A/N: I'm passing out apples this time, because I care! I care about your teeth!
Fun Fact: Loth leaves for Tokyo in less than two months!!
Raising a Hand
by LQ Aredhel
Chapter 25
JD's days were filled with silence.
He woke to a silent, empty apartment and went to work where no one who knew him would even green him. He spent hours reading patient charts, diagnosing ailments and prescribing medication, but what once been a social occupation became long days of paperwork when everyone who saw him knew that he was empty.
Perverted.
Disgusting.
Weak.
New patients were too quick to catch on to who he really was; doctors and nurses already knew, had known for so long. So long that he'd forgotten what it was like to hear them say hello.
And after long hours of silent work he returned to his apartment and searched flimsy drawers and bare furniture for a way out. It was easy to find; by the end of the evening he had it all laid out on the floor: a knife, a bottle of prescription medication, a handgun, yards of old rope and several small baggies of cocaine that he'd been experimenting with in order to lift the silence. And every night he'd look at the items, the tools to his freedom, and then he'd fall asleep next to them and wake up the next day only to replace them and start another day.
It wasn't strength or bravery that kept him from finally ending it. It was only fear. Fear of pain, fear of the next world being even worse than this one, but mostly just the fear of all human beings to end the only life they may ever have. Sometimes he had hope of it getting better. Sometimes, a stranger would glance at him on the street and their unknowing smile would scrape away at the ice settled in his stomach. Of course, he knew if he made any attempt at communicating with them, they'd see right away who he was. But there was always that small grace of hope in their gaze.
His co-workers at the hospital didn't even look at him anymore.
Why would they? How could they? He didn't expect anything from them anymore. Maybe one of them would be the one to end it.
"God!"
JD sat upright in bed, his whole body cold and shaking and filled with the sensation of completely and utter abandonment. He shivered and sobbed openly, barely aware of himself until he finally heard a voice next to him and jerked away from it.
Turk was just inside of the bedroom door, watching him with wide eyes. He was saying something.
JD frantically rubbed the tears from his eyes and took a deep breath. The feelings from the dream that had only moments ago swept his entire psych away from him seeped away just as quickly and he attempted a small laugh.
"Sorry, Turk," he reassured his friend. "Just had a bad dream." He lowered his fists from his eyes when he realized he must have looked and sounded like a five-year-old.
"No biggie," Turk replied, obviously distressed by what he'd seen. "Do you...want some water or something?"
"Uh yeah, sure, I'll just..." He crawled out of the bed and wobbled on his feet. Still at Dr. Cox's house, he reminded himself. Still dark out. The same night or the next? It felt like ages since that night until he hobbled from the bedroom and saw the wire that had so recently been tangled in his wrists still dangling from the bathroom doorknob. Not so long ago. He took another deep breath and looked away to see that the rest of the room was empty.
"Where's Carla and Dr. Cox?" he asked quietly as he lowered himself to the sofa. His back was to the bathroom door, but he kind of had to go.
Turk settled across from him on the edge of the couch. He seemed so...uptight. "Carla took Dr. Cox to the hospital because he needed stitches." He gestured to the back of his head. "Frying pan, you know."
JD knew. "Yeah. I got one too." And the fact that he wasn't curled up in a ball from a migraine meant that they probably gave him something for it already. Which was why he felt like falling asleep again on the couch.
Turk was silent, staring at something behind JD. JD looked at his wrists in his lap. They were wrapped in gauze. Probably bruised...he didn't think he'd broken the skin. But he'd been pulling so hard... Familiar panic ran down his spine. Bad line of thought. He looked back up at Turk.
"So, Chocolate Bear, you're on babysitting duty?" he asked in an attempt at conversation.
Turk looked at him funny. "Yeah, I guess." Not the answer JD was expecting. No witty comeback about JD being a child? Or Carla being an overprotective mother hen. They fell back into an awkward silence and JD recalled from his most recent nightmare the distance created between him and his friends. He looked back down at his wrists, fiddling with the gauze. In the dream, he'd chosen a knife as one of his "tools to freedom". What would he have done if he'd gone through with it? Drag it along each wrist until there was no way to stop it? It wouldn't be so hard. He'd already tried with pills once, but he'd been too chicken.
Just like in the dream.
He wished Turk would say something. JD felt groggy, heavy with his thoughts. All the adrenaline running through him after the nightmare had left him.
"He tried to kill me again," he blurted out. Well that was a conversation starter. Turk froze, still staring at him. "I don't really know why," JD mumbled, leaning back into the couch. The other man was silent.
"When will Dr. Cox be back?" JD wished he was here now, so that he had someone to talk to. Turk was too quiet. He hated the silence.
"I'll kill him," Turk suddenly announced. JD looked at to see his friend's face puffy, his eyes red. He was crying? "I'll kill him for what he did to you. I swear to God."
JD was taken aback. He sat upright. "He didn't do anything!" he assured him. "Dr. Cox was trying to help me, I swear!"
"Not him," Turk explained, staring hard at the floor between them. "Daniel. That he...did those things to you. Forced you to--" he hesitated, then glared at JD. "How could you just let it happen? How could you keep going back to him? Night after night, that's where you were, weren't you? Not with patients or even dating. You went back to him?" He should his head, incredulity and anger lashing out from behind his eyes. "How could you continue to let that happen and not even tell me? Why didn't you get help? Why, JD?!"
"I..." JD wasn't sure how to answer, so he sat, frozen at the rage he rarely saw in his friend. He already knew it was his fault. Why did Turk have to yell at him about it too? Wait...
"You know?" he asked cautiously, his throat tightening. "You know...about what happened? How?"
Turk shook his head, glaring at JD. "Dr. Cox told us. He said you told him to. He knew all about this and he never told anyone either!"
"It wasn't his fault," JD tried to explain. He was so tired. "He didn't know until afterwards...and he tried to help..."
"He led you right to him, and almost got you killed!" Turk made a frantic sweep with his arm and JD flinched away from him. "Why did you keep letting it happen?"
JD breathed, stared at a piece of glass on the carpet. His whole body was flushed with heat, embarrassment, guilt, shame riding rushing through him. "I didn't know. I told you, it was an accident," he said quietly.
"There is nothing accidental about this!"
He saw out of the corner of his eye Turk dropping his head into his hands and rubbing his face.
JD murmured, "I just wanted someone to talk to." No one understood him when he said that. "It didn't seem so big at the time." Why had Dr. Cox told them? And Carla as well? JD vaguely recalled asking Dr. Cox to do it, but surely the older man would have realized that JD would rather have kept it a secret.
He looked up at Turk still fuming with tears on his cheeks. JD knew what it felt like to have warring emotions bottled up inside of him. Turk wouldn't look at him.
"I'm sorry."
Turk shook his head and huffed at the ceiling. "I just...need to think about this for a while, okay?" He left without looking once at JD.
The apartment was empty and silent and JD stared at the glinting piece of glass that had burst from the television set and wondered how sharp it was and whether or not he'd be able to end the silence when the moment came.
Why had Dr. Cox told them? How dare he?
All exhaustion was pushed aside when JD was overcome with his own anger. What right did some co-worker of his have to reveal something like that to all of the people he cared about? What right did he have to change JD's entire world? All of his relationships, ruined!
JD pulled on a pair of shoes left by the door and left for the hospital.
It was hard to stay angry when his combined concussion and painkillers kept pulling at his mind, making his steps drag and falter, but JD held as hard as he could to the betrayal he felt at knowing that his one confidant had made his nightmare a reality.
His walk to the hospital took an eternity, and by the time he wandered through the front door, it was morning. He was dizzy.
JD stumbled into the nearest bathroom and gulped down some water from the nearest sink. He glanced at himself in the mirror; there was still a strip of gauze wrapped around his head, so he quickly unraveled it and tossed it into the garbage can. Then he met his own eyes in the mirror.
Dr. Cox had been wrong to tell everyone his secrets. He was the only one who had the right to tell them. He was wrong. JD kept reminding himself that. He didn't want to lose the anger. If he was angry enough, he could prove to everyone that he was just as strong as them.
He found Carla and Dr. Cox in an examination room on the first floor. Dr. Cox looked exhausted and fully agitated sitting on the exam table while Carla stood next to him, speaking quietly.
JD burst into the room and felt adrenaline rush through him once more. They both looked up at him in surprise.
"Why did you do it?" JD demanded, doing his best to glare at Dr. Cox. "How could you tell them all? What right did you have!?"
Dr. Cox just looked stunned.
Carla spoke up first. "JD, shouldn't you be asleep?" He glanced at her, almost surprised that she spoke. There was pity and concern in her eyes. Was that all he would get today? He wanted them to respect him, to take him seriously.
"You had no right to tell them." He tried to put more force in his words. "How could you tell them, you asshole!" That did it.
Dr. Cox was standing, suddenly towering over him and JD's relief at invoking a reaction was overcome by a twinge of fear at the intimidating man.
"You asked me to, Newbie, you begged me to tell them," Dr. Cox explained almost calmly. "Here I thought I was doing something nice when really I've gone and given you another excuse to throw a hissy."
JD felt himself blush and sway on his feet. "Something nice?" he demanded. "You made me look like an idiot! Turk stormed out on me! He wouldn't look at me! He wouldn't talk to me, none of them would talk to me!" His words began to slur together. "All they could see when they looked at me was emptiness and weakness and no one was around to talk to because they could all see it in me and the only thing that could have possible saved me I was too chicken-shit to even try! Even though I knew it would be better than living in silence."
There was a long pause in which JD couldn't quite focus his eyes on the still faces of his two companions; he knew they were still there but nothing moved and he couldn't quite recall what he'd said to make them stare at him like that, only that he wasn't surprised that he fucked up again. He braced himself against the wall beside him.
"I hate you," JD professed, settling his wavering gaze on his mentor. "You ruined everything. They all hate me know. They all know. I hate you!"
Dr. Cox moved closer and raised a hand. JD flinched away, but he only placed it firmly on his shoulder and shook him slightly. "Newbie, get ahold of yourself. You're making a scene. You're obviously exhausted and not thinking straight. We should have taken you to the hospital before. I'm sorry."
"You're not sorry," JD told him, inching away from the hand on his shoulder. It didn't budge. "You've always hated me. You figured it all out, forced me to tell you everything, and then used it to make everyone else hate me too." Suddenly it all made sense. Why else would Dr. Cox have been trying to protect him. He chuckled humorlessly. "Well, it worked. They all hate me. They all know."
Carla was suddenly beside Dr. Cox. "JD, why would we hate you? After what you've been through...you've made a lot of mistakes, that's all."
He laughed again. Sometimes it seemed so small, like that. What happened? He made a friend, had sex, got roughed up a bit, knocked around. What was so horrible? Why was it so hard for him to get back to normal?
He'd tried. He really had. He tried to talk to his friends again, like he used to. He ate on schedule and slept as much as he could. He started therapy, prepared to go back to work, even talked about some of it out loud. None of it went away, it was always there. Every day, he felt the same way. He felt like he did when he woke up, after the first time. When he realized what had happened, when his entire body ached in affirmation of what had taken place the night before. When he looked in the mirror to see bite marks on his neck and chest claiming his body as someone else's property, and the fading bruise on his cheek attesting to his humiliation and domination. Every day felt like that day, and the drunken nights that followed. As much as he kept expecting it to, it never faded into the past, but just soaked further into his mind. And now it was all around him, in his friends and his co-workers, soon in his patients and his family and the people on the street. And as much as he wanted to appear strong in front of Dr. Cox and Carla, he knew he wasn't. He could easily see that inside of himself; this was swallowing him up.
"You're right, it's no big deal," he easily agreed, smiling at Carla. Perhaps his smile was less than believable, because Carla seemed more alarmed that reassured.
"JD, we don't hate you!" Carla exclaimed. "Turk is just confused! He was so angry last night, when you were sleeping, he kept talking about ways of getting back at Daniel. Why would he do that unless he cared about you?
JD shook his head and closed his eyes briefly. He was so tired. "It's as much my fault as it is Daniel's." He never saw the fist coming at his face, only felt the pounding pressure in his cheek and his knees as he hit the floor. Carla shrieked Dr. Cox's name as JD folded up to protect his ribs.