Chapter 16: Just Something a little differnt
About an hour after my unease regarding Doctor Cox, my phone started to bleep, at first it was just one or two messages, I didn't bother even looking who they were from. Then slowly it started going off more and more and by the time the nurse came back to check on Sam's vitals I had thirty two text messages and eleven missed calls.
Even Dan was starting to think the consistency of the alerts were getting quite strange, so eventually I relented, reached into my pocket and glanced at the screen- scrolling down, I was surprised to say the least to see a variety of names, the majority were from Turk and Carla, then there were a few from Doug, The Todd, a few nurses, someone I had one date with, gift shop girl- I could go on.
As I clicked to go further and further down the list, a feeling of complete dread washed over me, all these people worked at Sacred Heart and there was no logical reason my mind could come up with, for them all to be texting me like this, apart from them knowing the truth.
With shaky fingers I selected a random message and clicked enter, all sorts of things floating though my head as I waited for my phone to open it. I make that sound rather dramatic, it wasn't. It took half a second for the writing to appear on screen. To me however it felt like an eternity and even then I couldn't read the words properly. I had to literally force my eyes to focus and it took several attempts before I could read the whole thing and it wasn't very long.
'I'm sorry for your loss, Kim will never be forgotten'
My mind reeled at that and I bit down hard on my lip, trying to force the tears not to come. I just didn't understand!
How?
How was it they all knew?
Who told them?
For a brief second I contemplated it being DR Cox, but that thought left my mind as soon as it entered it. Even with my new cynical self, I knew he would never do that, if he was going to tell the whole hospital, he would have done it the moment he found out, not several days later. Besides it was hardly his style.
Yet that brought the question back, who knew? Who had figured it out and was cold hearted enough to treat it like it was nothing more than a good piece of gossip?
With nothing but pure dread, I clicked the back button and scrolled up to the next message.
' I've just heard I'm sooo sorry JD *hugs*'
And the next
'Just heard, it's all over the hospital; if u need to talk I'm 'ere yea?'
And the next
'Oh honey I'm sorry about Kim! Dr Cox is on the war path about it x'
And the next
'Dude, she was hot!' I'll give you two guesses as to who that was from.
The more I read, the more the knot in my stomach grew and the tighter my chest seemed to become, it was getting increasingly harder to breath as the cool liquid I was trying to stop, started seeping from my eyes, down my cheeks before dripping onto my trousers.
Dan must have noticed as he quickly wrapped his arm around my shoulder and glanced down, reading the messages along with me. Then I got to Turk and Carla's, I just about managed to read two before my phone disappeared from my hand.
"What?" I mumbled confused as I stared at the place it had once been, before glancing towards my brother who was angrily staring at what was displayed on my cell, the one I hadn't quite managed to read before he took it away. I couldn't help but think the day I was a slower reader than Dan was the day I truly knew things were bad.
"What does it say Dan?" I found myself asking; confused as to what could have possible provoked this type of reaction from my brother. He was like me in a way I suppose, or at least how I was before 'the event' he didn't lose his temper very easy at all.
"Nothing." He replied simply, his tone quite deadpan.
He was obviously lying of that I was sure.
"Dan! What does it say?" I asked again a bit more force in my voice this time as I got to my feet as he stood up and made his way across the room. "Dan?"
But he wasn't listening to me, instead he perched himself on the window ledge, a lot like a bird about to take flight and continued to stare at the screen, from his hand movements I was pretty sure he was deleting some things as well, before moving onto the next one.
"Dan!" I said for perhaps the third or fourth time. "Don't start hiding things from me, tell me what's going on?"
I took a few steps towards him, and placed one of my hands on Sam's incubator, I did not want to step too far away from him, yet at the same time yearned to get closer to my brother.
Dan sighed as he looked up at me before placing my phone into his pocket and turning to stare out of the window, not that there was much to look at.
"Coxie's on his way over, he'll explain what's going on then, But JD, you have to promise me not to freak out. And yes I know you want to know what Turk and Carla have said, but believe me at the moment, until we know the full story I just think it might be better if you wait!"
Turning my own body away from Dan I nodded slowly, unsure whether he would actually see it or not, all the while not really caring either way. After a moment or two of pure silence, I once again heard my brother's voice.
"Johnny…" Dan said, his voice noticeably trailing off at the end, clearly not really having anything to say to me, I just shrugged before glancing in his direction as I heard his footsteps coming closer. "Listen to me little brother, I know what these text's look like, and yeah there's probably not another explanation but come on, its better its out in the open, at least this way you won't have to deal with telling people yourself."
"No!" I snapped, and to be quite honest I don't know why, I just felt really angry all over again and needed someone to take it out on, unfortunatly for Dan the nurse had already left the room and there was no one else around. "This way I get to return to work with people staring at me with nothing but pity, this way I get the carefully measured responses where everyone's already figured out what they have to say to me."
"And how is that a bad thing?"
I couldn't help it, as ridiculous as it sounds that made me blow.
"How? How is it a bad thing? I don't want people's pity; me and Sammy don't need people's pity! What we need is for people to care enough about us to begin with, to notice something was wrong! To notice that someone they apparently cared about, life is falling apart! We don't need people coming up with what they have to say to make things right because nothing is ever going to be alright again! Kim is dead! She's dead and no amount of' I'm sorry' or 'we loved her' is going to change that! It's not going to bring her back. Don't you understand I'd do anything, anything to bring her back! I'd give my own life to bring her back… but it won't work I know it won't work! And everyone jumping in with what they thought of Kim or how she's going to be missed won't make it alright again; it won't make the one thing I desire most in the world come true. If I could I would swap all of them for her!
Turk Carla, Elliot, if I've learnt one thing from these last few weeks is that Kim was 100 times more of a person than they are put together. She cared, she cared about everyone, she never got so wrapped up in her own life she didn't notice what was going on in front of her nose! If I had a choice right now I'd take all their 'kind words' and their entire 'sympathy' and hell id even take them and id swap them all for her!"
I stopped talking after that as Dan once again wrapped his arms around me, God I'm really starting to sound pathetic, and the sad part is I meant every word. I thought at first that I didn't want them to know; that they had too much going on in their lives it was better for me to keep it to myself.
Now?
Now, I still wish that they didn't know, but not for the same reason as before, I read two text messages from them and that was enough to know, the only thing my so called friends care about is themselves and neither Sammy or I need that type of person in our lives.
That may in itself sound selfish but I don't care, all I care about right now is my little baby and the type of world he's going to have to survive in. If he gets the chance to grow up, he's going to have the best people possible in his life if I can help it and right now I'm not sure that that includes my best friend, his wife and whoever the hell Elliot is to me these days.
When I finally calmed down I pulled away, only to realize that my brothers eyes were glued to the door behind me. Taking a deep breath out of fear of who I would see, I slowly turned my head to look in the opposite direction.
The man standing by the door smiled slightly and I gave him a small nod as he walked further into the room.
"Okay…" He said carefully as he grabbed a chair from across the room spun it around and took a seat in front of me and besides the incubator. "So here's the thing…."
(a/n) shorter than normal but this way I can get the chapter up a lot quicker. Once again sorry for the delay! The update gaps are getting crazy. To be honest have a lot of inspiration for this story. Which is why I decided to do something a bit different this chapter, it wasn't meant to end up all in first person I just started writing and then it got a bit long to be just a JD voice over. Not sure if the next chapter will be like this or not, what do u guys think?
Oh and anyone got twitter and fancy a chat? or to bug me about updating this story katielowilliams if u do :)
thanks for everyone whose read and reviewed :D