The Rain It Fell, The Story Went On (3/4)
Title: The Rain It Fell, The Story Went On (3/4)
Author: crazybeagle
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen, hurt/comfort/angst
Characters: Dean, Sam, John and Tessa (sort of….), minor OC's.
Spoilers: None as long as you've seen season 2!
Summary: One obnoxious Big Bad with some unexpected tricks up its sleeve equals one hunt gone pretty far south for the Winchesters. They're both badly hurt, but Dean's got it decidedly worse this time around, and feeling pretty belligerent about it. Because hospitals? Not exactly his thing. Not after the last time. Set after "In My Time of Dying," written for a"lonely prompt"for the hoodietime community by doylescordy, found here. Title from "Salina" by the Avett Brothers.
He didn't know it was physically possible for an ER to be this quiet. But this one was. Silent, almost. He heard the TV-something about a forensics team poring over a very decomposed corpse, but he couldn't focus on it long-and almost nothing else. He wished the curtains that created the boundaries of his little "room" weren't shut; it'd be nice to see somebody, anybody. He heard footsteps only twice over what must've been two hours, and snatches of conversation only once. An Asian nurse had come in to administer morphine to the epidural, but other than that, he'd seen nobody. And it was starting to get to him.
Really get to him.
He tried going to sleep, he really did. And he probably could have, too, easily, once the morphine kicked in. It wasn't like there was anything else to do, except sit here by himself and contemplate the fact that he couldn't fucking breathe…
He shut his eyes, but they kept popping open again, as each time a sudden, stupid, completely irrational thought kept jolting him back awake.
If I fall asleep, what if I don't wake up?
Which, again, was stupid.
Completely and totally stupid. He'd been told to go to sleep, and they'd left him alone here, so things couldn't be that bad anymore. He obviously wasn't totally out of the woods here, but he'd woken up, hadn't he? And while Walsh had been oh-so-helpful, he thought Jodie probably would have told him if he wasn't going to be okay.
He wondered if Sam was being left to rot with shitty daytime television too. Probably not, seeing as the hospital staff would probably be thinking that they'd as good as poisoned him with the transfusion, and were trying to avoid a lawsuit. Or a dead patient. If they were, though, Dean would get up out of this stupid bed and kick their asses himself.
…Or give it a noble try, anyways.
Eh, Jodie's probably fussing over him right now, along with the entire female hospital staff... He figured he didn't need to worry too much, but just because he didn't need to didn't mean he wasn't. Last time this had happened, Sam had been pretty much green in the face, shivering and puking a lot for two weeks straight, too wiped out to do much besides sleep.
And if the same thing happened now and Sam got himself referred to a specialist, there was no way in hell they were skipping out on it this time, even if Dean had to drag him there kicking and screaming.
But as completely on-edge as Dean felt right now, creating a sensation like acid churning in the pit of his stomach, he couldn't fight sleep for very long. Whether he liked it or not, he was completely exhausted, not to mention nauseated by the feeling of his ribs all grinding together every time the machines pumped some air into him. So eventually, he fell asleep or passed out, one way or the other…
…only to find himself no longer in the bed, but standing at the end of a long, shadowy hallway. Weirdly enough, it was a hospital hallway, but not this hospital. He wasn't sure he could remember specifically where-maybe he could have remembered if he wasn't, well, asleep-but he'd definitely been here before. And somehow he knew that it wasn't a good thing, being here now. It was a very, very bad thing…
He looked down at himself. All the tubes and wires and shit? Gone. He had a shirt on and everything. No mask on his face, either. And surprisingly, he felt okay. The pain was there, to be sure, but really distant and easy to ignore. One of the perks of dreaming, I guess… Something was definitely not right here, but for now, he'd go with it. Besides, as he confirmed when he pinched his arm, hard, and nothing happened, it wasn't going to be easy waking himself up when he was drugged, hurt, and probably more passed out than asleep. He felt his pulse quicken as he glanced around the eerily empty hallway, but come on, what pathetic idiot can't survive their own dreams?
And that was when he felt the cold. It started as a sudden, jarring, freezing gust of air slamming into his back, washing over him. He shivered, and tried to turn to see what it was, but he was paralyzed, his feet apparently rooted to the floor. He gulped.
Ooookay, waking up would be really nice right about now…
The cold seeped through his skin and settled in his chest, where it throbbed sickeningly. And with each throb came another, even more bizarre feeling…a bit like radio static pulsing through his veins. He looked down at his hands; they flickered in and out of existence, vanishing for a millisecond before reappearing solid as ever.
Just like a damn ghost…
He swallowed back bile. Maybe the shock of it was what finally un-froze him, he didn't know. But suddenly he was free, he could move again, and he was running. He didn't know what he was running from or where he was running to, but he was running all right. And the cold was following him.
He'd nearly reached the end of the hall-luckily, this didn't seem to be one of those freaky endless-hallway-type-deals that was pretty much standard stuff in freaky dreams-and was about to round the corner when, for no reason at all, he tripped, his entire body smacking the floor painfully. And then he was being forcibly flipped over onto his back, and when he looked up, there was this…thing, hovering over him. It looked vaguely like a woman, or rather a woman's ghost, with long, stringy hair obscuring her face and shrouded in strips of transparent grayish cloth. But then he noticed the empty eye sockets, the grizzly exposed teeth, and no nose. She-it-was slowly reaching for him, almost lovingly, with impossibly long-fingered hands, as though prepared to wrap them around his throat. He scrambled backwards a little, only to be knocked flat again by a sudden surge of blinding pain from his ribs, and then-
He was in a hospital bed once more. Still hooked to a billion monitors, but there was no tube in his throat, no pain, and no sign of the ghost-woman-thing. And there was Sam, thank God, face a little battered but otherwise fine, holding some coffee cups and leaning in the doorway. And there was Dad, similarly bruised up but perfectly okay, standing by his bed, looking a little sad and saying words Dean couldn't hear.
And then Dad was falling.
And then he was dead, sprawled out on the floor. Sam dropped the coffee; it splattered everywhere.
No, Dean tried to say. No,no, no.
Not again.
Wake up, he thought. God, wake up, wake UP, wake-
He lunged forward in the bed, trying to get to Dad, knowing how this had already ended and knowing there wasn't a damn thing in the world he could do to stop it now, but that didn't stop him.
What did stop him, though, was a crushing feeling like somebody had swung a meat tenderizer at his chest, a sudden and complete inability to breathe, and then a pair of hands pushing him down. His vision blacked out.
When he opened his eyes, he could breathe again-or as much as anybody could with a tube down their throat-but pain made him lightheaded, and through the cold, dazzling brightness that met his eyes and had temporarily blinded him, he could make out the face of Dr. Walsh, bending over him and issuing sharp reprimands that Dean could barely hear or be bothered to comprehend. Stuff don't like Don't move…aggravating the problem…almost tore the tubing out…could collapse your lung again… Despite that, he looked worried. Dean dimly realized that it was Walsh who must have pushed him back down. Blinking a few times and looking around him, he saw Jodie fussing with the machines, which were beep-beep-beeping like crazy. A moment later he felt a tissue blotting at his stinging eyes-also Jodie's doing.
"…And don't fight the machines," Walsh was saying. "Stop trying to breathe on your own. You'll pass out."
Dean hadn't even realized he'd been doing this, but immediately complied, letting go of the air he'd been holding in. For once the mechanical in-out-in-out of the machine was a relief. Everything hurt less that way.
"Good," Walsh said, one eye on the vitals monitor. "Very good. Now if you'll cooperate with us here, we were about to move you to the ICU."
Dean's eyes shifted to Jodie, hoping she'd answer the question that he couldn't ask and that Walsh probably wouldn't answer. She nodded slightly, eyes kind. "Let's get you to your brother," she said.
The supposedly "double-occupancy" room was stuffy, dimly lit, and pretty damn dreary. Ah, the joys of lacking health insurance… Well, at least it beat one of those huge multi-patient rooms where five or six patients would be piled in at a time. Dean and Sam both had been stuffed into those several times over the years. The curtains of its single small window on the far wall were drawn tightly, and against the rightmost wall near the window was Sam, one arm heavily bandaged almost past the elbow with a soft cast on top and an IV in place in the other, dozing off in his bed. At the sound of Dean's bed being wheeled into the room, Sam stirred, blinking a few times before he actually saw what was going on. When he saw Dean, his face lit up.
"Dean!" he exclaimed, sitting up eagerly. "Hey!"
Dean smiled, tube sticking out of his mouth or no. Kid just looked so damn happy to see him…
But-aw, shit, Sammy-he looked terrible. Sick, definitely. Sweaty. Bruised-looking eyes that he was clearly having a hard time keeping open. But what worried him most was the absence of any of the red splotchiness around the cheekbones that would normally indicate that he was sick-his face had an odd grayish pallor to it, the veins there and on his arms all blue and showing up too clearly through translucent skin.
Blood loss. Nasty blood loss.
But based on the way Sam was looking at him now, his grin fading and eyes widening, morphing to an expression of shocked concern, Dean assumed he must look even worse, with the tubes and the bruises and the machines and the freaking mask…
…Great.
He grabbed for the dry-erase board that they had finally given him and quickly wrote,
Hey Sammy
"Hey…" Sam attempted a grin but was still staring at Dean as though his guts were suddenly on the outside of his body. "Are you ok-I mean, how're you-" he spluttered.
Dean rolled his eyes.
I'm good.
Sam eyed the various machines that Walsh and Jodie were situating next to Dean's bed, now moved against the wall by Sam's own. He looked back at Dean skeptically.
Promise, Dean added to the board. And of course, with perfect timing, right then was when he got hit with a massive wave of exhaustion. Clearly the "sleep" he'd gotten earlier had actually been, well, just about as restful as getting chased down an empty hallway by a floating skeleton hag… He spent the next several minutes, while Walsh was explaining a few things to Sam-something about overnight observation, we'll discuss further treatment options tomorrow if all goes smoothly-fighting to keep his eyes open. The pull of sleep was so completely enticing, his brain and awareness all so fuzzy around the edges, that it was getting harder and harder to remember that if he fell asleep, he might just get chased all over again…
…right into Dad's body.
Walsh and Jodie had gone by the time that sobering thought had jolted him back awake, back to the tiny room, the beeping monitors, and Sam.
"Are you tired?" Sam asked him abruptly. He looked like he had a zillion and one questions on his tongue, but he had the tact for the time being to just deal with the immediate situation and let the rest slide. Even if the immediate situation was one he didn't want to deal with.
Dean paused, and shook his head.
Sam didn't look like he was buying it, but didn't comment, and continued, "Uh, the doctor said you were asleep and then you woke up and almost hurt yourself thrashing around everywhere."
Dean made no move to confirm or deny it. Sam clearly took that as a yes and frowned.
"So what happened?" Sam winced as he spoke, the fingers of his left hand absently reaching over to tug at the edges of the bandages near the crook of his right elbow. "Bad dream or something? I know morphine'll do that, but I thought they weren't giving you any of that except through the epidural thing…"
Dean stared at the ugly floral wallpaper on the opposite wall, his stomach churning.
"Dean, seriously. Are you okay?" He sounded all-out worried now.
Despite Sam's good intentions, Dean was halfway tempted to use the board to clearly communicate fuck off, but his hands were shaking too badly. He had to settle for a tired we're-not-discussing-this-right-now glare.
Sam glowered right back. Yup, drugs and pain usually made him grumpy, nothing new there... "Come on," he growled. "Don't be like that. Look, I've spent all day with everybody hardly telling me a damn thing about what's up with you, if you're okay. And I just want to know," he said, exasperated, "if you're okay or not. You don't have to talk-"
Dean raised an eyebrow.
"…alright, bad choice of words there," he said with a bit of a sheepish smile. "But please, please, just yes or no. Are you okay?" He was sitting up straight now, head inclined towards Dean in anticipation.
Dean nodded slowly. Because really, what else could he do?
And it was sort of true, anyway. "Okay" was a relative term, but Sam was here now, so he'd say he was doing a hell of a lot better now than he was before. And he knew the question wasn't to assess literal okayness-which he was clearly not so much-as it was are-you-in-immediate-danger-of-dropping-dead or is-there-any-permanent-damage-I-should-know-about or even are-you-okay-in-a-nonphysical-sense.
Sam shut his eyes, shoulders sagging a bit, relief palpable in his pallid face. "Good," he said. A second later, he asked. "Okay, uh, how are you feeling, then?"
At that, Dean wanted to laugh. He just looked at Sam, incredulous, amused.
Sam rubbed at his own eyes, obviously not the only one trying to keep exhaustion at bay. "Okay, dumb question…so…You need anything?"
Dean shook his head.
Yeah, to get this stupid mask off so I can swallow and eat and actually talk to you, for starters…and then getting the hell out of here, that'd be nice too.
But then something occurred to him that he did need, and as long as he wasn't going to be able to fight sleep any longer, he was more terrified than he'd admit to himself of doing it in another sterilized, silent hospital room.
He pointed at Sam, and then moved the fingers and thumb of one hand together over and over. Universal gesture for talk.
Sam blinked. "You want me to talk?"
Dean nodded.
He laughed a little uncomfortably. "Okay…about what?"
The hell if I care, he thought, but on a sudden inspiration, he pointed at Sam again, and then gave a one-handed thumbs-up.
"What, you wanna know if I'm okay?" Sam asked.
Dean nodded, and gestured talk once more.
"Uh, yeah," he said with a shrug, but eyeing the cast on his arm distastefully. "I guess. Both forearm bones got broken and obviously it bled a lot, but I probably got off easy seeing as it was a Black Dog."
Dean pinched the thumb and index finger of one hand together as though he was holding a needle, and mimed sewing up the skin of the other arm. What about stitches?
Sam sighed. "Yeah, there was a lot of that…Don't remember much of it, though. Kinda nasty. There was some white stuff coming out….pretty sure that could've been, y'know, fat or something, but…" he wrinkled his nose. "Didn't ask."
Dean felt slightly ill at that. TMI, Sammy. Well, if there was anything that was going to keep him awake now, it was worry. He reached for the board once more.
And the transfusion thing?
Sam shrugged. "Same as last time, really. I just kind of feel like crap, is all." He sounded annoyed. "And also like last time, I don't think they're gonna let me go until they've eliminated every single possibility and then write it off as a machine defect or more likely try to cart me off to some specialist we can't afford…" he started fiddling with the bandage again. "Either way, we're looking at several days, at least. And that's just for me. They haven't even told me how long you'll be here…they were saying something about surgery, maybe?" he added anxiously.
Dean shot him another not-now glare.
"Okay, okay," Sam relented. "Sorry."
Dean picked up the marker again. It was getting harder and harder to make his fingers work properly; damn he was tired…
If they want you to go to a specialist we're going this time
Sam rolled his eyes. He looked mutinous, a little petulant, and all in all Dean was reminded of a five-year-old Sammy not getting his way. "Dean, come on-"
Putting my foot down on this I mean it
"Look, they were talking about contacting some doctor at Johns Hopkins University. That's all the way in Baltimore, Dean."
Don't care
A couple extra tanks of gas were worth it if it meant keeping this from happening again.
Sam looked thoughtful, and then hesitated before speaking again, suddenly apprehensive. "What if this isn't something they can fix?" he asked slowly. "What if…what if it's just another weird side effect of the freaky psychic thing?"
Unconsciously, Dean bit down a little on the tube. Shit.
You have to save him, or you have to kill him…
No, no, no.
He wasn't gonna deal with that right now. No way in hell.
He met Sam's gaze steadily, and wrote,
And what if it isn't
Sam looked away.
Don't be an idiot
And when Sam read that, and he pulled one spectacular bitchface, Dean knew he'd won, despite Sam's obvious displeasure at having his own words from the night before used against him.
"Fine," he snapped.
Dean was about to write something along the lines of I win on the board, but a sudden, grinding throb from his ribs just about floored him, and he squeezed the marker hard in a fist, his eyes screwing themselves shut.
"Dean!"
Even more panic.
The beeping sped up.
Without opening his eyes, Dean gave one shaky thumbs-up and mimed talk once more.
"Should I get somebody?"
Dean shook his head tightly.
Talk.
"Uh…okay, okay. Um, well everybody's being ridiculously nice to me because they think I'm gonna sue them for this, 'cause I warned them what was gonna happen if they tried to give me a transfusion…like, uh, this one nurse, her name's Libby or Livvy or something, I don't remember, keeps trying to offer me banana pudding…" he was babbling, voice laced with anxiety, and it was abundantly clear that the talking-to-distract-somebody-from-pain thing was not something that came nearly so naturally to Sam as it did to Dean. Dean appreciated the effort anyway, and was able to relax a little bit, his back no longer arcing off the bed against that terrible grinding feeling. Didn't mean it didn't hurt like shit still, but Sam's nervous rambling provided a sort of barrier between him and the worst of it, and gave him something else to focus on.
"…And if we were anybody but, y'know, us, we probably could sue them, and win, so they're right to be freaked out…even though that Walsh guy still doesn't seem all that friendly, which is weird considering I think he's the head doctor here…He told me the police were coming to ask us some questions, and apparently we're gonna owe a trespassing fine. Hopefully Bobby won't have to pay it. Talked to him on the phone, by the way, and he'll be here as soon as he can…"
And then everything faded out into warm, inviting nothingness…
And he was suddenly thrown headlong into the empty hallway again.
…And there was the hag, a horrible smile twisting her face…
And Dean ran. He ran and ran, but she was reaching for him, she was pulling him backwards, her cold, bony arms wrapping themselves around his throat, once more almost tenderly.
He punched and kicked, but all he did was flail uselessly against her, his feet suspended off the ground.
You should not be here, breathed a dry, crackly voice into his ear, making all the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end. You were meant to come with me…You know this… The voice sounded a bit sad, regretful rather than cruel, but no less terrifying.
He tried to gasp out a no, hands scrabbling to free his throat,but he couldn't talk, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't-
"Dean!"
A familiar voice-Sam's-jarred him, brought him back. One of his wrists was being grabbed and dragged roughly away from his throat, and held fast when he tried to reach back up.
"Dean, come on, wake up-" Dean felt his wrist being squeezed almost painfully. "Snap out of it, you're okay, it's just me…"
It was only then Dean realized there was nothing choking him anymore, and he let his other hand drop, opening his eyes blearily.
He saw the hazy outline of Sam bending over him, and as his vision cleared, he saw all the terror he was feeling reflected in his brother's eyes, hair hanging in the kid's face and injured arm pressed against his chest.
Sam didn't let go of his wrist. "You need to calm down, okay?" he said firmly. "The doctors are gonna come back in if you don't."
And he tried, he did, but oh God he could still feel those freezing fingers choking the life out of him…
"Dean." He felt his wrist being released, then a hand on his shoulder. "You're safe, okay? Whatever you saw, it can't follow you here, alright? Promise." Sam's eyes were wide, clearly searching Dean's face for some hint of understanding or acknowledgement.
Dean felt himself blinking rapidly, not realizing he'd been tearing up-again, for Pete's sake-until he felt his cheeks get wet and hot. To be honest, he was too shaken to be that embarrassed when Sam used the corner of a sheet to dry his face before replacing his hand on Dean's shoulder.
And not caring that he was probably giving Sam golden blackmail material for the rest of his life-or not caring much, anyways-he reached up and found Sam's hand, holding on like his life depended on it, to assure himself that this was all real-Sam, this room, even all these tubes-and that the thing after him wasn't.
Even if he had a stomach-turning feeling that he knew exactly what she was.
But whether he'd really had a Reaper after him that day, like Sam had told him, or not, it wasn't like she was here, now.
But somehow it wasn't that simple to convince himself of what he knew in his head to be true…
Without withdrawing his hand, Sam sat himself carefully down on the edge of Dean's bed. He said nothing for a long time, but stared at the tiled floor, chewing on his lip, looking tired, scared, and so damned young…the haunted look of somebody who'd already seen too much in too few years. And while Dean hated that he was certainly contributing to the problem-hell, he'd always been a part of the problem-it was all he could do to lie still and let Sam be his lifeline.
At long last, Sam turned back towards him and asked, "You wanna tell me what you saw?" I can help.
Dean shook his head slightly. No, you can't.
Sam shrugged. "Okay, just thought, you know, it might help." He paused. "You know, I've been seeing weird shit too. Morphine, y'know..." he made a valiant attempt at a smile. "I saw giant bugs crawling in through the window when I first woke up, if that helps…" But by the tone of his voice, Dean knew that Sam knew it wasn't going to help, and Sam didn't need Dean to tell him that what Dean had seen had been a hell of a lot worse than that. Not when Dad's death had been hanging over their heads like a stifling black cloud going on two months now.
Didn't mean he didn't appreciate the effort. He squeezed Sam's hand. Thanks anyway.
Sam nodded. Yeah.
To be continued.
Part Four
Part Two Part One