A/N: Hey, everyone! I'm back, and with a sequel no less! Okay, I think it's only fair to warn you that this is going to be a rather long author's note, but I feel it's a pretty important one, so please stick with me here.

In all honesty, I did not plan on doing a sequel. I had considered the possibility of doing something along the lines of "The Lost Chapters," which would've consisted of ideas I had but couldn't fit into the time slot I allowed for "My Hypnotism." Yet, the more I thought of those ideas, the more new ones came, and suddenly I was face to face with a plot line for a sequel. I was really excited about it, but in since I'm also working on another Scrubs story as well, not to mention several one-shots, I was curious to see what all you lovely readers and reviewers thought of the idea.

Anyway, I just recently held a poll on my profile, and a sequel to "My Hypnotism," won by a landside. Now, that does not mean I won't be doing "My Captain" or any of the other one-shots, but it helps to know what you all are interested in and looking forward to, and your votes were very much appreciated.

Okay, now that the insanely long author's note is over, here it is folks! The first chapter of the sequel. I hope you all enjoy. :)

Disclaimer: I own a very large nothing.

Chapter 1:

"JD!"

The young doctor turned where he stood and smiled. It had been a whole month since he babysat his mentor's son, and what a month it had been! The girls' names had completely and utterly vanished, just like Perry said they would before JD had fallen asleep on the older man's couch. Well, okay…the first couple of days after were clearly harder for Perry. Not that Dr. Cox wasn't willing to stop with the girls' names, but it had become such a habit by then that JD had often heard his mentor begin a sentence with, "Susa – I mean, Newbie. Come." The brunette actually found this more amusing than bothersome. It was the effort that mattered, and Perry's obvious attempt at kicking the customary name calling did not go unappreciated.

"Yeah, Dr. Cox?"

Perry rolled his eyes at his protégé's increasingly wide smile. A whole month since he had admitted to caring for JD, and the kid still glowed whenever he called him by his first name. "I need you to go get blood cultures on Mrs. Faust."

"Can do, Per-Per!"

"Newbie…"

"Perry. Right. On my way."

Dr. Cox watched as JD practically skipped away as he went to follow orders. Perry just shook his head as he brought his attention back to the chart before him. It really had been quite an interesting month. After multiple times of reminding himself not to call his protégé by the usual girls' name, he finally found himself comfortable enough to call him JD, even if he did mainly stick with calling him Newbie.

The two had actually hung out a couple of times as well. Nothing big to the every day observer, but in comparison to the strained relationship of suppressed parental instincts and emotions, something so simple as going out for a beer after work was a huge thing; for the both of them. Though at least Dr. Cox did a better job at hiding how big of an event it really was, while JD had not been able to contain himself from babbling. He made the kid promise to relax if the two were ever to go out for drinks again. Which was stupid, because even Perry knew he'd end up taking him out again anyway, but the young doctor promised to calm down, and surprisingly enough, he had.

Of course, Dr. Cox was still Dr. Cox. He still got angry, he still ranted, he still did all the things that JD enjoyed describing as "Coxian," but at least with Newbie, his rants were often much shorter. And on the days that Perry seemed to be on overload – stress from work, stress from his home life – JD seemed able to handle him much better. If Dr. Cox served him a ten minute rant about how incompetent the new interns were, or how annoying his newest hypochondriac patient was, or how Jordan just had to use his money for that oh-so-needed manicure, he would just nod along and listen, and if an insult or two slipped out in the process, well…the kid knew for sure now that he really did care; knew how hard he was trying. That made even Perry's worst habits a million times more tolerable.

JD came back just as Dr. Cox was leaving the room. To the red headed man's surprise, the young brunette handed him a coffee. "I didn't ask for this, Newbie."

"I know, but you looked like you could use another cup."

"Thanks, kid."

JD smiled at this, while Dr. Cox, on the other hand, swallowed down a prominent emotion he still hadn't quite gotten rid of.

While their relationship had definitely changed for the better since JD's accidental hypnotism, it was sometimes hard for the older man to forget his protégé's five year old self; memories that he was not permitted to share. And sure, he could always talk about them with Carla, but he preferred to refrain from doing so. Not to say she hadn't helped at all during the weekend in which he'd taken care of little JD, but he knew how she'd react if he ever confessed he still sometimes saw him as such: She'd give him that sweet, mother-like smile, tell him he'd been doing a good job with the whole transition, and then pat him gently on the shoulder before saying how lucky Bambi was to have him.

Yeah, okay – he already knew all that. But it still bothered him that sometimes, even now, he'd look over at JD and suddenly see the kid sitting on his apartment floor, smiling up at him and offering him another lego piece. Or in the cafeteria, when he would randomly catch the kid eating with Gandhi: Instead of seeing him eating the insanely greasy burger, he'd see Newbie stuffing down a peanut butter and banana sandwich. The worst time ever was when he heard JD mumble his disgust for broccoli in the middle of the lunch line. Perry had caught himself just in time before saying something humiliating like, "You have to eat those vegetables, kiddo." Oh dear God, that would have been horrible.

That was another thing: "Kiddo." He hadn't called JD that since the whole incident. Kid, occasionally, but never kiddo. There were just certain things he couldn't bring himself to do with the fully grown JD. One of which, to the young man's increasing disappointment, was hug him.

"You know…I'm still waiting for that hug, Dr. Cox," JD had said to him one day during lunch when Turtlehead was still stuck in surgery.

"Too bad, Newbie."

"Aw, c'mon! I thought your main problem with doing that was because you didn't want me to know that you…you know…" JD stopped then to lower his voice, not wanting to have the whole room hear his next words and have his mentor take back everything he'd already confessed, "Care about me and stuff."

"Newbie, you're a grown man. You need to stop with the constantly needing a hug thing, alright?"

JD gave a slight nod as his lower lip stuck into a pout, only to cause Perry's memories of the hypnotized doctor to fully erupt in his mind. He left the lunchroom early that day.

The truth was, the idea of hugging JD wasn't really the problem. He'd done it several times with the younger version of his protégé, but that, right there, was the actual problem. The older doctor now found himself associating nicknames like kiddo and comforting hugs as a strictly five-year-old-Newbie thing, and while it was undoubtedly true that the situation in its entirety had affected their current relationship for the better, there were still definite road blocks that Dr. Cox was having trouble getting over.

But why? The obvious answer to anybody would be to automatically assume that Perry didn't have a kid of his own; that he was missing the younger version of his Newbie because of a desire to have a child himself, but that was just completely untrue! Not that he didn't see JD in a son like fashion, but he did have a kid of his own; a boy he loved very much. So why was he having such difficulty getting over that one weekend?

Dr. Cox thought back to the picture JD's older brother had brought in just days after his protégé had awoken from his hypnotized state. Maybe that was one of the reasons why. Now that Perry had seen an actual picture of Newbie as a five year old, the image of him at that specific age seemed to stick out even more.

The Irish man shook his head as he continued to sip at his coffee. Whatever the reason, he'd sort it out later. Right now, he was at work. He had patients to see and annoying people to deal with.

"Ah, Perry!"

Speak of the devil.

"Beelzebub," Dr. Cox growled. He saw JD give him a "Do you want me to stay and back you up look?" but Perry just rolled his eyes and nodded his head towards the on-call room. Newbie was working a sixteen hour shift, and if he didn't take advantage of his break and get some sleep pronto, there was a good chance he wouldn't be able to make it for the remaining six hours.

Once JD had turned the corner to finally get some rest, Perry turned his attention back onto Kelso. "Listen, Bobbo. I re-heel-y don't have time for this today. While it's true the majority of my patients are doing quite well, it's also true that half of them shouldn't even be here, seeing as how nothing's even remotely wrong with them. Why you insist on giving the best damn doctor in this place all the hypochondriacs is beyond me, but really if you'd just –"

"Save the racket for the tennis court, chief. Believe it or not, what I need to say has nothing to do with you."

Perry snarled, not very pleased at being interrupted mid-rant. "Then why are you here?"

"I have information concerning your ex-wife."

"Which is…?"

"There's going to be a big medical conference held in Buffalo this week; a conference that all board members are required to attend. Seeing as how she's on the board as well, I'm just gonna go ahead and have you pass that information on to her."

"This week as in Sunday? As in tomorrow? Bob, are you insane!? That'd be short notice even for me, let alone Jordan! You know how much self-care products that woman needs to pack just for a weekend at her mothers?"

"Hey, champ – what has two thumbs and doesn't give a crap? Bob Kelso. How ya' doin'."

Perry bared his teeth as Kelso just walked away, a self satisfied smirk spread across his face.

--

The phone conversation had gone over pretty much how Dr. Cox had expected it to. "Jordan," he murmured angrily through clenched teeth. "I'm just the messenger. If you want someone to blame, go yell at Bobbo."

"I'm just saying! You're at the hospital all week and the nanny's taking a vacation of her own, which means that I have to leave tonight, just so I have enough time to drop Jack off at my mother's before going to the airport. Not to mention the packing I have to cram into what – one, maybe two suitcases? Do you have any idea how stressed I am right now?"

"Gee, I don't know. Maybe, if you'd like, we can switch. I can leave this hell hole for a week, get on a plane with a ticket bought with your money instead of mine, and you can stay here and take care of sick people while I'm gone. Whaddya say?"

She had hung up the phone after that, but called back just five minutes later in order for Dr. Cox to say goodbye to Jack. Even Jordan wasn't so cruel that she wouldn't allow Perry as a father to tell his son goodbye.

After giving the three year old boy instructions on how to deal with the forever aging she-devil that was his grandma, Perry hung up the phone. He was feeling ten times more exhausted than he felt from only an hour earlier, and was suddenly more than grateful that Newbie had gone ahead and bought him that extra coffee from before.

Right. Newbie.

Dr. Cox jumped down from the counter he'd been sitting on and made his way to the on-call room. JD still had about thirty or so minutes left of sleep, and Perry himself was long over due for a break of his own.

Pushing open the door quietly as to not to wake the kid up, Dr. Cox fell noiselessly onto the first empty bed he laid eyes on. It wasn't until he turned on his side did he realize that JD was currently occupying the bed right across from his own.

He hadn't realized how exhausted Newbie must've been as well, but considering the doctor now lay sprawled out on the mattress with his sneakers still on, well…it was more or less a dead give away.

"Wiped out too, eh kiddo?" Dr. Cox let the words hang in the air, getting ready to close his eyes as well. Or at least he would have, if it wasn't for his pager deciding to pick that exact moment in time to beep at him obnoxiously. "Ah, damn it!" he whisper-shouted at the intrusive piece of machinery. "What now!?"

Perry stood from his place on the bed to march angrily out of the on-call room. He closed the door just in time to miss JD curl in on himself, snuggling closer to the pillow as his thumb found its way to his mouth.

--

Carla made her way to the on-call room in what Elliot would most likely describe as, "The other side of the tracks up-bringing fashion." Basically, she was pissed.

While it was true that Sacred Heart wasn't nearly as busy as it had been in the past, they were still busy enough that when a doctor was, let's say, ignoring every single one of his pages and not returning for the rest of his shift, it tended to cause some problems.

Because it was Bambi she was dealing with here, she chose to cut him some slack. He was in the middle of an extremely long shift during an extremely long day. He was known to be a rather heavy sleeper, so she didn't really mind sparing him an extra ten minutes or so. But when ten minutes turned to twenty, and twenty turned to thirty, and doctors kept harassing her every two seconds as to who was taking care of Dorian's patients if he was off in la-la-land somewhere - as if his slacking off was her fault – the nurse's blood began to boil. She was a busy woman, and just because she and JD were friends didn't mean he could just continue on sleeping and get away with it scott free.

Upon reaching the on-call room, she swung the door open and flicked on the light, getting ready to give the young doctor an earful. She stopped though, when she noticed his peculiar position on the bed.

The brunette was curled into a tight ball, his face burrowed into the pillow as if the object itself held all the warmth in the world. But what really had her eyes popping was where his thumb was; tucked away neatly inside his mouth. He sucked on it lightly, blissfully unaware of the world around him.

It would've been funnier, cuter even, if she wasn't already mad at him. Still, the site before her seemed to bring her frustration to a more reasonable level, as she walked over and shook his shoulder to wake him rather than slamming the door as she had planned on doing earlier.

"Bambi," she said softly. The brunette only stirred, a small whimper escaping his lips in the process. She sighed, shaking his shoulder just a little harder. "JD," she tried again. "Come on. Your break ended thirty minutes ago. It's time to get up now."

Finally, the young doctor opened his eyes. He looked at her and squinted, confusion etched in his features.

"Come on, Bambi. I know it's been a long day, but it's time to get up."

JD brought his hands to his eyes and rubbed fiercely, doing his best to shoo away the sleep. When he pulled them down, he continued to stare up at her; head cocked to the side, blue eyes wide and curious. The next words out of his mouth had Carla's jaw dropping straight to the floor.

"…Bambi lady?"

A/N: Well, there it is! I know this was more of a summary of what's been going on for the past month and a peek inside of our favorite character's minds, but I felt it was necessary before moving on to the bigger stuff. I can at least promise you that the plot will pick up sooner rather than later (or so I like to think. lol) Oh! Just one more thing before I go. I'm going to be gone for about a week, but I plan on writing while I'm on the road, so by the time I get back, I hope to have a lot more for you guys. Anyway, I really hope you all enjoyed it. :) Until next time!