Thanks for the reviews everyone! Knowing people are really liking this story makes me want to post lots! :) I got one request for drugged, humorous Sammy, so I'm going to try to put him in somewhere later….
Chapter 3:
After making the call to Dean to correct the directions of where to go and tell him House's suggestion of some casual disguises, Cameron waited outside with two nurses. Apparently House had called in a favor with each, or threatened or bribed them; Cameron wasn't sure which. And she had no idea how House was going to keep Cuddy out of the loop, but then again she had no idea how House pulled off half the stuff he did. He had managed to get an OR confirmed about thirty seconds ago though.
When the black Impala finally pulled up to the emergency room entrance, Cameron went over with the nurses and helped Sam out of the car and onto the gurney.
"Hey Ali. Long time no see," Dean quipped, shutting his door.
"Right," she replied with a half-smile. Per her request, Sam sported a dark sweatshirt, the hood pulled over his head. Turning his head to the right and trying not to curl back around the pain, Sam was unrecognizable to a stranger. After pulling up Sam's shirt and tentatively pressing down on the side of his abdomen and receiving the expected reaction of a cry of pain through clenched teeth, Cameron motioned the nurses inside. She asked Dean a few standard questions before nodding. "Sounds like textbook appendicitis. Go park and I'll wait here to bring you somewhere to sit."
Dean nodded and hesitated. "Ah…thanks. For all this," he murmured.
Cameron nodded, giving him a soft smile. "You're welcome."
Dean got back into his car and drove to the parking lot. Cameron took out her cell phone and called House, relaying the information that Dean had given to her, confirming her previously off-the-wall diagnosis of appendicitis. When Dean came back, a sweatshirt pulled over his head and staring at the ground, Cameron led him inside to the empty room where Sam would be recovering.
Closing the door and motioning to two chairs sitting against the wall, Cameron sat down and Dean did the same. "You look good," Dean said with his trademark cocky smile, pulling back his hood to reveal his short blonde hair. "Taller actually."
Cameron smirked. "Five years will do that to a person. You look pretty good yourself. So. What happened?" she asked simply.
"With Sam's massive indigestion or the national television debut?" Dean asked.
"Let's start with Sam," she replied dryly.
"Ah…we were going to lay low for a few days after Milwaukee. We spent the next day driving east, figuring we could find a job in New England later without too much trouble. We've got a room at a motel about half an hour from here. We'd been hanging out for like a day when Sam started getting randomly dizzy and feverish. You know us, we brushed it off, blamed it on stress, whatever, but it got worse. He got nauseous, then his stomach started really hurting. When it didn't go away and started to persist in his lower right abdomen, that's when we started to worry."
"You mean that's when he started to worry," Cameron said.
Dean looked down to his hands, smiling. "Yea. So I put in a call to you, hoping you'd call back before we got to the hospital. Figured worst came to worst, we'd give them some fake ID's and hope nobody watches too much TV."
"That would have worked out great, I'm sure," Cameron replied.
Dean snorted. "Yea."
"And what was Milwaukee?"
"Ah…job went south after we got trapped in a bank hostage situation with a shapeshifter and a well-meaning civilian with a gun who thought he was hunting a Mandroid."
Cameron blinked. "I'm sorry, he what?"
Dean smiled at her. "We'd interviewed the guy, Ronald, and turns out that he'd been tracking the shapeshifter, who had turned into one of his friends. When he saw the camera flare in the security tape, he was convinced it was a Mandroid. After he took the entire bank hostage with me and Sam in it, dead set on killing this thing, we managed to convince him that it was a shapeshifter. We killed it, but, ah…Ronald didn't make it. One other casualty, an employee at the bank."
"That…sucks," she replied quietly.
"Yea. Looks like you've been doing okay for yourself though," Dean said, motioning to the hospital.
"Pretty much. After medical school, I got an internship, did really well, and things took off."
"I know it took a while to really get out of hunting though," Dean replied. "Especially when you still volunteered to marry Jacob when your dad was grasping at straws to save his life from that shadchan eight years ago. You know, the one who mixed up matchmaking with voodoo?"
"Do we really have to get into that? My dad needed a woman for the ceremony for the ritual to work," Cameron told him. "Besides, all I had to do was stay legally and spiritually married to him for five years." She sighed, looking down to her hands. "My dad was desperate. And Jacob died six months later anyway. It's not like what I did helped."
"Hey, wait a minute," Dean objected. "You gave him six more months than he would have gotten. That mattered."
"Yea, just didn't seem like enough. I got through medical school though. It helped to have my dad on my side. It's easier to go to college and not become a hunter like your father if you've got support," Cameron said, looking to Dean pointedly, efficiently changing the topic.
Dean looked to her, the makings of a glare on his face. "Yea, yea," he muttered.
"How is Sam these days?" she asked. "I haven't talked to him much since his girlfriend died."
"He's all right. We've, ah…. We've been going through some rough times though."
"Rougher than what?" Cameron asked, raising an eyebrow.
Dean glanced at her sideways. "Yea, no kidding. Ah…I'm interested actually. What have you heard?"
Cameron's eyes narrowed curiously. "About what?"
"About us."
"Um…not much. I talk to Jason and my dad, but I left that world a while ago. I mean I heard when your dad passed, and I called you. The death of a hunter like him was hard to not hear about. And I heard that demonic possessions are spiking like they haven't in years. Why?" she asked.
"It's…not really something I like to talk about," Dean said, avoiding her gaze. "Or spread around really."
Cameron's eyes narrowed further. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that we've had family stuff going on," Dean replied evasively. "Stuff that's been making more trouble for us than normal. Stuff that I don't want to involve you in."
Cameron hesitated for a few seconds and then nodded. "All right."
