November 19 5:32pm
The door to the room opening and closing was what brought Sam back out of the memory. The darkness faded away to the stark white lights of the hospital and the Impala's leather seat was replaced with a semi-comfortable hospital chair. Cas was standing in the doorway with another cup of coffee, and offered Sam a smile before he passed it down to him.
"Thanks, Cas," Sam said appreciatively, grateful for another aid to help keep him up.
"It was no trouble," the angel shook his head and sat down in the other chair. His eyes ghosted over Dean, still in the coma, before they settled back on Sam. "How did your call go?"
"Good," Sam nodded and honestly smiled for the first time that day. "Yeah, just Jody's usual monthly check in. I filled her in and she wanted to come right down here, I told her we had it handled and we'd call if we needed anything. Alex and Claire are both safe and doing well," he added.
After almost a week filled with nothing but beeping, a comatose Dean, and a not so talkative Cas, it had been nice to hear a different voice. It was always good to talk to Jody, but this time was especially helpful. Not just for the reassurances, but for a few other things.
Four days passed by with the two of them sitting around before Sam started looking for things on his phone. Simple odd cases that anyone could handle. He passed them off to other hunters that he knew wouldn't mind a few days of work, given that he and Cas were quite preoccupied but still wanted to help.
Jody had been able to fill in some missing information for a few cases, which went a long way. Until Dean woke up, that was how they were keeping busy and avoiding thinking about worst cases scenarios too much.
Sam had gotten an email from Mick a day after the meeting was supposed to have been held, and, following a few more messages back and forth of explaining, they had settled on the fact that they would discuss the matter further after Dean was back to a hundred percent.
Cas had a fond smile on his face as he nodded back. "That is definitely good news, thank you for checking in with them."
"Yeah, no problem," Sam replied before he lightly closed his laptop. "Any news on this end of the spectrum?"
Cas shrugged his shoulders a bit. "I spoke briefly with Dr. Monroe about his condition, and he seemed to believe that Dean should be waking up soon. Unless they missed something in the scans, he had a relatively high GCS, which should lend itself to a higher rate of survival and less permanent injuries…" Cas trailed off and shook his head a little.
"Of course, every case is different, it just depends on Dean. Though, I have been reading, and some people believe that they can hear what is said around them, even in this state."
Sam cast another glance towards Dean, as he had been reading up on similar facts. It was an interesting idea, and in a way it was also strangely comforting. Sam had been talking to him…a lot, in hopes that maybe just his voice and presence would bring him around again.
Everything he talked about was positive. Good memories, some talk about rock music, different meals Dean could try to cook when he got better. Because somewhere deep in Sam's mind, he knew that if Dean was struggling to come out of the coma, he needed something to come out for. While Sam himself would probably be enough, some reminders that the world wasn't all crap couldn't hurt the situation.
"I found that to be…oddly comforting in a way," Cas mentioned, his head slightly tilted as he too looked to the hunter in the bed. His complexion was a bit better, as it had been becoming less grey over the past few days. His head was still thoroughly bandaged though.
Sam let out a breathy laugh between his hand, which he had brought up to rest on his chin. He caught the questioning look Cas threw him and just shook his head slightly. "Was just thinking the same thing," he replied. They stayed like that for the better part of fifteen minutes, just sitting and watching, as if the mere talk of Dean getting out of the coma could make it happen.
"You mind watching him? I gotta stretch my legs, you know…"
Cas nodded in affirmation. "Of course, Sam, take as long as you need."
Sam smiled appreciatively and got up out of the chair, leaving his laptop in his place. His joints cracked a bit as he did so, but the pain in his chest was less intense. One positive of being cooped up in a hospital all day long was that he wasn't doing strenuous activity to stress out the wound, so it could actually heal.
Even in their week or so there, they had developed their own little habits. Two or three times a day, Sam would take a walk around the hospital to get some fresh air. If there were no problems with Dean and the weather was decent, he'd walk to one of the parks that was nearby, loop around it, and be back in twenty minutes. Of course, nice was relative when it came to New York.
As long as the temperature didn't dip below forty-five and there weren't small piles of snow on the ground, a walk was possible. Sam was just glad they had remembered to pack plenty of jackets before the trip.
If he was stir crazy when Dean woke up, that wouldn't be beneficial, so he was trying to make the best of a bad situation. A little bit of cold air did good to wake him up and keep him moving. By the time Sam came back, his head was a bit clearer and he was ready for another few hours of brotherly watch duty.
Every time when he came back, he did so slowly and quietly. The past few days, Cas had been talking to Dean to, similarly to what Sam himself did when he was in the room alone. The first time he noticed it, he…didn't, and walked in on Cas in the middle of a sentence, mouth still open when Sam came in. He hadn't meant to disturb the angel, so every time following, he had always approached slowly. Sam stood by the door for a few seconds, comforted by the sound of the angel's voice in the room. Angels were in fact watching over his brother, and it made Sam smirk.
"-doing well. He'd be doing better if the situation were better, but he's alright, I just wanted to assure you of that."
By catching the tail end of that conversation, Sam hurried into the room, half expecting Dean to be suddenly awake and up in bed, talking like nothing had happened. When he got into the room, it was still Cas in the chair, a bit more bent over towards Dean than before, and his eyes were still closed.
"Sam? Did you have a good walk?" Cas asked, not missing a beat even with Sam's hurried entrance.
"Hm? Yeah, it was fine, sun's out today, makes the cold a bit more bearable," Sam nodded. He took off his two jackets and hung them up on the back of the chair. He then picked up his laptop again and let it rest in his lap as he went to sit down.
The silence in the room was only broken up by the beeping, which had become more consistent over the past few days. The doctors assured them that this was a good sign, but Sam was still wary of any dramatic changes.
Sam was going back and forth in his head about whether or not to look for another case when the beeping began to speed up. It was an audible increase in beats, and it had Sam up and out of his seat before anything else could happen.
"Is something wrong?" Cas asked, visibly worried as he too got up and looked over Dean from the other side of the bed.
"I…I don't know," Sam said quietly. He had Dean's hand in his again, which wasn't as cold as it had been before. He was bent slightly over his brother, his other hand hovering over the call button in case something should be going very, very wrong. "Dean? You up?"
It was a question that went floating through the air in the room, but didn't meet any ears besides Cas' and his own. The increased beeping continued, but didn't get any higher, and there weren't any other visible signs of stress. Maybe he was just…dreaming?
Sam kept perfectly still for the next five or so minutes, worried that any movement on his part would make something happen, good or bad he didn't know.
"Sam?" the angel asked, having not moved from his own position.
The younger brother's eyes were still on his older sibling. "Yeah, I think he's okay, probably just…dreaming, I don't know," he shook his head, his own heart still pounding in his chest, as if waiting for an attack. Sam dropped his finger from the call button and sighed. It only took another second for him to make up his mind that his chair needed to be closer, and started to get up to bring it in.
His hand loosened in Dean's a bit so he could reach back, but as he did so, his hand didn't want to go back any further. That was when he felt a slight tickle on his palm and immediately turned back around.
"Dean?" Sure enough, his brother's fingers were curled around his own, where they hadn't been before. Of course, it could just be an unconscious comatose movement, but Sam was hoping for better. He needed better after this past week. "If you're awake, I need you to give me a sign, man, so this isn't just comatose muscle movements or something."
Cas was eyeing the brothers curiously from Dean's other side, waiting for signs of movement as well. They were waiting for signs of…anything, really.
But there wasn't anything. Dean's hand remained curled around Sam's, a bit more than before, but it stayed that way. Any time Sam tried to reach back to grab the chair, his brother's grip stopped him. He was holding onto Sam, either consciously or not.
Eventually Cas moved Sam's chair closer so he could sit down and then moved his own and sat down on the opposite side. Sam continued to watch his brother closely, only changing his perspective to look at the monitors by the bed. Dean's breathing was consistent, as was his slightly elevated pulse.
Every so often, Sam would jostle their hands a bit, hoping for another bit of movement, but it never came.
If Dean were in the room, he'd probably be laughing at the scene in front of him and how much it looked like a damned movie. Through the laughing though, he'd tell Sam to quit his worrying because he'd be fine and he'd make a full recovery. A little traumatic brain injury wasn't going to keep Dean Winchester down, and Sam should know better.
He'd probably more or less apologize eventually, having seen that his joking was grating on Sam, who wasn't happy about the fact that he had almost lost his brother again. Dean would sober up, and again assure Sam that he was fine and that he wasn't going anywhere.
If only he'd just wake up, that's how Sam was guessing the scenario would play itself out. They'd been here too many times, Sam knew how it was supposed to go. He knew that-
In the middle of his mental ramblings and worrying, the pressure on his hand increased again. Sam immediately looked back over his brother and squeezed his hand back. He wasn't expecting anything, it was just an unconscious muscle response to Sam's hand, an added pressure of sorts. Which was why when Dean squeezed back, ever so slightly, but it was there, Sam's face lit up in a smile.
"Cas, I think he's-" Sam started excitedly, and looked up to see the angel smiling at the two of them too. "De-" he cut himself off again when he looked back to Dean.
Because staring back at him, through bleary, partially unfocused eyes, was Dean. Tired and probably not all there in the best capacity, but awake.
So Dean's finally awake and somewhat on the road to recovery! Or is he? We'll start to see very shortly ;) Having a bit of writer's block at the moment, here's hoping it passes soon. Dear readers, thank you for, well, reading! Celtic Knot, thank you for your review! To Imtheonewhofeelinglost, I very much appreciate it, thanks! Until hopefully next week! (Also, am I the only one that didn't care much for this week's episode? They were doing so well!)