My Shattered Reality

Chapter 8 My Unwanted Past

That and I had to keep my hands busy.

I hadn’t really gotten any sleep last night, for my mind kept drifting back to my mother…

…and Frank.

Damn you, mother! Why did you have to go back to him? What do you see in him? What the hell could you possibly see in that bastard?

Seriously…did she not see me in that hospital? I can’t help but remember what happened, no matter how hard I try not to.

Damn mothers.

“Stop!”

“Yeah, right you little bitch of a son!”

Now I knew the man was drunk, though it had been pretty easy to tell when he threw his empty vodka bottle at my head. I was trying to speak while trying not to pass out from my head, when I wiped a little blood away from my hair. It took a moment for me to figure what he was saying through his mixed up words, but I got it rather quickly.

“Frank…please, just…you need to go to bed-”

“You need to learn how to shut up!” the man slurred. He walked over, cornering a younger me, who whimpered but I couldn’t hold in a cry of pain as the man’s large fist connected harshly with my stomach…

I shut my eyes and let my hand rest for a moment. If I didn’t, who knows where that knife might end up?

Why was it so hard to block out memories? Why was it so hard to just…I dunno, forget whatever it was you wanted to forget?

I had practically had amnesia concerning my childhood – it wasn’t that difficult. I avoided conversations that involved childhoods or redirected those conversations, and I didn’t make that many mentions to it in my daily life.

But sometimes, it just comes right back at ya when you least expected it.

As I tried to forget, I couldn’t help but remember.

“Little wimp can’t take a few punches?”

KICK

“How about that?”

I, as a young, dark-haired preteen, cried out in pain and shock. The man kicked right in the center of my chest…it hurt to breath…

Kill me now, the younger me thought.

“Gladly!” the man sneered out, and I realized I accidentally said that out-loud.

“No! I didn’t-”

“Then learn to shut up!”

WHAM

Geez, I didn’t talk that much during my younger years. In fact, I practically didn’t talk at all. I think that may be why I talk so much now…I talked so much since college, making up for years of silence.

I wasn’t really mute or anything – I just made sure to stay unnoticed and to make sure that no one knew me, so they wouldn’t know when suddenly I was acting differently for any reason.

It worked pretty well. Turk was my best friend…well, first best friend ever, one who really liked me, not the childhood friends and such that I had that never really gotten close to for fear of realization.

In college, there would never really be any reason why I would suddenly act different at random…but years of silence had been difficult to end.

“Little idiot!” the drunk man smiled a feral smile as he watched the tiny boy in the corner, me, cry in pain, but when I tried to take a deep breath, suddenly I screamed once again, my chest on fire.

“I said shut up, you worthless little brat!” the man said. I tried to do so, but I just wanted it all to end, the pain to end…but I couldn’t hold in the sobs.

The man grabbed a penny jar with about four dollars worth of pennies and nickels in it and threw it towards me.

He aimed too high, though, and it smashed against the wall five feet above my body. Pennies are normally harmless, but right then I learned that when it had several feet to fly down and gain energy before hitting your body, anything could hurt.

I think that might be where I got my fear of pennies. Too many bad memories of many of the guys grabbing the nearest thing, which was often my jar, and throwing it at me. I really should have learned to keep the damn thing somewhere else…but we made it a point, all of us, to not spend pennies, just put them in that jar…and I was determined about that part.

At that point I started chopping with a little more force and precision. Just focus on the veggies, make sure the cut’s right and the angle’s right so that they’re each the same size and flavor and they each can be used in that luscious, thick, and delicious soup…

The man picked up me by my collar with absolute ease, before throwing me onto the stove, which was still lit.

I screamed in agony, especially, when he pressed down on my stomach, my hip being singed, until an eternity later, he let go, and let me fall down, the smell of burning skin still filling my nose.

I was crying, and I tried to crawl away, unable to get up and run, and he kicked me right back into that corner. He grabbed the knife on the counter from my cooking and threw it at me, as well, and it sliced right across my left arm when I threw it up to defend my self and fend it off.

This celery was thankfully a little tougher to chop, needing a little more focus to make the slices just right, than the ginger I set aside. I had to keep moving the knife, and the celery underneath it, to make sure it all stayed exactly the same, and to make sure that when the celery became wider, the slices became shorter…

Damn my good cooking skills. It was so natural…this needed a lot of focus, but not enough.

“Lessoned your learn now?” he said drunkenly.

All the man got was a low moan from me.

“HEY! Leave him alone!”

I never thought he would ever be so glad to see my annoying brother, but the sixteen year old was much better able to fight off our mother’s many boyfriends, as he grabbed frying pan and threw it at the guy.

“The big brat returns!”

“Damn right, I did!” Dan cried out, picked up the pan and starting to attack the older man. “LEAVE. MY. BROTHER. ALONE!”

I never would have thought I’d be so glad to see my brother, but at this time, I was. Normally, he never came home, almost literally, but he was coming home tonight because he wanted to be there the next morning wish me a happy thirteenth birthday.

He claimed that there were five important birthdays that were the only ones worth celebrating: ten (decade), thirteen (teenager), sixteen (driver), eighteen (adult), and twenty-one (bars).

Of course, he wanted to wish me a happy beginning of teenager-dom, seeing as he was almost seventeen himself. He actually wanted to get me a small cake to celebrate, not being there otherwise.

He never got that chance.

“Looks like…like…you need a discipline little, too!” Frank slurred out, his drunken words barely making sense, though his message still got across when he punched Dan in the face and stomach. Dan threw a punch right back, but the man simply threw him against a wall, now less in ‘beat ‘em up’ mode and more in ‘fight mode’. And unfortunately, Dan wasn’t as good at dodging as me.

Don’t hurt him, was actually all I could think. I don’t know what I’d do without my brother…he saved my life at times.

But Dan grabbed the fallen frying pan and hit it against the man’s head. It actually wasn’t that hard, but in the man’s drunken state, that was all it took, for he crumpled to the floor like a puppet with it’s strings all severed at once.

I looked down at my celery, which was done for being chopped. I set it next to the ginger and started on the carrots.

I think that night may have been the most my brother was ever there for me. He practically risked his life to save mine, under the circumstances. Hell, he even managed to get me some help without needing to tell anyone the truth about our mom’s boyfriends, which at the time, both were a number one priority.

I know, it sounds stupid. But I had enough of being called weak, worthless, and useless. I didn’t want to have to deal with the psychiatrists they’d dump on me and all the looks of pity I knew people would give me.

Dan was the obnoxious older brother most of the time, but this was one of the very few situations where he was serious enough to listen to me when I refused to get someone else to help me or get me out of there. He hated it, but he knew to listen. I was the one that took the most punches, so I got that little bit of control. Besides, on her own my mom would still pick up those kind of guys, and if they didn’t take their anger out on me, she’d be next.

I may have hated her, but I also loved her too damn much to just leave her on her own at the time.

Dan picked up the barely conscious me.

“Hang on, Johnny…hang on, little brother…I can’t deal with this all alone…you have to stay here for me, all right?” he said as he carried the unhealthily lightweight me out the back door and through the yard gate, his own bruises starting to form already.

He kept talking, though less out of trying to actually say something and more out of trying to fill the deadly silence. I didn’t really care, because either way, I was hanging onto every word, for it may have been the only thing keeping me conscious, and I’ve been to hospitals enough to know that heads wounds and falling asleep or passing out…not the best combination.

I almost felt a tear going down my face, but I refused to cry, even in the privacy of my own home.

I hadn’t cried in years…I think not since the last time I called my mom about three years ago, and she confirmed, apparently slightly drunk or high, that I had actually been an accident. I always knew I was born almost two and a half months premature – in fact I had nearly died. That fact that I have lived was a miracle, especially since I was born with a slight positive tox screen for some street drug. I don’t even want to know what. But it turns out I was a premie because they tried to get an abortion too late. It didn't work, and a few weeks later, my mom went into labor.

But still, I had bawled and cried like a baby for no real reason at the time, and then I’ve had dry eyes for the last three years.

Yeah, yeah, crying is supposed to release all that tension and help you feel better…but it never did me any good. Hell, when I was a kid, someone would beat me up if they saw me crying. Besides, it’s just slightly salty water coming out of tear ducts. It’s only there to keep the eyes clean. I do enough blinking for that.

Crying doesn’t do any damn good, not for me. Sure, other people, but not me. I had my own ways of dealing with my problems, and this wasn’t one of them.

I don’t see crying as weak, it just doesn’t do any good for me.

Never had, never will.

I couldn’t cry. Anything but crying…

“Look, little bro…we’ll get you to some really nice hospital…I heard from Mike that Angel’s Touch Hospital’s good…he says that they have really good food, like pudding and brownies…and they even serve soda to some patients…and he says there are really cute nurses there…I can finally teach you how to flirt…Johnny, please, just stay with me…you have to live.”

He got me to a nearby alley and set me down carefully before calling 911 and saying that some unknown mugger attacked me and threw a penny jar we were carrying at me and that I was badly hurt.

All I remember after that was that I was given a painkiller and an O2 mask and then came the best sleep and relief of my life…

Finally I couldn’t handle the memories much longer…this time, when I raised the knife, instead of landing on the stupid carrot, which was finished being chopped anyway, I moved my arm and that’s where the damn thing landed.

I cried out in pain…but it was my pain. This might sound sick, but just plain and simple seeing my blood was relaxing, so I dug it in a little more and dragged it across my arm, and did this twice more.

It reminded me I was here, and I was now, and where and when I was and where and when I wasn’t. And the blood just told me I was alive. Maybe I was a vampire…nah…

I raised the knife off my skin and transferred it to the other hand, and press down on my right arm. I know why I was feeling relaxed by this – cutting releases endorphins, and endorphins relieve pain. That part was simple, and it made the most sense as I dug in hard into my arm.

And at the moment, I couldn’t think of anything complicated to add to this, yet I so desperately want to. Anything to keep the memories at bay.

I think that was why I did so well in college – I worked relentlessly because it was the only thing that could keep my mind off of these things. I worked hard at my job in the bookstore, my job as a waiter, my weekend job being on tech support in the computer lab, and in classes. All of it cluttered my head and I could gladly get rid of those memories to make room for new ones. But now that I didn’t really have to think, practically, of all the medical things I learned, finally reaching that level of expertise, so now those damn memories were coming back.

That was a bad thing.

I was almost tempted to call my mom, but I hadn’t called her in three years, and in all honesty, I didn’t really want to start now.

Nothing made sense, really, when you took a good look at it. What made the least sense was that we all thought it made sense and didn’t see that it didn’t and thus we didn’t try to fix it.

That didn’t really make much sense, either, did it?

What was ironic was that that made the least and most sense.

All right, I really need to stop thinking.

I was staring at the blood slowly dripping down my arm and onto the floor and just sighed and dropped the knife, focusing on the present, the now – it was the only thing I could do, at the moment.

And it worked, for the memories were held at bay.

I sat there with my eyes shut not thinking for about ten minutes before I groaned and got up. I carefully maneuvered my arm so that none of blood got on me or my clothes, before I simply wiped it off with another rag. The cuts weren’t closing as quickly as I had hoped, though, so I got a bandage from the bathroom and wrapped it over some gauze over the cuts, and then, since I had taken my tee-shirt off and was just standing in my black sweat pants, I pulled on a red UCLA sweatshirt, smiling at some of the few but better memories of my time there.

I went back to my cooking, improvising here or there. Hey, I was a good cook! It was just that none of my friends ever knew it…or ever will…I guess I just got way too used to Carla cooking for us all. And I wasn’t exactly fond of cooking when I had a lot of better things to do…but right now I didn’t, so I guess it was just a little bit nice.

I vaguely thought back to the sight of my blood…and wondered if I was becoming a vampire. I smiled – I always thought vampires were cool.

As I was finished making the thing, when I heard the doorbell ring.

“Elliot?”

She looked like she had been crying a bit, but she also looked angry, as well.

Tears of anger?

“Um…I know this is a bad time…but can I crash here for a night? Please?” I then realized along with her work backpack, she had a very small duffel bag with her, as well.

“Sure…” I stepped aside to let her walk in and she did, though she looked like she felt awkward doing so.

“What happened?”

“Um…just a big fight with Keith…”

“What was the fight about?”

“I honestly don’t know…we just…we were arguing about some stupid pool…then we started calling each other names, mean names, and not in our usual nice way, but just…then he said I was a terrible doctor…and that I was so useless I would end up just like my mother…and that I was only interested in rich hott men and nothing else…and that I was so emotional that no one liked me…and only...pretended to like me to have sex with me…and fucking PMS doesn’t help…”

I sighed. It wasn’t as big as it might seem, but being overworked she was more likely to crack. And her PMS was usually a bit extreme.

“Yeah…you can take my bed and I can have the hammock.”

“Well…your bed, I really can just take the couch-” she said, wiping a tear or two off her face.

“Nah, don’t worry. You’ve been overworking yourself more than me at the Sacred Fart.” She snorted in laughter at our private joke. “Get some rest.” She thanked me and walked into my room, still in streets, and she came back out in a few minutes wearing a bathrobe like the one I used in my tent but baby-blue and sweat pants and a tee-shirt saying, “We can’t all be morning people” with a pattern of ducks underneath.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Want some dinner?”

“Yeah…just realized I haven’t eaten since that burrito I had for a pre-lunch snack.”

“Well, that doesn’t count for a meal, so here.” I pulled out two bowls and ladled her some soup along with my own. “Hope it’s all right – made it all myself.”

She already sat down gingerly at the table, so she took the bowl and sipped some of it, as it had finally cooled down.

“I can’t believe you made it! It’s delicious…” I only had one bowl, but she had like two and a half in the next fifteen minutes. I found myself not minding, anyway.

“Thanks, JD, really…” she paused to look at me. “You know, it doesn’t make sense.”

“What?”

“How you’re such a great cook and yet you never eat.”

“Oh, come on! I do, too.”

“JD, think back. Your average day: coffee for breakfast, one fruit or vegetable for lunch, and then usually nothing or next to nothing for dinner, if this is how much you eat.”

“So what if I don’t eat as much a normal person? I eat healthily enough-”

“Oh, come on, your clothes are hanging off of you! And not just these, even your scrubs!”

I laughed and shook my head, not wanting to admit she was right. Maybe I should start wearing a size that was a little bit smaller so that they would think I looked a little more filled out and would stop worrying. Only problem was that they’d probably figure out that it was small because I was slightly tall.

“Look, I’m alive, and I’m not going to collapse anytime soon.”

She just sighed, thanked me for the food and we settled down to watch some movie on TV, and at one point, Elliot went to go grab something from the fridge…

“JD!”

“What?”

“In your fridge…it’s practically empty…”

“Sorry. 7-11’s right across, want me to get something?”

“Uh…no, tortilla’s good…”

I guess she microwaved a few and offered me one, which I courteously denied.

“JD…how come you don’t have anything in your fridge?”

“Er…forgot to shop?”

“You just don’t eat, do you?”

“I told you, I eat just a little less than a normal person…that and most people shop all at once, but Ralph’s like a block away, so I can basically shop whenever I want, so I grab stuff when I need it. I just used most of it for that soup, so most of it’s gone.”

“That’s not it and you know it.” Elliot said, while turning back to the stupid movie. “You really do need to take care of yourself, JD.”

“I do!”

“Sure, you do.”

After that I just dropped it. You know, it’s a nice difference to have someone actually care about me, a big opposite from my childhood, but it was a bit annoying. I used to wonder how kids could hate their mothers for worrying, but now I’m starting to see why.

“You know what?” I paused. Nah, not interested in arguing tonight.

“What?”

“Actually…never mind.”

We both just went back to the movie, her still trying to get me to talk, and me not responding, and soon, with a few hints and questions from me, we got back to the subject of work, then the sex in the movie, and when it ended, we ran out of small talk, so we just went to bed.

The next morning, she got on the back of my bike and I drove her to work, and the tension could be cut with a knife when she saw Keith, so I just grabbed her arm and dragged her away.

Later that day, though, Turk acted as a mediator between them and I finally was freed enough to go and do my own thing, sorta, so I finished my patient list.

The day went by smoothly enough…

Until Doctor Cox noticed my scrubs’ arm when talking to me in a coma guy’s room.

“Newbie, get through these patients when I ask you, not when you finish your bikini wax, then do the world a favor and do your fucking rounds on time! You’re checking on that contagious, HAZMAT worthy patient in room 203 and then you’re going to what the hell’s wrong with your arm?”

Unfazed by his sudden change of topic, I looked down, and there was a small but growing bloodstain on my right arm, right above my cuts from the night before. It wasn’t the arm with the cross and star (those were on my left), but still…I had cut a bit deeper than I thought, I guess.

“I was cooking last night and I misaimed the knife.”

He eyed me carefully.

“You? Cook?”

“Yes. Not that hard to believe.”

“Great, now you can’t go check on my HAZMAT patient.”

I rolled my eyes. Yes I could.

Oh, wait, I’m supposed to be talking.

“I’ll just fix up the slices. They probably just re-opened.”

“Lemme see that-” he grabbed my arm and pushed my sleeve up and stared at the larger blood spot on the white bandages

“I cut a little deep by accident,” I said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go fix it and do whatever the hell it was you told me to.”

I ripped my arm from his grasp and walked out and into my favorite medical supply closet, where I unwrapped the bandages and checked it over.

Damnit, Damnit, Damnit, Damnit! The thing was a lot deeper than I thought.

I grabbed a few things, and when I was sure no one could see me, I ran to an empty patient room and closed the door, thankful that this one didn’t have any windows into the hall way.

It was hard, and probably wouldn’t last long, but I sutured the cut close. Three stitches on one of the cuts, and the rest only needed two.

I have to be careful about this, which isn’t really a fun thought for me.

I wrapped the bandages over it, anyway, and went back to work, hoping that Dr. Cox will forget all of this.

Thank fully, he did.

Several days passed, and unfortunately, it wasn’t that long until my brother came back.

“Heeeyy, little brother. Good news – I only need to stay here for a few days! My bar chain is opening a new branch in another city, so…”

He continued rambling even as I grabbed his bag and showed him to the couch that was to be his bed for said few days.

“So, how’re things shakin’, JD?”

I stared at him.

“What?” he asked. “Dude, why are you staring at me?”

“You never called me that, before,”

“What?”

“JD.”

“Oh…yeah…I guess I do now. Anyway, how are things and the people?”

“Fine.”

“How’s Elliot?”

“She’s still not single.”

“Oh…bummer…so, what ya watching.”

“Underworld: Evolution.”

“I saw the first one!”

“So did I. That’s why this is called the sequel.”

We sat and watched it in hilarity, and Dan and I used my Pay-Per-View to watch some other ones, not really sure what they were, but mostly action with hott, half naked chicks in them…I think he ordered a porno for later…I had magazines for that for me.

You didn’t need to know that, did you?

Anyway, we watched a lot of random sitcoms, before I gave him some meat loaf type thing I made the night before, and soon he took the hammock while I kept to my bed.

He actually did…well, something, during the day when I went to work, where I was surprised.

“Carla?”

She smiled at me, pink scrubs and all.

“What are you doing here several days early?” Elliot asked.

“Well, seeing as it’s only four days early, I started Izzy with the new day care center a few blocks down.”

“You’re going to go there during all your lunch breaks, aren’t you?” Dr. Cox threw in, popping up from nowhere.

“Hello to you, too. I will at first, but I’ll try not to.” She said. She got to the nurses’ station and started talking with Laverne about patient gossip, and the day went a bit like normal. Actually, with Carla back, things went smoother now, at least to me.

“Mrs. Davidson, we got the results of your arterial blood gas back a little while ago – your pH is very low, at roughly 6.42, and your renal function and your urinanalysis hinted towards renal tubular acidosis type one.”

“In English?” Her husband asked.

“We’re pretty sure you have metabolic acidosis. We’re going to start you on intravenous bicarbonate with 95mmol to help prevent Cardiac arrhythmia, and we hope we don’t have to start you on dialysis, and we’ll get the nephrologist in here shortly.”

“Thanks, Dr. Dorian,” she said, smiling.

“So,” I asked the young couple, probably both about five years younger than me. “How long have you two been married?”

“This Christmas is going to be our first anniversary!” she said happily.

“Congratulations,” I said. “I think that’s not long after we’ll end up releasing you, so I guess that’s a double whammy celebration.”

She laughed merrily as I walked out and to the locker rooms. She was my last patient today, anyway.

“So, JD, did you figure out what Mrs. Davidson has? No one else has been able to figure her out, even at her original hospital.”

“Metabolic acidosis. Symptoms so complicated, diagnosis so simple.”

Carla just shook her head.

“Sucks for her…”

“For anyone,”

“Yeah, but she’s a TV reporter, and her husbands a journalist and police officer. This isn’t good for either of them.”

“True…you know I miss these conversations we have?” I said, smiling.

“Yeah. Oh, your brother called, by the way – he won’t be back home until at least one in the morning, though he said probably three.”

“Okay. You get off at eight, right?”

She nodded, and checked whatever it was she was writing while I started filling out the patient chart, remembering these very few calmer moments me and Carla had.

“Want me check in on Izzy? Kinda miss her…and like her…” I admitted. Hey, I don’t want to be a pediatrician, but I did like kids!

“Actually…you know I trust you more than day care teachers, right?” She asked.

“You do? You do realize while Dan and I like kids, neither of us are really good with them, right?”

“I just trust you guys more than those day care teachers, and if you show them ID that you’re John Dorian, then they’ll let you pick her up – Turk and I listed you first choice to get her if something happens to us or to pick her up.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You, then Dr. Cox, then Laverne, then Elliot.”

“Thanks! Wait, me first?”

“Yes!”

“Thanks.”

“You just said that.”

“Who cares?”

She shook her head and I was glad I took the bus this morning.

“Carla…you know what?”

“What?”

“You and Turk, with different schedules and stuff, haven’t had much time together and won’t have much time together. How ‘bout you guys get some dinner for tonight?”

“JD, I’m not sure…I’ll end up getting worried.”

“I promise, she’ll be all right – come on, rare offer. You did make me godfather, right?”

“Yeah…I don’t know…”

“You’ll be fine, too. Turk’ll make sure of it.”

“…thanks JD. You’re probably right.”

“I am right!” and with that planned out, I walked off.

I got down at the day care and walked into the place, and got the little baby, and took her home.

I grabbed the bag Carla had left for the stupid daycare and got out some of Izzy’s formula and put in a bottle and heated it, before I sat down on the couch and started feeding her.

You know, normally I’m sort of…well, not wild, but not really good with kids and stuff, and I generally get restless and have to pace – that’s not very well known, but still. However, when I was holding Izzy on the sofa chair and feeding her her bottle, I just…I don’t know. Peaceful.

I guess Elliot was right about the power of a baby. They seem to hypnotize people and stuff.

Most people think it’s kinda boring, from an outside view, to just watch a baby suckle on a bottle…and I thought so, too. But when you’re doing the actual feeding…I don’t know. It makes you feel kinda like a gentle power…gently empowered. I’m not really sure if that makes sense by the book, but in reality, it does.

When she finished, I grabbed a few of the random toys from her bag and stared playing, her baby gibberish actually kinda soothing. She was a little long for a baby, but still, she was small…though this time I knew that was just me.

“Guh!” she said at one, point, with a little hiccup sound that wasn’t a hiccup. I remembered Carla after that slight gurgle last time I saw the kid, and picked her up, patted her back, and started bouncing her ever so gently.

She burped and looked up at me, and I caught the smell and changed her diaper, and I tuned the TV to a kids channel and we watched some re-run or something of Dora the Explorer.

But when some ‘scary’ part of the show came on, she started crying, and I shut off the TV, but she continued, so I guess I copied Carla, picked her up, started gently bouncing her while walking around. She still didn’t settle down.

I cradled her and gently started rocking her, instead, when that didn’t work, and she kept crying.

Running out of ideas, I did something I hadn’t done (literally) almost since college: I sang.

I started singing Hush Little Baby, but I wasn’t entirely sure of the tune, so I started singing the words to a Journey tune.

What amazed me most was that she actually calmed down.

When she finally settled, I pulled out the baby music CD from Carla, and put it on, bracing myself for a bunch of torturous lullabies to come on.

I was shocked, to be honest. I expected that song about kittens and mittens, but it was typical baby music, with the softest possible (which I just discovered was amazingly close to silent while still being able to hear it) electric guitar.

Leave it to Carla to being a modern mother despite being in her early thirties. Baby rock, advice from chatrooms, things like that.

I smiled as I lay down on the couch with Izzy curled up in my sweatshirt on my chest, and we both listened to the music, and we both fell asleep.

“Here it is, baby,” I said to Carla when we found JD’s apartment around eleven thirty.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, maybe something of a controlled chaos, the baby crying, or both of them covered in food or something, with the place a mess. JD hasn’t been alone with a baby since he took care of a classmate’s son in college, and that kid was four! I don’t know how he was as a baby, and voiced this to Carla, making her nervous when we were leaving the restaurant.

So we were both surprised to find all the food cleaned up, the toys in one general area, and JD lying comfortably on the couch with my baby on his chest, wrapped up in her blanket and his sweatshirt, using his chest as a pillow. Mine and Carla’s baby rock was playing.

“Oh,” she said. “They both look so…peaceful!”

“I know…it’s weird.”

“Turk!”

“What? I told you about JD.”

“That was years ago.”

“Besides, JD sleeping peacefully doesn’t happen.”

“What do you mean?” She asked me quietly as we sat down.

“JD doesn’t sleep that much, not so long as I’ve known him, and he doesn’t sleep peacefully, either. He can normally wake up at the sound of a pencil dropping on a carpet.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“That’s happened!”

She shook her head, and pulled out her phone and took a picture of JD and Izzy.

“I’ll probably print that and tack it up on a wall or something…” she muttered. “It’s just so…sweet…” she said.

The last song of the CD finished playing, and I think that stirred JD.

“…uh…Turk! Hey, Carla.”

“Hey, Bambi.”

“Hey…guess you want Izzy back.”

“That would be nice,” Carla said.

He looked down at the baby, before quickly but gently slipping his fingers under her belly and lifting her up.

“Anything noteworthy happen?” I asked him as Carla cradled her and started muttering softly to her.

“Nope.” I looked at him. “I swear.”

Carla smiled as she walked over to the bag and pulled out a pacifier.

“You looked peaceful,” Carla said. “Which according to Turk never happens.”

“He’s right,” JD said, surprising me, actually. Whenever anything was wrong with him, he usually didn’t admit it that easily. “Anyway, I hope I don’t sound rude, but Dan’ll be comin’ in, soon, so you may want to leave before that – if he’s coming that late, he’ll probably be drunk.”

“Sure…hold on.”

I got up and walked straight to his fridge…and was actually surprised at how little there was in it.

“Turk, if you want something to eat, there’s some blue Tupperware in there with that stew of Carla’s recipe.”

“Dude, if this is all you have then I’m not taking anything.”

“I’m just low at the moment…I just have to remember to shop. Seven-Eleven and grocery within walking distance, so I guess I’ll have something to do until Dan gets home.”

I nodded and brought it out and poured it evenly into three bowls, before Carla took over it to leave me with Izzy.

I didn’t miss that she poured a little more into the bowl that a moment later she gave to JD.

“You made this perfectly!” She said when she tasted it. “Where’d you learn to cook?”

“Ninth grade.”

“What?”

“Teen Survival had a big thing on cooking.”

“What else did you take in pre-college life?” Carla asked curiously. There’s my favorite nosy baby back.

“Well, half year of cooking, like I just said…half year of shop…half year of drawing class…full year of band – guitar…half year of computer classes…half year of astronomy…I took a full year of Spanish…and another half year like two years later…half year of financial planning and study skills…I was on the debate team…I can’t remember the rest …nor do I really care.”

“Spanish?” Carla asked. “You remember any of it?”

“All of it. Just not fluent so I don’t use it for fear of messing up. Racial consideration.”

“Say something. I won’t judge you.”

“I know I’m going to get it wrong.”

“It’s me. Try.”

He paused for a moment while I waited. I have heard him once or twice trying to use Spanish, and what was scary was that he had a really good accent.

“Qué debo decir en español?”

“¡Perfecto¡Tu está correcto!”

“Yo soy?”

“Si! Intento otra vez.”

“Todavía no sé…qué deco.”

“Bambi¿Por qué tu no utiliza español más a menudo?”

“Can you guys please go back to English with me? What did you say, anyway?”

“He asked what he should say in Spanish, I said he’s great and correct, he asked if he was, I told him to try again, he said he still doesn’t know what to say," Carla said.

“Pero si él no entiende español, tenemos que utilizarlo más a menudo.”

“¿Vea¡Usted es muy bueno!”

“English!” I said. Carla just turned to Izzy and started singing something in Spanish.

“La mar estaba serena, serena estaba la mar,” She started singing.

“La mar estaba serena,” JD joined in softly. “Serena estaba le mar.”

“Now what’s that mean?” I asked JD. Seriously, though, this was making me just a little bit nervous.

“The sea was calm, calm was the sea. It’s normally used to show vowels and such.”

“What?”

“Never mind, I’ll tell you later,” Carla said. JD suddenly got up and grabbed a peace of paper, and wrote the lyrics to the song on it…and then wrote the five vowels underneath it.

“What’s with the vowels?” I asked.

“You sing the first song twice, then you replace all the vowels with just one of those vowels in that order.”

“O-kay…”

“Try it,” he said. “You can sing well.”

“Uh, I’m not-”

“Oh, baby please?” Carla half begged me.

“Er…la mar estaba serena?”

“Roll the ‘r’ a bit more in serena, and drag out the mar a little bit,” JD said.

“Dude, since when do you know so much about Spanish?”

“Since eighth, then tenth, grade. Just never used it.”

I shook my head and started singing, only it kinda came out sounding like the Sanford& Son theme song, which was actually kinda funny, till I got the hang of it.

Carla walked off to the bag on the other side of the room, and I leaned in to talk to JD.

“Dude, you’ve got to teach me!”

“Just ask Carla.”

“I did…but she’s getting exhausted lately with the baby, and she’s great at teaching medicine, but not so good at teaching language.”

“Okay…I’ll think of something. Why the desperate look?”
“Carla wants Izzy to be bilingual, and she said just growing up with two languages will do that.”

JD just looked between me, Carla, and Izzy in her arms, chuckled, and settled back in his seat.

“Sure thing, buddy, sure thing.”

He smiled as he watched Carla and Izzy, in a reminiscent way, and his eyes glazed over.

Even thought I’m not as ‘sensitive’ as JD or anyone else, for that matter, I learned, by now, to recognize certain looks on his face, to the point where I practically read his mind. And his eyes said he was actually just thinking of something, in a reminiscent way.

And as usual, for a moment he was completely out of it, and as usual, I wanted to ask him what was going on in his head, though I knew not to. As usual, he shook himself out of it, jerking his head to shake it and clear his thoughts, and as usual, he pretended like he was letting go of a good memory. And as usual, I wasn’t entirely too sure.

But as usual, I knew better not to. Past experiences have told me when it comes down to memories, to just let him be.

“JD, dude…JD!”

“Wah?”

“Snap out of it! You’re always doing that – you zone out and…ya know…” Chris Turk imitated his look.

“Sorry…gotta work on that…”

“It’s okay, just make sure you’re not driving when you do!”

He smiled and tightened his grip on the wheel as we drove back form the party.

“What do you keep remembering?”

“Hm?”

“When you zone out?”

“Just…things…day dreams…”

“Nah, it ain’t.”

“Well, it’s none of your business, now is it?”

“It kinda is cuz you’re my friend.”

“Look…just shut the hell up about that, all right? Besides, I don’t have any memories worth talking about, anyway.”

“You sure dude?”

“YES!”

“Okay, okay…”

He sighed.

“Look, I’m sorry, but it just gets annoying, ya know?”

“So’s your spacing out…you’re never gonna get Emily that way…”

“But I have this perfect plan for tonight…”

“SCB?”

“Hm?”

“I know a good program to help learn…Rosetta Stone…”

“I heard that was a good language teacher.”

“That girl in Pharmaceuticals says it is.”

“Jennifer Suranya?”

“Yeah.”

“The chick who gave you a ten second lap dance?”

“Yep.”

We both looked at each other and just laughed for the first time in a long time. Truly laughed.