A/N: Whew! My first posted fic in a long time. And who'da thought it'd be a Scrubs fic? As I said in the summary, this was a shower epiphany, and it contains mild language adn mild DCA. Enjoy! (hopefully)
The kid had four broken ribs and massive internal bleeding, courtesy of his own father. From in front of the nurses' station, 26 year-old Percival Cox watched the child twist and turn in vain, trying to find a comfortable position with all the tubes and wires sticking out of his skin. Dr. Cox again thought of the boy's father. "Bastard," he muttered.
Perry was supposed to go tell the boy's mother about the slight change in dosage, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to go into the kid's room. He felt something wrap itself around his heart and squeeze and something that felt something like sadness lodge itself in the back of his throat.
Perry altered his stance and folded his arms across his chest. For the two months he had been working at Sacred Heart he had been cementing his reputation as sarcastic-jerk-who-was-still-ahead-of-the-curve. He wasn't going to let his first night on call ruin the carefully built façade of nonchalance. Still, whatever had clamped in his chest earlier wasn't going away, and as he flicked his nose he vaguely wondered what it was.
"Baggage," said a voice from behind him.
Perry whirled around. The man who spoke was Dr. John Loeb, a soft-spoken attending who Perry had never really talked to before. Loeb had been silently filling out paperwork until he had spoken to Perry. "Excuse me?" Perry asked.
"It's baggage—what you feel, I mean."
Perry snorted and turned back around.
"We all have it." Loeb set down his pen. "Like how Dr. Birch never looks burn victims in the eye, because they make him think of his son. Or how Nurse Sidney always gives lung cancer patients food last because they remind her of her first husband."
Perry stared straight forward. He had a quip all ready to use, but somehow it had slipped out of his mind.
Loeb went back to his writing, but put his pen down after a second. "Y'know, I was looking over my old med school notes a few days ago."
"Really," Perry said, trying to inject every bit of do-you-think-I-care into the word. The result was pathetic at best.
"Did you know that every nine years ago you shed all of your skin?"
Nine years ago. Nine years ago Perry was a suicidal seventeen-year-old who was getting beat up by his alcoholic father every other night. Not exactly the happiest time of his life. Perry subconsciously shifted into a defensive position.
Loeb started writing again. "So, if you think about it, you are not even the same man you were nine years ago." Loeb retreated into his grunt work, leaving the words resounding in the cocky intern's head.
You are not the man you were nine years ago.
Perry took a deep breath and opened the door to the wounded kid's hospital room. Back at the nurses' station, Loeb smiled without stopping his pen.
Twenty years later, Percival Cox leaned against the shelf holding the coffee maker and watched as one of the faceless, nameless interns pensively observed a rape victim's mother console her crying daughter.
"Baggage," Dr. Cox said to the forlorn intern, almost without realizing it.
"Excuse me?" the intern asked, her voice cracking a little.
"It's called baggage."