As Noah sat in the car with Thomas, he looked out the window and admired the beautiful sights. It was ordinary, sure, but that was exactly what made it beautiful. "I wonder if I ever lived in a place as beautiful as this." He mumbled to himself.
When they arrived at the hospital, Noah went straight to Dr. Gonzales. She was head of pediatrics so sometimes she was hard to find, but Noah found her within a few minutes. She was sitting with a little boy named Rick. Also a cancer patient, Ricky wasn't looking too great. Immediately, Noah knew who he would be sitting with today.
He walked into the room and said, "Hey there, Ricky. How are you doing today?"
Ricky may have looked bad, but his smile lit up the room, "I'm good Mr. Noah," he said, smiling a toothy (but front toothless) grin. "How are you?"
Noah sat down on the bed and took Ricky's hand. "I'm great. Do you mind if I borrow Dr. Gonzales for a minute?"
Ricky nodded and Noah squeezed his hand, and then followed Dr. Gonzales out of the room. "Is there a problem, Noah?" she asked.
"No no, actually the contrary. I wanted to let you know I would love to take that position that you offered me the other day."
"Well, that's fantastic news!" Dr. Gonzales grinned. "We just need you to fill out these forms," she practically skipped to the nurses' station and Noah followed, "and then we'll need to give you a drug test."
"A drug test?"
"Yeah, it's just to make sure you haven't done anything that would prevent you from working here."
"I suppose that does make sense." Noah thought. "But I assure you, I haven't done anything."
"Oh I don't think you have, honey. I just need to test you anyway. It's just a precaution and it's standard hospital procedure."
"All right, then what do I need to do?"
"I have a few things to do before I get to that, so if you're going to be here all day, I'll just come find you when I'm ready."
"Certainly, I'll just be reading to Ricky."
"Perfect! I'm sure that will do him some good." Dr. Gonzales heard her name from across the room and waved to Noah as she left.
Noah finished filling out all of the required forms and went into Ricky's room. Ricky was flipping through television channels, though apparently not finding anything worthwhile: Wheel of Fortune, Ellen DeGeneres, Days of Our Lives. Nothing a 10 year-old boy would be interested in.
"What's on T.V?" Noah asked anyway.
"Nothing good," Ricky said, switching off the T.V. and tossing the remote to the end of his bed.
"Hey, I have a good idea."
Ricky grinned, "Yeah?"
"Yeah." Noah took a seat on the edge of Ricky's bed. "See, I just happened to bring my favorite book along, and I was wondering if you liked to read." He pulled a small secondhand copy of Alice in Wonderland out of his backpack.
"I love to read!" Ricky beamed.
"Perfect! Should I start reading from the beginning?"
"Of course!" Ricky scooted up in his bed and crossed his legs, motioning for Noah to sit next to him, so Noah moved and began to read.
"What do you mean, 'It's Cas'?" Dean demanded.
"I mean Castiel is in the background of this picture, Dean. He's reading to some kid," Sam explained.
Dean abruptly pulled over and stopped the car. "Sam if you're screwing with me, I swear to…" he broke off and turned off the car, then snatched the newspaper from Sam. "Holy crap…" He stared at the paper in disbelief. There he was, wearing khakis and a polo, reading to a little bald kid in a wheelchair. How had he missed that? He would never let Sam know this, but he had been looking for Cas ever since Sam had tried to talk to him. Dean hadn't stopped. He wanted his best friend to come back like he always had.
Why didn't God give a crap about him or Cas or Sam anymore, he would wonder. And despite not giving one shit in hell about God, he had prayed every night that somehow Cas would be back. He prayed to Cas sometimes, too. But of course, he didn't expect that Cas would hear him. Angels hadn't heard, much less answered, prayers in over a year. Still, he hoped that somewhere Cas was hearing him.
Of course Sam felt the same way. Since they had met Castiel, their team wasn't the same without him and everything had gone awry now that he was dead. Rescuing Dean from hell had sold Sam on the angel's intentions whether or not it had been an order from Mr. Big Guns Upstairs or not. Any mistakes Castiel had made in the past were forgiven, just like all the mistakes Dean had made, and the many many more that Sam had made along with those.
They were family, and had been for a long time. Things were off and Sam missed how things were. The last year, they had just gotten back to the basic hunting: vampires, ghosts, what leviathan were still left (though those were slightly more difficult to take care of). Other than the occasional group of fallen angels, like the ones that killed Castiel, things were just business-as-usual hunting. They had a home to go back to, and they were all happy. Sam had honestly believed that they might be on the verge of calling it quits, but all those hopes were shattered.
After a long time, Dean cleared his throat and started the car back up. "Well we better go help the poor bastard."
"Dean it looks like Cas is doing just fine. I still think we should take a couple days off, okay?"
Dean sighed a sort of Sam-I-don't-like-it-but-I-guess-I'll-listen-to-you sigh. "All right, fine. We're still going to drive there, though. Suck it up."
Noah had been reading to Ricky for two days now. They had reached the place where Alice was talking to the caterpillar
"Well perhaps you haven't found it so yet", said Alice, "but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will someday, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you'll feel it a little but queer, won't you?"
"I hate to interrupt the beautiful story," Dr. Gonzales came into the room looking worried, "but I'm afraid I'm going to have to take Mr. Noah away for the day. Is that all right with you, Ricky?"
Ricky smiled and nodded as Noah put away the book, "I'll come back tomorrow, all right?"
"See you then, Mr. Noah!"
Noah closed the door behind him and asked, "Is something wrong, Dr. Gonzales? Is everything all right with the job?"
Dr. Gonzales stared at her feet with her arms crossed. "No, Noah. You're still allowed to have the job, but I'm afraid I may have found out something about your past."
"Wait really? How?"
"There was an officer from Massachusetts in here earlier visiting his niece."
"Well what did he say? Did he recognize me? Were we related somehow?"
"Not exactly, Noah. He said he had arrested you and two of your friends."
Noah's heart sank. He looked down to his feet, "You're kidding me," he breathed.
"He said it was only trespassing, and you three were let go, but he looked pretty upset, you might want to talk to him."
"Yeah. Yeah thanks, I'll do that." Without saying goodbye he walked hurriedly down the hall, only to stop abruptly, "Who is he visiting?"
"He's with a little girl names Lulu Rockfeld. She's in room three-oh-two."
"Thank you, Dr. Gonzales," Noah said and walked briskly in the direction of room 302.
Walking to the door of the room, he saw a little girl asleep on the bed, and a very large man sitting next to her, holding her hand.
"Excuse me, sir," Noah said, shifting nervously at the entrance. "I was told that you recognized me earlier and I wanted to know if you could tell me," he laughed, "tell me about myself."
Without speaking, the man stood up, cleared his throat, and walked past Noah, motioning him to follow. Noah turned to follow and was surprised when the man was standing almost directly behind him.
The man spoke in a hushed yet stern voice, "You listen to me, Castiel. We had a deal that you would stay away from me and my family."
"What? Castiel? What are you—"?
"What's going on this time, huh? Another shtriga? Something else?"
"Sir, I don't have any idea what you're—".
The man took Noah's shirt around his collar and gripped it, shoving him up against the shatter-proof glass of the hospital room window. "Don't you lie to me!" The man was still whispering, but it came out with the force of a scream.
Noah was completely overwhelmed. He glanced nervously to the nurses' station, one of the pediatric nurses had the phone in her hand and Noah read "Security?" on her lips. He quickly shook his head and motioned for her to stop, waiting until she had nodded and hung up the phone to talk to the man. "Please sir, I really don't know what you're talking about," he said calmly.
The man released Noah, looking more surprised than anything.
Noah continued, "About three months ago, I was found in the road. I didn't have any memory. I'm just trying to figure out who I was." Noah had his hands up by his head, still in the "I have no weapons" pose.
"I'm…" the man sputtered, "I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I'm sorry. I just…my niece is sick. When I saw you here, I thought maybe you had something to do with it." He put his hand to his forehead and ran his fingers through his hair. "Just…come with me. I'll tell you everything I know."