Sam switched shoulders with his back pack. It was a particularly nippy night and he had his old lightweight beige carhart jacket on. Even after all this time, the canvas held traces of smoke from bars he'd been in, oil from cleaning weapons and standing around talking to Dean, while his brother leaned over Baby's hood and tinkered with some component of her that Sam didn't understand and made it a point to not want to. He got a flash of Dean's face, cheek smeared with grease, wiping his brow with his filthy oil rag, thus making it worse, smiling at Sam's protest.
Sam dropped his gaze to the sidewalk as he strode and tried not to think of his brother. Often he was successful, but just as often it seemed that Dean strode through whatever cracks were in Sam's psyche like a dandelion growing from concrete.
Sam noticed suddenly how conspicuously absent any weeds were in the Palo Alto sidewalk. In the climates with harsher weather, the ground itself shifted like a sleeping dragon as it froze and unfroze, and the concrete, inflexible as it was and worn down by salt and snow and plows- cracked at the stress points. Eroded where it had had too much rock salt hit it. And then in spring, some intrepid and hardly little plant sought solace in the tiny opening of concrete and nestled in the soil. It found a space there, moist and blocked from the wind, and grew. And grew... and tore its host apart more.
Sam always found it strangely beautiful that nature reclaimed it's space in the parts of suburbia that were ignored. But here, without the harshness of the environment, in the carefully maintained and controlled spaces of the semi-wealthy, nothing grew wild. All was order.
Sam had the weird thought that here nothing like Dean could grow. Dean was shaped by hardship and extremes of fortune. He rooted in what he could find and stayed there doggedly. Others didn't see the beauty of him. He disrupted their plan of homogeny, wild thing that he was. In the suburbs of Palo Alto a creature like Dean could not grow.
Sam paused, shifted His sack of books and wondered if he, himself, was the same way. Did the people here view him as a dandelion pushing through the cracks in the sidewalk? He scuffed a worn shoe over the concrete and kept walking, feeling strangely Other in this environment he'd sought out.
Sam's danger sense picked up that something was wrong before he even entered the apartment. It was a well-honed skill borne both of the supernatural and dodging his father's drunken tirades. He flipped on the light.
"Brady?" He called.
He heard a sobbing noise from the bedroom and hurried in, dropping his book bag on the floor.
"Brady?"
The door was ajar, giving him just a glimpse of Brady's room. He saw Brady huddled on the floor, back pressed against the drawers of his cherry wood dresser.
Sam pushed open the door and poked his head in. "Brady? What is it, man?"
Brady was in his boxer shorts and a white tank top. He looked up, flushed a little at his friend's presence. His eyes were red-rimmed and his nose pink. His gelled hair askew in wildly unkempt directions.
Sam took in the empty booze bottles, the open prescription bottle with pills scattered from it on the glass top of the dresser, as well as a few scores of powdered cocaine.
"Sam..." Tyson said softly.
Sam stepped in and crouched down. "Jesus, Brady what did you do, man?"
"I don't know..." Brady was shivering.
"Hey." Sam said softly. "Hey." He smoothly touched his friend's carotid artery. -Knew right where to check for a pulse from too many past experiences with his family.
The pulse was galloping. Triple timing. Sam counted the beats in his head.
"Alright Tyson, I'm gonna get you up, okay?"
Brady was silent.
"Okay?" Sam asked softly, brow furrowed in worry.
"Y..yeah." Came the whispered answer.
Sam took Brady by the arms and hauled him up. He guided him the two steps to the bed and sat him down.
He sat there for a moment, shaking.
Sam gazed at the mirrored dresser and righted the tipped pill bottle. "Oxycodone?" His hunter's instinct made him pocket a few of the pills without Brady noticing. "Seriously, Brady. Talk to me, what did you have? Oxy, booze, and is this... coke?"
Tyson shook his head to clear it, spacey and not fully in control of his body or thoughts. "Y..yeah?"
"How much did you have?" Sam started counting the remaining pills hurriedly, years of training teaching him to react on instinct. Triage the victim, manage the situation, plan a course of action. Move, move, move. Waste no time.
"I don't..." Brady was foggy.
"Ten of these are missing. Did you take all ten?"
"No...no."
"Did you drink all this liquor?"
"I don't..."
Sam turned to face him and grabbed Brady's arm. "Tyson," he said patiently but firmly. "I need to know what you took and how much. I need to move fast to get you to a hospital if you overdosed."
Brady's blue eyes lit with fear. "I don't know."
"Okay. I'm calling 911." Sam pulled out his cell phone and started to dial.
"911 Emergency."
"Hello... my name is Sam-" his reception began to go screwy and the voice on the other line cut out. "Hello?" Sam swore, tried dialing again and the cell went dead. "Dammit!"
He turned around. "Brady, stand up. We're going to the hospital."
"No, Sam." The voice was small and scared.
"We need your stomach pumped, okay?"
"No." Brady pawed at Sam's sleeve like a child. "Please. Sam..."
"Brady." Sam hauled him up and staggered with him to the bathroom. Brady was a big guy and even though Sam was taller, he was still a bit of a burden. Sam propped his friend against the faux marble vanity for a minute and then maneuvered them so that Brady was bent over the sink. Sam stuck his fingers down his friend's throat. Brady gagged and pushed him off, began to retch into the basin. He threw up mostly liquid.
Sam held him steady until the spasm was over. He reached over with his free hand, filled the tumbler with water and gave it to Brady. "Rinse."
Brady took mouthful and spit it back into the sink, clearing his throat after.
Sam ushered him back to the bed and tucked a blanket around the shuddering shoulders.
Sam fetched some more water. "Drink this." He held it up to Brady's shaking hand. "Slow and steady. Do we have a thermometer in the house?"
Brady shook his head. He was still trembling, although Sam was uncertain whether it was from nerves or the drugs.
"Okay." Sam said patiently, his voice soft and cajoling. "Hey, buddy. Stay calm."
He took his friend's pulse again and then looked at the dilated pupils. "Tell me what you're feeling."
Brady didn't seem like he had his thoughts together enough to speak.
"Keep drinking." Sam tilted the glass in Brady's hand up to the young man's lips.
Brady's throat worked as he swallowed a few long draughts.
"Okay," Sam got him back up. "One more time."
"No, Sam." He struggled against the firm hold.
"It's okay." Sam soothed, wrangling the shorter man into the bathroom. "You can do this."
Sam had to wrestle with an uncooperative victim to get his hand down his throat and Brady pulled away, then started to gag and spit up water again and again.
Sam held him up to keep him from face planting with the heaves. He turned on the sink to rinse away the vomit, ran his fingers under the stream quickly and then put his arm around Brady and returned him to bed.
"That's it. Not gonna do that anymore. I had to get that out of your stomach, buddy. I'm gonna get you more water and I want you to drink it."
"No." Brady's skin was pale and his eyes shadowed.
Sam locked gazes with him, still talking patiently and firmly. "Brady, you've been to med school. You know I have to dilute what's in your system. It will be okay."
Something about the words seemed to get through the confusion and he nodded and looked up at Sam. He looked more pathetic than Sam had ever seen him. His thick blonde hair was in no semblance of order, there were deep lines in his face from being stressed, despite his youth. His blue eyes were hollowed out and lost.
Sam realized he was losing his friend, maybe not to death, maybe not to overdose, but he was surely losing him. He was at a loss.
He concentrated on what he could fix. What he could deal with. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Two."
"Good. Tell me your name."
"Tyson Brady."
"What day is it?"
Brady furrowed his brow, that fine shake still running though the hands clenched in his lap. "I... Wednesday."
"Thursday," Sam said. "Six times six?"
"Thirty six." Brady looked up at him, his eyes suddenly a little clearer. "You're a good friend, Sam."
Sam waved it off. "Yeah I know. I'm getting you more water."
He returned a minute later with a glass. "Keep drinking. We're gonna flush this out of your system."
Brady looked at the proffered glass with a lack of interest.
Sam shoved it into his hand. "Drink. You've got to drink. Help your kidneys and liver filter this crap."
Brady did. His hand seemed slightly steadier and he looked very drained. They sat quietly for a long time, Brady drinking copious amounts of water that Sam kept throwing at him.
Brady had his back propped up against the oak headboard and he rubbed the bridge of his nose with a groan. "Sam, you're gonna drown me." He complained as he eyed the water on the nightstand.
"I think you're doing a good job of drowning yourself right now." Sam answered.
Brady stood up and Sam sprang to his own feet, hands out protectively as if he were trying to keep a toddler from taking a spill.
"Hey," Brady assured. "It's okay. I can pee."
He walked a fairly straight line to the toilet and partially closed the door. -Emerged a little later, having thrown water on his face and toweled it off. He staggered back to the bed and sat down.
"Headache." He said, clenching his teeth. He'd begun to look like he had his wits about him.
Sam crouched down beside his friend and put a hand on his leg. "I think you're going to live. You had me worried there for a minute." His brow furrowed. "You can talk to me." He urged. "What's going on with you, man?"
Brady shook his head and tried to dodge Sam's eyes. "I don't know. It's like...I'm, there are gaps in my memory." He had a fine tremble running through his leg again.
Sam patted it. "The drugs. The drinking. It affects memory."
"I don't know where I am or how I got there. I...I do things and it's like watching myself do them. I'm burning bridges. My dad doesn't want to speak to me."
"Hey." Sam said with a small smile. "I got ya there." He took a breath. "Sometimes when we don't want to follow the path our parents mapped out for us they don't know how to deal with it."
His own leg was starting to cramp from holding the crouch, so Sam stood up and stepped back to lean his ass on the large oak dresser. He folded his arms and sat expectantly.
"What if they don't talk to me again?"
"They'll talk to you again." Sam assured. "Family always does."
"Does it though?"
Sam's gaze turned inward and he thought of the little broken family he'd broken even further by walking out. Brady's family was nothing like his.
"Yes. It does. Eventually." He looked up. "Brady, your family is close. Call them up and apologize."
Brady swallowed hard. Put his head in his hands. "I'm tail spinning, Sam. I don't know how it got this way."
"Hey," Sam said firmly. "I'm here, man. I've got you. You know that. Let's get you help."
"There's no help."
"Of course there is. There's a ton of rehab centers and addiction counseling. We just have to talk to someone." Sam paused. "I'll help. You know I will."
Brady's brow was eloquent with defeat. His depression was palpable.
"Let's start small. Get some sleep. When you get up we'll get a good breakfast and talk about options. Okay?"
Brady nodded.
He let Sam guide him to lay down and throw a blanket over him.
The young Winchester shut off the light and walked out into the hallway.
Sam leaned up against the drywall and closed his eyes against a swell of emotion. He wrestled it down and headed to his own bedroom. In between the endless worrying about Brady, he thought of Dean.
Whew. Rough chapter to write. Thank you for the reviews! They are so appreciated.
