How i Died S2 E06: Just Fine

Transcript: How i Died S2 E06: Just Fine

This transcript is adapted from the episode’s original script, so the final audio may differ slightly.

[Vacuum and a woman whistling to herself. Police sirens in the background. Intro]

PhD: How are you today, Jonathan.

Jon: I’m fine.

PhD: Just ’fine’?

Jon: I’m good. What do you want me to say?

PhD: I want you to say how you’re actually doing. This doesn’t need to be like passing a coworker in a hallway. You can talk to me.

Jon: You and I don’t have a real therapist relationship. You’re not interested in how I am. You’re interested in making sure I’m not a danger to others.

PhD: And that means I can’t ask you how you are?

Jon: No. It just means that my answer will always be "I’m fine."

[Intro]

PhD: Did you remember to bring the tapes with you?

Jon: I left them on my desk. I can go back and get them quickly.

PhD: It’s fine. Bring them after.

Jon: Are you sure? I can run down.

PhD: And burn through half of our session? I don’t think so.

Jon: You caught me.

PhD: How’s your recovery going? I’d imagine you "running down" to the lab isn’t quite possible yet. I half expected to see you using the cane.

Jon: I don’t need it.

PhD: The pain doesn’t interfere with your work?

Jon: It might make me a little more grouchy here or there.

PhD: Fran mentioned to me that you’ve been more antagonistic than you were when you started. Do you think the pain is the reason?

Jon: While I’d love to be able to hide behind being shot as a reason to be more combative toward Crowley, I’m thinking THIS situation has more of a correlation than my hip hurting.

PhD: And how are things with doctor Amelia? I heard you two were dating.

Jon: You heard wrong.

PhD: Interesting.

Jon: Why is that interesting?

PhD: Do you not want people to know you were dating?

Jon: Can you stop answering my question with a question?

PhD: It’s interesting because a few months ago, it seemed like you moving into her house after your injury was the talk of the hospital.

Jon: People gossip too damn much around here.

PhD: Small town mentality. How was your time staying with her?

Jon: It was-

PhD: Don’t say it was fine.

Jon: It was… Nice, I guess.

PhD: Did you enjoy being taken care of?

Jon: What kind of question is that?

PhD: Okay then. Did you enjoy being around someone who didn’t look at you like you scared them?

Jon: Wow.

PhD: What does wow mean?

Jon: Is that why you think I wanted to be around her?

PhD: I never said that.

Jon: Amelia was interesting. Like she didn’t belong here.

PhD: And now that you’ve gotten to know her, gotten to see her real life, you don’t think she’s as interesting?

Jon: She was…

PhD: And you’re using the past tense.

Jon: You see right through me, huh?

PhD: I’m not trying to see through you, Jonathan. I’m trying to see *you*. And you won’t let me.

Jon: I have no interest in letting you "see me" then. If this is how it’s going to be.

PhD: I don’t see you as a monster, either, Jonathan. If that’s any comfort.

Jon: I don’t care what people thought of me after it happened.

PhD: You should say what "it" is. Don’t hide it. But besides, I’m sure coming back to work and knowing that people viewed you differently couldn’t be easy. So I want you to know that I don’t judge you based on what you did. I’m only here to make sure you’re alright now.

Jon: I’m. Fine.

PhD: Do you regret stabbing Curtis?

Jon: I’ve told you. If I didn’t… Kill Curtis, he would have killed me. So no, I don’t regret protecting myself and not dying.

PhD: Could you not have incapacitated him and taken the gun if you already had the upper hand.

Jon: I don’t have any police or military training. I was fighting for my life.

PhD: But still, you’d imagine once you were safe, the adrenaline would wear off.

Jon: You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like.

PhD: Tell me what it was like then.

Jon: No.

PhD: Why not?

Jon: Because I don’t want to relive it.

PhD: Repressing it isn’t going to help you get over it.

Jon: I don’t need to get over it.

PhD: That’s interesting. Why not?

Jon: Because. (Long pause, shifting) Because I can use it to make sure it never happens again.

PhD: Make sure what never happens again? Getting hurt? Everyone gets hurt at some point.

Jon: No. So I can notice the warning signs for someone as deranged as Curtis.

PhD: (coming to a conclusion) That’s new… You feel bad for not stopping him before it escalated too far…

Jon: I had an idea before, but I ignored it.

PhD: You feel guilty that it went that far. Not that you killed him. (Pause) Jonathan, you said only a moment ago that you never had police or military training. It’s not your job to prevent tragedy.

Jon: I know. I’m on the wrong side.

PhD: Is that why Crowley feels like you overstep so often? Are you trying to prevent people from dying?

Jon: You’re so good at this stuff, you know that? (Long pause again). Is the silence supposed to make me talk?

PhD: An old interview tactic…

[Beeper]

Jon: I have to go.

PhD: Right now?

Jon: Crowley has a body for me.

PhD: Fine. Our time is almost up anyway. We’ll try to pick up where we left off next time. I feel like we were finally making progress.

Curtis: JON!

Jon: Curtis. What do you want?

Curtis: Sheriff Fran-Fran came down to the lab.

Jon: I know. She paged me.

Curtis: She left after. I was coming to get, coming to get you.

Jon: What’s going on with you?

Curtis: Nothing. Why?

Jon: Are you aware that you’re stuttering?

Curtis: I’m not. I’m FINE!

Jon: Geez. Seems to be a trigger word today.

Curtis: I was trying to be helpful. I’ve been trying to be helpful, but you won’t let me.

Jon: I don’t have time for this today, Curtis. Can you just go away?

Curtis: NO! I need you to listen to me. Need you to talk to me. Where are you going?

Jon: Crowley asked that I meet her outside, by the delivery entrance.

Curtis: Why?

Jon: I have no idea. But she didn’t tell you in the page, did she?

Curtis: She didn’t… Oh, you’re funny.

[Loud beeping of a crane. The crane sets a dumpster down.]

Jon: Mendez? What’s up. Why am I out here?

Mendez: Hey, Doc. How ya doing?

Jon: Fine. Where’s Crowley?

Mendez: How’s therapy going?

Jon: God damn. Does everyone know?

Mendez: I didn’t know it was a secret.

Jon: It’s going as well as any other intervention.

Mendez: Heh. That sounds about right. An intervention for what, though?

Curtis: I don’t think you have a problem, Jon.

Jon: It’s been one of those mornings. Why isn’t Crowley here? She paged me.

Mendez: She’s coming.

Jon: Okay, so…

Curtis: Did you hear me, Jon? I don’t think you have a problem.

Mendez: We’ve got a body for you.

Jon: I’m… not seeing a body. I’m seeing. What is that?

Mendez: A wet vac.

Jon: Okay. You’re standing next to a vacuum in an empty parking bay. Where’s the body?

Mendez: It’s in the wet vac.

Jon: Stuffed in…?

Mendez: Heh. No.

Curtis: (whiney) Jonnnnnnnn.

Mendez: This is one of the weirdest deaths I’ve seen in a while.

Jon: I’m gonna need more than that.

Mendez: Just wait.

Jon: I’ve got things to do.

Mendez: We sprung you from jail early. You don’t have shit right now.

Jon: (sarcastic) The suspense is killing me.

Mendez: Alright, so, we’ve arrested a woman named Caroline Becket. Her husband went missing a few months ago, and she doesn’t know what happened. We went to check the house for anything odd.

Jon: This is weird. Crowley never voluntarily tells me the back story.

Mendez: It’ll help on this one. Trust me.

Curtis: Jon! Talk to me. Hey. Hey, Jon.

Mendez: Well, the house is clean and shiny. Cleanest house I’ve ever seen. I’m talking smelling like it was covered in Fabreze.

Jon: Alright…

Mendez: Anyways, we go look out her back yard and find one of those industrial dumpsters and this.

[Vaccuum slides]

Mendez: Careful.

Jon: Jesus christ.

Curtis: What? What’s it smell like?

Jon: That’s… Blood in there. And… What is that?

Mendez: Looks like skin to me. But You’re the expert.

Jon: Fucking hell…

Mendez: Right? Oh! Here it comes.

Jon: What?

[Big crane machine beeping and bringing in a crate.]

Jon: What the fuck is that?

Mendez: The other part of the body.

Jon: Are you… Giddy? What is happening right now?

Mendez: This is definitely one of the cooler ways to blow the city budget.

Curtis: And this is how you fucking assholes spend your day.

[The crane drops off a giant dumpster.]

Jon: Whay in the world?

Mendez: Hey, boss! That looked fun.

Crowley: Love using these.

Jon: They let you drive that?

Crowley: Borrowed it from my ex. Construction job, remember?

Jon: Hmmm.

Curtis: There’s no one else here…

Jon: Why did you bring it here?

Mendez: Ta-da! The rest of the body is somewhere in this dumpster.

Jon: But why bring it here? We usually go TO the crime scenes.

Crowley: Because we can’t *usually* bring the crime scenes to us. Come on, Spacer. I thought you’d be happy to have evidence hand-delivered.

Mendez: I think you just wanted to drive the crane.

Crowley: That too.

Jon: So, what? We empty is out?

Crowley: I was thinking dumpster diving.

Jon: Isn’t the body just like… Chopped up and put in the bags?

Crowley: You didn’t tell him?

Mendez: I was working on it.

Jon: Tell me what?

Curtis: Are you sure there’s a body in there?

Mendez: Miss Becket spilled the beans.

Jon: What do you mean?

Crowley: She told us the whole story.

Jon: So you caught her. What do you need me for?

Crowley: We have no way of verifying anything she told us without some actual proof. DNA match, or even enough parts to make a body.

Jon: Okay, enough. Stop being coy and tell me what’s going on.

Crowley: Mendez, you take it. I’ll unhook the crane.

Mendez: Okay, so this past weekend, Caroline Becket submitted a missing person’s report for her husband, Hammond.

Curtis: Hammond Becket…

Mendez: We had no hard evidence to go on. Nobody saw him leave. Neither of them got into a fight – at least at first. We looked around and turned up with nada.

Curtis: Hammond, are you there?

Mendez: So, a couple days later we go to check out the house and get a better statement. Like I said, we showed up and the house was pristine. I’m talking-

Jon: Yeah, Fabreze, I got it.

Mendez: You really are grumpy today.

Crowley: (yelling) That’s every day!

Jon: Just keep going…

Mendez: Anyway. House was clean and I got suspicious.

Crowley: (yelling) I got suspicious.

Mendez: You wanna tell the story?

Crowley: Grumble grumble.

Mendez: I got suspicious. Looked like they might be doing some renovations around the house. Why was it so clean? I asked to have a look around, and the entire house was like that – spotless. We go out back to check the yard, and it was a huge wreck. I’m talking looking like a city dump.

Crowley: A city dump.

Jon: Are you two always like this?

Mendez: Yes.

Crowley: No.

Curtis: Jon. I’m not seeing anyone… I think they left Hammond at the scene. Or maybe he already moved on? Hammond! Hammond!

Mendez: So the back yard was a mess. We found this dumpster, we found the vaccuum.

Crowley: (walking back up) She had power tools, piping, soldering equipment, a fucking broken furnace. It was like slaughterhouse five.

Mendez: What is that?

Crowley: A book.

Curtis: Jon. Tell them there’s nobody here. TELL THEM. No, I’ll tell them. Hey! Why can’t they hear me? I’m right here.

Jon: Jesus christ. Okay so she chopped up the body and threw it in the dumpster. I’m not seeing the problem.

Crowley: Sucked.

Jon: Excuse me?

Crowley: Mendez, you take too damn long to tell the details.

Mendez: It’s all yours.

Crowley: We noticed the vacuum and go to arrest Caroline. Before the cuffs are even on her, she’s giving us a whole dissertation on what happened.

Mendez: So her husband was a contractor who recently lost his job.

Crowley: Here we go.

Mendez: He started storing extra supplies in their yard, then it moved into the house, ended up taking over. And this lady was a neat freak. As you can tell. She said he was destroying their house and this that and the other. Ended up telling us how she was so angry one day when she got home that she just started cleaning. She went into some frenzy trace bullshit about just cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, everywhere. Scrubbing anything and everything.

Crowley: Frankly, I don’t believe her.

Mendez: She said she sort of "woke up" the next day with a fuzzy memory of what happened. She thought her and her husband got into a fight and he left. So she filed the report. But, after she reported it, she went back home and it all came back to her.

Jon: Man… Can you just give me the cliff notes? Maybe it’s better if I *don’t* know all the case details beforehand.

Crowley: Told you.

Mendez: Short story is: She remembers spraying her husband with bleach and other chemicals. He passes out. She scrubs and scrapes like crazy. Ends up vacuuming with this. The bitch –

Crowley: Hey.

Mendez: Sorry. The lady ends up scraping off all of her husband’s skin. Sucking up the blood and scraps in the vacuum and then shredding him up into a million pieces with the power tools before going back and cleaning the house.

Curtis: How could someone do that to someone else? Ha. Haha. HAHAHAHA THAT’S CRAZY.

Crowley: I didn’t believe her, but we opened one bag and found a finger. So there must be more.

Jon: Wow…

Mendez: So yeah. I took the full story, got her processed as Fran went to get the crane. And now we’re here.

Jon: Thanks for the recap.

Crowley: I don’t buy it, but she’s sticking to her story – claiming it was a blackout or insanity or whatever she can to get off easy. She’s got an appointment with your favorite person tomorrow morning, but after talking to her, I figure she can pull of crazy well.

Jon: And you think she’s lying.

Crowley: I think you can tell us one way or the other what actually happened. Am I wrong?

Jon: No. I can get samples of skin to see if it was scratched off. And if we find a solid limb I should be able to note bruise patterns from the vacuum hose sucking. Or even lungs to see what he breathed in.

Mendez: Excellent. We came to the right place.

Crowley: So time to suit up.

Jon: I’ll need to run to my lab. Be right back.

Mendez: Haha, I can’t wait to see this.

Crowley: What are you laughing for? You’re gonna need a suit, too.

Mendez: What? What for?

Jon: I’ll bring an extra.

Mendez: Son of a bitch.

[Jon goes inside]

Jon: Curtis, for fuck’s sake – can you just stop talking?

Curtis: Me? What the fuck is going on with YOU? Or with them? Why couldn’t they hear me?

Jon: I’m not engaging with you. You’re a ghost. Stop trying to get attention.

Curtis: Very funny. Ahahahaha. I’m a valuable member of this team, but you’re not letting me help.

Jon: Wow… You forgot you were dead, didn’t you? This is the worst I’ve ever seen it.

Curtis: I’m just kidding. Just being funny. Just, just, just. I know what’s going on.

Jon: Curtis, you need to move on. You’re losing it by sticking around here for so long.

Curtis: No YOU ARE. I’m not going anywhere.

Jon: You’re going to keep getting worse. This is what happens. I saw it with my mom. I’ve seen it in other ghosts. You can’t just exist in between worlds forever.

Curtis: I’m not – not – not leaving.

Jon: You’re completely unhinged.

Curtis: I thought you said I was crazy before I died.

Jon: And now look at you.

Curtis: You, you don’t care about me. You don’t care about him – about him.

Jon: Him?

[Jon suits up]

Curtis: Howard!

Jon: Do you mean Hammond? The dead husband?

Curtis: Yes! You don’t care about him or me or anyone, anyone, ANYONE!

Jon: I care about what happened to Hammond.

Curtis: Because you want to solve the puzzle.

Jon: Because I want to help them.

Curtis: And why don’t you want to help me? HUH?!

Jon: Am I supposed to want to help you now, Curtis? After all you’ve done to me?

Curtis: All I’ve done to YOU? It’s your job to help me. It’s your, your responsibility.

Jon: Because I did this? Because I was the one who fucking killed you? Because I’m sick of people asking me if I feel bad. I don’t feel bad. You ATTACKED me. You took it too far. I reacted to save my life, because I think I can help more people by being alive than you can could have. So if one of us had to die, I’m glad it wasn’t me. So tell me, why should I care about you? Why? Why is it my responsibility to help you?

Curtis: (calm) Because you’re the only one who can. (Long pause)

[Jon starts walking again.]

Curtis: I don’t want to move on. What if – what if – what if there’s nothing after? What if I just cease to exist completely?

Jon: Death isn’t that bad. I see death constantly. Figuratively and literally. And it’s not fucking fair. People like Crowley are affected by it, and I’m sure it makes a scar for everyone, but it’s different for me. I take on the burdens, the fears, the trauma of every single person who’s died and comes into my lab.

Curtis: Except for – except for me.

Jon: Except for you. I can’t do that for you. I can’t handle it.

Curtis: I don’t want to be dead…

Jon: You should have thought about that before you attacked me.

[Jon goes back outside]

Crowley: Talking to yourself again?

Jon: Just dictating on the old recorder…

Crowley: I thought you stopped that.

Jon: Kim said it’s therapeutic.

Crowley: Oh good. So you can record your cases AND your personal blog. Just hurry it up next time.

Jon: I took me a minute to find the suits.

Crowley: Mhm. Mendez?

Mendez: Ugh… Fine.

Crowley: I am going to enjoy this.

Jon: Sadist.

Crowley: Consider it payback for all the shit you’ve put me in over the last year, Spacer.

Jon: Fitting. Eric, I’ll get in and hand you what I find.

Mendez: This is not how I pictured this day going…

Jon: Me neither…