SPN FIC - And Miles To Go Before I Sleep
(Original art by adinarj)
Missing stuff from "Faith" - Sam's on the Internet for 3 days, looking for answers, but what's going on with Dean? (Yep, it's Poor!Woobie!Dean time. Hugs are needed.)
And that was pathetic. Being stuck here, tethered to the bed, tethered to the wall, being stared at like that old baboon he and Sam had seen at the zoo in Cleveland when Sam was eight and he was twelve. If he had any sense, he thought, he'd have Sam sneak the Glock in instead of sacks of fries, and he'd end this quick. Punch his own clock, because that was how it ought to be, one, two, three and out of here.
Length: 5,500 words
Pairings: None
Rating: PG for language
Spoilers: up through "Faith"
And Miles To Go Before I Sleep
By Carol Davis
The reports of Dean Winchester’s death were greatly exaggerated. Unfortunately, no one seemed to know that. Or they didn’t believe it.
He had crawled back to consciousness maybe an hour ago, down in the ER, surrounded by strangers in scrubs who were calling him “Kevin.” None of that was anything particularly new; he’d come to in hospitals a couple of times before, and “Kevin” was probably the name Sam had given the admissions nurse. What was new was the intense looks on the faces of all the people in scrubs.
And the fact that one of them had defibrillator paddles in his hands.
You usin’ that on me? drifted through Dean’s mind.
He tried to tell the guy to back off, that he didn’t need another jolt like…like something…but they were fussing with him, giving him oxygen, instructing him to lie still.
I’m okay. Just lemme up. Lemme…
His vision grayed out a little and he could hear the scrubs people talking to each other but the words they were saying didn’t add up to anything.
Sam? Where…
An hour of that. At least it seemed like an hour. Or maybe it seemed like six. He gave up trying to say anything and settled for lying there quietly. That seemed to please the scrubs people, who went on fussing and talking to each other in babbledyspeak. One of them tucked a warm blanket around him, and that felt good, because his body was one big ache seasoned with weird burning sensations in his back and his ass.
Feel like…
Feel like oatmeal.
It wasn’t until they were rolling him down the hall and he was looking at a long procession of fluorescent light fixtures on the ceiling that he started to be able to connect the dots, remember what had happened. Memory arrived in chunks and not in any particular order. The old, abandoned house. Water on the floor. Sam standing with him out by the Impala.
Water on the floor.
And that big ugly sonofabitching rawhead that’d been after those kids.
“Shit,” he mumbled.
The nurse walking alongside him looked at him. Surprised, but not a lot.
I freakin’ tasered myself. Now, ain’t that just perfect.
He made his mouth form words. The lip movements were easy; making sound come out was tougher. “Where…Sam,” he rasped.
“Hmm?” the nurse said.
“Brother.”
“Oh.” She gestured to the orderly pushing Dean’s bed, and the procession of light fixtures stopped as she looked around. “I’m not sure. He might be out at the desk, finishing up the paperwork. Don’t worry - we’ll let him know where you are.”
“Where.” That wasn’t much more than a whisper.
“We’re taking you up to the cardiac floor.”
Cardiac?
He could feel his face scrunch up. That made the nurse pat his arm as they started rolling down the hall again. “They’ll take good care of you up there. And we’ll send your brother up as soon as he’s done at the desk.”
She stayed with him as far as the elevator, then patted his arm again and smiled. There was something annoyingly odd about the smile, something he couldn’t interpret before the doors closed and he was left looking at a sign warning medical personnel not to discuss patients in the elevator. When the doors opened again, he was zipped along underneath five more light fixtures.
“Here we are,” the orderly said.
They wanted him to slide from the ER bed into one set up in the corner next to a big, bright window.
Daytime. Was dark out when…
He tried to slide. Figured it was no big deal - brace hands, elbows, feet, swing on over. But when he tried to lever his upper body up away from the bed, it wouldn’t go. Just plain wouldn’t go. The orderly and the new smiling nurse who’d joined him told Dean that that was all right, not to worry about it, they’d be glad to do the work for him. And they did, with what seemed like remarkably little effort. Like he was a little kid. Like he weighed nothing. He winced when their maneuvering made his johnny hike up, leaving the whole bottom half of him hanging out in the breeze, but the nurse didn’t seem to notice the wincing or the nakedness. She simply got pillows into place, tucked the johnny down, and pulled the covers up over him. Once the orderly had taken the ER bed away, she plugged in Dean’s cardiac monitor and IV pump, checked the flow, then drew the bedside table over so that he could reach what had been placed on top of it - a pink plastic cup of water, a box of Kleenex, a little portable TV and its remote.
That seemed to finish things off. She took a step away, but Dean caught hold of her arm before she could get past his reach. “Why…”
“Hmm?”
“Cardiac floor? Why am I here?”
The smile changed, and the new one made him think uh-oh. “You don’t know?” she asked.
If I knew, why the hell would I ask you? Dean shifted his head, slowly, side to side.
“You had a heart attack, Mr. Berkovitz.”
Okay, so no more “Kevin.” Maybe they were only on a first-name basis with the patients down below, in the ER. He looked past her and for the first time saw the man in the bed opposite his. He couldn’t have been much older than Dad, late fifties maybe. But his face was drawn, tight, and damn, it was gray.
Taser came back to him. And hundred thousand volts. “I want this rawhead extra frickin’ crispy.”
But I’m…
“Here, take some of this.” She had the pink cup in her hand. Held it so he could sip some of the water through the straw.
His long-range forecast was written all over her face.
“Oh,” he said.
“You let us know anything we can do to make you more comfortable. My name is Amy. I’ll be here until three.”
“Am I dying?”
She made little circles with her mouth, like a fish, then worked it back into a smile. “Your doctor should be around soon. He’ll explain -“
“Amy,” Dean said.
The smile got a little more forced. “There’s…always a chance…”
“How long?”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
***
The doctor was a black dude. Young-ish, for a heart specialist. Or maybe it was that Dean wanted somebody older, somebody who looked like they’d seen it all and knew what they were talking about. This guy’s face went plastic the second he walked through the door. To pay him back, Dean forgot his name the second after he said it.
He heard the words massive and damage and nothing.
“So I’m toast.”
Dr. No-name blinked at him. “I -“
“Am I, or not?”
“I - yes.”
More words - pain and comfortable and tired. Sleep. And back later.
They hung in the air like the little dialogue balloons in comic books. Drifted around a little, bumping into each other. The doctor smiled at him, then dipped his head once in what he must have intended as a goodbye and walked out the door. Rapid steps, very purposeful. Other patients to see, other people to lower the boom on.
Left alone to ponder the vast mysteries of life, Dean picked up the TV remote and switched on the little set. Decent reception, but the same crappy selection of channels as the motel he and Sam had stayed at last night.
Last…? No, the night before last. Because last night I friggin’ fried myself.
And finally, there was Sam.
***
Sam didn’t buy the “that’s it, that’s all, there ain’t no more” routine. Not for a second. “Watch me,” he told his brother.
Yeah, watch him.
And listen to him buttonholing people out in the hallway. Asking for the name of the head of cardiology. For the names of the best cardiologists in the state. The best hospital. How the hell they were going to pay for the best of anything with phony insurance and phony credit didn’t seem to occur to him. Or maybe he didn’t care. He had the same stubborn streak they all had, the three of them, the Winchester men. Once he’d decided which windmill to tilt at, he wasn’t going to be discouraged. Not by people in scrubs, not by Dean, not by anybody.
He left during the first commercial break in “Oprah” with a murmured, “I’ll be back, man. Get some rest.”
That was a gold-plated pile of crap. Rest? Rest for what? To store up enough energy to die?
Dean watched the rest of “Oprah” and a little bit of “Dr. Phil,” then switched off the TV. It was past four, and Amy was gone; taking her place was Abby, who came in to tidy things and check his vitals and have a good, long, commiserating look at the dying 27-year-old.
At 4:30 they brought him ham steak, mashed potatoes and green beans, with applesauce and decaf coffee on the side.
At 5:10 Abby came back in and clucked at him for not eating.
At 5:32 they took the dinner tray away.
Night had fallen by then. He was in the wrong position to see much out the window other than a few lights from another wing of the hospital. In fact, with the daylight gone, the window acted pretty much like a mirror, reflecting things he didn’t want to look at. Himself, for instance.
A little after six, three people came to see the guy in the other bed. They brought magazines and a little bouquet of flowers in a white vase that they placed on the windowsill. Abby drew the curtain around Dean’s bed, but not until after the gray guy’s family had had a good look at him. They all smiled and nodded.
His upper arm, the right one, was mottled with bruises from the automatic blood pressure cuff they’d had on him in the ER. He poked at them experimentally, but they didn’t hurt.
A little before 10:00 he turned the TV on again, in time for “ER.”
The TV doctors used the defibrillator on somebody. Yelled “Clear!” Idly, Dean wondered if he had bounced off the bed like the patient on TV.
The local news had been on for a few minutes when another nurse came in. This one had dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and wore a blue-and-white flowered scrub top over blue scrub pants. “I’m Andrea,” she said, and reached for his hand to take his pulse. Her palm was warm against the back of his wrist. When she’d finished, she asked him, “Can I get you anything?”
Andrea.
Amy, Abby, Andrea. His mouth twitched and a laugh bubbled out. Not much of one, but a laugh.
Yeah, this was funny. This was hi-freaking-larious.
***
Not ever - not even after going three or four days with only a few hours’ sleep, had he felt this tired. Somebody, somehow, had pulled a stopper in him and drained out every last bit of energy. Lifting the TV remote was like hoisting a concrete block. Lifting his head just plain didn’t happen. They hadn’t put a catheter in him, which was a blessing, but it presented a whole new problem: how to get out of bed and cross what looked like eight miles of floor to the bathroom before he sprung a massive leak. The problem got larger when he remembered that the IV pump and the cardiac monitor were plugged into the wall in a place he couldn’t reach without hunkering down alongside the bed.
He sat looking at the call button at the end of its long plastic-coated cord for a while before he pushed it.
Andrea answered it, johnny-on-the-spot. “What do you need?”
“Bathroom,” he murmured.
“Do you want the bedpan?”
I would rather have you shoot me between the eyes, he thought. But you could put the bedpan behind my head so the mess doesn’t hit the wall.
“Bathroom. Please.”
She was sturdier than she looked - maybe she had to be. And she was quick, efficient. She unplugged the IV pump and coiled the cord around it, disconnected his cardiac monitor, and helped him sit up with his legs dangling over the side of the bed. They’d put weird socks on him, stretchy ones with non-skid circles on the soles. He sat looking at them for a minute, then hitched himself forward a little bit. Andrea slung an arm around him and pretty much on her own hoisted him to his feet.
The room did a very interesting pivot around him, like he was standing on a turntable.
Peeing, he thought when he crawled back under the covers, had never been quite that much of an adventure. Not even during the bladder infection ten years ago, when the stuff dribbling out of him had burned like battery acid.
Andrea straightened the covers for him and asked quietly, “Are you warm enough?”
“I guess.”
“All right, then. Don’t be afraid to call.”
He didn’t sleep. When he was still awake at three in the morning, she brought him a pill and a cup of water.
“Will I -“ he said, and couldn’t get the rest of the words out.
“Hmm?”
“When it happens. Will I…”
She was no kid. Mid-thirties, maybe. How many patients she’d had, how many she’d lost, he couldn’t guess. But enough, apparently. “You’ll probably just go to sleep.”
She looked at him like that was supposed to be a comfort. He decided it was, because there’d be no pain. No crushing sensation in his chest, no panic. Nobody in scrubs rushing around, getting ready to zap him with the defibrillator and yell “Clear!” Just sleep.
Maybe he’d be dreaming about something good when it happened. About home, where he’d had a room full of books and toys, and a new baby brother.
About Mom.
He lay there for a few minutes, feeling the medication make fuzz out of his thoughts. From far away he could hear Andrea talking to someone out in the hallway. About a child. A baby. She had a baby.
***
The sun was shining into his face when he struggled out of the soupy fog of the sleeping pill. A short and very muscular black guy he hadn’t seen before was at his bedside taking his vitals, nodding when he realized Dean was awake. Or at least something that would pass for “awake.” He left without doing anything about the window blinds and Dean lay there squinting until somebody else came in.
“Hey,” Sam’s voice said.
Sam fixed the blinds, and finally Dean could see, although his vision was still wonky, as if he was looking through cheesecloth. Sam stood by the side of the bed and considered things, looking worried and unsatisfied. He took the gray plastic lid off the breakfast plate sitting next to the little TV and scowled at what he found underneath.
“That’s s’posed to be for me,” Dean muttered.
“It’s not very hot.”
“Hospital, Sam. Not the Four Seasons.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“D’you find someplace to stay?”
Sam went on making faces at the food. “Yeah. It’s down the street like a block and a half. Not bad. I guess they, you know, cater to relatives of patients. God, man, this stuff looks like toxic waste. Do you want me to bring you something?”
“Root beer.”
Sam heard only the “beer” part and cranked up a protest, then got the rest of it. “Oh. Yeah. Sure. But I meant food.”
“No.”
“You should have something to eat.”
Sam’s hands were bunched up. Another minute and he’d start pacing. He hadn’t slept, that was obvious, and he was nothing but nervous energy on legs. But better that than if he went in the other direction. If Sam started to cry, Dean thought, he was going to lose it.
Just…lose it. All of it.
“I found some stuff on the Internet,” Sam said.
His voice was getting louder. How he’d even gotten in here, when visiting hours weren’t until after lunch, Dean didn’t know. Maybe he’d sweet-talked somebody. Or snuck up the stairs. Or…hell, it didn’t matter. But he was getting louder, and the guy in the bed across the room was getting twitchy because of the noise. Wasn’t right, making the poor bastard uncomfortable.
“Sam,” Dean said. “Maybe you should go.”
“What?”
“Go. So I can rest.”
“Oh.” Sam stopped his almost-pacing and looked long and hard at his brother. “Sure. Okay. I’ll come back later. Bring you that root beer.”
“Perfect.”
***
The conclusion is here: http://ficwriter1966.livejournal.com/1762.html