangover, then something had to be wrong and you shouldn’t have to deal with that. And you just said so yourself: everything is wrong with you.”

I just shook my head, and so I grabbed a coat and began my rounds.

Today was going to be a long day…

Chapter 2