The Scattered Pieces of Me -Chapter 3
The first week passes by in a blur. After two whole days without leaving the hospital, Sam lets Bobby have his way and finds a motel room nearby. When Sam climbs into the Impala, Dean’s presence is palpable, so intense he feels his heart shatter in his chest, and it hurts so damn much.
In the motel room, Sam takes a shower and collapses on the bed. He sleeps for a couple of hours, but is soon awaken by a nightmare he tries his best not to remember. He grabs something to eat from a vending machine and goes straight back to the hospital. Bobby isn’t happy with him, grumbles about keeping his strength up and being in this for the long haul. Sam doesn’t really listen. He breathes better when he can see Dean, when he can touch him.
Two or three days later -Sam doesn’t really know how long, he's having trouble keeping track of time as it passes- someone from the hospital’s administration asks to meet him because, apparently, the fees for Dean’s hospitalization have already surpassed the credit card limit. Bobby steps up then and introduces himself as Dean’s uncle, tells Sam not to worry, he’ll take care of it.
Sam can’t even conceive that money is an issue here, not when his brother is holding onto life by a thread. When Bobby comes back one hour later and tells him that the insurance has been taken care of, he nods and doesn't give it another thought.
Five days after Dean’s admittance, a nurse unwraps the gauze bandage wrapped around his head. Sam is there, leaning against the wall. In his mind, the shock of his brother’s forehead splitting against the stone foundation, small drops of blood flying in all directions, keeps repeating itself.
Sam almost bursts out crying when he sees that Dean’s head had been shaved completely. He swallows hard and clenches his jaw. His brother’s body has been violated in every way possible. His hair is such a big part of his personality. Sam remembers him as a teenager, spending several minutes in front of the mirror, rearranging his spikes until he was satisfied.
The forehead injury is swollen and angry looking, closed not with stitches, but with surgical metal pins. There is another closed wound, cleaner looking, going from behind the right ear to the middle of the back of the skull. That’s where they had to perform the surgery to remove a big blood clot. It’s closed with metal pins as well. There is an almost unnoticeable blond dusting of fine hair overing Dean’s scalp. Sam wonders if the hair is ever going to grow back on the wounds.
::: :::
After a week, he and Bobby have settled into a kind of routine. Bobby has a room in the same motel, ten minutes away from the hospital. Whenever Sam leaves to take a shower and sleep a little, Bobby stays with Dean. Bobby’s supposed to be looking for a healer, but Sam isn't sure the old hunter is putting any serious effort into it. His friend looks older and defeated these days. Whenever he’s in the room with Dean, he gets that faraway look that speaks of defeat and absence of hope.
Sam does his best to ignore it. He does some research on his own, reads tons of medical articles about brain injuries, concentrating on the success stories and looking for a doctor who’s worked miracles, if someone like that even exists.
At the two week mark, on August twenty-fourth, Dr. Murphy decides to try to take Dean off the respirator. His vital signs are good and his brain activity, although it hasn’t improved, hasn’t gotten any worse either. It’s a delicate procedure. Sam agrees only after asking every question he can think of, with the assurance that at the first sign that his brother is in respiratory distress, they’ll put him back on the machine.
He doesn’t get to stay with Dean for the procedure though. The nurse sends him back to the waiting room where he drinks bad coffee while Bobby tries to calm him down. It takes two hours, since the oxygen flow has to be decreased gradually before they even try to remove the tube. When Dr. Murphy finally comes back, Sam is nothing more than a bundle of nerves.
“He’s okay,” Murphy tells him immediately, raising his hands in a calming gesture. “He’s doing good. We’re monitoring his oxygen level. He has a mask on for now but it’s only a precaution. He’s breathing on his own.”
“Wow,” Sam laughs nervously. “It’s… it’s a good sign, right?”
Murphy looks around. They’re alone in the waiting room. “Can we sit? There are some things we need to talk about.”
Sam agrees nervously and almost trips over his feet in his haste to take a seat. Bobby is quiet, almost brooding.
“First of all,” Murphy says, rubbing at his forehead in a tired gesture, “I’m thinking about moving Dean to our neurological care unit. He’s stable enough not to require constant monitoring and there's a section of the unit especially prepared for comatose patients. It’s quieter than the ICU and it will be easier for you to be with Dean. The nursing staff is accustomed to patients like your brother. He’ll receive the best of care.”
“Yeah, okay,” Sam agrees. That's good, right? If Dean doesn’t need to stay in the intensive care unit anymore, it has to be good, somehow.
“We’ll wait twenty-four hours to be sure his breathing doesn't deteriorate, then I’ll arrange the transfer. It’s only a floor down from here.”
“Okay.”
“That said, Sam… You have to realize that even if Dean is breathing on his own, it doesn’t really mean he’s doing better. I’m not being pessimistic here and it’s good that you keep some hope. But everything about your brother’s condition suggests that the coma is deep. The brain damage is still impossible to assess and will continue to be unless he wakes up, which seems highly unlikely. Even if he does wake up, he will most likely be severely disabled. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Sam nods. He does. He gets it, really. He doesn’t bring up some of the medical stories he’s read, in which patients in similar conditions to Dean’s have woken up and now lead more or less normal lives. It would sound pathetic, Sam knows, but there's nothing to stop him from keeping those stories in mind.
“So,” Bobby asks, playing with his hat. “You sayin’ we’re in this for the long haul.”
“Yes, definitely. Sam, Mr.Smith, as I understand it, you two are Dean’s only family. You both have to take care of yourselves and take some time away from the hospital occasionally. It might seem cruel, but life goes on. Sam, I know your brother and you are not from here, so maybe in a couple of weeks we could arrange a medical transfer for Dean to be closer to home. That way you could still go on with your life and-“
Sam bursts out laughing then. He can’t help himself. It comes out desperate and scary. “We… we don’t have a home. We travel around the country, for our work.”
“Well, maybe you boys can locate close to Sioux Falls,” Bobby suggests.
Maybe. Still. Sam shrugs. Moving in with Bobby, finding work and visiting Dean once a day at the hospital in Sioux Falls sounds too much like something he could do for months, years. It sounds like it could become permanent. He feels sick.
“Anyway,” Dr. Murphy continues when he sees Sam's reaction. “We’re heading more toward a chronic coma than an acute one and I’m sorry to tell you this, but those are the facts.”
“Thank you doctor,” Bobby says.
“Can I go back to Dean now?”
Sam is already standing up, ready to go.
“Of course,” the doctor looks at him with too much compassion in his eyes. Sam kind of wants to punch it off his face. Strange, that’s the kind of thing that’s more Dean's style, or so Sam had always thought..
Sam guesses he must have changed a lot since his brother came to get him at Stanford. All of his then dreams seem futile and childlike now. He can’t help but see his whole 'running away from his family to have a normal life' phase as a child’s temper tantrum.
What if he’d stayed? How different would things be now?
Somehow, he'd thought Dean would look different without the respirator, more… alive. He doesn’t. The oxygen mask hides most of his face and his skin still has that waxy tint that makes him look like some kind of life-size doll.
Sam sits close to Dean. “Bet it feels good to be rid of that tube down your throat, right? It’s a step, Dean. You’re gonna come back, right? There are still a whole lot of monsters out there just waiting for you to gank them.”
Dean’s chest rises on his own. It makes Sam feel better, somehow.
::: :::
Peoria, September 1st
Dean’s private room on the third floor is quieter and bigger than his ICU cubicle. Sam doesn’t know how Bobby managed it, but when he asks the old man simply says, “Think you Winchesters invented credit card fraud?” If Sam had had more energy, he would have insisted on more than that, but he’s trying so hard to keep it together for Dean he can’t bring himself to care too much.
His own finances are getting dangerously low. He's had to move to another motel because it’s never wise to stay too long when paying with a fraudulent credit card. The new motel is cheaper, the kind where most of the rooms are paid for by the hour. As long as he can sleep a little and take a shower, Sam doesn’t care. Toward the end of Dean’s third week in the coma, though, Sam has to leave him with Bobby for two nights in a row while he goes out of town to play pool and darts to make a little money. He gets enough to last two more weeks, if he’s careful.
Sam doesn’t want to think of a more permanent solution, because it would imply Dean staying unconscious for an undetermined period of time, and he’s not ready to face that.
He may never be ready.
On the morning of September 1st, Bobby arrives at the hospital shortly after ten. Sam is helping the nurse finish Dean’s sponge bath. He wants to learn how to do it correctly. So far, the nursing team is doing an amazing job, but Sam always feels better when he’s the one taking care of Dean’s needs.
“Care for a cup of caffeine?” Bobby asks in a strange, almost ceremonial way.
He wants to talk, Sam can feel it.
He finishes washing Dean’s face carefully and follows the old hunter to the cafeteria. They sit in a quiet corner. Faint, annoying instrumental music is playing feebly.
“So, what do you want to talk about?” Sam asks up front because he’s everything but patient these days, unless he’s in Dean’s room.
“Have you thought about it, Sam? Moving to Sioux Falls when Dean is well enough to travel?”
Sam looks down at his Styrofoam cup, at the tepid, too clear beverage. “I don’t… I’m not sure about that, Bobby.”
Bobby nods, like he had been expecting that answer. He gets a small pamphlet out of his pocket.
“Found this last week in the ICU waiting room. This couple, they have a house five minutes away from the hospital and they rent rooms at a very cheap rate for people who have family members who are patients here. They have a small charity foundation, sometin’ like that. Anyway, I went to check it out yesterday and, well… It’s a big house, very clean, and there's a common kitchen and common bathroom and the couple seems nice.”
“Oh.” Sam takes the pamphlet. The price of a room for a month is what he would pay for a standard motel room for three days. It’s a good solution. “Do they have a room available?”
“As a matter of fact, yes, a couple. They’re ready to have you if you want.”
“Of course. It’s… wow, that would save a lot of money.”
Then, Sam realizes what Bobby is doing, what he really wants to talk about, and he feels guilty for not figuring it out before.
“You’re going back to Sioux Falls,” he murmurs.
A deep blush colors Bobby’s bearded cheeks. “Sam, I… there are some things I have to take care of and um… Hell, supernatural creatures are still out there, demon activity is reaching a peak and there's the Salvage yard and…”
“No, it’s okay, Bobby. I understand. Don’t… No need to apologize. You can’t give up everything and just… stay here, waiting for something to happen.”
“I wish you’d consider moving Dean to Sioux Falls.”
Sam feels sick at the thought, going through life as Bobby’s fellow hunter and visiting his comatose brother once every now and then. They’re not there yet, he doesn’t want to stop hoping. He can’t.
Bobby seems to understand what’s going through Sam’s mind. He clears his throat and readjusts his cap on his head. “Love this boy like a son. Breaks my heart to see him like this,” he grumbles into his coffee cup.
“You’ll keep trying, right?”
“Trying what?”
“To find something that could help him. With everything we know, Bobby, I can’t believe we-“
“I’ll keep trying,” Bobby cuts him short, a little too quickly for Sam’s liking.
The conversation tires him, forces his mind to go places he doesn’t want to. He claps his hands together and empties the rest of his cup. “I’ll go visit this house. You’ll stay with Dean in the meanwhile, right?”
“Yeah,” Bobby sighs. “Okay. Sam?”
“What?”
“I’ll come back in a couple of weeks. I won’t let you carry this on your own.”
Sam slowly stands up, stretching his limbs. “You've already helped so much, Bobby. You don’t have to feel guilty. Besides, I don’t mind… Carrying this, like you say. Dean did it all his life, keeping us together, taking care of dad and me, trying to stop us from killing each other. It’s only fair that I get to do the same for him now.”
And just like that, Sam feels something lighten in his chest, like he’d spent his life blinded by his own frustration and selfishness. This feels like redemption, in a way. He smiles. Bobby frowns.
“I’ll get him through this,” Sam whispers.
Bobby stays silent. He looks defeated. Sam ignores it.
Chapter 4
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