CHAPTER 4

The blanket tasted like it hadn't been washed in ten years. Gritty and sour, it would probably have killed him from some disease if the operations weren't already shoving him towards death's door. He could taste blood on the blanket, too, but it was probably his.

Sam bit down on the blanket, listening numbly to his screams that were muffled and blocked by the cloth and bouncing back into his own ears. How could his body be on fire when he was so cold? It had to be close to the end. His end.

He had two blanket wrapped snugly around him. Katie had sneaked another one to him somehow. It was useless, though, against the frigid death throes of his system. He might as well have been lying in a snowbank.

He tried to think of warm things, but his brain was joining his body in shutting down, and the only thing he could think of was coffee. The way Dean used to make it; so strong and thick that it could keep anyone awake for days.

Dean.

He would be crying if there was enough liquid left in him to do so. It wasn't even logical to hope that his brother could save him now. Not again, after the innumerable times he'd already been torn from inevitable death or even brought back to life by his older brother. He didn't need to be saved. He just needed his brother. His rock, the one who had been there for him and gotten him through everything.

The door creaked open, and hope sprang up in him.

Katie.

He sobbed her name, and she came to him, wrapping her arms around him.

In a moment, he realized that she wasn't comforting him. She was lifting him up. Literally pulling him from the ground.

"Can you walk?" she asked urgently.

"What?" he blinked, trying to concentrate more on what was going on.

"Try. I'll help you. Logan, help me with him."

Sam knew he couldn't walk. There was no way. He obliged to her plea, though, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. That was a start. A new set of shoulders worked its way under his other arm.

"Come on, come on. Hurry." a young man's voice said.

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Dean kept staring at the ceiling as the male nurse, whose name, he had discovered, was Jace, continued to ramble.

"I mean, I can't believe that she would do that. She was so...hot! And not just hot, you know? Nice, too. Really nice. I mean, even though she wouldn't go out with me, she jut seemed like a decent human being, you know? She brought me donuts sometimes, stuff like that. But dude, she tried to kill you! That's so weird."

"Yeah. Weird. Shut up already!" Dean bit out.

"Oh, man. I'm sorry. This must be really scary for you. I'm sorry man."

"Okay, just leave, will you?" Dean groaned in exasperation.

With a full quart of blood back in him, and his blood regaining its normal consistency, he was beginning to allow himself to process what was happening, and he didn't like what he was realizing.

Chelsea had tried to kill him, which could only mean one thing. Actually, two things; one being that his happiness with the incredibly hot girl was completely over, no second chances or second thoughts. Secondly, albeit with no conclusive evidence, Chelsea's deception most likely meant Sam was in danger. He couldn't identify the logical steps he'd taken to reach this conclusion, but he knew it in his gut. And he'd learned over the years to trust his gut over his brain.

He had to get out of the hospital and get to his brother.

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"Sam? Can you hear me?" Katie leaned forward and tenderly wiped his forehead.

"Check his blood pressure again, Katie." Logan said.

She reached for the sphygmomanometer. "Logan, you should get out of here."

"He's not out of the woods yet. I'll stay. Plus, this is my place. You can't kick me out."

She nodded gratefully at him, biting her lip to try to control her panic. "We should take him to the hospital."

"You know why we can't. If Lewis catches wind of where he is...where we are..."

Katie dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand. "I can't see him die. I won't be able to live with myself."
Logan was silent for a moment, hanging another bag of blood on the iv pole. Katie could see that he was choosing his words carefully.

"Katie, you can't blame yourself. It's not your fault..."

"Not my fault? I'm the reason he's missing half his organs! They're inside of me and you're trying to tell me it's not my fault?"

Logan was silent.

"My father stole those organs from Sam and put them in me. So I could live. And if Sam dies...then I have to live with knowing that I'm alive because my father killed a man. Slowly, painfully, inhumanely, without telling him why. That's on me. I might as well have killed him myself."

Katie clenched her hands against her stomach. Dizzily, she focused on her lap, too numbingly terrified and guilty to produce tears. All that came out was a breathless scream from somewhere in between the pit of her stomach and her soul.

Logan pulled her to him, and she buried her face in the smell of his jacket. He was her only real family; she had disowned Lewis as her father in her mind long ago. First, it had been because he'd killed her human mother. He had been outraged when he discovered that Katie's illness was stemming from having the two species in her genes attack each other, killing her organs.

She completely disowned the shifter when he'd taken his first victim in the name in keeping her healthy. A life of a man named Chris.

She was losing track of how many organs had come in and out of her body in the last three years; organs that were stolen from others so that her father could save her. No matter how many people had suffered for her, though, her body had rejected them all.

Until Sam.

"It is not your fault, Katie. It's not your fault." Logan repeated over and over. She could feel his heart thumping angrily. He needed comfort, too. She wrapped her arms around his waist, leaning into the familiarity of her half brother.

"We've got to save him." she gasped.

"We've done everything we can, Katie. You need to get some rest, okay?"

She could feel it; the weariness. The coldness. It had been a diminishing feeling recently, thanks to Sam, but she had been pushing herself too much. For him. She owed him.

"Katie, if you promise to get some sleep, I'll watch out for him, alright? And I'll wake you up the instant anything changes. Go get in my bed."

She nodded, taking one last look at Sam. It was a little like looking in a time-traveling mirror; the gauntly obvious cheekbones under the yellowed skin that was bluish around the fingertips, lips, and eyelids. The thinning hair. The streaks of blood under the nose, around the corners of the mouth, and everywhere else. The appearance of death. It was the way she knew she herself had looked very recently.

If she'd ever had her father's ability to shape shift, she would have chosen a body that was stronger. Less weak, less afraid.

"Katie?"

"Yeah, I'm going." she stood up, reluctantly letting herself admit how tired she was. "Can I use your shower?"

"Of course."

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"I highly recommend that you don't check out now, Mr. Porter." the receptionist said. "I paged your doctor, he'll be down any minute. Please, for your own health, stay at least one more night."

Dean moaned, trying to turn the sound into a cough on the way out. The receptionist wasn't fooled and continued to beg him to stay.

"Look, lady." he cut her off. "If you say one more word to try to keep me here, I will call the police. You can't keep me here against my will, and my will is to get out of here. Now."

Dean's doctor came up behind him. "Dean..."
"Don't you start, too. I'm leaving. Give me whatever meds I need and some bandages, and I'm out of here."

"I'll let you go."

"What?" the receptionist looked as shocked as Dean. "Sir, he's..."

"I know his condition, Carol." the doctor said calmly. "Dean, you can go. I would just suggest that you keep 911 on speed dial at all times. One wrong move and you're going to have more internal and external bleeding than you know what to do with."

"For crying out loud. You think you can scare me into staying? Just give me my meds, Doc. I have to go get my baby brother."

"Why don't you stay here. I'll go get him for you. Or we can send the police, they would take great care of him and bring him here for you."
"Yeah, that won't be easy if they don't know where he is." Dean growled. The room was spinning under his feet, and the doctor sounded like he was speaking from the other end of a tunnel. If he leaned against the desk, though, his already weak argument was going completely down the drain.

"You don't know where he is either, do you? Why not just let the police handle it?"

"Look, I'm leaving. You can't force me to stay. I'm the only one who can find Sam."

He grabbed the form from the startled receptionist and finished filling it out, then signed with a flourish. Staring pointedly at the doctor, he dropped the pen on the desk and stalked out.

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The silence had been too long. After Logan and Katie had discussed every option they could think of, they had finally decided that staying here in Logan's apartment, caring for Sam with the limited medical knowledge they had between the two of them, was best. Hide and wait.

Katie walked over to the stereo, her bare feet sinking into the lush, thick carpet.

She knew this place; the tastefully chosen color palate of the walls, the neatly organized bookshelves, the incredibly plump leather sofa that now was doubling as Sam's hospital bed. Logan had done a good job of keeping the place the way it had always been.

She'd used to live here, too. Before her mother died...their mother. It had been her, Logan, and their mom against the world. When they'd been kids, it hadn't been the American dream. Not with Allison worn out from burning the candle at both ends in her attempts to provide for them; but it had been good. Allison had made major efforts to give her kids the little things in life; things that Katie never got from Lewis. Ice cream cones, trips to the playground, swim team, birthday parties.

Logan's father had walked out before he was even born; to both of them, Allison had been their only real parent.

Now that she was twenty-one, Katie more fully appreciated what her mom had been through. The fear of discovering the shifter race, the roller coaster of falling in love with one, the rejection of an abusive husband, and finally, being pinned with the guilt of her daughter's critical illness, shortly before her own murder.

Allison's history was tragic.

Katie turned on the stereo, smiling as the notes began to pour out of the speakers. She'd known this was the song that was going to come on. It was the only thing Allison had ever played. She'd bought the CD, which Logan had later ripped to iTunes when Katie had fallen in love with the song.

It had all started with the nightmares...Katie had started having them when she was seven; nightmares that she would morph into a hideous beast, and that the kids at school would shoot her. Allison had first convinced Katie that none of her fellow second graders were packing, and then that she wouldn't turn into a monster. Katie could still remembering hiccuping with sobs as she continued to drown her mother in "what ifs". What if I do, what if I can't change back, what if I can't go back to school, what if you don't like me any more.

Allison hadn't ever been great at words; music was the way she really sold her point. That was the first night Katie had heard Make You Feel My Love. The way Allison had sung the words to her had given her faith, hope...all those cheesy words. Her favorite part was "I've known it from the moment that we met, no doubt in my mind where you belong."

In music's crazy way, it had provided assurance that she wasn't losing her mother's love.

But she had lost it. And not in a way that any of them would have ever planned for.

Now, the song lyrics were slowly coming to mean something else.

When she'd sung it over the loudspeaker to Sam, she'd begun to pour meaning into the words.

She dug her nails into her palms. She couldn't go there. It was probably just pity and guilt.

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Dean had never been so grateful for the spare key under the Impala's bumper in his life. Baby roared to life as he turned the key in the ignition, but he didn't take it out of park; he found himself suddenly frozen in indecision. He had no idea where Sam was. No leads, nothing. Even more, now that he was out of the hospital, he was doubting his logic that Sam was even in trouble.

But if his brother had ditched him, why was the car still here?

Dean clenched his jaw and shifted into drive.

"I'm coming, Sammy."