Our Changed World Chapter 1, a scrubs fanfic

First of all, THANK YOU to the reviewers of My Snowstorm! I can't express my gratitude at your lovely reviews. You guys seriously make me cry with happiness.

Anyway, this fic. I love a good dystopia!fic, and what could be more fun than one of those starring the characters of Scrubs? Not that this fic will be fun. More sort of doom and gloom. I'm having a good time writing it, even though I have absolutely no plot outline and am just going with the flow (what's new there, then?) As for updates, there'll probably be a few after this one , and then I'll most likely have to pause and think up the next bit of plot. Also, I'm starting college this week and I am TERRIFIED.

The story would take place when JD and his friends are in their third year at the hospital.

Enjoy the fic!

PROLOGUE

Newbie was waiting for me at the hospital entrance, silhouetted against the lit interior. It wasn't until I had jogged up to him that I saw the fear in his eyes. He was wringing his hands together.

'What's all this about, Newbie?' I said, slightly breathless, trying to ignore the sudden sick feeling in my stomach. 'You'd better have a good reason for calling me and dragging me out here in the middle of the night.'

'It's the patients with the high fever we admitted today and yesterday, Doctor Cox. They're dying, all of them, they're dying...'

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We could only stand and watch as patient after patient died. There was nothing we could do.

It was a virus of some kind. Most of the staff caught it and succumbed to their fevers as well. And the virus, or whatever it was, was nationwide. Worldwide. A person began to feel hot and weak, their temperature soared, and within two days they were dead. There was no treatment, and we had no idea how it spread.

There was nothing we could do.

The government declared a state of emergency and no one was allowed to leave the hospital. Trucks came to the hospital every day to take the bodies away. Patients were deposited on our doorstep.

I phoned Jordan.

'Stay indoors, Jordan, do you hear me? No matter what happens, you and Jack have to stay inside. I will come for you, Jordan, I will come for you.'

The trucks stopped coming. The TV and radio stopped broadcasting. Phone lines were down. We were stuck in a hospital full of dying people with no contact with the outside world.

And gradually the sick patients stopped coming, leaving about fifty survivors within the hospital, some of them staff, some of them other patients who hadn't caught the virus. No one knew what to do. The city was silent and empty. No one came to us. No one contacted us

'Jordan? Are you there? Jordan! Open the door, please open the door!'

She opened the door. I grabbed her to me and kissed her long and hard.

We went back the hospital. There was nothing else for us to do. We went back, back to Newbie and Carla and Ghandi and Barbie and Kelso and the rest, most of who I didn't know.

And we stayed there.

There was gunfire outside.

ONE YEAR LATER

'Stop here.'

The janitor's van skidded to a stop in the middle of the deserted street and he cut the engine. The sudden silence was unsettling; apart from the slight breeze that moaned around the vehicle and sent dead leaves scattering across the road, there was no sound. I leaned forward and peered through the dusty windshield at the distant hospital, a dark silhouette against the bleak grey sky.

I picked up the walkie-talkie and held out my hand to the janitor without looking at him. 'Give me the gun.'

'You're not getting the gun!'

'What? What are you - I don't have time for this. Give me the gun, now.'

'Oh, so because you're a doctor you automatically get the gun?' The janitor jabbed the rifle in my direction. 'I take care of Rosalie every day, but once we actually have to get down to business, you have the right to her?'

'You named the goddamn gun? Whatever - the reason I want the gun is because you're the one driving, and I don't care what you say, it is not possible to make a quick getaway while firing a gun at the same time. Plus, you're always too busy staring at the thing to actually keep watch.'

'Who wouldn't stare at her?' the janitor said. He turned an adoring gaze on the rifle. 'She's mine...my own...my precious.'

'Just keep a lookout, would ya?' I growled, staring around shiftily through the windscreen. It was making me edgy, knowing how vulnerable we were, parked in the middle of the street. We were a sitting duck, ready to be picked off at any moment. I wasn't any less nervous knowing that our only means of defense was in the hands of the janitor, especially when he was prone to an alarming habit of waving the rifle around in the air.

I kept my eyes on Sacred Heart as I held the walkie-talkie to my mouth, wondering if perhaps Jordan or Jack was peering through one of the windows in my direction at this very moment. 'Come in, Sacred Heart, this is Cox,' I said. 'There better be someone on the roof right now, because I am so not in the mood to be messed with!'

There was a pause, during which my heartbeat was suddenly very loud in my ears. The janitor turned his head slowly, his eyes widening. Then there was a crackling, followed by a very familiar voice. 'Reading you loud and clear, Doctor Cox! Over and out.'

I froze, my eyes widening. Was that Newbie? What the hell was he doing on roof duty? I took a deep breath and forced myself to speak calmly.

'Newbie? Are you on the roof?'

'Yeah - oh wait, I can see your van. Look, can you see me waving?' I could see a tiny figure waving distantly from the hospital roof. 'Oh, and by the way, Doctor Cox, do you think you could call me Scorpio while we're talking like this? It's my new code name. Or The Hustle, I haven't quite decided which - '

I gritted my teeth. 'Newbie, I thought I made it clear to you that you are under no circumstances allowed up there?'

'Doctor Kelso hit me with guard duty this morning. Anyway, do you want a code name too? How about Coxer? Too obvious?'

I was going to rip Bob's head off his shoulders and nail it to the wall. He had put Newbie up on the roof on purpose, the son of a bitch. He knew that it was my explicit instruction that Newbie never, ever be put up there, a sitting target for any sniper with their eye on the place. But as I'd been gone the past two days, Kelso had evidently seen fit to defy me. To spite me, even.

'We are going to talk as soon as I get back,' I growled into the walkie-talkie, spitting the words through my teeth. 'But before I do that, you can at least do your job and tell me if the way is clear.'

'Seems to be. A car passed this morning, but it didn't even slow down. Do you want me to send someone down to tell Stanley you're coming?'

'Do that, Newbie.' I hesitated. I could say either Good job or Now get off the damn roof, but instead I just said, 'See you in a bit.'

'Over and out.'

'And stop using all that goddamn code-speak!'

I put down the walkie-talkie and the janitor eased the van forward, silently passing me the gun as he hit the accelerator. There was no bickering this time. We both had to concentrate. Neither of us said anything as the van slowly passed down the street, the blank, staring eyes of empty buildings rolling by. At least, I hoped very much that they were empty. I narrowed my eyes as I held the rifle ready in my hands, the tips of my fingers restlessly playing around the trigger. I had been caught in an ambush once before. The gunshots had come entirely out of nowhere; I had been driving along steadily, alert but not afraid, and there had been no sign of any living creature, when suddenly several deafening blasts echoed out, thousands of shards of glass exploded inwards and Doctor Wen was jerking violently in the passenger seat, blood staining rapidly across his chest. I hadn't had any choice but to hit the accelerator and get as far away from there as I could, as fast as possible. As I'd roared away, I caught sight in the mirror of three or four figures running into the street behind me, immediately taking aim, but their following shots hadn't done any harm.

By the time I thought it was safe to pull over, Wen was already slumped lifelessly, his eyes wide and staring, and there wasn't anything I could have done. I'd locked the memory of that day in the back of my mind, and never spoke of it to anyone. But what really left a strange, sick taste in my mouth was the thought that Newbie had been begging me to take him with him, and it had been a last-minute decision of mine to refuse. The horror of what could have been that day was never far from my thoughts. And now he'd been posted on the roof...

I blinked hard, trying not to imagine how exactly I would go about murdering Kelso. It would be just too ironic if, getting lost in my thoughts about how I had to stay alert because of the way Doctor Wen died, I got distracted and died in the exact same way. I'd always wanted to die ironically, but...not today. I leaned forward in my seat and continued scanning the road, the mirrors, the windows of houses, my eyes constantly roving and examining, never staying on one thing for too long. But the short journey down the street was without incident, and I let myself relax just the tiniest bit as the janitor carefully turned the van into the parking lot.

'You seem to spend a lot more time than it's worth trying not to let Scooter get killed,' the janitor remarked, pulling up. I peered towards the door of the hospital; I could see the flurry of movement inside as people worked to remove the barricades and let us through.

I shoved the gun back towards the janitor, not meeting his eyes. 'So?'

He was quiet for a minute. When I finally looked up at him, he frowned at me in a confused way and shrugged. 'Why? He's got as much chance of surviving as any of us.'

'You'd think so, wouldn't ya,' I snapped, 'but the thing is, Newbie's a damn sight more stupid than the rest of us, therefore he is more likely to get himself killed.' With that, I flung open the door and jumped out of the van. The last of the barricades had been removed from the hospital door, and an elderly man was now peering blearily at us through his glasses.

''Lo, Doctor Cox,' he called across to me in a quavering voice. 'Did you get the supplies?'

'We sure did, Stanley,' I replied, unable to stop a triumphant grin from pulling at the corners of my mouth. Doctor Cox always came back from a succeeded mission. 'Send someone on down to help us with this stuff.' I couldn't resist adding, 'Because there's a lot of it.'

'I hope you're not going to take all the credit for this,' the janitor said to me as he pulled open the back doors of his van to reveal large boxes crammed in on top of each other, reaching from the floor to the ceiling. 'It was a team effort, right?'

'If by team effort you mean, I took part in hostile and dangerous negotiations while you sat in the van with the gun in your lap and all the doors locked, then yes, I can see where we really came together on this one.' I held the walkie-talkie to my mouth again. 'How's it looking, Newbie?'

'All clear,' came the crackle. I could just hear Newbie's real voice carried faintly on the wind; craning my neck, I saw him silhouetted on the roof, looking down at me. He waved. I growled and turned my attention back to the task at hand. As luck would have it, one of the guys who had come to help unload the supplies was that sex-crazed maniac Todd Quinlan.

'You know who else has a gun in his lap?' he was saying to the janitor.

The janitor looked at him briefly; he was leaning against the van, still keeping watch with the rifle. 'I'm guessing...that would be you.'

'Correct five!' the Todd crowed.

The janitor grimaced and shook his head.

I reached into the van and hefted a box into my arms. 'Less innuendo and more getting this job done, unless you want to die while talking about your penis. But then...' I cocked my head to one side, pretending to consider, 'you never actually stop talking about your penis, so it's a fairly likely scenario anyway.'

Todd pursed his lips, then grinned. 'The Todd can think of worse scenarios,' he said, nodding.

'Fair enough.' I caught the box in a tighter grip and began to make my way towards the door -

'Doctor Cox! Doctor Cox!' Newbie's panicked voice crackled to me from the walkie-talkie in my pocket. 'There's a man running, I mean two, two men, they've got - '

BANG.

The box tumbled from my grasp and hit the concrete heavily, bursting open and strewing food supplies across the ground.

BANG.

Stanley, at the door, was down, he'd been hit.

Todd was diving behind the van.

I could faintly hear shocked shouts from inside the hospital.

The janitor was whirling around, his feet planted squarely on the ground, the barrel of the rifle swinging in the direction the shots had come from.

I flung myself back against the van. People were screaming and yelling from the hospital entrance, Todd was cowering at my feet, the janitor was firing off deafening shots but I ignored all that as I fumbled frantically for my walkie-talkie. 'Newbie? Newbie! Come in! Newbie!'

There was silence, and I froze, gripping the walkie-talkie, staring at nothing.

Why wasn't he answering?

He had been cut off so suddenly...

And then I was running, sprinting past the janitor, who was still firing, past the people with more guns who had come running out of the hospital to help him, over Stanley's body - he was a goner - and up the corridor, forcing my feet to pound faster against the carpet, faster, run faster...

I was through the door to the stairwell and leaping up it, leaving behind the cries behind me - Doctor Cox? What's going on? What's happening? - and taking the stairs two at a time, seeing nothing but the image in my head of Newbie lying on the cold roof, dying alone. My head was so taken up with the image that I passed flight after flight without realising, until abruptly the door to the roof was in front of me. I flung it open, staggering out onto the roof.

Newbie was lying on his back by the wall. Numb with horror, I stumbled towards him. There was blood, he was bleeding. 'No, no, no,' someone was gasping, and I dimly realised that it was me. 'Newbie! Newbie!' I bent over him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and shook him hard, barely aware of what I was doing.

'OW!' Newbie yelled at me.