My Sweetest Autopsy

Pairings: JD/Cox, Jorliot, Turla

Warnings: Ooh, psychological and phsyical nasties galore in this one. ::sighs:: Drug abuse, self-injury, torture (probably graphic), psychological trauma, and a psychopath.

Summary: He had worked so hard to be good. He had finally found his niche. And he wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from him. Not even Dr. Cox.

Author’s Notes: And here it is XD I’m semi-co-writing this with Dark Samu. It’s based off of her fic "His Calm", and if you haven’t read it, it’s awesome. A bit graphic, so not for the weak of stomach. I still highly recommend it; it’s just a one-shot. Really good and introspective, check it out!

Chapter One

Dr. Doug Murphy loved the morgue.

It was so quiet, like little falls of death every few minutes that only made him feel competent and calm. Here, there were no mouthy patients second-guessing him every step of the way. Here, there were no loud, verbally abusive attending physicians that reminded him far too much of high school and the majority of college.

In the morgue, he didn’t have to be invisible.

Light music playing in the background, Doug swirled his tongue around the grape lollipop in his mouth as he cut open the dead body in front of him. He’d barely taken a glance inside the body when he shook his head. A surgeon had been sloppy near the aortic artery, apparently.

Doug made a clucking sound around the sucker and wrote down the cause of death with a quick practiced hand. As he finished sewing the body back up from the Y-incision, he took a moment to breathe in the familiar scents of frozen skin and silent death.

He owed Elliot so much. He’d tried, in his own little way, to pay her back slowly over the past five years. He tried making sure that the orderlies who worked in the morgue with him were extra quick to pick up her dead bodies, or made sure to remember her birthday.

Hell, Doug had even tried asking her out nervously once, hating the way his voice cracked in that old way. She’d said no, of course, but that didn’t mean Doug felt any worse for it. At least he’d tried.

A knock on the morgue’s door before it opened had Doug turning around. "Teddy," he said almost affectionately. "Kelso send you on an errand?"

Ted Buckland gave his usual sour frown as he pulled up a chair. "No. He thinks I called in sick again. He’s started taking my vacation days for when he "thinks" I’m sick." Ted gave a forlorn sigh at that, rubbing a hand over his bald head.

"I don’t know how you put up with that," Doug remarked as he moved on to the next body with a new pair of gloves. He slid the sucker around in his mouth thoughtfully. "I don’t think I could stand it after being down here for so long. All that yelling and abuse?" Doug shuddered for effect even as he neatly sliced open the dead woman.

Ted paled a bit as Doug stuck his hands inside the body. "Yes, well…you get used to it."

Doug shrugged. "You shouldn’t have to," he pointed out. "Look at me. Dr. Cox used to treat me horribly, but now I’m down here. He never comes down here; he usually sends an intern or his boy-toy."

Ted snorted amusingly. "He does let Dr. Dorian follow him around a bit." He looked at the pale body there. "I am actually here for a reason," Ted finally admitted. He hated that; mostly because it meant he wasn’t spending time with a real friend anymore. "Dr. Kelso wanted to know how the autopsy on Mr. Leeman came up."

Doug pulled the file from the stack on his counter. "I haven’t gotten to Mr. Leeman yet. Why do you ask?"

Ted shrugged. "It’s Kelso’s annual testosterone contest with Dr. Cox. Mr. Leeman happens to be the deciding factor."

Doug nodded and patted the file. "I’ll get to it. Hey, in the basement, there’s a broken MRI machine that Elliot used to hang out in. Kelso would never find you there."

Ted shrugged. "I think I’m going to head up to the roof and think."

"You keep thinking up there, one day you’ll fall off."

Ted smiled witheringly. "If only." He stood. "Better Kelso then me."

Doug grinned and sucked on his lollipop. "That’s the spirit. See ya later, Ted."

Ted waved and walked out of the morgue.

Back in the silence of dead bodies, Doug slapped the file to the countertop in an almost belligerent fashion. He’d get to Mr. Leeman when he could, and not a second sooner.

The little rush of rebellion made Doug smile and he got to work on the lady in front of him.

XXXXXXXX

"What do you mean he’s not "done" yet with my autopsy?" Dr. Perry Cox roared at his intern.

The female intern shrank away a bit. "He said he’d get to it when he could!" she sputtered out. "He seemed pretty busy." She didn’t mention that the pathologist downstairs had also been somewhat of an arrogant jerk.

Perry rolled his eyes. "Fat guy, balding with dark hair? Looks kind of creepy and has a sucker in his mouth?"

The intern frowned. "He did have a sucker…but he was really skinny. Kind of geeky looking. I can go back and talk to him if you want."

"No, go kill someone else on your resident’s time," Perry muttered irritably. "I know the guy you’re talking about."

The intern scampered off, glad for once that it wasn’t her fault something had gone wrong in the life of Dr. Cox.

Perry stood at the counter of the nurse’s station and drank the acidic coffee that a resident had brought him earlier in a piss-poor effort to suck up. It didn’t work well, seeing as the coffee tasted awful and wasn’t made the way he liked it at all.

It was then that Dr. John Dorian walked past, head stuck in a chart.

Perry reached out and grabbed JD’s scrubs collar. "Newbie. Go get me some coffee."

"Don’t you have other interns to do that?"

"That wasn’t a request. Skip to it." He beat JD’s back with a chart. "And go see what’s keeping Nervous Guy in the morgue on a Mr. Leeman."

JD sighed. "I’ll get one of my interns to do it."

"Ho-no, either you’re doing it or I am, and seeing as how I need to stand up here just to make the entire ICU look better, it’ll be you."

JD groaned as the chart hit his back again. He headed for the elevator, but not before eyeing Dr. Cox again witheringly. He’d worked with the man for close to seven years now; he’d think that they could at least try and respect each other somewhat.

With a sigh, JD heard his pager go off and groaned. Mr. Corman had entered the hospital once more, this time with phantom complaints of a stomach pain that he thought might be related to a cancerous ulcer of some kind.

JD sighed and texted something to Dr. Cox’s pager before heading for Mr. Corman’s room.

XXXXXXXX

Perry was just exiting his latest fatty’s room when his pager went off and he read JD’s message with glaring eyes. He groaned and wondered if the day could get any worse.

As he exited the room, however, it did.

Jordan glared at him, her foot tapping anxiously. "You were supposed to be out of here an hour ago."

Perry groaned and then covered his face with his chart. "Not today, Medusa. I cannot be turned to stone and you will not suck out my soul."

Jordan grabbed the chart and yanked it down. "I know it’s not enough for you that you can bury yourself in work instead of accepting the fact that I’m done with you and now you have no one more then your lapdogs around here, but you could at least try to remember that you’ve got a son to help out with."

"I’ll be there when I get there; I’ve got an autopsy report that…"

"Bup!" Jordan cut him off sharply. "If I wanted to know, I would’ve asked. Just get your ass home before the nanny leaves." She turned on her heel and walked off.

Perry clenched his fist around the chart and went off in search of someone to abuse. He found Mr. Corman’s room first, and decided that JD was as good as anyone.

"Newbie, where the hell have you been? I asked you to go down to the morgue fifteen minutes ago!"

"I’ve got a patient; I’ll get to it when I can. I’m just as swamped as you are!"

"I don’t care how swamped you are, Melissa; when I ask you to do something, you better damn well do it or have a damn good excuse for why you blew it off so you could go powder your damn nose and fix your stupid hair! Now get your scrawny ass to the morgue!"

JD groaned and turned apologetic eyes back to Mr. Corman. "Fine," he said through gritted teeth. "Just let me explain to Mr. Corman why we don’t care about his treatment so that I can drop everything, all for you, and go do your work for you!"

"You really are a worthless waste of space, Newbie."

"And one of these days, someone’s going to rip you a new one!" JD snapped back, anger finally breaking his usual calm face. "Now let me treat my patient!"

Perry stormed out of the room before he could punch the kid, and headed for the elevator. Nervous Guy was just as good as anyone, if not better. The kid was getting arrogant by working around nameless dead bodies all the time.

Deciding that he liked his course of action, Perry slammed his fist into the down button for the elevator.

XXXXXXXXX

Doug was whistling by this time, having polished off the grape sucker. His lips were now a faint purple, but it wasn’t like he actually had to interact with anyone except for a couple of doctors and a lot of dead people.

Sewing the body up in front of him expertly, he grinned and patted the finished suturing with a hand. Then he pulled the sheet up and began rolling the body back to the ice caves (as he liked to call them) to slide it back into the small cubicle.

Doug had just finished pushing the door shut when the door to the morgue swung open angrily, and an almost palpable aura of fury entered the room. He whirled around in fright, and jumped at the furiously red face of Dr. Cox.

"What the hell is so important down here that you have to treat one of my interns like crap just because you want to be a big boy now?" Dr. Cox snapped at him furiously.

"But I just…"

"Oh, what? You just want to wipe your goddamn nose and pretend like you’re not a total fuck-up around here?"

Doug felt sweat slide down the back of his neck as he backed up into the one of the empty tables. His hands shook behind him, and he gripped the metal surface tightly to try and keep his composure. He wasn’t supposed to be like this anymore.

"So come on; let’s hear your grand excuse, Nervous guy," Dr. Cox went on, his voice so angry that it was almost shaky. "I’ve got to know just what you were up to besides pretending you’re a really real doctor while I need an stupid lousy autopsy report from you!"

No, it wasn’t supposed to be like this at all. Doug scrambled for a smart remark, something…anything to make this horrible feeling of self-consciousness go away. He wasn’t that guy anymore; he wasn’t just "nervous guy". He wasn’t nervous anymore; he hadn’t been nervous in ages.

"Well?" Dr. Cox roared. "I’m waiting, Pee Pants."

And it was that final insult that had Doug’s head snapping up again. "My name’s not Pee Pants," he said as stiffly as he could.

"Oh, I’m so sorry to have damaged your nonexistent self-esteem. You want to wipe those tears away and get me the damn report?"

Doug turned, and realized suddenly what he had to do. No one was allowed to make him feel like this anymore, no one. Not even Dr. Cox.

He had worked so hard to get where he was at. He was a good pathologist; his boss said he was one of the best he’d seen in a while.

Doug picked up the file, realizing it still had yet to be done. His hands shook even more, and he wished he had something to wrap his hands around in order to make them stop shaking.

The sounds around him became louder and more disorienting, and he could feel that familiar trail out of his mind; it was one he had always taken when someone was yelling at him and he just wanted it to go away.

Dimly, Doug could still hear yelling in the background, punctuated by a too-loud foot that tapped impatiently on the floor. The light rock music still played gently. And then he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder.

Doug yelled out and whirled around, metal chart hitting something fleshy and solid as he did so.

Dr. Cox reeled back slightly. "Oh, big mistake, nervous guy. Today was not the day."

Doug felt the power run through his hand as Dr. Cox rubbed at the blood at his temple and began to advance on him. He looked at the chart again, and then back to Dr. Cox.

Doug ducked under the hand that was aimed for him, and used the chart once more to bring it slamming down to Dr. Cox’s head as hard as he could.

The older man grunted, and hit the floor on one knee, a hand going automatically to the back of his head.

Doug looked around the room calmly, realizing how even his breathing was and how shallow Dr. Cox’s was. Now Dr. Cox was the nervous guy. Now Dr. Cox was the one trying to take a step forward when all everyone else tried to do was bring him two steps back.

And it was with that that Doug delivered another blow with the metal chart in his hands as hard as he could. The force of it propelled Dr. Cox’s body forward, and his head hit the side of a table with a dead body on it.

And then Dr. Cox didn’t move anymore.

Doug looked down at the still body and calmly wiped the blood from the side of the chart. He kneeled down next to Dr. Cox’s body, and took a pulse with a steady hand. It was the stillness of his own body and of his own hands that made Doug stand back up. He wasn’t that guy anymore. He wasn’t nervous, and he wasn’t scared.

Doug looked down at Dr. Cox again. Today just hadn’t been the day for him either, Doug supposed, and wasn’t frightened at how calm he was.

Today was, however, Doug’s day. Having used dead people’s charts and insurance for live patients, Doug calmly filled out a prescription for sedatives, and signed his boss’s name to it (as he often did for other prescriptions anyway). His boss had been known to write the prescriptions for other interns and residents above, and so Doug could already know that it wouldn’t look odd.

What would look odd, however, was the limp body now beginning to groan in the bottom of the morgue’s dirty, green-tiled floor.

Doug looked down at Dr. Cox, knowing that the older man couldn’t be feeling good at the moment. How easy it would be to simply kill him.

And that was the one thought that seemed to make Doug stand up again. He didn’t want to kill the man, did he?

Oh no. Killing would be far too quick.

The music continued to play as Doug set himself to work, and laughed at the efficiency of his mind and at the brilliance of his thought process.

Yeah. Killing was way too quick.

XXXXXXXX

Author’s Notes: Sorry; my first chapters are always short and a bit rough. Again, dedicated to Samu’s "His Calm". She wrote it much better then I attempted in my first chapter, I fear…but I also haven’t gotten to the torture!stuff yet. I will be though in the next chapter. Cheers!