AN: Thanks a bunch for the reviews, you are all awesome :) Sorry for the late update, though, I've been really busy with things like painting my new room and stuff like that. (Argh, I'm so sore right now I can hardly move x.x)

Btw, sorry if you got this updated twice. I wanted to change one silly thing...

Well, on with the chapter:

The best things in life come in threes, like friends, dreams, and memories.

Unknown

Chapter 7

A beach. I wriggled my toes into the gray sand, the grains rubbing against my feet as I stood on the banks of my own imagination, the deep, dark water producing silent waves of thought that only barely reached the sandy shore of my consciousness. They seemed like tender lovers ever so carefully kissing each other, afraid to touch each others lips. I looked up at the gray sun in the gray sky, letting the meagre rays fall on my skin, allowing myself to soak up whatever warmth I could get in this place.

There was no colour here, curiously enough. My daydreams had always been in full colour, so dreaming in black and white was a strange experience for me. Yet, being able to dream at all was somehow significant and comforting; the upsetting feeling that the dark and crushing darkness from before had produced still lingered, like a thunderstorm still a long way off in the distance yet one that you can still hear rumble. However, right now my mind filled the darkness with pleasant images and this relieved me greatly.

I sat down and let the sand glide through my outstretched fingers, watching in fascination. The sudden urge to built a sand castle welled up inside of me, produced by some kind of childish instinct. I smiled slightly and the urge passed again; somehow I couldn't really bring myself to do anything in here than just to sit and stare out onto the sea.

The sand between my toes, the soft breeze in my hair and the sunlight on my skin. Everything felt so real, even though there was a definite absence of sound and colour. Yet, I knew I was inside my own mind and that it was somehow different from my normal daydreams and that I probably wouldn't be leaving any time soon. I couldn't much remember what had caused me to end up here. In fact, I couldn't remember much, period. All the same, I hadn't really given my lack of memories any thought and hadn't really pushed myself to recollect anything, so I wasn't really all that worried.

For now, I was content to just be.

---

He felt a weird feeling in his stomach. One he couldn't easily identify and this scared him a little. Or maybe the scared feeling had been there already, produced by this feeling, but he couldn't know for sure. All he knew was that he felt strange. And that he had been hovering silently outside this patient room for the better part of an hour now, occasionally sneaking glances inside through the blinds.

He had been mopping up something or other by the ambulance entrance when a medical team had burst through the doors, shouting things at each other, pushing a gurney. A sight which wasn't uncommon, this was a hospital after all. However, he had seen angry doctor running behind it, looking, well, angry. Still, not unusual. The reaction of angry doctor after the medical team had disappeared into the OR had been unusual, though. The janitor couldn't help it, he had been curious and he had followed him when angry doctor had stormed off again. That's why he had overheard him talking to blonde doctor and scary nurse.

It seemed like hours ago.

Maybe that was because it had been hours ago.

He stopped his mopping at looked through the blinds. Scooter looked pale and fragile and if it wasn't for the beeping and readout of the heart monitor, one could easily mistake him to be dead.

Actually, if the nurses' talk was anything to go by, Scooter had in fact been dead several times today, albeit temporarily. As he thought about this fact that weird feeling in his stomach bubbled up again and he frowned slightly while he looked at the several figures that were slumped in their seats next to the bed. As he watched, behind him there was skidding sound and a short yell and a loud thumb. He turned around.

"Floor's wet, madam."

---

Turk stirred and looked up, bleary eyed. He noticed the gray swirling mass of clouds and snow battling each other outside. The combination of the streetlamps and the whiteness of the snow gave off an eerie colour, reflecting endlessly throughout the night and causing one who looked out the window to feel that the room was isolated in a sea of gray, turbulent violence. The storm was picking up strength and the wind tore at the windows.

The slow, rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor brought him to look upon the figure on the bed. JD looked worse than he had ever seen him in his life. The oxygen tube snaked out of his mouth, obscuring part of his face. He looked pale and broken and his eyes were unnaturally still, black smudges underneath them. Turk gingerly reached out to grab his friend's right hand, which lay still upon the covers, and gently squeezed it. His eyes travelled to JD's bandaged left shoulder. Next to him, Carla stirred in her sleep, murmuring something in Spanish. Elliot sat slumped in her seat opposite of them, her head lolled to the side, JD's scarf still wrapped tightly around her neck as if it provided some remote comfort.

Turk moved his head left and right and rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. He had fallen asleep in an awkward position, he must have been sitting in this uncomfortable chair for hours now. He looked on his watch to see that it was 4 o'clock in the morning and he sighed sadly. Carla and him had decided to stay at the hospital. The storm was really bad right now and they didn't want to get stranded in it while heading home. Turk knew, however, that even if there hadn't been a storm he would still be sitting on this uncomfortable chair next to this bed right now. He couldn't leave his vanilla bear alone in a dark and cold hospital room like this. What if he woke up and no one was there to comfort him? If indeed he woke up.

He cast another glance at the heart monitor, denoting the fact that JD was alive yet not showing any sign of change for the past few hours. Hypothermic induced coma… He had almost squeezed Carla's hand off when the surgeon had come to talk to them about it. It could take days for JD to wake up. Until then they had no way of knowing if JD's multiple cardiac arrests had brought about any permanent damage…

Carla stirred again, her head upon his shoulder, her hair dangling in her face. Even after a double shift, emotional rollercoaster and after collapsing from exhaustion she looked like an angel while asleep. She frowned slightly in her sleep and mumbled urgently in his shoulder, sounding a big agitated. He slung his arm around her shoulder and kissed her on top of her soft, dark hair.

"Sssh, it's all right." He mumbled and Carla visibly relaxed in her sleep. His eyes shifted from the sleeping form of his wife to JD again and he squeezed his friend's cold, lifeless hand once more.

"You better pull through there, buddy."

---

Dr. Cox looked out into the sea of snow, whirling past in fierce spirals brought about by the icy wind. His forehead rested against the cold glass of the windowpane, bearing some comfort against the numb feeling his body felt. His fingers pressed the window, slowly increasing pressure as he watched in silent observation of the misty marks his body heat made against the icy glass. The hospital was misleadingly silent in the middle of the night. The storm was bad enough that paramedics were going to be hard pressed to get any new patients to the hospital. Indeed, someone would be crazy to venture out in the cold right now, in the middle of the night. The risk of snowing in were quite high and the changes of anybody finding them low.

He leaned back, rocking on his feet as he clasped his arms around each other. A low growl escaped his lips as annoyance flared up inside of him. He could be home right now, lying in his own bed with the she-devil. Granted, probably being woken up by Jack in the middle of the night because the boy wouldn't be able to sleep because of the howling of the wind and excited by the prospect of so much snow the following day. However, he would have preferred it to the smell and sight of this hospital. This living hell hole and place of death and misery.

But of course Clarice had to get herself shot and almost killed, paging him of all people to come and rescue him. Another flare of annoyance swept through him when he thought about newbie's daydreams and that he probably would be the knight in shining armour while that girl imagined herself in a pink dress, braiding her hair and letting out terrific girly screams when danger drew near. That kid was going to be the death of him and he knew it.

He was also annoyed about the fact that he seemed to be unable to sleep. He had stood with the rest of newbie's gang in the recovery room when they had brought the kid out from surgery, had listened to the explanation of the surgeon. He had left after that, not wanting to look at that bed like some pathetic mother. Roaming the halls of the hospital, he had ended up in an on call room where he had tried to get some shut eye. However, the fragile figure lying there in the hospital bed kept popping up in his mind's eye. That was newbie. His newbie.

God. That kid had finally gone and done it. He had gotten under his skin, infected him with his wimpy habits; he was turning into a girl. If he cared any more he might as well sit in that room and hold newbie's hand, sing lullabies for him, stroke his hair and tell him about the latest gossips in the hospital, even though he probably couldn't hear and understand any of it anyway.

He clenched and unclenched his fists and glared at the snowflakes as they were tossed about in the currents of the wind, swooping past the hospital in some kind of great, chaotic, dance routine. He kind of felt like a snowflake. Not the whole, beautifully unique and fragile snowflake, though. Good god, no. Maybe a borderline alcoholic, emotionally damaged, sharp, rough and pointy snowflake. Still; a snowflake, being tossed about in the turbulent currents of life's sadistic ways and showing him his existence was one big fucked up mess that he had no control over whatsoever.

A noise made him turn his back on the window and he glared at the one that had caused the disturbance. In the door opening stood the janitor, wheeling his portable bucket and mop inside the doctor's lounge, carelessly pushing it aside and flopping onto the couch. Dr. Cox narrowed his eyes at him.

"It's the middle of the night. What are you still doing here?"

The janitor looked up as if he only just noticed the doctor, he propped his foots upon the coffee table and leaned back, shrugging non-commitedly.

"A janitor never sleeps."

Dr. Cox gnawed his teeth, irritated by this uninvited presence in his silent safe haven. He just wanted to find some peace and quiet for a few hours.

"Why don't you go and mop something up then?" He bit back, bitterly.

"Nah. Did that, turned out it wasn't that much fun." The Janitor grabbed a errant magazine and opened it up onto a random page, then thought better of it and looked up.

"So, you gonna tell me what happened to Scooter?" He asked, sounding unconcerned. "Spider-monkeys finally got him? Told him not to use so much frizz gel. Those things are crazy for that stuff, can't stand the smell, you see. Attack you and bam! Next thing you know you're lying in a ditch somewhere, eyebrowless, just two fingers and a strange smell of coconut oil wafting from your clothing." He stuck up both of his index fingers and wiggled them up and down, indicating the two fingers one would still have left. Dr. Cox's annoyance flared in the presence of this seemingly random babbling, he rea-eally wasn't in the mood for the janitor's antics right now.

"Listen here, Mop-jock. You better stay away from him right now, because frankly if I find you anywhere near that room the next few days, planning out one of your sick jokes, I'm going to make sure you'll never look at a mop without fear and reverence again." He growled, glowering at the janitor, who frankly didn't look to impressed by the threat, and with that short burst of anger stormed out of the room again.

He seemed to be doing that a lot, storming away from people. Somehow, it made him feel good. And he really needed to feel good about something right now.

---

I approached the sea with some apprehension, looking out over the vast, still plane of water. It was like a liquid mirror, spread endlessly into the distance. The silence pressed heavily onto my eardrums, like pressure weighing down on my shoulders. I looked down and saw my face reflected upward, almost like a twin down under the surface looking up in my own startled face. I looked pale and ghostlike.

I kneeled down tentatively, my toes digging into the wet sand, and eyed the water curiously. Somehow it was an ominous presence in this dream, demanding attention while still appearing calm and unthreatening. I reached out with my hand and unhurriedly let my fingers loom over the surface, slowing as I drew nearer.

Gradually, my finger dipped into the ocean of black, the water almost reaching upward towards it, beckoning it to come closer. Cold wrapped itself around my finger, climbing up through my hand and chilling my arm. I drew my hand away from the surface, and a drop of dark liquid fell from my finger back into the water, disturbing it. Ripples pooled out from where I had touched it and spread across the vast mirror, continually multiplying into the expanse. I cocked my head and watched, feeling only a slight curiosity.

And there, faces stared up from under the cloudy water, turning to look at me. Some simply stared, others frowned, pouted, looked sad or angry. Yet, most smiled. My breathe hitched in my throat as a wave of emotion flashed over me while I recognized these people. Slowly, different memories stirred, awakened by my touch, flickering back to the surface of my consciousness, scenes being played out before my eyes on this grand cinematic screen. I knew these people. I sensed now the memories bubbling up from the real world. Not some gray dream where nothing stood as far as the eye could see. The memories stirred a feeling in me, leaving a sense of desolation as they passed.

Why was I in here and not out there? Why couldn't I leave this place and go back towards those people?

I stared into their faces, smiling, laughing and joking. Scenes unfolding over and over again, recollections of past events that filtered through my subconscious.

I felt suddenly cold and lonely. And afraid. Yes, fear came peeking over my shoulder, disturbing the water and clouding the faces. I wanted to leave. Go back there.

Go back to my friends.

Still, the gray sun shone pathetically down upon this gray world, illuminating nothing but my own sense of desperation while in the distance the rumbling of the thunderstorms drew closer.

TBC

Not a lot of dialogue in this one, I really just wanted to show everybody's feelings about the situation. Hope you still enjoyed it, though…