SPN Fanfic: Break My Body, Hold My Bones
Title: Break My Body, Hold My Bones
Rating: PG-13?
Genre/pairing: None
Word count: ~600
Summary: I don’t think she even threw you that hard, Sammy, Dean had said. You need to eat more Wheaties?
Disclaimer: Please don’t sue me.
Note: Prompt: "broken bones" for dark_bingo, "major illness" for hc_bingo.
(AO3)
“Dean?” He reaches down to tap his brother’s arm. Dean shoots upright, looks around wildly at the hospital lobby.
“Hey, I’m ready to go.”
Dean rubs a hand over his face. “Time?”
“Almost 5. Let’s go get some food.”
“What took them so damn long?”
Sam turns towards the parking lot, limping a little. He’d tried to get Dean to go back to the hotel and sleep-they were both bone weary from digging graves all night. It had turned out that not one, not two, but three sisters were wreaking havoc at the boarded-up inn on the outskirts of town. Every muscle Sam had was screaming by the time they’d dug up the second grave, even before he was flung into a mausoleum with enough force to fracture a couple of ribs and snap his right arm.
I don’t think she even threw you that hard, Sammy, Dean had said. You need to eat more Wheaties?
“Let’s just pack up and get out of town,” Dean suggests as they pull into the parking lot of a local pub.
“I need to go back to the hospital in a couple of days, they want to x-ray my ribs again.” Sam says.
“Well, you definitely have a broken radius,” Dr. Reynolds says. Then he holds the chest x-ray up to the light, hums a little, and clips it into place on the light box.
“And, it looks like two fractured ribs,” he says. He frowns as he studies the x-ray.
“Have you been feeling tired or run-down lately?” he asks.
Sam doesn’t remember the last time he wasn’t tired, coasting on fumes and truck stop coffee, but he shrugs.
“Any soreness?”
That’s even harder to quantify, as much as he gets thrown around.
“Weight loss?”
Sam looks down at himself, wonders when he last stepped on a scale. Had he been notching his belt a little tighter?
“How about in your knees? Any soreness there?” and here Sam squints at the doctor, suspicious.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“I think you should come back this week and let us run some tests,” and that’s all the doctor wants to say.
“Why do you have to go back for a busted rib?” Dean asks over a platter of nachos.
“I dunno, I guess they’re worried about me puncturing a lung?” Sam lies easily, feels his stomach twist at the lies they’ve told each other over the years.
(I don’t remember. I dreamt about my girlfriend burning.)
(No, nothing. I might have to kill you someday.)
(Everything’s fine. I can’t stop drinking blood.)
(I don’t remember. I tortured lost souls in hell.)
(I’m fine. I don't think I can take much more.)
(I’m fine. I don't think I can take much more.)
I’m fine.
I’m fine.
Sam drops Dean off at a pool hall two days later and returns to the hospital, this time to see a specialist. They run more x-rays, PET scans, MRIs. Sam looks up, up at the tube he’s stuck in as the magnets revolve around him, clanging and banging. He tries not to think about the words he’s heard the doctors throwing around, words like osteosarcoma. Words like metastasized. Words like amputation.
He picks Dean up two hours late and says “Let’s get out of here.”
He thinks about the appointment for a bone biopsy next week that he will not be keeping. He already knows what the results will be.
“Everything okay with your arm?”
“Yeah.”
“And your ribs?”
“Yeah.” Sam looks out the window, watches the town roll by. “I’m fine.”
Sequel: Building Jumper, Roof to Roof