Details
His daddy used to say the devil was in the details. How right he was. The hell of it is---no pun intended, Bobby's always been detail-oriented. He knows why mandrake gathered by the light of a full moon will work in a particular spell and why if it's gathered under a new moon, it won't. He can tell a snark from a boojum. He's lived as long as he has by thinking one step ahead of his enemies, because nothing in the world is more dangerous than ignorance, and procrastination kills.
Now, laying here in this hopital bed, darned together with one hundred and eight stitches, he shakes his head, mad at himself. Like the jingle about one nail in a horseshoe causing an empire to fall, it was a minor piece of hardware that caused his downfall. A few weeks back, he'd been grinding some rust off a bracket and the durned thing had shattered against the whirring wire brush. A shrapnel-sharp piece of steel sliced through his tee shirt and gouged a notch out of the tattoo beneath. It was an ugly, jagged cut, and took a while to heal. Bobby had been thinking it was about time to go get the gap in his protective sigil touched up, but between trying to detox Sam and scanning for signs of the Apocalypse, it had taken a back seat.
He'd called Sam arrogant---well, the thing riding him had---but he's just as bad, putting off that simple task; it wouldn't have taken ten minutes to fix that line. Of course, his tattoo guy is an hour away and doesn't make house calls, and he hadn't wanted to "waste" the time. Just see how that turned out. "Shut up, you," he growls at the heart monitor, which has blipped at the terrible memory of holding that knife to Dean's throat.
Stabbing himself had been a desperate gambit; it saved Dean from dying at his hand. In his urgency, he'd managed to nick the femoral nerve of his right leg, and the fool doctors were mournfully telling him he might not walk again. Idjits. He'll pull himself back up if he has to go find some voodoo priest to lay some mojo on him. He'll be fine...or is that more big-headedness on his part? That Bobby Singer is too special for the world to crap on?
Humph. He knows better. Right now, he may be hip-deep in it, but Sam and Dean are up to their necks, and for the time being, it doesn't look like he's going to be much help. Bobby sighs. Dean's mad and scared---he can read that boy like a book; he's talking big about stopping the end of the world, but knowing Dean, it's talk to make himself feel like he's in control. And Sam...that boy is hurting. Has been ever since Dean made that deal, and it got worse instead of better when Dean got out of Hell without any help from him. He's loaded down with guilt---Bobby remembers how that feels. In his case, though, killing Kathryne hadn't brought on the End of Days.
Once they turn him loose from this place, the first thing he's gonna do is head up the road and get that sigil fixed. No matter what---if he has to rig up hand controls on the Chevelle or ride a goldurned lawn mower. Or call a taxi cab, if it comes to that. The important thing is that nothing like Thursday's stand-off ever happens again. The rest is just details.