Same old, same old: I don't own Dean or Sam

Sooo, I'm the first to admit this chapter isn't my best work, but I really want to fast forward to Sam getting out of the hospital, and I can only do that by tying up a few loose ends. Hope this isn't too bad.

"Sam, you need to try a little harder. Push for me. Push! I want to feel your heel against my palm." Harry had spent much of the last hour prodding Sam to participate in his therapy. After working on the standard Range of Motion exercises, ROM's for short, Harry had moved on to some harder exercises. For the past 10 minutes he'd been encouraging Sam to fight the inevitability that Harry was stronger than his legs were, demanding he try to move his still very paralyzed legs.

It had been six days. Six very long, trying days of therapy, both physical and emotional, and Sam was drained. The suicidal thoughts he'd had before had disappeared when he realized what his death would do to Dean, but he still had a long way to go to acceptance.

"What's the point of this, Harry?" Sam moped. "You and I both know I can't push back, so why fight it? Gimme a break, man."

"I'll give you a break when you give me one," Harry retorted stubbornly. "Make me believe you're really trying and we'll call it a day."

"That's all I have to do, huh?" Sam scoffed. "Pretend like I care and you'll leave me be?"

"I don't want you to pretend to care. I want you to care."

"Sorry man, just don't have it in me today. Come back in a week; maybe I'll be the happy crip you all want to see then."

Dean shot out of the chair where he'd been listening to the whole session and crossed the room, prepared to smack his brother if the need arose. "Sam, you are not a cripple! I'm so sick of you referring to yourself by that term. Are you hurt? Yeah. Is it going to take time to recover? Of course. But you are going to recover. There's just no other way about this. I won't let there be."

"I'm so happy for you," Sam sneered. "But you're not the one laying in this bed. You're not the one who can't move his legs. It's not you who has to deal with all the pitying stares and sympathy that I get from every single person who crosses my path."

"Quit being so unreasonable!" Dean exploded, pacing back and forth across the room.

"I'm not being unreasonable!" Sam screamed back. "I'm being realistic. Someone has to be."

"Whoa!" Harry's voice boomed over top of the shrill ranting's of Dean and Sam. "You boys need to stop this right now. You're acting like children! This isn't healthy." Dean and Sam both froze in place. If they hadn't actually seen Harry speak those words they would have been trembling. It was as if their father had intruded on the sterile hospital room. In an instant Dean and Sam reverted back to childhood ways, quickly apologizing to Harry as though he were, indeed, their father. And for once, Sam tried. He agreed, albeit reluctantly, to give everything he had to his physical therapy.

Satisfied that he'd won the battle, at least for now, Harry returned to the therapy as Dr. Reynolds peeked his head in the door. "Dean, can I have a word with you out in the hall?" he asked, hesitantly. Dean had been more than clear that he wasn't fond of the doctor, so Dr. Reynolds was far from eager to have this conversation.

"What's going on?" Dean demanded as he sauntered out the door behind the doctor.

Dr. Reynolds hesitated, stalling as he picked the best words. "Dean, It's come to our attention that the insurance information you submitted for yourself and Sam when you first came in has expired."

Dean tried his best to put on a shocked face. He had been waiting for this to come up. The insurance wasn't even theirs to begin with. They'd picked the card off of some moron back in Mississippi a couple months ago. Thank God the idiot just cancelled it rather than reporting his card missing. They'd never stayed long enough for the insurance bills to catch up with them."What are you saying, Doc? I've paid every installment of that insurance!" Dean could lie convincingly, and one look at the doctor's sympathetic face told him the doc was buying it. Idiot.

"The insurance end is yours to deal with, Dean. This hospital will work with you to get all the bills paid on a schedule you can work with. What I'm more concerned with is Sam's rehabilitation process. Most of the rehab hospitals around here are privately funded institutions. They only deal with insurance and up front payments."

"So we'll just have to find one that will let me pay a little every week," Dean answered with conviction, still failing to see the problem.

"There's...only one hospital near here that he can go to," Dr. Reynolds admitted. Adding a little too quickly, "But it's a great hospital. They're very attentive to their patients. And it's a state funded hospital, so you can be approved for grants. You shouldn't have to pay a thing if you can't afford it."

Dean eyed the doctor suspiciously. "It's good, huh?" he questioned, cautiously taking the pamphlet that was held out to him. Good and free don't usually fall in the same sentence. He's not telling me something. Dean looked down at the front of the pamphlet. "Stateside Convalescent Home," it read. Politely thanking the doctor Dean turned and headed down the hall to call Laura to see if she could come sit with Sam. There was recon to be done.

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They had no insurance. No way of paying for the state of the art rehab hospital even if the waiting list wasn't weeks long. The only thing available to them was the state run convalescent home. According to the doctor, Sam would get the care he needed, and the state would pick up the tab. Harry hadn't seemed too sure, but he'd stonewalled when Dean asked why. 'Just go check it out for yourself,' Harry had insisted. Make your own decisions.

Arriving at the convalescent home Dean looked down again at the brochure clutched tightly in his hand and rechecked the address. The image on the front looked nothing like the dilapidated building looming in front of him. But the address was the same. This was it. Sam would be released from the hospital in less than a weeks time, and this was the place they planned to send him. Dean walked pointedly through the automatic door, but soon cringed at the sight before him. The large lobby, outfitted with ripped couches and stained tables, was filled with nothing but zombies. The glazed eyes of the geriatric patients haunted Dean as his eyes scanned the room, searching for anyone even remotely close to Sam's age. What the hell is this place? Dean jumped as he felt his arm being clutched tightly. He looked down at the drooling old lady who pitifully whimpered at him. "Where's my Stan?" she repeated over and over again. "Have you seen my Stan?"

He recognized the emptiness in her eyes. It was the same one all the patients here had. It was the same one that Sam had possessed the first couple of days after the accident. But Sam was getting better. He was even laughing a little. These people were...well, they were decaying. There was nothing left of them, nothing but empty shells. I'll be damned if I let that happen to Sam. There's no way in hell that I'm leaving him in this place. He's better off with me. "Forget this!" he growled out loud, storming back towards the door.

"Sir, can I help you with something?" Dean spun around at the sound of the first coherent voice he'd heard since entering the lobby. He came face to face with, he assumed, one of the nurses. She didn't look to be much older than Dean, himself, but stress and exhaustion had added a good ten years to her features. "Do you have a patient here?"

"Nnn...no, I don't have a patient here," Dean raged, completely disgusted at the place. He'd just watched an old man with a walker urinate on the floor and then walk right through it, tracking yellow footsteps through the lobby. "I don't ever plan on having a patient her either. My brother stays with me." He turned on his heel and left, leaving the poor, confused nurse staring after him in shock.

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Dean took the long way back to the hospital, opening the car full out on the deserted backroads. He needed time to think, and this was the best way to do it. Sam could only stay in the hospital until his ribs had healed, which would be soon. They couldn't afford a state of the art rehab hospital. Hell, they couldn't even afford a clean rehab hospital. But Dean wasn't equipped to take care of Sam and his needs. They didn't even have a place to stay.

The brakes squealed loudly when Dean slammed down the pedal. He spun the wheel in a sharp arc, turning the car 180 degrees, and then gunned it the hundred or so yards back to the pull off he'd seen. There hadn't been another car the entire time Dean was traveling on this road and everywhere he looked all he could see were trees. This was the perfect place to vent his frustrations. Climbing out of the Impala, Dean only spent enough time to lock the doors before taking off into the woods. He ran. He ran until his lungs burned and his calves screamed and he was sure he couldn't take another step. And then he stopped. And he howled, a deep guttural howl that shook the tree tops and conveyed every iota of pain and confusion and desperation that he'd kept bottled inside since those precious five minutes he'd given himself that first day. Not until he was certain there was nothing left to mourn for did Dean leave his haven, and then he returned to his car and then to Sam. He had answers.

Laura was studying in the corner chair as Sam slept peacefully in his bed. "What happened to you?" she asked in surprise, studying Dean's disheveled appearance. A light smattering of dirt covered Dean's pant legs; thorns and branches had ripped at his clothing and face, and a piece of a leaf still stuck out from his hair. "I thought you went to visit the rehab hospital."

"I did. I'm not leaving Sam there." Dean didn't explain beyond that. Laura didn't need to know that he'd just spent and hour pouring out his feelings to the squirrels and the deer and all the other little wood nymphs.

Somehow, Laura understood his need for privacy. She didn't push, just reached up and removed the leaf. "What are you going to do, then?"

"What I've always done. I'll take care of him myself. We'll be fine. Sam and I have been on our own for a long time now and we've always been fine. I've been doing a lot of research. We'll figure this out."

"Well maybe this will help," Laura said, timidly holding out a plain, unlabeled manilla envelope to Dean.

Curiosity found it's way to Dean's mind as he took the bulging envelope from her hand. He slid his finger under the flap and opened it, eyes popping out at the sight inside. He reached his hand in and withdrew the multiple sheets of green paper, flipping through them quickly. "Laura, there must be over five thousand dollars in here," he cried in disbelief, flipping through the stack of bills in his fist.

"Five thousand three hundred and sixty-two, to be exact," she replied proudly. "And that's just the first installment. Seems the entire campus is so extremely grateful for you boys getting rid of the campus attacker that they gave up their drinking money for the weekend to help you guys out in return."

"They know about us?" Dean asked nervously, stuffing the money back in the envelope.

"It's been all over the papers. But don't worry, nobody knows what the attacker actually was or why you came here. All they know is that you were involved and there hasn't been a single attack since that night. I think your secret's safe."

Dean nodded gratefully. "Thank you. This is...I mean...I– "

There's just one condition, though," Laura interrupted. She knew what he was trying to say, and that was enough.

"Name it."

"You have to realize that you can't help Sam all by yourself. If you're determined to keep him with you I won't stop you; but stay in town. Let me help you help him."

What was that? I mean, I get that she's trying to help. She's got that whole 'mother hen' thing down pat. But her voice, the intonation, was she flirting with me? Is she propositioning me? She's trying to get to me through Sam...but I think I'm OK with that. "Alright," Dean agreed. "You've got yourself a deal. We'll stay."

I've kinda gotten on a Dean kick lately. I'm gonna try to make the next chapter from Sam's point of view. He's not getting nearly enough story time. Sorry about that.