City of Angels
DeathOfSanity
Summary: City of Angels AU. "You knew there would always be a spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason."
"If you'd known this was going to happen, would you have done it?"
His answer required no thought. "I would rather have had one breath of his hair,
"one kiss of his mouth,
"one touch of his hand,
"than an eternity without it.
"One."
AN: Because all I can see when I watch the movie is Dean and Cas. So I looked it up, and was mesmerized that I couldn't find anyone else who had done this. I basically just wrote the story down exactly and changed the characters. I also added some stuff and changed some stuff in order to try and keep them in character (although, lets be honest, Maggie and Seth's characters are already pretty much identical to Dean and Cas – I'm honestly impressed by the similarities). And just for your information, the angels are actually pretty cool in this story. Not total dicks. Hope you like it.
I love you without knowing how or when or from where
I love you straightforwardly without complexities or pride
I love you because I know no other way than this
So close that your hand upon my chest is my hand
So close that when your eyes close, I fall asleep
Chapter 1
I – I don't really pray, but if you could just... help me out here? I promise... A woman, Carol, with straight, dyed blonde hair, sleep-ruffled and exhausted, stood next to a child's bed, holding tightly to a thermometer and squinting at it in the darkness of the room. 105. 105? Oh my god! She cast a glance down at her daughter, lying still on the bed in her yellow footie pajamas, and frantically ran to the bathroom and turned on the cold water faucet in the bathtub.
Okay. Okay. Run a bath, call the doctor. Just run a bath – get her into the bath. She left the water running and went for the phone. Dr. Carter, 655... Oh. He won't be there.
Thermometer. What is a thermometer? Mercury? How does it even work? Maybe I can page him?
Carol went back over to the little girl to find her reaching out a hand to thin air, and brushed her daughter's hair back, wincing at the waves of heat pouring off her head. "Susan. Susie. Mommy needs you to get up now."
"Cold!" Susie whined pitifully, eyes barely open,
"I know. Hang on, hang on." Carol easily lifted her daughter off the bed and carried her into the bathroom.
"Cold!" Susie shrieked, flailing weakly as she was placed in the tub.
"It just feels cold because you're so hot," Carol tried to console the girl. But it did nothing, and Susie's eyes rolled up into her skull. "Susan? Stay with me, Susan. Susan!"
o0o
"Has she been disoriented?" asked the doctor, as he, two nurses, and the girl's mother wheeled Susie's bed through the halls of the hospital. "Confused?"
Castiel followed them.
"She said that she saw a man in her bedroom," Carol answered, frowning at the doctor.
Susie gazed up at Castiel. "Are you cold?" she asked him in a weak, high pitched voice.
He smiled and shook his head.
She kept her eyes on the him all the while as she was wheeled through the corridors.
"Okay, swing it."
"Move it, people."
"Is the room clear?"
"Yes, it's clear."
The doctors and nurses got Susie hooked up to monitors and life support. The pace was harried, and Carol stood off to the side with her hands clutched in her shirt.
"Give her pressure."
"Let's give her O 2 . Ten liters."
"Tap her right away."
"How's her breathing?" the doctor asked the nurse.
"No pulse or rhythm."
Susie's head fell to the side, to stare directly at Castiel where he knelt. He smiled as her eyes closed of their own accord.
A second later, Susie stared up at Castiel from where they stood outside of the room, watching through the glass as the doctors and nurses continued to work on Susie's now lifeless body. "Are you God?" she asked, her voice one of curiosity.
"No." She continued to stare. "My name is Castiel."
"Where are we going?" Her voice, innocent, unafraid.
He answered honestly. "Home."
"Can Mommy come?"
Castiel followed Susie's gaze back to the girl's mother, who had only just come out of her shock at what had just happened, and was wailing inconsolably at her daughter's bed.
"No."
"She won't understand."
"She will. One day."
As they left the Earthly realm, Castiel the angel and Susie the little girl, Castiel took her hand. "Can I ask you something?" he inquired.
"Yes," she answered, gazing upward.
"What did you like best?"
She considered only for a moment, a small grin on her face, "Pajamas."
o0o
"She definitely knew what she liked."
Castiel looked up from his "book of favorite things" and turned his gaze to Balthazar.
"Pajamas?" Balthazar asked, part confused, part awed.
"Flannel," Castiel tilted his head in wonder, "with feet."
"Pajamas," Balthazar stated again, looking around at the city for a moment, before turning back to Castiel. "Excellent choice. What else?"
Castiel grinned happily, excited as he always was to share his experiences with his most constant companion. He referred to the book. "In the elevator of the Bradbury Building, a man touched a woman's bare skin by accident... but it made her turn and look at him in such a way..."
A soft look crossed Balthazar's face. "And they...?"
"Yes," breathed Castiel.
His companion let out a deep chuckle. "It was a good day."
They sat above a freeway, the road sign upon which he and Balthazar rested indicated 3 miles to Los Angeles. Castiel glanced down at the freeway below, the cars driving past, some towards home, others elsewhere. "Do you ever wonder what it would be like?" He knew his companion would not look down upon him for this. "Touch?"
"No," he replied.
"Yes you do."
A flash of a smirk crossed Balthazar's face, as though the notion of touch were a naughty thing, and they would get in trouble if they were heard. "Occasionally. Yes."
Castiel returned his conspiratory look, and said it again, like a child trying out a bad word. "Touch."
o0o
Balthazar accompanied him to the airport, the air traffic control station.
The man looked stressed, but it wasn't just the pressure of the job. $20,000 at twenty-one percent. Pay it off with another card at fourteen percent.Castiel laid a hand on the man, helping him to focus. Aw, shit, the man thought, noticing a reading and relaying the vital information into his radio. ‟Federal 595 heavy, slow immediately to match preceding aircraft. Over.″ Jesus, wake up! Wake up!
Castiel and Balthazar spent the rest of the night in the city, going wherever they were needed. It was their lot.
"The little girl asked me if she could be an angel," Castiel relayed to Balthazar as they crossed to a lifeguard house at the beach the next morning. Castiel was a bit of an oddity among the other angels gathered there, the tan trenchcoat sticking out from the typical black attire of the host.
Every dawn and dusk, since the beginning of time, the angels gathered at sunrise and sunset.
"They all want wings."
"I never know what to say," Castiel admitted.
"Tell them the truth. Angels aren't human. We were never human."
"What if I just... make her a little pair of wings out of paper?"
"Tell her the truth," his companion scolded gently.
"I told her," Castiel replied, decidedly petulant.
"How did she take it?"
"She said, 'What good would wings be if you couldn't feel the wind on your face?'"
At the first light, in the brilliance of the sunrise peaking out over the horizon and shining out over the gathered angels, the choirs of heaven could be heard singing with majestic glory of the grace of God, as with all sunsets and sunrises since the world began. Castiel closed his eyes, and let it wash over him.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"... on the 101, through downtown L.A., no delays..." " Dean caught a snippet of the traffic report drifting out the open window of a car as he passed by on his bicycle, riding gloves on and sweatpants rolled up so the ends wouldn't get caught in the spokes.
As he rode by a construction site, one of the workers could be heard cursing up a storm. "Shit! Jesus!" Dean Winchester zipped past, grateful he wasn't stuck in traffic as well, honking horns and pissed off drivers were never a good start to the day.
Upon arrival to Memorial Hospital, Dean circled around to the back where the kitchens were housed and locked his bike to a guardrail. He took the employee only entrance and his beeper went off as he wound his way around cooks and janitors to get to the sixth floor. Patient in Prep, it said. He speed-walked the rest of the way to the men's locker room, quickly changed out of his sweats and into a set of blue scrubs, and then headed off towards the OR.
He strode into the antechamber outside of the surgical suite.
"What do we got?" Dean asked, studying the heart scan his protege Dr. Jo Harvelle already had up on the screen.
She answered, "50-year-old had a huge anterior wall MI this morning. Collapsed while jogging. Paramedics resuscitated him, but his EKG's pretty ugly. He's hypotensive," Jo pointed out the reading.
Dean focused his gaze on the white and gray image of the patient's heart before him. "This diagonal looks tight," he commented, indicating the area. "Who cathed him?"
"Rosenberg."
Dean nodded, "Be right in," and made to enter the scrub room, but Jo stopped him.
"The patient wants to meet you."
Dean turned to give her an incredulous look, but Jo just shrugged.
Seeing no reasonable excuse to deny the request, Dean shrugged himself, and snatched a surgical mask, holding it to his face as he entered the O.R. "He's pretty out of it," one of the nurses informed him.
The anesthesiologist pulled away the O2 mask from the patient's face, and said gently, "The doctor's here."
Dean looked into the bleary eyes for a moment. The patient, Dean had forgotten to ask for a name, looked back, almost as if he were searching for something. But what? Assurance? Calm? Dean's confidence that the surgery would go well, and that he would make it through to the other side. That he would see his family again. Did he have a family? Dean wasn't sure.
He didn't know what he saw, but it didn't matter. The patient's eyes began to drift closed and Dean left the OR to wash up.
o0o
"We're just gonna cool to 32º today," Dean announced to the surgical staff, as they got underway. Dean had gotten the patient's – Tom – chest open and the patient onto bypass without any complications, and other than the odd request from earlier, the operation was nothing out of the ordinary.
"Sucker," Dean requested, as it became harder to see inside the chest cavity. Once that was cleared up, he looked at the one of the nurses, Ash, and said, "Jimi."
Ash pushed the button on the boombox with a flourish, and a smooth guitar filled the room.
"Vein," he said to Jo, who complied, placing a clamp on the spurting blood.
"Kid started walking," Jo informed Dean conversationally. "Three unassisted steps."
Dean remembered the little cretin. Her name was Ellen, named after Jo's mother, and she'd bitten him the last time they were in the same room. She was a lot like her grandma. "You get it on video?" he asked.
"I wasn't even there."
"Aww. You've failed as a mother already. How does that feel?"
She responded with a glare. "Rather be there than staring at your ugly mug all day."
Dean laughed.
The surgery only lasted four hours, but Dean felt like he could go on forever. It was a good day, things were going well, and after the operation, he had plans to have lunch with Sam. For even though he worked in the same hospital as his brother, they saw very little of each other. Sam, being a pediatrician, and Dean in thoracics, the crossovers of their specialties were far and in between.
Dean saw Ash toss a People magazine into the biohazard bag, and listened as two of the orderlies discussed politics and who was going to win the election coming up.
The end of the operation came about easily – it was nothing Dean hadn't done a hundred times. Dean nodded to Ash to cut the music, and began unclamping the smaller capilaries, pleased to see them return to normal capacity. "Retrograde on," the nurse – Brenda – complied. "Let's come down to half flow. Give me a little volume."
"Down to half-flow," the bypass operator – Benny – replied. "Here's your volume."
"Ready to come off?"
"Ready."
"Let's come off."
"We're coming down."
"We're clamped and off bypass," said Jo, and the room abruptly filled with silence. The type of deadly hush doctors have nightmares about. Everyone in the room had their gazes fixed on the EKG monitor. It showed a flat line. Come on. Come on , Dean thought. You can do it, Tom.
One bleep. Then another. A collective sigh passed through the occupants of the room as the patient's heart started beating again, and someone turned the music back on. They began closing. Dean and Jo were wrist deep in sewing up, when Ash said, "Oh, shit."
Never a good sign, when the guy with the equipment tray says that.
Dean turned around. "What are you missing."
"Sponge."
"Bummer," said Jo, pausing mid-stitch.
After a beat, the entire staff bent to look on the floor. Better on the floor than in the patient.
"Got it!" Ash said with relief, and everybody stood up again.
They finished closing, and Dean had Brenda help him out of his surgical gown. "Thank you, everybody," he said.
Nurse Ruby stepped into the room, holding a white phone, the cord swinging from it's base like a jumprope. "Presbyterian's on the line."
Dean nodded to her, and turned to Jo. "His rhythm will be irritable," and went to take the call.
Back in the room, Jo turned to Benny. "He's getting good, huh?"
"Yeah, he's getting that attitude too."
" Getting an attitude?"
They were cut off as a shrill alarm sounded throughout the room. "Shit," said Ash. "V-tac."
"Christ!" Jo held out a hand to Brenda, "Paddles!"
"Kill the music," demanded Benny. "Get him back."
Brenda swung the door open for Dean, who looked in the room, adrenaline sprouting in his chest. He dropped the phone and hurried back in.
He kept his uncovered hands on his hips, giving orders. "Charge to 200."
"Charging 200," Jo replied
"Clear!" said Jo, and the paddles emitted a loud Zap! No change. "V-fib. No pressure."
"You give him lidocane?" Dean asked, and Brenda answered.
"It's gone in."
"Buzz him again. Paddles at 300."
Zap!
"Still nothing."
"Start compression." Jo readily obeyed. "Kill the alarm!" Dean ordered. After a moment of Jo pressing down on the patient's freshly stitched up chest, he held up a hand. "Hold up. It's not working." He held out his arms to Brenda who had another gown at the ready. "Got to open him. How long to go back on?" he glanced at Benny, who's hands were already going at lightning speed, working to replace all the tubes and get the bypass back up and running.
"It'll take me ten minutes to set up," he answered, voice strained with concentration.
"Come on!" Jo exclaimed, repeatedly glancing between the patient and the monitors. "Nothing."
"Knife," Dean held out a newly gloved hand to Ash, and was given a scalpel. He quickly cut through the stitches they'd just placed, and used the rib-spreader to re-expose the heart. "Internal paddles," he ordered, and found them in his hand less than a second later, covered in insulation jelly. "Charge to 20."
"Ready," said Brenda.
"Hit it."
Nothing. No movement, no beeping.
"Go to 30," Dean said. "Hit it."
"No response," supplied Jo.
"Benny, I need to get back on bypass here."
"Give me seven more minutes."
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Castiel watched as Dean Winchester dropped the paddles and stuck his own hands into Tom Balford's chest, not giving up without a fight. Castiel found it admirable, that this human felt so strongly the hurt of others. Even a patient he didn't know.
Castiel could almost feel sorry for him, as he knew the plight would be fruitless. Tom Balford would soon be at peace. Dean's hands expertly pumped the heart, forcing blood to flow through it, and trying to stimulate it to begin working on it's own again.
"Come on. Come on," Dean said, sweat beading on his forehead. "Don't do this. Come on ."
"He's going," stated Joanna Harvelle, casting worried looks from the heart monitor, to Dean, and then back again.
"He's not going anywhere." Castiel was caught suddenly, unexpectedly, by bright green eyes. Dean was looking right at him as if he could see him. Which was impossible.
Castiel stared back, disbelieving. How could this be happening. Humans couldn't see angels. Children could. And the dead and dying. But Dean was neither dead nor dying. He was perfectly healthy, soul shining bright, and staring right at him, arms still pumping away.
While Castiel was still reeling in shock, Dean looked back down at the heart held in his hands. "Come on, don't do this," he panted. Nothing. "Damn it, come on!"
"Tom!
"Come on! Come on.
"Tom.
"Come on."
Castiel remembered himself only when Tom came to stand next to him, watching Dean fight to restart the man's heart.