The doctor sighed and looked down at the floor. He hadn't even thought… "I'm sorry. I thought you knew," he told Sam, meeting his gaze once again. "But yes, along with the physical assault, your brother was sexually assaulted."
"He said he'd been drugged; I didn't piece it together," Sam murmured, standing up and walking away from the doctor. "Goddammit, Dean," he swore under his breath. "You couldn't tell me?"
Sam was torn between his need to stay at the hospital, waiting for Dean to wake up so he could continue with his plan to knock some sense into his brother for ignoring his injuries, and his wanting to return to "Davy's" and go Old Testament on the couple that had done this to his brother.
"Mr. Wesson?"
Sam turned to find the doctor standing next to him.
"This isn't an easy thing for someone to go through," the doctor began. He held up his hand at Sam's incredulous expression, staying the young man's words. "Even more so for a man. Us men, especially the younger ones, like you and your brother, we like to believe we know how to take care of ourselves; that it's only the weak who become victims. So when it does happen to us, it's not so easy to admit."
Sam nodded, but didn't say a word.
"We have a great SART program here," the doctor continued. "That's Sexual Assault Response Team," he explained. "Counselors, police, medical staff… once your brother is able, they'll be in to talk to him, help him through this."
Sam smiled sadly as he shook his head. "Don't count on it," he responded.
The doctor pulled a business card out of his coat pocket and handed it to Sam. "You never know," he said. "The surgical waiting room is directly upstairs, second floor." He patted Sam on the shoulder and headed back to the treatment area.
Sam looked at the card, saw the MSW designation behind some woman's name, and dropped it onto one of the low tables covered in magazines.
00000
"Dean? Dean it's time to open your eyes now."
Dean heard the woman's voice. He wasn't quite sure what she was saying, but he recognized his name, at least. He was tired and when he tried to move his body, to a more comfortable position, his arms and legs moved sluggishly, as if not entirely in his control. But his back hurt; he needed to move. He tried harder to roll onto his other side.
"Dean? You need to lie still, Sweetie." The woman's voice again.
He tried to think of who she might be. She brushed her fingers through his hair. He opened his eyes, hoping to see whom she was, but found only blurry shapes moving around him. Then he felt the hands on his body, around his wrists, on his legs, on his hips, all holding him down. Visions of a bar and a pool table suddenly came to mind. The image of a pretty blonde woman smiling at him opened up the floodgates of his memory.
"No!" he shouted, struggling against the hands. "Get your fucking hands off me!"
"Take it easy, it's all right," the woman soothed. "You're safe now."
"Fuckers!" he called them, realizing he didn't have the strength to fight back, as the pain flared in his back, paralyzing him.
"Hold him down!"
"No!"
00000
Sam sat watching his brother sleep. A few hours earlier the surgeon had come to the waiting room to tell him that Dean made it through his surgery just fine, that they were able to stop the internal bleeding in his abdomen – most of it from small blood vessels in his muscles, not from any of his internal organs; that Dean's kidney, while badly bruised, should be okay, with time and rest as well.
They would keep Dean in the hospital for the week, at least, monitoring his urine output, making sure that the kidney healed properly, that no infections set in, etc., etc., etc. There was also mention of those SART counselors coming to see him.
Sam thought about telling them that they should keep anyone mentioning any sort of counseling the hell away from his brother, or he'd be AMA before they could blink an eye, finding the tubes and wires Dean was currently hooked up to dangling in the wind.
Sam wondered when the police portion of the team would find them, though he wasn't worried about the fight in the bar, about the couple pressing charges against he and Dean. The people in places like "Davy's" handled their own. They probably knew Dean wasn't about to call the cops on them, either. Hell, his and Sam's appearance the second night proved that. By all intents and purposes, the incident should be over with, as long as he and Dean never stepped foot into the bar again, anyway.
A quiet, pain-filled moan brought Sam's attention back to the man in the hospital bed.
"Dean? You awake?" he called quietly.
Another painful moan, then a whispered, "Sammy?"
"Right here, Big Brother," Sam replied, gently placing his right hand on top of Dean's head.
"Son of a bitch."
"Try not to move around so much," Sam told him. "You just got out of surgery."
"Surgery?"
"Yeah," Sam replied. "You know, for the internal bleeding you didn't tell me about." He had tried to keep the irritation out of his voice, but didn't fully succeed.
Dean looked a little confused, his eyebrows furrowing at Sam's words, before slowly meeting Sam's gaze as his memory returned. There was no apology, though. He'd done nothing wrong. Instead, another painful groan escaped Dean's lips as he tried to turn away. But Sam gently tightened the grip he had on Dean's head, preventing his brother from looking away.
"I swear, Dean," Sam went on. "I could probably find you with a knife through your heart and you'd tell me it was just a scratch, your damn stubbornness alone keeping you alive, at least until whoever stabbed you died."
Dean closed is eyes, unable to meet Sam's gaze any longer, hearing hard truth from his little brother, but knowing he'd never change, not willingly.
"Closing your eyes? A little second grade, don't you think?" Sam balked, frustrated at the one-sided conversation.
"I'm fine, Sammy. Been beat up before," Dean protested, opening his eyes, not liking the second grader remark. But then he saw the new anger in Sam's eyes and wished he were asleep again.
"'Beat up'! Dammit, Dean, they raped you! How could you not tell-"
"Get out, Sammy," Dean growled, anger and maybe a little fear in his voice.
"We've got to talk about this, Dean."
"No. We don't." He made the mistake of trying to sit up and practically screamed as his back protested. "Goddamn doctor, doesn't he know anything about HIPPA!" He grunted and groaned in pain, trying to roll onto his other side. "Didn't I tell you to get out, Sammy!" he got out, tears forming.
A nurse, hearing the shouting, came into the room, worried for her patient. She hit the call button on the side of the bed, to summon some additional help in calming down her patient.
"Please," she said to Sam, "You better come back later."
Realizing that she was right, that he and Dean would just argue more, agitate Dean more, and cause him more pain, Sam complied. "We're not done with this," he told him before leaving.
00000
Sam sat in the hospital cafeteria, playing with his bagel, twirling it around on its side, not eating it, and contemplating what had just happened. He thought he'd understood Dean's actions, or in his case, inactions. But Dean's blatant denial of anything more than participating in a bar fight had frustrated Sam. He'd tried to open Pandora's Box and Dean had immediately slammed it shut again.
Dean and his secrets were nothing new to Sam. Hell, he had a few of his own. But they were just some things that were better left unsaid. Nothing that would endanger his life, if left unspoken. Or would they?
Sam dropped the bagel and thrust his hands through his hair in frustration. Put yourself in his shoes, Sam. Would you tell? he pondered. If I was hurt... If I needed help... And then the doctor's words came back to Sam: "We like to believe we know how to take care of ourselves; that it's only the weak who become victims." That was a perfect description of Dean if Sam had ever heard one. He shook his head angrily.
"He's twenty-six. He's not going to change now. He wants to pretend nothing happened? Fine," Sam decided.
00000
The next few days passed slowly. Sam made short visits to Dean, just to let his brother know he was still around, still nearby. They made no mention of the sexual assault, keeping their conversation on Dean's recovery, cute nurses, the local goings on, the situation in Binghamton, the weather… They were talking. Just, not talking. Sam thought they could, cliché as it sounded, cut the tension with a knife. And it would take one of Dean's very large knives to do it.
He spent most of his time alone in his motel room – a new motel, ten miles from the hospital, in the opposite direction of the last one they'd stayed at, the one near "Davy's."
As he had told Dean, he had kept up on things – no one from the bar had come looking for them. He'd even gone back there one night and watched from the parking lot, seeing the couple there, acting as if nothing had happened. It had made him upset to think that they were going on with their lives while he and Dean had been torn apart, it seemed.
He felt not one bit of guilt or remorse when he backed into the line of motorcycles and sent them toppling.
On Dean's fifth day in the hospital, things finally took a turn for the better.
"So the doctor said you're doing good." It was the same thing Sam had said every day, trying to open their conversations.
"Yeah. The blood's pretty much all gone from my kidney. Haven't passed any since yesterday. So the stupid catheter comes out later. Can finally take a piss on my own."
"Good. That's good."
A few minutes passed by without either talking, without either making eye contact. Sam stared at his boots, lining them up against the seams in the tile floor. Dean looked out the window, watching a couple of squirrels chasing each other.
"Sammy." "Dean."
Their gazes met, hurt seen in both.
"You first," Dean told Sam.
"If you don't want to talk about it, I should respect that. I should know better than to force you to something you don't want to do." Someone already did that. "But I'm here, to listen, if the time ever comes."
Sam noted that Dean was no longer looking at him, but out the window again. He waited for the outburst, for Dean to throw him out of the room again for bringing up the subject.
"Dean?"
"You know it's a sad day when I start talking about urine output and intimate body functions with my brother. Damn. We gotta get some better material, Sammy."
"I checked on the situation in Binghamton," Sam began. "Nothing bad, no one's been hurt seriously – just the startled, scared tripping over things as they run from the house or room type injuries. Nothing that can't wait."
Dean nodded. "We could probably be there in a few days."
"You still need to take it easy. Just because you'll be able to piss on your own doesn't mean you're ready to take on some ghosts, Dean," Sam warned.
"Sure it does!" Dean replied. "Don't you remember? You salted your first bones two weeks after you got out of diapers!"
Sam rolled his eyes at the exaggeration. It was two years.
Okay, so they still weren't talking about 'it,' but they were talking again. Sam would take whatever he got.
