DISCLAIMER- I own nothing to do with Scrubs or anything else, unfortunately. I want Scrubs!
Rated M mainly for themes- I just want to be sure, since it is a bit serious in places.
This is just a quick gap between writing the sequel for my Captive Audience. It's another stand alone, like "My Author's Awful Angst" (I don't know if I'll categorise these as a series of shorts or something, but I quite enjoy doing them). Hope you enjoy!
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My Ledge
The cool wind blows over Sacred Heart hospital, over the rooftop where I'm standing, perched on the ledge, at the very edge of the building, staring down at the drop. A step off and that would end it. A step off and I no longer have to think about what a failure I am. What a total, useless, blip my life is.
The Janitor's down there, sweeping something up. He glances up at me on the rooftop, a disdainful expression that I'm so used to seeing twisting his face.
"If you jump I'm not cleanin' you up!"
I wouldn't expect him to. He hates me. Much like everyone else.
I stare back down at the heights. The Janitor shakes his head in disgust and then walks back into the hospital. To do some cleaning? I doubt it.
When did the respect go? Actually, scrap that; why wasn't the respect there in the first place? Everyone talks down to me. Everyone. They think I'm useless and pathetic, because I am useless and pathetic. This ledge is too good for me. This end is too good for me.
Who would talk me out of it? Carla? That nice Latino nurse with a mothering attitude? Why should she bother? She's already much too nice for me than I deserve. Or someone like Doctor Cox? I bite back a laugh. Him? He hates me. He thinks I'm weak and incapable of doing anything at all right.
He's probably right. No, he is right. No probably in there.
Although this seems a ridiculously public way to end the suffering I try to hide. It's always underneath, bubbling up. Sometimes it escapes, in bouts of black thoughts. I don't think I hide it as well as I really want to. I want to keep it hidden, but it charges up and swamps me as I prove to myself over and over again that I'm useless and meaningless and worthless. And as I'm reminded of it over and over again, as he sweeps away from me in his white lab coat and his bullying ways. He makes me want to stop thinking, stop feeling, stop my life altogether.
Sometimes I daydream about it. More than sometimes. I'll be in a corridor in Sacred Heart and I'll see myself with a scalpel, slicing cleanly through my veins and arteries of the pale flesh of my skin. Watch as deep, ruby-red blood wells up and escapes the tubes that imprison it in my body. In blessed relief, the blood flows out of me, taking away the pain and the shame and leaving me with weakness and relief. And then I'll be snapped out of it by someone, and I'll hate them for it for all of about three seconds. Because, let's face it: you need to be stronger than me to hate someone for a prolonged period of time.
But then, if you think about it, cutting your wrists isn't sure-fire. Someone could find you. Someone could try and save you. I look down at the gray carpark below me. Would this be instantaneous? Would it just be a moment of exhilaration as I fall and then blackness? Or would this drop only injure me?
I've seen jumpers before. They can be a total mess. Broken legs, femoral heads thrust through the pelvis, spines, wrists, ankles… in my job I see that sort of thing. Should it put me off doing this? Maybe something higher would work better?
Pills have the same problem as cutting yourself. What if someone finds you and "saves" you? Plus, with pills there's always that chance of throwing up all your good work. Sometimes the body just doesn't cooperate with what you desperately need.
Which, for some reason, brings my mind back to cutting myself. Just to relieve the tension, the anger and annoyance inside me. Standing in the shower once, I felt the crushing pain of the world, and everything that happened to me, how worthless I felt, choking up in my chest and clawing its way up my throat. I felt too small to have such a massive monster of pain inside me and dropped my head forward, the water running over my face and into my eyes. The sobs that escaped me were beyond tears, beyond even the capability of crying. It was just the agonised gasping noises of pain that seemed to great to express escaping me from my too-small throat and mouth. I inhaled desperately, a gasping croak escaping me. Hardly even knowing what I was doing, my fingers closed around a razor, and I was slashing at my thigh. Whenever I'd thought of self-harm before that I had always thought that it didn't hurt people who did it. But it did hurt. It was just that the hurt was such a blessed relief that I was feeling pain that made sense, that wasn't from inside, but from outside. Pain from outside that almost seemed to cancel out the inner pain. As I cut I felt my face twisting into a smile that I knew would have terrified any sane person who saw it.
But cutting is off. Takes too long to end everything, far too many chances of survival. And why end everything? Because life is unbearable, that's why. Because when you live with the sort of pain that touches everything in your life and makes it shrivel and die, you aren't really living. You're existing on a plateux of emotional pain that makes life pointless and abysmal. It's not living, it's existing. There's a major difference. And what's the point in that existence? Better to feel nothing at all than overwhelming pain every single damn day of your life.
I extend a foot, feeling the sir beneath it. Close my eyes and inhale the cool air into my lungs, feeling it refreshing me somehow. Cleansing me. Feeling the exhilaration as my foot presses down onto nothingness, knowing that I'm seconds away from a bliss of nothingness that will cure me forever of my own wretched existence-
"TED! GET THE HELL OFF THAT LEDGE NOW AND DO SOME DAMN WORK!"
I open my eyes and sigh.
"Yes, Dr. Kelso,"
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You thought it was JD, didn't you? Didn't you?! Well, I hope you did, since I was trying to keep Ted's identity secret… Hopefully worked!
From what I can tell, no one has actually really written a Ted angst story, mainly because he's seen as such a comedic character. Personally, I think Ted is, in many ways, one of the most sad and quite moving characters in the show- sometimes his comedic sadness can really get to me. Which is also why I tried not to let on who it was- if you knew it was Ted you wouldn't take him seriously. Poor Ted.
Anyway, thanks for reading this little ficlet.
Little Tiger Stripes xXx