Sabbatical March 1996--SPN 1/3 (complete)
Title: Sabbatical, March 1996
Author: borgmama1of5
Summary: A hunt gone bad, and John is faced with an untenable situation.
Wordcount: 11,200
Genre: h/c, Teen!chesters (John, Dean, Sam)
Rating: PG13
Beta: Cheerleader extraordinaire, sandymg
Disclaimer: If they were mine, I would have given them a happier childhood
Awesome banner by: apieceofcake
(All parts linked)
Part 1
“Dad!”
John knows his son, and Dean doesn’t panic.
“DAD!”
That is terror in his son’s voice.
John struggles up from the hardwood floor, knows that shaking his head to clear it will be a bad idea, and yet involuntarily does it anyway as he tries to orient himself to Dean’s cry. John has no idea how long he’s been unconscious. There is a ferocious roaring in his ears making it near-impossible to focus.
“Dean! Where are you?”
Like a viewfinder adjusting, everything suddenly clarifies at the sound of Dean calling for him again.
Fire.
The entire far end of the room is crackling with the hypnotic dance of flames. Yellow and orange tongues lapping up the drapes, swallowing the elaborate upholstered chairs, consuming the oversize dining room table. The speed with which the inferno is moving confirms the unnatural origin of the blaze. A pyrrhic victory over this ghost …
There’s a motion on the floor, almost camouflaged by the violently flickering light. John stumbles toward it, his gut clenching as he sees the reason for Dean’s panic.
Dean is pinned underneath a toppled, wall-sized china cabinet, and flames are nibbling on the far side of it.
“Dad…”
The fear-filled cry hastens John’s weaving steps toward his son. His lungs are burning from the choking smoke as he reaches Dean’s side. John sinks to his knees. Glass and china shards slice through the denim of his jeans, but the lacerations mean nothing to him.
“Okay, Dean, I’m gonna get this off of you.” John forces his voice calm even as his brain is shrieking ‘how?’ He fastens his fingers under the top edge and gives an experimental heave. The massive cabinet barely shifts. Still, if he could lift it just enough for Dean to wiggle out. He says as much.
“Dad, that’s not gonna work. I can’t … I can’t feel my legs. I think … it did something to my back.”
John’s inadvertent inhalation causes him to waste precious moments doubled over coughing. The flames are now actively devouring the wood, only feet separating Dean from their hunger.
“Dad … Dad, don’t let me burn. Please, Dad, don’t let me burn. You gotta … you gotta shoot me first, Dad!”
John feels his heart stop. What has he done to his boy?
“No!” Fighting the burn of each breath John struggles to his feet and looks through the smoke for anything he can use. A table lamp with a solid-looking pedestal is only a dozen steps away and he has it in his hands almost instantly.
“Cover your face!” he orders and begins battering the metal base like an ax against the wood imprisoning Dean.
The need to save his son gives him more-than-human focus to ignore his own injuries, but each flinch from Dean as John strives to fracture the cabinet stabs him. Through his double vision John concentrates on striking each blow to the same spot, ignoring the waves of heat, the need to cough, the moan from Dean each time John’s improvised club hits the solid wood.
A wicked crack and the end of the lamp breaks through, then catches in the cabinet back. John chokes but keeps going, pulling the base free, smashing again until the wood begins splintering. The entire end of the once magnificent piece is under attack by the fire now.
“Dad…” Dean’s voice is weak, his hands scrabbling on the floor, seeking something. “ ‘M gun, gimme … if you can’t, I gotta, don’ wanna burn …”
There is not enough oxygen to answer that horrific plea so John continues to pound Dean’s prison to pieces. The intensifying of the wavering light tells John the flames are too close, it is now or not at all, and he seizes the shattered hulk and strains to heave it off his boy’s body. Wood shards pierce his palms but John is oblivious, locked into battle with the immovable object - the scream in his head of ‘Not my son!’ combines with the contraction of every muscle he has and the wreckage tips up and John heaves it to the side.
Dean’s pistol is next to John’s foot and without thinking John shoves it in his coat pocket and grabs Dean under the arms to drag him away from the inferno that has erupted around the cabinet’s remains. This is the worst thing for Dean’s injured back but there is no choice.
Out of the room John doubles over hacking from the smoke but doesn’t let go of Dean. Dean’s stillness fuels John with the energy to continue moving out of the doomed building.
On the lawn, John eases Dean onto his back and with bloody hands feels for a pulse, but Dean’s eyes open before John finds it. Knowing Dean is okay - alive - John turns away and surrenders to the wrenching coughs tearing his chest. Distant sirens wail.
“Dad, Dad …” John continues to gasp for air as Dean gropes to touch him.
“ ‘S okay, Dean.”
“ ‘S not, can’t feel anything b’low … can’t, I can’t move m’ legs, Dad.”
In thirteen years of hunting - hell, since walking into Sam’s nursery that night - John Winchester has experienced moments so terrifying that he’d swear his heart had stopped, only to trigger the clarity and bullet-point focus he needed to finish the job, save the innocent. Save himself. And he’s had frightening moments about his boys, when adrenaline has rocketed through him to get one or the other of them to safety.
But Dean’s words freeze him.
The paramedics swiftly and efficiently secure Dean’s neck with a brace and slide a backboard under him. Dean never loses consciousness, and the look he gives John as he is carried to the ambulance - vulnerable, afraid, and trying as hard as he can to hide it - will haunt John forever.
“Dad …”
“I’ll be right behind you, Dean,” he promises as Dean is secured inside the van.
By the time he’s reached the hospital John has made the hard decision to tell the truth about not having insurance. While using a fake card would get Dean treated tonight, John doesn’t want to chance the fraud being detected if Dean is, god help them, going to be laid up for a long time. Or forever. John would rather deal with the hassle of being uninsured than have to pull Dean from treatment in a rush this time.
John leaves blood on the Impala steering wheel and doesn’t care.
Dean will be okay. He has to be.
Fortunately, the ER staff cares more about what has happened to Dean than why the two of them had been in the historical Vandermere house. The police won’t be so single-minded, however, and John needs to concoct a plausible explanation that will buy them time.
“Mr. Winchester?”
John starts to jump up and then grabs for the chair next to him as the room spins.
“Mr. Winchester, I think you need to be checked out, too.”
“Prob’ly a concussion, I hit my head…”
“Come with me, sir.”
“My son …”
“They’ve taken him to imaging. Let’s get you fixed up before he gets back.”
Just as John gets into the ER cubicle his cell rings. He winces when splinters stab his palm as he opens the phone.
Jesus, it’s Sammy.
“Dad? How come you aren’t back yet?” Anxious disguised with angry.
How much to tell him?
“We’ve, uh, run into a problem, Sam, and I’ll call you back shortly.”
“Dad? Dad, what’s happened? Is Dean hurt? Are you hurt?”
Dammit, kid is psychic when it comes to Dean.
“I can’t talk now, I’ll call you back.” John disconnects the call.
John declines the full workup the doctor wants to do on him, using the excuse of no insurance to divert the earnest young woman, who then proceeds to give him a handful of sample painkillers while explaining she is doing so against her better judgment. More times than not, John has to acknowledge to himself, medical personnel, at least the ones on the front lines, are more concerned with helping their patients than with going ‘by the book.’ He hopes that will continue to hold true.
Lacerations cleaned, splinters removed, and hands bandaged, he sits back in the waiting room, and the enormity of Dean’s injury suddenly crashes down on him like the proverbial ton of bricks. John finds himself shaking. What if … what if …
“No!” He says it out loud to stop himself from thinking in that direction. No speculation, no guessing. He will wait until the doctor comes out and tells him what they are up against. No imagining scenarios.
His cell rings again.
“Dad. I called Dean’s phone and he doesn’t answer. What happened, where are you?”
It is not fair that this call makes his head throb more.
“Sam, you have nothing to do with this.” Can’t worry about Sam now. At least one son is safe.
The blaze of anger from his thirteen-year-old would have fried the telephone wires if they’d been on a regular phone.
“How can you say that, Dad?! If Dean is hurt, he needs me!”
“Sam, I won’t know anything until the doctor comes out …”
“Dean is hurt! You tell me what hospital you’re at or … or I will call every hospital in this city until I find the ER you’re in!”
“Sam, the doctor’s coming. Let me talk to him, I’ll call you back.”
It is a total fabrication, but John cannot let himself be distracted from Dean. John bites his lip, then turns the phone in his hand off.
There will be hell to pay for doing that. He’ll pay it when Dean is okay.
If moving didn’t make him dizzy, John would be pacing a track in the grungy carpet. How much longer will it take for the doctor to come out? It’s been nearly two hours. Voices make him lift his head from his hands.
Police. Shit. They’re standing with the ER receptionist, not yet looking for him. John pushes himself to stand, fumbles in his jacket for his lighter. Make it look like he’s going out for a cigarette.
Leaning against the building, watching through the sliding glass doors, he needs to come up with a story. Because he needs to be there when the doctor comes out. John blinks blurry eyes, trying to tell from the officers’ body language how much trouble he is in. The receptionist looks over the empty chairs, clearly surprised that John isn’t there. One of the cops motions to the cubicles.
A figure brushes past John’s arm, is halfway through the doorway when John’s brain catches up to his eyes. He grabs the shoulder before the doors shut.
“Hey! Oh.”
“What the hell …”
Sam twists his shirt out of John’s fist with a shrug and blinks oddly glittering eyes.
“I told you I’d call around. And I’m going in, you can’t stop me. Dean needs me!”
“I’m not gonna stop you. But stop and look. See those policemen? If you go in there now and ask for Dean, you’re gonna lead them right to your brother. And Dean’s in no condition for that. We gotta wait till they leave.”
Sam had stopped moving at the mention of the police. He steps back and lets the doors slide shut, standing silent at John’s side.
The cops start to walk toward the exit.
“I’m gonna disappear till they’re out of sight. You can go in, the cops don’t know you, and once they’re gone ask for your brother. He’s under his real name …”
Sam jerks with a gasp and stares at John with straight-out panic. There is nothing John can say - Sam knows the drill, knows the fake-names-and-insurance-cards routine. So Sam understands what it means for Dean to be in the ER under his real name.
He waits, wants an angry bite-back from Sam, not the deer-in-the-headlights petrified reaction he’s getting. John starts to touch Sam’s shoulder, pulls his hand back, sees the policemen are almost at the door.
“Okay, go on in, ask for your brother. You’ve got your phone, right?”
A nod.
“So if they tell you anything, or a doctor comes out, tell ‘em I went to have a smoke and call me. I’ll be right here, okay?
Another nod.
John slides into the shadows as Sam goes in and the cops come out. There’s a respectably-sized concrete planter to the side of the entrance and John simply sits down behind it. He folds his shaking body in half, rests his arms on his knees. More than just his head aches like a bitch.
He wonders if it’s too late to pray - but god hasn’t listened to John Winchester in a long time. What will he do if Dean’s injury is … permanent? If his son is paralyzed?
John is very afraid that Dean will think he’d be better off dead.
And John hates himself for that split second of wondering if Dean might be right.
He closes his eyes to not think.
“Dad!” hisses through the quiet. “Dad! The doctor’s here!”
“ ‘M coming, Sam.” Getting himself upright is so much harder than it ought to be. He grimaces as he pushes his gauze-wrapped hands against the pavement. Once on his feet, John wavers back into the ER.
“Mr. Winchester? I’m Doctor Novey.”
Short and scrawny, but a bit older than John. Hopefully he knows his stuff.
“My son?”
John acquiesces to the gesture to sit down, only because he is about to fall over if he doesn’t. Sam, although scrunching in his own chair, is practically in John’s lap from anxiety.
“Your son’s injury is at the T12 vertebrae, meaning his movement is basically affected below the waist. Based on the imaging results, it appears that that the vertebrate is dislocated but not fractured. The spinal cord is inflamed from the pressure of the dislocation.”
“What’s the bottom line here?” Not fractured has to be good, but the rest?
“We don’t have a bottom line, yet, Mr. Winchester …”
“John, just John.” He puts his hand to his forehead, it smells like smoke, disinfectant, and antibiotic cream. The combination makes his stomach churn.
“Okay, John. Here’s the problem. The piece of furniture, a china cabinet, I understand, injured your son’s spine when it fell on him. You moved him to get him clear of the fire - again, I understand you had no choice - but the moving exacerbated the injury.” John feels Sam’s shudder at what he is hearing. “We’ve called in our most experienced surgeon, Doctor Thomas Yugasumi. We need your authorization to perform emergency surgery to relieve the pressure on the spinal cord. Time is of the essence, here, because if the swelling isn’t alleviated quickly the damage could be permanent.”
“Is Dean … Is Dean gonna be paralyzed?” Sammy voices the question knotting John’s guts.
The doctor’s intense gaze is frustrated, like he wants to be able to give the answer they want, but he can’t.
“It’s impossible to say yet. With immediate surgery there’s a chance the damage can be reversed. But it’s only a chance, not a certainty.” The doctor knows his words are not what John and Sam want to hear. “I am sorry I can’t say more. I assume you want to proceed?”
“No other options, right?”
A head shake.
“Then you do what you gotta do to fix my boy. But I want to see him first.”
“Dad, I have to see him, too!” Desperation drives Sam’s fingers into John’s forearm.
“It’ll be a little while, but I will make sure you see him before the surgery.” The doctor’s nod includes both of them. “In the meantime, the nurse is going to bring you authorizations to sign.”
John does not want to beg. But it’s Dean.
“I, uh, we don’t have any insurance.”
“I saw that. And the billing department will be all over you in about forty-eight hours. And they’ll discuss payment plans and applying for charity status. But none of that has anything to do with surgery on a young man who’s had a serious accident.”
John hopes the man can read the gratitude in his eyes.
John starts signing more forms, not bothering to read them. Not like he could focus on the ocean of small print with this headache.
Sam wants to know what happened. Sam deserves to know what happened. John won’t - can’t talk about it. Explaining would mean having to figure out which of them screwed up. John doesn’t want it to be his fault, doesn’t want Sam to point out what John did wrong to cripple Dean.
But he doesn’t want Sam to tell him that Dean fucked up. Because even if Dean did make a mistake, it was John that put him in that situation in the first place.
And Sam knows that, too.
“You can see him now.”
Sam jumps so fast he knocks the clipboard from John’s ragged grasp and the papers shoot over the floor. Of course Sam’s frazzled efforts to fix the mistake just delay getting to Dean more. The nurse stoops to help and then they are following her through the cold, sterilized hallways. She hands them off to another scrubs-clad employee with instructions to take them to fifth floor surgery.
“Dr. Yugasumi will meet you there, explain the procedure.”
“When can I see my son?”
“You’ll be able to see him before the surgery.”
The subtle change in air pressure as the elevator starts up is enough to send a stabbing thrust through John’s temples. He is unaware that he made a noise until Sam asks quietly, “Dad? Are you all right?”
The honest answer to that question, which John will not give voice to, is no.
“Banged my head.” He’d give Sam that much. “But I’m okay.”
“Dad? Dean …” Sam trails off, knowing he can’t ask the question.
They sit in the waiting area for a few minutes, then a young Asian man in navy scrubs, looks in at them.
“Mr. Winchester?”
John moves too fast at his name and aborts his attempt to stand. He feels Sam’s fingers around his upper arm to steadying him.
“I’m Dr. Yumasugi.” The man moves into John’s space, sits across from him. “We are going to attempt to relieve the pressure on your son’s spinal cord by shifting the vertebrate back to its correct place. There’s a fifty percent chance that will completely resolve his paralysis. However, we can’t tell what damage has been done to the cord from the swelling. We are operating immediately because the longer there is pressure on the nerve, the greater the risk of permanent damage.’
He pauses. John knows there is no answer to the question he really wants to ask, so he stays silent.
“With delicate surgery on the spine there is always the possibility of a negative outcome. The biggest risk is permanent paralysis. Other potential dangers are blood clots, adverse reaction to anesthetic, and heart attack or stroke during the operation. Given your son’s age and apparent health, the last two aren’t as likely. And every surgery runs the risk of patient death.”
He waits for John to absorb the explanation. “Do you have any questions you wish to ask?”
Sam’s fingers, still around John’s arm, tighten, and John is sure Sam doesn’t realize he’s hissed as the doctor finishes his matter-of-fact assessment. John chooses to believe that the factual presentation is an indication that the surgeon’s competence regards Dean as a routine case.
“I … We … want to see him before …”
“Follow me. Don’t be alarmed, he’s already getting Fentanyl in his I.V. so he’s going to be pretty out of it.”
“Dean!” Sam darts over to the hospital bed where Dean lays, rigid. The neck brace prevents him from turning his head, but his half-closed eyes shift and attempt to open at Sam’s voice.
“Dean,” John echoes.
“Sam? Dad?” The names are whispered. “Was’ happen’ Dad? ‘M on somethin’ …”
John can’t tell if Dean means the drugs or the bed, and he struggles with an explanation. What should he say?
Of course, Sam answers while John is still deciding how much information Dean needs.
“The doctor’s going to fix you, Dean.”
“I’m … broken.”
Both John and Sam have moved into Dean’s line of sight and John watches as glazed eyes try to focus on them. Dean’s fingers twitch and Sam reaches to settle them, not even conscious of the gesture, John is sure.
“Dean …” John still doesn’t know what to say.
“Dad,” Dean says simultaneously, “Don’ feel … no legs, Dad, can’t …”
“It’s just temporary, Dean.” He decides to lie. “The doctor said you’ll be fine once the swelling goes down.” Sam nods his head in agreement. Pleased with this unusual show of solidarity, John continues, “Spirit’s gone, we finished the job.” He thinks it’s important Dean believes that.
“ ‘K, Dad.” Eyelids lower as the sheer willpower keeping them open trickles away. Dark lashes rest on too-pale cheeks. Why? Why did this happen to Dean? John struggles to keep the rush of nausea in check.
Medical personnel invade the room and ask John and Sam to leave and John enters the excruciating limbo of just waiting. With Sam's accusatory and terrified eyes on him for the duration.
Part 2:
http://borgmama1of5.livejournal.com/49336.html
Part 3:
http://borgmama1of5.livejournal.com/49658.html