A/N: Okay, this story revolves around one Ben Sullivan throughout the most imporant times of his life. I already pretty much have the second chappie. Please review, even if you don't like it.


A Construction Site, 2002

I was working on the stairs. My hand didn't hurt very much, I was used to pain, but the damn bleeding got annoying after a while.

Dre came over, with his hammer and screwdriver. "Sully, how's it going?"

I tried to pick up my hammer, but it slipped and fell on my knee. "Damn."

"What?"

I waved my board-ed hand in his direction. "This makes everything so much harder."

Dre's eyes doubled in size. "Holy mother of—doesn't that hurt?"

"My knee? I'll probably have a good-sized bruise-"

"Your freaking hand!"

I shrugged. "It started feeling numb about half an hour ago."

"Didn't you report it?"

That's the thing about Dre. He might put on a tough-other-side-of-tracks act, but as soon as blood comes into play, he freaks.

"You're only supposed to report three per week."

"That's to make sure people don't report papercuts! Not—not boards nailed to someone's hand! How long has it been like that?"

"Since you started the master bedroom."

"That was an hour and a half ago!"

I aimed the nailgun. "More like an hour and forty-five minutes."

"Go! Go! I'll cover for you! Just—go to the hospital!"

I shrugged, dropped the nailgun, grabbed my camera, and headed over to Sacred Heart, doing what is sometimes called "The Ben Sullivan One-Handed Driving Show." JFK Memorial Hospital was at least twenty minutes closer, but the doctors over there would just get pissed off that I had showed up again.

I waited in the lobby for a while, sitting next to an extremely talkative woman named Jill Tracy. "…so then I had a breakdown. I got on Prozac, but, well, you know, side effects…"

"Miss Tracy?" An orderly called.

"Oh, that's me." As she walked away, I snapped a picture of her retreating back.

A young teenager sat in Jill's seat. "Hey, I'm Razz. I tried to get my friend to talk to someone, and she hurt me."

I nodded. The admitting nurse called me over. "Mr. Sullivan?"

"Yes?"

"I see you haven't filled in any major symptoms in, and we're pretty swamped, so in the in the interest of time, can I move you down the list?"

I shrugged. "Sure. But I might get blood on the chairs." I held up my hand.

"Actually I think I'll keep you where you are," she said, trying to maintain composure. She wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to me. "Exam room three, second floor. Your doctor will be Elliot Reid."

"Um, actually, can I have Dr. Perry Cox?" Nancy raised her eyebrows. "He's my, er, brother."

"Your name's Sullivan, right?"

"Yeah, he's my… biological brother. Our parents were killed in a… helicopter accident… we were adopted by, uh, different families. We only found out a few months ago."

She might have looked like she wasn't buying it, but really she was superimposing Perry's face onto my own. Apparently we looked close enough, because she took the slip back and changed something. "Second floor, exam room four."

I smiled and held up my right hand in victory. Nancy looked sickened.


"Ben!" Perry called. "Good god, what have you done to yourself this time."

I held up my camera and snapped a picture at his half annoyed, half concerned expression. "Nail gun accident." I pulled the picture out with my teeth. "That's a good 'un. Percival Cox, showing concern."

"No one would believe it was me."

I smiled. This was why I loved him.

"Listen, I'm going to get you some morphine, and a radiologist will get up here to take an x-ray. So if you can just sit here without killing yourself and/or driving someone to suicide, that would just be tee-rific."

"Aye-aye, chief."

"I'm serious. We don't want a repeat of the great staple gun accident of '98."

"Well, if they wanted to give me blood, they should have just given me the blood. They act like I've never gotten a transfusion."

He laughed and left.

I wasted my time taking pictures of people walking by and making shadow puppets with the light-thing they put x-rays on.

Perry reappeared with a morphine drip. "Tell me when it starts feeling numb. Wouldn't want to accidentally overdose."

I smiled. "I knew the Mafia was still after me."

"I'm actually serious."

"You're never serious," I chuckled. "You can be sarcastic. You occasionally can be happy. You can be drunk."

"I can… pretend to be serious."

There was a silence.

"Numb yet?"

"Yup."


My camera was an attempt to annoy my father into liking me. I got it three months after I quit (or got thrown out, depending on your perspective) Boy Scouts. My neighbor Suey and I would ride around town on bikes, buying crap from garage sales and reselling it for a profit at school. My dad still didn't know either my being thrown out or the event which led to it, and I wasn't in a hurry to tell him.

I was fourteen, so Jordan must have been fifteen and Danni (who was Danielle then) was eight or nine. My dad thought Jordan's razor blade with was amusing, and later Danni and Dad bonded over their habit of sneaking out during dinner for smokes.

Every Saturday at ten to ten I would set out towards the community center where the Boy Scout meetings were held, then double back to the library, where I would wait for Suey.

Suey was a girl from the Midwest with celery-colored eyes and a smattering of freckles. We had nothing in common, but besides Jordan, she was the only kid my age in the neighborhood.

Armed with last week's profits and whatever money we'd earned from allowance/stolen from our siblings, we rode around town and bought whatever looked marketable.

The camera was sitting between a red ceramic mug and an ancient stack of jazz records. The mistress of the sale, a widowed woman in her mid-seventies, came up behind me.

"It used ta be his pri' and joy. He spen' all his time wi' that strap 'round his neck. You wan' it? I can't bear to look a' it anymore. Fitty cents. I got some film fer it too."

She shuffled away and reappeared with a camera case. "S'all in 'ere."

I reached in my pocket and pulled out two quarters. I gave them to her, and she handed me the case and camera. I put the strap around my neck.

Suey came up behind me. "Are you gonna sell that?"

I shook my head. "I'm gonna keep it. Do you mind?"

She shrugged. "I bought myself something, too." She reached behind her and pulled out a giant poster of Paul McCartney. "He's gorgeous, ain't he?"

I rolled my eyes.

When I got home, I announced my presence by snapping a picture of my sleeping father. He jolted awake. "Whassat?

"It's a camera, Dad."

Silence.

"What does it do?"