Title: The Road Less Travelled By
Rating: T, for mild imagery and mild language. Also a possibly disturbing scene, though it isn't explicit by any stretch.
Disclaimer: Jimmy is not my character. I'm just borrowing him for a couple of minutes at a time. I'll return him nice and shiny, sincehe is used rarely in fics and is in factory-mint condition. Ducky isn't mine either. Michaela, however, is my creation.
Summary: Jimmy Palmer wonders what the hell he was thinking.
Level of completion: Done like dinner.
"...Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference." (From "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost)
He stood in the morgue after putting the last one to bed. He looked around, wondering what the hell he was thinking, wanting to do this.
The good ones were rare. The ones that hadn't stewed in their own juices, hadn't been found floating somewhere, hadn't been blown up or otherwise dismantled, hadn't been abandoned to mummify and become wizened old corpses. The good ones, the ones that they could easily identify, the ones that they could ensure would be in a fit state to say a proper goodbye to, they were far too rare.
So why, then? So many aspects of this were just so damned undesirable.
He thought about what Ducky had told him, on more than one occasion.
The dead had a voice that only they could hear. That voice spoke in a language that only they could understand. It was up to them to speak for those who could no longer speak for themselves. It was up to them to find a way to give them peace, somehow, by telling their stories and getting to the truth. Pointing the way towards justice, if indeed justice were called for.
No pressure there, really.
He wondered why he hadn't chosen a different path. Medicine was definitely his calling. Sometimes he doubted it, felt like an 8 year old could do a better job of understanding. But most of the time, he was sure of his choice, and had made peace with it.
He had thought about pediatrics. He liked kids, he felt like one of them sometimes, in fact. But he realized early on, that some of them he could help, make them better. Fix their broken bones, bandage their bruises, stitch up their cuts, give them medicine tocure their ails. They would be fine.
But others, he'd merely be patching up, only to send them back for more of what had sent them to him in the first place.
He knew he wouldn't be able to save them all, and he couldn't handle that.
He thought about a time, long ago. When his best friend, the neighbour's little girl, had been abducted and murdered, and her battered, abused body dumped right back into her own backyard.
Michaela O'Farrell had been close to Jimmy Palmer. To this day, he missed her. His throat tightened sometimes at the memories of the days following the discovery of her body, only a few feet from the sandpit that they had spent so many hours playing in.
A Pediatrician would have arrived far too late.
But a Medical Examiner, now he could do something.
He could allow her to tell them what had happened to her, and who had stolen the light from her eyes, and the breath from her lungs. Who had snuffed out a future.
He looked around, sighed heavily, the scent of disinfectant flooding his nostrils.
Michaela's story had been told in a place much like this one, he thought.
Yes, this is where he should be. It would be unpleasant, nightmarish at times. No sane person would choose this as a profession. But somebody had to do it. Most would have shied away, chosen something less assaulting to the senses.
There would be no Michaelas in this morgue. This place was meant to tell the stories of military personnel who had met an untimely fate. Grown men and women, whose futures had already been glimpsed into and partially experienced. He wouldn't have to deal with any Michaelas, here.
But he would someday have the skills and the knowledge to speak for the Michaelas of the world, if that was where this road would ultimately take him, this road less travelled by.
So that was it. That was why he was here.
He removed his cap, tossing it in the bin, then walked out the doors.