Scrubs: 10 Most Heartbreaking Moments
4. Ben's Diagnosis
When Jordan's brother and Dr. Cox's best friend was admitted to Sacred Heart with a wooden board nailed to his hand, there was no reason to believe he would be leaving with a diagnosis of Leukemia. However, when his hand wouldn't stop bleeding, he underwent further tests.
Throughout the rest of the episode, despite Dr. Kelso's firm stance that mistakes simply didn't happen at Sacred Heart, Elliott told the wrong patient that she was pregnant, and Turk almost removed the testicle of a man who was supposed to have an appendectomy. When Ben's results came back and they weren't what JD wanted to see, he knew it had to be a mistake.
Halfway through the episode, when JD went to tell Ben the news he decided against it and went to have the test results double checked. The rest of the episode is nothing but a figment of JD's imagination as he comes to the realisation that just because he likes Ben and wants the result to be a mistake, doesn't mean it will be.
Ben was one of the most popular patients in Scrubs history, and seeing the mistake snatched from under JD as he had to tell his new friend he had cancer was devastating. Usually, the 'it was all a dream' sequence is insulting to fans, but in this instance it was utilised to perfection.