Title: The shattered shaft

Chapter: 1

Fandom: Scrubs

Pairing: Cox / JD

Rating: Chapter rating – hard R (NC-17 overall)

Setting: Post "My lunch" but before Kim. Probably partially AU, since Cox/JD are in established relationship.

Summary: JD never really imagined what it would be to loose control over his body. Still, things change pretty drastically. Hurt / comfort theme. Please read author's notes, they clarify the situation a bit.

Author's notes: Well, here it is. My first Scrubs fanfic. I know that the idea itself is not very original. I finally got through the 5th season of the series and there is a possibility of OOC'ness, but please bear with my first fic in that fandom (I'm more manga/anime kind of person).

Oh, JD's thoughts are written (like this). Daydreams are shown -- like this -- .

Anyhow...

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The shattered shaft

Chapter 1

As he lay down, face pressed hard and uncomfortably into the floor panels of his own apartment (I really needed to clean it up more often, the dust was already making me sneeze constantly), JD wasn't really sure what to do next. Sure, there was always the possibility to just stay down and not even twitch, but it was kind of hard to do that. Not when all of your valuable possessions (Valuable? Who was I kidding; the most valuable things I owned were my currently broken TV, Sasha – fortunately, safely parked away – and a Toto CD) were currently being stashed away by very angry and apparently quite stoned young guy.

JD wondered what in the name of sweet heavens made him come down to his kitchen in the middle of the night to find a burglar going through his things. Ah yes, a stupid glass of water it was. He knew he should have closed his windows when he went to bed, but his apartment was too damn hot at this time of year and he still couldn't afford air conditioning. It felt like fate was pulling some nasty trick on him.

-- In his mind, JD could see God, Buddha and Allah sitting on a few clouds above the Earth, making a small talk with each other and drinking 'Heavenbucks' coffee as they yanked the strings that ran all the way down to his apartment, moving JD and the burglar around like a pair of puppets. --

The young doctor watched silently as the other man rifled through the shelves and cabinets in search of something that could be turned into cash and later a dose of narcotics. Hell, JD was a good doctor; he recognized the symptoms of withdrawal right away. Not quite high but not clean either, mostly unbalanced state of mind. The sweaty hands (Why wasn't he wearing a pair of gloves; didn't they always wear gloves in the movies?), shaky voice when he ordered him to lie down, unsteady posture. If he only had chance to look into his eyes he would have got the proof by looking into his pupils. Unfortunately, pressing his face into the floor was not the best position to do that.

"Where's the rest?"

JD stirred, raising his chin from the floor a little, to look at the young man. He avoided any real eye contact, to not provoke any kind of attack. The steel baseball bat he was holding with force certainly wouldn't feel nice if connected to any part of his body.

"The rest of what?"

"Money!" The man shouted, although he probably should keep his voice down at this time of night. That is, if he knew what was best for him. "Or electronic stuff, jewelry... that kind of stuff!?"

Gods, he really was desperate for the drugs.

"Look, I've already gave you the last cent I had with me. You got my iPod and watch, you can take whatever you want. Please, just take what you want."

He rushed around the apartment one more time, the steady wave of frustration making him feel more and more on edge, JD was sure of it. After giving out a pained sigh, the young attending decided it was good time to speak, before he fully snaps.

"You don't have to do this." He made a pause after making sure he caught the other man's attention. "You don't have to steal to buy any more of that junk."

"What?" The burglar stopped dead in his tracks, watching the dark-haired man in surprise.

"I am a doctor; if you want to, I can admit you into my hospital and we will forget about this evening. You just need to say so. I will help you out of this if you only want to."

Ah, always the idealist. JD wondered for a split second how much of his message actually got through the drug-hazed barrier that comfortably shielded the shaky junkie right now. But he had meant it, every single word. One sentence, one plea for help and JD was ready to commit his time to curing the man. He was young, way younger then JD would expect a burglar to be and in his own private world, JD was convinced nobody deserved a fate lined up with drugs and most probably an early death as well.

The first kick that landed on his right side was a surprise and JD yelped in pain, even though it wasn't very strong. Turning him on his back with the heel of his foot, the other man laughed hysterically.

"What the fuck do you know?! Shut up, just shut the fuck up!"

JD's eyes widened at the sight of the baseball bat swinging at him, but he managed to duck and roll to his less bruised side just in time. The bat gave a loud, metallic sound as it collided with wooden floor of his apartment (Please, please let it alarm the neighbors!) and the young doctor scrambled to his feet, struggling to regain balance so he could dodge another swing aimed at his head.

He did, fortunately and the bat crashed into the wall that separated his kitchen and living room, tearing off a mass of roughcast and thermal insulation. He yelped in surprise as the small pieces of debris and dust went flying in his direction. Dodging the attacker JD rushed towards his door – forget everything else, he just wanted out of there – trying to grab his cell phone from the kitchen counter as he ran.

It happened so suddenly; at first there was this brief glimpse of silver he noticed with the corner of his eye. Then the powerful swing of the bat came down on his right hand. For a second he could swear he didn't feel any pain, just stopping dead in his tracks to witness how the hard metal descended on his hand that reached for the phone. How his fingers bent under the pressure (Joints couldn't bend like that, no way in the world joints could bend like that) and gave that sickening, wet cracking sound, like the one you get while stepping over the crackers and salt sticks littering the floor of your favorite bar. Then someone screamed; an ear-piercing yell tore trough the otherwise silent night. An animalistic wail of pain started that would have either annoyed him or scared the shit out of him, had he not realized that it actually came from his own lips.

After that there was just a flash of white, moments of agony that stretched cruelly trough the eternity, in which he couldn't think, couldn't breathe, clutching the crushed fingers close to himself, not paying attention to the fact he could see fragments of white bones sticking out from his skin, when it hurt like that and there was just pain (painpainpainpainpainpainpain)...

He heard shouts, someone telling him to shut the fuck up, but then shouts stopped and kicking took over, as his tormentor no longer bothered with words, just trying to do anything to make him stop screaming. He did, eventually, having no longer any air in his lungs, after it got kicked out of him. He could hear someone walking trough the corridor – a salvation, perhaps? He yelled for help, but before he could learn if it was any use, the smudged shape of silver bat descended upon him again. Before JD lost his consciousness and drifted off towards darkness, he could hear the sound of his own cracking skull and teeth that now fell with loud clatter on his own dusty floor.

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Somehow, he woke up after few minutes.

He knew it wasn't long before he lost consciousness; the faint red light of his electronic clock above his stove gave it away. For a split second he wondered what the hell he was doing on the kitchen floor, had Turk once again got his appletinis spiked with something harder and then dropped him unconscious and naked into his kitchen, for everyone to see and laugh in the morning? But as he tried to glance down his chest to see if he really was naked, a sharp wave of pain hit him and the realization came to him in full force.

He groaned in agony as he raised his head a little; the already drying blood was starting to get sticky and moving made the drying strings of it tug on his torn skin painfully. JD knew that there were many things wrong with him right now; the broken ribs, teeth that lay beside him, his hand that right now looked and felt like one giant wound. But it was his vision that got him really worried, as the world blurred before him and swayed around like he was sitting on a child's swing. His phone laid on the floor maybe a meter away; the flap was shattered and JD prayed to whatever god he really didn't believe in that it was not completely broken. Crawling towards it was a task that took him longer then he would have thought; every inch of the way marked with a groan of pain, tears that slid from his eyes even though he didn't really feel like crying and the red, smeared trail of blood he left behind on the wooden floor. When the fingers of his good hand closed around his phone he almost danced a victory dance – well, in his mind at least – and tried to focus his eyes on the numbers. (Call Perry, call him, he will know what to do, just call him, god dammit!) While all he wanted was to dial his lover's number, the doctor inside of him knew better. He called the ambulance.

Croaking out his address to the woman on the phone was an enormous task, considering that some of his teeth were currently decorating his floor a meter away from him. He had hoped she understood the name of the hospital he wanted to be taken to. When wave of nausea hit him suddenly, JD barely managed to twist on his better side (Fuck, right now there is no better side, both feel like they had been hit by Janitor's van) to avoid vomiting all over himself. It surely wouldn't be a nice sight to anyone, even if the paramedics were used to it.

But they were on their way. JD wanted to dial up Perry's number now, to tell him to prepare the Sacred Heart Hospital for the quite unpleasant surprise, but his fingers already had grown numb and cold. JD's last thought before drifting off again was that this couldn't be a good sign.

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Doctor Perry Cox had a bad, bad night.

The nights on call were never his favorite thing in the world – hell, none of the shifts were – but being stuck for hours in the ICU with the bunch of incompetent interns that would not be able to find their own asses without his help was simply too much.

He groaned as he came close to the nurse station and rested his head against the cool surface.

"Poor baby" Carla cooed to him while briefly stroking his unruly curls. "Did other kids tire you out?"

Perry let out another angry groan, his arms spreading on the counter, taking in the coolness that seemed to soothe down his incoming migraine just a little bit. It was a brief moment of peace, all of the patients taken care of until his next check-up round, all stabilized and doing well so far. Maybe, just maybe, he could finally beat the record of holding no death cases during his shift? It was only a couple of hours left...

"Doctor Cox?"

The girl's voice next to him ruined the vision of his 'happy place' that started to form in front of his eyes, the gentle sounds of waves, seagulls and all of that. He chose to ignore the owner of the voice, to pretend he was not there, even if it was his own temple pressed into the counter of nurse's office. He could almost feel Carla smirking at him, her eyes boring into the back of his skull.

"Doctor Cox?"

He groaned and started to bang his head lightly against the counter, before finally raising up and sending his best, perfected death glare towards Lisa, who not only did not cower in fear but held his gaze. She seemed a little pale though. Confused by this unexpected turn of events, Perry tried to find as much courtesy as he possibly could.

"What?!"

Lisa seemed startled; that pleased him.

"Doctor Turk is in OR, he asked for you to come there as soon as possible."

Wait... that had caught his attention. Carla shifted behind the counter nervously – he could hear the rustle of her pink scrubs as she came closer to them.

"What the hell for?" He had some very faint idea by now; no, more like a premonition.

"Doctor Dorian was brought in by the paramedics few minutes ago." Lisa almost whispered, as if not saying it loudly helped to minimize the blow. Carla gasped and clutched the counter, then after few seconds of simply staring at the blonde intern she made her way around the counter quickly – it was quite astonishing how fast a pregnant woman could move if she was determined enough – and came close to him, grabbing his arm.

"Perry, snap out of it!" She hissed, but the worried look was still on her face. The older doctor looked at her in surprise, as if seeing her for the first time in his life.

"Bambi, in the OR, remember?" She quickly reminded the shocked man, while pushing him gently, but firmly towards the ICU exit door. "Go!"

As if it was his cue, Perry Cox started to run like his own life depended on it.

----------

Carla was soon behind him, not really running, but her steps were steady and coming down hard. But he got ahead of her pretty quickly and soon he couldn't hear the woman's steps at all. He couldn't hear anything anymore, just a dull pounding of the migraine in the back of his head and rushing of his own blood as he ran, ran like it was some kind of twisted race, fearing what was waiting for him at the finish line.

Turk was outside the operation room, both of his hands spread wide on the glass he was looking through, looking like a window shop dummy. Perry slowed down, not really needing to rest but despite his fitness he found himself a little breathless. Taking up the position right next to Gandhi he glanced trough the glass and found himself taking a sharp breath, as if someone punched him in the gut.

His first realization was that there was a lot of blood, too much for his own liking when it involved someone he knew. What hit him next was the motionless body that was laid on the operation table. The purple-black bruises that marred Newbie's face, his torso and god, what in the world happened to his hand?

Cox was glad he couldn't see him very well, not from the distance and small army of nurses and surgeons that surrounded him. He was even more grateful for that obscured vision when Carla finally caught up to him and burst into tears. She probably shouldn't be watching JD in that state, not to worry too much. Perry almost snorted, finding his thoughts gruesomely comical. Like a sense of her well-being ever stopped that woman from messing with everyone's business.

"What happened?" He breathed out finally, when a surgical nurse ran past them, carrying another bag of blood. He tried not to flinch at the thought of the blood loss JD was now going through.

"I don't know much." Turk shook his head while still keeping his arms wrapped protectively around Carla's. The woman seemed to be calming down, even though her hormones were probably giving her one hell of a ride right now. "Doctor Wen promised to tell me more as soon as he gets out of there. I talked to the paramedics that brought him in. They said his flat was demolished. Either it was a burglary or he got in a bad fight. Maybe both."

Carla's gasps sounded more like a sobs now and Turk winced, rubbing his hands up and down her back.

"He managed to call the ambulance somehow. They said that the most obvious injuries were on his head and hand. They haven't told me anything more then that."

Perry turned back to the glass, trying to make a sense out of the scraps of information he now had. Head injury – concussion, broken skull, blood loss. Bruises on chest – broken ribs, possible internal organs damage? Hand – broken bones, probably. What else?

Carla seemed to sober up a bit and she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Her mascara smudged her cheeks slightly, but she was obviously past caring at that very moment.

"I'll go page Elliot." The nurse's voice was shaken a tiniest bit, but still strong. "And after that I am going to get us coffee and come back here. We are going to need it." She nodded, as if convincing herself that was the right thing to do. "You guys don't leave this place. Don't leave Bambi alone."

"We won't." Turk reassured his wife with a sad, forced smile. Perry chose to say nothing.

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After a very shocked and teary Elliot joined them in front of the operating room, Turk was forced to once again tell his story about every detail the paramedics spared him. This time Carle held through it without breaking into tears.

Perry was seating nearly motionless, slowly going through his coffee, now long cold, but he didn't seem to notice. Elliot could see the stubble that started to appear on his face and wondered how long the tired man had been awake. He'd been on call since late afternoon.

In the late dawn hours doctor Wen finally came to them; his surgical scrubs fresh and new, probably to avoid meeting them with Newbie's blood splattered in front, Perry thought grimly.

"Doctor Wen, how is he?" Elliot had sprung to her feet, nearly spilling the sad remains of her coffee. Carla grabbed Turk's hands and squeezed, hard, but he never even winced, too focused on the Asian attending.

"I'm not going to say he's doing great, but it could have been a lot worse. Apart from the three broken ribs he has no internal damage."

'Oh thank god' Perry squeezed his eyes shut. Even if he didn't believe in him, he had to thank someone, or something, that watched over the young doctor.

"It's his head and hand injuries that seem to be the biggest problem right now. He was attacked with some kind of blunt object; His skull was nearly cracked open. There is a high chance of concussion – we won't know for sure until he wakes up – and we are not really sure how bad the head and brain damage will be. It's too early to predict."

Perry glanced at the black surgeon sitting next to him; after all, he was JD's best friend. Turk seemed fine, steady at least, but something in his eyes told him that inside he was going mad with worry.

"There is, of course, a mass amount of swelling and bruises, but it should go down in week or two. Apparently, some of his teeth were knocked out as well."

Elliot started to weep. Again. But right now, Doctor Cox tried not to pay attention. She needed it. Hell, all of them did.

"Doctor Wen, what about his hand?"

"It appears to be smashed with the same kind of object. The phalanges and metacarpals of the right hand are broken in multiple places and most of them are open fractures, so we have to start him on antibiotics as soon as possible to avoid infection. Some of the muscles got cut with the bone fragments, but they're minor injuries, shouldn't be much of a problem. The bones, however, are the main issue. As soon as he wakes up and stabilizes I would like to schedule him for the reconstruction surgery. The faster we do this the better. Still, there is a high risk he won't be able to use his hand to its full extent ever again."

With that, Perry had enough. He could tell the rest of the story himself. Concussion, rehabilitation to be even able to move the hand at all, problems at work when he won't be able to do as much as inserting an IV.

"Doctor Cox, where are you going?" Elliot's yell, loud and angry ran through the halls as he dumped the remains of his coffee to nearest basket and clasping both hands on his neck, he made his way back to the main hallway and out.

"Home, Barbie. I'm going home." He rasped out as he pushed the door open and disappeared from their sight.

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Perry bent under the yellow and black police tape as he used his key to get inside the flat. They were here soon after the paramedics, protecting any kind of evidence they could find. Perry was still convinced they would find nothing. Newbie's blood, newbie's fingerprints, his own fingerprints. He had been here long enough for the apartment to be marked with his own presence, his touch and smell.

He stepped over the shattered glass from the window and then looked around. The place was a mess. Everything was out of place, torn, thrown away and broken. Not a single item was spared; and Perry knew, he had seen the surroundings nearly every day. He somehow memorized the position of every single one of Newbie's idiotic knickknacks, like the custom made figurine of Sasha or the call-phone holder that flashed bright red lights and gave a silly tune every time he got a call.

He shook his head, raising said holder from the ground when it had laid helplessly and fixed it back to its proper place.

Then his eyes fell upon the kitchen floor, where the panels were stained with red. Perry's eyes widened for a second, and then he slowly approached the trail, running his fingers over it gently. It was already dry, sinking into the wood, marking it probably beyond the point of repair. He hoped that JD wasn't in the same condition.

The tired man sat down on the floor, leaning on one of the cabinets and stared at the red stain angrily, as if a staring contest could fix things. It's not here, it never happened, go away.

His eyes burned, but no tears came. Perry Cox didn't cry. He just died a little inside instead.