Bring Me A Dream
It was middle-of-the-night dark and the air outside the bar reeked of smoke, whiskey, beer, and an unsavory tang of urine. Ordinarily Sam would have vacated the immediate environs with all great haste. Instead he hesitated not far from the door, staring at his brother in wide-eyed, brow-knitted disbelief.
Dean stood with legs spread to maintain balance and was bent over, braced with hands on thighs.
Laughing his ass off.
One hand came up to wave in his younger brother's general vicinity. "Oh, Sam . . . oh, Sam . . . you should have seen it . . ."
Sam said, "I did see it. I was there. Dean—"
But Dean was still laughing. "No . . . no . . . you missed it, Sam. The look on his face . . ."
Sam did not know how long it had been since he had heard Dean's laughter run so unfettered and open. Probably the last time was when the Clowns of Doom hit his baby brother with seltzer and glitter, rendering him looking, Dean said in the midst of laughter verging on the hysterical, like he'd been attacked by PCP-crazed strippers.
Through gritted teeth, Sam said, "Do you even realize we nearly got our asses handed to us by a couple of locals?"
Dean straightened, fumbled at his side as if it ached from laughter. "Oh Jesus, Sam — the guy had no friggin' clue! You just rose up off that barstool and he realized he was, like, two feet shorter than you. Gigantor had come to get him!" And Dean was gone again, convulsed in laughter.
"You know," Sam said with pointed deliberation, "come morning, you're going to hurt like hell." Because he already did: bruised and bloodied knuckles, a sore gut, and a graze on his chin. Plus a headache.
"What—because of laughing?" Dean just grinned at him maniacally. "No, no, Sammy—laughter is the best medicine!"
"You got a pool cue broken over your head."
"Ah, Sammy—you know my head's harder than any pool cue!"
"And the big guy landed a few good punches."
"But it was worth it!" Dean rubbed briefly at the back of his skull, leaving a tuft of hair sticking up in an echo of Dennis the Menace. Laughter was dying, though it did bubble up now and then in spurts. "Okay, yeah, I'll be sore in the morning. But not as sore as that guy."
"They were locals, Dean, very large locals, and there's one bar in town. Nobody knows us, and you took almost $200 off the guy. Before you punched his lights out. So, are we staying the night in the motel? Or hitting the road?"
Dean squinted consideringly around at their surroundings. A podunk bar in a podunk town. The bartender had tossed all those involved in the brawl, but Dean and Sam appeared to be the only ones still inhabiting the poorly-lighted parking lot. Inviting targets for angry locals.
"Okay." Dean straightened, rolling shoulders and neck against incipient stiffness. "Okay, yeah—maybe best to hit the road. We're, what, 200 miles out of Sioux Falls? We'll make that before dawn . . . we can surprise Bobby. He's not expecting us until late tomorrow."
Sam nodded. "You know . . . one of these days maybe you'll learn not to hit on the girlfriend of the biggest guy in the bar."
"No, no . . . I was the hittee, not the hittor!"
Sam sighed, lifted a hand in surrender. "Fine. Whatever."
Dean straightened his coat, found the Impala sitting in the middle of the mostly-empty lot. He grinned, hitched one shoulder in a cocky, dismissive shrug. "What can I say, Sammy? It's my burden."
Sam tipped his head back, let the heavens see his eye-roll. Then he followed his burdened brother out into the moonlight, heading for Dean's baby.
# # #
As the Impala was jerked sharply to the left, Sam woke up abruptly. "What . . . Dean . . .?"
Pitch black outside. The only illumination were the dash and radio lights, and the dull ambient glow of a low-hanging crescent moon.
Dean slotted the car back between the center stripe and the chewed-up asphalt shoulder. "What?"
Sam, who'd been slumped against the passenger door, now sat bolt upright and assessed his brother closely. "You okay?"
Dean, squinting at the road, barely glanced at him. "I'm fine."
Sam reassembled long limbs into something approaching a normal position, grimacing against the pull of sore, brawl-bruised muscles. He pulled his phone, depressed a button, brought up the backlighted panel. "Uh. Two a.m." He tucked the phone back into his pocket, giving way to a jaw-cracking yawn. " . . . Falls?"
"Say what?"
"How far?"
"About 75 miles out."
Sam debated whether to stay awake, or return to oblivion. Then the car seemed to wallow in the road, lacking her usual powerful crispness. Frowning, Sam glanced at his brother again. "You okay? You awake? You want me to drive?"
Dean shot him a brief stink-eye scowl, the kind that silenced humans and demons alike.
Except for his brother. Sam raised placating hands in the air. "Okay! Fine! Just asking. You did get whacked over the head with a pool cue."
"So?"
"And the guy did land a few punches after that."
"Sam, the other guy landed a couple on you. Should I assume you're incapable of driving because of it? It was a pool cue, not a two-by-four!"
"On the tail end of six days going from town to town doing salt-and-burns that totally disrupted a multiplicity of sleep cycles." Sam couldn't restrain another massive yawn.
Dean's startled silence was palpable. Then he piled on. "'Multiplicity? Multiplicity?' Is that what we're calling it, now? Did they teach you that at Stanford? Or is that your Word-For-The-Day taken from a bathroom stall door?"
Sam massaged his right hand, working the stiffness out of bruised knuckles. "I'm not sure men who read bathroom stall doors can count above two."
"Two? What two?"
"Boobs, for all I know. Hell . . . balls."
Dean expelled a breath of a grunt that transmuted itself into an appreciative blurt of a laugh. "That's good, Sam. I like that. But as for my head and the pool cue? No problemo. If you're discussing numbers that range between two and a 'multiplicity,' I think you're the one who needs the sleep."
Sam grunted, leaned forward, punched in the cassette tape resting in the slot. One of Dean's beloved Metallica albums blasted into the car. "Jesus," Sam blurted, flailing to turn it down, "that'll wake the dead."
The Impala canted leftward sharply. He shot a glance at his brother, saw Dean's head tipped forward, chin nearing his chest.
In the space of seconds? Crap.
He lurched leftward, grabbed the wheel, yanked it to return the car to the right-hand lane. Steered the car himself because apparently Dean wouldn't, or couldn't, despite his booted foot remaining on the gas pedal. "Dean—wake up!"
Dean's head bobbed, then jerked upright.
"Pull over! Pull over, Dean!"
" . . . crap . . . " Dean shut his hands tightly around the wheel.
"Just pull over, Dean. I'll take it from here." And as his brother began to protest, Sam snapped, "You're going to kill us both, otherwise, and I don't feel like dying tonight!"
That got through. Words and tone.
Dean did indeed steer the car to the side of the road, shut off the ignition. After a moment he roused, squinted. "Yeah. Okay."
Sam, taking no chances, yanked the keys free. "'Yeah okay' what? Dean . . . ?"
But Dean cracked the door open, pushed his way out of the car. Took two paces away from the Impala, then stopped, tipping his head back to gaze heavenward.
Sam popped the glovebox, grabbed the Maglite and twisted it on, exited his side of the car. He rounded the massive hood, snagged a handful of his brother's jacket to hold him in place, and stuck the flashlight into his face.
Dean fell back a step, trying to jerk free of Sam's grip. " - the hell?"
Sam breathed a little easier. His brother's pupils had been wide and equally open for darkness, then in perfect synchronicity shrank down small from the onslaught of the flashlight. Dean shut his eyes, attempted to bat the Maglite away with a wild swipe of his arm. It was a perfectly normal response.
Sam released a noisy breath, aimed the flashlight elsewhere. "Needed to check."
"Well, I'm sure as hell awake now," Dean growled. "Give me the keys, and let's hit the road."
"No, no . . . no keys for you. I'm driving."
"Sam—"
Sam drew himself up. It was Dean who usually employed his lethal grace and poised physicality to intimidate, but Sam was fully aware his height could do the job as well. Hadn't his brother already said it played a role in the bar fight?
So, he used it. "You're not winning this one, Dean. Either get into the passenger seat, or walk. Those are your choices."
Dean, hands tucked into pockets and shoulders rounded, squinted at him. "You know . . . you're just so friggin' cute, and downright masterful, when you're pissed."
Sam flashed a very quick version of his most insincere smile. "Not pissed. Just trying to save our asses. I don't care if you sleep in the car, Dean, but you're not going to do it while behind the wheel."
He could see the parade of potential rebuttals crossing Dean's face. He saw, too, the decision to make none of them.
"Yeah, " Sam said. "Headache, right?"
That earned him stink-eye again. But Dean made his way around the Impala to the passenger side and climbed in with no further discussion.
"Uh-huh," Sam said, and folded himself behind the steering wheel.
# # #
Men said that with age came wisdom. What men didn't say was that with age also came completely screwed up sleep patterns and a tiring prostate. Bobby Singer couldn't properly declare when was the last time he'd slept a night through. Either he was up to pee, or he was up just friggin' because.
So he was awake when he heard the familiar rumble of a massive Chevy engine arriving in front of his porch steps.
Early. Like, twelve-fourteen hours early. Which meant no overnight in a town along the way, as planned; and that sometimes translated to trouble. Could be any number of things had gone wrong.
Or maybe they'd gotten bored in one of the skeevy motel rooms they called home along the road. That'd happened, too. He'd known them to do one of two things: Park before his house, then sleep in the car because they didn't want to disturb him; or pick his lock to sneak in, then crash on couch and floor.
The clock claimed it 3 a.m. Still dark. Sun wouldn't make it up for a few more hours.
Sighing, Bobby unlocked the front door. Pulled it open on creaking hinges. Heard the big engine shut down; saw the dome light go on as Sam opened the driver's side door in the familiar metallic grind. Across from him, Dean clambered out of the passenger side.
Bobby waited. He saw them grab duffles, hitch them over shoulders. Noted the stop-and-start stiffness of their movements. But they were moving, each of them under his own power, so whatever was going on did not appear to be serious.
Sam came up the steps first, pausing in the porch light. Bobby saw the shading of a bruise along one side of his jaw, scuffed knuckles on the hand holding the straps of the duffle hitched over a shoulder. Then Dean came up behind him with a lighter tread, and Bobby noted the faint bloom of a black eye, the swollen lower lip.
He grunted. "Was it supernatural, or human?"
Sam's mouth twitched in a crooked grin. "Human."
"Bar fight," Dean clarified.
Bobby nodded. "Who won?"
"Jury may be out," Sam said. "We were both still standing, and they had a man down, so maybe we won on points."
Bobby stepped aside in tacit invitation. "Don't tell me. Dean hustled some poor schmuck out of his factory wages . . . "
Sam slid by. "And the girlfriend," he added. "Don't forget the girlfriend."
Bobby saw Dean's bruised mouth widen. He knew what that meant. "Ya idjit. You're gonna get yourselves killed one of these days, and it ain't gonna be the Big Bad that does it. Just a jealous boyfriend or husband."
Dean followed his brother into the house. "I swear, Bobby, all I did was shoot pool and be polite to the lady. You know—I smiled back. End of story."
"That's never the end of the story with you." Bobby shut the door behind them, latched it. "You want coffee?"
Sam dropped the duffle to the floor in the study. "Bobby, you want to go back to bed, I can make it. Dean needs sleep, but I grabbed some in the car."
"I'm good." Dean moved past both of them to deposit his duffle next to the couch. "Coffee sounds great."
Bobby looked from one to the other. Despite the rising bruises, it was true Sam appeared well-rested. Dean, not so much — probably more sore from the fight than he was letting on - but there was an alertness behind the eyes.
"All right," Bobby said, "coffee it is."
And he made it, and they drank it, and he did; then, despite the infusion of caffeine, Sam fell asleep in an armchair, and Dean stared blindly at the TV screen, watching—well, between long blinks where his eyes spent more time closed than they did open—a Clint Eastwood movie. One with horses and guns, but no monkeys.
They were battered around the edges like aged books packed in boxes for too many moves, but they were whole, and clearly not in need of any medicinal aid beyond beer and whiskey and a good night's sleep.
And Bobby, who recognized that his age-screwed circadian rhythm was winning the round even over coffee, went back upstairs to his bed. They'd fend for themselves. They always did.
# # #
Dean became aware that at some point he'd crunched himself into Bobby's couch as if burrowing in for the winter. It took awhile for his brain to make the connection with his limbs, and then he rolled back, pulled his nose out of the cushions, and peered up at the ceiling in an attempt to focus.
" . . . Sleeping Beauty, there," Bobby was saying. "How bad of a brawl was it?"
And Sam answered easily, "Wasn't much. It blew up fast—the guy didn't like being hustled—but it didn't last long. He landed a few punches, but Dean took him out pretty quick."
They were in the kitchen. Dean shifted, worked himself up into a sitting position, sat slumped against the couch as he rubbed his eyes. The left one hurt; oh yeah, he'd been tagged.
He raised his voice to enter the conversation. " . . . that fight lasted about as long as bad sex." He realized then that the air was redolent of eggs, bacon, country potatoes, toast, and coffee. That was worth getting up for. He gathered resources, lurched up from the couch. "Hope you saved some for me."
"Early bird," Sam reminded him in a tone of voice far too bright and chipper for whatever time of the morning it was.
"This bird is always on time for breakfast." Dean stretched briefly, stumped his sock-footed way into the kitchen. An inspection of the stove suggested that no, they had saved nothing for him. "Ah, man . . . "
"More eggs in the fridge," Bobby said in his slow, dry gravel, "and taters on the counter if you want to fry 'em. Butter's still out. You know where the bread is. Have at it."
Dean grunted, considered it, made a course correction and went for the coffee. By the time he managed to pour a mug, down half, then refill, he realized that food did not, after all, interest him. So while Sam and Bobby sat at the table over the remains of their meal, Dean shuffled back into the study, flopped down on the couch, and fastened a scowl upon the vast distances of a small room.
When he nearly lost his grip on the coffee, which would have been disastrous for his crotch, Dean put the mug on the table, tipped over sideways and stretched out. Nothing wrong with an extended nap on a down day . . .
. . . except they wouldn't let him sleep. In minutes, Sam was there slapping the back of a hand against his shoulder. "Hey. Wake up."
Dean muttered imprecations at him.
"Come on," Sam said. "It's almost noon. Up, already. Give Bobby back his couch."
Noon. Noon? How the hell could it be noon? " . . . you just had breakfast," Dean muttered in groggy protest.
"We had breakfast hours ago," Sam replied. "It's lunchtime, and if you want to eat this time, you'd damn well better get your ass of the couch and make it yourself."
Dean considered it. "Nah. Not hungry." He waved a hand, let it flop back down. "Go ahead without me."
After a moment of silence, Bobby asked, "How bad was that brawl again?"
" – we won," Dean answered as his eyes sealed themselves closed. So, he'd missed breakfast, would miss lunch . . . there was always dinner.
# # #
Since Bobby had cooked dinner - grilled salmon, whipped garlic-laced potatoes, corn-on-the-cob, Chef's salad - Sam called clean-up duty on himself. Just as he finished washing the last of the plates, Bobby asked, "He get hit in the head?"
Sam looked at him sharply, surprised by the tone of voice. "Pool cue," he answered. "A nasty crack, but nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn't even the butt end. Halfway down, maybe. He shook it off, laid the guy out."
Bobby was working on a post-dinner whiskey. "Not like him to miss breakfast, let alone lunch and dinner."
Sam shrugged. "I think he's just tired. You know how he pushes himself, Bobby. Maybe four hours of sleep a night anyway, if that, and then we went almost a week with next to none on those salt-and-burns. Plus he got up-close-and-personal with a tree on the last job."
"Followed by a bar fight." Bobby shrugged. "I dunno. You're right about pushing himself too hard. You boys are young yet, but you go burnin' the candle at both ends without decent rest in between jobs, and you may get yourselves in trouble." His smile was a twitch of a mouth mostly hidden by beard. "Maybe I oughta invest in a couple of beds, stick 'em up in the spare bedrooms. Give you boys a proper place to sleep."
Sam grinned at him, shrugged. "Couch doesn't seem to be bothering Dean."
But later on, Dean's tenure on the couch was bothering Sam. He usually could spend hours on the laptop surfing for anything that might suggest a job, and he'd done that, losing track of time as he researched, but now he came back to the world and discovered his brother was still not in it.
"Dean—come on." Sam pushed back the chair and rose, made the distance to the couch in a few long strides. "Enough, already. Wake up." He leaned down, backhanded the nearest shoulder. When that elicited no response, Sam grabbed a handful of shirt sleeve and shook it. Hard. "Dean."
Nothing. Dean lay on his back in the utter abandon of deep sleep, limbs slack, the lines of his face gone soft. As Sam shook his arm, his head lolled against the couch arm. Behind closed lids, he slept.
Unease stirred in Sam. He knelt down, thumbed back the eyelids. Sharp concern subsided when he saw the pupils were evenly matched, perfectly normal. To all appearances, Dean was just – asleep.
Sleeping like the dead.
"Hey." Sam poked him. "Hey." This time he went for the ribs. Dean was somewhat ticklish, and a shot to the ribs with experienced fingers was always enough to evoke a sudden, and semi-violent, response.
Nothing.
Unease resurfaced. "Dean."
He heard the step as Bobby came close. "What's up?"
Sam drew in a breath. "He won't wake up." He looked up at Bobby, trying to rein in burgeoning concern. "I can't wake him up."
The older man grunted, studied Dean a moment. Sam saw the tightening of his eyes as he considered what he saw. Then Bobby stepped close, bent over, placed a bunched knuckle against Dean's sternum and bore down.
It was a pain stimulus test, Sam knew, as well as an assessment of consciousness levels. A hard knuckle set firmly against the flesh over the breastbone with focused pressure behind it was an excellent way to rouse someone. Doctors used it in hospitals. And Bobby wasn't gentle.
When the attempt produced no changed results, Bobby said, "Balls."
Sam, still kneeling beside the couch, frowned up at him. "You thinking concussion, maybe? He fell asleep driving on the way here."
Bobby looked at him sharply. "Fell asleep behind the wheel?"
Sam looked at his brother again. Never, ever, had Dean done such a thing. He wasn't a fool, and he knew the toll the job took on a body. He left nothing to chance when it came to the kinds of things that were mundane, the small threats of the everyday world. When one risked his life against all things that bumped in the night, deadly things bumping around day or night, he did not take chances behind the wheel of a car. He turned the keys over to Sam, if Sam was alert enough to drive, or he parked the car. Many a night they'd spent just off backroad asphalt, making a bedroom of the Impala when trying for a motel stretched physical resources too much.
He had not done so the night before. It had taken Sam's quick actions to keep the car on the road.
Unease transmuted to something deeper yet, a breath of chill air across the back of his neck. "Bobby . . ."
Bobby used his knuckle again, and the response was the same: none. "This ain't right, Sam. This ain't natural."
Sam grabbed the front of Dean's shirt, closed hands into fists, and yanked his brother up off the cushions, shoved him hard against the couch back. "Dean!"
Dean slumped against the couch, head lolling. In a frantic scramble, Sam opened eyelids again, checked skin temperature, felt for a pulse, for breathing, even pressed an ear hard against Dean's chest to listen for a heartbeat.
All was normal. Nothing appeared wrong with Dean physically. He breathed. His heart beat. He was simply, illogically, deeply asleep, and nothing they did, nothing at all, woke him.
Once again Sam grabbed handfuls of his brother's shirt, shook him hard, worried him like a terrier with vermin. "Dean. Dean!"
Dean slept on.
Sam's breath left him on a rush. From where he knelt upon the floor, hands knotted into his brother's shirt, he looked up at Bobby. "What do we do? What do we do?"
"Sioux Falls," Bobby said tightly. "Hospital."
"Hospital - ?"
"This ain't right, Sam. It's a head injury, maybe, or even some kind of virus."
"A virus? For this?"
"There's a whole bunch of possibilities, Sam. But his pupils are normal, he's breathing, heart's strong; I see no reason for 9-1-1. Let's just load him into the car, drive him in. If we're lucky, the doctors will laugh at us, and Dean'll cuss us out for being namby-pamby alarmist fools on the drive back."
It was unreal. One moment, Dean being Dean, and laughing like a maniac outside the bar. Now, healthy in all respects, but . . .
And the phrase crept out of the dark in the back of his head: Dead to the world.
# # #
Sam pushed himself into a corner of the small ER cubicle as they brought Dean back after preliminary tests. Orderlies placed the rolling bed with ease of practice, slotting it between monitors against a wall containing various equipment; locked down the wheels, checked rails, glanced briefly at Sam, then departed as swiftly as they arrived. And Sam stood there, staring at his brother.
They'd hooked him up to fluids, set a second IV needle and catheter just in case they decided to add something else to the mix. Before they'd hauled him away for more tests, he'd sported a pulse-ox device on one finger, a blood pressure sleeve around a bicep. Electrical leads ran from under the hospital gown; unhooked, they were coiled at his side. Other than fluids, he was free of encumbrances.
Sam stood in the corner like a kid in Time Out. Then, slowly, he loosened stiff limbs and moved forward, toward Dean. He closed both hands around a bed rail and gripped it, clung tightly.
A nurse yanked the curtain aside, and Sam startled. She was young, brunette, pretty, wearing brightly-colored scrubs. A stethoscope was slung around her neck.
She moved swiftly and efficiently, resettling BP cuff, pulse-ox, hooking leads to monitors, checking IV fluid levels. She cast Sam a smiling glance. "Family?"
Sam swallowed heavily. "My brother."
"Breathe," she said.
Sam looked at her blankly. "What?"
"Breathe. Or you'll pass out, and we'll have to pick you up off the floor. We'd really only rather do that with actual patients, not brothers."
He got that. Nodded jerkily, forced himself to inhale.
"Vitals are good," she told him. "Temp's normal, so is BP. Heart's steady. He's not in any danger."
He wanted to shout it, but didn't. "Then why won't he wake up?"
"Tests may tell us something. The doctor will be in soon. She'll have some results." She checked the IV catheter in Dean's left elbow, the drip-rate on the bag, resettled sheet and blanket, then pulled the curtain aside again and disappeared.
Sam closed his eyes a moment, shuttered lids tightly, then opened them and looked at his brother. Dean's color was good, save for the bruising from where a punch had landed. And even that looked perfectly normal. A black eye. People got black eyes all the time. It didn't even require a fist applied to face.
So many monitors. Glowing, spiking lines, beeping, the hiss and grind of the BP cuff as, on a programmed schedule, it inflated automatically, paused, sent data and deflated. How many times had Sam sat in a hospital beside his brother and watched machines? He knew what the numbers meant. The nurse was right. Nothing on the monitors indicated a problem.
Sam drew in a prodigious breath, blew it out on a noisy stream that wasn't quite steady. He shook his head, gazed all over the room to escape the vision of his brother lying so still and silent in the bed, and loosed his grip upon the bed rail with a rattle of metal and plastic. He couldn't make himself sit, and there wasn't room to pace. So he stood there locked in place, arms wrapped around himself in a tight, stiff hug.
Which is how the doctor found him as she pulled back the curtain and stepped into the cubicle. She was mid-30s, he thought, not that much older than they were, really, and blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She wore tortoise-shell glasses. Behind them, her eyes were blue.
Her smile was professional. "You're the one who filled out the forms? Sam?"
He nodded.
Her smile softened. "I'm Dr. Randall. Listen, we're running tests and not all the results are back. It takes a little time. But the neurologist saw nothing on the initial CT or MRI scans that indicate a problem for now."
He pounced on it. "'For now?'"
She nodded. "Sometimes it takes more than a couple of scans to begin sorting things out. We need a baseline, and then we go from there. Now, if your brother's sustained any head injuries and sought treatment in the past, scans from other facilities would be helpful."
"You think it's a head injury?"
"Too soon to know," she said, "but you did mention a bar fight, and a pool cue. We have to take that into consideration. If he's had concussions, skull fractures, any kind of injury, it would be helpful to know."
Sam blurted it on a rush of breath. "All of the above."
Her brows rose. "Repeatedly?"
"Uhhh . . . kind of." Sam dragged out the best story he could think of. "We—my brother—um . . . have you heard of cage fighting? Mixed martial arts?" He saw a shift in her eyes. "It's not . . . not exactly sanctioned, if you know what I mean." This was not going well. "But this wasn't any kind of match. This was just – just a bar fight. Three punches maybe, the pool cue . . . Dean never even hit the floor. He seemed fine."
"And are there medical records elsewhere?"
"Um, no." Yes. Of course there were. But not under the name he'd used when they checked Dean in.
"It's helpful," she said, "but not required. We'll run our own scans, see what we get. Right now, I'm not seeing indications of injury. He may have sustained a minor concussion. But we'll run other tests, too, to be sure. We're going to admit him, and I've got him scheduled for bloodwork, lumbar puncture, some other tests."
Sam was startled. "Lumbar puncture?"
"This isn't a coma," she said, "but it's not normal, either. So, we need to check for other agents."
"Virus," he said, recalling Bobby's comment.
"Exactly. We'll check for encephalitis, meningitis, a slew of other things. In the meantime, all vitals are good, the first head scans seem fine. We'll monitor his condition. But if you think of anything, anything at all, that might have contributed, please let me know. And I do mean anything, even if it seems inconsequential. Okay?"
Nothing about their lives was inconsequential.
Sam nodded. She studied him a moment longer, then checked Dean's monitors, the chart at the end of the bed, departed.
# # #
In three days, doctors still could not determine the problem. Sam thought he might be losing his mind. His questions elicited no definitive answers, only cliches and platitudes. In a small private room his brother lay very still in a bed hooked to multiple monitors, IV fluids, and now a nasogastric tube to provide nutrients, since he wasn't conscious to eat. The black eye was mostly greenish-yellow now, but the rest of his skin had acquired a pallor Sam didn't like at all. Dean looked almost waxy, and his flesh seemed to adhere more closely to his bones.
Bobby came in every day. He was grim, mostly silent, clearly concerned. There was little to say. No stimulus provoked a response, and while Dr. Randall still refused to say it was a coma, it sure looked that way.
# # #
On the fifth day, Dean seized.
The monitor alarms went off in a dissonant chorus and staff came running in. Sam and Bobby were herded out of the room. They heard the quick, steady voices calling out orders, questions, replies, the calm in the midst of storm. Eventually the tones changed from highly alert to relaxed professionalism, and the monitor alarms halted. After a moment, Dr. Randall stepped out into the corridor.
"He's okay," she said, before they could even ask. "As these things go, the seizure was mild. But we're seeing something now we didn't see before."
Sam jumped on it. "What are you seeing?"
"We've got to consider other things," she said. "Maybe catalepsy, stupor, catatonia . . . he's completely unresponsive to all external stimuli. But there are drugs for such things, and that's probably the route we'll take now."
"Wait!" Sam realized he'd closed a hand around her forearm. Shocked, he released it quickly and made a placatory gesture. "I'm sorry – I'm sorry! But . . . you said stupor . . . catatonia. Is that like – he's catatonic? Just – a body, and nothing's in there?"
"Something's in there," she said firmly. "I promise you that. Your brother's in there. We just have to find the key to letting him out again." Her glance flicked between him and Bobby, measuring their anguish. "I'm sorry. I know this is difficult. But we really are doing everything we know to do. Look, he's quiet now. If you want to go in, you can. But only for 30 minutes. We'll be running tests again."
This time, when they entered, Dean wasn't Dean anymore. His head was canted rigidly to the right, and that hand was locked around the bed rail. Visible muscles ran like cables beneath chalky flesh. The smattering of freckles across Dean's nose and cheeks, usually mostly hidden by a faint tan, stood out like beacons. The jaw was clenched, lips parted. Even his breathing had changed. From the steadiness of deep sleep, it ran noisily now through his teeth.
"Balls," Bobby muttered. "It hurts to see this, boy. Wake the hell up." And then he blinked hard, looked at Sam. "You be okay if I leave you for a bit?"
Sam nodded, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I'm going to get on the laptop, see what the medical sites say about that stuff the doc said."
Bobby cast Dean a long, raw look, then departed swiftly.
Sam watched him go, noting the stiffness in his gait, the tension in his shoulders. Bobby would rather, he knew, check out of the world long before either of his surrogate sons did.
# # #
Dean slept, but was awake. Felt the poking, the prodding, the lumbar puncture, even the insertion of the NG tube; heard the monitors. Nothing hurt. No discomfort was involved. But he heard and felt everything, including Sammy's questions, Bobby's, and was aware of their rising fear.
He'd tried so hard to break his way out of the inertia, the utter stillness of his body. The closest he had come devolved into seizure, into a frantic clutch of hand upon bed rail, and the locking of fingers into place. He'd meant to grab Sam's arm, but Sam had been hustled out of the room. All Dean could grab instead was plastic and metal, not flesh, not human flesh; not his own flesh. Or as good as, born of the same mother and father.
He lay stiff beneath the covers, his body locked into a battle with itself. The laxity of bones, muscle, flesh had become rigidity.
He could not coax movement even from his lips, to form his brother's name. Could not open eyelids to see his brother's face.
He was stone. He was stillness.
Inside, he screamed.
# # #
When staff took Dean away again for further testing, Sam retreated to the hallway, to a chair, and sat hunched over the laptop. Part of him wanted badly to go with Dean, to see what they were doing with his brother, but it wasn't allowed. So he worked feverishly on the computer and tried to focus, tried to accept that what he did away from Dean was as important as being with Dean.
But it wasn't. It wasn't. He closed his eyes, felt the sting of bitter tears, felt like shouting to the world of the unfairness, of his fear.
Once, he had found another path, had made his life something other than what drove his father, his brother. His brain was starved for learning, for the brilliance of books; desiring so badly to be something other than hunter, who relied more on gut instinct than book smarts, on the agility of a body instead of nimbleness of brain. One was not better than the other, he'd tried to explain the night he left for Stanford; it was different, that's all. He'd tried their way, and it wasn't what he wanted. What he desired lay elsewhere.
Within four years, all was ripped from him. He lived now as his father had, his brother. He was hunter, not student. And while, in the years preceding Stanford, he had learned a hunter's trade, he'd never fully committed. Dean, yes. Not Sam. He'd turned his back, walked away, made different commitments.
Four years later, Dad missing, Jess dead, Dean needing him, he'd turned his back again, had walked away again. Walked to the life.
Four years after that, fully committed now, he knew himself adrift without his brother. Stanford? Long gone. Another school? He doubted it. He was eight years removed from the scholarship he'd scored. Four years removed from college altogether. One could not explain on an entrance app essay that one killed demons, devils, ghosts, ghouls, and goblins, and all other manner of things no normal person accepted as reality.
And now, so far down a hunter's road, he wasn't certain, any more, that he was fit for real life.
Therefore the question: Without Dean, who was he?
And if that wasn't an indictment of their lives, their co-dependency, what was? Dean had dragged him out of school because he needed him. Now Sam wanted to drag Dean out of a hospital for the same reason.
# # #
Bobby returned not long after staff had brought Dean back to the small room. Sam, about to follow, held back as he saw the older man coming down the corridor.
"You got anything?" Bobby called, then glanced around in quick acknowledgment that a hospital was not the place to be raising his voice. But once closer, he repeated it: "You got anything?"
"Maybe," Sam said. "PTSD. If this is any of the things the doctor mentioned—that isn't head injury or virus—it might be psychological."
Bobby frowned, then tipped his head, as if surrendering to something he didn't wish to acknowledge. "Possible. In the old days no one would ever have ventured the opinion that a hunter might encounter such a thing, but it's a brave new world, ain't it? God knows the fight never ends, and we take our blows."
"He's strong," Sam said. "But he's also . . . he's . . . he's . . . " But Sam, with a vast vocabulary honed by so much reading, ran out of words and gave up.
"Complicated," Bobby finished dryly.
Sam nodded. It summed up everything as well as could be done.
"He's old in the life," Bobby acknowledged. "Hell, John had him on hunts when he was just a kid. Hard hunts, dangerous hunts. It's one of the things we argued about, me and your father." Bobby sighed, rubbed at red-rimmed eyes. "Dean's built up a hard exterior, harder, maybe, than anyone I know, and him ten years younger than most. Maybe . . . maybe it's just that he's tired, Sam. That inside his head he just wants to stop. Or needs a break." Bobby's eyes were kinder than Sam had ever seen. "John never let up on him, and he's never let up on himself. I don't know anyone who punishes himself as much as your brother does."
"You think this is some kind of a . . . a . . . psychotic break?" Sam demanded, wishing to bring up nothing of the sort. "That's he's just – what . . . checked out?"
"I don't know," Bobby replied. "Sam – I just don't know. But if the doctors can't find anything, and what you come up with is PTSD . . . well, maybe it is."
And then another option unfolded abruptly within Sam's mind. "Bobby - what if it's supernatural?"
Bobby frowned. "In what way? You said all you'd been doing was salt-and-burns."
"Salt-and-burns, no sleep to speak of, a bar fight." Sam shook his head, knowing it sounded lame. "It's all I've got."
"Maybe not." Bobby's eyes tightened as he gazed up at Sam. "We gotta think of everything, kid. Maybe it's what lies between the lines. Not on 'em."
# # #
They did their work within the small room, casting glances at Dean as they did so. Sam used the computer while Bobby scribbled on a yellow legal pad, taking down Sam's mutterings, the information Sam broke out from what he read.
Dean still lay rigid within the confines of the bed, jaw clenched, hand locked tightly around the bed rail. Despite the NG tube feeding him nutrients, the IVs of fluids, his face was thinner, more transparent. The facial bones that struck so many people with their clarity, an assemblage of angles and edges melding into a striking amalgam, were too sharp now. Darkening beard scruff deepened the hollows of his cheeks. He looked young, fragile, absent - and nothing at all like Dean Winchester.
Aware of a creeping desolation, Sam said tightly, "The doctor mentioned ECT. Electroconvulsive therapy."
"Crap," Bobby said, and sounded a hundred years old.
"I'm next-of-kin. I can overrule them."
"Is that what you want to do?"
Sam looked at Bobby and swallowed painfully. His throat felt raw. "I don't know. I don't know what I want to do. I just want him better."
Bobby looked aside. When he looked back, his composure was in place. "Take me through it again, Sam."
Sam stared at him, awash in doubts and fears. "I've told you everything!"
"Tell me things you haven't said before. Things that don't matter. Things you think don't matter. The salt-and-burns, the bar, the drive from there to my place. At what point did he stop behaving like Dean? Because he did. Hell, has Dean Winchester ever in his life skipped three meals on the same day? If we hadn't already stopped the apocalypse, I'd claim that as a sign."
Sam saw no sense in it, but he did as told and began relaying, again, what their lives had been like for the last two weeks. It was a litany of the unbelievable, but the older hunter knew well to believe.
Bobby listened, scribbled, frowned over his notes, finally looked up at Sam. "You said he seemed tired."
"Yeah. But nothing out of the ordinary. You know how he is. Four hours of sleep—"
Bobby cut him off. "But he wasn't getting four hours."
"Well . . . no. Neither of us were. Maybe a couple of hours a night." He rethought. "If that. And the last salt-and-burn was a little physical."
"And you went from that last job to the bar. No rest in between."
"No. Dean was tired, but keyed up. Wasn't ready for sleep."
"Tell me about the fight."
Sam frowned. "It was . . . ordinary. You know how he is around a pool table. He hustled the locals."
"He provoke any of 'em?"
Sam shrugged. "Not really. Yeah, he made a few comments, but that's nothing new."
"This is," Bobby said intently. "What else?"
"He was just – Dean." That had always been explanation enough.
"And this woman? That's what started the fight?"
Sam shrugged. "I don't know if that was the trigger. I mean, yeah, the woman was definitely giving Dean the once-over, and the guy lost a chunk of money. Could have been either, could have been both. But I didn't see the whole thing."
"What were you doing?"
"Talking to the bartender. Guy was upset about his daughter, said she was in a coma. I didn't see how the fight started. I just stepped in when the big guy's friend decided to get involved."
Bobby's head came up. "The daughter's in a coma?"
"Yeah. Some kind of virus – " Sam stopped dead, stared at Bobby. "But the doctor said all Dean's tests were normal. No virus of any kind."
Bobby enunciated very clearly. "No virus of any kind yet." He stood up from the chair hastily, flipped down pages of his legal pad until it was covered by the front sheet. "Sam – stay put." A gesture underscored that. "Stay here. I'll be back. I got something I need to look into at home. I'll be back as soon as I can."
Totally at sea, Sam watched him go. Then he closed his laptop, set it into the seat vacated by Bobby, and rose. A quick twist in both directions popped knots in his back, and he took the step that put him immediately at Dean's bedside.
Still the same. No movement beyond the rise and fall of his chest. Eyes were closed, jaw clenched, right hand clamped around the bed rail.
He looked so – empty.
It hurt. It hurt so badly to look upon the wreckage. "Jesus, Dean . . . " Swallowing painfully, Sam touched his brother's tight-locked fist. "Come on, Dean . . . if it's a virus, or PTSD, or something else – who cares? We'll fix it. We'll find a way to fix it. Just don't give up."
Dean was stone-still.
"We're not giving up," Sam said, gripping Dean's hand. "Bobby and I will be here. You're not alone."
A faint quiver ran across Dean's face. Sam saw the twitch of eyelids, the brief spasm that touched his mouth.
Sam slipped his hand around the back of Dean's neck. Was that the key? Contact? "Dean . . . Dean, I'm here. I'm here. I'm not leaving you."
Dean's body arched once against the bed as if electrified. His left forearm came up, fist clenched. The bed rail rattled from the pressure of his right hand. The spasm snapped his head left.
Monitor alarms sounded their cacophony, alerting the world to the fact that Dean Winchester still maintained the capacity for movement.
During the first seizure, Sam had been terrified. Now he rejoiced. "Yes! Yes, Dean! I'm here! You're okay! I promise!"
Bodies piled into the room. Sam was caught, shoved away, pushed toward the door. This time he gave way, gave them room, but did not depart. And when someone yet again pushed at him, telling him he needed to leave, he stood his ground.
"Dean! I'm here!"
# # #
When Bobby came through the door an hour later, Sam was ready for him. "Bobby, he seized again, but it's good, I think. I think he's responding to me."
"Good," Bobby echoed. He carried a knapsack, swung shut the door quickly, reached to drop the blinds. "Sam, I need you to stand here against the door. If anyone tries to come in, stop 'em."
"Stop them how?"
"I'd say you probably outweigh most men here, ya idjit. Just plant yourself against it and don't let anyone in."
Sam watched, startled, as Bobby upended the knapsack on Dean's bed and began to pour out items. "What are you doing? And what if they call security?"
"If this works, who gives a damn? It'll be Dean tellin' 'em to back the hell off." He looked up briefly as Sam took his post in front of the door. "It's a sandman."
"A what?"
"Sandman. Spirit. It makes people sleep."
"Like Mr. Sandman? The song?"
"The song' s just a derivation, a bastardization of the sandman legend . . . the thing that comes to a kid's bedside and puts 'em to sleep so they can dream happy things. The song's about a woman asking for a sweetheart: 'Bring me a dream.' Except I don't think our spirit is quite so benign, or romantically inclined." He began to piece together the supplies he'd brought. "Dean was tired, you said, running on empty after days, had taken some dings, but didn't want to sleep. So you went to the bar, where the bartender talked about his daughter in a coma. Coma is a deep sleep."
Sam knew better than to doubt. "And you think the sandman was there, in the bar . . . and latched onto Dean because it thought he needed to sleep?"
Bobby always was an intuitive soul, despite his rough ways. Sam saw the light in his eyes. "Got a deep-down, basement full of gut feeling about it - on top of the lore. And it will bring that bartender's daughter out of her coma to boot."
Sam felt the smile stretch his face, along with massive relief. "You've got a spell."
"If the seizures are Dean trying to fight his way free, like I think - hell, I'm pretty frickin' damn sure - this should be enough to break him through the wall. And it will put paid to our little menace for Dean and for the girl. The guy'll owe you free drinks for eternity."
Sam watched as Bobby worked, as he assembled what appeared to be a tangle of charms, string, bells, three small carved soapstone jars. From each jar he took a fingertip of the contents, touched Dean's face at forehead, both cheeks, his chin, leaving small, pale dabs. From the IV and various monitors, he hung the strings, charms, and bells.
Then he pulled a creased note from a pocket and unfolded it. Quickly he recited:
"Qui ingreditur sine, suscitant.
Qui ingreditur sine, redeunt.
Sit rursus esse de mundo qui ingreditur."
Then he repeated it, this time in English:
"Let he who sleeps, awaken.
Let he who sleeps, return.
Let he who sleeps be of the world again."
Holding his breath, Sam waited. The sounds of the room ran loud, the constant clicks, beeps, and hissing of various monitors. Dean lay immobile, one hand clutching the bed rail, the other raised in the air, fisted, on the end of a rigid forearm.
Bobby's voice sounded raw.
"Qui ingreditur sine, suscitant.
Qui ingreditur sine, redeunt.
Sit rursus esse de mundo qui ingreditur."
A third seizure. Every alarm in the room went off.
Bobby said calmly, "Hold the door, Sam."
He held it against the onslaught, watching his brother. Watching as Dean, arched and gasping, fought his way free. His arms and legs were stiff, muscles jumping, as the determination and pure need fought through the slack features and lax muscles to bring them to life again, to stamp what was Dean all over the flesh. It was like a birth, Sam thought: an infant fighting its way into the world, then laying a claim upon it. Carpe diem.
When Dean had laid that claim, when his eyes were open and his body his own again, indisputably Dean; and once Bobby took down the bits and pieces of his spellwork and wiped Dean's face free of ointment, Sam stepped away from the door. In two strides he was at the bed, where he reached down to press his palm against his brother's chest. To feel the beating heart. "I'm here. Dean, I'm here."
As hospital personnel poured into the room, Dean reached out and closed his hand around Sam's wrist. His green eyes, a world of emotion within them, caught and held Sam's. " – what I wanted," he rasped. " . . . whole time . . . what I needed: Sammy."
Bobby said quietly, "Let he who sleeps be of the world again."
And Dean was. Unquestionably, he was.
~ end ~