AN: And here's the next chapter… Thank you for the reviews

:)

"Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained."

Arthur Somers Roche

Chapter 6

Buzzing, around me. I wish it would go away, it somehow irritated me. I want it to be quiet, the whole world to disappear. I just wanted to sleep and sleep and sleep. So tired.

Weight, on my chest. Something, in my mouth, tickling my throat, it felt so rough. I found I could not breathe, yet somehow I was not distressed. It briefly made me wonder, but that, too, disappeared as I felt so tired. I could not keep my attention on it.

Voices. Somewhere. They sounded alien and distressed, yet again I found I could not make myself care about them. My consciousness wavered and I slipped back inside my own mind, where it was dark and silent and calm. Here I could stay, here I could come and rest and regain my energy. I looked around, my thoughts came sluggish yet when they arrived they were bold and clear.

I was cold in here. Silence so intense that my mind began filling it up with sounds of it's own making. Slowly I became aware of the buzzing of my own body and every single process that made me vibrate with the feeling of being alive. Somewhere, something felt wrong.

---

Dr. Cox was on Turk in two long steps, grabbing the front of his scrubs with both of his hands and slamming him against the door. The surgeon looked at him, seemingly noticing him for the first time, alarm evident in his eyes.

"What do you mean you killed him!" Dr. Cox bellowed, his face contorted in fury, although his eyes told a different story; Fear looked out of them. Turk held up his hands as if to protect himself.

"I- what?" Turk managed to say, shooting a glance at his shocked-looking wife on the couch and then back at the angry face just inches away from his own.

"Answer the damn question! Is he dead?" Dr. Cox yelled, fire spitting out from his eyes. He found he wanted direct conformation, yet he dared Turk to say it. Dared him to shatter his world. He knew he was only angry because he could think of no other way to deal with his emotions right now. In his head, a fast mantra repeated over and over; No, no no no nononono.

Turk looked frightened and lost, looking for a hint of compassion in the older doctor's face. Finally, his shoulders sacked as if he resigned to his fate.

"Yes." He whispered. Dr. Cox's hands let go of Turk's scrubs, his hands flying up towards his head and he grabbed hold of his hair, a look of horror on his face. A deep chasm opened up below his feet, threatening to swallow him whole.

Turk looked at him, shock on his face when he saw the older man's reaction to the news. Behind them, Elliot had burrowed her face in the scarf and Carla got up, tears in her eyes, reaching out towards her husband.

---

Now that I paid attention to my surroundings, I could see it was also darker than I thought pleasant and I found that my former excitement of coming to this place evaporated as I came into contact with the frightening aspects of it. Clarity passed over me in waves, each one followed by tiredness, leaving me drained and exhausted. I wanted to let go and let my thoughts go as well, leaving everything behind, including this place. Somehow, though, a part of me fought against it.

I was frightened.

With each passing wave I felt more and more energy being lifted from me and taken into the dark abyss beyond my consciousness. Thoughts came slower and slower and finally just one clear one spun around in my mind.

Sleep.

And there, tiredness so intense fell over me, eliminating every single process in my mind. Slowly, the buzzing and vibrant feeling from before disappeared. Like a tsunami the exhaustion took a hold over me and I found I could not fight it any longer as I let myself be swept off my feet and carried in the sea of nothingness.

---

"I… I don't understand." Turk pointed out, still looking frightened. "What are you doing here?"

Dr. Cox looked at him with a dumfounded expression on his face. This wasn't exactly how he had thought Turk would deal with the loss.

Turk blinked several times. "You… you went looking for JD…" He said slowly. Dr. Cox and Carla exchanged a worried glance. Carla bit her lip and placed a hand on her husband's shoulder.

"Baby…"

This didn't have the expected result. Turk jumped up, startled by the touch, and his eyes suddenly went wide in horror. "Oh god! Something happened to JD!" His hand shot up towards his head in much the same manner as Dr. Cox had done and his face was filled with worry and sorrow. "Why! Why my vanilla bear? Tell me what happened!"

Carla looked utterly shocked and Dr. Cox, too, had trouble processing this reaction. The man had gone mad. Absolutely mad after losing his best friend and now he had thought up a reality in which JD was still alive… and they had just gone and shattered his world all over again…

Carla seemed ready to cry. "Baby, he… died." Her voice choked and she seemed helplessly small and vulnerable. "He died. Don't you remember? You just told us!"

Turk froze, his face a subtle mask, not betraying any of his emotions while behind it his mind was a flurry of thunderstorms full of rage and heart-broken grief, but above all; confusion.

Slowly he opened his mouth and looked sideways to Dr. Cox, fixing him with a silent stare. "No… I just told you my patient died…" His voice was calm and determined, yet his eyes dared the older doctor to say something that contradicted his own claim.

Suddenly, an idea formed in Dr. Cox's head and with it a terrifying idea of hope, too small and fragile that he didn't even want to give it any space lest he break his heart again for a second time. He returned the look with much the same expression on his face.

"Who… Who was your patient, Ghandi?" The nickname escaped his lips before he knew it. He couldn't help it, his mind was a mixture of strong emotions he was not very familiar with and he needed something to restore the normality of this place.

Turk looked away for a moment of two, confusion flashing across his face before he spoke up. "It was…. that guy." He looked up then, alarmed. He glanced at his wife and also at Elliot, trying to catch their eyes.

"You know! That guy from the security camera footage. In the lobby!" Both Elliot and Carla just stared at him, unable to say anything to confirm what his ramblings. "I recognized him just as he went in cardiac arrest and I… I just froze, you know. I suddenly thought about JD and how this guy had kidnapped him or did something horrible to him, or… I don't know. Just crazy things…" He trailed off, looking miserable.

".. He died, because of me." He whispered. "He died because I was overcome with my own emotions, induced by some random crazy theories that hold no merit whatsoever. The guy probably had nothing to do with any of this in the first place."

Dr. Cox let out a breathe he hadn't realized he had been holding, relief washing over him.

"This… This is great news."

Turk's head shot up, looking angry. "Great? I just probably caused a man to die and you're calling this great news?"

"It's great news your patient died, Ghandi, because it means newbie didn't." Dr. Cox answered, calmly. This caused Turk to lapse in shocked and uncomfortable silence. Gradually he opened his mouth again to say something;

"Someone is going to tell me where JD is, right now."

---

The incessant wine of the heart monitor.

"Clear!"

The violent zap of the defibrillator.

"He's not responding!"

"Again! Clear!"

---

Now all four of them were sitting on the couch, looking steadily through the glass out into the hallway, daring anyone to venture close and open the door to come tell them bad news. Silence had settled a while ago, Elliot's tears had run dry and Turk and Carla just sat together, Carla absentmindedly rubbing her husband's back while they both stared into nothing. Dr. Cox was surprised he could sit still at all, but after the emotional roller coaster of a few moments ago, he felt drained and just wanted to sit. Worry was still so tangible in this room he almost felt the need to open a window and get a broom to sweep it out.

He sat up when het noticed two police officers following a doctor appearing in the hallway. The doctor approached a nurse and asked her something. The nurse pointed at the door, both police officers followed her finger and their eyes came to rest on the four of them sitting on the couch. Dr. Cox's heart began hammering in his chest.

The doctor led the two officers to the door and opened it, letting them inside. Four pairs of eyes stared silently at the newcomers. One of the policemen took off his cap and brushed off some wet snow while the other stepped towards him and held up a badge.

"Are you Dr. Turk and Dr. Cox?" He asked as he glanced at the surgeon and the older doctor. Turk's hand, on top of Carla's leg, grasped it more tightly and he looked frightened. Dr. Cox blinked and fought to find his voice.

"Yes." It sounded rough.

"I'm here to talk to you about Dr. Dorian."

---

Pain, exploding in my chest and radiating outward, everywhere it went it caused my body to convulse and tingle, tearing my mind from the depths of whatever black abyss it had been in.

Good god! I'm awake! I'm awake!

I wanted to scream this at whatever was causing the sensation. However, my voice did not come and I found my mouth did not cooperate, because it was filled with something, stuffed down my throat. I wanted to cough and splutter yet nothing happened and I blindly panicked.

What the hell?

Slowly I calmed down again when I noticed nothing actually changed and that panicking didn't help much. I wasn't lying in my bed and I hadn't overslept like I thought I had. I was somewhere else but I couldn't remember where. My mind was still very fuzzy and my eyes wouldn't open.

Darkness surrounded me and the buzzing from before returned, quite loudly. Now, however, I found the buzzing to be almost like a lullaby and the darkness like a blanket snugly covering me. This… this wasn't really all that frightening.

There were voices again, sounding less agitated and less alien. And an unremitting slow beeping. It all felt much less daunting and I found it kind of reassuring to hear the voices and the beeping seemed to signify something important although I couldn't put my finger on it.

As I listened I found my concentration wavering again and the buzzing and beeping united into an endless harmony that let me drift gradually back to sleep, although now it felt more like a nap and the permanence of the sensation from before had disappeared. Still, a feeling of worry lingers as I let the blackness overtake me once again.

---

Dr. Cox turned the object in his hand slowly over and over, silently staring at it. This process had been going on for the past few minutes now.

It was JD's nametag.

The policemen had wanted to take it with them again, but he had kind of gotten cross with them and given them such a good ranting that the officers had thought it safer to just scamper out of the room without it.

The police had talked to them for quite some time. They had told him several things. And now Dr. Cox was mulling them over.

They had found the nametag in a car. A car that had collided with a truck, blocking off the 510, causing Dr. Cox to need to take the other route to JD's residence, which resulted in him being able to respond much more quickly to JD's cry for help when the kid had paged him.

The car had been the property of a man. The man had been badly injured in the car crash and when the firemen had gotten him out of his car the man had been rushed to the nearest hospital. Sacred Heart. He arrived almost simultaneously with the ambulance that had carried Dr. Cox and JD. Turk had been paged for Emergency surgery. Turk had operated not on JD but on the man from the car crash.

The man who somehow had JD's nametag in his car…

The truck driver had told the police that the man had just suddenly veered onto his road and headed straight for him, even tough the small car had been manoeuvrable enough to avoid the truck… The police were treating it as a deliberate collision.

The police told them that they were familiar with the man's history in prison and his history of mental problems… The man was kind of schizophrenic, switching between a crazy, violent personality and normal, almost docile personality. For years it had gone unnoticed, as the crazy part of the man's personality admitted to every crime they threw at him, often with detailed recollections. When the man began admitting crimes that he couldn't possibly have committed because he had been in prison during them, they finally had let a shrink take a look at him. He had gotten pills, to control his schizophrenic-like switches in personality and all had gone well for months. He had been released from prison after the police had been assured he wasn't any danger to society.

Dr. Cox had laughed at that. No danger to society…

The police had found a gun in the man's car, with a bullet missing and after that they had found JD's nametag, with blood on it… and a full unopened bottle of medicine. Well, naturally they had come to Sacred Heart to ask about Dr. Dorian and there they found out that he was currently in surgery because he had been shot.

No danger for society as long someone kept an eye on him and made sure the guy took his meds… Dr. Cox had laughed at that, too. The police had looked at him funnily.

It wasn't very hard to figure out that Turk's first crazy theory had probably been spot on. Yet, what had been the reason for this bizarre behaviour? The man was dead now, they couldn't ask him. And newbie… well, time would only tell if he was going to be able to talk, let alone fill in any of the details…

Elliot had told them the man had been in the waiting room of the hospital for more than an hour asking for Dr. Cox himself…

The police had taken a look at the security footage as well.

JD had gone in the examination room. The man had come out. JD had come out. They had both left…

…And several hours later Dr. Cox had found him unconscious in a field of snow with a gunshot wound.

The police asked to be alerted when newbie regained consciousness. Dr. Cox had grinned at that, probably unsettling them even more. After that, the whole fight about the ID-card had gone down and they had left him alone. Now he was sitting in the doctor's lounge again.

Dr. Cox twirled the card in his hand, looking at the smiling face of his protégé as it stared at him. His other hand was gripping the seat's arm rest so hard all the colour had drained from it.

The nurses and interns went out of their way not to disturb him, unless it be with some good news.

TBC

You don't want to know what kind of sadistic glee I got of people screaming "No! Did you just kill off JD? It cannot be so!"

Yes. I am evil.

Tell me exactly how evil I am with that little review button below! :)

Thanks for reading and until next time… when we see what becomes of our poor JD :(