Nosocomephobia
- Floor 4, part 2 -
oo0oo
"Dean?" Sam, still with his ear pressed to the door, called out with worry. No answer. "Dean!" he yelled as be backed up and tried shouldering the door a few times. Then kicking it.
But, the door was much more solid than it appeared.
"What about the lock?" Kole asked him. "Can you pick the lock?"
In too much distress to feel foolish for not thinking of it himself, Sam began patting down his pockets to find the lock pick set. Coming up empty, he let loose a growl. Kole may not have been able to translate all of the brothers' looks and signals, but this one was pretty clear. Dean still had the set.
Sam yelled for his brother one more time and then began throwing his body into the door again. Kole moved to the little receptionist window. She thought it would easily open, but they couldn't be so lucky. However, it was just a window – just glass. Kole looked around and found a chair, small enough to lift and swing simply, but sturdy enough for the job.
"What are you-" Sam started to ask when he noticed Kole picking up the chair, but stopped when her plan was obvious, when she practically threw the chair into the window and it shattered.
She grabbed one of the magazines from the table, rolled it up, and began trying to break away any remaining glass from the frame. Sam quickly grabbed a magazine of his own and joined the effort. It wasn't until the glass was nearly gone that Sam realized they had a problem.
"Um, I'm not going to be able to fit through there. It's too narrow. I mean, maybe if I could angle..." Sam said, contemplating the small window. No, it just wouldn't work. His thoughts were interrupted by Kole returning – though he hadn't realized she had left his side until she joined him again – and placing a few more open magazines over the bottom of the window frame.
"Maybe not," she told him, "but I will." And with that, she stepped up onto the same chair she had used to break the glass and looked slowly and carefully into the reception area.
"No," Sam said, grabbing her arm before she could disappear as well. "No, you can't go through there by yourself."
"Sam," her voice reasonable yet slightly rushed, "there seems to be only two ways to move forward. One is the door, which doesn't seem willing to open. The other is through this window, which you have already stated you can't get through. I'm really not seeing another option here."
"But-"
"No, Sam, listen. I'll go through and see if I can unlock the door from the other side. I mean, the window and the door are only a couple feet apart. You can look through the window and see me the whole time if it makes you feel any better."
"I just don't like the idea of splitting up. It's bad enough that they have Dean, but why let them divide and conquer even further?"
Sam, of course, could see the logic at play. However, that didn't mean he had to like it. And, he did trust Kole's judgment – that was a given. But she was still rather new to this lifestyle and, though she was older than him, he still looked at her like a little sister. After all, what was chronological age to a Winchester? It was years of hunting that mattered. And, if Sam had learned anything from being raised under the watchful eye of Dean Winchester, it was that big brothers are protective to a fault.
During one of their longer cross-country treks, Sam had let his mind wander to how similar things were now to when he was growing up. It was almost like the Winchester trio again, minus the heated arguments – arguments, yes, but they were nothing more than minor disputes. Dean had taken up the role of patriarch, more or less the commander-in-chief. However, unlike his predecessor, Dean was less need-to-know and more about keeping everyone informed and, therefore, prepared.
Kole had relieved Sam of much of his researching duties. What information had escaped her almost-photographic memory, she had stored and ready on numerous discs. And Sam had become somewhat of a middle-man, often translating Kole's book smarts and Dean's street smarts for the other. In Sam's mind, it worked better than the team under John Winchester's command had for the simple fact that they were equals playing their specific parts rather than a wide-spread hierarchy.
A quick thumping noise from the other side of the door brought Sam back to himself. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he realized that his cousin was no longer standing in front of him. Another thump made him turn to the door again.
"Kole?" he said, slightly softer than a typical conversational level. No point revealing her whereabouts to the enemy. He heard another thump before she answered.
"Just a second, Sam. I've almost..." thump "got it." Thump.
Sam stepped back from the door. He couldn't believe she went through the window without – what? - asking him? Right. Dean had told him before how much Sam and their dad were alike. Now, as the new middle-man, he could see how much Dean and Kole were alike – no matter how much they tried to deny it. And Dean would, of course, use Sam's temporary distraction to do what he deemed necessary whether Sam liked it or not. And so would Kole.
The thumping noise had stopped. Sam watched the door and waited with as much patience as he could muster. However, his patience evaporated quickly. He was about to run at the door (and start panicking again) when he heard Kole on the other side.
"Sam, I can't open it from this side. Try pushing on it again from yours."
Short of picking the lock, something which Kole had only been able to do once with the boys' tutelage, Sam wasn't sure what would make this time different from the last hundred times he tried to break down the door. But it wasn't as if they had a lot of options, so Sam took a couple more steps away from the door, took a deep breath, and shoulder-rushed the door.
He, of course, was prepared for the door to give no small amount of resistance. However, it snapped open rather easily and both it and Sam came tumbling down.
"Geez, Sam," Kole said, concern and humor at war on her face, "I was looking for a little more Prince Adam and a little less He-Man."
Still slightly stunned, Sam looked up at his cousin noting that she was holding a metal ruler in one hand a battered stapler in the other. All he could manage as he started to rise from the door – which Kole was luckily not standing behind – were a few incoherent sounds of confusion.
"I said push," she told him, dropping her office supplies and giving him a hand up, "not use yourself at a battering ram."
"What did you do?" he asked, still a little disoriented, as he looked down at the discarded objects.
"Oh, well, I figured since I have not yet passed the Winchester lock-picking course, I'd attack the other side. I took the pins out of the hinges. The bottom one was pretty easy, but the top one gave me some trouble." She looked at the ruler and stapler and then back at Sam, giving a little shrug. "I just used the tools I was given."
He was still a little upset – well, more at himself than at her – that she went through that window. Alone. And unprotected. But, Sam couldn't help the swell of pride he was feeling. He'd only ever been on the student side before; this was the first time he'd seen things from the teacher side. It felt good to know he had a hand in her accomplishment (sure, it was common sense more than anything else, but using the window and taking out the pins seemed a very Winchester thing to do!). A+ to the (ex)professor.
oo0oo
Dean was well-acquainted with the act of regaining consciousness. So far, there seemed to be two ways to go about it. One was to awaken suddenly with a gasping breath and almost full alertness. The other and more preferable way (as it was less likely to come with the massive headache that the first does after a moment's pause while the waking world catches up to you) is to slowly regain your senses and wake up (often in the hospital) groggy but more or less intact.
But this was completely different.
Dean didn't have a clear-cut picture of what had happened, but he was able to produce the memories without too much trouble. He and Sam and Kole had entered the floor by way of a waiting room. His name was called – twice – and he walked through the door to the rest of the floor. The door snapped shut as soon as he was through, somehow completely missing him on the way.
He could remember turning and trying to open the door again. After all, he had just promised himself that he would take better care of his brother and cousin, and how could he do that when he couldn't see them? And, because he was busy trying to open the door and cursing himself, he apparently missed the fact that someone was creeping up on him.
Dean could still feel the spot on the right side of his neck where he was stabbed with a (what he hoped was clean) syringe. The needle was barely in his skin when his assailant quickly pushed the plunger and emptied the contents into his system. He didn't even have time to reach up and grasp the spot out of instinct before the serum invaded his body and deactivated his muscles. Including his eyelids, which fell closed as he felt himself crumble under his own weight.
He had the vaguest sense of being caught and the faint sensation of being pulled along, but his body was so numb that he could have been falling down a flight of stairs and not realized it. But the sound of Sammy yelling his name and pounding on the unyielding door was clear as crystal.
Dean couldn't see or feel anything, but his remaining senses stayed on high alert. Taste was useless, but he could hear shuffling feet and squeaky wheels and loudspeaker interference all around him. And worse, he could smell the too-sterilized odor of disinfectant, the overly sweet smell of dying flowers and aging people, and the very familiar scent of a lot of blood on the wrong side of the body.
Yep, if he had any doubts after stepping into the waiting room earlier, they were now thoroughly stamped out. He was in a hospital.
Great. A hospital. It just had to be a hospital...
But he quickly decided to stop feeling sorry for himself. He had to find a way to get his body to cooperate again. He had to get to Sam and Kole and make sure they were all right. He had to... did his eyelids just flutter? Yes, definitely a flutter! It was working.
"Ah," a deep voice filled with mock-kindness began, "I see the patient is starting to come around."
Dean could hear murmurs and whispers and a couple of giggles coming from behind him. He put all of his effort into opening his eyes – that was the first step. Once that was accomplished, he looked around. He was sitting, well reclining, in a chair now and seemed to be in an examining room.
"Now class," the same deep voice continued, "who can tell me the definition of Traumatology?" The doctor was now within Dean's eye-line but was facing the opposite direction. Dean could hear metal softly clinking against metal, but could not see around the doctor to determine the source.
"Traumatology," a younger male voice began reciting from behind Dean, "is the study of wounds and injuries caused by accidents or violence to a person, and the surgical therapy and repair of the damage."
"Very good," the instructing doctor said just as Dean was thinking the complete opposite. The man, still without turning around, motioned for the class to join him. As six younger people walked into Dean's line of sight and up to the instructor, Dean was sure he heard what sounded like a fond: now, choose your weapons.
Six hands reached forward and grabbed small metallic instruments. There was a collective sigh and the small group of people turned to face him, each in surgical masks and full scrubs. As they circle around him with sinister smiles in their eyes, Dean realized that now might not be the time to worry about how his brother and cousin were faring.
Nosocomephobia: fear of hospitals