Hm. I'm not very happy with this chapter, but here it is. Stupid plot, getting in the way of Hurt!Dean. Maybe I'll just start writing chapter after chapter of blood and near-death. But don't worry, Dean will be back in the next chapter, when we find out the outcome of his surgery. Oh well. Please review, and head to my blog for review answers and general blathering. And the boys don't belong to me. If they did, I would never write on this site. I would be far too busy.
Sam's eyes were drooping with fatigue when a squat, round security guard poked his balding head into the waiting room. "Sorry to bother you, bub, but you gotta move your car." Sam nodded and passed a hand over his face, trying to scrub away the weariness. He glanced at his watch. Two hours since Dean had gone into the O.R. Two hours of sitting, thumb up his ass, helpless to do anything but wait. It was the longest two hours of Sam's life.
His legs felt like rubber as he stood so he stomped out the pins and needles, and rotated his shoulders, which had tightened up in protest of Dean's weight. As Sam stepped into the corridor, his eyes were drawn toward the doors marked Restricted, the doors that stood between him and Dean. He chewed the side of his mouth, wanting nothing more than to charge through those doors. But no. No point in acting like a mama bear, no matter how much he wanted to, and there was absolutely nothing that he could do now to help Dean. The best thing to do was to keep a low profile, and wait for the doctors to do their jobs. So he squared his shoulders and loped toward the elevators.
As he stepped out of the building he was a bit startled to see that the sun was setting, casting a fading golden light across the Impala. Sam dropped into the front seat, and he couldn't help but give a little shudder as he caught the scent of blood. He pulled the car out of the roundabout and found a parking space at the back of the lot. After glancing around to ensure he was alone, he popped the trunk and pulled a pair of jeans and a shirt from Dean's duffel. Another quick check for people revealed no one, so Sam quickly stripped off his blood-crusted pants and t-shirt, and slid into the clean clothes. He dug into the front pocket of the bag and pulled out a wad of ID cards.
Who shall I be today?
He flipped through the cards, slipped a pair of licenses into his pocket, and tossed the rest back into the trunk. He looked back toward the hospital, which was enveloped in the last dying glow of daylight, and couldn't help but raise his eyes toward the sky, wishing to be anywhere else. Wishing for a lot of things.
But then his heart constricted as he caught sight of a police cruiser gliding into the parking lot. Fuck. Sam slammed the trunk shut and walked nonchalantly away from the car, not wanting to draw attention. The last thing he needed was the cops sniffing around the Impala. One look in the trunk and it was game over.
Sam waited between two parked cars until the patrol unit pulled under the roundabout, then he slipped into a side door and hurried across to the registration desk, where he caught sight of a shamrock-sprinkled scrub top. "Nurse O'Donoghue," he called, and she turned to him with raised eyebrows. "Do you have my brother's things? His boots and clothes?" She glanced backward, nudged aside another nurse, and retrieved a plastic bag.
"Any word on your brother?" she asked, handing the bag to Sam. He shook his head and she pursed her mouth. "How are you feeling…" She paused, waiting for a name.
"Jason. Jason Fish. And I'm doing okay." He reached forward and laid his hand over hers. "I'm gonna go back up to the waiting room. But I just wanted to thank you for taking care of me, making sure I got my head together." She smiled and nodded, patting his hand.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sam glimpsed a blue-uniformed officer stepping into the E.R. With a final smile and a little wink at the nurse, Sam turned and walked at a fast clip toward the elevators, clutching the bag of Dean's clothes to his chest. He had to make sure that Dean's things didn't contain anything that could cause trouble. Knowing Dean, there was no telling what could be lurking in the pockets of his jeans.
The elevator doors opened onto the second floor and Sam dodged back into the waiting room, which was thankfully still empty. He dropped to his knees on the carpet and began to dig through the bag. His skin crawled as his fingers grasped Dean's clammy, blood-soaked t-shirt, and he clawed past it to go through the pockets of the pants. He came up with a handful of silver bullets and jammed them into his own pocket, but found nothing else. There was no ID card, so the identities Sam had chosen back at the Impala would work out fine.
Sam heard the elevator doors whoosh open, and he crammed the clothes back into the bag and tossed it into the corner. He glanced at his hands and grimaced at the sight of gummy blood staining his skin. He took a frantic look around, then wiped his hands across the back of one of the tattered arm chairs and flung himself into a seat just as a blond, barrel-chested police officer rounded into the room.
The officer looked Sam up and down once, and removed his garrison cap. "Are you Jason Fish?" Sam nodded, hand fisting in his lap. Calm. Be calm. "I'm Officer Deenik. Mind if I sit down and ask you a couple questions?" Deenik didn't wait for permission, settling into one of the chairs, his leather belt and holster creaking in the quiet. "I understand that your brother came in here with a stab wound this afternoon. How is he?"
Sam nodded again, keeping his face neutral, despite the fact that his mind was racing and his palms were sweating. "He's still in surgery."
"I'm sorry to bother you with this now, but can you tell me what happened? Do you know who stabbed him?" Deenik produced a notepad from his breast pocket and poised a pen over it, searching Sam's face with his gray eyes.
"He did it himself." The words popped out before Sam really thought them through, and he felt a pang of panic in his stomach as Deenik's eyebrows quirked upward.
"I beg your pardon?" The disbelief in the officer's voice was palpable. He looked almost amused as he scribbled in his notebook.
"I know it sounds strange, but it's the truth." Sam leaned forward in his chair, seeking Deenik's eyes. "Jack and I lost our dad a while back in a car accident. Dad and Jack were really close, and since the accident Jack hasn't been the same. He took it really hard, and he's been kind of tail spinning, drinking a lot. Always picking fights with the biggest guy around." Sam paused, dropping his eyes. "He called me this morning, left me a message saying goodbye. I found…" He faltered, and this time it wasn't an act. "I found him right after he stabbed himself."
Deenik twitched his mouth, tapping his pen against his notepad. "Has your brother ever tried to kill himself before?"
Sam shocked himself by making a small 'heh' noise, half-laugh, half-verbal-shrug. "I'll just say that I've been worried about him for a long time. He doesn't so much try to kill himself outright. He's just…" He paused, a bitter smile creeping over his face. "He's just not particularly careful."
The officer scratched out a few more things on his pad, then slipped it back into his pocket. "Mr. Fish, I'm very sorry about your brother. Unfortunately we're a pretty small town up here, so there's no detective available until Monday. But he'll be in contact. Nothing personal, you understand; it's just procedure." Deenik stood, tugging at his uniform shirt, and turned to leave.
"The last thing I said to him before he did it…" As Sam spoke, Deenik turned back to look back at him. "I called him a whore. Called him a jerk. Then I walked out the door, and he left." A long pause. "And now here he is." Tears burned in Sam's eyes.
Deenik gave a small smile of understanding. "I've been around a lot of years, Mr. Fish. And I can tell you for sure; your brother didn't do this because of what you said. He did it because of something inside him. You can't take the blame for his mistakes."
You have no idea.
Deenik reached back into his pocket and pulled out a business card, and then leaned forward to hand it to Sam. "We'll be in touch. You call me if you think of anything else you want to tell me."
Sam nodded, staring down at the card, at the police shield etched in gold foil in the heavy paper. Deenik's boot-steps faded down the hall, and Sam finally looked up, eyes focused far off.
You can't take the blame for his mistakes.
Dean had spent most of his life taking the blame for Sam's mistakes. Taking the consequences, everything from John's spankings to Demon Deals. And now look. Now look at what had come of it. Dean under a surgeon's knife, his belly full of blood. And Sam alone in a shabby hospital waiting room, not bothering to wipe away the tears that were dripping from his chin.
There was plenty of blame to go around.