Beta: None... all errors are mine alone.
A/N: Sleep deprivation and overthinking the useless creates fanfiction!
Rating: T...
Sam Winchester felt like he'd been run over by a steamroller and then baked in an oven. He couldn't for a minute imagine what kind of crazy shit they'd been through on this case. It was like they had... Oh, crap!
He'd forgotten all about Dean. Man, he wouldn't believe this... He'd probably tell him something about empathy or feelings or something.
He took a slow step forward, tested his joints, made sure the throbbing, burning pain was only bruised muscle and walked several more steps. Everything seemed to be in it's place. Nothing was dislocated, nothing broken, and even though his face hurt, his head was perfectly fine, thank God! Dean would probably lose it if he found out he hadn't known what his younger brother had been up to. Sure, he'd asked him to fight the fairies. Who wouldn't have? Dean was probably spread so thin at the time, he just didn't know what he was saying.
He found some wash cloths and wiped down the surfaces of the workshop, took whatever money he could find (so it looked like a robbery) and carefully left to find a phone booth to call the cops and report some noises in the watchmaker's store. He wasn't even halfway to his destination when his phone began to ring.
He took a minute to pat down his pockets and find it before he answered. It was Dean.
When Sam answered, however, it was the Sheriff's gruff voice that replied. He told Sam something about Dean and mentioned the county hospital. That threw Sam into overdrive and he hurried to the Impala.
He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and climbed into the car. He revved up the engine and drove as fast as he possibly could towards Tipton County General Hospital.
When Sam arrived at the hospital, he noticed three police officers leaving as the Sheriff stood at the entrance and watched them go. He was talking on his cellphone and his hand made sweeping motions in the air.
Sam parked the Impala and went toward Donalson. The Sheriff told him that Dean had been taken for a CT scan and asked Sam to follow him. He walked with the Sheriff in silence until they arrived at a curtained off cubicle of the ER.
"What happened?" Sam asked once he was seated on a plastic chair next to the bed.
The Sheriff stood in the corner, a short distance from Sam.
"We found him unconscious in his cell. He'd been hit on the head several times. There was blood on the wall of the cell as well," the Sheriff answered, carefully including information Sam needed.
"Who attacked him?" Sam asked, almost standing up but deciding to perch on the edge of the chair, instead.
"Son, I personally went through the security footage from the holding cells and nobody ever came or left the place."
The Sheriff was doing a bad job of convincing the family member but Sam believed him.
"What do you think happened?" Sam asked, careful not to seem gullible.
"I don't know, but I don't think your brother is guilty of a hate crime anymore."
"Really?" Sam asked, the suspense causing him to finally stand, "What do you think, then?"
"Does your brother do drugs?"
The question came like a slap to the face. Sam was stunned, soul or no soul.
"You think my brother physically abused himself because he was high?" Sam took two thundering steps toward the Sheriff and glared at him. He had lost respect for personal space along with his soul.
"Now, son, I never said such a thing?" the Sheriff insisted, backing away a little.
"You were implying exactly that Sheriff!" Sam said in a near-whisper, "My brother has never abused drugs, nor had he ever done anything unlawful under the influence of alcohol. What more do you need to know?"
"We already checked his blood alcohol content," the Sheriff countered and seeing the rage in Sam's eyes added, "And it was well within normal limits."
"And what have the doctors found so far?" Sam asked returning to his chair.
"They're still trying to..." Sheriff Donalson broke off when a nurse walked through the parted curtains pushing a wheelchair. Dean sat slumped in it, his eyes only half open and drool rolling down his chin.
"I'll come back later," the Sheriff said and quickly left.
Sam turned to the nurse, "How is he?"
"The doctor will be in to talk to you in a few minutes," she responded as she applied the brakes on the chair.
Sam refused the offer for an orderly saying he would help Dean himself. The nurse nodded and left.
There was an IV catheter taped to the back of Dean's hand and Sam assumed the tube had been disconnected so Dean could be taken for the scan. He carefully pulled Dean to a half standing position and deposited him on the bed before pulling the covers and blankets over Dean's exposed legs and laying them over his chest.
The nurse came back a moment later and reattached several wires to the electrodes stuck to Dean's chest and connected a bag of saline to the IV in Dean's hand. She placed the pulse oxymeter back on Dean's finger, checked his temperature and then turned to Sam.
"We're just waiting for his blood test results to come back. The doctor will be here soon."
Sam nodded, the nurse left and Sam pulled the chair closer to the bed and sat down.
"How you holding up Dean?" Sam asked his partially comatose brother.
Dean's eyes rolled around like a pinball that had been struck too slow. He made a soft humming noise but only drool came out of his half-open mouth. Sam used a few tissues to wipe it away and placed a few more under Dean's chin to catch any more spit. Sam could watch Dean. He may not have a soul but he was still Sam Winchester and he still looked up to Dean, he thought as he placed an elbow on the bed and rested his head on it.
He sat that way for almost half-an-hour until the doctor walked in.
Sam couldn't remember what went down when the doctor came in, but he did remember controlling the urge to want to hit the man. He recalled small bits of the dialogue that had been interrupted by the violent throwing up that Dean had taken up. Sam had demanded to know what Dean had been given to make him a zombie and what the hell they thought he had. The doctor had been happy to say Dean wasn't high and Sam had accused the man of actually shooting Dean full of some shit that made him look stoned. The doctor was also quite certain that Dean was suffering from some kind of mental illness. Sam remembered calling the man a 'complete dick' and insisting that Dean was not insane or schizophrenic or any other crap that dicks assumed normal people were.
The doctor, Dan Heisner, was loath to agree. But, the way Sam was yelling and the way Dean was hurling and the lack of staff in a small county hospital changed the man's mind.
He wrote up a prescription for sleeping pills because he finally decided Dean was sleep deprived and generally not as sane as his younger brother thought he was. He suggested that Sam get Dean checked at a better equipped hospital for mental disorders or something like Alzheimer's.
Sam had been so pissed, he'd just wrapped Dean in the hospital blankets, the electrode stickers and IV ignored, thrown money at the cashier and practically carried his boneless brother to the car. He'd driven them to the motel and that was how Dean woke up fourteen hours later. He hadn't been in the mood to ask why he was in a hospital gown or where his clothes were. There was a band-aid on the back of his hand, his ears buzzed and he had one hell of a headache. He looked over to the other bed, completely expecting the younger Winchester to have another chick in the room. He was wrong.
Sam lay on his bed, eyes closed, but sleepless, listening to Dean moving around.
Dean swung his legs off the bed and stood. He didn't fell sick or dizzy so he grabbed his towel off the back of the chair near the window and made his way to the bathroom.
When Dean came out, hair wet and plastered to his face, several long minutes later, Sam was on the phone.
"Thank you, Sheriff, I'll tell him," Sam said, and put the phone back in his pocket.
"What was that about?" Dean asked, curious.
"The DA dropped the charges against you. I thought for a minute they'd charge us both when I checked you out of the hospital and brought you back here."
"So that's it, he just dropped the charges?" Dean was a little confused.
He'd not only assaulted the man, he'd verbally abused and insulted him.
"Yeah," Sam nodded, raising his eyebrows, "He talked to your doctor and he apparently understood what he heard."
"Whatever," Dean said, pulling on his shirt and jacket, "Let's get outta here!"
Dean packed all his stuff and joined Sam at the open door.
He was going to have a nice long brotherly talk about this case and the way Sam was behaving. But, first, he was going to leave this town in his rear-view mirror and drown his son-of-a-bitch headache in a few bottles of beer.