SPN fic: Room 3135
Title: Room 3135
Category: Gen; outsiderpov
Words: ~1500
Warnings: none
Summary: Written for this prompt on ohsam's comment fic meme: There are a few things you know about the new guy. He is unreasonably tall, his arms are in bandages, and he doesn't talk much. Which isn't a rare thing in the psych ward. There seems to be a constant balance in here between people who will talk your ear off, and those who have run out of words altogether. But you do know his name is Sammy. That's what his brother calls him when he brings him in, and then when he visits. Every day.
A/N: It’s got to be painfully obvious I’ve only ever been on the visitor’s side of the hospital. So please don’t be offended by any inaccuracies, or let me know so I can fix them? I don’t even know! Also, beware that this was written entirely during a particularly dull lunch hour. Beware!
Each patient in the Ward gets exactly the same good treatment, from all the staff, but that doesn’t mean that nobody picks favourites. It’s easy to get attached to some of the people here, when they (most all of them) have such sad and lonely eyes. Sure, some scream and rage and throw up bitterness more often than they do bile, and some flinch and hide inside themselves so deep down that Amy wonders how lost they must become, but she can’t despise any of them. She’s seen every one of them in their most lucid of moments, when the world contracts around them and they understand the weight of where they are. That’s a time when no one can hide their central humanity--it’s utterly exposed, raw, and perfect.
Most of the staff on the third floor adore Mrs. Watkins, a gentle woman that can’t quite stop herself from rambling on and on, in circles and onto leaping tangents, rarely making sense but always smiling so softly. But Amy’s favourite is new to the Ward, and to be honest, she’s not really sure why she’s taken with him so. He’s quiet--none of the staff have ever coaxed a single word from his pinched mouth--and most days he seems scared spitless, eyes tracking through empty air and flinching in the summer’s breeze. When he first arrived, word around the nurses desk for three days was all about him, the newcomer who could have been so handsome, if only...
See, his face is gorgeous--even though it’s starved and stricken, lost and lonely--but his hands? Amy can’t stop herself from wondering how they could ever have been so thoroughly mutilated, like they were fed through a thresher, or shattered into a million pieces under the full weight of a moving car, or beaten into a pulp on unyielding concrete. Splints crawl around his fingers like little vines, and his wrists (both of them, and that has got to be a trouble) are welded into place by white plaster casts signed with just one name, repeated over and over and over: Dean.
The first time she saw him, room 3135, long-term care, she was changing the sheets on his bed and he was sitting in a chair, shaking his head, staring at the corner.
“See you’ve got a fan, there,” she had said, “to sign your casts all up like that.” But he hadn’t said anything back--one of the quiet ones, she had noted--and he hadn’t done anything except for shiver and rub his cast against his face.
As she had turned to leave, she had dropped the basket of his dirty linens.
“Oh, sorry!” she had said, as she crouched down to gather up the scattered laundry. When she stood back up, he had been there, looming, holding a pillowcase she had missed. He had handed it to her without taking his eyes off of the corner of the room. He was tall, and he could have stood so proud, if he had maybe led a different life. Like her brother Jeffrey, tall as a flagpole and just as proud, when he had waved goodbye at the airport. Sharp, in his military uniform. Amy’s mother said, and kept on saying, until that Ending on the operating table, “That’s how you remember him, Amy. Tall and proud. That’s who he really is--even when he looks small and broken, inside he’s still your handsome brother.”
So maybe that’s why Amy keeps finding herself drawn to the tall and shrunken, handsome and ruined, brave and terrified man in room 3135--before the End, her brother had looked the same way.
He even has the same visiting schedule Jeffrey had had. Every single day, a man--tall, yet not so tall--flirts halfheartedly past the nurses station and walks into room 3135 like there’s both nowhere and anywhere else he’d rather be, and he stays in that room as long as the staff’ll let him; like there’s not a single other person to hold his attention.
The Visitor talks a lot. Amy knows that she isn’t supposed to listen in, but if she catches a few words here or there while she’s bringing in fresh linens, or wiping down the windows so the sun shines in clear, it’s not like its her fault. That’s how she knows her favourite patient’s name at all--she overhears so many quiet and down-lilted conversations (and even though the patient never says a word, it still seems a conversation) that she feels she knows a lot about him.
“Hey, Sammy,” Amy hears as she’s cleaning out the bathroom. That’s how it always starts. The Visitor with green eyes and freckles will walk in, all of the sudden, and say exactly that. He’s yet to hear a single line back, but still he talks as if he might.
The grime around the sink is just a little sticky today. She scrubs quietly, gently, wringing the soap out of the soft-with-use sponge over the worst of the filthy sink and letting it warm back up in the bucket of hot, sudsy water. The Visitor’s voice is a steady rumble, the motor of a car idling, waiting, waiting.
“So I went to a meeting today. Nothing special, and I didn’t stay for long. Bit too touchy-feely, if you ask me, but still.” Amy’s just waiting for the soap she spread over the grime to soak in, so it’s not really her fault if she happens to peak through the crack in the doorway, is it? The Visitor is leaning towards Sammy, hands woven between his legs, eyes searching for something--maybe some spark of who Sammy used to be. A lot of the visitors look at the patients like that. “Thought you’d be proud, though,” the Visitor continues. “And you are, aren’t you? Sure as shit should be. I did not suffer through all that sharing and caring for nothing, you know.” Sammy, head listing to the side, starts humming something Amy can’t quite place, but it pulls such a smile from the Visitor that she knows she’s missing something. Probably intruding on something, too. “Atta boy, Sammy. Knew you had some taste in you. Couldn’t have taught you all wrong, could I have?”
It’s a vaguely familiar melody, and both she and the Visitor listen for a short while. Amy’s never heard Sammy before, after all--it’s only natural she should be curious at what sounds he thinks important enough make.
The bathroom shines by the time she makes her exit, white porcelain gleaming even after she turns the lights off, just from the narrow beam through the crack in the doorway. The Visitor is still listening to Sammy as she’s backing out the door; listening with a patient crick in his neck, soft crows feet rippled out from his smile.
It still surprises her how, every day, the Visitor sticks around until after her shift is over, hanging on to the very last minute of visiting hours. Or at least she assumes he does--her average day is done a half hour before the end of the visiting day. But she’s run late today, a few patients more than usual having made messes beyond what she normally has to clean.
On her way back to the utility closet, car limping along on only two working wheels, Amy pauses outside Sammy’s door, next to Sharon. She’s seen the Visitor arrive what seems like a thousand times, but she’s never seen him leaving.
“I’m sorry, sir, but visiting hours are over,” Sharon says, and she actually does sound regretful; odd, or maybe not, that this pair can move her to compassion when few others can. “You’ll need to let Sam get his rest, now.”
The Visitor’s smile is tight and forced as he turns to Sam, slapping a hand down on his knee. “Well, Sammy, gotta let you get your beauty rest, now don’t I.”
Wordless as he ever is, and maybe ever will be, Sam holds out his left arm and waits patiently. The Visitor searches his pocket, frowning. “Thought I...”
“Here,” Amy says. They look lost and alone but for each other, and that’s so familiar to Amy she might cry. “You can have my marker.” She pulls the Sharpie off the clipboard on her cart, hands it over, snatches the brief yet genuine (albeit pained) smile she gets in return and tucks it deep inside her memory. The Visitor carefully pulls Sam’s arm into the grasp of his own, finds a rare white space, and signs Dean. Carefully. And when he’s done, he doesn’t let go; not right away. The Visitor--Dean--holds Sam’s arm, stares at the plaster cast, and says, “Tomorrow, Sammy. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He says it with a child’s eyes that can’t imagine a longer wait.
Amy moves her cart out of the doorway as Dean walks through, head bent and arms drooping at his side. Sammy’s eyes watch Dean until he’s gone. Amy wonders if Jeffrey had watched her leaving with the same expression--complete trust and boundless hope in something she couldn’t ever comprehend.
The cart squeaks as she wheels it down the hall. When she gets home, she knows she’s going to pull out a bottle of wine, that photo of her and Jeffrey at Camp Christopher when they were both eleven, and blast Apocalyptica until her eardrums burst. Last thing they heard together before they carted him away; out of the room and away.
Enter Sandman. That’s what Sammy had been humming. Enter Sandman.
Category: Gen; outsiderpov
Words: ~1500
Warnings: none
Summary: Written for this prompt on ohsam's comment fic meme: There are a few things you know about the new guy. He is unreasonably tall, his arms are in bandages, and he doesn't talk much. Which isn't a rare thing in the psych ward. There seems to be a constant balance in here between people who will talk your ear off, and those who have run out of words altogether. But you do know his name is Sammy. That's what his brother calls him when he brings him in, and then when he visits. Every day.
A/N: It’s got to be painfully obvious I’ve only ever been on the visitor’s side of the hospital. So please don’t be offended by any inaccuracies, or let me know so I can fix them? I don’t even know! Also, beware that this was written entirely during a particularly dull lunch hour. Beware!
Each patient in the Ward gets exactly the same good treatment, from all the staff, but that doesn’t mean that nobody picks favourites. It’s easy to get attached to some of the people here, when they (most all of them) have such sad and lonely eyes. Sure, some scream and rage and throw up bitterness more often than they do bile, and some flinch and hide inside themselves so deep down that Amy wonders how lost they must become, but she can’t despise any of them. She’s seen every one of them in their most lucid of moments, when the world contracts around them and they understand the weight of where they are. That’s a time when no one can hide their central humanity--it’s utterly exposed, raw, and perfect.
Most of the staff on the third floor adore Mrs. Watkins, a gentle woman that can’t quite stop herself from rambling on and on, in circles and onto leaping tangents, rarely making sense but always smiling so softly. But Amy’s favourite is new to the Ward, and to be honest, she’s not really sure why she’s taken with him so. He’s quiet--none of the staff have ever coaxed a single word from his pinched mouth--and most days he seems scared spitless, eyes tracking through empty air and flinching in the summer’s breeze. When he first arrived, word around the nurses desk for three days was all about him, the newcomer who could have been so handsome, if only...
See, his face is gorgeous--even though it’s starved and stricken, lost and lonely--but his hands? Amy can’t stop herself from wondering how they could ever have been so thoroughly mutilated, like they were fed through a thresher, or shattered into a million pieces under the full weight of a moving car, or beaten into a pulp on unyielding concrete. Splints crawl around his fingers like little vines, and his wrists (both of them, and that has got to be a trouble) are welded into place by white plaster casts signed with just one name, repeated over and over and over: Dean.
The first time she saw him, room 3135, long-term care, she was changing the sheets on his bed and he was sitting in a chair, shaking his head, staring at the corner.
“See you’ve got a fan, there,” she had said, “to sign your casts all up like that.” But he hadn’t said anything back--one of the quiet ones, she had noted--and he hadn’t done anything except for shiver and rub his cast against his face.
As she had turned to leave, she had dropped the basket of his dirty linens.
“Oh, sorry!” she had said, as she crouched down to gather up the scattered laundry. When she stood back up, he had been there, looming, holding a pillowcase she had missed. He had handed it to her without taking his eyes off of the corner of the room. He was tall, and he could have stood so proud, if he had maybe led a different life. Like her brother Jeffrey, tall as a flagpole and just as proud, when he had waved goodbye at the airport. Sharp, in his military uniform. Amy’s mother said, and kept on saying, until that Ending on the operating table, “That’s how you remember him, Amy. Tall and proud. That’s who he really is--even when he looks small and broken, inside he’s still your handsome brother.”
So maybe that’s why Amy keeps finding herself drawn to the tall and shrunken, handsome and ruined, brave and terrified man in room 3135--before the End, her brother had looked the same way.
He even has the same visiting schedule Jeffrey had had. Every single day, a man--tall, yet not so tall--flirts halfheartedly past the nurses station and walks into room 3135 like there’s both nowhere and anywhere else he’d rather be, and he stays in that room as long as the staff’ll let him; like there’s not a single other person to hold his attention.
The Visitor talks a lot. Amy knows that she isn’t supposed to listen in, but if she catches a few words here or there while she’s bringing in fresh linens, or wiping down the windows so the sun shines in clear, it’s not like its her fault. That’s how she knows her favourite patient’s name at all--she overhears so many quiet and down-lilted conversations (and even though the patient never says a word, it still seems a conversation) that she feels she knows a lot about him.
“Hey, Sammy,” Amy hears as she’s cleaning out the bathroom. That’s how it always starts. The Visitor with green eyes and freckles will walk in, all of the sudden, and say exactly that. He’s yet to hear a single line back, but still he talks as if he might.
The grime around the sink is just a little sticky today. She scrubs quietly, gently, wringing the soap out of the soft-with-use sponge over the worst of the filthy sink and letting it warm back up in the bucket of hot, sudsy water. The Visitor’s voice is a steady rumble, the motor of a car idling, waiting, waiting.
“So I went to a meeting today. Nothing special, and I didn’t stay for long. Bit too touchy-feely, if you ask me, but still.” Amy’s just waiting for the soap she spread over the grime to soak in, so it’s not really her fault if she happens to peak through the crack in the doorway, is it? The Visitor is leaning towards Sammy, hands woven between his legs, eyes searching for something--maybe some spark of who Sammy used to be. A lot of the visitors look at the patients like that. “Thought you’d be proud, though,” the Visitor continues. “And you are, aren’t you? Sure as shit should be. I did not suffer through all that sharing and caring for nothing, you know.” Sammy, head listing to the side, starts humming something Amy can’t quite place, but it pulls such a smile from the Visitor that she knows she’s missing something. Probably intruding on something, too. “Atta boy, Sammy. Knew you had some taste in you. Couldn’t have taught you all wrong, could I have?”
It’s a vaguely familiar melody, and both she and the Visitor listen for a short while. Amy’s never heard Sammy before, after all--it’s only natural she should be curious at what sounds he thinks important enough make.
The bathroom shines by the time she makes her exit, white porcelain gleaming even after she turns the lights off, just from the narrow beam through the crack in the doorway. The Visitor is still listening to Sammy as she’s backing out the door; listening with a patient crick in his neck, soft crows feet rippled out from his smile.
It still surprises her how, every day, the Visitor sticks around until after her shift is over, hanging on to the very last minute of visiting hours. Or at least she assumes he does--her average day is done a half hour before the end of the visiting day. But she’s run late today, a few patients more than usual having made messes beyond what she normally has to clean.
On her way back to the utility closet, car limping along on only two working wheels, Amy pauses outside Sammy’s door, next to Sharon. She’s seen the Visitor arrive what seems like a thousand times, but she’s never seen him leaving.
“I’m sorry, sir, but visiting hours are over,” Sharon says, and she actually does sound regretful; odd, or maybe not, that this pair can move her to compassion when few others can. “You’ll need to let Sam get his rest, now.”
The Visitor’s smile is tight and forced as he turns to Sam, slapping a hand down on his knee. “Well, Sammy, gotta let you get your beauty rest, now don’t I.”
Wordless as he ever is, and maybe ever will be, Sam holds out his left arm and waits patiently. The Visitor searches his pocket, frowning. “Thought I...”
“Here,” Amy says. They look lost and alone but for each other, and that’s so familiar to Amy she might cry. “You can have my marker.” She pulls the Sharpie off the clipboard on her cart, hands it over, snatches the brief yet genuine (albeit pained) smile she gets in return and tucks it deep inside her memory. The Visitor carefully pulls Sam’s arm into the grasp of his own, finds a rare white space, and signs Dean. Carefully. And when he’s done, he doesn’t let go; not right away. The Visitor--Dean--holds Sam’s arm, stares at the plaster cast, and says, “Tomorrow, Sammy. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He says it with a child’s eyes that can’t imagine a longer wait.
Amy moves her cart out of the doorway as Dean walks through, head bent and arms drooping at his side. Sammy’s eyes watch Dean until he’s gone. Amy wonders if Jeffrey had watched her leaving with the same expression--complete trust and boundless hope in something she couldn’t ever comprehend.
The cart squeaks as she wheels it down the hall. When she gets home, she knows she’s going to pull out a bottle of wine, that photo of her and Jeffrey at Camp Christopher when they were both eleven, and blast Apocalyptica until her eardrums burst. Last thing they heard together before they carted him away; out of the room and away.
Enter Sandman. That’s what Sammy had been humming. Enter Sandman.