Don't Hang Up
Rated: K+ (PG) for injury and minor peril involving children
Summery: 12-year-old Sam is at the library when the shelves in a supply closet bring down an avalanche of equipment on top of him. Injured, afraid, and trapped, Sam's one chance lies in a phone call to Dean which acts as both an escape route and a lifeline. OneShot. Wee!Chester.
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Sam coughed again. He was trying to get his breathing under control but it was hard. The rushing sensation in his leg made him nauseous and the feeling of warm, sticky liquid soaking his hair caused a certain amount of panic in the twelve-year-old's mind.
"Okay…" his breathing was erratic. He hoped perhaps by talking he could steady himself. "Okay… okay, okay, okay…stay calm. Calm."
Darkness seemed to seeping in thick and fast as the cement dust from the burst bag on the floor began to settle, leaving less gray and more black. The darkness scared him.
A third cough racked his already trembling body and his breathing quickened. "Stop it!" Sam scolded to himself. "Think!"
In a moment, his eyes adjusted to the dark enough for him to make out the shapes of a few things. There were two more of the one hundred ten pound cement bags (still closed unlike the other one) that had fallen on either side of him, both of them half laying on his chest. They were the cause of his constricted breathing.
What he couldn't make out was whatever was crushing his left leg. It was heavier than the cement bags and felt like a box because the corner was pressed into his shin.
His right arm was splayed to the side and pinned under at toppled pile of paint buckets and the strain against his shoulder was cutting off all circulation to his fingers.
The whole lopsided position would have been almost comical if it weren't for the severe pain and darkness. Not to mention the fact that Sam could already sense the feeling draining out of his leg as the pool of what he'd detected to be blood increased under his head.
It scared him. All the pain seemed to intensify the longer he lay there. Breathing shallowly, he let out a little sob and whimpered softly, "Ow."
Only second passed before his memory was brought back to life and he felt the little cell phone heavy in the pocket of his jeans. He remembered Dean handing it to him right after Dad left two days ago. "Just in case." Was all he'd said.
Sam reached out his one free hand toward his pocket. He pulled against his right shoulder towards his left pocket. He reached over the cement bag, his shoulder practically numb now. At last he felt the top of the phone and pulled it out. He gasped at the respite of some of the pain in his arm, though he then choked on the cement dust clouding the air.
He pressed in the numbers and held the phone to his ear. It rang only once before he heard Dean's voice on the other end and relief eased a little of the pain shooting through him.
"Yeah?"
"Dean-"
"Sammy?! For crying out loud, I've been going out of my mind looking for you. Where are you?"
"I'm at - I'm at the library."
"Still? I thought you were coming home at seven, what's going on?"
"Sorry, I-" Sam broke off, trying to swallow the dryness in his throat.
"Sam? Hey, what's up man? You sound awful."
"I'm okay," He lied.
"…Alright. So talk to me, what happened?"
"I was just looking at some books and there was one I couldn't reach. The door to the supply closet was open a little so I went in to look for a ladder, but I went behind a stack of paint cans an' the janitor didn't see me and he shut the door and locked me in." Sam swallowed again. "I thought I saw a grate or something near the ceiling so I climbed up the shelves to try and find it 'cause it was really dark…but the shelves broke when I stood on them and I fell down and knocked over a bunch of stuff…."
"Are you hurt?" Sam heard the familiar worry and winced.
He leaned the earpiece away from the increasingly large pool of blood. "No." He bit his lip. "But I can't get up… there's something on my leg…"
"Okay, I'm already on my way, see you in ten min -"
"Wait!" Sam cried before he could stop himself.
"What?" The concern was back in Dean's voice.
"It's - nothing just…just…." Sam stared through the darkness at the high ceiling of the closet. All of a sudden, the idea of facing one more minute in this dark, suffocating room seemed impossibly frightening. He couldn't do it. He just couldn't…it was too scary. Feeling slightly ashamed of himself, he finished miserably but earnestly, "Just don't hang up. Okay?"
He could hear the fear in his voice and he knew Dean could too. There was a pause on the other end.
"Okay…Sam, are you alright?"
"I'm fine -"
"Cause you really don't sound alright. How heavy is the thing on you leg?"
"Not - so bad. I just can't move it…my arm is kinda' stuck, too."
"Sam, how much stuff are we talking about here?" Sam could hear in Dean's voice that he was running now.
"Just some cement mix and…some paint cans I think. I'm really okay, just stuck -" He couldn't hold back a cough anymore; the dust was making his throat close if he talked to long.
"Sam? Sam, hey, what's wrong?"
"Nothing… a-a bag of cement broke open, it's kind of dusty… I'm fine."
"No, I don't think so. I'm halfway there, almost to the train tracks, if -" there was a pause and then a rumbling noise came through the earpiece and Dean swore.
"What's wrong?"
"The train's going, I can't cross the tracks. The only other way to the library is half a mile around Staves street."
Sam held the phone in front of his face to check the battery. It was dying. His head was throbbing from whatever it had hit earlier the coughs were starting hurt. He listened into the phone again.
"I guess I'll need to wait for the train to pass," Dean was saying.
"That's okay. Is it a fast train?"
"Since when is anything in town fast." Sam could here the irritation concealed beneath the humor.
"Yeah, I think we always go to small towns."
"And we always stay in cruddy motels. Speaking of which, I'm pretty sure there's a dead rat in the bathtub."
Sam laughed. "So have you heard from Dad?"
"Yeah, he called about two hours ago to ask how things were going."
"Yeah? What'd you say?"
"Had to tell him the truth, Sammy. That you got a tattoo, a nose ring, a girlfriend who broke your heart in six different places, and you joined a boy band as a tambourine player."
"Ri-ight. I don't know the first thing about playing a tambourine."
"Or about having a girlfriend."
"Neither do you."
"Yeah, but just you wait. As soon as I have my driver's license, you'll be seeing a lot more of this smoothie in action."
"Oh, yeah. Can't wait." Sam could tell his brother was trying to distract him and he appreciated it. As long as he was talking, he didn't have to feel so much of the pain. "Did Dad say when he was coming back?"
There was a pause and Sam half regretted saying it but Dean answered steadily, "I don't know. He didn't say." There was a slightly longer silence before Dean spoke again. "Looks like the train's almost past."
Sam's phone started beeping softly and he held it before him again. The battery icon in the corner was reading one notch above dead.
He listened again. "Alright, it passed. Hang in there, I'm on my way."
"Okay."
Nothing was said for a while. Sam had the idea Dean was putting all his effort into running to make up for lost time. He apparently hadn't believed Sam's insistence that he was fine which made sense because Sam was a horrible liar when it came to Dean and they both knew it.
The little phone's insistent beeping made Sam increasingly anxious. He willed Dean to come soon.
"Alright," Came Dean's out-of-breath voice again. "I'm at the library. Where are you?"
"The supply closet - the door right next to -" The phone beeped once more, long and louder than before, and then fell silent leaving only the sound of Sam's panicked breathing. "Dean?" No answer. "Dean!"
He looked at the phone. The little scratched-up display screen was blank. He let the phone fall from his hand onto the dusty concrete floor.
The dust had all settled now but it seemed to make the room darker. Sam throbbed all over and realized he'd been biting his lip without meaning to, in order to hold back the tears. Scared.
"Sam?"
Dean's voice was muffled through the door but not for long. Sam heard something scraping inside the doorknob and after a pause it turned. The door swung only halfway open before it hit the burst cement bag and stopped.
The sudden light, made Sam squint and it was a moment before he could see properly.
"Sammy? Oh my -"
"I'm okay," Sam tried feebly.
In the new light he could now see what was on his leg. It appeared to be a large plywood crate full of old books. Fortunately, the crate was not resting completely on his leg so he held out hope that it was not broken.
Dean lifted up half of one of the broken shelves and threw it aside so he could get to Sam's pinned arm. "Are you okay? Can you feel your leg at all?"
He heaved three of the paint cans away quickly but was more careful with the last one just in case. The moment Sam's arm was free, he shoved one of the bags of cement the rest of the way off Sam's chest and the other one slid off onto the floor.
Sam gasped as his chest rose and fell freely and he clutched his bruised arm to his chest, his eyes squeezing shut. "Not really. But I don't think it's broken."
"Okay…okay." Dean was staring at the crate looking uncertain. He licked his lips and swallowed. "Okay, Sam? I'm gonna try and move it. I need you to hold still, okay?"
"Okay."
"Okay." He hesitated a minute but then swallowed and moved on his knees to the crate. One corner was resting on the floor and the corner across from it stuck in the air by the elevation of having Sam under it. The crate was only about three feet wide but very heavy.
Dean took hold of the corner held in the air, nodded once, and heaved on it. The moment some of the pressure was gone, feeling seemed to flood back into his leg and Sam cried out in pain.
"Dean, wait!" The other corner was now pressing even harder into the area just above his knee. Dean stopped but held the crate where it was with some effort.
"I know it hurts, but we gotta get it off you."
Sam felt tears trailing through the cement dust on his face and he swallowed what he could of the dryness in his throat.
Dean held his gaze for another second but didn't wait for an answer. He pushed again. The corner pressed in harder Sam gave another cry that broke off into pained sobs.
"Hang on, Sammy," Dean urged through clenched teeth. "Almost got it." He stood up against it, lifting now, trying to get as much weight off of Sam's leg as possible.
Just then, Sam felt the corner rising off him. A minute later, Dean spun it around on the corner still on the floor and let it go with a loud SLAM! flat on the concrete.
Sam inhaled sharply through his teeth and held it there a moment before breathing out unsteadily. Dean was bent double with his hands on his knees and breathing hard. He looked over at Sam.
"You okay, little brother?" Sam, still panting heavily, gave him a shaky thumbs up. "Okay. Let's get you out of here."
Dean walked over and knelt down next to him, helping him to sit up. Suddenly, he froze. "What?" Sam looked up at him curiously.
"What happened here?" Dean ran his hand lightly over the back of Sam's head and held it up to show the blood painting his fingers.
"Oh. I hit my head."
"No kidding." His fingers probed through the clotted mass of hair to find the source of the blood flow. "Okay, you just cut yourself. I'll call Pastor Jim to pick us up and he can take a look at you."
"M-kay."
Dean slung Sam's left arm around his neck and lifted him up to stand. Sam had been fearing collapse if he couldn't put weight on his left leg but with the combination of his one good leg and Dean's support, it was fairly easy going out of the library.
Neither of them said anything until they were on the stone steps in front of the building. Dean eased him into one of the benches next to the door and pulled out his cell phone to call Pastor Jim.
Sam caught his reflection in the library window and grimaced. The cement dust had completely covered him, making him look gray and ghostlike. Dried blood had crusted onto his shoulder and looking down, he saw that his arm had turned black and yellowish from his wrist up past his elbow. His face was still wet with tears.
"Dean?"
Dean paused in his phone-dialing to face his brother. "Yeah?"
"Um… Thanks - for….for not hang …just thanks."
The hint of a smile tweaked the corner of Dean's mouth and he nodded. "No problem." He finished dialing and held the phone to his ear, still looking at Sam and not turning until Pastor Jim picked up on the other end.
"Hi, it's Dean. Me and Sam are at the library and can't really walk back. Could you give us a lift?…. Great, thanks."
And with that he hung up and sat down next to his brother to wait.