A/N: Next chapter. It's from the cashier's perspective this time.

If You Dare Challenge - #57 (A cheap motel)

Are You Crazy Enough To Do It Challenge - #220 (donuts)

Disclaimer: The SPN writers own all of this.

The cashier had received treatment for his minor shoulder gunshot wound and was already back at work after three days. It hardly hurt anymore; in fact, it had not bothered him so far that day. That might have been due to the heavy painkillers he had been prescribed, but he tried to think optimistically and believe that it was because he was healing quickly.

He hadn't had many customers that day, and he didn't mind that. He loved organizing the small store, and fewer customers meant fewer messes for him to clean up. He was engrossed in organizing the donuts, in fact, when the door opened. He turned to greet his newest customer, prepared to ask the person if they needed help, but he stopped in his tracks instead, his mouth going slack. His heart dropped inside his chest.

It was the boy: Dean. He knew this was his name, for his father and brother had addressed him as such while inside the store. He looked worse than he had a few days ago; his malnourished, skinny body was covered in a sheen of sweat that only emphasized his ill state. The front of his clothing was sticky with blood and vomit. His eyes, however, frightened the cashier the most. They were bloodshot and unfocused, flitting wildly about the room as if there was something evil lurking in every corner. "Baby…" he croaked, his eyes falling into another nystagmus of delirium. "Cryin'..." He stumbled forward two steps before collapsing on the floor with a sickening thump.

"Dean!" The cashier rushed forward to help the boy who had shot him only a few days beforehand. He placed his hand on the child's arm only to receive a weak hit in response.

The boy flinched away from his arms, all of his strength focused on getting away from the man. "No…" he slurred, his eyes opening and closing slowly. "Daddy… Sorry…"

The man took Dean into his arms before reaching for his phone, frantically dialing 911 with one hand. He pinned it between his ear and his shoulder, trying to comfort the child as he writhed in his feverish stupor. He pressed his hand to the boy's forehead to judge his temperature as the operator spoke. "911, what's your emergency?"

The cashier struggled to get a grip on Dean; the boy's face grew even more pale as his breaths became shorter. "There's a kid… He collapsed and he's… He's hurt real bad—" He pressed his hand to the boy's bony back and discovered that his grimy, torn T-shirt was sticky and soaked. "There's blood all over his back—his leg, too… He can barely breathe, and he—he—"

"Where are you located now?"

"Corner of Hawthorne and Forest… Store called Luke's."

"Is the victim breathing?"

"Yes, but I don't know how much longer—"

The boy coughed so hard that his back arched, and more blood flooded down his spine. "Daddy…" Dean gasped. "Baby cryin… Gotta...get...baby…"

"Dean, hey! Look at me, buddy, there's no baby." When Dean's unfocused gaze drifted past him, staring with undeniable fear at something beside him, he knew it would be extremely difficult to reach him.

"How old is the victim, sir?"

Dean began to whimper, shaking in terror and raising his left arm as if he was trying to protect his head. "Um—he-he's eleven, maybe? Twelve?" He wasn't sure why the age was relevant, but he guessed that—

"I'm going to ask that you stay with the victim, sir, do you understand?"

"Yes—yes. Of course."

"We are sending you an ambulance now, but the child needs your assistance. Do not hang up the phone. Is he conscious?"

"Yes, but—he's not...lucid. He doesn't know I'm here. He keeps calling for a baby, and…"

"Okay, sir, we are going to try to keep him conscious. Can you locate the source of the bleeding?"

"Yes—yes—oh…"

"Sir?"

The cashier's large hands hovered over the jagged wound in Dean's back. It was trickling yellow pus and was swollen and red, bruised around the edges. "It's…bad."

"You need to put pressure on it to stop the bleeding."

Dean cringed, twisting out of the cashier's arms. "S'mmy…" When the cashier tried to keep him close, trapping the boy in his grasp and pressing against his injury, he felt a stinging pain in his cheek. "No…" The boy's arm dropped, and his fingers went limp, releasing a small pocket knife. Even as he was trying to help him, Dean put up a fight.

"Sir, The ambulance is almost to you, but—"

"Oh, God!"

"Sir? What's going on?"

Dean was thrashing now, his eyes falling into a frightening nystagmus and his lips turning blue. "He—He's seizing!" Foam slid out of the boy's mouth as he shook, his whole body twitching and convulsing.

"Roll him onto his side, sir," the operator stated calmly. "And lessen your grip on him. Make sure there's nothing around him he can injure himself on." The cashier followed her instructions carefully, cringing as Dean's seizing intensified.

"It's—he's not—oh, God—"

"It's alright, sir, we'll take it from here."

The cashier looked up to find four paramedics rushing into his store. Two pried Dean's convulsing form away from the cashier. The first paramedic, a small woman with a dark pixie cut and blue eyes, carried the boy with surprising ease and put him on the stretcher. They rolled him out of the store, conversing in medical terms. One grasped his arm and hurried him into the ambulance. Before he could protest, he was inside of the vehicle as they placed an oxygen mask over Dean's nose and mouth and strapped him down as he thrashed. The red-haired paramedic plunged a needle into his arm as they rounded a corner, but it didn't seem to slow the seizure.

All of a sudden, the boy went frighteningly, dangerously limp, his seizure stopping. "We've got full respiratory arrest, here—we're going to have to intubate."

"Pulse is rising," said another. "BP's dropping."

"Sir? Sir!"

The cashier jerked his head to face the nearest paramedic. "Yes?"

"I need to know how long this seizure lasted."

His thoughts were frantic and blurry. "He—I—five minutes? Maybe six?"

The woman cursed as two paramedics forced a tube down Dean's throat. They squeezed a bag of oxygen over his head, giving him air. As they arrived at the hospital, four doctors rushed to assist them, giving Dean injections and tearing off the boy's shirt to get a better look at his injuries.

The cashier, feeling helpless, tried to follow the boy's stretcher, but was immediately stopped by a doctor with a pile of curly hair and gold eyeshadow. "My name is Dr. Gilmore. Are you the boy's father?" She was clearly angry; her rage was obvious in her white-knuckled fingers and the position of her jaw. She thought that he was the cause of the child's poor condition.

"Is he going—where are they taking him? Is he gonna be okay? I don't—"

"Sir," the woman ordered, her expression reading only business, "the doctors are doing everything in their power to help your son. I just have a few questions about him that will help him. Does he have any allergies to medications?"

The cashier stared down at himself. His clothes were stained with Dean's blood; his thoughts returning, he stated, "I-I-I'm not his father. I just...found him."

The woman's expression relaxed slightly, her anger (previously directed at him) fading. "Oh. Sorry. Can you… tell me anything about him?"

The man nearly did a double take, his mouth rushing slightly ahead of his mind. "A brother."

"What?"

"He's got a brother. I don't know—the kid's probably all alone. He's six, I think, and he can't stay home by himself."

"Okay, we'll send someone over as soon as we can. Do you know where he lives?"

"No, I… Well, there's only one motel nearby: Blue Stars Motel?"

"Okay. Do you know what happened to him?"

The cashier quickly explained that he had seen Dean and his brother a few times in the past week and that their respective conditions had slightly diminished until Dean came to him, alone, with a gun. "He shot you?" asked the woman.

"No… well, yes," he replied, raising his wounded arm slightly, "but… I don't blame him, Doctor. I didn't press charges, or…" He watched, his voice trailing off, as she scribbled on her clipboard. "It wasn't bad. Just the arm. And I got it fixed up."

"Can you tell me if the boy matches any of these symptoms?" She listed a few, including shortness of breath, absent seizures, hallucinations, blood-tinged mucus, vomiting, nausea, shivering, wheezing, memory loss, coughing, and confusion, most of which he had recognized in Dean.

"Thank you, sir," she said finally. "We'll let you know about Dean's condition as soon as we can. Can you tell me your name?"

"Jimmy," he said quickly. "Jimmy Novak."

A/N: I'll post the next chapter soon! Thanks for reading!