Greetings readers of fic! Here's chapter 5 for you of My So-Called Afterlife!

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

Chapter 5

Throughout my entire afterlife, I've never really been thrilled with moonlighting as a reaper, but it's times like these when I really despise my job. I ended my shift and left the hospital without any troubles. I even made pretty good time in getting to the apartment complex of G. N. Baker. It was around 10:10 when I knocked on his or her door, just five minutes before the estimated time of death. That's when things started going downhill, for the person to respond to my knocks was a young child.

Honestly, I had been expecting an elderly person of some sort, or at least someone who lived alone. Well, more hoping for it than expecting it. However, when you're employed into the reaper business, it's an inevitable fact that at some point you'll end up having to tear apart families and separate loved ones.

"Who is it?" the voice of a little girl called through the door.

Damn, and I bet she's cute too.

"Dr. Donovan," I replied, using my real last name.

It's usually not a good idea to use your alias while on the job. It gives people a way to find you if they wanted to and could lead to unwanted confrontations in the future.

"Can I talk to your parents?" I asked.

"I don't know who you are and I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," she said.

Smart girl.

"It's okay, I'm a doctor. I was called over because someone in your home is sick," I explained.

If someone was in the end stages of the plague, then it would be obvious, even to a little kid, that that person was sick.

"Mommy hasn't been feeling well," she admitted before adding a tad suspiciously, "But Daddy didn't say a doctor was coming over."

"Is your last name Baker?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"And your mother's first name? I don't exactly remember; It starts with a 'G'?" I asked while glancing at my watch. I had just a minute left.

"Ginny," she said, sounding more convinced by my story.

"Well, your daddy might not have had the time to tell you that I was coming over," I explained as convincingly as I could.

She went quiet for a while and for a moment, I was worried that she left. I looked nervously at my watch again, just seconds left before she should pass.

"Okay," she chirped.

There was a click as the door unlocked and it creaked on its hinges as it opened. In the doorway stood a little girl, around eight it looked like, with brown hair, big blue eyes, and a scruffy pink dress. I was right, she was absolutely adorable.

'Damn.'

"So, where's your mommy?" I asked.

She gave me a bright smile before leading the way. A quick glance around the apartment told me that these people didn't have a whole lot of money, which was probably why the mother wasn't able to get the proper medical help for a disease that's completely curable these days. The furniture looked worn down, the paint was chipping, the carpet was old, and over all, the place was pretty small. It did smell nice though; a flowery, springtime scent.

We stopped in front of a bedroom door when the little girl looked up at me and whispered, "We got to be quiet. Mommy's resting."

I mentally cringed and couldn't help but feel a little guilty. This girl had let me into her home expecting me to help her mom feel better and I was here to do the exact opposite. Resting... right.

The mother lay twisted up among the bed sheets of a queen-sized bed. She looked pale and feverish, and the bangs of her brown hair were stuck to her forehead with sweat. I couldn't see any visible buboes, so it probably wasn't the bubonic plague. It could however be the septicemic plague which is when the plague bacteria multiplies in the bloodstream. All it would really take is one bite from a flea carrying the bacteria.

The little girl watched me closely as I approached the women's bed, as if she expected me to just wave my hand and magically heal her mom. I could practically feel her big blue eyes boring into my back.

"Where's your daddy?" I asked.

"At work," she said simply.

"Do you know his work number?" she nodded to my question. "Why don't you go call him and tell him to come home."

She tilted her head to the side and asked, "Why?"

Why? Because I can't exactly stick around once I release this woman's soul and I don't want to leave her here alone with her dead mother. God, this is such a horrible situation. I hate it when kids are involved, whether it be when I'm a doctor or a reaper, it's usually never a good situation when there's a kid involved. For God's sake, why couldn't these people just go to a free clinic when they started feeling bad? This isn't the dark ages, it's the twenty-first century. The plague shouldn't be a problem anymore!

"While I'm sure you're taking really good care of your mom, there are some grownup things I need your dad to handle," I explained while remaining as vague as I possibly could.

She shrugged and excepted the answer before running off to make the call. Once she was out of the bedroom door, I turned back to the woman and felt for a pulse. It was there, just barely there, and fading as the seconds ticked by. I brushed my hand down her arm, again briefly leaving behind an after-glow.

Her soul rose up from her body and with a yawn, she stretched for a moment before calmly looking around her room. However, her serene attitude vanished as soon as she set her eyes on me. She swung her legs around and stood up from her bed, not even aware that she had left her body behind.

Giving me a stern look, she snapped, "Who are you and what are you doing in my house?"

I simply gestured to her body that lay still on the bed behind her. She spun around before letting out a shocked gasp, her eyes going wide as she shook her head in denial.

She whispered disbelievingly, "No... No. It was just the flu." she turned back to me, "Do you hear me? The flu! I'm fine."

"I'm sorry," I finally said solemnly.

"No!" she cried. "You have the wrong person! Go and check your list again because there's been a mistake."

"Ginny, you're name is Ginny, right?" I asked and she nodded hesitantly. "What's your middle name, Ginny?"

"Nancy," she quietly admitted.

"Ginny Nancy Baker," I said, reading off the post-it note I had pulled out of my pocket, "Yup, I have the right person."

She ripped the small, yellow piece of paper out of my hand and there was a moment of silence as she read over the information. When she looked back up at me, her eyes shone with barely restrained tears and she said brokenly, "I have a family. I can't be dead."

It was at that point that her daughter came walking into the room with the phone in hand. She glanced over at her mother still laying on the bed before holding up the phone and whispering, "Daddy wants to talk to you and then I'm supposed to go to the neighbors."

I took the phone from her hand and smiled at her while Ginny kneeled down in front of her and said sadly, "Lizzy, are you okay?" she shot me a nasty glare before reaching her arms out to Lizzy. However, instead of pulling the girl into a hug like she had intended, she fazed right through her. A tear trailed down her face as she called out, "Lizzy! Elizabeth, can you hear me?"

"Take care of Mommy, kay?" Elizabeth said, completely oblivious to her mother's soul in front of her.

I nodded and the little girl smiled at me before walking out the bedroom door.

"No, Lizzy, Mommy's right here," Ginny called after her desperately, "Elizabeth!"

The door to the apartment clicked closed, signally the little girl leaving, and as her mother curled up on the floor and hid her face in her hands, I turned from the scene and held the phone to my ear, "Hello?"

"I never called a doctor, who the hell is this?" came the angry voice of who I can only assume is the father.

"This is Dr. Donovan, you're wife called me over because she wasn't feeling well," I explained.

"You're lying," he snapped. "You told my daughter that I called you."

Damn, he caught me. See, this is why I didn't use my alias. The man's obviously pissed and suspicious about my motives, and once he comes home and finds out the fate of his wife, he's going to be even more angry. Thankfully though, I'll be long gone by the time he gets home and there's really no way for him to locate me since Dr. Donovan doesn't exist in any hospitals around here.

"Minor details aside, sir, there's a more pressing matter I need to discuss with you," I began, but was quickly interrupted.

"If you hurt my family, I swear to God I'll-"

"Believe it or not, but I really am a doctor. I'm sure you've noticed that your wife's been sick recently," his silence only confirmed what I already knew, "She had the plague, Sir. I'm so sorry, but it was too late for me to do anything."

"What are you saying?" he asked.

"You should come home as soon as you can," I told him. "Your daughter will need you."

I hung up the phone before he could respond and a quiet inquiry drew my attention back to the distraught mother sitting on the floor.

"Plague?"

"Yes," I confirmed, "It's rare, but it happens."

"So what now?" she asked, her gaze drifting up to me as if I held all the answers.

"As cheesy as it sounds, you go into the light," I said dryly then held out my hand to her, "Come on."

She stared at me for a moment as if I might bite her before hesitantly taking my hand. As I pulled her up and led her out the bedroom door, she glanced over her shoulder one last time at the lifeless body on the bed. I pretended I didn't notice the tears in her eyes as we walked down the hallway, passing by photos of past memories, and when I closed the door behind us of what was once her apartment, I acted like I hadn't heard her miserable sniffling.

Soon after exiting the elevator of the apartment complex, Ginny's light had appeared in the form of a waterfall. I couldn't have been more relieved because as soon as she laid eyes on the rushing streams of iridescent light, all of her depression seemed to vanish and was replaced with a look of blissful amazement.

It was a little after eleven by the time I got back home and both Carla and Turk were already in bed. After a long day of work at Sacred Heart closely followed by a reap, sleep became the only thing on my mind. I barely even took the time to change out of my scrubs before crashing face first on my bed and becoming, well, dead to the world.

Every reaper has his or her own way of dealing with the stress of the job. You know, coping with the fact that for the rest of our afterlife, or at least until we fill our quota, we have to go around pulling souls out of the dead and dying and send them off to those pretty lights while we can only sit back and watch. Having sex, doing drugs, or getting into fights are just a few of the many ways we may unwind. It's sort of like having a hobby. An unusual hobby that the living would probably find odd.

I once met a reaper who took pictures of everyone she reaped before they died.

I, on the other hand, collect obituaries. I had been collecting them since around 1904. Barbara, the motherly reaper of my group, had suggested it as a way to distract myself from my post-death grief. Since that year, I've collected every obituary of every soul I've reaped. That's why I had asked to write Mr. Bengal's. Since he was the last in his family, I knew that there wouldn't be anyone to write it and since I've been following through on this tradition of mine for so long, it just felt wrong to not have one for him.

Which leads me to the reason why I was skimming through the obituaries this morning with a pair of scissors in hand. I had mailed in the information about Peter Bengal during my lunch break the day that Castello first made his reappearance at the hospital.

'Ah-ha! There his is: Peter R. Bengal,' I thought triumphantly with a snip-snip of my scissors.

"JD, are you almost ready?" Carla asked while putting on a pair of black earrings.

"Yeah!" I said, already dressed in my funeral clothes.

She came up behind me and asked in a curious tone, "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," I muttered innocently while folding up the obituary before she could get a good look at it.

"Baby, there are three things I've learnt not to discuss with people: Religion, politics, and JD's weird thing with the obituaries," Turk stated as he adjusted his tie.

Carla shrugged and walked away from me to go grab her purse, calling over her shoulder at me, "Come on! We don't want to be late."

Ted's funeral was today and Kelso let anyone who was attending have the time off. Of course, because Carla and Turk had already had yesterday off, they were being called in afterwards. The hospital usually wasn't so strict on scheduling, but because of the sudden rise in sickness, every bit of help was needed. I thankfully didn't have to go in at all today which would leave me with some relaxing time after the funeral.

Thanks to Carla's pestering, we arrived there on time, and surprisingly enough, there were more people there than I though there would be. It was held in a small church. There was nothing too fancy about it. Simply an urn on a pedestal with a picture of Ted to one side of it and a small floral arrangement to its other side.

We took a seat in the pews along with a couple other people from the hospital. There was Doug, Ted's a cappella group, The Todd, Lloyd, Laverne, and-

'The Janitor.'

Okay, no problems there. Just avoid eye-contact and you'll be fine.

There was also a few people I didn't recognize. Possibly family?

Anyway, overall the service was pretty okay, and the rumor going around (according to Lavern) was that Kelso was the one that paid for the whole thing.

"Don't look too surprised," Lavern said, shaking her head, "Cremation is the cheapest way to go when it comes to a funeral."

Well, that partially explained some things, though why Kelso paid for anything at all was still a mystery. My best guess is that maybe he was feeling just a tad bit guilty and a little responsible for the whole thing. After all, he wasn't really that nice to Ted when he was alive.

"It's a possibility," Carla said, though she didn't sound too convinced.

Ted's a cappella group not only hummed the funeral tune during the service, but also sang a few songs that apparently had meant something to their friend. Then a priest came out and did his little spiel: he's in a better place, something about God, so on and so forth. A couple people even got up and said a few words about him.

"He may not have been the best lawyer, but when it came down to it, he got the job done... sometimes."

Though I wondered why some people got up and said a few word. Hell, I could have come up with something better than that.

"He was a very important member of my brain trust. He will be missed."

I'm not quite sure what that one was about, but I'm sure it held some deeper meaning for a few of the people sitting around me nodded solemnly.

It was around noon when the ceremony ended and those who didn't need to go to work had lunch in mind, myself included. I know I should have been a bit more saddened by the whole thing, but give me a break, people. Not only was I not extremely close to the guy, but when you've been around as long as I have, you've seen so many funerals that they've started to lose meaning. It's sort of like saying a word over and over again. Eventually it stops sounding like an actual word.

"We'll see you later on, Vanilla Bear," Turk said, patting me on the shoulder.

"You going to be alright?" Carla asked, probably thinking I'd be a little depressed over the funeral.

"Yeah," I nodded.

She smiled at me, "Hey, enjoy your day off. Relax, okay?"

"No problems there," I said with a grin.

With that said, they left to the hospital while I headed back home on Sasha. Man, I really need this day off. First I'm going to stuff my face; there's always plenty of good food after Carla goes grocery shopping. Then I'm going to watch TV, lots of it, and finally comes sleep. Yup, it's going to be a very productive day.

I pulled out my apartment keys as I approached the door when I noticed it had been left open just a crack. Who left it open? ...Wait, I specifically remember locking the door behind me. Then that could only mean..

"Someone broke in," I whispered as I cautiously neared the door.

Okay, remain calm. I'm already dead, so there's really nothing more they could do to me. Still, I needed a weapon. It would just be stupid to go in there with no form of defense. Well, I could always rip their soul out of their body to stun them, but I really don't think that would be a good idea. Not only could it be a possible risk of exposure, but you only really get to do that once and get away with it. It's like speeding, you can only get so many warnings before you get a ticket. In this case, you only get one warning to not do that again and if you don't listen to that warning, there will be consequences in the end. However, I have no idea what those consequences are because I've never met a reaper who's done it more than once.

Back to my current dilemma: a weapon. Hmmm... Wait, my shoe! It's not great, but it should work.

I listened closely at the door and could hear a bit of shuffling around inside. Whoever had broken in hadn't left yet. So with one hand on the door and the other holding my shoe, I slammed the door open, ready to face my opponent. I raised my shoe into the air, awaiting the right moment to strike down the intruder. Hopefully my sudden entrance would give me the advantage of surprise.

"You've messed with the wrong-"

I froze.

'What?'

I blinked, confused.

"Dan?"

End of Chapter 5! Hope you're all enjoying it so far. Oh, some good news for you all. First of all, I'm out of school for the summer, so aside from work, I should have more time to write if I choose to do so.

Second of all, I've finally come up with the ending for this series. Yeah, you didn't know I was having plotting problems, but I was. I've figured it out thought. However, never fear, the ending is a ways away. It's like (counting on fingers) about four other stories away, and I'm not counting this one.

Anyway, you've read it, so review it please. Like it? Hate it? Tell me what you think.