Disclaimer: If I did own Scrubs, I'd bring Lonnie back.
We made it to my house and went inside. As I went in I was greeted by my mother. "Hey, Rebecca, how's life treating ya?"
"Well, hopefully, a lot easier now I'm out of school. Hey, where's Dad at?" I suddenly wondered.
"Oh yeah, he had to work overtime at the hospital. I can see you and your friends are going to be at it tonight which is just as well because your father and I are going out for dinner tonight", Mom explained to me.
"Why? Because you're going celebrate the end of my schooling?" I said to her.
"No, because we want to. Not everything's about you, alright, little miss" she replied with an insistently mocking tone in her voice. That what she gets for spending too much time around Elliot.
"Well, I'm off. Seeing you all here and knowing JD and I will probably be a burden, I'll probably stay at Turk and Carla's tonight. See ya, Becky, Izzy, Jennifer, Michael".
Everybody said goodbye to my mom with varying amounts of interest in their voice. After she went, I turned to everyone and said "Well, what now?"
"Why don't we just see watch TV?" Jenny suggested.
"Nah, I already checked. It's all crap" said Izzy.
"Alright, go into my Dad's room and pick out any movie. Be careful of what you pick though. He might be a married man but he still has needs" I forewarned Izzy.
"Eww, I'm not going now" Izzy said.
"Alright, fine, I'll go. Christ, it is so much worse at my house because my brother has much stronger needs on top of my dad's" Jenny told us.
She came back with the first movie she saw and just before we put it on, we heard someone come through the door. At first, I would have thought it would be my parents but we all turned around to see that it was Jack.
"Well, I can see the sewing club is here for it's daily ritual of sacrificing fabric for bullshit and talking about endless repeats of Sex and The City and that includes you too, Michael" he said cynically towards all of us.
"Oh, for God's sake, what the hell are you doing here, Jack? Why don't you go annoy someone else for the night, alright?" Jenny said bitterly to Jack.
"Well, I would say I only came here because I got thrown out of the tavern for not paying for my whisky and had nothing else to do but that is so not true. Alright, Jenny, I know you always think of me as an egotistical bastard who sets aside fifty percent of his monthly wages to buy more mirrors for himself but I was thinking to myself at the bar. I thought the fact that because Becky is your friend and you two have become inseparable for years now, you wouldn't want me to fuck tonight up in any way. So I thought I might quote join the party end quote because and it pains me to say this, it really does, I'm proud of Rebecca and how she got through everything and I thought I might as well be here to celebrate it. Alas, I see neither donkey nor whipped cream" he ranted onto us.
Jenny felt touched by this, in all truth, despite the end remark. In all the years she knew her brother, he only rarely ever said anything like that to anyone as to preserve his underlying pride. Jenny agreed as long as he doesn't get too cynical towards me. Before we put on the film, I said to Jack "Wait a sec, how did you get in here?"
"Your parents let me in. I bumped into them just before they left and they opened the door. I know it's always polite to knock before entering but I'm the type of man who likes to make say I shall, grand entrances" he explained to us.
Halfway through the film, I turned to Jenny and said this.
"What do you think I should do with my life right now?"
Needless to say, she was taken aback by the comment. "Whoa, you just got out of school and now you already want to get your life on track. Listen, if there is one thing I have learnt from my parents, it's that you need time to sort things out before begin to get your life on track alright. Sit back and relax. I mean, look at Jack, he's 22 now and he still doesn't have a fucking clue what the hell he's going to do for the rest of his life".
"Yeah, but I've always thought about what there is I should do. I mean, not now, maybe in the next five years or so" I explained further to Jenny.
"Yeah, well, you leave that to five years time and stay in suspended animation now" she replied to me.
"Well, what should I do while I'm waiting for those five years to go by?" I said to her.
"Hey, why don't you come down to the fashion outlet I work at? I'm sure I'll be able to get you a job there" she replied.
"Alright, nice, thanks".
"OK, now sit down, relax and watch the movie and don't worry about the future. I'm your friend; I'll do that part for you".
"Listen, Jenny's right. You shouldn't get too caught up in the future. I mean, look at me, I'm 22, I live in a shitty run-down apartment, I spend the other half of my monthly budget on whiskey, which I never end up paying for and in all truth, I never once thought about what I should do with my life, as Jenny said before. And the truth is I sure as hell am not going to start now" Jack said to me, offering the sage wisdom he liked to be known for.
The next day, I decided to head down and get a second opinion of what I should do. And I'm guessing you'd know who the source was. I got to the hospital to see him sitting on a chair in the waiting room. Before I said what I initially wanted to say, I decided to say this.
"Admit it, you knew I was coming today. You were waiting for me, weren't you?"
"No, I needed to rest all right. I clean for 5 minutes, annoy your father, take a rest and repeat the same process until my shift is over" he said back to me.
"Yeah, like I already didn't know. Janitor, I wanted to talk to you about something"
"Well, what is it, my dear?" he said in an old-fashioned, grandfatherly tone.
"OK, last night, when I was with everybody, I got talking with Jenny and I said to her what I should do now that I left school. She said not to worry about it and take a break for a few years but I wanted too see what your opinion is" I said to him.
"Well, that there is an interesting question" he said.
He thought for a moment and then said this, "I want you to look at me, Becky. Do you think I made the right choice by being a janitor? I mean, I've worked at this hospital over forty years. I mean, forty years of cleaning up everybody else's mess. Don't you think that time should have been better used than what I do now?" he wondered.
"What are you trying to say to me?" I asked him.
"Well, OK, what is your one of your best hobbies? What do you really like doing a lot?" he told me.
"Well, I like animals" I answered.
"Well, there's your answer. Why don't you pursue a career in veterinaries? I'm sure you'll enjoy that" he said to me, quite exuberantly.
"No, I like animals but I don't want to do anything about it" I explained to him.
"OK, bad example. Hmm, when you were younger, what did you always want to become?" he asked again.
"Well, I might have to think about that". And I did for awhile before eventually coming up with this.
"When I was younger, as you would know, I had to come to this hospital a lot and I found it interesting to look around. I got to the hospital psychiatrist and I found out that day I wouldn't mind doing her line of work. I never did much about it, though"
"Well, there's your second answer. Why don't you try for a psychiatrist's degree? Not now, obviously, you need time to think about it but I want you to promise me this. For your old friend, the Janitor, you will keep that in mind. I care for you and I want you to end up doing something you'd enjoy not something just to get the bread" he said to me.
I then said thanks and goodbye and left. Truth to be told, I felt shifted after that encounter. Throughout all the years I'd known the Janitor, he's offered me advice on a wide variety of topics but this was the most interesting piece of advice he's given me yet.
As the weeks went by, I ended up getting that job at the fashion outlet and with Jenny being an assistant manager, why wouldn't I? I did end up liking the job in all actuality. Whenever I wasn't serving customers, I got to talk to Jenny and Lord knows I love doing that. And now I was getting paid for it, basically. But the janitor's advice still stuck to the back of my mind. I thought about it intensely and ended up giving the proposition to my dad. He was a little more than disappointed that I had gotten career advice from the janitor but he knows how close the Janitor and I have been over the last ten year, so he stopped complaining along time ago. But my dad was happy to see, for one thing, me following in the footsteps of a career in medicine, one thing he wasn't expecting. Of course he came up with the answer I'm sure every father would say to their daughter.
"You do whatever you want, sweetie".
It was two months later when I woke up one day and thought to myself, "I should just do it. No more thinking about it, just go there, apply and you might get somewhere".
And I did. The very next day, I went down to the same university my father applied to for his career in medicine. I told the admissions officer what I hope to achieve in psychology and all that jazz, they put me in reference and told me they would call me when they process my application.
I thought about what I did over the next few weeks ever since I applied and wondered whether it was worth it. It got to me quite hard that I couldn't focus on much else. It went on like this for a few more weeks until my mother checked the mail.
"Bill, bill, flyer, bill, ahh, this looks like a letter for you, Becky. Ooh, it looks like it's from the university you applied to. Well, let's open and read it" she said, as began to open the letter and read through it briefly.
"I'm sorry, Rebecca Dorian, but your application was successful! You have been accepted into our university"
At first I thought she was bullshitting, but I swiped it from her hands and read it and it was true. I had been accepted a position in the psychology course over there. Needless, both me and my mom were happy about it but I was more fixated on telling and subsequently thanking someone else.
The next day, I rushed down to the hospital immediately after I got up. I couldn't wait really, I wanted to thank the Janitor for giving me that advice and telling me to act through for it. But when I got there, I couldn't see him. I looked around everywhere I knew and I still couldn't find him. That was until I saw Carla.
"Ahh, Carla, have you seen the Janitor around anywhere? I want to thank him for something" I told Carla.
Carla, though, stayed solemn and said. "Rebecca, I got some bad news for you".
I thought to myself, what bad news, what? She didn't say anything but took me to a patient's room. Inside was the Janitor, hooked up to wires in a coma.
"Yesterday, when he was cleaning the upstairs bathroom, he got overwhelmed by the fumes for one of his cleaning products and passed out. When he passed out, he smashed his head on a steel pipe nearby and suffered a severe concussion. The results came back today and he had suffered massive brain damage. He won't be able to make it. I'm so sorry" Carla explained to me.
I was speechless. I didn't have anything to say and I stood there, looking at him, seeing that he won't ever be able to talk to me again. Carla realized this and left me alone with him for awhile. After Carla left, I pulled up a chair next to him and sat there, trying not cry. But I couldn't.
Well, as I thought I wasn't on hiatus and was able to figure what I should do for the rest of the story a couple of hourse after I finished the previous chapter. A new chapter will be here in a few days or so. I hope you've enjoyed it so far and for the last time, if you are reading this, PLEASE REVIEW!!