Threw Stones At The Stars But The Whole Sky Fell

Chapter 2

By crazybeagle

AN: I love you guys. Thank you to everybody who reviewed, faved, alerted, whatever. Seriously, you guys made my week and you all get virtual pie in the flavor of your choice. (And I will respond to the reviews, I promise. Just know in the meantime you are awesome and every single one made me grin like an idiot.)

Another AN: It'll be a few more days before the next chapter's up, but hopefully under a week. This fic should wrap up in about 2 more chapters after this one if all goes as planned, but I've only got like a third of a chapter's worth of the next bit written.

Dean felt bad about making Bobby drive around until they could find a motel a good few towns away from here, because even if Bobby hadn't broken any bones himself, he'd still been inside of a car that got flipped, and then pushed down a flight of stairs. And based on the stiffness of Bobby's movements, Dean could tell that he'd be feeling it for days, if not weeks, to come. But with one incapacitated limb and one incapacitated little brother, there wasn't much Dean could do but let Bobby deal with it.

After Dean had herded Sam into the car—which hadn't been too terrible, because Sam had been obedient, if a bit lethargic—Bobby offered to head to the hospital first so Dean could get his arm taken care of. But one look at Sam's drained face was enough to tell him that the kid had more than had it for one day, and taking him out in public, even 4-AM-in-some-backwoods-ER-public, wasn't happening. They'd have to find a room. Dean could head back out on his own, or at least be dropped off at an ER front entrance if they found one before they found a motel. Because as much as Dean didn't want to deal with hospital staff right now, and really didn't want to leave Sam on his own, it really was better to get this kind of thing out of the way as soon as possible so they didn't make it any worse, in case his bones needed resetting, and it wasn't like he could make a decent cast on his own. And he wasn't gonna lie, the promise of hospital-strength painkillers did sound pretty appealing right now, because damn if he didn't freaking hurt all over right now... And Bobby'd probably appreciate it if he shared them.

As they headed for the main road, Dean tried not to wince when they passed the pitifully upended Impala. It was gonna be a bitch and a half to fix, the hood as good as crushed, but he tried not to think about that.

"What happened?" Sam asked, frowning at the car. He and Dean were crammed into the backseat of a beat-up, stuffy green sedan that smelled like cats and pine air fresheners. Sam's knees were wedged up against the back of the driver's seat, looking absurdly huge and out-of-place in such a small car. But Dean didn't fail to note that he'd pressed himself as close to the car door as he could, as far from Dean as he could manage.

"Crowley invited some friends to come play," Bobby said grimly. "Gonna have to leave it here for awhile 'till we can figure out how to get it towed, ain't much we can do about that. This place is in the middle 'a goddamn nowhere though, so I figure it'll be alright for a day or two. Just gotta make sure we get back to it before the cops do."

Dean grimaced and tried—to little avail— to put it out of his mind.

Thank God, at least, for the fact that, even though their all their bags and things had to be left behind in the Impala's trunk, he and Bobby had had their phones in their pockets the entire time. Bobby's phone still seemed to be working fine, for now at least; the screen of Dean's own had cracked and the screen light had dimmed a bit, but it appeared still functional. He'd left his wallet on the car seat, which was just as well— he could claim he'd been mugged when he finally got to the hospital. Bobby did still have some cash on him, enough for a room at least; Sam had used the last of his own on the rental.

A subdued silence settled over them after that. For all the shit that had gone down, and despite the angry throbbing in his arm, Dean felt numb, so exhausted he couldn't see straight. He almost nodded off a few times, but he kept catching movement out of the corner of his eye.

It took him awhile to realize what he was seeing, because every time he'd looked over at Sam, nothing appeared to have changed, but a minute or two of watching him and he figured it out. Every now and then, Sam was twitching, flinching as though he'd been hit.

"Sam?" he asked, worried now. Without really thinking about it, he reached over to tap Sam's shoulder, get his attention.

Sam jerked violently at the touch, nearly hitting his head on the car ceiling. "Gah…W-what?" he stuttered out.

Dean frowned, not liking it one bit that Sam was freaking out so much at having his shoulder touched. "You okay? You look kinda…"

Sam nodded rapidly. "Yeah. Yeah, 'm good." He sounded a bit choked, and was looking anywhere but at Dean.

Dean watched him for a few minutes. The twitching hadn't let up, and it was now coupled with something that worried Dean even more—Sam's eyes were darting all over the car interior, for once very much focused, as though they were tracking something that Dean couldn't see. He looked panicked.

Dean's stomach dropped. He's seeing things.

"Sam, hey—" He hesitated for a second, briefly questioning the wisdom of what he was about to do, but then went ahead and did it anyway—he laid a hand on Sam's arm, and then gripped it tight, hoping against hope that it would help instead of hurt. Sam yelped and just about jumped out of his seat this time, but Dean held on tighter. "Hey, look at me, okay?" he said, loudly and clearly. "Right at me." Sam did. And it wasn't so much panic that Dean saw now on his brother's face as it was terror. His breath was coming in harsh gasps.

Bobby glanced at them in the rearview mirror, looking worried. "He still holdin' up alright?"

"'Course he is," Dean said, eyes not leaving Sam. "'Course you are, aren't you?"

Sam pursed his lips. The message was clear. No, I'm really not.

Dean wrung Sam's wrist. "You're fine, you understand? You're safe. We're gonna take care of you."

But Sam was watching something over Dean's shoulder, darting eyes tracking a path around and around the car interior. He looked faint. "Dean—"

"No," Dean barked. "Sam, I don't care what the hell else you think you're seeing, you look at me, only at me, man. Got it?"

With what appeared to be a tremendous effort, Sam complied, but he was clearly resisting the urge to continue to follow the thing with his peripheral vision. Dean dug his fingernails into Sam's wrist every time he tried to. After the third or so time, when Dean was sure that he was going to make Sam's wrist bleed if he kept it up, Sam gave him a miserable look, shaking his head almost imperceptibly. I can't do this.

Dean suppressed a shudder at whatever it was that was so bad that Sam must be seeing to make him want to give up like that, and dug a finger into a tender spot on the back of Sam's wrist that he knew would hurt like a bitch, anything to grab his attention and keep it. Sam cringed and tried to withdraw his hand, but Dean didn't let go. "Hey, remember what you told me earlier? He was wrong, right? He was wrong," Dean said, his tone beseeching. Of course, he still had no clue who "he" was. But whatever it was that had gone down in Sam's head, "he" was somehow pivotal in regard to Sam's sanity, Dean knew that for sure.

Sam bit his lip and nodded. Dean smiled encouragingly, trying not to let it falter when he caught Bobby's apprehensive glance reflected in the rearview.

"See?" Dean said. "There ya go. Come on, what the fuck would he know, anyway? You're gonna take this thing by the horns, whatever it is, and kick its ass six ways from Sunday. Got it?"

Sam half-smiled, uncertainly, and nodded. He was wearing that look, that one where he wasn't really buying what Dean was telling him, but trusted him enough to be willing to go along with it, for both their sakes.

And he seemed calmer, after that. Less flinching, and his breathing evened out, and in a few minutes he seemed intently focused on the overcast night sky speeding past outside to the exclusion of all else. Dean waved off Bobby's offers to pull over, and in a few minutes had nearly dozed off himself. That is, until he felt the wrist he'd forgotten he'd still had a hold of being torn violently out of his grasp, followed closely by an inarticulate grunt and a fist connecting with his nose.

Another minute, and Bobby had pulled over.

Another ten, and Sam was hunched over and contrite in his seat, muttering a string of apologies, Dean dazed and holding an old napkin they'd found in the glove compartment under his bleeding and broken nose. Sam had apparently snapped out of whatever reverie he'd been in only to freak out, again, at physical contact and proximity to another person. After punching Dean, he tried, and almost managed to, rip the door open and fling himself out of the moving car. And if it hadn't been for Bobby's fast reaction pulling over, swerving onto the gravelly shoulder of the country road, he would have. While Dean fished around for something to mop himself up with, Bobby had, as discreetly as possible, turned on the child-safety locks. When Sam finally realized where he was and what was going on, he was horrified and humiliated, twitching again and stammering out apologies. And for the rest of the trip, Dean couldn't count the number of times he'd ground out through a haze of pain and watery eyes that he was fine, he wasn't angry.

That was Dean's first indication of just how bad things really were.

The second came at around eight or nine the next morning.

Bobby had dropped Dean off at the ER at around 3:30 AM before taking Sam with him to a motel a couple blocks down the road. Dean had planned to be in and out of the ER in a few hours—maybe a few x-rays, a cast on his arm, and hopefully some very strong painkillers—long before they figured out he had no insurance to speak of. But of course, it was while he was walking up to the desk to get his paperwork in the ER waiting room that his body chose to remind him that he'd been running on fumes and he passed out in front of the receptionist's desk.

Now it's not like passing out was all that big a deal in itself, or like it didn't happen all that much if you were a hunter—it was mostly just annoying, inconvenient, or embarrassing, depending on the situation. In this case, it was all three. The ER was the last place you wanted to pass out, and it was never any use trying to explain to medics that it wasn't that big a deal. He'd woken up not long after, lying in a hospital bed and being bitched at by a middle-aged ER nurse about low blood sugar and When is the last time you ate or slept and Where did all these bruises come from and he just wished she'd shut the fuck UP and hurry up with the cast so he could get out of here. Lady, YOU hang out with your comatose little brother a few days and see if you have much of an appetite either. Not that she didn't mean well, because it probably looked pretty alarming for a guy with blood all over his face and down his front to stumble into an ER and then pass out before he could explain what was wrong, but it was no use pulling an "it's not what it looks like" at a hospital. And seriously, he didn't have time for this. He needed to get back to Sam and Bobby. But of course, when you try to ask a doctor to hurry up, it never works—he and Sam had always had a theory that the more times you asked, the more they took their sweet time about things.

They'd x-rayed him while he was out, and diagnosed the breaks that he'd already known were there—broken arm, broken nose, pretty much run-of-the-mill—and were now running a glucose drip or something along with painkillers through an IV. And the painkillers? Not bad. Not bad at all. But they made his head too fuzzy to be much good harassing the doctors into giving him his phone back to check on Sam, damn them. He had to say, though, it made getting his arm reset a breeze, and he couldn't even feel his nose at all. And nobody had even approached him about insurance yet. Probably because they thought he was too loopy to deal with it, which he was.

But falling asleep for several hours after he should technically have been good to go? That was a really shitty thing to do. Sam was clearly barely hanging onto reality right now, and Bobby was, to put it bluntly, a 60-year-old man who had just been pushed down a staircase. So in a lot of ways, they were worse off than he was, and that knowledge alone should've kept him awake and ready to get out of here.

But it didn't. And he should feel super guilty, but exhaustion and pain and drugs were a little hard to argue with, as well as the temporary, if artificial, reprieve from responsibility of any sort and thoughts of HolyCrapWhatDoWeDoAboutCas and, more urgently, HolyCrapWhatDoIDoAboutSam.

So yeah, he fell asleep…

…Only to wake up, oddly, to Sam himself, standing by the side of the bed and shuffling his feet, a puzzled-looking young nurse with a clipboard at his elbow. She was peering between Dean and Sam over the top of the clipboard, addressing one or both of them by a name that definitely wasn't theirs. Hagar or something…

It took a few more seconds before he could form enough cohesive thought through the thick fog of meds to realize—oh, right—that was the alias they'd all agreed on before he'd showed up here.

"Mr. Hagar?" the nurse repeated, obviously speaking to Dean but shooting apprehensive glances up at Sam, who was clearly not all there, eyes roving nervously around the room. "We have a…visitor for you. He couldn't provide an identification, but he showed up asking for you. He says he's your brother?"

Dean managed a nod. He tried to elaborate but his tongue and throat felt like sandpaper. He swallowed. "He is," he croaked. He knew it was probably a pretty big breach of hospital protocol to let an unidentified visitor, and a pretty spacey-looking one at that, into the ER. But hey, he couldn't blame the girl, or the rest of the hospital staff, for that matter—if he were them, he wouldn't have tried to get in Sam's way right now either. Somebody of Sam's stature could easily snap this girl in half like a twig. Not that Sam ever would lay a finger on her, regardless of mental state, but clearly she hadn't wanted to wait around to find out.

Sam didn't look particularly threatening right now, though, that was for sure. He was just standing there, fidgeting, not looking at either Dean or the nurse.

"Sam," Dean said, rather louder than necessary, trying to get his attention. "Dude. Hey."

Sam's brow furrowed but his eyes were fixed on the floor tiles. The nurse looked extremely uncomfortable. After 30 seconds or so of hovering, she finally flitted over to the chair near the bed and dragged it around so that it was facing the bedside. She turned to Sam and pointed at it. "Um, you can sit, if you'd like."

Sam's head snapped up. "What?" He took in the chair, and her concerned face, and then said, "Oh," shuffling over to it and sitting down. "Thanks."
The nurse looked down at him, and then looked at Dean, uncertain. "Is he—" She trailed off, as though unsure how best to phrase the question.

And then, with an unprecedented burst of clarity, Sam looked up at her, gaze clear. "Yeah," he said, with an embarrassed, apologetic grin. "I'm sorry. I'm fine. I'm a…um, I'm a schizophrenia patient, I'm sorry I didn't mention that. I've got documentation, but I sort of left it at home."

The nurse blinked. "Oh. Um, okay…" She glanced at Dean.

Numbly, Dean nodded affirmation, though suddenly feeling as though somebody had punched him in the gut. Schizophrenia? What the…

"Sorry if I, uh, scared you or anything," Sam continued, sounding totally normal and conversational. But Dean didn't miss the white-knuckled grip he had on the bedrail, as if he was trying to keep himself from drifting off again. "I got a little distracted since this happened," he inclined his head at Dean, "…And I forgot my pills." Dean had to admit he was really damn proud that Sam was focused enough to come up with a convincing lie on the spot in order to keep himself from getting hauled off to the psych ward, but the implications of the lie—that he was acting bizarre enough for her to buy it—were painful.

But his brother was not crazy. He wasn't.

"Oh," the nurse said—again— tucking her hair behind her ear, her expression tinged with pity. "Are you gonna be okay now?"

Sam nodded earnestly. "Oh, yeah. I got the pills in my pocket now. And Dean knows what to do if…uh, if anything happens."

"Alright…" She stood there for a moment, appearing as though she couldn't decide whether to stay or go. She looked young, Dean thought, probably an intern, and like she really didn't want to be here or know how to begin to handle a situation like this. If she'd been a professional, given Sam's state, she probably would've tactfully and discreetly found a reason to stay and monitor the visit. But this girl just seemed uneasy and uncertain, her face flushing.

"Hey, you can go if you want," Dean told the girl, with as reassuring a smile as he could manage. "Really. We'll be fine. And besides, I bet they got you hopping around doing a million things at once, huh? But thanks for helping Sammy out here." Sam offered a small, shaky grin of his own.

The girl flushed even deeper red, and smiled in return, flustered. "Oh. Um. No problem."

Dean was more than a bit pleased at the fact that this was working as well as it was, busted and swollen nose plus two probably blackening eyes notwithstanding. So as she turned to go, he decided to push his luck. "Oh, hey," he called after her. She wheeled around. "Sorry if this is a total pain in the ass, but d'you think you could maybe try to find my phone and clothes and stuff? I've been askin' and askin' and I kind of need 'em back. Got people I gotta contact, let 'em know I'm okay." That was a bit of a lie—if Sam was here, Bobby must be here somewhere, too.

The girl nodded, her ponytail bobbing up and down. "Oh. Yeah," she said, a little breathily. "No problem. Be right back." And with a newfound spring in her step, she left.

Dean shook his head and grinned as he watched her go. "Guess I still got it, huh?"

But Sam wasn't amused. He was staring up at the vitals monitor by the other side of the bed, and the IV pouch, and then back at him. "Dean, what—are you okay? D-did they find something?" He was stammering again, the moment of complete clarity apparently diminishing. "You sh-shoulda been out of before now."

Dean sighed, sat up, and rubbed his eyes, wincing as his fingers accidentally met the sore bridge of his nose. "I'm fine, Sam. I'm just a moron who forgot to eat once or twice." …Or sleep… But he didn't need to mention that part. Truth be told, he hadn't been all that good about remembering to make himself get an adequate amount of either since, well, since he'd left Lisa and Ben behind for the last time, even with Sam nagging him about it. Helluva time for it to catch up with him. Not that Sam could blame him for it; it was something they both did—when the going got tough, the priority of bodily necessities subconsciously got kicked down a few notches, and this wouldn't be the first time that one of their bodies decided to pick an inconvenient or public place to remind them that it was being neglected. Adrenaline and coffee and booze could only get you so far. Two years ago, Sam had undergone a long stint of time where he'd been terrified to fall asleep because of the access it would give Lucifer to his mind, and after he'd blacked out from exhaustion one night at a Laundromat, Dean had had to start forcing sleeping pills on him.

Sam's eyes narrowed. "Forgot to eat?"

"Passed out in the ER."

"Passed out?"

"Yeah, kind of. Not one of my finer moments."

"Oh…" he blinked. "But are you sure that's all—"

"Yeah, I'm sure, Sammy. Broken arm, broken nose, and some awesome bruises. That's it."

"Okay…" His hands were still worrying the bedrail, gripping and wrenching the plastic covering. "B-but Dean, how long's it been s-since you ate something?"

"Probably not as long as it's been since you ate something," Dean said dryly.

Sam scowled, but said nothing, and Dean would be willing to bet that Sam hadn't had anything to eat since before Cas broke the wall. He'd have to be lightheaded or at least fatigued by now. They'd have to fix that.

"Why d-didn' you call?" Sam asked, and Dean's heart sank as he saw that Sam was once again tracking something that wasn't there with his eyes across the taupe-colored curtain that served as a barrier between his bed and the rest of the ER.

"Cause they had me doped up to the gills and wouldn't give me my phone. I fell asleep. I'm really sorry, man." But Sam appeared to have lost interest in him, watching the curtain. "Sam," Dean said.

"Huh?" Sam asked absently. "Oh. What?"

"I said, they took my phone. Now where's Bobby? I wanna get outta here before we have to deal with, you know, having to pay for any of this," he said in an undertone.

Sam nodded. "Y-yeah. Yeah, definitely. Let's go."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Dude, you didn't answer my question," he said slowly. "Where's Bobby?"
Sam was silent for a long moment. Then, "I don't know." He looked suddenly paler.

"What?"

"I don't know," Sam repeated. He shook his head. "I…I have no idea." Panic crept into his voice.

"Whoa, okay, just calm down," Dean said, patiently, trying to ignore his sudden, very bad feeling about all this. "If you don't remember, that's fine. You're here, right? That means he's gotta be here too."

Sam's brows furrowed. "I d-don't think he is, Dean," he said slowly.

"Why not? I mean, how'd you get here then? Did you take the car?"

Sam looked as though he was reeling, as though something horrible was just now dawning on him. "I don't think I did take the car," he said breathlessly.

"What, so you walked?" Dean asked. Sam was quiet. "Talk to me, man," he said, fear lodging itself in his chest. "If something bad happened to Bobby, we gotta know. What do you remember?"

"I don't re—" he started, then his eyes got huge. "Wait. T-there was…something…in the room," he whispered.

Dean sat up some more and leaned forward. "Whoa, what, in the motel room?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah. Something…bad… I was gonna call you 'cause you were late, and then…then Bobby was gone and something was…was in the room with me."

"What was it?" Dean asked. His own voice had gone weirdly quiet. He cleared his throat. "Sam, what was it?"

"I…I don't…" His fists were clenched around the bedrail so hard Dean almost thought he might crush it.

"Sam," Dean put his un-casted hand on top of one of Sam's. He knew he was at risk for another punch in the face, but at least it got his attention. "Man, you gotta focus. Was it real?"

Sam looked confused. "R-real?"

"What you saw in the room. Was it real, or were you imagining it?" He tightened his grip on Sam's hands, painfully, when Sam's gaze started to wander. "Answer me."

Sam looked up, eyes bright. "I don't know," he said hoarsely.

Dean shut his eyes and slackened his grip on Sam's hand. The last thing in the world he wanted to do right now was upset Sam, but if Bobby was in trouble, he needed to know. "The thing you saw," he said at last, feeling drained, "did it hurt Bobby?"

"I don't—"

"Sam," he interrupted, "Did you hurt Bobby?"

Sam was quiet. He looked dazed; there were tears in his eyes.

"Sammy, I gotta know," Dean said gently. "Okay? Just tell me what you remember."

Sam took a halting breath, shook his head a little. "Okay. Yeah. 'M sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for, man. Just talk to me."

"I was…was gonna call you," he said, his voice rapid and a little stronger. "I dunno where Bobby was, maybe he was there. And then there was something…else… there, with me. I think I hit it or something, knocked it down, maybe, and then I ran. To find you, I guess. 'Cause I ended up here. I don't really remember how. I'm sorry," he repeated anxiously.

"That's good, Sammy. That's all I wanted to know. You did good." He nodded and patted Sam's arm, trying to be reassuring, despite the sickening feeling that he knew exactly what had happened. "And don't be sorry. Let's just call Bobby and see what he's up to, alright? You got your phone?"

Sam nodded mechanically, reached into his pocket, and handed it over.

Dean flipped it open and speed-dialed Bobby.

No answer.

He bit back his dread, and snapped the phone shut. "Eh, it's probably fine. I'm sure he's just—"

But at that very second his words were cut off by a commotion in the hallway. Some girl—maybe college age—was being wheeled down the hall of the ER on a gurney, surrounded by a frantic-looking trauma team. They didn't get to see much of her before she was wheeled past the gap in their curtain, but Dean's stomach turned when he caught a whiff of burned hair and a glimpse blackened flesh on her arm.

And the screaming.

Over and over. The sound reverberated down the hall, wrenching and terrible.

And Sam, frozen, stared after her.

Dean winced as another scream tore from the girl, echoing down the hall to them.

"Sam…" Dean began, stomach roiling.

Sam's face was completely leeched of color. His mouth was hanging open. He looked as though he'd forgotten how to breathe. "W-what…" he began.

Okay, Dean was pretty sure that this had to be the universe cosmically fucking with them somehow. The world's worst timing, and what were the odds of this happening, seriously.

…Even if they were in a stupid ER. This wasn't fair.

"Dude, it's okay," Dean said, teeth grating as she screamed again. "It was just her arm. I'm sure she'll be—"

"What's going on?" he asked faintly, cringing and shuddering at each of the girl's cries. He looked at Dean, confused, pleading. "W-where are we?" He blinked. "Dean?"

The girl screamed again.

"We're at the hospital, Sammy, remember?" Dean tried putting his hand on Sam's arm again, but Sam recoiled as though he'd been burned himself.

"The hospital…" Sam parroted, but obviously still uncomprehending.

"Yeah. The hospital. Everything's fine, Sammy, okay?" Once again, everything was definitely not fine, and damn this was hard to just sit here and watch, especially when he couldn't even freaking touch Sam without him going ballistic.

"Dean?" he repeated, his voice small.

"Yeah, I'm here, buddy."

"Can we go?" He gasped sharply as she screamed again, eyes spilling over. "Please?"

"Yeah," Dean said, his own voice thin. "Yeah, Sammy. We can. As soon as Bobby gets here, alright? I promise."

The screaming cut off, abruptly. Dean wondered if the girl had passed out. Or worse.

And that was when Sam collapsed overtop of the bedrail. Dean quickly pushed the button to lower it, and Sam slumped unceremoniously onto the sheets somewhere near Dean's knee, shoulders heaving.

"Sammy?"

No response. Just the sound of loud, fast breathing, and the sight of fists clenching around hospital sheets.

Dean just stared down at him, wishing more than anything he could will away the odor of charred flesh that lingered in the air. After a moment, he nudged Sam's head with his knee. Still no change. He huffed a sigh and leaned back against the raised end of the bed. He still felt about seventy five percent burned out, all his senses dulled from the drugs.

A few more tries dialing Bobby yielded no result. He settled down to wait, but he must've dozed again, because the next thing he knew the same nurse from before had come back in, a bundle of what he realized were his clothes from before and a Ziploc containing his phone under her arm. Her brows knit and she pursed her lips as she took in Sam, who hadn't moved. The abrupt, muffled noises that cut through the otherwise silent room sounded like choked sobs. "I brought your stuff," she said softly, setting her load down at the foot of the bed. "What happened? What's wrong?" she said, inclining her head towards Sam. Dean didn't miss that she seemed not to want to come any closer to Sam than necessary, and truth be told, he didn't know if he wanted her near Sam either, for her own sake, or he might not be the only one who wound up with a broken nose.

Dean shrugged. "He's just kinda overwhelmed, that's all," he said, hoping he sounded calm or at least composed. "Hospitals are definitely not his thing. And, uh…" he cleared his throat. "That girl, earlier. Kind of bothered him." He paused. "Hey, do you know, is she gonna be—"

She looked mildly surprised he was asking. "Oh. Um, with the burns?"

"Yeah."

The nurse looked tentative, but nodded. "Yeah, um, I think she'll pull through, definitely. But it was a pretty bad kitchen fire, and that means oil, so…" she shifted her weight a little and looked down at her shoes. "But it looks worse than it is, even though she's in a lot of pain, 2nd and 3rd degree burns and all that. I didn't help treat her or anything, but that's why they said she wouldn't calm down." She was speaking a little too quickly, and her lips were twitching when she finished.

Dean watched her for a moment. "You alright?" he asked. Thing like that had to be tough for a small-town intern to watch. Hell, it'd be hard for anyone to watch.

The girl sniffed once, delicately, and looked up, expression normal other than slightly shiny eyes. "Yeah, of course," she said, making a valiant stab at regaining professionalism. She smoothed the front of her scrubs. "Tell, uh, tell your brother that she'll be alright, okay?"

"You hear that, Sam?" he relayed gently when she had gone. "That girl's gonna be okay."

There was no answer.

He hadn't expected one.

To be continued…