Ladies and gentlemen, I sincerely apologize for the delay in adding new chapters. I have been incredibly busy with the beginning of the school year and other things and I just didn't have the time to do some heavy rewriting necessary for these next few chapters. It was killing me that, after all the wonderful reviews, comments and subscriptions (who I will begin to thank by name in following posts) that I wasn't updating. Well, here we are and never fear! A brand spanking new addition kicking off part two of My Overall Complications entitled My Changing Opinions.

Again, I'm flying solo here without a beta reader, so I apologize in advance for typos and the like. Even though I've reread this five or six times and made corrections, I'm sure there will still be a mistake or two and I would be more than happy to make corrections to any errors brought to my attention. As always, if anyone would be interested in being the first to read new installments in turn for a little proof reading, lol, let me know. It would make my day.

And just to let you all know, the next chapter is halfway completed as we speak and should be out much more quickly than it took for this one.

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

-V

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He'd heard the door click open but hadn't worried about it. He didn't realize that he wasn't in his own bed. He didn't realize that it wasn't probably just Turk. He didn't think about anything until a woman's voice whispered softly, "Perry? Are you awake?"

Perry? JD cracked open his eyes to see who it was and, while it would be clichéd to say that it all came back to him at once, enough did to give him the good sense to hide under the covers.

"What the hell?" the voice continued as the door screeched the rest of the way open.

JD didn't say a word. He searched for an item, any item of clothing under the covers but came up with nothing. His boxers were where they should be but everything else seemed to have disappeared.

"What the hell?" the voice repeated then, with a kick to the side of the bed, "Perry!"

"Jesus Christ, Priscilla," Perry groaned hoarsely into his pillow on the other side of the bed, "Could you take it down a notch?"

"I will not 'take it down a notch,' you stupid prick!"

Perry propped himself up on his elbows and tried to blink his eyes into focus. He looked confused until he saw that Jordan was standing at the foot of the bed and there was still a bulge under the sheets next to him.

"What little intern whore did you manage to drag back here?" Jordan pointed at the frozen mass, "It's not Barbie under there is it?" then something hit her and she asked, "It's Dr. Miller, isn't it? God damn it, Perry!"

When JD still couldn't come up with a pair of pants, he tried to peek out from underneath the covers but dropped them altogether his flushed face came into full view. Caught, he blitzkrieged for the pile of clothes he could finally see in the corner of the room and rushed to put them on.

Jordan's face went blank, "DJ?"

"Jordan…" Perry said in an explanatory tone, standing out of bed and wrapping one of the sheets around his waist, though he didn't seem to have anything to add.

"This is just pathetic," Jordan said coldly, "You couldn't even bag that blond bitch you've been chasing? You had to bring this little…faggot home?"

She stepped towards JD as he tried to button the waist of his Levis. Perry grabbed her by the shoulder and she responded with an elbow to his stomach.

"You fucking asshole," she shouted, shoving Perry backwards, "I can't believe you!"

She looked around the room with furious eyes as if she didn't know what to do with herself. Then she saw the glass bowl sitting on one of the bedroom dressers.

"I never should have thought you'd change," Jordan cried as she threw the bowl but Perry managed to duck in time. Unsatisfied, Jordan grabbed a framed photo of Jack and hurled it at him as well, following suit with a jewelry box and then a lamp, "How could I have been so stupid?"

Jordan cleared off the entire dresser then continued to scream as she moved on to the one on the other side of the room and started pitching a collection of ceramic containers, "You self-centered piece of shit!"

"Hey," Perry cried out, "Hey! HEY!" He dropped the sheet wrapped around his waist as he danced to avoid bodily harm. "Jordan," he pleaded, "Jordan, come on. Knock it off. Jordan. Would you listen…"

"To what?" Jordan snapped, stepping close to look Perry in the eye "To you? To your excuses? To your bullshit?" She pursed her lips and stared at Perry for a moment. Her eyes were glistening and a tear almost welled over but she wiped them away stiffly and, from somewhere else inside the apartment, a baby's cry chimed in.

"No. I don't think so," Jordan said simply. She turned and left the room, "I'm done."

"Wait. Stop. We can…talk?" Perry pleaded, "We can talk about this."

He ran after her in his underwear but Jordan didn't look back. Jack was still sitting in his stroller in the living room next to a couple of unpacked pieces of luggage. Jordan pulled the bags over her shoulder, grabbed Jack's stroller by the handles and steered him out the front door.

"Come on. Wait!"

When she slammed the door, the entire apartment was silent. JD came into the room slowly. He had managed to get his pants and shoes on, but his shirt was still unbuttoned as he snuck down the hall.

"Dr. Cox?" JD whispered hoarsely.

Perry was standing in the middle of the living room with his arms raised, fingers laced behind his head. He didn't turn to face him but JD heard the hiss of air as Perry sucked air in through his teeth, "Go."

"Listen," JD started, "I'm-"

"Go!" Perry interrupted angrily.

JD closed his mouth tightly and rushed past Perry and out the front door. In the hall, he had decided not to take the elevator in case Jordan returned for more. Instead, he went down the utility staircase, buttoning his shirt as he carefully descended the treacherous steps, his bandaged hand searing at his fingers' movements.

Outside, the sun was still below the horizon and the sky was a dim, surreal sort of orange. People were waking up and getting ready for their lives: driving to work, walking to school, speeding home on a scooter in yesterday's clothes - each one in their own little bubble of morning genesis. As JD got further from Perry's apartment and closer to his own, everything that had happened became a bit disjointed. It was again like he'd had an odd dream but the details didn't blur this time. The more he thought about the look on Jordan's face, the sound of Perry's voice, the sweat of the night before, the more it all became frighteningly vicid. The only reasonable solution was to stop thinking and that's exactly what he did.

When he got home, JD went straight to his bathroom where he stripped out of his clothes and turned the shower on. While he waited for the water to warm up, he carefully peeled back the medical tape on his hand and removed the brown stained-gauze. Underneath, the bony heel of his palm was a mottled purple and the slash where the largest piece of glass had cut had scabbed over. It would heal fine, he thought, but he was still going to get a pretty good scar.

By the time JD finished inspecting his hand, the room had filled with steam and he stepped into the shower. He closed his eyes while water poured over his body and when he opened them again, he swept the dripping hair out of his eyes and stared at the familiar green and white tiled walls.

***

Perry didn't show up for work that day. JD kept himself too busy to think about it.

The second day Perry was gone, JD couldn't keep himself from feeling a bit worried no matter how hard he tried to clear his mind of it. He did, however, manage to keep from calling Perry's house to see if anyone would pick up which, he supposed, was a small victory in self-determination.

When Perry finally came to work on the third day, looking haggard and most likely still hungover, JD was relieved for a grand total of three second before he realized that meant he would have to actually see him during the day. Sacred Heart wasn't that big and, more likely or not, something would come up that he would require Perry's assistance.

It became quickly apparent, however, that it wouldn't be a problem. After Perry took off his coat and signed in first thing in the morning, he looked up and caught JD's gaze. Both men immediately diverted glances and walked in opposite directions.

The rest of the morning was a game of tag with nurse's sent as messengers between the two. Post-Its stuck to patient charts with things like, "high blood pressure," "needs surgical consult," "get a chest x-ray," and "gout?" were the closest they came to actual communication until a page came over the hospital's intercom requesting Dr. Dorian in pediatrics.

JD, who had been on his way to the cafeteria for a lunch break, was baffled but changed course for the closest elevator and went to the third floor. He was half-jogging down the hall to the nurse's station to see who was looking for him when something caught him by the elbow and pulled him into the men's room. The door closed behind him and JD turned around to find Perry. JD blushed violently and wished he could be anywhere else. He couldn't look Perry in the eye and stared at the end of the stethoscope hanging around his neck.

"Dr. Cox," JD nodded uncomfortably, trying to sound nonchalant as if they were passing in the hall.

There was a horribly long silence before Perry finally opened his dry lips and said quietly, "She moved out."

JD looked up, "Huh?"

"Jordan," Perry said, "She moved back into the place she leased before we got back together. Said she kept it just in case."

"I'm so sorry," JD replied solemnly and genuinely.

Perry stared silently. It felt like he was sizing him up and JD began to try and figure out an escape plan.

"About the other day," JD offered while he stepped back and tried to inconspicuously see if there were any feet under the toilet stall doors - any witnesses, "I don't know what happened."

"Nobody's in here," Perry noted, seeing what he was doing.

JD felt a twinge of fright, "The best thing would be to just forget that anything happened at all and we could…we could just go back to how things were beforehand. You can call me girls' names and tell me how much of an idiot I am and I can leave you alone. How about that?"

JD waited for an answer, a threat, a scream. Something. But Perry didn't look angry. He didn't look anything. His face was oddly blank. Actually seeing him this close, JD noticed there were heavy bags under Perry's eyes and his usually meticulous hair was slightly disarrayed. The lines in his forehead looked like they had been there a while.

Perry finally opened his mouth again and said, "No." Then he stepped forward, reaching into his white coat pocket.

JD thought he was going to pull out a gun, maybe a knife. He thought Perry was going to stab him to death there and then. When Perry instead pulled out a small copper colored key and offered it, JD didn't know what to do.

"What's this?"

"It's to my apartment," Perry mumbled, "I work a double shift so I won't get off until early tomorrow morning."

Perry turned quickly to leave, but JD asked, "What's this for?"

"Jordan wants the rest of her stuff," Perry said flatly, " I need help packing it all."

"Oh?" JD commented unsurely.

"You helped make this whole goddamn mess," Perry said, sounding a tiny bit like his normal self, "I'll be damned if I'm left to clean it up on my own."

***

JD had been practicing conversations all day - things to say, things to clarify, things to apologize about – but when he knocked on Perry's door, he still had no idea what to say. His pulse quickened when he heard the deadbolt click and the door swung open. He decided that, "Hi," was a good start but Perry didn't even give him the chance.

"Come on," Perry said, annoyed, "There's a shit load to pack."

JD followed Perry back to his and Jordan's bedroom where already half-filled cardboard boxes were on the floor and a pile of clothing sat in the middle of the bed.

"Here," Perry said, offering him a black plastic trash bag and gesturing to the clothes.

"Just stuff 'em in?": JD's first words of the night.

"I'm giving her her shit," Perry replied, finding the opening to a bag of his own and shaking it in the air to open, "I don't have to be cordial about it."

JD flicked open his own bag and started shoving what appeared to be rather expensive blouses, skirts and dresses and suits in dry cleaner bags into it. They managed to compact and entire wardrobe into three bags that Perry tied at the tops and threw into the hall.

Then Perry picked up the half empty boxes off the floor one by one and stuck them on the bed where the clothes used to be and went through the battle-scarred drawers of the bedroom dressers, stacking little odds and ends and feminine articles inside. What remained of the wooden jewelry and its shining guts spilling over went in first, followed by bottles of lotion and makeup. Perry ducked into the side bathroom for a second and came back with an armful of things from his medicine cabinet. As each one filled up, he folded the tops close and wrote "Jordan's Shit" across the front of them in Sharpie.

When there was nothing left in the bedroom, JD followed Perry's lead and carried the boxes and bags out to the living room where they were stacked on and in front of the couch. While they were there, Perry went through the living room and took framed photographs, paintings, trinkets and decorative things off the walls and shelves. He did a quick sweep through the kitchen, grabbing a coffee mug with "#1 Bitch" written on it and several old serving dishes that looked like real silver and packed them all away.

JD helped when it was apparent what was going but, for the most part, Perry just pointed. And even then, Perry usually shook his head exasperatedly and ended up taking whatever it was and doing it himself. JD mostly stood back and watched Perry work back and forth through all the rooms with the same odd blank look on his face that he had had at the hospital. As the middle of the night wore on into being the very early morning, his face became more gaunt and his movements clumsy. It took hours to comb through the entire apartment and, just when it looked like Perry might be done, he would stop suddenly and go to a room he had already been through, remembering something he had forgotten in an out of the way drawer or cupboard.

Finally, sometime just after five o'clock in the morning, Perry came back to the living room with a stack of paperback novels that he tossed onto the only remaining visible part of furniture with a sigh. He stepped back, tilting his head from side to side and stretching his shoulders as he undoubtedly did a mental inventory check of the house before letting his shoulders drop. Then his face changed slightly. The anger and frustration softened into something that, if Perry knew was so transparently visible on his face, he would have never let JD seen it.

"Was that it?" JD asked.

Perry started a little at the sound of his voice, "Just one more," he replied.

He picked up one of the only remaining empty boxes from the floor and went down the hall into the only room that neither of them had set foot in. JD followed tentatively.

Perry flipped on the stark overhead light and the crib, the toys, the alphabet painted on the wall all came into view. JD was uncomfortable and stayed outside the door. Perry went inside slowly and looked around. He didn't touch anything, only gazed slowly. He got to the crib and saw a little blue blanket.

"I can't believe she left this," Perry said to himself under his breath, "He needs his woobie." The word sounded absolutely out of place coming from Perry's mouth, but something about it sounded natural – like he'd said woobie a thousand times before.

Perry carefully picked up the blanket, refolded it and placed it at the bottom of the box before turning to look at the rest of the room. His jaw was clenched more than ever so that it looked like he was in physical pain. This time, he did turn away from JD. He picked up the box, turned out the light and brushed past JD as he went back to the living room. He pulled out the Sharpie from his box and wrote Jack's name very carefully across the front before placing it on top of everything else and they both stood back and surveyed Perry's inconsistently bare apartment, like it had mange.

Perry let out a yawn and went into the kitchen and started the coffeemaker. JD stood in the middle of the room awkwardly. He felt like he should probably go, but Perry hadn't dismissed him. Neither had he invited JD for coffee. He was stuck in an odd limbo waiting for something to be said.

"Dr. Cox?" JD said finally, when Perry came back out of the kitchen "I really am sorry about all of this. If I would have known any of this would happen…"

"Stop," Perry said, "Just don't. I've had enough lies of formality lately. You're not that sorry."

"I am. I am sorry."

"No you're not!" Perry shouted, "And neither am I. All right? Let's just fucking forget it. You can go now. That's all I needed help with."

JD mulled something over for a second, "What do you mean you're not sorry? The mother of your child just left you over some one-night stand."

"I'm not," Perry shrugged defiantly.

"So you're saying you would do it all over again?" JD asked.

Perry looked uncomfortable and turned back into the kitchen.

"Are you saying it was worth it?" JD asked after him.

There was a thick silence in the apartment.

"This place is too goddamn quiet anymore," Perry commented incongruently, "Why the hell isn't the TV on or something?"

"Dr. Cox," JD asked uncomfortably, "What…what was all of that? What was this? Why did you ask me to help you with this? You could have done that on your own. Or called one of your friends."

Perry didn't answer.

"Dr. Cox?" JD hesitated, "Are you…Do you…What are we doing?"

"I don't know," Perry shrugged sarcastically, "What the hell are we doing, Janelle?"

"I don't know," JD sighed, tucking his hands in his coat pocket and turning towards the front door, "I'll get going."

Perry went to say something, then hesitated.

"Huh?" JD looking back.

"Thanks," Perry sighed.

"The least I could do," JD replied limply before he stepped out into the hall.