"You've improved over the last year Sam, tell me, what led to the moment when you switched?"
Sam shrugs, his large shoulders rising and falling but he doesn't let go of his legs that are currently pushed up to his stomach. He looks like a giant six year old in time out, hell, he kind of feels like it. He's been doing great, switching out at times is normal but he had gone months without a single one. They were even looking into releasing him when it all just fell apart.
She's patient with him, she has to be, any sort of conflict and her patient could be set off on something she says or does and while that is beneficial in a controlled environment to get a closer look at what was the starting point of his disorder, she needs to talk to the core personality right now. Dr. Richardson adjusts her legs, pulling herself forward to give Sam a more focused look, "I have on the records that you had a visitor minutes before the switch, was..." she looks down at her notes, "...Robert Plant the source of this, Sam?"
Amelia expects Sam to shrink back or close off, he usually does in their conversations, but instead he just smiles. God, his smile is beautiful. She doesn't know why he's smiling but it makes her want to smile too, "I take it Robert Plant is a good friend of yours?" Sam had mentioned he'd had relationships with many women before in their conversations, but the way he smiles at the mention of his name - a name that doesn't share his last name - looks like complete love and adoration. Wouldn't be the first time she's had a bisexual or homosexual patient.
"Yeah, very good friend," Sam's smile slowly falters but his mood is better, "I was shocked to see him was all."
She taps her pencil on her notes and reads them, "you switched to your second personality."
"The Cowardly Lion."
Usually patients come with names with their personalities already attached, Sam, he was a special case and all of his alters wanted to be called Sam as well. To differentiate them Amelia used numbers, Sam used The Wizard of Oz, she's still not sure why. He only has two other personalities: The Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, as he calls them. She had asked that once, asked him who he thought Dorthy was and who the Scarecrow was but he had only shrugged. Amelia, with approval, pressed deeper into Sam's stability when he had named them using The Wizard of Oz to see if she can find any alternate personalities still hiding, but so far nothing.
"So, since you switched to the Cowardly Lion, that meant you were scared to see him, is that right?"
Sam shrugs again, Amelia wishes she could tie those shoulders down so she doesn't have to see him shrug anymore, but patience. She's patient.
"I was shocked, that's all."
"Sam, I can't help you if you don't talk. Whatever is on your mind, I'll listen. Whoever Robert Plant is, whatever he means to you, I need to know so I can help you."
Sam is silent for several minutes, nothing but the clock ticking on the wall to occupy the silence in the room. She lets him stay quiet, doesn't push, she knows Sam needs time to think what he wants and needs to say. They still have thirty minutes in this private session before he has to be back in his room and she doubts he'll stay completely silent for that long. He's done it before, but only in the early days of treatment, after weeks Sam had slowly gotten more responsive to her.
Finally, he speaks up and her hand goes straight to the pencil, "His name isn't Robert Plant. That's the lead singer to Led Zeppelin, one of his favorite bands."
"He used an alias?"
Sam nods, "he's my brother. Dean, the one I thought was dead for the past year."
Oh. No wonder he was so shocked to see him then, she writes it down in her notes. "Why do you think he used a fake alias instead of signing in to see you with his real name?" She knows that Sam had an unhealthy codependent lifestyle with his brother, and what she assumes to be the leading cause of his formation of DID, other factors aside. Whoever his brother is, the use of a fake name doesn't strike her as someone who should be near her patient. And the fact that Sam switched to his 'Cowardly Lion' personality only reinforces that.
Sam doesn't say anything and rests his head on top of his knees, looking into the distance of her office. Amelia sighs, she knows this look, this is the shutdown. He won't answer this question so she moves on. "Explain what happened today. In your own words, recount everything you possibly can. I don't have any appointments after you and I can request extra time if you need it."
Amelia thinks, for a brief second, that he isn't. That this shut down is permanent and he won't talk until the session is over, but he picks his head back up and sets his feet back onto the ground. Her pencil is ready to write on her notepad as Sam opens his mouth to talk.
"You keep your nose clean, Benny," Dean says with fondness in his tone as Benny pulls him into a hug. Their bond having formed in the midst of war is something Dean can't ever sever, but wartime relationships and real world relationships don't mix well - and he knows this. Personal experience. He parts ways with Benny that night, the cold October night air raising goosebumps all over his flesh.
He steals a car in some run down motel on the side of an interstate, he doesn't feel bad when he sees the baby seat sitting in the back of the car, whoever the family was that stopped at that motel can find another way to their destination. Dean needed the wheels, he blames it on his survival instincts - still urging him to take take take to survive.
His cellphone died in Purgatory, lasted one day without any power to hook it up to. It broke sometime in the first month, he didn't know when, he was too busy fighting for his life to notice it until one day he pulled out the slab of plastic with a cracked screen and a useless computer chip inside. But he knows Sammy's phone number by heart, and he hopes that whatever happened to Sam in the last year no Leviathan schemes or anything else made that phone number invalid.
It reminds him of the day he got out of Hell, pushing quarters from the stolen car into some payphone by a shitty stop 'n' go. The number goes to voicemail, so he leaves Sam a message, "Sam, it's me Dean. I know you're probably out there busy lookin' for me, but I'm back. Meet me at Rufus's cabin tomorrow." He hangs up, his message is blunt and to the point. He'll explain what happened at the cabin, no need to get emotional over a fucking pay phone.
Dean sets up salt lines at the cabin, prepares to test Sam to make sure it his Sam walking through that door, but Sam never shows. And that's when he starts getting restless, his life has been nothing but nonstop fighting and walking and running for the past year and just sitting around here waiting for his brother to show is making him pace back and forth.
Calling up Sam's number again, this time on a cheap cellphone at a gas station so Sam can freakin' call back, but he just gets his voice mail again. And again. And Again.
The cellphone gets flung to the wall, and he's on one of Sam's laptops that he had left in the cabin - why was it left in the cabin? – and types in the address for the GPS site for their phone service.
Abilene, Texas. It doesn't give him a street address, it's the last known location of the phone before it was turned off and that's enough of a lead for Dean.
He's back on the interstate before he knows it, flipping through radio stations because holy shit he can now. Dean can listen to anything he wants instead of the creepy howls of Gorilla Wolves and chilled breezes of Purgatory wind. The radio station rabbles on about the election coming up, Obama versus Romney but Dean can't muster enough care for something so mundane after his ass was almost mauled apart when it was Dean versus werewolf.
The car pushes the speed limit, he needs and wants to see his brother again so badly, but here he is again chasing him down just like he did when he popped out of Hell. Last time he was in some other dimension, Sam was drinking demon blood and fucking Ruby and doing god knows what while he was either the torturer or the victim on the rack. So whatever the hell Sam is doing now, it had better be him looking for a way to pop Dean out of Purgatory, and not guzzling down poison like its heroin.
Why the fuck didn't Sam just answer his damn phone, he's left him so many voice messages that he had to have noticed. Maybe he thought it was a trap, yeah, that's what it could've been. Sam just didn't trust the voice, maybe he thought it was some Crocotta spreading lies through the phone waves.
Dean runs through so many scenarios on his mind as he drives down the interstate, entering Texas, passing Dallas, and then entering Abilene. His body is tired but he needs to stay awake, anything can come around the corner and attack him so he needs to stay focused and find his brother.
There's nothing abnormal on the local papers, nothing fishy online, no electrical storms, no cattle mutilations, no odd deaths. So Sam mustn't be on a hunt here, must be doing something else then.
He's searching phone books, calling the operators, talking to the local bars, trying to find anything tying someone to his brother. There's absolutely nothing and now that he's out of Purgatory, he feels exhaustion and sleep wanting to take him into unconsciousness.
That's when he pulls into some shitty motel, walks in to find some teenaged kid manning the front desk, "one room," Dean states. He's not in the mood to strike up conversation with this guy, he wants a room, he wants to sleep, he wants to find Sammy.
But the fucker decides otherwise, "sure, you must've had quite the road trip huh?"
"Oh, you have no idea," Dean rubs his eyes and repeats himself, making sure this kid gets to the point, "one room. One bed."
The kid gets the point and rings him up, "cash or credit?"
"Credit."
His wallet survived the year in Purgatory, he'll need a new one though, he's not sure who clawed through the leather and it's still sticking together but anymore opening and closing that claw mark is going to grow and eventually fall apart.
"Dean Kobowski?"
"The one, the only."
The kid stares at him for a brief moment, "any relation to a Sam Kobowski?"
Oh, Dean is wide awake now, "what?"
He shakes his head and smiles, "sorry, nothing. It's just an odd last name and we had some other guy who racked up quite the bill in here and destroyed the hell out of that room. Never paid it."
"Is the room still like he left it?"
The teenager – Everett – now that he looks at the name tag, gives him a funny look, "yeah, me and my dad haven't had the chance to clean it up or fix it so we just kind of locked it away. Rainy day project I guess."
"That's the room I want."
Everett snorts a laugh, but it stalls when he sees that Dean is completely serious. "Seriously?"
"I'll pay for whatever damages plus the room fee."
"Sir, that's almost $1,500."
Ain't his credit card, "do it."
Everett gives him another funny look, slides the credit card through, hand it back and the key to Sam Kobowski's room.
It was trashed, there were holes in the way and the bed was torn apart – someone had stuck a knife in there and sliced through the mattress. But that, that is definitely Sam's clothes on the floor. There by the bed is one of Sam's old red plaid shirt with the stain on the back, okay, so Dean was the one who caused the stain by dripping burrito grease onto it, but he knew that shirt anywhere. They don't have many clothes in their dufflebags after all.
He looks around some more and doesn't find any remnants of a hunt anywhere on the walls of the hotel. It looks like there was a fight here though, something mean and nasty came for his brother and for the first time since he got back he felt fear. There was a reason Sam wasn't answering his phone, probably because he's…no, Dean did not come back from fucking Purgatory to find a dead brother. That thought is pushed out of his mind and he continues to look around.
There's no hint to where Sam had gone, but maybe the front desk kid did. Dean puts on his friendly con-man expression, "Hey, uhh, so what happened to this guy?"
"Went mental, that's what."
No, Dean is pretty sure he got into a fight, but he presses for more information anyways, "is he in jail?"
"Nah, the white coats took him. He's uhh…last I remember they took him down in the Abilene Psychiatric Center."
"Last you remember? When did this happen?"
Everett shrugs, "about a year ago. The guy was freakin' mental, he didn't seem like that at first but I dunno. People snap."
"A year ago? You've left that room like that for an entire year?"
"Business is slow, we don't have a lot of cash and we have plenty of rooms to give out. It's not high on my priority list, not when my dad is sick."
Dean nods, a fucking psychiatric center? He grunts out a rough "thank you," and returns back to his room. It's 11pm. Visiting hours are definitely closed right now, but he could try the phones, usually these places operate for 24 hours and the night shift crew don't exactly have much to do besides doing their rounds. He gives it a shot.
Finding their phone number on the website he calls them up, a male voice answers. "Abilene Psychiatric Center, nurse Ford speaking."
"Hi, I'm looking to confirm that one of the patients is still in your care at the hospital."
"Sir, if this isn't an emergency the regular operating hours are from-"
Dean cuts him off, doesn't have time for this shit, not when his brother could be dead right now, "I just need to know if you guys have a Sam Kobowski in your hospital. Please, I just got off from a fourteen hour shift and just now got a chance to call you guys. He's my friend and I'm worried about him."
There's silence on the other end, but he can hear fingers tapping on the keys, "yes, we have a Sam Kobowski here; thirty year old male. He's open to all visitors from five pm to six pm on the weekdays, four pm to six pm on weekends. I'm sorry sir, but the visiting hours are strict, you'll have to find a way to get off work tomorrow if you'd like to see him."
"That's okay, thanks." He hangs up. Relieved, his brother is still alive…but in a psychiatric center. Last time that had happened Lucifer was yelling in his head and Sam couldn't sleep for days, all Dean could do was watch it happen before his very eyes. But Castiel fixed that, he saw it fixed before his very eyes, so whatever happened and whatever this is – it's completely natural. "Shit," he mutters and he throws the cellphone down on the torn bed.
He has hours to kill but too wired up to sleep. Dean lays on the ground, not needing the bed anyways, he's been sleeping on the cold hard dirt of Purgatory for a year and this position only seems natural for him. Dean picks up Sam's shirt and places it under his head for a makeshift pillow and tries to sleep. There's an ache in his heart, worry that festers and grows for his brother, as sleep consumes him for the first time in four days.
Sam is allowed to have visitors, no matter what relation, which fares well for Dean since that means he's not violent and is probably doing well in this center. Heck, Dean could probably sign his little brother out today and hit the road if he wanted to. He's in high hopes, a very good mood ever since popping out of Legoland, he's slept, took a shower, ate breakfast (god he missed the sweet sweet taste of a glazed donut) and is currently sliding his fake identification card to the secretary to the hospital.
"You've never been here before, sir?" The lady asks, her name is Sherry, a pretty name. He doesn't have the urge to flirt though, his baby brother is in there and dammit, he needs him.
"No, first time. I'm here to see my friend, Sam Kobowski." A friend, he doesn't know what kind of files and history they have on Sam, but a brother coming out of nowhere? It would definitely set off the alarms, and his paranoia has been on high alert for the past year. His survival depends on it.
Sherry types something into the computer and smiles back up at him, "I'll have to call you in and get Sam's approval before I can let you inside. You can take a seat over there," she points to the waiting room chairs.
She picks up the phone but Dean doesn't sit, he paces. His heart is racing, whatever happened to his baby brother this past year, Dean can fix it. He's sure he can, he can put his brother in that car of his and hit the road. Just like old times. As if Purgatory never happened and he can put it behind him and Sam can put this hospital behind him.
"Robert Plant?" Sherry calls and Dean is at her desk in a matter of seconds, "you can go in. He's in the dayroom." She smiles fondly.
Dean smiles back while she swipes her card and let's Dean through the hallway.
The dayroom reminds him of the hospital he was in back when he was hunting a Wraith with Martin, he wonders briefly if Martin is still in a hospital like this and if he got any better the last time he saw him. But he drops that thought once he sees Sam, his hair is longer but his body still looks like he's in prime shape. Strong enough to hit the road again and fight monsters side by side with Dean, and Dean smiles at the idea. Smiles at Sam.
He walks towards his brother, and finally Sam looks up and registers Dean. And Dean is expecting Sam's beautiful smile to greet him, his big little brother to rise up from that chair he's sitting on and wrap his stupidly large arms around him in a tight hug, but what he expects and what he sees are two different things.
Instead of Sam racing over to greet him, there's a brief moment of confusion, then a glassy vacant look, and then he's sliding back in his chair, panicking and yelling, "no, no, no" over and over again before the chair slides under him and he falls to the ground.
Dean stops in his tracks and watches, hell, practically everyone besides the nurses and guards are staying put and watching. He can see a couple men in white in the corner of his eye run up to Sam, holding him down while he writhes and screams under their forced weight.
The nurse who let him in is the one taking him by the arm and trying to maneuver him out of the day room, "Sir. Sir. Sir." Dean finally looks from his screaming brother over to her, "I'm sorry, but you'll need to leave."
She keeps talking but he phases her out, her voice nothing but a low murmur under the screams and yells of his baby brother, who is currently being stabbed – fucking stabbed – with a needle and injected with whatever shit they have in there.
"You leave him alone!" Dean yells at them, but it's just added noise in the commotion in the day room. A male nurse takes him by the arm this time, and more forcefully takes him back into the visitor room. Dean's eyes are constantly on Sam as the male nurse leads him backwards into the hallway. He can see Sam's body relax under the drugs, the male nurses in white dragging him up and walking him out of the day room and into the hallway for the patient's rooms. Whatever the drug was, it's keeping Sam conscious, but relaxed enough so that his eyes are focused on Dean – and those eyes, fuck those eyes were not human the way Sam stared back at him like a frightened animal.
He lost eye contact with Sam and is now in the waiting room. And Sherry is pulling him aside now and sitting back down on her desk. Dean finally looks down at her and listens to what she's saying, "you'll be placed on a minimum 72 hour waiting period so we can talk to the patient and figure out what happened. After the 72 hours, you'll have no contact with the patient until he approves another visitation request or phone call from you," she slides his fake ID back to him. "Your visitation is on file, and I'm very sorry about your friend." She gives him a slight smile, "Sam did verbally approve your visitation when I called in, so…I'm not quite sure what happened."
Dean doesn't know when and how he ended up in the Impala, everything was sort of a drifted daze, and fucking hell. Seventy two hours? Seventy two fucking hours? And that's the minimum. Fuck.
He slams his hand against the wheel of his Impala, and another slam for good measure. And Dean finds himself driving around the center, finding entering and exit points, because he's going to bust his brother out. They can fix whatever this is when they are on the road, whatever this is, it can be fixed by Dean explaining where he was for the past year – he's sure of it. Determined and hopeful.