Disclaimer: Scrubs is not mine.
Perry glared hard into the half empty tumbler cupped between both his hands. The remainder of the ice cubes floating atop the surface were beginning to dissolve into flat, clear shards in the amber liquid. Normally he'd sit around and drink himself into a drunken stupor in the comfort of his own home, but going home meant rendering himself to an interrogation from Jordan about his three day suspension (Kelso couldn't afford more than that, considering Perry was the best doctor in the God damn world).
"That drunken stupor that you're hoping to achieve isn't going to come around by itself," a female voice said teasingly behind him.
The middle aged man cringed. Perry should've known he wouldn't have been able to avoid confrontation for much longer. Granted, it wasn't from his ex-wife, but Carla wasn't any less worse.
"I'm kinda proud of you, you know," Carla piped up.
He looked at her incredulously.
"I was the nurse who did the blood tests on Mr. Michaels," she explained. "Let's just say I missed the vein… About five times." The Latina snorted. "Of course, no one really makes a big deal out of that. Interns do it all the time." She shrugged before turning to smirk at him. "But you? You took the cake with that pointless biopsy. Do you know what that makes you? That makes you more of a drama queen than Elliot."
"Oh goody, does that mean I've been recruited into the sorority?" Perry retorted. He knocked his now lukewarm drink back with a grimace.
Carla gave him a knowing smile. "You care more about JD than you let on," she teased. "You're just one giant teddy bear."
"Teddy bears don't maliciously stab patients with scalpels," Turk's voice muttered behind them. He took the seat on Perry's left.
"The kooky ones do," his girlfriend countered with a grin.
"Aw, baby, let the dude drown in the Nile in peace," the surgical doctor admonished playfully.
"Oh, please," Perry snorted, peering longingly into the empty tumbler, "you so wanted me to give you a reason to give him a surgical consult."
"Doesn't mean you'd cut up any ol' person just for fun and gravy, Doctor Cox," Turk replied, shrugging.
"You can't even admit you did this for Bambi," Carla said in disbelief, shaking her head. "Even with that three day suspension staring you in the face."
Perry rolled his eyes and whistled the bartender over.
Elliot worried at her lower lip as she pushed a stray strand of hair from JD's forehead, eyes widening in surprise at the heat emanating from his skin. "JD?" she asked, her voice hushed but still alarmed.
"Elliot?" he rasped, glancing blearily at her. JD shivered, his eyes falling closed again. "It's so cold."
The blonde doctor poured ice water into a pink plastic cup, pressing it into his hand. "You're burning up. Drink this. I'm going to get a thermometer." She darted out of the room once she was sure he had a firm grasp on the cup. Elliot dug through the supply closet for an infrared ear thermometer before jogging back towards JD's room.
"Could I get another blanket?" JD asked, his teeth chattering.
"Hold on, JD," Elliot said soothingly. She placed a protective plastic cap over the thermometer before nestling it into his ear. She glanced at the LCD screen as soon as it started to beep. "Frick, you have a temp of 101.1," she murmured under her breath. She disposed of the plastic cap and placed the thermometer in the leg pocket of her scrubs before pouring JD another cup of water. "Drink this, okay? I'm going to get you another blanket and some naproxen."
Elliot rushed out of the room again, returning momentarily with a thin blanket and a small medicine cup containing two naproxen tablets. She draped the linen over JD's shoulders before pouring him some more water and handing him his medicine.
"I'm going to pee like crazy," JD whined. He tipped both tablets into his mouth, chasing it down with a sip of water.
"Good!" Elliot told him with a resolute nod. "Pee that infection out, where it belongs!"
The dark haired man shivered, pulling the blanket around him. "Couldn't you have given me a thicker blanket?"
"You're a doctor, JD. You know you'll overheat," she admonished softly. "Want me to get you a urinal?"
He pouted. "I guess… It'll only hurt my pride."
Elliot giggled, gently nudging him with her elbow. She was about to leave the room when she thought she saw something odd. She frowned, glancing up at the fluorescent lighting before glancing back into JD's pallid features, fishing a penlight from her front pocket. "JD, look at me for a sec?"
"Why? What's wrong?"
"Just look into the light for me," she murmured, shining the penlight into his right eye when he did so. She did the same to his left before taking a step back, her hands on her hips. "Your eyes are yellow," she said softly.
JD's eyes widened, sliding his hand under the covers to palpate his stomach. Elliot lowered the bed frame so that he was lying flat on his back. She rounded his bed and took a pair of latex gloves from a box mounted on the wall behind him, pulling them on.
"It actually hurts when I palpate here but I just thought it was my ribs," JD said pensively. "But then again, I hurt all over," he muttered, rolling his eyes.
"Lift your gown up," Elliot said. She gently palpated his abdomen as soon as he covered his nether regions with the blanket and pulled his hospital gown up, the material bunched around his bandaged torso. "You don't have any lacerations, do you?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Just bruises. So I'm guessing that if my liver's damaged, it's more than likely from a blunt injury than anything else. But there could be a hematoma considering I'm a bit jaundiced." He glanced at her gloved hands. "It feels a bit swollen, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, but not by much," she replied with a nod. "But that really doesn't explain your fever…"
He shrugged, wincing as he did so. "My body's kinda dealing with a lot of things right now and my immune system is probably taking the brunt of it; the hospital isn't exactly the cleanest place on earth, either."
Elliot glanced at her watch as she pulled off her gloves. "I'm gonna shoot you up with some vitamin K," she said, dropping the gloves into a trash can in the corner of the room. "Wait a minute… Weren't you sent for a CT scan the other day? I don't get why they couldn't have caught this."
JD shrugged, wincing again at the action. "I don't know. I'll get Doctor Cox to harass Doctor Flannerly again." He pulled his gown back down. "Could you up the dosage on my painkillers a bit, Doc?" he asked jokingly.
"Sure, lemme just document these things down so you don't sue me," Elliot chuckled, picking up his chart and plucking a pen from her front pocket. She glanced up at him as she returned his file to the foot of the bed. "Oh! Did you hear what Doctor Cox did to the guy that hit you?" she murmured, her eyes wide.
"Yeah, I did," he muttered, fidgeting. "I guess I'll figure out why soon enough. Maybe the guy just pissed him off."
"That bad? If Doctor Cox got that pissed off on a normal basis, all of the sharp and shiny things in this hospital would be locked up. And that would pretty much be most of the stuff in this hospital." She tweaked a few things on his infusion pump. "There're your painkillers, JD. Get some sleep. I'll be back later to administer your vitamin K."
He nodded, leaning back into his pillows. "As if I had a choice. This stuff knocks me out in nanoseconds," he chuckled. "Thanks, Elliot."
She smiled, stroking his hair affectionately before leaving the room.
Perry groaned as his pager went off, setting the tumbler back onto the table before detaching the offending object from his belt. Fortunately, it was just Elliot filling him in on JD's condition like he'd insisted.
Unfortunately, JD's condition had apparently worsened.
"You're on call?" Carla asked beside him, eyebrow raised.
"No, it's Barbie," he muttered, fishing in his jacket pocket for his cell phone. He glanced at the screen with a grimace. "Damn battery is low."
"Here," Turk said, offering his cell phone.
Perry took it and dialed the number Elliot had paged him along with JD's stats. "What's the news on Barbara?"
"Maybe blunt liver trauma," Elliot's voice came up on the other line. "His eyes are yellow. We think he's got a hematoma 'cause there're apparently no lacerations but vehicular accident victims usually sustain liver injuries considering its placement in the body. But that doesn't really make any sense since JD got a CT scan the other day and Doctor Flannerly didn't report anything besides the herniated disk…"
"Did you put him on vitamin K?"
Turk sat up in alarm. "Vitamin K? What's going on with Vanilla Bear?"
"Yeah, just now," Elliot replied. "He has a high grade fever too, but that couldn't be caused by his liver, could it? There must be an infection somewhere…"
"Great observation, Barbie, really," Perry snapped, rubbing his hand over his face. "Do a blood test and check for the standard stuff, and see if he's got any liver toxins floating around in there."
"I'm swamped, Doctor Cox--"
"Don't you know by now that I don't care? Drop everything and get his blood culture!"
Carla gave him a scathing look, snatching the phone from him. "Don't listen to him, honey, he's drunk. Have one of the nursing staff do it for you, okay?" she told the other girl on the other line soothingly.
"Okay," Elliot murmured, voice sounding strained.
"Dumb Newbie, injuring his liver like that," Perry groused petulantly. He took a long sip of his scotch.
Turk stared at him oddly. "Dude, look at what you're doing."
Carla hung up the phone and handed it to Turk. "Doctor Cox, you should stop," she said softly but firmly, placing her hand on his as he reached for the tumbler again. "I sure as hell won't allow you to drive home in the condition you're in now."
Perry pushed his chair back, slapping a few twenties on the bar before getting to his feet.
"Where do you think you're going?" the Latina nurse demanded. She and Turk stood up in alarm.
"Where else do you think I'm going?" Perry snapped at her. "I'm gonna go check up on the kid."
The middle aged man stepped out of the bar, the chill air making his face even more flushed than it already was. He glanced at the watch on his wrist to find that it was almost three in the morning. Perry walked the short distance to the hospital, flashing the security guard his ID card before making his way through the parking lot.
He took the elevator to the ICU and sauntered into Newbie's room, pausing over his sleeping protégé. Perry carefully placed his hands on the bed to brace himself before leaning forward and pressing his lips to the younger man's forehead.
JD's eyes shot open and he glanced up at his mentor, his pale features suddenly very pink. "Am I delirious?" he asked, sounding startled.
"No, why?" Perry grunted.
"What were you doing?" he demanded.
An expression slipped over Perry's features that conveyed something along the lines of 'duh'. "Checking your temperature, what else?"
"With your mouth?" JD asked, an incredulous look on his face. "You kissed me!" he exclaimed accusingly. He leaned forward, sniffing the older man in front of him. "Are you… Are you drunk?"
Perry's features were disquietingly blank, but his eyes shined glossily. He blinked. "Yeah… Yeah, I think I might be."
A/N: The truth always comes out when you're drunk. :3 Reviews, please!
