Fanfiction: I Try to Discover (Scrubs, JD/Cox)
This was so much fun to write! I'm grinning as I post it.
Title: I Try to Discover
Fandom: Scrubs
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: JD/Dr Cox
Wordcount: 3,500
Summary: Sacred Heart is a hospital where everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts. Sometimes it gets awkward.
Notes: The concept of Noise is borrowed from Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy.
Sometimes I wonder if I caused the whole Noise outbreak.
I know that’s stupid. Everyone who hears me wondering tells me it’s stupid. But I made a wish, back in college, that me and Turk would be together forever. We were already both planning to go to med school, but I guess a part of me was scared that we’d graduate and he’d go to a hospital for awesome doctors and I’d end up at the hospital for doctors who were merely rad. So I made a wish.
The next day? Noise. And suddenly we didn’t get to choose where we’d be practising any more.
-
Officially, you aren’t supposed to turn someone down for employment just because they have Noise. Unofficially, everywhere does it. Most people are immune, so you’re always going to have Noiseless candidates. And most people don’t want a doctor who’s constantly, uncontrollably broadcasting their thoughts for the world to hear.
Being able to hear every horrible illness your doctor thinks you might have before you actually get diagnosed? Yeah, people find that unsettling.
But there is some demand for it. Patients who really don’t want any bullshitting or sugar-coating. Patients who like to know exactly what’s going on at all times. Patients who have Noise themselves, and feel less awkward about their doctor hearing their thoughts if it’s two-sided.
Right now, Miss Vasquez is thinking wow, my doctor is adorable as I introduce myself, and then I hear her realising I heard that and getting embarrassed. I try to put her at ease by thinking there’s no shame in being right back at her, but I don’t know if it’s loud enough over the part of my mind that’s going I wonder if people would still think cats are cute if they had eight legs.
And now I’m starting to wonder if people would still think I’m cute if I had eight legs, and Miss Vasquez’s Noise is just getting more uncomfortable.
Sacred Heart is a Noisy hospital. That’s its selling point. You can hear the thoughts of almost every staff member in this place, non-stop.
(But not every staff member. It’d probably make my life a lot easier if I could hear what the janitor’s thinking.)
There’s a sharp whistle. “Lucinda!”
I fall into step behind Dr Cox. Dr Cox is a guy whose thoughts I don’t actually get to hear that often, even though I’m constantly dying to know what he’s thinking. People deal with having Noise in different ways. Some people keep up a constant stream of music in their head. Some people just repress, repress, repress. Dr Cox deals by filling every second of silence with his own voice, so you can’t hear what he’s thinking underneath it.
“Right, Newbie, I’m gonna need a tox screen for Mrs Lee on the second floor, and yes, I know your story about how the ‘scary janitor’ keeps mopping in front of the lab whenever you need tests done, but I promise I’m scarier than he is, so you’re going to get the lab tech to do the work even if you have to lure that janitor away by pissing all over the paediatrics ward.”
It’s kind of exhausting sometimes.
The problem with trying to lure the janitor away is that, obviously, he can hear my thoughts. If I come up with some cunning strategy for getting him out of the way, he’s going to hear it. And I can’t even come up with a cunning strategy because I can’t stop thinking about Dr Cox’s ‘piss on the floor’ suggestion, and the janitor hears that and accuses me of planning to piss on the floor and starts telling me to do it, then, do it, piss on the floor like an animal until I just drop my scrubs and do it, on the verge of crying, and see his expression change as he realises he’s going to have to clean it up.
But I manage to drop the samples off with the lab tech, at least.
I have a spare moment after that, so I head towards surgery to see Turk. Something’s been bothering me lately.
Hey, it’s JD, Turk thinks when he sees me coming. I bet this is about Dr Cox again.
Okay, fine.
“It’s really bugging me that Dr Cox never lets me hear his Noise,” I say.
Bingo. “What, you don’t hear enough of his voice already?”
“I just wish he’d let me in,” I say. “You know?”
Maybe Carla’s right, Turk thinks, and then his Noise suddenly launches into song, and I know he does that when he’s thinking something he doesn’t want me to hear.
“What?” I ask.
“What? A man can’t have Erasure stuck in his head any more?”
A man definitely can, because now it’s getting stuck in mine. Thanks, Turk.
“Sorry,” Turk mutters. “Dr Wen’s been playing it in the OR again. It’s the only song I can think of.”
-
“Wait, am I reading your thoughts right?” Elliot asks. “The janitor made you do what?”
“Not important,” I say hastily, leaning against the nurses’ station alongside her. Better change the subject. “Don’t you wish we could hear what Dr Cox is thinking?”
“We can,” Elliot says. “He tells us. He’s telling us all the time.”
“Yeah, but I mean... really,” I say. “What he’s feeling deep down. I feel he never lets me get close enough to really know him, y’know?”
“You mean Noise?” Elliot asks. “Honestly, I’m kind of glad he never lets us hear it. At least we’re only pretty sure he hates us. If we could hear his thoughts, the hope’s gone; we’d know he wants to pee on us.”
There’s a pause.
Did I really just say that? she’s thinking.
“Pee on us?” I ask.
“I don’t know!” Elliot protests. “I was just thinking, you know, what do you want to do with people you hate? And I couldn’t forget that janitor thing, and...”
Another pause.
“Stop picturing it!” Elliot snaps.
“I can’t! You started it!”
“Hey,” Carla says, wandering over from the other side of the nurses’ station, “I couldn’t help noticing there are some very distracting mental images going on over here, and I kind of need to be able to concentrate on my work right now. What are you talking about?”
Carla doesn’t have Noise; she can hear our thoughts, we can’t hear hers. She’s one of the few members of staff who worked here before the outbreak and didn’t quit when the hospital started hiring more and more Noisy candidates. It takes a kind of fortitude to work in a place where you can hear every little thought a co-worker has about you. I’m pretty sure Dr Cox worked here pre-Noise as well, actually, but he didn’t turn out to be immune.
If Carla really wanted to focus on her work, she wouldn’t be trying to poke further into our conversation. She catches me thinking it and sends me a glare.
“We were talking about Dr Cox,” Elliot says.
Carla raises her eyebrows. “Yeah, I got that much.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to pee on us,” I say. “Maybe we’d hear his Noise and we’d know he’s cared about us all along.”
“Oh, that’s what this is about?” Carla asks. “He cares. I don’t need to hear his thoughts to know that.”
“How do you know?” I demand. “Did he tell you? Did he sign some kind of declaration? Do you have it?”
“I can just tell, Bambi. Are you sure you’d want to hear it from his Noise, though?”
What? Of course I’d want it. Hearing Dr Cox’s innermost thoughts and finding he totally cares about me and respects me and he’s only been holding back on giving me a real hug because he doesn’t want me to figure out that he wants it as much as I do? That would be incredible.
“I mean,” Carla says, “this endless-pursuit-of-Dr-Cox’s-approval thing. I’ve heard it going on inside your head. I think it’s important to you. Do you really just want to know if he cares about you, or do you want him to admit it?”
“I just need something,” I say. I’ll be honest: it comes out sounding a little more pathetic than I was aiming for.
Carla gives me a gentle smile. “I know you do, Bambi. Look, people were getting along without Noise for a long time before the outbreak. Turk and I make it work, even if he doesn’t constantly know what’s going on in my head and I know way too much about what’s going on in his. You don’t need to know what Dr Cox is thinking.”
She ruffles my hair and heads back to the other side of the station. I try to pretend I can’t see her wiping her hand on her scrubs.
“You use way too much mousse!” she calls back.
Oh, right. She can hear your thoughts. Come on, JD.
I turn back to Elliot. Where were we? Dr Cox. Maybe Carla’s right, maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about it, but... it kind of aches, not really knowing what he thinks. What he thinks of me, what he thinks in general. I want to know him. I want-
Holy frick, is he in love with Dr Cox?
“What?” I ask.
“What?” Elliot says, several octaves past the ‘convincing’ range. To be honest, pretending you don’t know what someone’s talking about never works that well when they’ve got Noise.
“You just thought I was in love with Dr Cox.”
“No I didn’t.”
Why would she think I’m in love with Dr Cox? Do I sound like I’m in love with Dr Cox? In my thoughts, I mean?
Kind of when you talk out loud too, she’s thinking, unhelpfully.
“Look,” I say. “Just because I want to know him better, and I happen to think about him a lot, and it’s killing me that we don’t spend more time together outside work, and I might occasionally wonder what it feels like to be held in those strong arms...”
Oh, shit, I’m thinking. Oh, no.
There it is, Elliot thinks, and, layered on top of that, Is he going to be okay?
I don’t know what I’m feeling. This is ridiculous. I wish I could hear my own Noise.
Someone’s picturing me and Dr Cox making out, and my head’s such a mess I can’t even tell whether it’s me or her. I’m just standing there, confused and scared and turned on.
Would Dr Cox go for it? Elliot is wondering. Does he actually like JD? Like, at all? Does he like anyone? Does that matter? He’s pretty into dominating people. Is that a sex thing? Wait, for all of us?
And now she’s picturing herself and Dr Cox making out while another part of her mind hisses crap, no, not in front of JD!
I’m not getting any less turned on.
I think I might need to get out of here.
-
I don’t know where I’m going. I just need to get out of the hospital. Get away from people, find a place I can sort out my thoughts without anyone hearing me thinking very inappropriate things about my mentor.
I turn a corner and walk straight into Dr Cox.
Great!!!
God, he’s going to hear what I’m thinking and he’s a doctor and doctors know so many ways to kill someone and his chest felt so firm when I collided with it-
“Look, Flo-Jo, I know you’re dying to make your country proud at the Olympics, but have you considered practising on, oh, a racetrack, rather than a hospital corridor, or have they finally introduced the Wheelchair Hurdles event you’ve been petitioning for? I guess the advantage of the location is that you won’t have to go far for treatment when you inevitably run straight into a wall and shatter every bone in your body, but, on the other hand, I’ll be the one treating you, and I can’t guarantee I won’t just go ahead and smother you with a pillow so I don’t have to worry about the next stupid stunt you’re going to pu-”
It just kind of spills out. “You know, you act like you know so much more than the rest of us, but you’re the one who keeps talking over your own Noise because you’re too scared to let anyone know who you really are.”
He stares at me. Long enough for me to catch a glimpse of his Noise. It’s not so much words as a general sense of murder.
“Oh, Newbie, you are not going to turn this around on me,” he says. “You’re lying awake at night because you don’t know what thoughts Dr Cox is keeping inside that handsome head of his, that is one billion percent your problem. If I want to keep my private thoughts private, guess what: that’s not a psychological issue. Try not to pass out when I say this, but no one likes having Noise. Now, maybe you’re the exception; maybe you’re just thuh-rilled that everyone knows what colour lipstick to get you for your birthday without you having to say, and you just don’t understand why I instead prefer to keep the contents of my head exactly where they are. Maybe you’re just jealous that I have the speaking ability, the lung capacity and the sheer disregard for normal conversational turn-taking to drown out the thoughts when you don’t. I wouldn’t know, because, when I make these little speeches, guess what: I can’t hear what you’re thinking either. So whaddya say we recognise that this benefits both of us and you never try to give me crap about it again? Huh? Huh? Huh?”
I know he’s going to keep saying huh? until I answer. I guess that at least gives me time to gather my thoughts.
Thoughts that he can’t hear.
I guess on some level I knew Dr Cox couldn’t hear my Noise when he was talking either, but it never really hit me until now. When I’m around Dr Cox, one of us is always talking; he makes sure of that. Which means Dr Cox is the one person I can be around without the constant knowledge that he can hear my thoughts. Dr Cox is the only person I can have a normal, Noiseless conversation with.
You know, if the definition of ‘a normal conversation’ includes full sixty-second speeches.
Which means maybe I can actually keep this a secret. Well, the rest of the hospital will probably end up knowing, which could make things complicated, but at least there’s a chance the man himself won’t learn I’ve got the hots for Dr Cox.
(Which almost rhymes! It sounds like it should be a Dr Seuss book. The Doc with the Hots for Dr Cox. Okay, maybe it shouldn’t be a Dr Seuss book.)
“You’re right,” I say. “I guess it benefits both of us. Honestly, I’m relieved you can’t hear what I’m thinking about right now.”
Dr Cox doesn’t answer.
Dr Cox! Doesn’t! Answer! And it doesn’t hit me until I realise I can hear him thinking okay, let’s see what’s on Caroline’s mind and then oh and then oh.
“Wait, what, why aren’t you talking?” I shriek.
“You literally just told me you didn’t want me to hear what you were thinking,” Dr Cox says. “I can give you a full list of every person in this hospital who’d be able to resist that temptation: it’s Mr Holden, and if he ever gets out of his coma he’s going to respect your privacy exactly as much as the rest of us.”
He’s not acting any different from usual, but his Noise is loud. I can almost hear it over what he’s saying.
“And, uh, what did you hear?” I ask, my stomach doing bungee-jumps.
“Didn’t hear anything,” he says. “You know, I’ve always suspected your head’s completely empty, but it’s good to have it confirmed.”
That’s a relief. And... also kind of worrying. I do actually have Noise, right? I’m not just so easy to read I’ve gone all this time assuming people can hear my thoughts?
“Oh, wait, no,” he says, “I do think I heard something. Is I wonder what he’d do if I licked him right now ringing a bell?”
Crap.
“Hey, that’s the kind of thing I think about everyone!” I blurt out. “That doesn’t prove I’m in love with you!”
“Doesn’t prove what now, Marianne?”
“I mean-” The hospital is burning down. I’m holed up in an exam room, dampening towels to try to block any cracks that smoke might get through, realising too late that I’m dampening them with gasoline. “I mean, hey, did someone say something about love? You didn’t, and I know I didn’t, because I’d have no reason to say I wasn’t in love with you if you hadn’t brought it up, right?” I laugh desperately. Nailed it.
“Newbie,” he says.
“Oh, God,” I whisper.
“Don’t wet yourself. You’d only need to panic this much if I’d looked inside your head and seen you’d forgotten Mrs Lee’s tox screen.”
That can’t be true. He’d probably be madder if I’d been thinking about what his ex-wife is like in bed.
Oh, God. I’m thinking about it now. I really hope he doesn’t stop talking.
“But, hey, if you don’t believe me, here’s a rare and exclusive peek at my thoughts.” He falls silent right when I’m thinking about how Jordan made me get on my knees and beg to be allowed to touch her butt.
Oh what the fuck, he thinks.
“Uh,” I say. “Sorry.”
My traitorous imagination, apparently deciding the situation isn’t awkward enough already, tries replacing Jordan with Dr Cox in that scenario. The real Dr Cox folds his arms and fixes me with his most incredulous stare, the one he breaks out when someone calls him Perry without permission.
This is going very badly. Even though I got exactly what I wanted! I’m getting to hear Dr Cox’s thoughts for once! Is Carla an evil genie?
Shit, Dr Cox’s thoughts are saying. I think the kid means it.
What does that mean? Does he think I’m dead-on serious about my intention to touch his butt?
He thinks I’m really into him, I realise, listening harder. And possibly also the butt thing.
He can hear my thoughts, and he decided that I’m into him. And Elliot heard my thoughts and decided that I’m into him. And Turk? I don’t know what Turk’s thinking right now, because all he does when I see him is sing ‘A Little Respect’ as loud as he can in his head, but I know he’s thinking something he doesn’t want me to know about.
Is it possible that I’m actually in love with Dr Cox?
“Honestly, Newbie,” Dr Cox says, “this isn’t a huge surprise.”
“It is to me!” I protest.
“Go figure. You’d think you’d worry about finding out what your own thoughts are before you start obsessing over mine.”
“So, uh, what happens now?” I ask, quietly.
“Now?” Dr Cox asks. “Now I skin you, tan you and make you into a new leather couch for my apartment as a warning to others.”
I squeak. I guess I’ll be doing a lot more squeaking when I’m a leather couch.
“Or things will go on exactly as they did before,” Dr Cox says. “You’ll still follow me around like an adoring little puppy, only without the collar and leash. Hm.” He pauses for an instant, just long enough for me to catch sight of the image of myself with a collar and leash in his head. It makes me feel funny. “I will still barely tolerate you, because it’s my job. And my personal thoughts will still be absolutely none of your business.”
“They could be,” I say.
“Careful, Newbie.”
“I’d like them to be. I’d like us to share more.”
“As I think we’ve just established,” Dr Cox says, “you’d like us to share bodily fluids. Never gonna happen.”
He pauses. And I can hear in his Noise that... he doesn’t want to hurt me, and he kind of regrets this, and he deliberately paused because he wants me to know that but there’s no way he’s saying it aloud.
And somewhere beneath that, presumably not meant for my hearing, he’s thinking oh, come on, you could at least throw the kid a quickie sometimes. It’s not like you haven’t thought about it before. Call him enough girls’ names and you can probably trick yourself into not having to question your sexuality. See if you can make him scream so loud he can’t hear your thoughts. Shit, no, can’t do it. Everyone’ll just hear about it through his Noise.
Holy crap.
“I could learn to talk like you do,” I say, quickly. “You know, if I had to. If there happened to be anything we... didn’t want people to hear about.”
You know when I said he was giving me his most incredulous stare earlier? Yeah, turns out I was wrong about that.
“You’d better be out of my sight in the next five seconds,” he says.
“Yes, sir,” I say, and I scramble out of there, abruptly dealing with the brand new knowledge that it kind of turns Dr Cox on when I call him sir.
I’m desperately singing Erasure in my head for the rest of the day.
Title: I Try to Discover
Fandom: Scrubs
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: JD/Dr Cox
Wordcount: 3,500
Summary: Sacred Heart is a hospital where everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts. Sometimes it gets awkward.
Notes: The concept of Noise is borrowed from Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy.
Sometimes I wonder if I caused the whole Noise outbreak.
I know that’s stupid. Everyone who hears me wondering tells me it’s stupid. But I made a wish, back in college, that me and Turk would be together forever. We were already both planning to go to med school, but I guess a part of me was scared that we’d graduate and he’d go to a hospital for awesome doctors and I’d end up at the hospital for doctors who were merely rad. So I made a wish.
The next day? Noise. And suddenly we didn’t get to choose where we’d be practising any more.
-
Officially, you aren’t supposed to turn someone down for employment just because they have Noise. Unofficially, everywhere does it. Most people are immune, so you’re always going to have Noiseless candidates. And most people don’t want a doctor who’s constantly, uncontrollably broadcasting their thoughts for the world to hear.
Being able to hear every horrible illness your doctor thinks you might have before you actually get diagnosed? Yeah, people find that unsettling.
But there is some demand for it. Patients who really don’t want any bullshitting or sugar-coating. Patients who like to know exactly what’s going on at all times. Patients who have Noise themselves, and feel less awkward about their doctor hearing their thoughts if it’s two-sided.
Right now, Miss Vasquez is thinking wow, my doctor is adorable as I introduce myself, and then I hear her realising I heard that and getting embarrassed. I try to put her at ease by thinking there’s no shame in being right back at her, but I don’t know if it’s loud enough over the part of my mind that’s going I wonder if people would still think cats are cute if they had eight legs.
And now I’m starting to wonder if people would still think I’m cute if I had eight legs, and Miss Vasquez’s Noise is just getting more uncomfortable.
Sacred Heart is a Noisy hospital. That’s its selling point. You can hear the thoughts of almost every staff member in this place, non-stop.
(But not every staff member. It’d probably make my life a lot easier if I could hear what the janitor’s thinking.)
There’s a sharp whistle. “Lucinda!”
I fall into step behind Dr Cox. Dr Cox is a guy whose thoughts I don’t actually get to hear that often, even though I’m constantly dying to know what he’s thinking. People deal with having Noise in different ways. Some people keep up a constant stream of music in their head. Some people just repress, repress, repress. Dr Cox deals by filling every second of silence with his own voice, so you can’t hear what he’s thinking underneath it.
“Right, Newbie, I’m gonna need a tox screen for Mrs Lee on the second floor, and yes, I know your story about how the ‘scary janitor’ keeps mopping in front of the lab whenever you need tests done, but I promise I’m scarier than he is, so you’re going to get the lab tech to do the work even if you have to lure that janitor away by pissing all over the paediatrics ward.”
It’s kind of exhausting sometimes.
The problem with trying to lure the janitor away is that, obviously, he can hear my thoughts. If I come up with some cunning strategy for getting him out of the way, he’s going to hear it. And I can’t even come up with a cunning strategy because I can’t stop thinking about Dr Cox’s ‘piss on the floor’ suggestion, and the janitor hears that and accuses me of planning to piss on the floor and starts telling me to do it, then, do it, piss on the floor like an animal until I just drop my scrubs and do it, on the verge of crying, and see his expression change as he realises he’s going to have to clean it up.
But I manage to drop the samples off with the lab tech, at least.
I have a spare moment after that, so I head towards surgery to see Turk. Something’s been bothering me lately.
Hey, it’s JD, Turk thinks when he sees me coming. I bet this is about Dr Cox again.
Okay, fine.
“It’s really bugging me that Dr Cox never lets me hear his Noise,” I say.
Bingo. “What, you don’t hear enough of his voice already?”
“I just wish he’d let me in,” I say. “You know?”
Maybe Carla’s right, Turk thinks, and then his Noise suddenly launches into song, and I know he does that when he’s thinking something he doesn’t want me to hear.
“What?” I ask.
“What? A man can’t have Erasure stuck in his head any more?”
A man definitely can, because now it’s getting stuck in mine. Thanks, Turk.
“Sorry,” Turk mutters. “Dr Wen’s been playing it in the OR again. It’s the only song I can think of.”
-
“Wait, am I reading your thoughts right?” Elliot asks. “The janitor made you do what?”
“Not important,” I say hastily, leaning against the nurses’ station alongside her. Better change the subject. “Don’t you wish we could hear what Dr Cox is thinking?”
“We can,” Elliot says. “He tells us. He’s telling us all the time.”
“Yeah, but I mean... really,” I say. “What he’s feeling deep down. I feel he never lets me get close enough to really know him, y’know?”
“You mean Noise?” Elliot asks. “Honestly, I’m kind of glad he never lets us hear it. At least we’re only pretty sure he hates us. If we could hear his thoughts, the hope’s gone; we’d know he wants to pee on us.”
There’s a pause.
Did I really just say that? she’s thinking.
“Pee on us?” I ask.
“I don’t know!” Elliot protests. “I was just thinking, you know, what do you want to do with people you hate? And I couldn’t forget that janitor thing, and...”
Another pause.
“Stop picturing it!” Elliot snaps.
“I can’t! You started it!”
“Hey,” Carla says, wandering over from the other side of the nurses’ station, “I couldn’t help noticing there are some very distracting mental images going on over here, and I kind of need to be able to concentrate on my work right now. What are you talking about?”
Carla doesn’t have Noise; she can hear our thoughts, we can’t hear hers. She’s one of the few members of staff who worked here before the outbreak and didn’t quit when the hospital started hiring more and more Noisy candidates. It takes a kind of fortitude to work in a place where you can hear every little thought a co-worker has about you. I’m pretty sure Dr Cox worked here pre-Noise as well, actually, but he didn’t turn out to be immune.
If Carla really wanted to focus on her work, she wouldn’t be trying to poke further into our conversation. She catches me thinking it and sends me a glare.
“We were talking about Dr Cox,” Elliot says.
Carla raises her eyebrows. “Yeah, I got that much.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to pee on us,” I say. “Maybe we’d hear his Noise and we’d know he’s cared about us all along.”
“Oh, that’s what this is about?” Carla asks. “He cares. I don’t need to hear his thoughts to know that.”
“How do you know?” I demand. “Did he tell you? Did he sign some kind of declaration? Do you have it?”
“I can just tell, Bambi. Are you sure you’d want to hear it from his Noise, though?”
What? Of course I’d want it. Hearing Dr Cox’s innermost thoughts and finding he totally cares about me and respects me and he’s only been holding back on giving me a real hug because he doesn’t want me to figure out that he wants it as much as I do? That would be incredible.
“I mean,” Carla says, “this endless-pursuit-of-Dr-Cox’s-approval thing. I’ve heard it going on inside your head. I think it’s important to you. Do you really just want to know if he cares about you, or do you want him to admit it?”
“I just need something,” I say. I’ll be honest: it comes out sounding a little more pathetic than I was aiming for.
Carla gives me a gentle smile. “I know you do, Bambi. Look, people were getting along without Noise for a long time before the outbreak. Turk and I make it work, even if he doesn’t constantly know what’s going on in my head and I know way too much about what’s going on in his. You don’t need to know what Dr Cox is thinking.”
She ruffles my hair and heads back to the other side of the station. I try to pretend I can’t see her wiping her hand on her scrubs.
“You use way too much mousse!” she calls back.
Oh, right. She can hear your thoughts. Come on, JD.
I turn back to Elliot. Where were we? Dr Cox. Maybe Carla’s right, maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about it, but... it kind of aches, not really knowing what he thinks. What he thinks of me, what he thinks in general. I want to know him. I want-
Holy frick, is he in love with Dr Cox?
“What?” I ask.
“What?” Elliot says, several octaves past the ‘convincing’ range. To be honest, pretending you don’t know what someone’s talking about never works that well when they’ve got Noise.
“You just thought I was in love with Dr Cox.”
“No I didn’t.”
Why would she think I’m in love with Dr Cox? Do I sound like I’m in love with Dr Cox? In my thoughts, I mean?
Kind of when you talk out loud too, she’s thinking, unhelpfully.
“Look,” I say. “Just because I want to know him better, and I happen to think about him a lot, and it’s killing me that we don’t spend more time together outside work, and I might occasionally wonder what it feels like to be held in those strong arms...”
Oh, shit, I’m thinking. Oh, no.
There it is, Elliot thinks, and, layered on top of that, Is he going to be okay?
I don’t know what I’m feeling. This is ridiculous. I wish I could hear my own Noise.
Someone’s picturing me and Dr Cox making out, and my head’s such a mess I can’t even tell whether it’s me or her. I’m just standing there, confused and scared and turned on.
Would Dr Cox go for it? Elliot is wondering. Does he actually like JD? Like, at all? Does he like anyone? Does that matter? He’s pretty into dominating people. Is that a sex thing? Wait, for all of us?
And now she’s picturing herself and Dr Cox making out while another part of her mind hisses crap, no, not in front of JD!
I’m not getting any less turned on.
I think I might need to get out of here.
-
I don’t know where I’m going. I just need to get out of the hospital. Get away from people, find a place I can sort out my thoughts without anyone hearing me thinking very inappropriate things about my mentor.
I turn a corner and walk straight into Dr Cox.
Great!!!
God, he’s going to hear what I’m thinking and he’s a doctor and doctors know so many ways to kill someone and his chest felt so firm when I collided with it-
“Look, Flo-Jo, I know you’re dying to make your country proud at the Olympics, but have you considered practising on, oh, a racetrack, rather than a hospital corridor, or have they finally introduced the Wheelchair Hurdles event you’ve been petitioning for? I guess the advantage of the location is that you won’t have to go far for treatment when you inevitably run straight into a wall and shatter every bone in your body, but, on the other hand, I’ll be the one treating you, and I can’t guarantee I won’t just go ahead and smother you with a pillow so I don’t have to worry about the next stupid stunt you’re going to pu-”
It just kind of spills out. “You know, you act like you know so much more than the rest of us, but you’re the one who keeps talking over your own Noise because you’re too scared to let anyone know who you really are.”
He stares at me. Long enough for me to catch a glimpse of his Noise. It’s not so much words as a general sense of murder.
“Oh, Newbie, you are not going to turn this around on me,” he says. “You’re lying awake at night because you don’t know what thoughts Dr Cox is keeping inside that handsome head of his, that is one billion percent your problem. If I want to keep my private thoughts private, guess what: that’s not a psychological issue. Try not to pass out when I say this, but no one likes having Noise. Now, maybe you’re the exception; maybe you’re just thuh-rilled that everyone knows what colour lipstick to get you for your birthday without you having to say, and you just don’t understand why I instead prefer to keep the contents of my head exactly where they are. Maybe you’re just jealous that I have the speaking ability, the lung capacity and the sheer disregard for normal conversational turn-taking to drown out the thoughts when you don’t. I wouldn’t know, because, when I make these little speeches, guess what: I can’t hear what you’re thinking either. So whaddya say we recognise that this benefits both of us and you never try to give me crap about it again? Huh? Huh? Huh?”
I know he’s going to keep saying huh? until I answer. I guess that at least gives me time to gather my thoughts.
Thoughts that he can’t hear.
I guess on some level I knew Dr Cox couldn’t hear my Noise when he was talking either, but it never really hit me until now. When I’m around Dr Cox, one of us is always talking; he makes sure of that. Which means Dr Cox is the one person I can be around without the constant knowledge that he can hear my thoughts. Dr Cox is the only person I can have a normal, Noiseless conversation with.
You know, if the definition of ‘a normal conversation’ includes full sixty-second speeches.
Which means maybe I can actually keep this a secret. Well, the rest of the hospital will probably end up knowing, which could make things complicated, but at least there’s a chance the man himself won’t learn I’ve got the hots for Dr Cox.
(Which almost rhymes! It sounds like it should be a Dr Seuss book. The Doc with the Hots for Dr Cox. Okay, maybe it shouldn’t be a Dr Seuss book.)
“You’re right,” I say. “I guess it benefits both of us. Honestly, I’m relieved you can’t hear what I’m thinking about right now.”
Dr Cox doesn’t answer.
Dr Cox! Doesn’t! Answer! And it doesn’t hit me until I realise I can hear him thinking okay, let’s see what’s on Caroline’s mind and then oh and then oh.
“Wait, what, why aren’t you talking?” I shriek.
“You literally just told me you didn’t want me to hear what you were thinking,” Dr Cox says. “I can give you a full list of every person in this hospital who’d be able to resist that temptation: it’s Mr Holden, and if he ever gets out of his coma he’s going to respect your privacy exactly as much as the rest of us.”
He’s not acting any different from usual, but his Noise is loud. I can almost hear it over what he’s saying.
“And, uh, what did you hear?” I ask, my stomach doing bungee-jumps.
“Didn’t hear anything,” he says. “You know, I’ve always suspected your head’s completely empty, but it’s good to have it confirmed.”
That’s a relief. And... also kind of worrying. I do actually have Noise, right? I’m not just so easy to read I’ve gone all this time assuming people can hear my thoughts?
“Oh, wait, no,” he says, “I do think I heard something. Is I wonder what he’d do if I licked him right now ringing a bell?”
Crap.
“Hey, that’s the kind of thing I think about everyone!” I blurt out. “That doesn’t prove I’m in love with you!”
“Doesn’t prove what now, Marianne?”
“I mean-” The hospital is burning down. I’m holed up in an exam room, dampening towels to try to block any cracks that smoke might get through, realising too late that I’m dampening them with gasoline. “I mean, hey, did someone say something about love? You didn’t, and I know I didn’t, because I’d have no reason to say I wasn’t in love with you if you hadn’t brought it up, right?” I laugh desperately. Nailed it.
“Newbie,” he says.
“Oh, God,” I whisper.
“Don’t wet yourself. You’d only need to panic this much if I’d looked inside your head and seen you’d forgotten Mrs Lee’s tox screen.”
That can’t be true. He’d probably be madder if I’d been thinking about what his ex-wife is like in bed.
Oh, God. I’m thinking about it now. I really hope he doesn’t stop talking.
“But, hey, if you don’t believe me, here’s a rare and exclusive peek at my thoughts.” He falls silent right when I’m thinking about how Jordan made me get on my knees and beg to be allowed to touch her butt.
Oh what the fuck, he thinks.
“Uh,” I say. “Sorry.”
My traitorous imagination, apparently deciding the situation isn’t awkward enough already, tries replacing Jordan with Dr Cox in that scenario. The real Dr Cox folds his arms and fixes me with his most incredulous stare, the one he breaks out when someone calls him Perry without permission.
This is going very badly. Even though I got exactly what I wanted! I’m getting to hear Dr Cox’s thoughts for once! Is Carla an evil genie?
Shit, Dr Cox’s thoughts are saying. I think the kid means it.
What does that mean? Does he think I’m dead-on serious about my intention to touch his butt?
He thinks I’m really into him, I realise, listening harder. And possibly also the butt thing.
He can hear my thoughts, and he decided that I’m into him. And Elliot heard my thoughts and decided that I’m into him. And Turk? I don’t know what Turk’s thinking right now, because all he does when I see him is sing ‘A Little Respect’ as loud as he can in his head, but I know he’s thinking something he doesn’t want me to know about.
Is it possible that I’m actually in love with Dr Cox?
“Honestly, Newbie,” Dr Cox says, “this isn’t a huge surprise.”
“It is to me!” I protest.
“Go figure. You’d think you’d worry about finding out what your own thoughts are before you start obsessing over mine.”
“So, uh, what happens now?” I ask, quietly.
“Now?” Dr Cox asks. “Now I skin you, tan you and make you into a new leather couch for my apartment as a warning to others.”
I squeak. I guess I’ll be doing a lot more squeaking when I’m a leather couch.
“Or things will go on exactly as they did before,” Dr Cox says. “You’ll still follow me around like an adoring little puppy, only without the collar and leash. Hm.” He pauses for an instant, just long enough for me to catch sight of the image of myself with a collar and leash in his head. It makes me feel funny. “I will still barely tolerate you, because it’s my job. And my personal thoughts will still be absolutely none of your business.”
“They could be,” I say.
“Careful, Newbie.”
“I’d like them to be. I’d like us to share more.”
“As I think we’ve just established,” Dr Cox says, “you’d like us to share bodily fluids. Never gonna happen.”
He pauses. And I can hear in his Noise that... he doesn’t want to hurt me, and he kind of regrets this, and he deliberately paused because he wants me to know that but there’s no way he’s saying it aloud.
And somewhere beneath that, presumably not meant for my hearing, he’s thinking oh, come on, you could at least throw the kid a quickie sometimes. It’s not like you haven’t thought about it before. Call him enough girls’ names and you can probably trick yourself into not having to question your sexuality. See if you can make him scream so loud he can’t hear your thoughts. Shit, no, can’t do it. Everyone’ll just hear about it through his Noise.
Holy crap.
“I could learn to talk like you do,” I say, quickly. “You know, if I had to. If there happened to be anything we... didn’t want people to hear about.”
You know when I said he was giving me his most incredulous stare earlier? Yeah, turns out I was wrong about that.
“You’d better be out of my sight in the next five seconds,” he says.
“Yes, sir,” I say, and I scramble out of there, abruptly dealing with the brand new knowledge that it kind of turns Dr Cox on when I call him sir.
I’m desperately singing Erasure in my head for the rest of the day.