Chapter Ten

He was in a private room on the ICU floor, because they feared the noise of another patient could trigger spasms. They kept the lights dim. Spoke in quiet voices. Touched him carefully but only when necessary, though he was promised the relaxant would prevent physical contact from triggering him.

Should prevent.

Anymore, no one was certain.

Sam didn't, wouldn't, leave. At some point Jackson hauled in a recliner to replace the stiff plastic chair at his bedside. Sam sat in it, slept in it. Talked to him quietly. Read when Dean slept, or surfed the web.

Looking for a case?

Would they ever again work a case?

Together?

Maybe Sam would.

When his heart developed arrhythmia, they added more meds. It was, he was told, not unexpected in a severe case of tetanus. And he could feel it in his chest, a heart that spasmed as his body had, before they shoved the cocktail into his veins. Squeezing, flipping, jumping, twitching. Pausing. And then it all started again. Until finally the meds worked, and he heard the steady beeping of the monitor, saw the desired peaks in the electronic line. Felt the easing in his chest, the normal, steady beats.

This, he could deal with. He'd been through it before, but worse, when 100,000 volts of electricity had nearly sent him to death. Would have, had Sammy not found the faith healer, had a reaper not been bound. Had a man not died in his stead.

His heart wasn't damaged. It just didn't want to beat normally. But they fixed that, even as they worked to fix the other stuff.

But this . . . this he couldn't take. Not anymore.

He wanted so badly to move in the bed. To get up, walk to the bathroom. Pee. Walk back on his own. Not be locked down in bed like a lunatic when all he was, was sick.

Despair, desperation . . . both distant. But come they did.

"—off," he said.

Sam, half-asleep, stirred upright in the recliner. "What?"

"Take 'm off, Sammy. Please."

"Dean—if you go into a full-body spasm, you can do serious damage to yourself."

"I'm too . . . 'm too drugged, Sam . . . jus' can't stay like this. 'kay?" He twitched hands, feet. "—don' ev'n need tell anyone . . . you do it. Please. Sammy."

Sam stared hard at the ground and said nothing. Tears filled his eyes.

Dean stared hard at the wall and also said nothing. His tears fell.

Eventually they stepped him down from the sedative. His body remained a rag because of the relaxants, but his head was clear. He'd surrendered fighting the restraints, quit arguing with his doctors and nurses, and had been rewarded. It was easier, but in many ways harder, because without that buffer of sedative-induced haze, he knew exactly what was happening.

"Your brother's not getting better. He's getting worse."

From a freakin' tooth in his shoulder.

"Yes," the doctor had said. "A regular booster would have prevented this."

"Asshole," he said.

He didn't mean the doctor.

He meant himself.

In the middle of the night, with Sam out of the room, he felt the tautness in his jaw, the ripple through his muscles.

Crap.

No.

But he was on stuff. He was on shit. This wasn't supposed to happen.

It did.

By the time Sam was back in the room, Dean had dislocated both of his thumbs against the restraints and cracked another vertebra.

Jackson came running. He took one look, snatched two syringes from the top drawer in the small cabinet between beds, injected the contents of both into an IV port.

"Hang on," he said. "Hang in there, Dean. This'll do it. This'll back you down, plus something for the pain. A little morphine, okay?" And then the nurse ran a strap across Dean's chest and locked it down. "I'm sorry, man. I'm really sorry." He nodded at Sam. "Yeah. You can."

He lay there gasping, trying to catch his breath, feeling the strap across his heaving chest. And one of Sam's hands at his neck, fingers wrapped behind, the heel of his hand along the side. The other hand, resting gently on his shoulder, made circling motions.

Dean's voice was shredded. "How long's it gonna take?"

Jackson was inspecting his right thumb. "To pop this sucker back into place? There. It's done. Bet you didn't feel a thing. Now I'll tackle the other one." He moved around to far side of the bed, popped the left thumb back into place. "There you go."

"How long's it take, dude?"

"How long does what take?"

"To die from this."

He remembered.

He'd heard the phrase 'of two minds.' Well, for a brief time in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 2006, following the introduction of a semi truck to the side of the Impala, he was of two bodies.

Trust a Winchester to do it differently.

One body in the bed, tangled in tubes and wires, hooked to machines. Intubated, to keep his lungs working. Beside the bed, the vent pushed oxygen in, filled his chest, then let lungs deflate. His face was utterly slack.

One body in the doorway, looking on. He couldn't feel the body. But he knew it existed. Knew his mind was in it.

His mind wasn't in the body in the bed.

How long's it take to die from this?

He'd died there, in that bed. They'd brought him back.

But he still was dying.

Until Dad made sure he wouldn't.

What's dead should stay dead.

Maybe this time he would.

He heard Sam on the phone. "He's got pneumonia, Bobby. They may have to put him on a vent."

His brother sounded exhausted.

"Yeah, it's from tension in the chest. He can't inflate his lungs all the way because of the spasms."

Dean didn't move. Didn't open his eyes. He simply listened.

"They say it happens a lot in severe cases." And then the exhaustion was replaced by despair, and an underlying anger. "Dammit, Bobby, I didn't even realize . . . people die from tetanus!"

Oh, Sammy.

"And I think he knows it."

Oh yeah.

Would it be Tessa again, who came for him?

"Yeah, Bobby. I'd like it if you did. Okay. See you when you get here."

They couldn't intubate through the mouth because of the potential for jaw and throat spasms and injury. And so when he woke up very slowly from anesthesia, he learned the surgeon had performed a tracheotomy and inserted a tube into this neck. He heard the whoosh and click of the ventilation machine, yet another part of the mechanical symphony at his bedside.

They told him he couldn't talk. Not that he shouldn't. That literally, he couldn't.

Dean Winchester, silenced.

So freakin' unfair, when the world benefited so often from his words of wisdom.

Well, it would give Sammy some peace.

Aftereffects of surgical anesthesia combined with his usual cocktail kept him close to the edge of unconsciousness. He was not, however, unconscious. But he couldn't talk, couldn't move, had tubes and wires and hoses invading him from everywhere, and he was absolutely certain he looked comatose.

But he wasn't.

He could open his eyes; he simply didn't. He was too far gone on meds. But he could hear.

He heard when Bobby arrived. He smelled him, too: old books, bacon, booze.

"Hey, Bobby," Sam said.

Dean heard his brother get up from the recliner. Heard the rustle of clothing, the slap of hands against backs as, he assumed, Sam and the older hunter hugged briefly. Heard the hard intake of Sam's breath, a murmur from Bobby that was meant for his brother, and then the heavy sigh from the old hunter.

"Jesus Christ, Dean, you had to be different. Had to be stupid."

Well. Yeah. On both counts.

"Idjit."

That, too.

"What are they sayin', Sam? The docs?"

"Not much. They don't know. They're following, as one doctor put it, 'recommended medical protocols.'"

"And?"

"Well . . . you're looking at how that's going."

"Sit down, kid. You look beat. I'll pull that chair over for me."

He heard his brother move back into the recliner; sounded like he half-collapsed. A body moved, chair legs scraped across the floor. It was placed very close to his bedside. He sensed the man coming close, leaning down.

"Bobby, don't touch him! It can trigger him. For a while it was okay because they've got him pumped so full of serious muscle relaxants, but now they're not sure. He's . . . not following a normal progression."

Bobby grunted. "He's a Winchester, ain't he?"

"They said this is all 'normal' for severe tetanus—but he's worse than they expected him to be by now, after all the treatment."

"What's the next step?"

Sam said, "This. Support. There's not a cure, just treatment."

Bobby moved. Sat down in the chair he'd dragged over. "This is for crap. You hear that, Dean? For crap."

Yeah. It was.

Sam sounded much older than his years. "He'll get better, or he'll get worse." He shifted in the recliner. "I got online, did some checking. It's almost unheard of in the U.S. Three people a month. Forty a year. That's it. Dean's now part of medical literature."

"All because he didn't get a booster."

Sam sounded tired. "And a black dog."

Yeah. Don't forget the damn dog.

"You need rest, kid. Those hollows beneath your eyes are deep as the Grand Canyon."

Sam huffed out a very brief laugh. "You ever been there, Bobby?"

"Once. Long time ago. Pretty damn impressive hole in the ground."

"Dean's always wanted to go. Since he was a kid. I remember him asking Dad. You know how he gets when he's excited, focused . . . 'Can we go? C'mon, Dad. Just a little sidetrip. We're close. We're on the road already. Can we just go?'" Sam sighed. "But we never did."

"Go when this is over," Bobby suggested.

Sam didn't say anything.

"Think about goin,' Sam. Plan for it. Because your brother ain't dead, and he ain't gonna be dead. He's too damn stubborn."

Dean opened his eyes.

Both Sam and Bobby shot to their feet. Sam leaned down, but took care not to reach out, to touch. "Hey."

Bobby's eyes narrowed. "You heard all that, didn't you?"

The tube was in his neck, not his mouth. It took effort, but Dean gifted Bobby with the twitch of a smile.

Too damn stubborn. Got that right.

He couldn't speak. But he could move his mouth. And so he shaped the words as clearly as he could.

'Hey, Bobby.'

Bobby's voice was very gentle. "Hey yourself."