Greetings readers of fic! How ya'll doing? Here's the next installment for the Scrubs/Dead Like Me crossover series. This story will be longer than the previous one, 'My Deadly Little Secret.' You don't really have to read that one to understand this one. All you really need to know is that JD's a grim reaper.
Lawyers: Our client does not own Scrubs or Dead Like Me, so don't bother suing her.
One last note: There is no Kim in my story. It only complicates things especially considering the fact that JD's technically dead and I'm really not sure if grim reapers can reproduce with the living. Also, Carla's still pregnant, Dr. Cox only has a son, not a future daughter, and JD has his half-acre and deck. However, I don't remember when he ends up moving out and living in a tent, so for now he'll still be living with Turk and Carla.
Chapter 1
It was December 23, 1905. The sky was partly cloudy and the temperature was in the low fifties. I slowly walked through the graveyard, my gaze unfocused as I reminisced on past memories. Walking to my left with a six pack held loosely in his grip was Dan. I had only known him for three years, but in those three years we've become like brothers, not really close brothers, but brothers none-the-less.
However, despite those three years, I didn't know too much about Dan, just that he was a pretty laid back guy who died of the plague sometime around 1711 and that he was known by many different names to the living.
I was pulled from my thoughts as we stopped in front of a familiar, medium-sized headstone that had a few fresh cut flowers resting before it. It was made of a polished, gray marble that was, oddly enough, shining as if it were new, and I vaguely wondered if it was Emily who had stopped by to clean it and bring fresh flowers.
Dan popped open two beers and handed me one. As he held up his beer, he said, "Here's to being a reaper."
I silently held up my own beer, but couldn't tear my gaze away from the headstone. The one death you never truly get over is your own. Sure, the pain would fade over time, but a dull ache would always remain. After all, everything you had lived for, everyone you knew and loved, pulled out of reach. While you could view them from afar, you couldn't interact. Not without consequences.
Taking a small sip of beer, my eyes quietly read over the words carved in the gray marble.
Joseph Donovan
Husband - Brother - Son
1875 ----- 1902
He
will be missed
"We hadn't even been married a year," I mumbled to him quietly.
Dan nodded before taking a long drink from his beer. We stood before my grave in silence for a few minutes before he finally said, "It's a nice gravestone."
"Yeah," I agreed, "It is."
The blaring of the alarm clock woke me from my sleep. I groaned out loud as I turned off the alarm and begun my morning routine. It was once again December 23, just a few days until Christmas. Today is the day I hate most out of all the other days of the year.
Practically everyone at the hospital thought that I hated Christmas because I always got a little bitter around this time of year. So I just went along with their assumptions and claimed that my Scrooge attitude was because of family-related issues. It's not like I could tell them the truth; that the reason why I seem down is because today is my day.
The day I took the big sleep one hundred and five years ago. Although it wasn't much of a big sleep. Hell, it was barely even a nap. I go to 'rest my eyes' for a second and the next thing I know, I'm standing over my lifeless body. I barely even had enough time to process the fact that I had died before Sam, the head reaper of our division up until around a year ago, whisked me away to train me for my new after-life.
Now I know what some of you may be thinking: One hundred and five years JD? Shouldn't you have gotten over it by now?
A perfectly valid question, and you're right. I pretty much have gotten over my death. One hundred and five years is plenty of time to cope. It's not so much the fact that I died that makes me feel mopey as it is the dull ache I always feel around this time of year. It's sort of like a subconscious sense of loss that I really have no control over.
I use the word 'subconscious' because I don't exactly remember a lot about my life before my death. I know of certain things, like the fact that I was married to a beautiful, youthful woman named Emily and that we were living together at the time that I died, but I don't remember specific details like when we moved in together. I know that I truly loved her, but I don't remember what it was about her that made me love her so much.
I guess that's why I stopped visiting my own grave over sixty years ago. Seeing it just encouraged the dull ache I felt and it also reminded me that I was forgetting some very important details of my life. There's nothing more annoying than knowing you're forgetting something, but being unable to remember what that something is.
Forgetting is just the price I have to pay for interfering in my past-life when I should have just moved on...
'No, just stop those thoughts right now,' I mentally scolded myself.
I wasn't going to let it get to me this year. It was time I fully and completely move on, aching feeling and all. This was the year I will hold my head up high and be my normally happy and goofy self. I'll walk into that hospital and act as if it were any other normal day. Hell, I'll even try and get into the Christmas cheer. Maybe... just a little bit.
I reached Sacred Heart without any incidents and I was even able to grab my charts without an unwanted run-in with the Janitor. I smiled at everyone and exchanged pleasantries with the occasional 'Happy Holidays' thrown in. Dr. Cox's morning rant was taken in stride and sent me into a brief daydream about a pool full of pudding (don't ask). The normality of it all was really quite refreshing.
I had just finished checking up on one of my patients and everything seemed to be going great up until the Todd came strolling up to me.
He raised his hand up to give me a high-five as usual and said with grin, "Hey, R-five!"
I mentally sighed as I returned the gesture. God, why did he have to hit so hard!
However, there was a reason why he sought me out and I could tell as soon as the grin dropped from his face and his tone became more serious, "I'm just telling you in advance that Ted's getting the Big Five today, so don't freak out on me, okay?"
In a hospital as big as Sacred Heart, it'd be a little egotistical of me to say that I was the only grim reaper working in it. The Big Five was the Todd's code for 'the big sleep'. Yes, that's right, the Todd was a grim reaper too. He's a part of the "external influence" division which basically means that he's responsible for reaping the souls of people who die in accidents, homicides, and suicides.
Because I'm part of a different division, it had taken me a few months into my internship to realize that he was a reaper. I had caught him high-fiving the soul out of one of the patients. I confronted him on it and we spent a couple minutes reminiscing on reaper life before returning to work. Several hours later when I saw him raise his hand to high-five Turk, I completely flipped out and, well, tackled the Todd to the ground before their hands could meet.
So to make hospital life less stressful and to keep myself from attacking the Todd whenever he gave out a high-five to one of my friends, he agreed to warn me in advance if anyone I knew on a personal level was about to receive the Big Five.
Coming back to reality, I sighed but nodded my 'okay' anyway. He gave me a small smile and patted me on the shoulder before walking off to go take care of business.
'Just when it seemed like the day was looking up,' I thought sadly, my spirits dropping.
I didn't know Ted that well. He was more of an acquaintance than a friend, but even the death of an acquaintance will get me down. Hell, the death of a stranger can even depress me. Looks like after all those threats of suicide, he was finally going to go through with it. Of course, it could be something else, something even he didn't expect that offs him; though suicide seemed the most likely route.
As I went to go check on another patient, I found myself a little amused by the fact that Ted's going to die on the same day that I did. Huh, he must be feeling the Christmas blues.
("I'm dreaming of a red Christmas," Ted sang in a deep, sad tone right before he stepped off the building.)
Now that was just horrible. Although that song does seem pretty low, slow, and depressing to me.
As I reached my patient's room, Anna Sven, I quickly scanned over her chart. She came in with a fever of 102 degrees Fahrenheit and since then had developed chills, chest pains, and a cough with bloody sputum.
"Mrs. Sven, it sounds like you have pneumonia, but we'll need to get a chest x-ray just to be sure," I told her and at her miserable look, I gave her a reassuring smile before leaving.
There seemed to be a lot of pneumonia cases going around. In fact, this was my second case today and it wasn't even lunch time yet. Luckily, pneumonia wasn't contagious, so once I get those chest x-rays back, I can set them both up with the right antibiotics.
I was torn from my musings by the sound of my beeper and sighed at the message I read off of it. Ted's body had been found and my assumptions were correct. He had jumped off the building. The impact had killed him instantly. A nurse attempted to contact his mother only to find out that the women died just a few days ago and while everyone was surprised, it seemed to explain everything.
A feeling of stunned disbelief seemed to fall over everyone in the hospital which was, in a way, funny because it's not like Ted never tried to kill himself before. I guess everyone, myself included, just thought he'd never get up the guts to do it. Well, he sure showed us.
Still, there was work to be done. After all, it was a hospital and there was a lot of sick and injured people to take care of, and as much as we would like to take the rest of the day off after something like this, we couldn't just abandon our patients.
Speaking of which, I just got the chest x-rays back on my two potential pneumonia patients. Hmm, make that my two pneumonia patients. Good thing they came in when they did because it would've only gotten worse if they didn't get the right treatment.
As I gave them their diagnosis and hooked them up to the proper antibiotics, I was paged to the nurse's station for a phone call. Immediately I felt nervous. After all, everyone I knew who would actually call me was here in the hospital, and if they needed to talk to me then they would just page me. Not only that, but people don't usually call you via the hospital just to chat.
Lavern held up the phone to me as I approached and upon seeing my confused look, said, "Your brother."
'Shit.'
I decided to end it here. It's not so much a cliffhanger as it is a question as to why Dan would be calling. Now, lately what I've been doing is waiting till I completely write out the entire story that way you're not left wondering what happens next for months on end because of my procrastination, but I decided to throw you all a bone. Hopefully I'll be better at updating this story, but I'm not making any promises.
Review please!