Frayed Ends Of Sanity, 2/?
Title: Frayed Ends Of Sanity
Author: mellaithwen
Chapters: 2/?
Rating: R (Gen)
Warnings: Spoilers for Devil's Trap. Only spec for season 2, no spoilers.
Summary: Post Devil's Trap. Everything has an aftermath...
Thank you Pixel!
Part One
Part Two
“Dean, you got the gun? Give it to me,” John asks and commands at the same time, his hand held out. Dean keeps hold of the Colt.
“Dad, Sam tried to shoot the demon in Salvation, and it vanished.”
“This is me, I won't miss. Now the gun, hurry.”
Something’s not right, something’s different. Dean never said Sam missed, Sam didn’t even know if he had missed. Dad doesn’t even know Sam had squeezed the trigger.
“Son, please.”
But everything makes sense and doesn’t at the same time; his ears begin to ring. Dean wasted a bullet and left a trail of dead bodies in their wake. And yet his father had praised him, something he never did. Ever.
Dean backs away, and he knows. He’s seen.
*-*-*
“What the hell happened?” John barks, taking his anger out on the nurse, when really he’s just pissed that he was stuck in bed for ten minutes while all of the commotion was going on in his older son’s room.
While decisions were made regarding his son’s welfare.
Bobby left as soon as they wheeled Dean back up to surgery, and Sam could breathe again knowing things were in motion to make his brother better.
*-*-*
Hours later when the nurses (and Sam) have stopped fussing, John begs to see the doctor. His voice isn’t loud, he isn’t shouting, he isn’t screaming. He’s asking, in a small voice, desperate to know about his son.
His boy.
Dr. Jesson is called in, and with a quick overlook of the case she’s reminded of it, and hurries to explain.
“Your son was experiencing acute tachycardia,” she tells John, gripping the chart in her hand. “It’s an abnormal rapid heart rate after adrenaline is released from the sympathetic nervous system.”
“Do you know what caused it?” the fearing father asks, aware of the terminology after too many visits to the hospital with their dangerous work.
“Considering the stress your son’s body is in, it could be a result from his injuries or the accident itself creating emotional distress. The adrenaline’s released, and the tachycardia begins.”
“Fight or flight response,” Sam whispers at his father’s side, recalling what he already knew.
“Yes,” the doctor confirms. “We were already concerned that his breathing could become a problem, and we don’t want to take any more risks. He’s stabilized, and the ventilator is just a precaution, there’s no need to be alarmed.”
“My son is hooked up to a machine, and you’re telling me not to be alarmed?”
“Yes, sir. I am,” she says coolly, recalling that it was indeed the father of the two boys who had suggested this hunt in the woods.
She remembered the story vividly simply because it was so ridiculously unlikely that it had to be true. They had been attacked, but in both testimonies neither had been able to identify said creature. In the fray, one of the boys had shot their father, and every time she met with this John Winchester, she couldn’t help but think it was deserved.
The accounts were vague, and it was dark, but bias got the better of her, and perhaps she had no right to judge, or maybe as the one who had taken their moaning for so long, she had earned the right to judge.
Though granted, the truck itself was just bad luck on top of that.
Something that couldn’t be helped.
“How can you stand there and-”
“Sir!” she says firmly. “Your son suffered-”
Suffered.
My son suffered.
“-grievous injuries and he needs to be treated. That can’t be done if you’re harassing every person coming in here who’s trying to help.”
John’s nostrils are flaring, and his jaw is set, skin rippling by the bone as he breathes deeply.
“Dad, come on, let’s just check in on Dean, okay?”
*-*-*
“Bobby called,” Sam tells his father when the conversation dulls to nothing.
John grunts, still angry with his friend.
“Bobby-”
“Saved you, Dad. He helped us out.”
“Your brother never should have taken you there.”
Sam sees the good ol’ John Winchester and puts on a mask of indifference.
“He wanted to get you back...We both did.”
“And look what happened, Sam,” he says, the desperation hidden beneath the pretence of irritation.
“You’re the one who got possessed, Dad,” Sam bites back before he can stop himself. John actually looks hurt, and Sam regrets his words immediately.
“What did he want?” John asks, changing the subject, and Sam is grateful for that much.
“Asked about you and Dean, gave me an update on the car.”
“He’s fixing it up?” John sounds surprised, and Sam’s almost sad to hear it.
*-*-*
The doctors have put Dean on a ventilator for precaution and necessity at a stretch. An artificial set of lungs for his boy, that’s how John sees it. Tubes weaving in and out and underneath the covers on the bed where Dean lay. That’s what they had been reduced to: patients in a hospital, victims of a tragedy.
The most obvious tube is the one in his son’s mouth, connected to the pumping machine filled with oxygen, and John hates the sound that fills his ears as the ventilator does its job. Yes, it keeps his boy alive, until he’s fit enough to breathe on his own, but John can’t help think that even the machine hates him. The intake of oxygen before the hiss...
In, Out, Hiss. In, Out, Hiss.
All, Your, Fault. All, Your, Fault.
He’s sure it’s likely to drive him mad, but right now it makes him face what he’s done, and he needs to face it. His son, his boy, is lying in a hospital bed and has been for far too long.
Because of him, because no matter how many times he’s drilled it into his boys that you can’t be vulnerable for demonic possession, you always have to keep your emotions under control he-John Winchester-still got caught.
And look where it got their family.
Left on the side of the road in a crumpled mesh of blood, steel, flesh and oil, taking a pit stop between here and revenge.
His youngest is sleeping soundly in the other chair. He lasted no more than twenty minutes of keeping vigil by Dean’s side before letting exhaustion win.
The nurses come in and out but try to keep their visits to a minimum. They don’t want to impose, and they know John on a first name basis after all the time he’s spent making his way up to see Dean in the ICU.
And that’s why he’s there now. Watching, and listening as a cold metal and plastic thing makes his son’s chest rise and fall. A part of him thinks staying by Dean’s bedside day in day out will make the hurting less when it’s time to leave again.
He whispers I’m sorry, and please, please wake up but nothing happens. Nothing at all, so John’s left clutching his son’s hand, rubbing his thumb across Dean’s knuckles again and again waiting for a response...
And getting nothing, nowhere, fast.
*-*-*
When Dean was thirteen he had to haul his semi-conscious father to the free clinic in Idaho, leaving a trail of blood and a shaking nine year old in their wake.
When the doctors ushered him away from his boys, John caught a glimpse of Dean in the corridor. Hand holding Sammy’s fingers, posture straight and strong. Nostrils flared, and eyes hardened.
A soldier.
John never forgot that image, but passed out before he could whisper stand down.
Two days later when he woke up he saw his sons curled up at the bottom of his bed. Sammy was asleep in his brother’s lap, exhausted, but Dean was watching every movement his father made. There were bags under his eyes, but they were keen like a hawk. Never faltering, not even for a second.
“You okay?” he asked carefully, and John smiled as best he could, grasped his boy’s hand, and squeezed tightly.
“Good,” Dean said simply, breathing easier. “Good.”
*-*-*
Sam shoots awake to see his father dressed, sitting in the chair next to Dean’s bed. He frowns just as John does the same.
“Nightmare?” the oldest in the room whispers, and Sam swallows the bile in his throat.
“More like a memory,” Sam says after yet another dream ending with giant headlights in his eyes and metal screeching in his ears. “Any change?”
John shakes his head and stares at the still form on the bed once more.
“He’ll be okay, Dad,” Sam comforts, “he always is.”
But the tense silence continues, and Sam lets his father speak when at last his lips part.
“I don’t even know him,” he says sadly, and Sam cocks his head to the side in confusion.
“What are you talking about?”
“For four years I could tell you everything. He used to change his mind all the time, but I always knew the basics. The windows had to be shut in the night, but the door kept open so he could see us in the morning. So he could get to us easier. Never wanted a bedtime story on a Friday because it was the weekend, and he always stayed up a half hour later. You had to put the banana slices on his breakfast quickly, before the milk made the cereal soggy.”
“Dad?”
“He used to like planes. He had two model planes hanging from his ceiling. He liked cars, still does I’m guessing and he loved the swings in the park down the road. Always wanted to climb the tree in our front garden. Always asking, ‘Where’s the baby, Daddy? Where’s Sammy?’ Wanting to hold you.”
“Sounds to me like you know plenty,” Sam says with a smile.
“Four year old Dean was an open book compared to now. To what I’ve made him into. No feelings out in the open, no emotion, and I let him do it. Making jokes and I let him do it because it was so much easier to not deal with it.”
“He would have done it anyway,” Sam supplies, knowing his brother well.
“Maybe,” John whispers, staring back at his boy-so damn still-on the bed.
“He’s afraid of flying,” Sam says suddenly, surprising himself, and John.
“What?”
“There was a demon bringing down planes, so-we got on.”
“You got on a plane, knowing it might crash?” John asks incredulously.
“We had to, there was no other option. We got on the plane, and I actually had to tell Dean to calm down.”
“He used to go on for hours about wanting to go on one, wanting to fly one...” John says, trailing off towards the end.
“Things change,” Sam tells his father solemnly. And he’s right. Too damn right.
There’s a silence that follows, that isn’t strictly comfortable or bearable, but Sam hates the words that break it and longs for the tension if it would stall the inevitable.
“I have to go, Sammy.”
John’s voice sounds strange to Sam. It’s not an order, it’s not a request; it’s just fact. Neutral in stance. It’s there, and there’s no reply to be given.
“The hunt isn’t over, I have to find it. Kill it.”
John’s hands are grasping the sheets covering Dean as though they themselves are a lifeline his son needs held onto.
“I know it’s out there, we can’t afford to-”
“Afford to what? Be there for Dean?” Sam asks suddenly, voice rising. “Did you see his face, when you-when the demon told him how proud he was? Did you see his face, Dad?”
John looks down.
“You can’t just go. What am I supposed to tell him when he wakes up?”
Sam doesn’t dare say if he wakes up, and both he and John are thankful for it.
“Sammy, this demon killed your mother, it killed Jessica...”
“And I won’t let it kill Dean too, because if we leave, that’s what’ll happen.” Off John’s look he continues. “Yes, Dad, we because you can’t do this alone, and you have to stop thinking you can.”
“Sam-”
“Dad, we need you to stay, please. Just stay for a little longer, just until he wakes up.”
But John’s on his feet now, reaching for his jacket, limping as he does so. Sam wonders if he’s even bothered to fill out the AMA forms, but pushes it to the back of his mind as he jumps forward.
“Dad, please.”
“Stay safe. I’ll keep in touch.”
Sam can only watch as his father makes another exit and hope that the last words his father speaks aren’t lies.
*-*-*
“Give me the gun. What are you doing, Dean?”
“He'd be furious.”
And now that John gets a passenger side view, he feels the pride that his son’s noticed at least.
“What?”
Dead meat.
“That I wasted a bullet, he wouldn't be proud of me. He'd tear me a new one.”
Cocked and ready, the gun is aimed.
“You’re not my dad.”
John cringes, and the demon fakes surprise, and they all know it’s just another rouse.
The whistling begins, as the image fades, snarling, hissing, screaming so loud...
*-*-*
When Sam wakes up, he’s more than confused. He’s certain his eyes were closed only for a second, and there’s bustling around him. Feet...
He’s on the ground, and he’s slowly being lifted into a chair, a pen light shining in his eyes reminiscent of the one he woke up to some time ago. It’s the third time the visions have done this. Taken away minutes of his life to which he has no recollection.
Blackout.
One minute he’s standing up, or sitting down, or walking, and then suddenly he’s trying his hardest to forget the images of that night but trying even harder to remember what the hell just happened.
It isn’t fair that he should get images of the past and future, and none of the immediate present.
Hasn’t he seen enough?
His episodes haven’t gone unnoticed by the staff either. He has an MRI scheduled for the morning. He’s told them more than four times no, and as they continue to press, Sam’s decided he won’t turn up instead. They can’t force him; he’s not a patient anymore.
He says that now, but tomorrow he’ll go to their appointment after realizing that maybe something is wrong.
He spends all afternoon by his brother’s side. He watches the tubes with gross fascination, looking at anything but his brother, because as soon as he catches a glance of Dean, he ends up staring.
Pale lips-barely pink, cracked and dry while the almost yellow skin looks pinched and is wet from a new sheen of perspiration. Eyelids red, bruised, with lashes that stick out as much as the freckles on Dean’s skin.
Hands still by his side, placed delicately atop the blue blanket covering the oh-so-dignifying gown beneath as far as Dean’s abdomen. The machine beeps idly and Sam knows it’s better than the screaming of the previous days.
All he can hear are the beeps, rhythmic, and his own breathing, erratic. And the ventilators grasping oxygen and feeding it to his brother in slow dosages.
He wants to see Dean’s eyes. He wants them open and aware.
He wants to tell Dean to wake up now, damn it, but his brother has had enough orders to last him a lifetime, so he keeps his mouth shut, and his eyes wide open.
*-*-*
“Well, Mr Winchester, you’ll be happy to know there’s no bleeding in the brain to be worried about,” Doctor Marks, Sam’s doctor, tells him with a wry smile.
“But?” Sam asks, aware that there is something not being said.
“When you were brought in, your EEG showed a lot of brain activity, something uncommon with unconscious patients. It was as though you were experiencing nightmares, and then you wake up from a night-terror? I’m concerned.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me, you said it yourself.”
“No, I said there was nothing on the MRI to indicate there was something wrong. And there isn’t. Look, night-terrors don’t occur during the REM period; they occur in the fourth stage of sleep. You were out for two days, and if I’m not mistaken, you know exactly what you were dreaming about, and most don’t.” He sighs deeply. “If you don’t tell me everything, I can’t treat you.”
“I’m not your patient,” Sam tells him, trying hard to keep an air of polite response in his voice.
“You were, and that’s enough for me. Are the night-terrors constant?”
“They’re nightmares,” Sam corrects.
“This is the first time you’ve woken up screaming for over ten minutes then? Non stop?” the doctor asks, already writing down notes in the margins of his notebook.
“Yes,” Sam replies, feeling more and more agitated by each question asked.
“Sam, I’m only trying to help. We need to treat this as a sleep disorder; we need to make them stop-”
“Why? What if I don’t want them to stop? What if they help?”
“Well, Sam, you have to ask yourself, if they help you that much why are you blacking out? If they’re such a good thing, why are they endangering your health?”
Sam has no reply.
TBC
Author: mellaithwen
Chapters: 2/?
Rating: R (Gen)
Warnings: Spoilers for Devil's Trap. Only spec for season 2, no spoilers.
Summary: Post Devil's Trap. Everything has an aftermath...
Thank you Pixel!
Part One
Part Two
“Dean, you got the gun? Give it to me,” John asks and commands at the same time, his hand held out. Dean keeps hold of the Colt.
“Dad, Sam tried to shoot the demon in Salvation, and it vanished.”
“This is me, I won't miss. Now the gun, hurry.”
Something’s not right, something’s different. Dean never said Sam missed, Sam didn’t even know if he had missed. Dad doesn’t even know Sam had squeezed the trigger.
“Son, please.”
But everything makes sense and doesn’t at the same time; his ears begin to ring. Dean wasted a bullet and left a trail of dead bodies in their wake. And yet his father had praised him, something he never did. Ever.
Dean backs away, and he knows. He’s seen.
*-*-*
“What the hell happened?” John barks, taking his anger out on the nurse, when really he’s just pissed that he was stuck in bed for ten minutes while all of the commotion was going on in his older son’s room.
While decisions were made regarding his son’s welfare.
Bobby left as soon as they wheeled Dean back up to surgery, and Sam could breathe again knowing things were in motion to make his brother better.
*-*-*
Hours later when the nurses (and Sam) have stopped fussing, John begs to see the doctor. His voice isn’t loud, he isn’t shouting, he isn’t screaming. He’s asking, in a small voice, desperate to know about his son.
His boy.
Dr. Jesson is called in, and with a quick overlook of the case she’s reminded of it, and hurries to explain.
“Your son was experiencing acute tachycardia,” she tells John, gripping the chart in her hand. “It’s an abnormal rapid heart rate after adrenaline is released from the sympathetic nervous system.”
“Do you know what caused it?” the fearing father asks, aware of the terminology after too many visits to the hospital with their dangerous work.
“Considering the stress your son’s body is in, it could be a result from his injuries or the accident itself creating emotional distress. The adrenaline’s released, and the tachycardia begins.”
“Fight or flight response,” Sam whispers at his father’s side, recalling what he already knew.
“Yes,” the doctor confirms. “We were already concerned that his breathing could become a problem, and we don’t want to take any more risks. He’s stabilized, and the ventilator is just a precaution, there’s no need to be alarmed.”
“My son is hooked up to a machine, and you’re telling me not to be alarmed?”
“Yes, sir. I am,” she says coolly, recalling that it was indeed the father of the two boys who had suggested this hunt in the woods.
She remembered the story vividly simply because it was so ridiculously unlikely that it had to be true. They had been attacked, but in both testimonies neither had been able to identify said creature. In the fray, one of the boys had shot their father, and every time she met with this John Winchester, she couldn’t help but think it was deserved.
The accounts were vague, and it was dark, but bias got the better of her, and perhaps she had no right to judge, or maybe as the one who had taken their moaning for so long, she had earned the right to judge.
Though granted, the truck itself was just bad luck on top of that.
Something that couldn’t be helped.
“How can you stand there and-”
“Sir!” she says firmly. “Your son suffered-”
Suffered.
My son suffered.
“-grievous injuries and he needs to be treated. That can’t be done if you’re harassing every person coming in here who’s trying to help.”
John’s nostrils are flaring, and his jaw is set, skin rippling by the bone as he breathes deeply.
“Dad, come on, let’s just check in on Dean, okay?”
*-*-*
“Bobby called,” Sam tells his father when the conversation dulls to nothing.
John grunts, still angry with his friend.
“Bobby-”
“Saved you, Dad. He helped us out.”
“Your brother never should have taken you there.”
Sam sees the good ol’ John Winchester and puts on a mask of indifference.
“He wanted to get you back...We both did.”
“And look what happened, Sam,” he says, the desperation hidden beneath the pretence of irritation.
“You’re the one who got possessed, Dad,” Sam bites back before he can stop himself. John actually looks hurt, and Sam regrets his words immediately.
“What did he want?” John asks, changing the subject, and Sam is grateful for that much.
“Asked about you and Dean, gave me an update on the car.”
“He’s fixing it up?” John sounds surprised, and Sam’s almost sad to hear it.
*-*-*
The doctors have put Dean on a ventilator for precaution and necessity at a stretch. An artificial set of lungs for his boy, that’s how John sees it. Tubes weaving in and out and underneath the covers on the bed where Dean lay. That’s what they had been reduced to: patients in a hospital, victims of a tragedy.
The most obvious tube is the one in his son’s mouth, connected to the pumping machine filled with oxygen, and John hates the sound that fills his ears as the ventilator does its job. Yes, it keeps his boy alive, until he’s fit enough to breathe on his own, but John can’t help think that even the machine hates him. The intake of oxygen before the hiss...
In, Out, Hiss. In, Out, Hiss.
All, Your, Fault. All, Your, Fault.
He’s sure it’s likely to drive him mad, but right now it makes him face what he’s done, and he needs to face it. His son, his boy, is lying in a hospital bed and has been for far too long.
Because of him, because no matter how many times he’s drilled it into his boys that you can’t be vulnerable for demonic possession, you always have to keep your emotions under control he-John Winchester-still got caught.
And look where it got their family.
Left on the side of the road in a crumpled mesh of blood, steel, flesh and oil, taking a pit stop between here and revenge.
His youngest is sleeping soundly in the other chair. He lasted no more than twenty minutes of keeping vigil by Dean’s side before letting exhaustion win.
The nurses come in and out but try to keep their visits to a minimum. They don’t want to impose, and they know John on a first name basis after all the time he’s spent making his way up to see Dean in the ICU.
And that’s why he’s there now. Watching, and listening as a cold metal and plastic thing makes his son’s chest rise and fall. A part of him thinks staying by Dean’s bedside day in day out will make the hurting less when it’s time to leave again.
He whispers I’m sorry, and please, please wake up but nothing happens. Nothing at all, so John’s left clutching his son’s hand, rubbing his thumb across Dean’s knuckles again and again waiting for a response...
And getting nothing, nowhere, fast.
*-*-*
When Dean was thirteen he had to haul his semi-conscious father to the free clinic in Idaho, leaving a trail of blood and a shaking nine year old in their wake.
When the doctors ushered him away from his boys, John caught a glimpse of Dean in the corridor. Hand holding Sammy’s fingers, posture straight and strong. Nostrils flared, and eyes hardened.
A soldier.
John never forgot that image, but passed out before he could whisper stand down.
Two days later when he woke up he saw his sons curled up at the bottom of his bed. Sammy was asleep in his brother’s lap, exhausted, but Dean was watching every movement his father made. There were bags under his eyes, but they were keen like a hawk. Never faltering, not even for a second.
“You okay?” he asked carefully, and John smiled as best he could, grasped his boy’s hand, and squeezed tightly.
“Good,” Dean said simply, breathing easier. “Good.”
*-*-*
Sam shoots awake to see his father dressed, sitting in the chair next to Dean’s bed. He frowns just as John does the same.
“Nightmare?” the oldest in the room whispers, and Sam swallows the bile in his throat.
“More like a memory,” Sam says after yet another dream ending with giant headlights in his eyes and metal screeching in his ears. “Any change?”
John shakes his head and stares at the still form on the bed once more.
“He’ll be okay, Dad,” Sam comforts, “he always is.”
But the tense silence continues, and Sam lets his father speak when at last his lips part.
“I don’t even know him,” he says sadly, and Sam cocks his head to the side in confusion.
“What are you talking about?”
“For four years I could tell you everything. He used to change his mind all the time, but I always knew the basics. The windows had to be shut in the night, but the door kept open so he could see us in the morning. So he could get to us easier. Never wanted a bedtime story on a Friday because it was the weekend, and he always stayed up a half hour later. You had to put the banana slices on his breakfast quickly, before the milk made the cereal soggy.”
“Dad?”
“He used to like planes. He had two model planes hanging from his ceiling. He liked cars, still does I’m guessing and he loved the swings in the park down the road. Always wanted to climb the tree in our front garden. Always asking, ‘Where’s the baby, Daddy? Where’s Sammy?’ Wanting to hold you.”
“Sounds to me like you know plenty,” Sam says with a smile.
“Four year old Dean was an open book compared to now. To what I’ve made him into. No feelings out in the open, no emotion, and I let him do it. Making jokes and I let him do it because it was so much easier to not deal with it.”
“He would have done it anyway,” Sam supplies, knowing his brother well.
“Maybe,” John whispers, staring back at his boy-so damn still-on the bed.
“He’s afraid of flying,” Sam says suddenly, surprising himself, and John.
“What?”
“There was a demon bringing down planes, so-we got on.”
“You got on a plane, knowing it might crash?” John asks incredulously.
“We had to, there was no other option. We got on the plane, and I actually had to tell Dean to calm down.”
“He used to go on for hours about wanting to go on one, wanting to fly one...” John says, trailing off towards the end.
“Things change,” Sam tells his father solemnly. And he’s right. Too damn right.
There’s a silence that follows, that isn’t strictly comfortable or bearable, but Sam hates the words that break it and longs for the tension if it would stall the inevitable.
“I have to go, Sammy.”
John’s voice sounds strange to Sam. It’s not an order, it’s not a request; it’s just fact. Neutral in stance. It’s there, and there’s no reply to be given.
“The hunt isn’t over, I have to find it. Kill it.”
John’s hands are grasping the sheets covering Dean as though they themselves are a lifeline his son needs held onto.
“I know it’s out there, we can’t afford to-”
“Afford to what? Be there for Dean?” Sam asks suddenly, voice rising. “Did you see his face, when you-when the demon told him how proud he was? Did you see his face, Dad?”
John looks down.
“You can’t just go. What am I supposed to tell him when he wakes up?”
Sam doesn’t dare say if he wakes up, and both he and John are thankful for it.
“Sammy, this demon killed your mother, it killed Jessica...”
“And I won’t let it kill Dean too, because if we leave, that’s what’ll happen.” Off John’s look he continues. “Yes, Dad, we because you can’t do this alone, and you have to stop thinking you can.”
“Sam-”
“Dad, we need you to stay, please. Just stay for a little longer, just until he wakes up.”
But John’s on his feet now, reaching for his jacket, limping as he does so. Sam wonders if he’s even bothered to fill out the AMA forms, but pushes it to the back of his mind as he jumps forward.
“Dad, please.”
“Stay safe. I’ll keep in touch.”
Sam can only watch as his father makes another exit and hope that the last words his father speaks aren’t lies.
*-*-*
“Give me the gun. What are you doing, Dean?”
“He'd be furious.”
And now that John gets a passenger side view, he feels the pride that his son’s noticed at least.
“What?”
Dead meat.
“That I wasted a bullet, he wouldn't be proud of me. He'd tear me a new one.”
Cocked and ready, the gun is aimed.
“You’re not my dad.”
John cringes, and the demon fakes surprise, and they all know it’s just another rouse.
The whistling begins, as the image fades, snarling, hissing, screaming so loud...
*-*-*
When Sam wakes up, he’s more than confused. He’s certain his eyes were closed only for a second, and there’s bustling around him. Feet...
He’s on the ground, and he’s slowly being lifted into a chair, a pen light shining in his eyes reminiscent of the one he woke up to some time ago. It’s the third time the visions have done this. Taken away minutes of his life to which he has no recollection.
Blackout.
One minute he’s standing up, or sitting down, or walking, and then suddenly he’s trying his hardest to forget the images of that night but trying even harder to remember what the hell just happened.
It isn’t fair that he should get images of the past and future, and none of the immediate present.
Hasn’t he seen enough?
His episodes haven’t gone unnoticed by the staff either. He has an MRI scheduled for the morning. He’s told them more than four times no, and as they continue to press, Sam’s decided he won’t turn up instead. They can’t force him; he’s not a patient anymore.
He says that now, but tomorrow he’ll go to their appointment after realizing that maybe something is wrong.
He spends all afternoon by his brother’s side. He watches the tubes with gross fascination, looking at anything but his brother, because as soon as he catches a glance of Dean, he ends up staring.
Pale lips-barely pink, cracked and dry while the almost yellow skin looks pinched and is wet from a new sheen of perspiration. Eyelids red, bruised, with lashes that stick out as much as the freckles on Dean’s skin.
Hands still by his side, placed delicately atop the blue blanket covering the oh-so-dignifying gown beneath as far as Dean’s abdomen. The machine beeps idly and Sam knows it’s better than the screaming of the previous days.
All he can hear are the beeps, rhythmic, and his own breathing, erratic. And the ventilators grasping oxygen and feeding it to his brother in slow dosages.
He wants to see Dean’s eyes. He wants them open and aware.
He wants to tell Dean to wake up now, damn it, but his brother has had enough orders to last him a lifetime, so he keeps his mouth shut, and his eyes wide open.
*-*-*
“Well, Mr Winchester, you’ll be happy to know there’s no bleeding in the brain to be worried about,” Doctor Marks, Sam’s doctor, tells him with a wry smile.
“But?” Sam asks, aware that there is something not being said.
“When you were brought in, your EEG showed a lot of brain activity, something uncommon with unconscious patients. It was as though you were experiencing nightmares, and then you wake up from a night-terror? I’m concerned.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me, you said it yourself.”
“No, I said there was nothing on the MRI to indicate there was something wrong. And there isn’t. Look, night-terrors don’t occur during the REM period; they occur in the fourth stage of sleep. You were out for two days, and if I’m not mistaken, you know exactly what you were dreaming about, and most don’t.” He sighs deeply. “If you don’t tell me everything, I can’t treat you.”
“I’m not your patient,” Sam tells him, trying hard to keep an air of polite response in his voice.
“You were, and that’s enough for me. Are the night-terrors constant?”
“They’re nightmares,” Sam corrects.
“This is the first time you’ve woken up screaming for over ten minutes then? Non stop?” the doctor asks, already writing down notes in the margins of his notebook.
“Yes,” Sam replies, feeling more and more agitated by each question asked.
“Sam, I’m only trying to help. We need to treat this as a sleep disorder; we need to make them stop-”
“Why? What if I don’t want them to stop? What if they help?”
“Well, Sam, you have to ask yourself, if they help you that much why are you blacking out? If they’re such a good thing, why are they endangering your health?”
Sam has no reply.
TBC