Archive of Our Own

I'd just finished rounds with my interns when my pager went off. Normally, that wasn't unusual. Pagers went off all the time. Usually, it meant somebody needed me, somebody was looking for me, or somebody had discovered another task I'd forgotten to finish.

This time, however, the message was short enough to be alarming.

SUPPLY CLOSET 3. NOW.
Dr. Cox.

I slowed to a stop in the middle of the hallway and stared at the screen.

Supply Closet 3? That was oddly private.

Dr. Cox wasn't exactly a private person. If he wanted to yell at me, he'd do it in public. If he wanted to insult me, he'd do it louder. If he wanted to emotionally scar me, he'd usually make sure there was an audience.

So why a supply closet?

As I headed down the hallway, I tried to think of a reasonable explanation. Maybe there was a patient in there. No. Patients generally preferred rooms. Maybe he wanted to discuss one of the interns. Maybe I'd made a mistake, and he wanted to yell at me somewhere nobody else could hear.

Then another possibility occurred to me. Maybe he didn't want to yell at me? Maybe he wanted to talk? Actually talk? The idea settled into my brain and immediately started causing problems.

Maybe he'd finally realized I wasn't completely useless. Maybe he'd finally admitted to himself that I was his favorite resident. Maybe all the years of mentoring me, protecting me, and pretending not to care had finally caught up with him. Maybe he'd looked at me during rounds that morning and suddenly thought, wow, that guy really is the closest thing I've ever had to a son.

Okay. That one was a little weird, but still. Possible.

My imagination immediately took over.

The second I turned that closet door handle, reality bent backwards. The cramped little room still smelled like bleach, but the walls had stretched out for miles, defying every known law of physics. Towering stacks of cardboard boxes and medical crates lined the walls like ancient, soaring pillars, and warm golden light poured down from majestic stained-glass windows that were somehow built right into the metal shelving.  Standing right in the center of this glorious, cathedral-sized warehouse of latex gloves and gauze was Dr. Cox. 

"Newbie," he said. His voice echoed dramatically, bouncing off the mountains of biohazard bins.

"Dr. Cox?" 

He looked emotional. Actually, scratch that. He looked like a guy fighting a losing battle against his own tear ducts. 

"Perry?" I whispered, taking a tentative step forward, my shoes squeaking on the linoleum.

He gave a slow, solemn nod. "Perry."

Right on cue, an unseen piano started playing a swelling, emotional ballad. I didn't question it. In my world, there’s always a guy on a keyboard waiting for a moment like this.

"I spent years trying to deny it," he confessed, staring down at a nearby stack of bedpans.

"Deny what?" My heart was pounding.

"The truth."

I swallowed hard, my throat completely dry. "What truth?"

He locked his blue eyes directly onto mine. "That you're my favorite."

I gasped. Behind me, Turk gasped from behind a pallet of saline bags. Beside him, Carla gasped. Across the room, Kelso gasped. Somehow, even the Janitor was standing by a towering wall of toilet paper, holding a mop and gasping. The piano music soared to a beautiful crescendo.

"I always believed in you, Newbie."

A single, perfect tear rolled down my cheek. "A-and the insults?"

"They were encouragement."

"The girl names?"

"Terms of endearment."

"The relentless emotional trauma?"

"Very aggressive encouragement."

I nodded. Honestly, surrounded by thousands of boxes of extra-large latex gloves, it made a terrifying amount of sense. Suddenly, Bob Kelso stepped out from behind a wall of specimen cups, wearing a tuxedo and carrying a velvet cushion. Resting on top of it was a glittering, solid-gold crown. 

"For outstanding hair," Kelso announced, his voice booming through the cavernous supply room.

The entire hospital staff materialized out of thin air, erupting into a deafening standing ovation. I bowed modestly, letting the crown rest perfectly on my beautifully coiffed curls.

Then something slammed directly into my shin.

"YEOWCH!"

Reality snapped back so fast my neck almost hurt. The Janitor rolled past with a mop bucket, one leg sticking casually into my path.

"Whoops."

I glared at him as he chuckled, then he kept walking.

Rubbing my shin, I continued toward Supply Closet 3. Honestly, the chances of Dr. Cox being in there waiting to admit I was his favorite person, apologize for years of emotional damage, and award me some kind of 'Hair Excellence Crown' were pretty low, but they weren't zero.

A minute later, I reached Supply Closet 3 and pulled the door open.

"Hey, Dr. Cox?" I asked. "Why did you call me here?"

"There you are, Dorothy."

Dr. Cox was standing in the middle of the supply closet with his arms crossed. There were boxes stacked behind him, boxes stacked beside him. He looked like he’d spent the last twenty minutes becoming progressively more disappointed in humanity.

I blinked and let out a little chuckle. "Dorothy? You called me Dorothy last week. You're repeating names!"

Dr. Cox closed his eyes. "That's what you heard."

"I'm just saying, your rotation is getting lazy. It caught me off guard."

"Well, Jennifer, I'm thrilled we've managed to identify the most important part of that entire conversation," he snapped, staring at me.

"What are you doing in here?"

"Oh, I don't know, Jennifer. Maybe I wanted to spend seven minutes in heaven with you. Maybe I thought we'd make out a little. Maybe I'd finally re-hea-lized that beneath the crippling insecurity, the pathological need for approval, and enough hair product to survive a natural disaster, there exists a man I simply can-nawt live without. Or—and this is just a wild guess here—the door got stuck, and I've been trapped in this tiny little room of latex gloves, alcohol wipes, and administrative incompetence for twenty minutes."

I glanced at the door, then back at him with an awkward smile. "So..." 

Dr. Cox just stared at me, his jaw tight.

"Oh," I said as it finally clicked. "You're actually stuck in here."

"Yes, Newbie. Try to keep up."

"And you paged me because you needed somebody to open the door."

For a brief moment, hope appeared on his face. "Yes, Newbie! Exactly!" 

"Wow," I murmured. "I honestly didn't think you'd ever need my help for anything." 

I stepped into the closet to join him, and the heavy door instantly swung shut behind me.

Click.

The hope disappeared. Neither of us moved. Dr. Cox slowly glared right at me. I could only smile weakly.

"You closed the door," he stated flatly.

"I closed the door."

"I paged you because I was trapped."

"Right."

"And your response to finding me trapped was to voluntarily join me."

"When you say it like that—"

"How else would I say it, Julie? Should I perhaps focus on the positives? Should I take a moment to appreciate the initiative? Because from where I'm standing—and thanks to your remarkable contribution to this situation, that's exactly where I'm still standing—it appears that I have successfully witnessed the first rescue attempt in recorded history that somehow increased the number of trapped people."

I winced. "That sounds bad."

"It sounds bad because it is bad."

Trying to salvage what little dignity I had left, I reached for the handle and gave it a twist. Nothing. I tried again. Still nothing. My stomach dropped.

"Oh."

Dr. Cox closed his eyes. 

"It won't open," I muttered.

"Faaantastic."

"No, seriously."

"Oh, thank God you clarified, Muffin," he sighed, staring at the ceiling. "For a second there, I thought we were discussing a completely different door. Maybe one in France. Or Narnia. Or some magical fantasy land where grown adults don't lock themselves inside supply closets after being specifically summoned to prevent that exact outcome."

I gave the handle a final rattle. "Okay, we're definitely stuck."

Dr. Cox drummed his fingers on a nearby metal shelf.

"You know, somewhere in this hospital, there's a patient whose life currently depends on the collective intelligence of the medical staff," he said quietly. "And somehow, despite the presence of surgeons, specialists, and people who have devoted decades of their lives to medicine, the universe has chosen this exact moment to remind me that one of those people is you."

"That's kinda harsh."

"Patricia, I spent twenty minutes trapped in a closet. Then help arrived and trapped itself."

I tried to come up with a defense, but nothing came out. "To be fair, I wasn't expecting a trapped person."

"Really? Because I feel like the man standing helplessly inside a locked room may have been a clue."

I aggressively rattled the broken handle three separate times, completely failing, while Dr. Cox just watched me.

"Are you expecting a different result, Carol, or are we just conducting an exciting new study on repetitive motion?"

I let go of the handle. "Just checking."

"Excellent. Let me know when we move on to checking it a fourth time."

"So... what now?" I leaned back against a stack of cardboard boxes and glanced around the cramped space. Outside, the muffled sounds of the hospital carried on completely fine without us. Someone down the hall laughed, a nice reminder that the world didn't actually stop spinning just because we were stuck in a closet. 

"What now?" Dr. Cox repeated. "Well, Tiffany, my current plan involves standing here until somebody notices we're missing."

"That's not really a plan."

I considered that for a moment. "Couldn't we just page somebody?"

Dr. Cox immediately shook his head. "No."

"Why not?"

"I have already suffered enough humiliation for one afternoon."

I frowned, looking around the space. "You got trapped in a closet. Exactly. So wouldn't getting out be worth a little embarrassment?"

Dr. Cox let out a dark laugh. "Picture it, Veronica. Carla arrives, finds out I've been trapped for twenty minutes, and then learns my rescue party managed to trap itself too. Then she tells Turk, Turk tells the entire hospital, and my life is over. For the rest of my natural life, every time I walk into a room, somebody asks whether I've had any trouble with doors lately."

I let that image sink in. "...Yeah. That's fair."

"Thank you."

"So we're just waiting?"

Another silence settled between us until a thought occurred to me. "You know, this is kind of your fault. You paged me."

Dr. Cox slowly turned his head toward me. "If I'd paged Carla, Carol, we'd both be working right now."

"That's a good point," I admitted, shifting my weight. My elbow accidentally bumped into his in the tight gap between the shelves. "But it's still your fault."

"How?"

"You picked me."

The look he gave me suggested he was searching for a way to respond that wouldn't get his medical license revoked. "That may genuinely be the dumbest defense I've ever heard."

"I've got worse," I said, briefly thinking about how I charted a patient's blood pressure on a paper towel on Tuesday.

"I know."

For a while, neither of us said anything. The closet felt smaller than it had a few minutes ago, mostly because there was absolutely nothing left for us to do. I watched a tiny piece of lint float off his shoulder, wondering if now was a good time to bring up my fantasy about us being cowboys, but decided against it. Outside, the muffled sounds of the hospital carried on without us—a cart rolled past, somebody laughed, and an overhead page crackled through the hallway. Neither of us moved.

Eventually, Dr. Cox sighed. It was a long one, the kind that sounded expensive. "You know, Sunshine, I'm honestly not sure which part of this situation is worse," he muttered.

I looked over, confused. "The trapped part?"

"The trapped part is certainly making a compelling argument."

I nodded. "Yeah."

"But then I remember that eventually somebody's going to open this door," he said, staring blankly at the opposite wall. "At which point I'll have to finish my shift, drive home, and spend the rest of my evening chasing a small child around my apartment."

"Jack?"

Dr. Cox rolled his eyes at me. "Unless Jordan has secretly acquired another one, yes."

I smiled. "He can't be that bad."

The look he gave me suggested I had never met a child in my life. "Last week he attempted to eat a crayon."

"Kids eat crayons."

"It was still attached to the box."

I laughed, but Dr. Cox didn't. "He then cried because the box wouldn't fit."

"Okay, that's actually kinda funny," I giggled.

"No. Funny would've been if somebody else had been responsible for him." It looked like he was trying not to smile. The story itself wasn't what amused him; he just clearly found his kid's antics funny.

Footsteps passed by outside the room. We both looked toward the threshold, hoping for a rescue, but the sound just traveled down the hall and died out. Dr. Cox sighed deeply, and I immediately echoed the sound, because subconsciously I still try to synchronize our breathing.

A minute later, I awkwardly tilted my wrist up to glance at my watch, trying not to bump his elbow in the process, and immediately regretted it. "Oh, crap."

"What now, Princess?"

"I'm gonna be late," I muttered.

"Congratulations."

"Dinner."

"Fascinating."

I shrugged, trying to sound casual, but the tight walls of the room made it impossible to hide my nerves. "With Elliot."

Nothing happened until Dr. Cox made a face. His eyes narrowed with that familiar, quiet annoyance he usually saves for when Doug Murphy walks into a patient's room. "Oh, no."

I backed up a tiny half-step until my shoulder blades hit a cardboard box. "What?"

"Oh, no."

"What does that even mean?"

"It means no."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only answer you're getting."

I stared at him, desperately waiting for him to expand, but he just stared back before looking away toward a shelf of cotton balls. "We're kinda back together."

A long sigh escaped him. "Of course you are."

I frowned. "Why do you always do that?"

"Do what?"

"That."

"Helpful, Britney."

"The thing where you act like we're making some horrible mistake."

Dr. Cox let out a sharp laugh out of pure disbelief. "Because you are making a mistake," he insisted.

"See? You're doing it again," I said, pointing a finger directly at his chest. "You can pretend all you want, but you actually care!"

"I assure you, I don't."

"You totally do."

Dr. Cox folded his arms. "Shirley, I have consistently informed you that I do not care about the personal lives of the people I work with."

"Exactly."

"Exactly what?"

"Then why do you have opinions?"

He looked like he wanted to argue, but thought better of it. I may or may not have grinned too wide at him.

"AHA!"

"There is no 'aha'."

"There was definitely an ‘AHA!’." 

"You knew exactly who I was talking about," I pressed on.

"Because unfortunately, I've met her."

"You immediately had an opinion."

"Because, again, unfortunately, I've met you."

I laughed, the sound bouncing off the metal shelves, but Dr. Cox didn't even crack a smile.

"Seriously, though," I said, dropping the smug act.

He groaned, tilting his head back against a stack of crates. "Must we?"

"Yeah," I said softly. "You always say you don't care."

"I don't."

"But every time Elliot comes up, suddenly you're invested."

Dr. Cox didn't answer immediately. "Lilly, you and Barbie have broken up so many times that watching your relationship is like being trapped in a rerun that nobody asked for."

I processed the analogy, then a small, hopeful smile crept back onto my face.

"That's a concern."

"No, it's not."

"That's literally a concern."

"No."

"Admit it, you're concerned about me," I nudged.

"I am thoroughly annoyed, Newbie. There is a massive difference."

"Keep telling yourself that, but it's definitely a concern."

"Newbieroo, if you say 'concerned' one more time, I'm going to find a way to make this closet even smaller."

"You seem awfully..." I lifted my hands, making little quotation marks with my fingers. "... 'concerned’ for somebody who can't stand me."

Dr. Cox scoffed, throwing his head back against the metal shelving. "Oh, here we go."

"No, seriously."

"Newbie—"

"You always say you can't stand me."

"Because I can't."

I nodded. "Okay."

"Okay."

I pointed a finger directly at him. "Still sounds pretty concerned."

Dr. Cox just stared at me. Then he let out a short, sharp laugh.

"Oh, right. I can't stand you."

I shrugged. "You said it."

"Yeah, Newbie, I said it," he snapped, his voice suddenly losing its usual loud, theatrical boom. "I can't stand how you somehow manage to smell like a field of cheap, fruity strawberries after a fourteen-hour shift in a hospital, or the way you look at me every five minutes for a lifeline. Better yet, I absolutely can-nawt stand that half the time you don't even bother to ask because you've convinced yourself that suffering builds character."

Dr. Cox turned away, trailing his fingers over the edge of a plastic crate as he looked toward a shelf of cotton balls. "I can't stand how you attach yourself like a barnacle to every single patient who walks through those doors, or that you stubbornly, pathologically refuse to learn not to. And I absolutely can't stand that every time a chart gets flipped, you wander these halls looking like it's your personal failing because you still haven't figured out that you can't save everyone."

My stomach dropped a little. "Dr. Cox—"

"Buh buh buh—I can't stand that every time you get hurt, you pretend you're fine," he talked right over me, his hands slicing through the air. "I can't stand that every time Barbie breaks your heart, everybody in this hospital knows it before you do. I can't stand that you keep making the same mistakes over and over and somehow never become cynical enough to stop trying."

"I can't stand the fact that I predict your every move before you even make it, or that I know exactly when you're lying and when you're terrified. Better yet, I absolutely cannot stand that I can read you like an open book."

Dr. Cox finally shifted his gaze back to me.

"I can't stand the fact that after all these years you're still walking around wondering if you're good enough."

I froze. For the first time all afternoon, Dr. Cox wasn't hiding behind a cruel insult, a physical deflection, or a sarcastic whistle.

"You spend so much time worrying about whether people like you, whether you're good enough, whether you're a good doctor, a good boyfriend, a good friend..." He shook his head. "And somehow it never occurs to you that most people figured that out years ago."

I stared at him until he finally broke eye contact and looked away first.

"I think that's the part that annoys me the most."

A breathless laugh escaped me. "You sound concerned."

"Oh, don't flatter yourself, Clarabelle."

"But—"

"Yes, I'm concerned." The answer came so quickly that it completely shut me up. Dr. Cox let out a heavy breath, reaching over to briefly squeeze my shoulder. His fingers dug into the fabric of my scrubs—just a quick, grounding pressure before he let go. "You know what, Newbie? You deserve something nice for once."

The rare sincerity held between us before he instantly crushed it. "God knows you've spent enough years making catastrophically stupid decisions to earn one."

Ahhh, there he was. The familiar wall went right back up. I smiled despite myself, earning an immediate roll of his eyes.

"Don't make this weird."

"Too late."

"Shut up, Newbie."

I kept smiling instead, watching the sharp deflection completely fail to stick. "Oh, for God's sake," he muttered, shifting his gaze away to glare somewhere over my shoulder. "Fix your face."

"Can't help it."

"Then learn."

I laughed.

Dr. Cox immediately locked his arms back across his chest, looking deeply annoyed. He just stood there, staring fixedly at the stack of cardboard crates behind me. Avoiding eye contact felt significantly more dangerous.

"You know," I said, leaning my back against the door. "For somebody who supposedly can't stand me, that was a pretty nice speech. You basically admitted you worry about me."

"I literally did not. I was complaining," Dr. Cox said.

JD pointed a finger directly at his crossed arms. "Most of those weren't complaints. One of them was basically 'I care about your emotional wellbeing.'"

“As God is my witness, that is not even remotely what I said,” Dr. Cox said flatly, staring at the ceiling.

"It was absolutely the underlying message," I shot back.

Dr. Cox kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

The smile faded from my face. “I don’t even… I don’t really know why I cared so much what you thought,” I admitted, my voice dropping as I tried to stitch the thoughts together in real time. Dr. Cox lowered his gaze, looking back down at me. “Maybe it’s… I don’t know, maybe because after my dad died, my brain just… it started collecting substitute authority figures.”

"Terrifying," he muttered. The word was sharp, but his voice lacked its usual biting delivery.

"But even that doesn't really explain you," I continued. "Normal residents don't spend this much time obsessing over their mentors. I talked about you constantly to Turk, Carla, Elliot, random patients... probably a few birds."

"Birds?" His brow furrowed.

"The birds are not the point. I'd spend twenty minutes complaining about why you were impossible to work with, and the next twenty explaining why everyone else was wrong about you."

I completely ignored his reaction, looking past his shoulder at a wall of boxes. "I mean..." I let out an awkward laugh. "Looking back, people always looked at me kinda funny afterward."

Dr. Cox didn't immediately have a sarcastic response ready. His mouth stayed firmly shut.

“Maybe I wanted your approval. Maybe I saw you as a mentor. Or maybe it was some weird father figure thing. I honestly don’t know…” I dropped my gaze to the floor, tracing a line on the front of my scrub shirt. “And that’s the thing, I guess. If it was just… approval… I think I would’ve stopped. I think I would’ve just… stopped years ago.”

A corner of his mouth twitched. "There it is. Attaboy."

"What?"

"I was beginning to worry."

"Worry?"

"Jennifer, I thought you'd developed self-awareness. It was a terrifying moment."

I laughed despite myself. "Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously. You deliver what can only be described as an emotional hostage situation, and your primary concern is your own pathetic delivery."

"To be fair, I kinda did sound pathetic."

"To be fair, Newbie, you've been sounding pathetic since the exact second I first laid eyes on you."

"That's harsh."

"It's generous."

I waited for the next insult. Usually, when things got this real, one of us would throw out a joke or a defensive deflection just to stop from having an actual moment. But the next insult never came. He just stood there, leaving us in an awkward stillness that made the tiny closet feel about three sizes smaller. I looked up, meeting his eyes. Dr. Cox was already staring straight back at me. 

"Well," he said, his voice dropping into a quiet rumble. "This is a spectacular disaster."

"Being trapped?" I tried to joke.

"No," he said, stepping closer. "Being right about you."

My stomach flipped. I opened my mouth to respond, but my brain completely stalled out. Dr. Cox dragged a palm over his face, letting out a sharp breath.

"Jesus Christ."

Neither of us broke eye contact. "This is a terrible idea."

"What is?"

"You."

I blinked. "What did I do?"

"Oh, where exactly would you like me to begin?" Despite the irritation, a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"You like me!"

"Newbie, don't."

"You do."

Then, his hand shot forward, fingers bunching tightly into the fabric of my scrubs, anchoring me right in front of him.

"You're a menace," he muttered, closing his eyes.

He stepped fully into my space and kissed me. It was fast, a sudden blur that ended almost as quickly as it started. He immediately retreated a full pace, his back hitting a stack of crates as his eyes snapped open.

"Well," he said, his hand trembling slightly as he rubbed his face. "That was clearly a terrible idea."

"You don't sound very convinced," I said, a massive smile taking over my face.

Dr. Cox groaned, pointing an accusatory finger directly at my forehead. "Fix your face, Newbie. I am entirely aware of the sequence of events, and I am choosing to ignore your smug expression."

"You kissed me," I laughed, stepping forward.

"J.D."

The sudden weight of my actual initials shut me up instantly. Before my internal filter could talk me out of it, I reached out and bunched the front of his lab coat in my fist, mimicking his exact grip. I leaned in and pulled him back down. This time, the kiss lasted. The frantic panic left his shoulders, his grip on my waist tightening. For the first time since I'd known him, he didn't have a sarcastic deflection ready.

Then, the heavy closet door flew wide open.

"Oh, for the love of—"

Carla froze in the doorway, her voice cutting off instantly.

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. She just stood there, her eyes wide, blinking three separate times in the bright fluorescent light as she stared directly at us. Dr. Cox and I sprang apart so violently my elbow slammed into a metal shelf, sending a box of tongue depressors rattling to the floor. 

"...Huh." Carla looked back and forth between us, her expression flattening into total, unbothered exhaustion. "Oh."

Neither of us said a word.

She let out a long sigh and pointed her clipboard toward the corridor. "Do you two have any actual idea how long I've been looking for you? The floor nurses are hunting for you, Perry. Kelso is actively screaming for Bambi, and Turk is entirely convinced someone got kidnapped."

She stared at the tangled mess of medical supplies we'd disturbed, her eyes narrowing. "Actually, this somehow makes perfect sense."

"Carla, I swear—" I started, my voice cracking.

"No," she said, cutting me off with a sharply raised hand. "No, I don't want an explanation. I especially do not want whatever spectacular lie you are currently formulating in your head."

Dr. Cox closed his eyes, his head dropping back against the shelves in total defeat.

"Unbelievable," Carla said, shaking her head as she took a step back into the hall, pointing a firm finger down the corridor. "Both of you. Out. Now."

And for the first time in my medical career, Dr. Cox and I slunk out of a supply room side-by-side, getting aggressively scolded by Carla Espinosa at the exact same time.