Iiiiiit's the big finale! It didn't come out as well as I had hoped, though :(


JD slowly opened his eyes. He was in Sacred Heart. He was in a hospital bed. And he was alive.

Dr Cox, who had been standing at the end of his bed, watching expectantly, sighed with relief and smiled.

"Welcome back, there, sleeping beauty," he said. "Gotta say, I'm glad to see ya."

JD smiled back. Turk was standing next to Dr Cox with Carla, and Elliot was sitting in a chair close to his head.

"You're all okay…" muttered JD, sleepily. He looked around the room some more. Behind his friends, on another chair near the door, was someone else he knew.

"James?"

Everyone turned to look at James, then back to JD.

"What?" asked Carla.

JD was equally confused. "James," he repeated, gesturing towards him. "James Long. Him."

James looked uncertainly up at JD's friends. Then: "How do you know my name?"

Now really, this is getting ridiculous. "Why wouldn't I know your name?"

Turk looked worriedly at Dr. Cox, who nodded in reply. He crouched down so that his head was level with JD's at the other end of the bed.

"JD," he said quietly, in his most fatherly voice. "Do you remember what happened?"

Everyone was looking at him again, but this time not with happiness. He squirmed uncomfortably. "Well yeah, I… I think…" Dr. Cox's glare made him doubt himself. He swallowed hard. He did remember. "I fell off the hospital, right?"

Turk opened his mouth to say something, but Dr. Cox shot out a hand to silence him.

"Alright, Newbie. What about before that? Do you remember anything about an earthquake?"

JD nodded earnestly, but then stopped, because it hurt. Flinching a little, he said: "Sure, I remember the earthquake. On our day off. At the bar."

Dr. Cox sighed and stood up. "Well. You're half right."

Turk nodded. "There was an earthquake on that day. But it wasn't at the bar."

"Where was it then?" asked JD.

"At our apartment."

A memory forced itself into JD's mind, the memory of a daydream about a ninja. And the cause…

"Rowdy fell over..." muttered JD, realisation dawning. "Wait." His mind began to work furiously. Rowdy had fallen over in the earthquake. Shortly after that, the earthquake at the bar didn't happen. Which meant… "The… the earthquake happened… while I was there?"

Everyone in the room nodded. Nothing over the last few days actually happened.

"James," he said suddenly, making everyone jump. James looked up. "You were there. You were the first person there after the earthquake."

James looked surprised. "…Yes."

"And… and at some point, you told me about you, and your family."

Everyone was still looking at James. He seemed a lot more nervous in this universe to JD's.

"Just after your friends arrived from the bar, there was a second tremor, got stuck in a little air pocket for a while… with you. And there wasn't anything really else to do."


JD was discharged six weeks later. He learnt what had happened – the earthquake at the apartment, James sticking around to ensure his recover, the point where he would either wake up then or never wake up – and what had not happened. By comparing notes with his friends, he worked out just how much of it had been real though. He remembered how the first conversation with Turk after he had woken up had been odd – the real Turk had been, at that very moment, having the exact same conversation with Dr. Cox about him. He remembered the time the nurse in the ICU had called him Dr. Reid, and sounded the same as Elliot. And he also remembered how his communications with 'the real world' had become more frequent just before he woke up.

Not that it mattered now, of course. He was back at work, and hanging out with Turk and James, who had decided to stay after all, when he was off.

Everything that had happened over those few days had just been a bad dream, a nightmare.

My Worst Nightmare, he thought.


Thanks for sticking around until the end. Feel free to re-read; the ENTIRELY SUBTLE list in the penultimate paragraph there is just a small amount of the clues. Most 'conversations' JD has can happen in the real world too. I'm hoping to write a sequel at some point, so keep an eye out for 'My New Friend'. Thanks to all my reviewers!