One whole year!
ohsam is one year old today! You know what that means, right? COMMENT-FIC!
Happy anniversary to us, and it's thanks to you, our fantastic members, who consistently come back and hurt Sammy in new and creative ways! \o/
Now, go and commit comment-fic!
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Happy anniversary to us, and it's thanks to you, our fantastic members, who consistently come back and hurt Sammy in new and creative ways! \o/
Now, go and commit comment-fic!
( Read more... )
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It all started with the flu. Or rather, it seemed like it was the flu, so Sam didn’t pay much attention at all. Yeah, there was the requisite fever, but feeling crappy after pulling an all-nighter for term papers was normal, wasn’t it? This was what he’d been striving for; term papers and midterms, clubs and community service, safety instead of seeking out an early death by vengeful spirit or some other supernatural creature. So as he lay in bed, curled up in his dorm room with lights off and blinds closed, Sam took comfort that he was at Stanford and not in the middle of a hunt, digging up some angry ghost’s grave, while he ignored the pangs of wishing that Dean was there to take care of him like always.
Not three hours later, Sam’s roommate Tyson Brady crashed through the door, turned on the lights, and noisily began to dig through the mini-fridge.
“Hey, man, Professor Bergman’s midterm was hella easy. I was actually kinda shocked at how easy it was. Easy calculus class, what what?”
Sam could only groan in response. The fever had quickly gotten worse, and a splitting headache erupted soon afterwards that traveled down his stiff neck. The trash can near his bed was conveniently placed next to his head when nausea bloomed forth and he threw up several times. The lights blinded his sensitive eyes and Brady's noisy rustling jackhammered into his skull, and he burrowed his head into his pillow to reduce the taiko drummers pounding on his head. Only then did Brady finally notice Sam’s condition.
“Shit, Sam, you look like crap. What happened? I swear you looked fine earlier this morning.” Brady peered at Sam as if trying to diagnose him through the blankets piled on top of his bed.
“Ugh, I think I caught something,” Sam replied hoarsely. “Just got a fever this afternoon. Figured it was the lack of sleep catching up to me.”
“Nuh uh. You look like something my mom cut up and cooked for dinner. I’m calling the advice nurse.” Sam sunk deeper into his bed as Brady stepped out of the room to call the health clinic.
He felt like the guy from one of Ray Bradbury’s stories who was weighted down with 200 pound weights and a constant ringing in his ears to disrupt his thinking patterns. His awareness dwindled down to only the pain in his head and neck as he tried his best to ignore Brady’s voice speaking to the advice nurse. After a few minutes, a litany of “Shitshitshitshitshit” worked its way through Sam’s ears. “Sam, you need to get to an ER, like stat. Seriously. I’m calling 911,” Brady’s voice trembled, fingers dialing frantically.
In a few minutes, the paramedics came and Sam’s last vestige of consciousness drifted away in a sea of bright lights and loud noises. An unknown amount of time passed by as he faded in and out of awareness. When he next became cognizant of his surroundings, he was alone, but his room was decorated with a get well soon banner, a few cards and a vase of flowers. Feeling tired, he fell back asleep.
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“Brady!” Sam voiced. At the sound of Sam’s voice, he shut up. “I can’t hear.” If it was possible, Brady’s eyes grew wider. He held up his index finger and left the room to come back with a nurse carrying a marker and a dry erase board. On the white board, she wrote down, “Hi Sam. I’m Jackie, your nurse for today. Do you remember what brought you in here?”
“Uh, yeah. I felt really sick and Brady called 911.” Sam felt the beginnings of panic well deep within him but concentrating on the nurse kept him superficially calm right now. She erased her message and wrote more.
“You had meningitis,” the nurse explained. “It’s been a few days since you were admitted to the hospital. Your friend mentioned that you couldn’t hear; that’s a complication of the disease. You came very close to death, young man.”
Sam stared at the words on the white board as he asked, “How close?” Sam’s eyes had latched onto the word "death," and wondered for a brief moment what would have happened if he really had died. Would word ever reach Dean and Dad or would they have merrily kept hunting, oblivious to his passing?
The nurse continued to scribble down her response. “Most likely your hearing loss will be temporary, but we’ll have to wait and see to be sure.”
Sam rubbed his face with his hands, exhausted from staying awake for more than a couple minutes at a time. Brady patted his shoulder in what Sam assumed to be support meanwhile the nurse checked his vitals. Inside of a minute, Sam slipped back into darkness.
The third time Sam woke up, more people were in his room. Apparently, Brady had spread the word and gathered other people from their floor to visit him in the hospital, armed with notebooks to communicate with him. Each expressed their eagerness in seeing him getting better, regaling him with tales of how close Brady was to filing for a pass on his classes because of how near death Sam had skated. Beth the RA said that she looked for Sam’s family, but the university didn’t have anyone on record to call. The gathering had the feel of a group of friends passing notes in class, a roaming notebook exchanging hands with added sketches of hilarious anecdotes. Eventually, Sam bowed to fatigue and drifted off, leading the crowd to disperse.
As Sam recuperated, his hearing did not, and the medical staff began to see his deafness as permanent. Every few days an audiologist would come by to test his hearing, but it never got any better than a classification of severe hearing loss. After two weeks of tests, trying desperately to hear the beeps from the machine, the otolarygologist diagnosed him as severely deaf and suggested testing for cochlear implants and taking classes in lipreading. At the end of the doctor's visit, Sam started to freak out about being deaf and being unable to complete his classes. No hearing meant not being able to listen to lectures or contribute to discussions, both of which were essential to getting the grades he wanted. And if he flunked out, he might have to go crawling back to Dad and Dean, where he would be equally useless at hunting and which he damned well swore he would never do. No, he’d survive somehow if only because he had to. He broke off from his family to study here, and he was going to fight tooth and nail to stay here regardless.
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Can't wait to see more!!
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Between notifying all his professors of his illness and new disability, filing to be officially considered a disabled student, and catching up on all his classes, Sam was confronted with his new situation on all sides. Communication over the phone was no longer an option and while he could e-mail his professors, filing for disability forced him to go on a wild goose chase to fill out the right forms and find the right office to file his claim. He missed bus stops and phone calls and had had various people staring at him in disgust. He saw people talking to him, but he understood next to nothing of what they said. The lectures he attended were all orally given, and he had to get the OAE to start stenocaptioning all his classes so he wouldn’t miss essential information and concepts his professor conveyed. He felt disconnected and disjointed, just when he was starting to get used to living his “normal” life, just when he thought he was fitting in as just another student trying to get by. Half the time, he felt like giving up, but the memory of John’s anger filled words disowning him and his views of his potential life if he dropped out kept him in Palo Alto, finding new ways to deal.
He couldn’t help but think about Dean during this time, wishing his brother was there with him, distracting him from his thoughts with pervy comments about coeds and attempts to drag him to parties, Dean, who’d run interference between him and people who refused to accommodate for his disability. Brady was a great help, adjusting his life for his newly deaf roommate, letting Sam’s moods slide right off his back, but he was no Dean. Sometimes he thought about calling Dean just to notify him, but Dad had ejected him from the family and Dean would never contradict Dad’s word. It hurt that he was bereft of his family’s support, but this was what he had signed up for. This was a chance to get out and be safe, avoid an early and bloody death in the middle of nowhere.
Sam opted to wait to start his ASL classes until summer quarter, where he started with other beginners rather than dive into a class halfway through the quarter. There were no other classes to detract from his education and he always had a knack for languages from back in his childhood learning church Latin from Pastor Jim. The ASL instructor started with fingerspelling and graduated to simple grammar and hand signs, but Sam wanted a faster pace and so ventured into the deaf community on campus to find those he could practice with. He immersed himself in sign language for the summer and tested into intermediate sign language for the next school year. He made sure that all his classes were accessible for him and studied twice as hard to keep ahead of the curve. Upon deciding to become a lawyer, Sam interned at a firm with a deaf lawyer on staff to see how it was done.
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“Heeeey,” slurred a blonde girl. The dimmed light above her head gave her curly hair a faint glow, and he thought her almost angelic until she clapped her hand to her mouth. “Sssssooorryyyy,” she smiled up at him and she swayed into Sam’s chest. Through his shirt, he felt her mumbling something and so he brought her outside under a street light.
“Are you OK?” he asked. He worried about the volume of his voice, if it was too soft and she couldn’t hear or if it was too loud and he embarrassed himself. She looked so beautiful despite her drunkenness and he felt nervous around her.
She simply nodded her head and stared up at him. “Oh, yeah,” she replied. “Fine.” She gestured the OK sign at him. “Just like you. So fine…” Her head lolled down and her hands came up to pet his pecs then to poke them. He gently pushed her hands off of him and queried, “Do you have someone to walk you home?”
The blonde shook her head. She said something, but Sam could only feel the vibrations through his clothes. “I’ll walk you home; that OK?” He asked her. Looking back up at him, she nodded. His hands wrapped around her waist and he walked her back to her dorm room, her chatting away at him and him making agreeing noises although he had no idea what she was talking about. Sometimes he caught a glimpse of her lips but nothing that made sense to him, but for the most part he just enjoyed the sensation of the vibrations of her voice and of her soft warmth at his side.
Once they were standing outside her dorm building, she turned to face Sam. Her lips moved again and it seemed like she was introducing herself. She held out her hand and he tentatively shook it.
“I’m Sam.” He gave her a small smile. They stood awkwardly there for a moment until she exclaimed, “Oh, right! I’m gunna go inside now. Bye!” She waved at him then headed inside. Sam stood there, watching her until she was out of sight.
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