II. To save a girl.
The second time, Dean gave blood to save a girl. It was like fate.
He was just sitting in the ER waiting room, filling out bogus insurance information while Sammy got his arm casted. He wasn't paying too much attention to what was going on around him, just basking in the fact that neither he nor his brother had been seriously injured in their latest successful hunt.
The doors of the ambulance bay opened with a bang, and Dean nearly jumped straight out of his crappy plastic chair. He turned to glare at the source of the noise.
He found that it was a team of frantic paramedics rushing alongside a gurney. The small form on it was that of a little girl, probably no older than six or seven. And there was so much blood that it was splashing onto the white tile floor. Dean was amazed that a child that small even had that much blood in her to begin with. The wheels of the gurney left long streaks all the way down the hallway.
The girl's mother was running alongside, crying and shouting at the paramedics to save her baby. The paramedics, quickly joined by a handful of doctors and nurses, began chattering back and forth about needing blood, about being tapped out of universal thanks to a multi-car pile-up they'd had earlier that morning. The girl's mother was shrieking that she was AB negative.
AB negative.
Rarest of them all.
Damnit.
Dean abandoned the insurance forms and walked straight up to the desk. "I heard you guys need blood," he said, holding out his "good veined" arm, "Me and my brother are AB negative, and we'll give to save the little girl."
They wouldn't take Sammy's blood. He had just sustained bone trauma and was hopped up on painkillers anyways. So it was all up to Dean.
Later, down about half his blood volume, the older Winchester was sharing a hospital room with his baby brother. Because no way in hell was the hospital staff letting either of them walk out. Nurses flitted through every ten minutes or so, bringing Dean crappy cookies and juice, checking to make sure he hadn't died, telling him with relieved smiles that the little girl was going to be ok.
"Dean," Sam whispered, feebly attempting to reach across the space between their beds, "Dean."
"Hmma?" was all the other could muster, staring up at the world through layers and layers of soft white haze.
More than a little high on morphine or vicodin or whatever the hell the good shit they were pumping into his veins was, Sam Winchester beamed. "You're a really good person," he announced wistfully, pride and just a tinge of residual hero-worship evident in his drug-addled voice.
Dean snorted.