Here's the next chapter. I hope you enjoy it. It's kind of short, but... Thank you for all the reviews you've given me. I'm glad to see so many people like my writing.

The two elder Winchester men were waiting outside in the lobby area that had become so familiar to them. They had basically been in these chairs in some kind of morbid holding pattern for three days now. Dr Lambert and the nurses on this floor had told them both several times to leave. The doctor had appealed to John's sense of paternal protection, telling him that Dean needed to go "home" to get some rest. John had been willing to layer salt around Sammy's bed and take his older son somewhere to rest, but Dean had fought both him and the doctor. He knew he needed the rest, but knew that Sammy needed his big brother close and that was top priority, so he stayed. They had convinced the doctor and nurses to let them in there a few times to see the youngest of their tiny family, all the while wearing full-protective gear.

Dean shook his head again to clear the fatigued feeling out of it, and looked at his watch again. It was just past three in the afternoon, and he'd been up for over twenty-four hours now. He had laid down, but his eyes had never closed.

Emily was going to be coming into work pretty soon, and he would get a chance to see his brother once his dad had gone to sleep. She was being lenient with him, after seeing him that day when he and Sammy had been playing a game. His dad was still awake though, and he silently wished him to sleep. She wouldn't even risk both of them going in to see Sam, and if his dad wasn't asleep, she wouldn't even allow him in.

The few times that he had been in to see him, Sammy had seemed exhausted and disoriented, and it looked like he was getting weaker, not better. The doctor had told them that it would take at least two weeks for the transplant to have any effect, but there should have been some difference by now. They had him on oxygen, not a ventilator at this point, but a hose that ran underneath his nose. He looked like skin and bone and while the hair had stopped falling out, it was still thin. It was hard to tell if he even knew they were there at times.

Sammy had to feel like they were abandoning him. He was all alone in that room, and they weren't there. On some level, they had told him why and he would know why, but... what if he didn't fully comprehend? He seemed to be in some kind of a haze, and Dean felt like they were losing him.

Looking at the TV screen across the room, Sam spaced out on the images of Dr Phil and his guests. He wasn't really watching, but for some reason it reminded him of Dean. Oh yeah, Oprah. Dean had probably said it as a joke, but it stuck with him. In these moments when he had to be without his big brother, he clung to this like a beacon of comfort. His dad had washed the quilt one day while he had been out. He had that, but it just wasn't enough. It didn't matter right now how at risk he was of getting an infection, they could even come and sit in the surgical uniforms that they'd been forced to wear, but he missed his brother and dad. He wanted them here, not in the lobby where he knew they had camped out. Even now, he could hear his father snoring faintly in the distance. He chuckled a little. Dean needed to go get one of those Breathe Easy things to put over his nose and keep him from waking the dead. That was all they needed right now. He shuddered at the thought of how many people had died just on this floor alone. It would be a lot of salting and torching and then there was the whole confidentiality thing. He had a good chuckle to himself.

He needed to see his brother before he became one of them, though. Searching for the cord that would allow him to call the nurse, he began to panic. Something wasn't right. He pressed the button, and waited for the nurse to come. Nurse Emily, the one that was good to Dean, came through the door only couple minutes later. Dean followed closely behind her, a worried look on his face. Seeing his brother, the feeling of unease left him.

"What's wrong?" Dean asked, as soon as he neared Sam's bed, holding the mask over his face. He looked so funny in that outfit.

"I was going to ask them to let you see me." He whispered. If Emily or one of the other nurses had spoken through the speaker, he had no idea how she would have heard him.

"Well, I'm here. I can't stay too long, but I'm here." Dean told him. He looked away from his brother. Sam frowned; he couldn't stand to look at him. Maybe Dean regretted giving a part of himself to him.

Dean looked away out of guilt and out of a need to not see his brother like this. He was supposed to be better, not look like an extra from some B grade zombie movie. This wasn't right. He felt a hand grab his own, and he looked back down.

"I'm sorry." Sammy said to him, and his heart broke.

"Don't say that. You have no reason to be sorry." He told him, shrugging him off in his best tough guy voice. Together they sat, ignoring everything else, but the quiet moment between each other.

"Why did you climb in bed with me?" Sam asked him.

"What? I never..."

"Yeah, you did. I felt you there with me when we first did the transplant." Sam said, trying his best to convince his brother, and looking like he was stressing himself out.

Dean soothed his brother by gently rubbing his forehead. "You remember that, huh? Yeah, I was trying to make sure you were still here. I wanted to be there for you. Plus, you know how I do alone."

Sammy smiled. "I knew that."

"Then why'd you make me say it? You know I hate chick flick moments."

Sammy smirked and looked up at him. "Just wanted to see if you'd say it." He knew Dean was resisting the urge to smack him.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter. Review with any kind of review that you would like.

That episode was good tonight. Lots of emotion.

Conner: It started out as a "turnabout" of "Faith", but I decided to change it a bit. Do you think that I should change the summary? I'm glad you liked the Missouri part.

Kaewi: It's an established idea that Mary died for Sam within the show. She died over his crib and the reason she went into the room was to protect him. Had she not been there, he would have died. It had nothing to do with the present situation. Also, when I said she couldn't stop him from dying, I was taking from another "fact" that the dead cannot interfere with the living, even as far as to stop them from dying.