Greetings readers of fic! Here we go, the next installment of My So-Called Afterlife! Oh, and if it's in italics, that usually means that it's a fantasy of JD's.

Lawyers: Our client does not own Scrubs or Dead Like Me. She had nothing to offer, so don't bother suing her.

Chapter 4

It was Christmas morning and everything started out good. Carla, Turk, Elliot and I all went out to breakfast to celebrate the holiday since we all had the morning off. I had invited Dr. Cox, but he made it quite clear that he'd rather get his teeth pulled than have to sit around a socialize with all of us. I don't know, maybe I'll ask him if he wants to go have a drink with me later.

Anyway, we had exchanged gifts already, so now we were just sitting back and enjoying the meal. Turk and I had both gotten the pancake plates and were in the process of seeing who could eat the most pancakes when my pager went off. I let out a muffled groan as I pulled out my pager and gazed down at the message. It was from my intern, Keith, and basically all he was telling me was that there was a problem and he needed me to get to the hospital ASAP.

I swallowed my mouthful of pancake and sighed, "I've got to go. Don't know why, I just know that I'm needed. Keith needs to work on his paging skills."

"That's too bad, man," Turk said, but then perked right up, "Hey, can I have your pancakes?"

"Help yourself, Chocolate bear," I said, pushing the plate towards him, however, Carla pulled the plate away before Turk could get at the pancakes.

"You have enough on your own plate," she said frowning, "I don't want your blood sugar skyrocketing."

As Turk pouted and I pulled on my jacket, Elliot's pager then went off. She looked at her pager before muttering a quick, "Frick!" and then looked up at the rest of us and said, "Looks like I'm needed too. I swear, we can't leave those interns alone for a second before they start running around like headless chickens."

"Why don't we just pay for the bill now. I have to get some grocery shopping done anyway," Carla said.

So after paying for the bill, we all went our separate ways; Elliot and I racing off to the hospital while Carla and Turk headed to the grocery store.

Sacred Heart was a mad house when we got there. For one thing, the waiting room was packed full of people, even more so than the usual amount that we had. Some looked pale and feverish, others were coughing, and there were even a few who lay slumped in their chairs unconscious while the person who had probably brought them in sat in the chair next to them with a worried look on their face.

While Elliot went to go find her interns, I met up with Keith since he was the one who originally paged me. He looked extremely relieved when he saw me and raced over to meet me.

A hundred questions flashed through my mind, but the only thing I could think of to ask was, "What's going on?"

"Mr. Gorvick is running a fever and both Mrs. Sven and Mr. Smith suffered respiratory failure. We were able to bring them both back and they're both on ventilators still, but neither has woken up yet," he explained.

I sighed. Mr. Smith was yet another one of my pneumonia patients.

"Mr. Gorvick's fever is probably due to an infection from one of his wounds," I said, "Have you put him on antibiotics?"

"Yes," Keith said.

"Okay, good. Also, collect a sputum sample from Mrs. Sven and send it to the lab. Not one from Mr. Smith though, he has heart problems," I said and Keith nodded before running off to take care of the sample.

Something just didn't feel right about this.

A sharp whistle sounded off from behind me and I whipped around to face Dr. Cox who immediately said, "Newbie! You're clocking in early, change into some scrubs, and then meet me in the waiting room."

He left before I could respond, so with a shrug, I headed to the lockers to change. On my way back to the waiting room, I ran into Elliot. She too was now dressed in scrubs and had also been on her way to the waiting room.

"Some of my patients went into respiratory failure," she told me.

"Pneumonia?" I asked.

"Yeah, how'd you know?" she asked, looking at me.

I said with a groan, "I'm having the same problem."

When we reached the waiting room, Dr. Cox immediately sent us as well as a bunch of other doctors to work. We went through patient after patient, asking about their symptoms and their situation; trying to find something similar about each of them.

"I've been coughing a whole lot lately," a college student, possibly in her early twenties told me, "I've had difficulty breathing and my temperature's been up. I wasn't too worried until the mucus I've been coughing up started to turn bloody."

I nodded as I wrote down all her symptoms on a chart and asked, "Have you had the flu or any other sort of sickness before this?"

"No, I've been perfectly healthy all year," she said.

"He's been wheezing and coughing for the past day," one worried father told me. "I know that doesn't seem too long to be worrying, but his temperature's been in the 103 range and it hit him so suddenly."

"Has your son been around anyone who's been sick lately?" I asked.

"Not that I know of," he said, thinking back. "Though he could have caught something from someone at his school..."

"I need a gurney over here!" I heard Elliot yell while I had been questioning a women in her sixties about her symptoms. Apparently one of the waiting patients who appeared to be resting her eyes in her chair had actually gone into respiratory failure. I paused in my questioning to watch as they intubated her and raced her off down the hall on the gurney.

As soon as they were out of site, everyone broke out of their stupor and began whispering nervously to each other. However, before panic could arise among the patients that they could be the next one, Dr. Cox called out loudly, "Okay everyone, head check! Look to your neighbor, are they breathing? Are we all good? We're good? Great!"

Just like that, the sudden tension was broken. A few of the people waiting to be admitted chuckled at the comment while the rest of the doctors and I got back to the task of questioning the patients and filling out charts. This continued on for several hours because more patients kept coming in, and the majority of them had the same type of symptoms. The whole thing was dizzying and repetitive; I felt as if I had become trapped in a time paradox.

I'm leaning against the Nurse's Station filling out charts when suddenly a swirling vortex opens up and out steps... me? What the hell?

"JD! I'm you, from the future!" future me exclaims.

"I gathered," I say dryly.

"I've come to give you some very important information!" he cries out.

"Have I always been this dramatic, or is that just something that happens to me later on?" I ask.

"Listen closely!" he shouts, ignoring my question. "First! When you meet a woman named Kim, run the other direction! Believe me, there's nothing but unwanted drama and angst down that road. Finally, and most importantly of all, do not get the operation to have your head surgically removed from your body!"

He pulls down the collar of his shirt to reveal a jagged, red scar circling his neck and I take a step back and wince at the sight of it.

Future me nods at my look and says, "Yup, wasn't pretty. Remember my words and all will be well. That said, I must depart!"

"But wait!" I shout as he takes a step back to the vortex. "Tell me more about this Kim. Is she hot?"

"I can reveal no more for the future consequences could be dire and cause a rip in the time-space continuum, making our universe implode!" he says even more dramatically than before.

"Oh come on, what's the worst that could happen?" I jest.

Future me gives me an incredulous look and stutters, "W-what? Weren't you listening? That's the worst that could happen!"

"Oh please," I scoff, "It can't be that bad."

"No really, it is," he says.

"Just tell me one little thing about her," I plead.

"No more talking out of you. Shush. Now, I bid you good day," he says, walking to the vortex.

"But future me-"

"I said good day!" he shouts as the portal closes around him.

"I wonder why future me talks so weird," I muttered before shaking my head and saying, "I'd still get the surgery done."

When things finally started to slow down, Elliot, Dr. Cox, and I all met up in the lounge. While Elliot and I sat on the couch, Dr. Cox paced back and forth in front of us and asked, "Okay, what do we know so far."

"They've all been experiencing fevers, coughing, wheezing, and other breathing troubles," I started.

"Also, some have experienced chills, nausea, vomit, and all of them have at some point started coughing up bloody sputum," Elliot added.

"All symptoms point to some sort of pneumonia," I said.

"But far too many people are catching it for it to just be simple pneumonia," Dr. Cox muttered.

"And it's happening really quickly too," Elliot said. "All patients have only been experiencing the symptoms within the last day or two, and many of them weren't even sick before."

"Some recalled coming in contact with other people who were sick while others claim to have not been around any sick people at all," I sighed, "Pneumonia's contagious, but it's not this contagious."

"Maybe not usually, but the virus or bacteria that's causing these particular cases of pneumonia is," Dr. Cox said. "Okay, here's the game plan. We move all the pneumonia patients so that they're grouped together. After all, we don't want to infect any non-pneumonia patients. Have them all hooked up to antibiotics and get several sputum samples while you're at it. Also, be sure to treat any other patient who's been around a pneumonia patient for a prolonged period of time."

'Shawn... shit.'

Dr. Cox whistled loudly, "We've got a lot of work to do. Barbie, Newbie, move out!"

We all got to work. Both Elliot and I filled our interns in on the plan and they all scurried off to get the job done. Throughout the rest of the day, dozens of patients were shifted around into different rooms. The whole thing reminded me of checkers.

They were all hooked up to antibiotics, even those few who didn't yet have the pneumonia, like Shawn Gorvick. Some where sent off to have chest x-rays done, sputum samples were taken from others, and many had to be set up on oxygen. You would think that with all the work that had to be done, my shift would have flown by, but no, it just seemed to drag on and on. I couldn't have been happier when the last hour rolled around. I was ready to just ride Sasha home, crash into bed, and sleep for a year.

Then I was paged to the Nurse's Station to answer a phone call from a Mr. Dan Dorian.

"You're killing me Dan, you really are," I said, exasperated.

"I'm sorry, Johnny, that someone's death is so inconvenient to you," he said in a mock serious voice.

I paused to bang my forehead against the counter, "You can't be serious."

"Sorry so say, little brother, but we've got yet another job here with your name written all over it," he said with a laugh before suddenly snapping, "Hey, quit eavesdropping, buddy. Eyes forward!"

"What?" I asked, confused.

"Huh? Oh, don't worry about that. It's just some guy who can't mind his own business. That's right, I'm talking about you!" he growled before turning his attention back to me, "Hey, you got a pen on you, or what?"

Grabbing a post-it and a pen from the Nurse's Station, I mumbled, "Okay, let's hear it."

"G.N. Baker. Apartment number twenty-three. Fifty-six Redstone Avenue. Estimated time of death is 10:15 PM," Dan rattled off.

While I scribbled down the information, I heard a faint beep over the phone followed by a mechanical feminine voice. It sounded a little familiar, but I couldn't place where I've heard it before.

"Dan, what was that?" I asked with a frown.

"Nothing, don't worry about it," he said dismissively.

That immediately made me suspicious. He was hiding something, otherwise he would have just told me what it was. The same noise sounded off again.

"There it is again!" I snapped.

"I don't hear anything," he said innocently, "You're too paranoid sometimes, Johnny. You should work on that. Look, I've got to go. I'll talk to you later."

He hung up before I could say anything else. I handed the phone back to Lavern who raised an eyebrow at me curiously, but said nothing. I glanced down at the post-it before folding it once and sticking it into my pocket.

'G.N. Baker,' I thought then mumbled out loud, "At least it's after my shift."

Two plague cases in a row? That just doesn't happen these days. It doesn't make any sense...

That's the end of chapter four. Once again we wonder what Dan's up to.. if he's up to anything at all. U.U;;;

Review please! Your comments are like crack to me.. Or sugar. Mmmm, sugar.