AN: This chapter just wrote itself, hence why so quick with the update. Hope you enjoy.

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Interstate 44, Missouri

It was all a blur. The entire 13 hours Isabel spent speeding up the interstate from Texas to Missouri, went by in a hazy blur of ice cold fear and flat, monotonous scenery. Yet while she was behind the steering wheel, she could feel time slipping through her fingers. She got two speeding tickets, one in Oklahoma, the other just after crossing the border into Missouri. She could have probably talked and flirted her way out of them easily, with the two male officers that stopped her. But her usual audacity and sassiness were gone, replaced instead by insolent impatience.

"I'm sorry" She'd said rudely to the second officer in Missouri, sounding anything but apologetic "Can you just give me the ticket so I can be on my way?"

Missouri apologized for her, excused her, politely explaining to the offended cop there was a family emergency. He nodded his head in understanding, but gave Isabel a ticket anyway, warning her to not speed, please.

She would then do the speed limit for the next ten to twenty minutes, before forgetting all about the highway police and deciding that she would rather risk getting a hundred speeding tickets than arrive at the hospital too late. She recalled Sam's voice. Sam's terrified, grief-stricken voice.

There's been an accident

She'd heard those words before and they had curdled her blood just the same. Nine years ago, a young police officer, no older than she was today, stood at her front door and uttered those exact same words. It had ended with her at Northwestern Memorial Hospital identifying her parents' bodies in the basement morgue. This was déjà vu at its worst, at its most bone-chilling. Nothing can ever, ever prepare you for what comes after those words.

Her composure was tenuous at best, and the only reason she was able to even sit behind the wheel of a speeding vehicle, was the knowledge that as of that morning, Dean was still alive. It was true, that a lot could happen in 13 hours, but she was determined to hang on to that last shred of hope. At least until she got both Missouri and herself safely to their destination.

Sam had been vague with details on the phone. Dean was in some sort of coma, the doctors didn't know if he would wake up soon, but he was stable, at least. Sam was fine, only minor injuries, nothing life threatening. John was fine too, he was sleeping. Then the conversation was cut short as she heard John obviously wake up on the other side of the line and warily ask Sam who he was talking to.

"Don't tell him" She tried to warn Sam. She knew, absolutely knew, John would be pissed Sam had called her. Sam had to know it too.

"Isabel" Sam said quickly, clearly not worried about his dad's reaction.

"Are you crazy?" She heard John's angry voice "Hang up! Now, Sam!"

"I told her about Dean" Sam continued, unperturbed "She's on her way"

"Tell her to stay where she is" John ordered "Tell her to stay put!"

"No!" Sam stood his ground defiantly.

"Dammit, Sam" John shouted "Isabel, do not come here!"

She was suddenly caught off guard. It was strange to be dragged into the conversation when she wasn't event there. She was angry with her uncle. If it had been up to him, she would have never found out Dean was dying. She shivered to think that if both Sam and Dean were in a coma, dying, she would have been sitting in Texas chewing the last remnants of her fingernails, completely unaware. Would he even have called her if they had died?

"Tell him to shove it" She said to Sam, knowing he would not repeat her words to John, but oh-so-wishing he would "I'll be there by tonight"

She hung up and stared at Missouri for a moment before both women, almost as if the response had been synchronized, packed up their things and ran out to the car. They sped off out of the motel car park without a word.

She looked at her watch. It had just passed midnight. Sam hadn't called back at all, and she wanted to assume that it meant no change in Dean's situation. For the better or worse. No news is good news, right? They were still a couple of hours away from Jefferson City. Her eyes were tiring now, but she'd refused Missouri's continuous requests that she let her drive. Isabel would shake her head. No. It wasn't that Missouri was a slow driver, or that Isabel was afraid that she would get them lost or anything like that. She just didn't think she could sit in the passenger seat and twiddle her thumbs. She needed something to do, and in a car, driving was pretty much the only activity available.

"You're speeding" Missouri said at length.

"I don't care"

"You wanna get pulled over again?" Missouri insisted "Why don't you let me drive?"

"No, Missouri"

"Do you want to talk about it?"

God, Missouri loved that question! Isabel let out a short gust of air through her nostrils as she tried to not go off at her friend while doing 80 miles an hour on the interstate.

"Missouri, seriously, just…don't" She warned her, as she swallowed the lump in her throat "I don't want to do this right now"

"No matter what happens, the sooner you deal with…"

"For Heaven's sake! Will you stop? Please!" She shouted at her friend, turning to her briefly with a look of complete exasperation. She turned back to the road and wiped her tears off, trying to focus her cloudy eyes back on the road.

"Honey…"

"There isn't much keeping me together right now. I'm this close, Missouri" She said raising her hand and holding her thumb and index finger millimeters away from each other "this close to losing it"

Missouri let it go, turned sideways to stare out the window and tried to fend off the surge of emotions radiating off of Isabel and praying she could get them to Jefferson City and not wrap them around a tree.

Jefferson City Hospital was smaller than Isabel had expected, yet still felt just like any other hospital. She'd been in so many in her short lifetime, and they all felt and smelled the same. Sadness, despair and a sense of dread no amount of industrial strength disinfectant or concentrated ammonia could ever get rid of.

Missouri was much better able to convey to the woman at the nurses' station in coherent words who they were and who they were looking for. The look the nurse gave them when they mentioned the name Winchester was all Isabel needed to see to know that she'd gotten there too late. She tried not to freak out prematurely, but the nurse wouldn't tell her anymore.

Minutes later a doctor came out to meet them. He was old, around sixty. He had white unruly hair, a thick matching moustache, and a ridiculous bow tie. Isabel thought he looked too kind to be giving her bad news, but she'd seen doctors shake their head sadly like that before as they came out to meet family members waiting for news of their loved ones. Nine years ago, in Chicago, a middle aged blonde trauma surgeon in green scrubs had given her the exact same look as she walked into the ER waiting room to tell Isabel that both her parents had died. 'There was nothing that we could do' That's what she'd said, in a well-practiced sympathetic tone. Did they teach them that in medical school?

Slow motion. Everything was happening in slow motion, as if time itself took some sick pleasure out of drawing out her torture. The doctor slowly told her three men had been in the accident and air-lifted to the hospital that very morning. Was she related?

"Yes" She replied robotically.

There was some confusion regarding identification. Isabel tried to remain calm. How could she possibly tell the doctor that her cousins and uncle were supernatural ghost hunters and sometimes worked under aliases to cover up their credit card and insurance fraud?

"Dean and Sam Winchester are my cousins. John is their father, my uncle" She said finally, hoping he would just take that.

"Yes, I see" he said slowly with another solemn nod of his head. Isabel immediately figured that gesture was about to lead somewhere bad "Miss Bennett, I'm afraid we lost one of them not long ago. I realize…"

"Oh my God" She muttered blankly as all oxygen left her lungs. She felt Missouri's hand come to rest on her shoulder. She raised her own hand to her mouth, unsure if she was covering a gasp, a sob, or a scream "No"

As soon as she saw Sam running towards her, her façade crumbled. His face was puffy and his eyes were red. He'd been crying. Seeing him like that undid her, and when his arms tightened around her, she let herself break down and cried. She held on to him for dear life, telling herself over and over, that he was safe. Trying to enjoy that moment as long as possible before having to face the next. When they finally pulled apart, Isabel looked up at him silently, pleadingly, begging him not to tell her what she knew he was about to say.

"He's gone" Sam gasped out as his lips started to quiver "Dad's gone"

It took her a moment to realize what he'd said. She wondered if she had actually really heard it right, when Dean stepped slowly into the room.

"Isabel?" He asked.

"Dean?" She mouthed out, unsure if he was real or just a wishful fragment of her imagination.

He nodded. He too had been crying, and Isabel finally understood that it had been John who'd died. She rushed towards him at supersonic speed, and embraced him tightly, only slight letting go when she heard him take a sharp breath as she put pressure on his bruised ribs. He was hurt, but she didn't care. Here he was, alive! It was moments like these she believed in God.

"You're OK, you're OK" She repeated over and over. Letting him go to look up at him before resuming her bear hug "Thank God, you're OK!"

She tried to hide from them that the sadness she felt at the loss of her uncle's life, was far outweighed by the relief of having her cousins survive. She heard a little voice inside her mind 'Thank God it was John and not one of them'. She immediately silenced it, surprised with herself that she could think a horrible thought like that at a moment like this.

Dean was obviously not entirely thrilled about his survival over his dad's, or even seeing his cousin. Finally noticing he was just standing there like a statue instead of returning her embrace, Isabel let go and looked up at him curiously.

"Dean?" She asked him.

He glanced between Sam and Isabel "I've got some forms to fill out" He said quietly and turned to walk away.

Isabel reached out and grasped at his hand "Dean?"

Without even turning to her, he shook off her hand and headed back the way he'd come. His steps seemed heavy and his posture rigid. She thought it looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Isabel turned to Sam with a heartbroken and confused expression on her face "Sam, what happened out there?"

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