A/N: Only 11 years between chapters! A global pandemic can really remind you that loose ends need to be tied. And some people deserve to find happiness.

Chapter 29: Step One

The pain from JD's bandaged hand was a good distraction from his exhaustion the next day at work. Tiny cuts dotted his fingers to the first knuckle, with one sloppily stitched cut stretching across two fingers. Squeezing his hand into a fist brought the world into color, into better focus, when JD began nodding off over his paperwork or zoning out when listening to an intern drone on about a procedure.

It worked, at least, until JD found himself in the presence of Dr. Kelso.

"Did I hear you let an intern do a lumbar puncture this morning, young man?" Dr. Kelso demanded, his face red and squashed indignantly.

Thinking back through the last few hours, JD finally nodded, feeling his face flush involuntarily, heart speeding up. "Dr. Kelso, Dr. Terrence was confident that she could complete the procedure, and she did a good job…."

"When this hospital's licensing and insurance rates are within your purview, then you will be welcome to make decisions about who can and cannot practice medicine here. Until then, use some common sense or defer to a doctor who has some. Is that understood?"

JD nodded again, and then to his horror, found his vision narrowing and his heart rate sky rocketing. He reached out and placed a steadying hand on the nurse's station in front of him, responding quickly, "Understood, Dr. Kelso, it won't happen again."

"I should hope not!" He was turning around to leave, but JD's relief was short-lived; the hand on the counter suddenly wasn't enough to hold his weight, and JD's vision briefly went black before he found himself staring Dr. Kelso's feet.

JD focused on shifting his feet underneath him and grabbing the counter again as a few nurses swarmed him. His vision cleared and Dr. Kelso was in front of him again.

"Go home, Dr. Dorian." His eyes narrowed, but some of the anger in his features had faded. "Don't come back until you've pulled yourself together. Monday at the earliest." He turned and left.

A nurse called JD a cab, but he didn't hear much beyond the white noise in his ears. His whole body felt numb, his knees dangerously close to collapsing again. It wasn't until he was in the cab that humiliation washed over him.

What just happened?

Was he just dismissed from his job for a week?

Did he just pass out in front of his boss and a handful of coworkers?

Maybe it looked like he'd slipped. Still embarrassing, but not so unusual for him.

Did he even injure himself in the fall?

Why am I so tired?

Hauling himself back into his empty apartment, the answer to his last question became clear. The kitchen: how long since he last ate? Days….3 days?

It was easier with Dr. Cox constantly watching him, making sure he ate, bothering him with questions about his sleep and mood and double checking his patients. Having someone around who knew what he was going through and who seemed to care, no matter that the care may have stemmed mostly from guilt, made JD want to act normal. He went to bed at a normal time so that he could at least tell Dr. Cox that he'd tried. He bought food at lunch every day at work and ate what he could because he knew it would make someone happy, someone feel better. Even if it wasn't him.

No one around him was watching anymore.

It was easy to stay up all night listening to music through headphones, staring at the wall, imagining all the ways his relationship with Daniel could have been worse or better. What he could have done better. What he could have done to stop it from the start.

It was easy to skip lunch and hide away from his fellow doctors and friends instead. He knew he wasn't good company right now.

But a human body needs a few basic things: food, water, and sleep were important, and he should know that as a doctor.

As a great doctor, who couldn't even stay upright at work, who couldn't even take care of himself much less a dozen patients.

Food and water felt like rewards for doing nothing.

Sleep felt lazy, like cheating.

Everything felt fuzzy, and the next thing he knew, Turk was home from work (early?), and making them each a sandwich.

"I heard what happened with Kelso today, and it's not a big deal," Turk announced as he slathered two pieces of bread in mayonnaise. "He's grumpy, you're challenging the status quo, and if an intern can handle a lumbar puncture this early on, then that's great!" He cut both sandwiches in half and put two halves on a plate in front of JD.

When JD looked up from the sandwich, not quite ready to touch it yet, Turk was looking at him patiently.

"I also heard you might have fallen down or passed out or something?" Turk continued, fiddling with his own food.

JD took a deep breath and picked up half his sandwich. "Yeah, maybe," he sighed.

"Do you think it's stress or what?" Turk asked, nonchalantly, taking a bite.

"I don't know."

"Is there something I can do? To help? Me or Carla? Or Elliot?"

JD shrugged, head heavy as he faced his plate. He thought about it for a moment and reminded himself that it had helped when Dr. Cox was around to keep track of him. But then, Dr. Cox went away.

"I don't know." He knew Turk was still looking at him, so he took a big bite of the sandwich and chewed carefully. Maybe it would be a bit easier to think if he ate something.

"Did you hurt your hand when you fell?" Turk asked.

JD held up his bandaged hand and looked at it like he'd never seen it before. He made a fist and the sharp pain helped clear his mind a bit.

"Yeah," he finally responded, "just some scratches," and took another bite.

"Ok. Let me know if you want me to take a look at it or anything."

The offer was a shock. JD couldn't imagine showing Turk what was under the bandage, but he knew, deeply believed, that if Turk saw his hand, he would clean the cuts for him and maybe redo the stitches and rebandage the whole thing and make sure that JD was ok. Suddenly JD really wanted to be ok for Turk.

"Thanks, man." JD kept his eyes down, feeling them fill with tears. He took a deep breath. "I'll try better from now on, I promise."

"Try better?" Turk asked quietly.

JD smiled, tears under control, and looked up at Turk. "I just need to drink more water, eat more, sleep more, basic stuff. Then I'll feel better."

Turk nodded carefully. "Sure. But let me know if you need help with any of that, too, ok? Humans are mostly water, we need a lot of it. Remember our screenplay for Waterworld II where all people are merpeople, not just Kevin Costner? We still have to finish that, so keep hydrated, ok?"

He laughed, JD actually laughed, and it felt sharp in his throat. "We have to finish that soon! Before someone else gets there first!"

"It's a high-demand idea!" Turk agreed. They both chuckled and JD picked at the second half of his sandwich. He felt a bit better, but there was no way he was eating any more tonight.

"I'll put it away for you for later," Turk offered, as though reading his mind. He packed away the food and JD drifted into his room, his meal a stone in his gut.

JD slept late the next day and felt like he could think clearly for the first time in a week. He thought of Waterworld II as he drank a tall glass of water, then left for his weekly therapy session.

"How's work?" Dr. Rice asked; a safe topic, it's usually his first question after JD shrugs off his 'What do you want to talk about today?'

"I was actually…dismissed for a week. So, I have some time off," JD responded lightheartedly.

"Why were you dismissed?"

JD tried to smile. "My boss asked me to 'get it together,' so I can't really say definitively what did it."

"You don't seem too torn up about it."

"I guess not," JD agreed. "Work has been really tiring. It's hard to focus there, so…this is definitely easier."

"Do you want to work?"

"Of course I do—" JD started, but was cut off.

"There's a difference between wanting to do something and wanting to want to do something. Do you know what I mean? For instance, I don't want to go jogging every morning, but I want to want to do it."

"Ok."

"Do you want to work, or do you think you're supposed to want to go to work?"

The conversation had gotten away from JD, and he suddenly wished he'd finished the other half of his sandwich this morning. He made a fist instead and took a deep breath at the sharp shooting pain in his hand.

"I guess I honestly don't care at this point."

"What do you care about?"

JD took another deep breath and let it out. "I don't know."

"Do you want to feel better?"

He scoffed at that. "Yes, it's just—" JD was just so tired. "It's not that easy."

"What's not that easy?"

"Getting better."

Dr. Rice was leaning forward, elbows on his knees. "What would it take for you to feel better, JD?"

JD looked away from his earnest face, shrank down into his chair. "Sleep," he answered easily. "Eating more, I think. I think I need to eat and drink more, I just don't have the energy." He thought carefully about how he felt, tried to remember how he used to feel before all of this started. "I'd have to talk to my friends. I just don't know how to act normal around them anymore. And maybe…maybe pay more attention to my patients? I miss caring for people that way. It's just too much. I'm not enough anymore."

"How much are you sleeping, on average?"

He tried to sit up straighter, focus on the conversation, "Maybe two or three hours a night. But I nap too, some days."

"Do you think that if you got regular sleep, the rest of the pieces might fall into place?"

JD shook his head. He couldn't imagine anything in his life being normal again.

"I know we haven't talked much about medication, but I think it might be time, JD," Dr. Rice explained. "I think your situation has built up a lot of anxiety for you, and you might even feel depressed. We could start with a mild sedative and see if getting some good sleep alleviates some of your symptoms, helps you take care of basic needs and communicate with your support system. If it doesn't, we can talk about anti-anxiety medication or even antidepressants. What do you think?"

"I don't know," JD repeated. He inexplicably felt embarrassed to hear that the doctor thought he needed medication. "I've never taken anything like that before."

"I know," Dr. Rice said gently, "but I think it might help you. And I know the idea of feeling better may seem overwhelming where you are now. I can't imagine going through what you've gone through and trying to function like nothing happened. But you don't have to do that. You don't have to pretend to be normal or hide how you're feeling from the people around you. If you asked them for help, I guarantee they would help you. I guarantee it. There isn't much I can guarantee, but this I have no problem saying."

JD nodded along, not really taking it in. Dr. Rice seemed pretty sure, but JD knew better. "I didn't hide from Dr. Cox."

Dr. Rice nodded, then sat back. "And he left."

"Yeah."

"JD, do you think you deserve to be punished for what happened?"

As JD's sluggish brain slowly absorbed the question, he felt his face heating in shame. Why was he blushing? Why did that question nick something deep in his stomach?

"I…I don't know," he responded, wholly unsure how to answer.

"Ok. If you did deserve to be punished, what would it be for?"

What would it be for? JD felt papercuts in his stomach, raw wounds opening up along his insides, his chest, his throat and back, rubbing against the onslaught of memories of all the stupidest shit he did in the last few months, vying for his attention for the action most deserving of punishment.

The time he screamed at Dr. Cox in the bar?

Flinching away from Elliot, watching her cry.

Lying to his friends and coworkers over and over again.

Leading Dr. Cox straight to Daniel.

Waking up after a night with Daniel and accepting the fact that he was raped and doing nothing about it.

Stubbornly complaining to his friends until they couldn't stand him.

JD took up space in a world that wasn't for him. Every step of the way he had been an inconvenience, a liar, a fool. He chose the wrong paths, made the wrong decisions, and made the lives of everyone around him a little bit worse along the way.

"Maybe you have some ideas," Dr. Rice broke in. JD realized he was crying and quickly wiped his eyes. "You don't have to share them with me if you don't want to. But do you think that those things that you did, that you might feel like deserve punishment, do they seem like forgivable things? Would you forgive your friend for doing them?"

JD closed his eyes tightly. Suddenly it's Turk who was hurt, who lied to cover his injuries, who didn't report his assault, who yelled at Dr. Cox and got him hurt…accidently. Who annoyed his friends with his thoughts and feelings.

"Yeah," JD nodded, sniffing and rubbing at his eyes. "I would." It was an easy question.

"That's good. If you can forgive your friend for all those things, then your friend would forgive you too. And you can forgive yourself. And then, you can try to do what you need to do to feel better."

JD stared into Dr. Rice's eyes, fixated now on his words. It seemed so simple when he laid it out like this. "How do I do that?"

Dr. Rice shifted forward again. "Think of it as step one, ok? Step one of feeling better is getting good sleep, eating food and drinking water regularly, and talking to your friends. That's all."

"That's a lot." Maybe too much?

"It is a lot at first," Dr. Rice agreed, "but you don't have to do any of it alone. I can help by prescribing you a mild sedative to help you sleep until it's easier for you. Then, you can ask a friend to share meal times with you, so you eat on a regular schedule. You can also set an alarm on your phone to keep track of when you should eat or drink a big glass of water."

"What about…how do I talk to my friends?"

"You could try telling one person how you feel each mealtime. Something easy at first, like whether or not you got good sleep or if you feel confident about your work that day. Sharing little things makes it easier to share big things."

JD nodded, exhaustion starting to sink back into his body. "It still seems like a lot."

"That's ok. How about we start with step ½? Let's get you some decent sleep."

The pills made JD sleep through the night – really, a bit longer than he'd like – but he woke up feeling groggy. He hated the feeling of not being fully awake for a few hours after he got up, but around noon after a full night's sleep, his mind cleared and it became so much easier to think.

In his mind, he formed a short list:

Step One:
Sleep
Eat
Drink
Talk

Deceptively simple, but Dr. Rice was right about sleep making the rest of the list easier. Somewhere in the back of his head, the idea of punishment and forgiveness lingers, sharp and clinging.

When Turk arrived home from his shift at 2pm, JD stood at the counter in the kitchen, wringing his hands in anticipation. Turk looked almost alarmed at the sight of him.

"Everything ok, Vanilla Bear?" he asked gently, and JD nodded quickly in response.

"It's kind of weird, but I was just wondering if we could eat together, like lunch or dinner or breakfast, or whatever meal is normal when we're home or at work, or…." He realized he was rambling and took a breath. "I was wondering if you could help me remember. To eat meals." This. This felt like a wound too, like he'd scraped off a scab and revealed something he didn't want anyone to see.

But Turk seemed…relieved, happy? "Sure, man! Do you want to eat now?" He threw open the fridge as he continued, "I have morning shifts the next two days but we can do breakfast at 6am if you're up for it, then a late dinner? Carla will be home in the afternoon to do lunch, too. Is it ok for her to help too?" He peaked his head over the fridge door at JD.

"Mm hmm," JD responded, feeling almost suspicious of his friend. Turk exhibited none of the curiosity, pity, or disdain that had been expected.

"This is a great idea, JD," he said as he arranged a pan on the stovetop and opened a cupboard, searching for ingredients for who knows what. "I know that Carla has been talking about feeding you more, but we didn't want to seem, you know…" he turned to face his friend, "patronizing? We don't want to baby you, but we want to help you, you know?"

JD nods as he listens to Turk talk and feels lighter with every word. His mind drifts as Turk cooks pancakes. He wonders briefly if Turk would forgive him if he knew everything that JD had done, but the idea stings and he quickly focuses back on the present with a squeeze of his hand.