AN: Alright, early update because of the last lame chapter. This ones a little longer, although just about as little happens (sorry), but there's a lot of Perry brooding and introspection and overall I like this one better.

Final (much, much longer) chapter on Monday and epilogue on Wednesday and this story is through! I can't believe it's almost over! Thanks again to everyone for their support.

Chapter 20 – His Reluctant Peek Inside

Serious things always seem to force us to do a lot of introspection, which is not something I enjoy doing for the record. It seems like whenever we are faced with a life-altering possibility, we instantly have to dive inward and do a whole heap of that soul-searching answer-seeking. This also generally leads to a few things that we have to deal with that we didn't think were true. Those little things we've denied to ourselves but when we turn inward we find that contradicting evidence, and it always results in the same inner battle of wits as both sides of your consciousness duke it out to see what you're going to continue believing; your outward denial and misconceptions, or the inner reality.

After my hour long break of watching a college football game, because my favorite soap seemed to be filled with an excess of comas and deaths today, I spent the rest of the day keeping myself busy.

I dug up the post-it with Kim Briggs' phone number and called her, letting her know what happened. Then I divided my time between paperwork and patients, stealing them off residents and interns to give myself something to do. Later when Carla showed up, I called Dan at the number she had found taped to Newbie's fridge. His answering machine informed me that he was at a realtor's conference for the week so I left a message telling him everything, and then gave him my number for when he got back. Then I threw myself back into my work.

"Knock knock." I looked up as my office door swung open and Jordan came in, carrying Jennifer. Jack pushed past her and jumped on me.

"Pewwy!" he yelled, squeezing me and then settling himself into my lap.

"Hey there, Jacky," I said, ruffling his hair. "What are you guys doing here?"

"The kids wanted to come by and see you," Jordan said and perched herself on the corner of my desk. "Why aren't you in with DJ?"

"I have work to do," I said evasively. "I don't have the time, or the want, to sit around all day and babysit Allison."

"Oh please," Jordan said in exasperation, rolling her eyes. "We both know it's where you want to be. You can't tell me that you don't care that your puppy's in a coma."

"Puppy?" Jack asked, suddenly very interested.

"Not a real puppy, honey," Jordan explained and Jack immediately went back to playing with my stethoscope.

"I honestly don't want to be in there," I insisted.

"You know, you're doing the same thing that little girl's dad did." Jordan's tone was off-hand but it still caught my full focus. I instantly regretted ranting about the Marks' to her after work that one day. I should've known the she-witch would find a way to use it against me. "Staying away because it's too hard on you. But you know, I bet that now his kid's gone, he's really wishing he could have been there for her. How are you gonna feel if DJ goes and you weren't there?"

"It's not the same, Jordan!" I said firmly. Jordan was completely unabashed, although she narrowed her eyes dangerously as Jack looked alarmed at my outburst. Feeling guilty, I lowered my voice. "He's not my son."

"Not in blood," Jordan said calmly. "But does that really matter? You loved Jack before you knew he was yours, blood didn't matter then. But DJ sees you as his dad and we all know that you love the attention and the pride of making him into a semi-decent doctor, and that's what should really matter." She passed to let this sink in. "The rest of us get it, Perry, so get out of your own way and quit being such an ass."

"Sush an ass," Jack echoed with a grin.

"Good boy, Jack," Jordan said. Then she turned back to me. "Don't worry, you'll have some time to think about it so long as DJ doesn't snuff it soon. I know you're not gonna want to leave here until he wakes up because of your 'Ben-complex,'" she said, making air-quotes with one hand, "so the kids and I are going up to my mom's for the week. Spend some time with Grandma, huh Jack?"

Jack looked up at me with fear in his eyes. Yep, that's my boy. "Jordan, you don't have to do that," I said resignedly. "I'll come home."

"Then you'll come home to an empty house," Jordan said simply. "We're already packed, we just stopped by so the kids could say bye."

"Jordan – "

"Perry, quit fighting me, you know you'll lose." Jordan stood up and I mirrored her, standing Jack on the desk. "I'll call you when we get there."

Knowing I'd lost, I took Jennifer and kissed her forehead. She laughed and her hand closed around my curls, tugging. Jordan was grinning as she pried the hand away, returning Jen to her hip.

"Okay, Jack," I said, and he looked up at me curiously. "Be good and cause lots of trouble at Grandma's house. And be careful to never look her in the eye or she'll turn into a monster and eat your soul." Jack's eyes went wide and behind me I heard Jordan make a noise somewhere between annoyance and amusement. "You remember that, okay?"

"Okay, daddy," Jack agreed with a solemn nod. Or as solemn as a four-year-old gets.

"Good kid," I said, smiling. "Now gimme a kiss." Jack eagerly obliged, squashing my nose in the process, and I swung him down to the floor. Once I was standing again, Jordan caught my chin in her free hand and kissed me forcefully. Wow, don't let her see how weak in the knees you get when she does that. As if she didn't already know.

"Now go, Per," she said when we broke apart. "It's where you need to be." Then with one last kiss on the cheek, she took Jack's hand and they left.

I sat back down at my desk. I still refused to believe what Jordan had been saying. JD was not my son, nor would I ever consider him so. Still, something in what she'd said though, comparing me to Lily's father, made me uneasy. How could I be like that moron? I mean, I wasn't really, because I didn't have a child dying of an incurable disease. I had an annoying colleague/shadow in a coma that we weren't sure he could come out of. So why did I feel so guilty?

You know why.

Damn, conscience is back again. Still, I figured that it wouldn't hurt to check in and see if there had been any changes. I was his doctor after all. I hauled myself up and went down to the room. Carla gave me a knowing smile when she saw me pass, but her eyes were sad. I kept going without a word and stopped in the doorway.

The only change was that the chair by the bed was empty. I guessed Gandhi had gone to get some sleep before his next shift. Newbie looked exactly the same as before; skin pale, eyes shut, mouth limp around the breathing tube. Unmoving and unaware of his delicate situation.

See, there was another way I wasn't like Mr. Marks. Lily had been fully conscious, fully aware of the fact that her father was ignoring her. Newbie wasn't. He was in a coma, he wouldn't know if I wasn't here. My being with him didn't make the slightest bit of difference to his condition or affect him in any way really. If he died, I wouldn't feel any worse for not being here watching him sleep. It didn't make a difference either way, did it?

But what if coma patients really can hear you? The thought came to me again, just like it had the night of Newbie' accident. What if he could hear me? What if he knew who was sitting with him? He could die without ever hearing me, and then he would die feeling abandoned. Could I deal with that? Of course I could, I didn't believe coma patients really do hear the people around them. They're practically brain dead, for God's sake. And at the same time, I still feel that guilt thing in my chest.

I don't know how long I was standing there arguing with myself before I was aware of someone coming up behind me. She didn't seem to notice me until she was already inside the room. "Oh, Dr. Cox, hi."

"Dr. Briggs."

"Nothing still?" Kim asked, her voice devoid of hope as she shifted Sam on her hip. I shook my head. Kim crossed to the bed and her free hand tentatively closed around one of Newbie's, rubbing the back of his wrist with her thumb. After a minute her fingers moved up his arm, never fully breaking contact, and she placed her palm against his bleached cheek.

"I thought he was getting better," she said quietly.

"He was," I said, feeling that familiar swell of anger in my chest. Finally an emotion I understood. Quell the guilt with anger, my typical standby.

Kim frowned, tracing her thumb along Newbie's cheekbone. "So his chances…"

"Are pretty low, yeah," I finished for her. "Twenty-five percent at best would be my guess, with a high probability of permanent damage if he does come out of it." Kim's lips trembled. Sam had turned to stare at the prone figure and he squealed in recognition, extending his hands toward his dad. This was apparently the breaking point for Kim. Before I even realized she'd moved, she was out the door and Sam was in my arms. I heard her choked sob as she jogged into the bathroom down the hall.

More than just a little confused by the sudden turn of events, I sat down in the rolling chair I'd left in there earlier, settling Sam on my lap awkwardly. The little boy wriggled and kept reaching out for the bed, whining, so I pushed the chair closer and helped him to stand up on my knees. Sam leaned forward against my grip and grabbed one of Newbie's fingers in his little fist. When Newbie didn't react, Sam looked back at me. His wide, blue eyes were full of questions and it hit me just then how much they looked like his father's.

"Don't worry, kid," I said gently. "Your dad's gonna come outta this." I wondered briefly if kids were as good at detecting lies as animals were. I shook it off, trying to convince myself that I wasn't lying. "He won't leave us behind. You. He won't leave you behind." Sam was tugging at Newbie's fingers and he whimpered again. When he turned to me again his lower lip was pushed out in a familiar pout. Once again, the similarity astounded me.

The chin quiver was a tell-tale sign and a second later the cry split the stiff air of the room. Paternal instinct kicked in and in an instant I had pulled Sam against my chest, wrapping my arms around him and rubbing small circles against his back. I felt the short arms secure themselves around my neck, fingers gripping at the back of my teeshirt, and the crying was muffled as Sam buried his face in my collarbone. Falling back into the routine of my own children, I stood up and began pacing a short line between the bed and the door, my steps taking on a bouncing, rocking gait.

"Easy there, Newbie Jr.," I murmured. "It's gonna be okay. I promise you, kiddo, it's gonna be okay." About round seventeen on my make-shift track, I heard the volume of the sobs dropping distinctly into sniffles. Four more trips and the sniffles became shuddery breaths, and then six more loops changed the shudders to steady, deep breaths. Convinced that Sam was asleep, I returned to the chair and sat down, occasionally making a whispered shushing noise if the boy shifted against my neck.

As if the pain in my chest wasn't bad enough, now I had this little offspring of Newbie sleeping in my arms, his head pressing the coolness of tear-dampened fabric against my collar bone. Damn Newbie. I almost wished that coma patients could hear the people around them, just so he could hear the misery he was putting his little boy through by being in a coma. Maybe that would make him come back.

That look of heartbreak on Sammy's face was haunting my mind. That look of the little boy who had no idea why his energetic, doting, loving father was just laying there sleeping and ignoring the son that he usually would never let go of if he didn't have to. It was honestly scary to see that much terror and hurt on a one-year-old's face. But what was even more frightening, not to mention confusing, was that as I had stared at that face it wasn't Sammy who I was really seeing. I had imagined a different doe-eyed, pouty-lipped person. And, alarmingly, that had shaken me to my core.

Why? Well I supposed it was feasible that seeing that much fear on any person's face was shocking. But why Newbie? Why did all of this have to give people like Carla and Jordan and Ben all the more evidence against me? Because it couldn't be true. I didn't care about Trisha that much. I'll admit that I cared, I think it was definitely too late to bother trying to deny that. So I cared, a little. What can I say, after eight years the girl had grown on me a bit. But not that much. Not the way he wanted me to see him. He was an employee that I respected, because honestly the kid wasn't that bad a doctor. He was a colleague, who I generally trusted not to mess up everything he touched. He might be a – shuddering at thinking this word – friend. But he was most definitely nawt my protégé. And even more so, he was nawt my son.

But who was I kidding? Okay so maybe the protégé thing has just the slightest bit of truth in it. I just really don't like using that word. Maybe I'll have to find a different word for Newbie to use when he comes out of this, and I'll let him get away with that. Something like… apprentice? Ugh, no that makes me think of Donald Trump. But I'll come up with something.

None of that changes the fact that Newbie is not my son. He might have whittled away at me to get the colleague thing, and then the friend, and even the not-protégé thing, but this one he wasn't going to win. As much as he might want me to be his father figure, I refuse. It's not happening. He's a big girl, he doesn't need to have his daddy around to take care of him. I'll be his boss and his teacher and even, occasionally, something like a friend, but I'm not going to be his father.

A flash of blonde made me look up and I saw Kim coming back into the room. Her eyes were red, but she seemed to have stopped crying. "I'm – " I cut her off with a shush and pointed at Sam. She nodded and lowered her voice. "I'm sorry about that," she whispered, crossing to stand in front of me, wrapping her arms around herself. "I just – this is a bit too much to take in." I just nodded, not knowing what more to say. Comforting people is re-heely not my forte. "Thanks for watching Sam," she added. "I can – I can take him back now if you like."

I stood up carefully, wincing as my back and knees groaned in protest. Dear God, when did I suddenly get so old that a night sleeping in a chair took this much out of me? Being careful not to jostle Sam too much, I unwrapped his arms from around my neck and handed him off to Kim. She adjusted him against her chest and in an instant his sleepy grumbles had faded back into normal breathing. "You gonna be okay?" I asked quietly.

Kim took a deep breath and cast a glance at JD. "I don't know," she said sincerely. "For now, I think so. But if he – I don't know." She sighed heavily, her breathing hitching just slightly. "Just – let me know if anything changes?"

I nodded in reply, stuffing my hands down into my pockets awkwardly. Kim hesitated for a moment longer, then thanked me and left. I had only just gotten to settle into my chair when another weepy-eyed blonde appeared, hovering in the doorway and clamping what looked like a fistful of tissues in one hand. Oh no.

"Hi, Dr. Cox," Barbie choked out. If you have any mercy, lemme just keel over now.

"Barboo," I responded, crossing my arms and making myself comfortable. Maybe if I made it apparent that I wasn't moving, she would leave. I needed to keep thinking and this had seemed like a nice, quiet place to do it.

Apparently no such luck as Barbie sat down in the other chair, scooting it closer to the bed with a screech that made my hangover headache resurface, and taking a hold of JD's hand in the one that wasn't clutching the Kleenexes. She kept glancing up at me, mouth open like she was going to say something, but I effectively silenced her with a glare every time and she would return to surveying Newbie. Okay so maybe this wasn't going to be so bad.

After fifteen minutes of the quiet repetition, Barbie seemed to have gotten sick of the silence. But instead of talking to me, she leaned closer to the mattress and began with, "Oh God, JD, this isn't fair." I thought about telling her to shut it, but decided against it. I could tune her out if I had to, I'd been doing it for years. At least she wasn't talking that loud. Grunting, I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, escaping into the darkness and solace of my mind. After seeing that I wasn't about to murder her, Blondie started talking again in a low voice.

"I can't believe this has happened to you," she was saying in her thick voice that betrayed the fact that she was trying not to cry more. "I thought you were getting better. Things just – they aren't working out for you. The accident and the amnesia, and then your friend Lily dies, and then this. God, why JD? I don't get it. You don't deserve it."

Well that much was for sure. I mean, the kid was annoying as all hell, but there were certainly people far more deserving of this much pain and misery. Like Republicans. Or Michael Moore. Or, perhaps most of all, Hugh Jackman. But not Newbie.

Barbie stopped with the pity party after this and launched into more casual conversation, as if she was just venting about a normal day to her friend after work. She told little jokes that seemed to amuse her but that I didn't understand, nor did I want to. She rambled endlessly about some weird guy she had run into at the grocery store who reminded her of some random person from her past, who had been part of one of her weird little sexual daydreams. Sweet Jesus, she's a whole keg of crazy. And the entire time she talked she ignored me, letting me pretend to be sleeping.

About midnight Jordan called me to let me know that she had made it to her mother's lair, and that because of me, every time Mrs. Sullivan looked at Jack he would scream and cover his face, running out of the room. Jordan had feigned ignorance as to why this was happening, and Jack wouldn't stay in the room long enough to explain, all of which had left the older woman completely baffled and disturbed. I felt a certain sort of smug satisfaction from the knowledge that even though the restraining order kept me away, I could torment the old hag vicariously through my son. Even though she tried to hide it, I could tell Jordan thought it was funny, and her parting insult as she went to hang up lacked the bite she usually forced. She even managed to say an almost nice, if reluctant sounding, goodnight before abruptly ending the call before I could reply.

I returned to my previous attempt at sleeping while Barbie continued on with her monologue, although it is admittedly very difficult to sleep with that thing screeching, no matter how quietly she was trying for. Shutting my eyes, I relaxed back into the chair and retreated back into that safe place in my head where I could think. I had only been there for about five minutes when I found out that my thoughts were not going to lead me anywhere I had the desire to go, so I finally settled for pretending to sleep and half-listening to the mumbo that Barbie continued to run off about until she finally got too tired and trooped off to go home with a bleary, "Night, Dr. Cox."

With her gone, I finally straightened up in my chair again. It was over, the first twenty-four hours. When a patient went into a coma, their greatest chance of recovery was in the first twenty-four. After that their chances declined exponentially with every day. I would never, I repeat ne-hever, admit this aloud even on pain of being forced to kiss Hugh Jackman, but as I stared at that pale, calm face that seemed even more bleached by the florescent lighting, I was scared shitless. From this point on, the medical faith went out the window. From now on, we'd be living off a hope and a prayer and, if things went wrong, a whole lot of scotch.