Author's note: just a quick disclaimer: I'm no medical professional, please forgive any lapses in medical fact this chapter may have but Harvey was just too much fun to write. As Sam would say, Welcome to the Geriatric Convention. Enjoy...


Chapter 12 - Crazy Train

The blackness was indescribable and Sam froze instantly in it feeling Doris run into the back of him before wrapping her arms around his middle. The speed with which the darkness had descended was so disorienting that he had to put his hands out in front of him to stop from falling over. The vision of Dean, black ectoplasm running from his mouth then dropping bodily to the floor had Sam's heart in his throat but he couldn't see a damn thing in the dark. He needed to get to his brother and fast, the spirit had ripped open the stitches of his incision and he'd been bleeding heavily but it was so hard to think in the unrelenting black.

"Doris, are you alright?" He could feel her shaking behind him.

"I think so," She answered, her quavering voice belying her true state.

"Doris, listen to me, I need you to do something," He felt her grip lessen. "Do you remember where the stairs are?"

She hesitated for a moment but he could feel her nod at his back.

"I think I could find them. Do you want me to go upstairs and find us some light?"

"Yeah, I need to be able to see, he was bleeding pretty badly."

"I think there's a generator around here somewhere, the construction workers were using it the last time I was here."

"Doris, you're brilliant. Can you go find it for me?" He needed her head to be in this, he couldn't get them out of this mess without her.

Her fierce reply was the only convincing he needed.

"Absolutely, Sam." Then as an afterthought, "Please be careful."

She tightened her arms around him for a fraction of a second then released him and he listened as her footsteps retreated back the way they'd come. Noise was amplified in the space around him, his ears making up for what his eyes couldn't do as he tried to focus his hearing over the frantic beating of his heart. A few yards away he could make out Dean's ragged breathing and he walked in the general direction of the noise. The vision the ghost had conjured was still fresh in his mind and he expected his hand to hit the solid wood of the tables he'd seen but there was nothing but empty space around him now, the magic broken in the blackness. It was unnerving and he tried to keep his feet going forward in a straight line toward his brother.

It was slow going, tortuously so, but his boot finally bumped against something soft on the ground and Sam fell to his knees on the floor beside Dean, hands shooting out to find the hole in his brother's chest to staunch the flow of blood with his palm. His brother's blood was hot, spilling over his fingers as he desperately tried to apply pressure to the wound. He ran scenarios out in his head, trying to decide how best to get Dean out of the basement and back to the hospital, using them to try and keep the threatening panic and fear at bay. The darkness around him had his nerves frayed and he couldn't even imagine how Dean had managed to keep his wits about him and almost get away when he had been attacked. It was a testament to his brother's strength and Sam grabbed onto it and held on tight, willing his own raw nerves to follow suit. He was no coward, but the darkness was a living thing that surrounded him from all sides and he had no defense against it. He closed the eyes that couldn't see and focused everything in him on the body beneath this hands.

"Come on Dean, don't you do this to me."

"Sammy..." It was a barely there whisper but it had Sam almost laughing with relief as Dean started to stir under his palm.

"It's okay Dean, stay still. I'm here."

"Sammy, she gone?" His brother's voice cracked and Sam didn't think he'd ever heard Dean sound so weak. Panic rose up and tried to choke him.

"Yeah, Dean, she's gone. You got this!" Dean was starting to move more beneath his hands and Sam cursed the complete blackness around him. He needed to be able to see what they were dealing with, blood was still welling up between his fingers but he didn't dare move his hand to prod at the wound. Dean wouldn't be able to take the pain and Sam didn't think he could take hearing his brother scream like he had last night when the spasms had hit, but he needed to get the bleeding under control somehow. Swallowing down the panic that threatened again, he pushed down harder on the weeping incision and Dean cried out.

"I know Dean, I'm sorry but I have to. You've lost a lot of blood. Stay with me ok? Everything's going to be fine." Dean's labored breathing reached his hears and he prayed for Doris to hurry.

"God Sam!" Dean cried out when Sam shifted on his knees. The cold stone was unrelenting on his thinly panted shins and his legs were beginning to go numb below the knee.

"I know, just hold on a little while longer. It's going to be okay... you're okay."

"Sammy, she was so angry."

"I know Dean but she's gone, it's over."

"What happened?" The last thing Sam wanted to do was explain to his brother what had just happened to him, but it was keeping Dean alert so Sam started talking, trying to control the panic in his voice that was coloring his speech high and fast.

"I think she was in you this whole time, Dean. The nightmares were what tipped me off first. You were talking in your sleep and it just felt different, like it wasn't you. Then there was that moment after we got you home where you started coughing and then just sort of disappeared inside yourself and I chalked it up to the pain, but I think it was her trying to take control. I think she was possessing you ever since the day you came down here with the sheriff and then took you over that night when you fell asleep to bring you back here. I think that's when she takes over, when your sleeping. It would explain why her other victims disappeared from their beds. We had the warding up, but I think she was old enough and strong enough to fight against it and stay in you. The salt lines didn't matter either because she had already possessed you before we brought you home and got them down. She took your body over and brought you back here... there was something she wanted from under the floor."

"She hurt you, Sammy?" Dean's question stopped him mid ramble and Sam couldn't stop the nervous laugh it pulled from him. Typical Dean, worrying about him while he was the one lying on the floor bleeding to death.

"No, Dean. I'm fine. I promise."

"God, everything hurts, Sammy." He could hear the emotion behind Dean's words, tears clogging his throat.

"I know Dean. Just hold on we'll get you to a hospital."

"No! No, Sam. No hospitals." Dean begged.

"Dean, you're bleeding, and badly. There's no discussing this!"

"No Sam, you don't understand. She's not done. This isn't finished... she won't rest until it's found."

"What Dean? Till what's found? What are you talking about?" But his brother didn't answer and Sam's heart was back in his throat.

"Dean! Fuck, don't do this to me. Stay awake," Sam pressed down on Dean's wound a little bit harder and his brother groaned weakly.

"Sam, please," he begged on the whisper of a breath.

"I know you're hurting and I know all you want to do is pass out right now, but you've got to stay with me Dean, okay?" He was losing him. Where the hell was Doris? Dean began to tremble beneath Sam's hands and he bellowed into the dark.

"DORIS!" Somewhere in the darkness he heard a generator whine to life and the lights came on around them.

The glare was unbearable at first and Sam took his hands away from Dean's chest to shield his eyes from the light. Realizing what he had done, he quickly replaced them and willed the pain lancing through his head to ease as his eyes adjusted to the light. Dean was shaking and his skin had gone an ashy gray color and was cool and clammy to the touch. Sam heard Doris thunder down the steps and come to a stop behind him with a gasp on her lips.

"Sweet Jesus!" She exclaimed when she saw Dean. "How is he?"

"He's lost a lot of blood, we need to get him to a hospital." Dean's eyes had been clenched shut in pain but they flew open at Sam's mention of the hospital again and his hand came up to weakly ball the fabric of Sam's shirt in his fist.

"No, Sam. Please." his brother begged again, agitation creasing his brow and filling his eyes. "She'll never rest till I find it. It'll never be safe, please!" It was hard to tell if Dean was just delirious from the blood loss or telling the truth and Sam tried to sooth him as best he could.

"Shhh, Dean. I can protect you." He said quiet and low. "You're going to be fine but you need the hospital right now. I can't patch this up."

"Sammy, you don't understand. It's like she left her memories behind. If we don't make this right, she's going to start killing them all." Sam feared Dean was going into shock. He wasn't making sense.

"Who, Dean? Who will she kill?"

"I don't know!" Dean cried out, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. "She's so mad and so alone. There's too much, Sammy..." Dean was starting to lose control. They needed to move quick.

"We'll protect them all Dean, but first..."

"We can take him to Harvey!" Doris said suddenly and Sam craned his neck around to look back at her.

"Who?"

"My friend Harvey, he used to be a doctor. He still patches kids up once in a while for families who can't afford their insurance. He does it out of his house, though no one would admit to it.

"You mean Harvey from your diner?" Dean asked from the floor.

"Yep."

"Doris, he's ancient!" It was weak but Dean still managed to sound shocked.

"But he can help. I don't see any other option if you refuse to go to the hospital." She said flatly.

Sam looked back to Dean and then to the blood still pumping out from beneath his fingers and tried to decide what to do. It was going to take more than his rudimentary medical skills to take care of Dean but his brother was insistent that they wouldn't be safe at the hospital and Sam's gut was telling him to listen to what Dean was saying even though he was losing more blood by the minute. If he really did have access to some of the spirits memories, then maybe Sam needed to heed the delirious warning and take Dean to this Harvey character.

"How far away is this guy?" Sam asked, still weighing the options

"Five minutes tops. His farmhouse is just outside of town."

"We need to get some pain meds into him..." Sam said tentatively, still trying to decide.

"Two steps ahead of you, buckaroo," Doris answered, coming around to the other side of Dean with the pill bottle in her hand and Sam looked up at her astonished.

"What? When you raced out of the apartment after Dean, I grabbed a few things. There's a change of clothes for each of you in my pickup and his coat and boots, too.

"Doris..." he was speechless, hot tears sprang to the corners of his eyes in his relief and Sam could have kissed her in that moment.

"Someone's gotta think logically in this mess," She said with a wink and Sam tried to pull himself back together.

"Ok," He said firmly, decision made, "you're going to have to help me move him. Are you up for it?"

"Absolutely." she replied kneeling down beside Dean and waiting for instructions. Sam shook three pills out of the bottle onto his palm and focused his attention back on his brother.

"Dean, can you manage these?" His brother cracked an eye open again and nodded slightly. They were rough going down but Dean somehow managed to dry swallow them and then give a weak smile.

"This is going to hurt, isn't it?" Dean half whispered half croaked and Sam caught Doris' eyes. It was going to be awful, actually and each one of them braced themselves against what they were going to have to do next. There wasn't time to sit around and let the pills take effect, Dean was losing blood and desperately needed medical attention. Sam could only hope that the pills would kick in quick enough to give him some respite from what he was about to go through.

Sam took a few minutes to rip some of the lining from his coat apart to make a makeshift pressure bandage for Dean. The fabric wasn't right for it and it was rudimentary at best, but it helped staunch the flow a bit and that was enough for Sam. Dean was sweating by the time it was over but had managed not to cry out as Sam worked.

He asked Doris to retrieved the bag the spirit had pulled up from the floor and she threw the strap of the ancient leather satchel over her shoulder. Sam knew he would need to come back and investigate further but they needed to get Dean taken care of first.

"Are you sure this Harvey guy will be able to help?" Sam asked one last time when the pallor of Dean's skin sent his heart racing and his mind revolting over their stupid plan.

"He's our best bet, Sam." Doris said, nodding at Dean with her head. There was no more time to waste.

They started with sitting him up and Dean groaned and panted around the pain, burying his face in the crook of Sam's neck trying not to cry out. The pain from the incision combined with his broken bones had to have been agony and Sam's own chest spasmed in sympathy for his brother. He could feel Dean's tears hit his neck as the slowly got him to his feet.

"Don't fight it Dean. Scream if you need to, no one here cares," He felt two puffs of air against his skin as Dean let out a few short laughs at his words.

Doris was stronger than she looked and they had Dean on his feet faster than Sam had expected. He threw Dean's good arm over his shoulders for more leverage in keeping him upright and tried not to wince when an agonizing wail broke from Dean's throat. The hold wasn't ideal, it was going to cause Dean more pain than he could probably afford at the moment, but there was no way Sam was going to get Dean out of that basement if they didn't do it this way.

He started walking them slowly toward the basement stairs one agonizing step at a time. Dean tried to help as best he could, but his knees kept buckling beneath him, his weight constantly trying to pull them back to the floor. Doris was on the other side of Dean trying to keep him steady. When they got to the bottom of the stairs Dean stopped their progress.

"Doris, you gotta go back for the bag." He said shakily, rolling his head to one side to look at her, barely able to hold up his own head anymore.

"Don't worry, honey, I've got it." She said softly, holding up the bag for Dean to see. Seemingly satisfied Dean let Sam pull him forward again.

The stairs were tricky and by the time they got Dean up to the top, he was passed out from either the pain or the blood loss, Sam couldn't tell which, and they manhandled his unconscious form into Doris' pickup. She climbed in beside Dean, supporting his head with her shoulder and Sam slammed the door shut behind her then drove like a bat out of hell towards Harvey's. Doris threw Dean's coat over top of him and while Sam cranked the heat and hit the gas she yelled directions at him every so often to turn left or right while she pulled out her cell phone to call her friend. It was early in the morning, the Impala's clock said 4:45a, but it appeared Doris had managed to reach Harvey because she started talking frantically to whoever was on the other end of the line.

"Mable, it's Doris. I need... No Mable, I just need to talk to Harvey. Is he... No honey, I did not tell everyone in town you were an old bat. Who... We'll his hearings not the best anymore anyway is it? No. I'm fine, it's for a friend... Mable... Mable, please just give the phone to Harvey... HARVEY? IT'S DORIS! DORIS! I HAVE A FRIEND WHO'S IN TROUBLE. I NEED TO BRING HIM BY YOUR HOUSE, HE NEEDS HELP! NO! TO. YOUR. HOUSE. IT'S AN EMERGENCY HARVEY, I NEED DOCTOR BOGS! BLOOD LOSS. WHAT? NO, HE'S LOST SOME BLOOD, NO TIME FOR THE HOSPITAL... Sam, what's Dean's blood type?

"O negative."

"O NEGATIVE, HARVEY... YES! OK... FIVE MINUTES TOPS. I SAID: FIVE. MINUTES. TOPS!. OK. I SAID OK, HARVEY FOR GOODNESS SAKES! BYE!" Sam was amazed Dean hadn't woken up with that exchange and Sam flicked his eyes over at Doris who was ending the call and shaking her head. This idea was starting to sound worse and worse. The last thing Dean needed was a Geriatric Convention while he was bleeding to death.

"I know what you're thinking, Sam" Doris said knowingly, seeming to read his thoughts, "But he was a fantastic doctor in his day, the best surgeon I ever knew and he'll help. This is still a good idea."

Sam focused his eyes back on the road and pressed the accelerator down to the floor.

Harvey and Mable lived in a little farmhouse on the outskirts of town and Harvey's "outpatient clinic" ended up being a pretty nice set up in an old dilapidated barn that had half fallen in on itself. Harvey met them at the head of the driveway and Sam noticed Mable standing at the front door of the farm house in her housecoat and slippers watching them but not having time to spare on wondering why she didn't come out to meet them with Harvey, Sam rounded the pickup and opened the door to help Doris step down onto the gravel. When he reached back in for Dean, his brother had woken back up.

"Sammy?" He called out, confused and disoriented

"Right here Dean, Harvey's going to help you."

Harvey was dressed in jeans and button down that was slightly askew. Whether due to old hands or his haste to dress before they arrived, he'd missed a few buttons and put others where they didn't go and the whole mess made him looked disheveled and confused. But whatever his outward appearance might be, he looked Sam over with aged but intelligent eyes as he struggled to get Dean down from the pickup's high seat. Neither older adult was strong enough to help him, but Doris was at the ready when Dean slid out, his blood sending him slipping across the leather of the bench seat and Sam caught him beneath the armpits and Dean cried out in pain. The pills had had a while to kick in, but they weren't doing enough. They never did.

Sam walked Dean over to an old dining room table acting as an exam table in the middle of the barn and tried to fight back the rising uncertainty the place brought out of him. Harvey had the barn done up pretty well and it looked relatively clean but if the authorities had been through here, Sam was pretty sure Harvey would have done some serious jail time. But Dean was still bleeding and this was still their best and only option. Sam helped his barely conscious brother up onto the table and Dean passed out almost instantly.

Sam watched Harvey move in right away to assess his brother, the old man's yellowed eyes flickering almost immediately to the tattoo near Dean's heart. He looked up at Sam with the stethoscope poised over his brother's chest.

"You boys are hunters?" Harvey asked in a cracked voice that sounded as old as he looked.

"Excuse me!?" Sam asked dumfounded. What was with the universe lately.

Harvey nonchalantly reached his arm over Dean to take Sam's hand and place it firmly over a pile of gauze he had placed over the ragged and bleeding edges of Dean's incision. Sam applied pressure without thinking and his brother didn't stir.

"You're friend's mark, it's an anti-possessing tattoo." Harvey said calmly, getting an IV near the table ready with shaking hands like what he'd just said didn't mean anything and Sam didn't know quite what to do.

"You know about hunters Harvey?" It was Doris who asked.

"Ran into one years ago at the hospital. What'd you guys give him for pain?"

"He's got a prescription for Tylenol 3." Sam managed, finally finding his voice. "We gave him three about 15 minutes ago."

"Harvey, if you know about hunters, why didn't you say something about what's been going on in town?" Doris asked, staring at her friend with wide eyes.

"Really Doris?" Harvey tried to laugh but it came out as more of wheeze as he bent close to Dean's hand and tried to start the IV. "Who's going to listen to a 88 year old man going on about supernatural hullabaloo? Besides, I called my friend and let him know what's going on but never heard back."

Sam was still speechless but the shock was starting to wear off and he watched Harvey struggle with his quaking hands to get the needle into Dean's veins and he knew what he needed to do.

"Doris, will you take over here for me?" Sam asked quietly and she came over to replace her hands with his. He circled the table and came up beside Harvey.

"May I?" He asked, gesturing toward the needle in Harvey's hand.

"Know your way around an IV, son?" Harvey's eyes were old but expressive and Sam's anxiety at the whole situation eased minutely.

"Done this enough times to be an expert at it, Sir." He said, trying to put respect behind the words. This man was sticking his neck out for them and though he was older than dirt (as Dean would say), Sam could tell he cared.

"Hands just aren't what they used to be." Harvey replied, looking down at his age lined hands. "Did you know I performed surgery on Mayor Giuliani when I was still practicing and he was in office? God that was back in '94 just before I retired." Sam gave an interested nod then positioned the needle against the side of Dean's hand, sliding it home into one of his brother's veins.

"There, all done," Harvey took back over and adjusted the drip then put his attention back to Dean's still bleeding incision.

"He's O neg. you said?" He asked Sam.

"Yeah, do you have any blood here?"

"No, can you give?"

"Yeah, we've done it before."

"Alright. Let's see what we've got." Doris stepped away and Harvey pulled the completely soaked gauze back from Dean's chest with gloved hands. The skin was torn and angry red and blood welled up and out with every pump of Dean's heart and Sam fought back the urge to be sick. The bruises on Dean's chest were a mass of colors, all sickly purples and greens and yellows and it was the first time Sam and really gotten a good look at his brother in unmuted, unforgiving light. He was a mess and the spirit had made it worse.

"He just had surgery." Sam said suddenly, thinking it best to give Harvey a history "They went in to get bone fragments from broken ribs." Harvey looked up and over at him with that.

"Why isn't this boy in a hospital?!" He asked, shock filling his old eyes and he looked back and forth between Sam and Doris.

"We couldn't risk it," Sam admitted, hanging his head. "The thing that attacked him... it's still out there."

He could feel the heat of Harvey's gaze on him and the colossalness of the past few days weighed him down, threatening to buckle his knees. Sam had no defense against it and he half expected to hear the old man say he was calling the cops and he waited for the rebuke he could feel forming in the air around him.

"Son," Harvey said, pulling Sam's eyes back up from the ground to take the inevitable beating, "there's sutures in that drawer over there. Will you bring me what you can find?"

Sam stared at Harvey for a moment, surprised by his words but rather than risk him changing his mind at the last second, Sam obeyed quickly and brought everything along with him he thought might be needed. Harvey put a set of half moon glasses on the tip of his nose and started assessing Dean's damage. He slipped into some kind of surgical mode then and although Sam had almost objected when he began to close up Dean's incision, he watched Harvey work with steady and quick hands, the surgeon that used to be emerging before their very eyes. A half an hour later the incision had been reclosed and a pristine new white bandage covered it.

"He tore the muscle pretty good but I did some subcutaneous sutures and shored up a few blood vessels. It looked worse than it was." Harvey said, slipping his blood covered gloves off and throwing them in a bin beside the table. He checked Dean's vitals with an ancient stethoscope and blood pressure cuff one more time then, seemingly satisfied with his work, crossed his arms over his chest and let out a low whistle.

"Shit," He said seriously, "that was intense!" Doris laughed and Sam couldn't help but join in.

"Do you think he needs blood?" He asked after the moment passed.

"I don't have the equipment here to really monitor this type of injury, Son, but I think giving him a boost would be better not doing anything."

Sam agreed and they set him up to fill a blood bag with as much as he could spare. They got Dean hooked up properly, Harvey adding a bag of antibiotics into the mix, and then all there was left to do was wait. Dean remained unconscious on the table while the three other adults stood around unsure of what to do with themselves or with each other now that the drama had passed. Harvey eventually procured a couple of ancient folding chairs from one of the stalls and they sat in a circle talking aimlessly while they let the medicines and the blood do their work on Dean until the sun started to fill the barn with light. Every so often Harvey would get up slowly from his chair and walk on rheumy joints to check on Dean's vitals and his brother thankfully remained stable. Sam, on the other hand, sat in nervous anticipation waiting for the other shoe to drop. Their normal Winchester luck mandated that every possible thing go wrong on a hunt and while not everything was going according to plan night now, they still had managed to walk away from some pretty serious shit. Dean was doing alright after his second encounter with the spirit and Sam was just waiting for something to go wrong. It was hard to sit back and try to chat with his new found allies when all his brain could do was throw scenarios at him of how Dean didn't survive this.

While in the grand scheme of things this hunt had no bearing on if the world kept spinning on again tomorrow, Sam's thoughts still kept going back to the conversations he'd had with Dean, both the one in the parking lot and then again in the bunker's kitchen. There were still some massive issues that they had to work through, but the part about not being brother's, about working the hunts and taking their relationship out of the equation... well that was all just bullshit. If Dean were faced with death at this very moment, Sam knew he would move heaven and earth to save his brother, just like Dean would do for him. No, he loved Dean and they were brother's till the end.

"Sam, honey, are you alright?" Doris asked as Harvey got up to check once again on Dean.

"I'm fine," he lied, trying not to let the emotions he was feeling in that moment telegraph across his face. "Just tired."

"Yeah, that was one heck of a wakeup call we got this morning, wasn't it," She said half with a shudder and half with a sad smile.

"I'll say," Sam nodded, smiling back at her. "I can think of only a handful of hunts we've been on where a ghost actually possessed someone. It's pretty rare and I'm just glad it didn't kill him."

"I don't think I'll likely get that image of his white eyes out of my head any time soon," Doris confessed.

"Imagine fighting against the things in your nightmares every single day and then imagine trying to lead some semblance of a normal life around that. That would pretty much sum up our lives over the past 20 years." Doris' head snapped up to study him for a moment but she didn't say anything and Harvey came back to their circle.

"He's stable and responding well. I think he's gonna be fine. No signs of anything internal going on."

"Thanks for doing this for us, Harvey." Doris said, giving her friend a warm smile. "It means a lot."

"As long as you don't tell Robert about anything you saw, consider us square."

"You got it sport." Doris laughed.

"Harvey, you said you met a hunter back at the hospital. What was his name?" Sam asked after Harvey managed to sit his old bones back down into his chair.

"Name was Rufus. I called him up when stuff started going down in town, but he never responded."

"Rufus Turner?" Sam asked.

"That's the one."

"Yeah, he died a few years back now," Sam said thinking back on the crotchety old hunter who would sooner feed you to a wood chipper then be your friend.

"Well that's too bad. He helped my Mable out of a pickle, too... you boys looking into the murders then?"

"Yes, Sir. We are."

"Shame about Abraham, Doris. I'm sorry it happened." Harvey said, giving his friend's knee a pat. Sam had almost forgotten that Doris had lost someone and he felt bad they hadn't done more to help her.

"I'm still reeling from it, Harv. Kinda been following these boys around hoping to help them take down whatever's doing this to Oriskany."

"You guys have any leads?" Harvey asked Sam.

"No we..." Sam was interrupted by the barn door slamming open, a shaft of light appearing at his feet. Mable, Harvey's... something or other, it had never really been said... rushed in.

"There's been two more deaths!" She shouted, looking pale and flushed all at once. "Two more children taken up to Jesus."

"Maybe this was the other shoe?" Sam thought to himself.


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