Hey all! Back again with chapter 19 for you! Sorry for the delay, but with a lack of new episodes, it's harder to get inspired.

Lawyers: Our client does not own Scrubs or Dead Like Me, nor is she gaining any profit by writing this story. Don't sue her.

Chapter 19

JD's POV

January 30th, 1903

It had been a little over a month since my death and I was just beginning to get used to the reaper thing. I'm not just talking about the reaping part, but my team as well. They were the quirkiest bunch of people I've ever met.

I had just finished my reap for the day and was going to go hang out with Dan later on. He wanted to go to the zoo for some reason. He wouldn't say why, just told me that it was a surprise. Usually on my free time, I would go see Emily, but the past two weeks the head of our team, Sam, had been especially pissed off. I didn't want to push my luck, so I cut back my meetings with her until further notice.

The reason why Sam was so pissed off was because of Judy. Like me, she had also died in the San Francisco outbreak and became a reaper. We were the only two new reapers of that outbreak. The problem with Judy was that she wasn't adjusting as well as I was. In fact, she wasn't adjusting at all. She hadn't gone to a single one of her reaps and all she ever did was stay locked in her small apartment and cry.

I was the only one she ever unlocked the door for. I guess it was because we died within days of each other and were in the same situation. Because she would let me in, every few days I would go see her at her apartment and try to convince her to do her job. I understand that it's a hard job to cope with, but I also understand what happens to the people she doesn't reap and I've seen what happens to their bodies and therefore their souls.

"Judy," I called, knocking on the door of her apartment. "It's JD. Let me in!"

There was no answer. Not even the usual muffled crying I commonly hear. I tested the door to find that it was unlocked and walked inside.

"Judy?" I called again. "Are you home?"

She must have left her apartment because she wasn't anywhere to be found. It was strange though because in the month that I've known her, she's never left her apartment. Not even for food. I always ended up bringing her groceries.

"Joseph." I heard from behind me and I turned to see Sam standing in the doorway of the apartment.

"Hey, Sam," I greeted. "Have you seen Judy? She actually left her apartment."

"We're actually here to remove her things," he explained and that's when I noticed that Dan standing behind him along with Barbara, and Bernie.

"Why?" I asked suspiciously.

"She wasn't doing her job, so the higher-ups took her away," Sam explained. "No point in having a reaper that won't do her job."

"Yeah, and we have to get rid of any evidence of her so that people don't get suspicious," Dan said with a shrug.

"She's gone?" I asked sadly.

"Oh, don't worry about her, honey," Barbara said with a smile. "She's just moved on to a different plane of existence or something."

"But you don't know for sure, do you?" I asked.

"You know how the higher-ups are. They like to be secretive and mysterious," Bernie said.

"I wouldn't worry about it though," Dan said, slinging an arm over my shoulders. "Why don't you go ahead and I'll meet you at the zoo later."

I nodded and as I left the apartment, I could hear Barbara say behind me, "The zoo? Dan!"

"What?! I'm just playing!"

However, I was too numb over the news on Judy to really care what that meant.

I couldn't find him anywhere and I was starting to go through what I like to call an 'Elliot freak out.' I had checked the hotel, but he wasn't there, so my only other option was to check places he might be. As I rode around on Sasha checking just about every bar in the area, my thought process went a little like this:

I can't believe he skipped out on his reap! He is so stubborn!

He is definitely gonna get a stern talking to.

What if he left town? What if he left the state!?

What if I never find him again? That kid will be stuck in his body until his soul rots away and then who knows what?

Wait. What if not coming to the reap wasn't his decision? He could have gotten in a horrible accident! ...What am I saying? He would heal.. But then what if the accident trapped him somewhere? He could have been on a bus and the bus overturned and was smashed beyond recognition and he's trapped in a twisted pile of metal and then when help comes and rescues him, they'll see that he's perfectly fine and he'll be captured for horrible experiments and in the end, reapers all over the world will be exposed!

...I have to stop thinking like this before I drive myself into a freakin' ditch.

I could feel my cellphone vibrating in my pocket, so I pulled over to answer it.

Pulling off my hairmet, I said, "Hello?"

"Hey DJ."

"Jordan?" I asked before stupidly realizing that of course Jordan's would be the place Dr. Cox would go.

"Yeah, listen, I need you to pass on a message to your cousin," she said.

"Did.. Chris bother you again?" I asked, still not quite used to referring to Dr. Cox that way.

"He did stop by," she said. "But it's not an issue. The next time you see him, tell him that... I'm interested."

I paused for a moment to let that process before asking incredulously, "You're what?"

"I'll go have coffee with him," Jordan explained simply then said in her usual annoyed tone, "Just have him call me. Can you handle that, DJ?"

"I'll tell him when I see him," I said while mentally groaning. I tell him to stay away and of course he goes and makes it worse.

"Good," Jordan said before hanging up.

I slipped the phone back in my pocket before banging my head repeatedly on Sasha's handlebars. As if bailing on his reap wasn't bad enough, now I have this to deal with. I wonder if I annoyed Dr. Cox this much back when I was making all those stupid mistakes as an intern.

Pulling away from the sidewalk, I made a U-turn and headed back to my apartment. There was something I needed to get before I went to go talk to Dr. Cox...

Perry's POV

I downed another shot and quirked an eyebrow at my competition. It was well into the night at this point and the college student before me swayed in his seat with a dazed look on his face as he reached for another shot. His fingers just barely touched the small glass before he slumped sideways out of his seat and passed out on the floor.

Raising my arms in the air victoriously, I crowed, "Who else thinks they can take on the champion?"

A girl in her early twenties stepped forward this time; looking quite confident that she could win. She probably suspected that I was at the end of my rope and about to pass out any minute. After all, I had already beaten three people and at this point had lost count of how many shots I had consumed.

Even after all that alcohol, I still didn't feel drunk. I only got a slight buzz every now and then, but it faded before I could even enjoy it. Of course, I pretended to be drunk, for appearances sake. Couldn't have them become suspicious, now could I?

More shots were set down on the table between us. Locking eyes, we both reached for our first shot and downed it in one gulp before grabbing the next shot, and another, and another after that...

While downing shot after shot, I suddenly heard over the cheering of the crowd an annoyingly familiar voice shout, "Damn it, Chris, I have a bone to pick with you!"

Not pausing in my drinking game, I glanced over and grimaced at the sight of Newbie pushing his way through the crowd. I threw him a quick death glare when he finally managed to reach the table and then turned my attention back to the drinking game.

Slamming a hand on the table, Newbie growled, "Do you realize how many bars I had to search to find you? Twenty-five and some of them have mentally scarred me for life."

I showed just how much I cared by throwing back another shot.

"Did you get a cellphone today?" he asked, frustrated, and I nodded. "Let me see it."

Rolling my eyes, I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket and set it down on the table before grabbing another shot. The girl before me swayed in her seat as she too grabbed another shot and I smirked. It wouldn't be long now. Out of the corner of my eye, Newbie grabbed my phone and programmed my number into his own cellphone.

Setting my phone back down on the table, Newbie said, "Now that that's settled, I need to have a talk with you about a few things. Come on, let's go."

"I'm a little busy here, Newbie," I said.

"Oh, you're a little busy are you? Well I'm so sorry to inconvenience you here, I can see that this is much more important than the job I gave you this morning," he snapped.

"Sarcasm doesn't suit you, kid," I commented lightly.

"We're leaving," he said. "Now."

"Hold on for one minute," I said, and just like clockwork, the girl sitting across from me passed out in her chair. I collected my winnings and grudgingly followed Newbie out of the bar. At the sight of his geeky little bike, I said, "I am not riding that, I hope you know."

He grabbed his bike by the handle bars and put up the kickstand before saying, "We'll walk and talk."

We headed off in a random direction and after walking in silence for a while, Newbie finally spoke, "Why didn't you show up for your second reap?"

"Oh come on, Newbie, you know why," I said with a snort.

He nodded and said, "It's hard starting out, but you can't just quit. Do you know what happens when a person doesn't die when it's their time? Their soul rots away in their body. It's something worse than death. Dr.." he paused. "Perry.."

Oh great, he's trying to connect with me.

"You need to come back to the hospital and release that kid's soul," Newbie said. "And you need to keep coming back to take care of every other one after that."

"I can't, Newbie," I finally admitted. "I'm a doctor, I'm supposed to help people. This goes against everything I know. Besides, you seem to be doing fine on your own."

"Only you can take care of your reaps, Perry. Not me and not anybody else," he said with a sympathetic smile. "That's just the way it works."

"What happens if I can't do this?" I asked.

"You... go away," he said with a distant look on his face.

I had no idea what that meant, but I knew that it couldn't be good. Any unknown place I would end up if I didn't do this was probably worse than the existence I led now. At least this way I could still see my son and Jordan as well as look in on everyone else.

"I'll try, Newbie," I said with a sigh. "I'll go in tomorrow to take care of it."

"Good," he said, nodding. "There's something else I need to talk to you about."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Jordan called," he began.

Crap.

"Perry, you can't keep seeing her," he said. "There are-"

"Consequences," I said with a sigh. "Yes, that's what you keep telling me, but you never mention what those consequences are."

"You forget," he said, stopping and putting up the kickstand on his bike. Turning to me, he said, "I was in the same position you're in now, Perry. I had just died and I couldn't let go of... my wife."

I blinked, completely floored, and had to run that through my mind again. Newbie had been married? It just seemed too impossible to imagine him, a goofy commitaphobe, as a husband. Of course, now that I think about it, perhaps the reason why he's such a commitaphobe is because of his wife. The reaper thing probably has a little something to do with it too.

He pulled out an old newspaper clipping from his pocket and as he passed it over to me, he said, "Her name was Emily."

There's that past-tense again.

"I think we had been married about a year," he said thoughtfully, but he didn't sound too sure.

I looked down at the newspaper clipping to see a picture of a pretty good looking woman. In the picture, she had her arms wrapped around a man who definitely didn't look like Newbie. That's when I realized that the newspaper clipping was a wedding announcement.

"That's not you, is it, kid?" I asked.

He shook his head with a pained look on his face and said, "You know how it is, Per, people move on, but just like you, I couldn't." He paused for a moment and got a far-off look in his eyes before continuing, "I kept seeing her after I died. However, the Powers That Be or whoever it is that makes the rules up there doesn't like it when we keep in contact with the people we knew when we were alive. As punishment, they take away your memories so that you don't feel a need to keep seeing everyone you knew."

That figures. Goddamn, well, God.

"It started out as little things for me at first," Newbie said. "Childhood memories and other things I didn't feel were that important as long as I could keep seeing Emily. She didn't fall for me the second time around though. Eventually I left her alone... until I saw the wedding announcement."

He ran a hand through his hair stressfully and with a lost look on his face, he explained, "I don't really remember what happened, but I woke up in a holding cell later on with barely any memories of my past life. Dan bailed me out not too long after that and told me that I crashed Emily's wedding and caused quite a scene.

"It was too late to save my memories though. I didn't even remember that I had a brother until later on when I saw it written on my gravestone," he said, bemused.

I didn't really know what to say to that except for, "That sucks, kid."

He nodded and said, "I wouldn't want the same thing to happen to you. I can't stop you from seeing them, but think about it, do you really want to be with Jack and Jordan only to forget all the reasons why they're so important to you to begin with?"

"It's worth it," I said firmly, more to myself than him.

"That's what I thought too," Newbie said. "Because of that decision, I can't remember what it is that I loved about Emily so much or why, to this day, a part of me still pines for her. Now that she's gone, I realize that it's not worth it because now I have nothing to remember her by."

It had to be worth it. I couldn't just never see them again. I wanted to be there for Jack and watch him grow up. Jordan may be an evil fire-breathing demon, but she's my evil fire-breathing demon and I'll be damned if I let her fall for somebody else like Newbie's wife did.

I looked back down at the newspaper clipping and imagined that it was Jordan in Emily's place with her arms wrapped around another man. I mentally growled at the thought. Staring at the wedding announcement, I suddenly noticed an interesting bit of information.

"April third, 1908?" I asked incredulously as my gaze snapped up to Newbie. "Just how the hell old are you?"

"Around one-hundred and thirty years old," he said sheepishly. "I died during the San Francisco outbreak in 1902."

I just stared at him with an 'are you kidding me?' look. How could someone be that old and live through so many different tragedies such as the Great Depression and WWII and still have such a childish personality?

"Maybe I should be calling you grandpa instead of kid," I said.

"Please don't," he said. "Kid is fine, or, or, you know, JD."

"Sure thing Josie." I said lightly with a small grin. "So what'd Jordan say anyway?"

"Um," he said, hesitating. "I won't lie to you. She wants to go out and have coffee with you. But consider this before you make a decision: she's on the rebound and she's just using you as a replacement for, well, you, probably because you reminded her so much of you-"

"Just stop talking, Newbie, before you give yourself and aneurysm," I said.

"What I'm getting at is that it's just not healthy for either of you," he said. "It'll mess up the healing process and you know it."

"Why don't you let me worry about that. Okay, kid?" I said a little irritably.

"Fine," he sighed. "Do you need a ride to the hotel?"

"I'll catch a bus or a cab, don't worry about it," I said, waving him away.

He nodded before putting up the kickstand and rolling his scooter out into the street. Pulling on his ridiculous-looking helmet, he hopped on the scooter and turned it on, but before he rode away, he called back, "Remember, down in the morgue tomorrow you have your reap to take care of! I'll call you about any others!"

Right. Tomorrow it's back to the job from hell. First however, I have a coffee date with Jordan. I pulled out my cellphone and dialed her number.

"Hey, Jordan. It's Chris..."

That's the end of chapter nineteen. Only a few more to go after this.

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