Around 2pm, Carla waltzed through the front door of their apartment laden with paper grocery bags and a big grin on her face.
"Who's hungry?" she howled across the room at JD, who had peaked his head up from behind the couch. He had been trying to watch one of his favorite tv shows to distract from his thoughts, but he found Topanga's luscious lips and the laugh track from Boy Meets World wasn't enough to combat the lingering grogginess of Dr. Rice's "mild" sedative. He'd only just dozed off when the door burst open.
JD dragged himself off the couch and leaned heavily onto the counter. He wasn't hungry at all.
"I said, 'who's hungry,' JD!" Carla twisted toward him holding an onion in one hand and a carrot in the other.
"Me?" JD guesses, baffled.
"I hope so, because I got all the ingredients for my famous chicken and vegetable soup," she told him, moving to the fridge to reveal piles of vegetables on the opposite counter. "It will warm you up, heart and soul. Grab a knife and start chopping!"
He had asked for this, JD reminded himself as he forced his eyes open and on the onion he was carefully dicing. Carla chatted happily about goings on in the hospital while he'd been gone the last two days. Apparently, another nurse almost given a patient a shot in the bottom instead of the arm and Carla had stopped her right before the patient yanked his pants down. In retaliation, the other nurse had spread a rumor that Carla was pregnant. The rumor had not phased Carla.
"Everyone knows she's only trying to save face after her screw up," she explained as she mixed the soup with a giant ladle JD hadn't known they owned. "Everyone messes up sometimes, and she's new. She's just embarrassed." She sat the ladle down and turned to JD. "But if she goes any further I'm going to have to end her."
The idea of Carla murdering another nurse was so startling that JD choked and Carla pat his back gently.
"You weren't back very long this time," she began again as he calmed down and drank some water, "but one of your new patients was released today. Mr. Howlett, the one with the appendicitis. He's doing great."
"I'm glad."
"And the man you saw the morning Dr. Kelso…you know…anyway, the man who came in for help with his addictions? He was transferred to Elliot and she was able to get him into a hospital up north. I think he'll do well there."
JD nodded. "What about Mrs. Bellamy?" She'd been admitted with pneumonia but had been doing better when he left. They'd played chess once and she told him all about her sons in California.
Carla was watching JD when he turned to look at her. "She's good. She'll probably be released soon. You should visit her."
JD nodded, but felt shame fill him as he imagined returning to the hospital for a visit. Not anytime soon, that's for sure.
The vegetables soon softened, and Carla served them each a big bowl with some buttered bread.
"I don't expect you to eat it all, even though my mother would have insisted," Carla explained as they settled onto the couch with their hot bowls. "You should try to get lots of broth into you, though."
Hearing Carla talk about the hospital staff and patients reminded JD of how passionate he had once been about his work. He really did care about what happened to the people there. At least, he did before. He wanted Mrs. Bellamy to get stronger and go visit her kids and grandkids. He wanted the young man with a heroine addiction to come out of rehab clean and happy. He'd been so focused on his own situation for so long, he seemed to have forgotten that other people had thoughts and feelings and problems, too.
"Carla, do you think you could," he started, feeling a bit foolish, "maybe tell me about the other patients at the hospital sometimes? When you have time?"
"Bambi, you don't have to ask me to gossip with you. I help every doctor and nurse there, and I come home every day with enough dirt to own everyone in that building." She sipped her soup thoughtfully. "Maybe we'll stick to the more positive stuff for now, though, ok?"
That was fine with JD.
When Turk arrived home in the evening, Carla was chatting animatedly at JD about the most audacious experiences she'd had at the hospital before JD and Turk started working there years before. Listening was easy and comfortable, but at the sight of Turk, JD remembered that Dr. Rice had told him to talk about himself to his friends. He was supposed to tell them about his day, how he felt, what he was thinking…none of which seemed particularly interesting compared to Carla's story about two drunk sorority sisters trying to start a fist fight with Dr. Cox.
Turk seemed to disagree, as he broke into the story with, "Hey, man, how are you feeling?"
"Hello to you, too," Carla shot back, and he kissed her soundly and whispered something against her lips.
"I'm fine," JD responded, glancing away.
Turk soon revealed that he brought home sandwiches, and then both he and Carla watched JD eat over half of a turkey club. At least, it seemed like they were watching him. And that he had never been so full in his whole life. JD felt like he could slip into a food comma any minute, sleeping pills or not. He wondered how long it would take for him to get fat eating like this.
His roommates eventually cleaned up and retired to their rooms, so JD did the same. He felt so full as he raised his arms to take off his shirt that his hands slipped down to his belly to feel if it was protruding from his meal.
It wasn't. At all.
JD stared down at his flat belly in surprise. He could see the outline of some of his ribs. He moved over to the mirror by his door and threw off the heavy sweater that had covered it for who knows how long.
The view made JD's mind go blank.
Many of his ribs were visible, shadowed by the overhead light, and his stomach was concave under his rib cafe. Any definition he'd had in his arms and chest from what little exercise he had done was gone too, leaving a sunken clavicle and pale sticks swinging at his side. He picked up the sweater from the floor, quickly put it on, and climbed into bed.
He'd never been athletic, or particularly vain about his body. But the idea that he could have become so emaciated without even realizing it was frightening. No one had told him. He hadn't looked in any mirrors. Did his face look different too?
The idea was alarming enough that JD jumped back out of bed and went back to the mirror.
He was pale, and his cheeks were sunken. He looked tired. But he looked like himself, recognizable enough that JD turned off his light, took a few deep breaths to ease some of the anxiety that had settled into his chest, and took one of Dr. Rice's mild sedatives before climbing back into bed.
Talking was hard at first, but once JD forced himself to drop information about how he was feeling into conversations with Turk, it became very easy. Because Turk wanted to know exactly how JD was feeling. Turk drank in the information like a man lost in a desert and asked questions to pull out more information whenever he could.
Carla was a little harder. When JD told her out of the blue one day while they were eating salads she picked up on her way home that he missed the smell of the big research manuals at the hospital, her eyes went wide and still.
"Oh, JD," she began, setting her bowl down on the coffee table, "you'll be back at the hospital soon, just a few more days, ok?"
He'd nodded quickly and asked her how Elliot was doing, a subject he hoped would be less intense.
"She's good," Carla responded. "You should visit her."
Sometimes JD wondered if Carla was just trying to get him out of her hair when she recommended that he visit anyone he happened to mention. But he was in the apartment all hours of the day and night, so maybe it would be good to get out.
On the fourth day of his suspension, JD visited Elliot at her apartment. In the past few weeks, they'd been experimenting with exposure therapy: a light make out session with minimal touching followed by a cuddle. JD did enjoy the cuddling part after a while, and even the make out sessions weren't too bad until Elliot started to try to remove his shirt. Any touch of her body against the skin under his clothes sent his brain to sleep until, very suddenly, he would look up from the corner of the couch – or the room – and see Elliot waiting patiently for him to calm down. They'd never been further than the touch of her hand on his stomach.
And JD hadn't told her yet that he thought the whole thing was making his anxiety worse, not better.
The walk to her apartment alone was anxiety-inducing, especially since JD had decided that today he would stop their sessions. He just hoped Elliot would be ok, wouldn't cry like last time, wouldn't be heartbroken that he'd failed her again.
She was happy to see him, and they sit down on her couch together.
"Carla said you were eating a lot more," she told him, her straight white teeth shining at him.
"Yeah, she's been cooking for me. Turk, too."
"I wish I could get someone to cook for me." Elliot's eyes widened. "Not that I would expect a partner to cook for me all the time or anything. It's just—"
"I can't do this anymore," JD broke in.
Elliot became very still. "Do what?" she asked carefully.
JD swallowed painfully, rubbing his thumbnail sharply against his palm. "Making out, touching, all of that. I just can't. Maybe someday? But I can't anymore."
She nodded slowly. "Ok."
"I'm really sorry," he continued. "And you don't have to wait for me or anything, you know? I don't know if I'll ever want to do that … again." He'd never said that aloud before. What if he never wanted to have sex again? Or if he wanted to, but he just couldn't?
"Ok, JD, it's ok." Elliot shifted to fully face him and reached for his hand, but stopped and pulled back. "That just…that sucks. But I never want to push you into doing something you don't want to do." She was tearing up, but smiling at him.
He wondered if she realized that that was all she'd been doing, but he didn't say anything.
Elliot wiped her eyes on her sleeves and cleared her throat. "OK. So, other than food, how have you been?"
She wasn't crying anymore, and she seemed to genuinely want to know, so JD told her about the sleeping pills helping him get over eight hours a night that last few nights and how much clearer his head had been lately. He told her about Dr. Rice's suggestions – food, water, sleep, talk – how easy they sound and how difficult it was to execute them all, every day, in practice.
"I don't remember ever having to set an alarm to know when to drink water," he explained, the words rushing out in a cascade. "I don't remember starving before, but I ate all the time, so why is it so hard now?"
"You got into the habit of not doing it, not you have to get into the habit of doing it again."
"How stupid is that? Babies can do it but I can't." They both chuckled.
"What else did your doc tell you to do? Or is that it?"
JD hesitated, but he felt so good about getting all of this off of his chest that the worst poured out before he could really decide to say them. "He said I should forgive myself for all the stupid stuff I did, because I would forgive Turk if he was the one that did them."
"What stupid stuff?" Elliot asked.
"Just…," he thought back to the list that flew through his head during therapy. "Like not reporting what happened to the police, or anyone. And going back to him over and over again. Dr. Rice said that Turk would forgive me for all of that."
"Of course he would," Elliot replied without hesitating. "Turk would forgive you for just about anything, and those might be mistakes that you made, but it doesn't justify what happened to you."
"Well, it's other things, too."
"Like what?"
JD scoffed, starting to feel irritated at the conversation. Elliot obviously wasn't getting it.
"Like leading Dr. Cox straight to him. Dr. Cox got his brains bashed in and tied up in his own house because of me."
"Not on you, and not even a mistake," Elliot responded dismissively. "You couldn't have known he'd be there, and you had no power to stop him."
"Dr. Cox was stabbed because of me," JD insisted.
"He was barely stabbed," Elliot shot back, "and not by you! You're not responsible for the actions of a deranged stalker!"
"I yelled at Dr. Cox in a bar."
"So has half the hospital staff."
"I lied to all of you for months. I could have stopped all of this and actively chose not to. I went along with it. I chose to go back to his apartment over and over again. I missed him when he was in jail for stabbing me!"
Elliot was starting to get teary eyed again. It took her a moment to respond. "JD you know as well as I do how abusive relationships work. You know how abusers needle their way into their victim's brain. We look out for it at the hospital every day because the victims are tricked into hiding it from everyone around them. And I don't know about everything you went through, but I do know that if you apologized to Turk for lying to him, he would forgive you in an instant. If you apologized to him for being abused…. I'm not sure what he'd say, but he wouldn't like the question very much because he'd know it wasn't your fault. And he would expect you to know that, too." She was crying a lot now, but her voice and gaze were steady.
JD took a deep breath as he watched her. "I made you cry so many times, Elliot. I keep making you cry."
Elliot laughed through her tears. "Turk can't forgive you for that, but I can."
JD left Elliot's apartment feeling like a person. In his brain the conversation swirled and hovered like a preamble to something bigger: a test run for a conversation he had to have with Turk. It felt like Elliot was right, that Turk would forgive JD for everything, a clean sweep, but he couldn't be sure.
He delayed. He ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner with Carla and Turk. He slept, somethings nine or ten hours, although it never quite felt like enough. He told his friends about how he felt both groggy and clearheaded all the time, about how he wondered if he'd feel more normal when his prescription ran out and he had to manage his sleep on his own, about how he missed having patients and gossip and going out to bars. He remembered his life before, in glimpses heavy with passion and meaning. He remembered what it felt like to care about things and people and himself, and he wanted to feel that again.
The Sunday afternoon before his return to the hospital, JD and Turk started their Water World DVD, each with a pen and legal pad in hand and ready to take notes for their screenplay. The opening scene was still playing when JD realized how quiet and calm it was in the apartment. Carla as at work, and it had been a while since JD and Turk had an afternoon alone. He suddenly felt his face flush at the thought of what he was about to do.
"Um…," JD started, lowering his legal pad. "Actually, can we pause it for a minute?"
Turk complied immediately and turned on the couch to face his friend. "Yeah of course. You feeling ok?"
"I'm ok." JD just had to say it, get it out and over with. "Do you think what happened was my fault?"
Eyebrows raised, Turk leaned in a bit and clarified, "Your fault?"
"Everything with…Daniel."
They were both frozen for a moment, and then Turk looked down at the legal pad and flicked his pen against the paper.
He's thinking about it, JD realized. His breath stopped; it felt like his heart stopped. This was obviously a mistake, and Elliot had no idea what she was talking about.
But then Turk cleared his throat and looked up, and his eyes were red. JD felt his mouth drop open. Turk's voice shook as he finally responded.
"The very first mistake," he started, maintaining eye contact with a stunned JD, "the first wrong step that started everything, was when I decided that you couldn't talk to me about everything that happened in your life." Turk shifted so he was even closer to JD. "I need you to understand that…that giant misstep that's on my head. I wasn't there for you exactly when you needed me. It's the biggest mistake I've ever made, and I'm not going to make it again. I'm not. Do you believe me?"
The question startled JD, but Turk looked so earnest that JD nodded, still feeling unsure.
"Do you think you could forgive me?" Turk asked, his voice more steady.
Turk looked so serious and so sure of what he was saying that JD nodded again.
"OK," Turk said, turning back to look at the paused television. "I'm glad we got that out of the way."
JD continued to stare at the side of his friend's face. He felt blindsided, like the conversation had been stolen from him. He didn't get to lay out the lies he told, the injuries and tears he'd caused. Turk had done nothing that needed to be forgiven, and it baffled JD that Turk could link the beginning of everything that happened with a tiny gap in their friendship, a gap that just happened to coincide with JD meeting the wrong person and making all of his stupid mistakes. Maybe the gap was one-sided, but everyone makes mistakes, and Turk hadn't meant any harm to come from it. Not that JD has meant his mistakes to cause any harm either, it had just kept working out that way….
Turk had brushed aside JD's complicity like it was nothing compared to his, as though his own guilt outweighed anything JD had to say. It made JD feel both slighted and absolved.
Forgiven. He felt forgiven. Turk hadn't said anything like that, he hadn't even listened to JD's confession, but JD felt the tight ball of fear and anxiety compressed inside him unfurl, tingling through his chest, his arms and legs, into his head. He felt light. His head was filled with air and butterflies. He laughed, but it was choked, and he realized he was crying.
Turk glanced over at him and smiled. "How about we get on with this viewing so we can shore up the second act?" He pushed play.
JD knew that he didn't miss Daniel at all. He'd never loved Daniel; he'd been afraid of him. He just missed knowing that someone loved him so much. It was hard to believe that anyone would ever love him as much as Daniel had loved him. JD would never be someone's whole world. Even his parents had each other and his brother and their own brothers and sisters and parents. And JD had been in love before - at least he thought he had - but nothing even nearing the passion and singular obsession of Daniel's love for him. And it was easy to understand and accept that no one would ever love him that way again. He wouldn't want them to, anyway. Love like that was frightening and unhealthy. But losing it still felt like a loss.
Being surrounded by people like Turk and Carla and Elliot helped. A lot.
His second first week back at the hospital was uneventful and exhausting and spectacular. Head clear and heart light, JD could focus on learning about his patients, exploring the medical mysteries around him, and being around the hospital staff again – who were only slightly wary of him after what he was guessing was very weird behavior the last time he was around. Strange looks and whispers followed him down the halls and JD resolved to keep his head up high and pretend it wasn't happening. The looks filled his head at night before bed, and embarrassment would normally have kept him up for hours with anxiety swimming in his gut. His dwindling supply of sleeping pills helped for now.
He ate lunches with his friends in the cafeteria and joined in their banter as though he were a part of their group again. Finishing meals was still difficult, but his friends seemed happy that he was eating anything at all. Carla occasionally passed him a bottle of water when he stopped at the nurse's station, and he wondered if all the attention he was basking in would eventually become tedious. For now, it was keeping him afloat through medical records, tests, patient histories, and more walking than his poor skinny legs could handle in a 12-hour shift. His friends were a revelation.
When he saw Dr. Rice that week and told him about everything that had happened during his suspension, the doctor seemed impressed, maybe surprised.
"I'm glad it's working out for you, JD. Let's think of one more small thing you can add to your regimen this week."
"Like what?"
"Eating, drinking, sleeping, talking, that's all going really well. Is there another area of your life that you think could be improved? What else is still giving you anxiety?"
JD told him about the staff at work watching him, curious about him. He talked about his legs aching from walking so much, and about how thin he was and how much that worried him. On the tip of his tongue was the deep fear that he would never be able to be intimate again… but it didn't come out. Not today.
Dr. Rice suggested eating lunch with coworkers other than Carla, Turk, and Elliot, joining a gym, maybe taking relaxing baths a few times a week. JD agreed readily to all three, but Dr. Rice suggested he pick one for this week and try to add another next week. As absolutely overwhelming as the idea of sleeping and eating were a week ago, taking a long bath seemed like no big deal.
"It's great to see you're feeling better, JD." Dr. Rice said, closing his notebook toward the end of the session. "Just so you know, it's ok to have setbacks too. Some weeks you might not feel so ready to take on the world, and that's normal. You just have to keep trying and keep me and your friends in the loop."
"Ok, I'll do that."
It was scary to think that next week, JD might not feel like he did now. That night, he told Turk about what Dr. Rice had said.
"That's ok. You can't be motivated and excited all the time. Nobody is."
"Yeah, just…" JD hesistated, "I don't know if you've noticed, but I've gotten really skinny. So if you can, could you keep me eating normally?"
"I can do that." Turk looked serious. JD wondered if he would get fat after all.
The second week of his second time back at the hospital, Dr. Cox returned from vacation. JD had no idea where the older doctor had been, and no one on the staff seemed to know either. His gruff demeanor and biting sarcasm was back, registering to JD as so very Dr. Cox that it was almost cartoonish. JD didn't see him much, but when he did, his former mentor treated him as though they hadn't experienced trauma together, which was fine with JD. He was working hard to keep his head above water in terms of whispering and staring and gossip by engaging in normal conversations with coworkers, so the last thing he needed was for Dr. Cox to look at him like he was broken. Or punch him in the face. JD wasn't sure which would be worse for gossip or his psyche.
JD happened upon Dr. Cox one day in the changing rooms as Dr. Cox was finishing his shift and JD was starting his. The older doctor was sat on a bench, lab coat bunched up in his fists, staring at the wall. He looked haunted, haggard. Exhausted. JD wondered if he'd looked like the last time he tried to work when he wasn't sleeping. He approached carefully.
"Hey Dr. Cox," he said lightly, opening his locker and shifting his backpack off his shoulder.
"Newbie," the doctor grunted.
JD screwed his eyes shut and worked up the nerve to ask casually, "How was the vacation? Where did you go?"
"Jersey. It was fine."
New Jersey seemed to JD like a weird place to go on vacation.
Dr. Cox was still sitting, grinding the jacket in his fist. JD paused and watched the material shift under white knuckles.
"Dr. Cox," he started, then stopped. "Perry."
The older man looked up at him, eyes dull.
JD continued quietly, "If you ever want to talk about anything, you can talk to me."
Dr. Cox looked very doubtful.
"I mean, I'm doing a lot better, and even so, I might be able to relate. A little bit. And I've been talking a lot to Turk and Elliot and Dr. Rice, and it helps more than I ever thought it could. Even when it's only about how I'm feeling right at that moment. For some reason, it just helps a lot to know that someone else is the world knows what I'm feeling. So, if you ever want to try, you can talk to me."
The words were all jumbled in his mouth; talking about talking must be a skill he hadn't mastered yet. But Dr. Cox didn't look quite so doubtful, and his fist loosened as he looked away.
JD went back to shoving his stuff into his locker and getting changed, and the other doctor eventually wandered out of the room. JD took a deep breath, forced his lungs and ribs and chest expand as far as they would go, and let it all rush out again. He slammed the locker closed and left to start his day.
A/N:
JD is only on the second step of his journey, but I have a lot of hope for him.
It took me 13 years and a global pandemic to finish this story. When I started I was a spry young lad of 20. I wrote one chapter on a bullet train between Osaka and Tokyo. In 13 years, I graduated twice and changed careers about seven times. I'm giving myself hope that some of my favorite fanfics might be finished one day, too. And that they'll have happy endings, if it's appropriate.
The ups and downs of this story was heavily influenced by an amazing Psych fic by dragonnan called The Fury. If you enjoyed the struggle and you love Psych, I'm sure you will also enjoy that story. It's on if not here.