Chapter 6 - Battle Lines
Gail popped into the bunker the next morning, and she headed for the kitchen, following her nose to the smell of coffee, and bacon.
Nicole was cooking breakfast, wearing Dean's robe. "Oh, hi, Gail," she said, smiling. "Can I get you a plate? Or is that a stupid question?"
Gail shook her head. "Don't bother. After my experience with that guy last night, I don't think I'll be eating for a while. Smells good, though."
Nicole flipped the bacon and then opened the cabinet where the plates were. "Thanks," she said. "I figured it's the least I can do. Sam's always the one doing the cooking."
"Here, let me set the table," Gail said, moving to the cabinet. "I'm not doing anything else, anyway. Where are the boys?"
"Dean's in the shower, and I think Sam might still be in bed," Nicole replied. "But I'm making extra for him, just in case. Hey, do you think you could pop me back to the movie set before you and Dean leave?"
"Sure, I don't see why not," Gail said agreeably.
"What's Cas up to today?" Nicole inquired.
"Sorting out more souls," Gail replied casually, laying the plates on the table. Then she paused, grinning. "That sounds really funny, doesn't it? 'What does your husband do for a living?' 'He drives a bus. How about yours?' 'Oh, he decides what to do with people's souls.'"
"What's it like, being married to God?" Nicole asked her, curious.
Gail paused. "You know what? In some ways, it's not really any different. But in other ways, it's VERY different. There's just a certain way that the other Angels look at him now. It's hard to describe, exactly. It's a look of respect, and awe. It's pretty neat, actually. I'm really proud of him." Then she looked around furtively. "And, between you and me, there are extra dividends in the bedroom, too."
Nicole laughed as Dean came into the kitchen, wrinkling his nose. "Awww, geez. Way to spoil my appetite," he said to Gail. He went straight to where Nicole was standing and put his arms around her from behind, kissing her neck. "Thanks for making breakfast," Dean said to his girlfriend. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
Gail's mouth dropped open. "All the years that Sam and I made breakfast here, and you didn't offer to help us once!" she exclaimed.
"That's 'cause you guys had it under control," Dean said, shrugging.
He reached down and snagged a piece of bacon from the paper towels Nicole was laying it on, popping it in his mouth. "Oooh! Hot!" he exclaimed.
"Next time, I'll cook it cold, then," Nicole retorted, but she was smiling. After the night they'd just had, she was more than willing to feed Dean anything he wanted.
"My mother used to say that!" Gail said, and then she added, "Well, I guess I mean Frank's mother, actually."
"Did you ever find out any more about your birth parents?" Nicole asked Gail.
Gail flashed back to the seance room at Quinn's, and the horrifying encounter with her father. She looked at Dean, who gave her an almost imperceptible head shake. "Nope," Gail said.
Dean poured himself a cup of coffee, then brought the carafe over to where Nicole's mug was, on the counter beside the stove. "Refill?" he offered.
Gail was rolling her eyes now. Dean was nuzzling Nicole's face with his, and they were both smiling. "Ewwww," Gail said sarcastically. "Do you have to be smooching all the time? People have to eat in this room, you know." They both stopped, looking at her. "You understand what I'm doing here, right?" Gail asked Dean pointedly. He smirked. "Yeah, I get it," he replied, bringing his mug over to the table and sitting down. "Speaking of which, where's Mr. Kissyface today?"
Cas was smiling. He and Gail had had a wonderful night last night. First, the get-together with their human family, and then later, in their suite. After they had made love the first couple of times, they had cuddled and talked about everyone, and their circumstances.
"Did you have the feeling that there was something going on with Jody at the end of the dinner, though?" Gail asked her husband.
"Yes, I did," he said, frowning. "She had a strange look in her eyes, and when she hugged me, I got a very guarded sort of feel from her. I was almost tempted to touch her forehead, but I restrained myself. Actually, due to my current status, I could probably just read any of their minds, without even touching them. But that would be an invasion of their privacy."
Gail had nodded. He was right. "You know what?" she said to him, kissing him softly on the cheek. "I'm very proud of you for the way you're doing your job. You're using your power in exactly the right way, but you're not letting it go to your head, either. You're a wonderful God, Cas."
His eyes had misted over. "I appreciate that, my darling," he'd said. "I think I finally understand what Father's intention was, when he created the human race. Last night was a good example. When I first took the Office, Patricia's brainwashing had me convinced that the eradication of Evil was my number one priority. But now, I see that the most important things are love, and compassion, and fellowship with one another."
Gail smiled. "And that's why we're well on our way to a Utopian society here in Heaven. The people tend to take on the personality of their leader. If you introduce a culture of love, that's the culture we'll have."
Cas had nodded at that, and then he had answered her smile. "Well, right now, I think I would like to lead by example." He lowered his head to hers and kissed her on the mouth, parting her lips with his tongue.
"By all means, lead on," Gail had said eagerly. His hand was already moving down her body, and she'd opened her legs to him.
Cas was daydreaming now, thinking about their night together. He missed Gail already, but he did understand her occasional need for independence. Still, he sent out The Eye to have a peek at her now, and he was just in time to see her teasing Dean about kissing Nicole, just the same way that Dean always teased them. Cas laughed. She could always make him laugh.
That was a good one, my love, he said to her over their frequency. Please give everyone my love, and take the biggest helping for yourself. I'll see you in the Garden, later on.
Gail sat back in her chair, tilting her head to the side. Cas's voice was in her mind, acting like a warm caress. She smiled. I love you, sweetie. It's a date, she said in return.
"Hey, what's the goofy look all about?" Dean asked her, loading up his plate with the food that Nicole was bringing to the table.
Gail told him, and Dean shook his head slowly. "Great. Now he doesn't even have to BE here for you guys to drive me nuts."
She shrugged, grinning. "I guess he really IS omnipresent, after all."
Sam came into the kitchen, yawning and stretching. "Thanks for making breakfast, Nicole," he remarked, walking over to the coffeemaker.
"How do you know Nicole made it?" Dean asked his brother.
Sam poured himself a coffee, smirking. "You're right. My apologies. Gail could have made it, too."
"You were in bed late this morning," Gail said to him.
"Yeah, well, I got back from Quinn's late," Sam replied. He sat down beside her at the table. He and Dean exchanged a glance, and then Sam started to spoon some eggs onto his plate.
Hmmm. Strange. Gail wondered what THAT was all about. But she thought she'd better let it go. She wasn't sure if she should get into it in front of Nicole.
As the group was in the bunker making small talk over breakfast, Cas and Bobby were talking. Cas had given their friend Matt's description, and the names and descriptions of the men he would be with. Since they'd died together, they would be in the Garden together. Bobby had nodded, adding them dutifully to the list.
But it was odd, and this was something that was beginning to concern Cas: he had sent out The Eye himself this morning, and he had been unable to find them. First Felicia, and now, Frank's friends. Had the Father given him a blind spot, maybe, to prevent favouritism? In any event, Cas vowed to himself that he would do whatever he could to set Frank's mind at ease about his friends. He knew how much they had meant to each other, and how devastated Frank had been when they had been killed. But the fact that Cas couldn't see them was worrisome. He hadn't even told Gail about that yet.
Cas and Bobby said their goodbyes, and then they winked themselves to different areas of the Garden to get to work.
Jody had gotten on the road fairly early that morning, and she was getting closer to Sioux Falls now. She had gone through a drive-thru fast food place to get coffee and a breakfast sandwich. She'd downed the sandwich in a couple of bites and swigged the coffee, and then she'd turned on the radio, and turned up the volume. A song came on that she particularly liked, and she cranked the dial and sang along. What she lacked in melody, she made up for in enthusiasm, Jody thought with some amusement. But, that was OK. No one was here, and she could do what she damn well pleased.
She was enjoying the solitude right now, but it had been very hard for her to leave the house this morning. The part of her mind that produced the same irrational thoughts that everyone had from time to time had been telling her that if she didn't leave the house, her diagnosis wouldn't be real. Any minute now, Nelly was going to call Jody and say that she was really sorry, but they'd mixed up her test results with some other unfortunate woman's.
Frank had been puttering around the kitchen, scrounging up some breakfast and heating up Angela's bottle. Rob had been talking excitedly to his dad about his internship at the Vancouver newspaper. Imagine being able to write for a living someday. Or even part-time. The young man had typed copious notes for story ideas into his father's laptop. Frank had capitulated a while back and told Rob to just take the computer. Frank didn't really use it, anyway. But that was a red herring, of course. Rob's birthday was coming up in a couple of months, and Frank and Jody had already decided: They were going to buy him a new laptop, put it in the trunk of the new car they were also buying him, and drive it up to Vancouver with Angela in the car seat, to have a family celebration.
Jody had given her fellows a hug and a kiss each, chucked Angela under the chin, and left the house, before she could change her mind. Now, she was making excellent time, but the irrational thought factory was working overtime. Maybe, if she pulled off the highway and went somewhere else, she wouldn't have cancer. Wasn't there an Indian casino around here somewhere? For an instant, she seriously considered it. Cas had rebelled against Heaven at one time, hadn't he? So why couldn't Jody rebel against being a middle-aged wife and mother who was about to walk into a white, antiseptic office, and be told that her life was about to undergo a radical change? That was, if her life was going to continue at all. The urge to say "Why me?" was becoming overwhelming. Most people asked that question at some point, and many people asked it of God, like they thought that the Almighty was out to get them, or something. But God was Jody's brother-in-law, and he was a nice guy. So who was she supposed to rant and rave to, exactly? And why should Jody be exempt from life's problems, anyway?
She drove on.
Gail had delivered Nicole to the movie set, and then she had come back to the bunker, gotten Dean, and zapped him over to her and Cas's house. She had made him wait a couple of minutes while she cleaned up the dust that had accumulated there, and then they'd gotten into her and Cas's car and driven over to Frank's place.
Rob was already standing on the sidewalk in front of the house. "Both Dad and Angela are having a nap, so I figured I'd just wait for you out here," he told them. Dean got out of the drivers' seat and walked around to the passenger side, where Gail was sitting. Rob settled in the driver's seat as Dean opened the passenger side door, gesturing to Gail.
"In the back, Mrs. God," he told her. "I'm the teacher. I sit up front."
She sighed, but she got out obediently and went to the back seat. Rob adjusted the seat and the mirrors while Dean turned on the radio.
Gail's lips twitched as Dean groaned. She had all the stations pre-set to pop music and Top 40. Dean kept punching buttons, and he started to swear in frustration. "Don't you have any decent music on this thing?"
"What do you mean?" she said innocently. "That's good music, Dean."
"OK, number one, it's not," he grumbled, "and, number two..."
She waited, but he just kept pushing buttons. "Number two...what?" she asked, curious.
"That's it," he retorted. "This music is all crap. It's number two." Dean couldn't believe it. He kept on punching buttons, as if doing so enough times would change the outcome. Every station was pop music, or even worse, hip-hop. Every. Damn. Station.
Gail was trying not to laugh, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. Rob turned towards Dean. "If you're finished having a cow, I'm ready to go, Uncle Dean," the young man said, amused.
"Nobody's going anywhere until I find something listen-able," Dean said through gritted teeth.
"Hey, I like all that stuff," Rob protested. "And besides, Uncle Sam told me that's the way it works: Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cake-hole. He told me to tell you that, if you complained about Aunt Gail's music."
Dean did a double-take, and then his expression morphed into a strange mixture of pride, disgust, and outrage. Then Gail did start to laugh. She just about slid out of the back seat. "Wait till I tell Sam," she crowed. "You should see the look on your face! Too funny!"
Dean glared at her. Then he snapped off the radio. "Never mind. Rob should be concentrating on his driving, anyway."
Rob grinned at Gail, turning on the ignition. "Don't worry, Aunt Gail. When Mom and Dad give me my car, I'll put all the good stations on the radio."
She eyed him. "Did your parents TELL you they're getting you a car?"
He smiled, pulling away from the curb. "Nope."
Gail nodded. Her nephew, the psychic. "But don't say anything to them, OK, you guys?" Rob continued. "I don't want to spoil their surprise. I know how excited they are about it."
Both Gail and Dean promised not to tell. Gail sat back and looked out the window, watching the scenery go by. What a nice day it was shaping up to be. "I'll tell you what, you guys," she said. "The Almighty gave me some spending money, and it's burning a hole in my pocket. Once Rob's driving lesson is over, we'll go to the city and get him to do some parallel parking, and then I'll treat you guys to lunch. How does that sound?"
"What about YOUR lesson?" Dean said warily.
"Ahhhh, the heck with it," she said happily. "It's such a nice day, I think I'll just sit back and enjoy the limo ride."
"Thank God," Dean sighed, relieved.
Gail grinned. "He says you're welcome."
They drove on down the road. "Let's hear some tunes, Rob," Gail exhorted her nephew. Rob turned on the radio, and Dean groaned again.
"So, bottom line it for me, Nelly: what are my options?" Jody asked her doctor friend.
Nelly sighed. "There aren't too many, Jody. I'm sorry. If you wanted, we could try to do a lumpectomy. But if you want the truth, it's risky. If the cancer metastasizes, you're just asking for trouble. So I would recommend the full mastectomy, with removal of the lymph nodes, following up with chemotherapy."
Jody was so shocked that she felt her whole body freeze. "What the hell, Nelly? We're talking about a little lump here! Aren't we?"
Nelly made a face. "Not exactly. If you'd had your mammograms last year, we probably would have caught it a lot sooner. But the mass is larger now."
Jody couldn't believe it. But she had no one but herself to blame for that. Nelly had reminded her several times to have the tests, and Jody had kept putting it off.
Nelly was on the verge of tears now. "I'm so sorry, Jody," she said to her friend. "I would give anything not to be telling you this. But we have to treat it aggressively; otherwise...well, you know. Go home and talk to Frank, and give me a call once you decide. I have some connections; I can talk to some people at Lebanon General and ask them to fast-track your surgery."
Jody continued to just sit there, not saying a word. Well, holy crap. How in the hell was she going to tell Frank about this? He was going to freak out. She hadn't even told him about the mammograms. When she'd initially had the tests a few years ago, he had been so nervous. So she hadn't wanted to put him through that again this time. She had honestly thought of the tests as just a formality. If you looked up "denial" in the dictionary, her picture would have been featured prominently.
"There are all kinds of innovations these days, Jody," Nelly was saying now. "Breast reconstruction, better medications...it's not like in your mom's day, I promise."
"Take me for a drink," Jody blurted out.
Nelly brightened. "Sure. I'll close the office, and we'll go for lunch."
"No, not lunch. A drink," Jody said. "Maybe two. Then, I'm going to go home to talk to my husband."
"It'll be all right, Jody," Nelly told her. "We'll make sure you're all right."
But it wasn't Nelly whose chest they were going to carve up, was it? Jody thought resentfully. But that was unfair, and she knew it. Nelly cared about her, and her doctor friend was only trying to keep her spirits up.
"Let's go," Jody said, grabbing her purse.
"That was a good piece of parking, Rob," Dean told the teenager. They were getting out of the car in the downtown area now. Rob had wanted to practice parallel parking, so he had done it a few times, in different locations. Then they had spotted a restaurant while circling the block, and Dean had suggested that Rob should park in the first curbside spot he could find. So they had parked around the corner from the place, and Dean was digging in his pockets for change, squinting at the parking meter.
"I hate these things," he grumbled. "I can never figure out how much you're supposed to put in, or for how long." He looked at Rob. "Got any change?" As Rob started to dig into his pants pocket, Dean looked at Gail. She gave him a half-shrug, and he threw his hands up in frustration. What else was new?
Gail's lips twitched. It was fun to watch Dean get wound up sometimes. She stepped forward. "Tell Cas to look the other way for a minute," she joked. Then she touched the parking meter, and the needle moved to the maximum setting. "I can never read these things either, but I think we might be good for a couple of days, now," she quipped.
Dean flashed her a grin. "Thanks, Mrs. Lord. Come on, let's go. I'm starving."
They walked around the corner, chatting about Rob's upcoming trip to Vancouver. "Barry's gonna take me to the casino and show me around," Rob told Gail. "I don't know if I'm old enough to gamble, but I just wanted to see the place, anyway."
"You should go to the Poker Room and look at the High Limit tables," Gail said, nudging him gently. "Your Uncle Cas used to clean up there. That's how we met Barry, actually."
A young girl in a bright red hoodie was walking towards them on the sidewalk, and she stopped short when she saw the trio. "Excuse me, I wonder if you guys can help me?" she said politely. "I'm looking for an address, and I think I'm lost."
"Sure," Rob said, moving towards her. She was kind of cute. "Where are you trying to go?"
"I have a map here - " the girl said, as the three of them approached her. Then suddenly, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a gun. "I have a message from Crowley," the girl said. "The Holy War is on." She shot Rob three times, in quick succession. He had been standing the closest to her, preparing to look at the map she'd said she had. Then the girl shot Gail twice, as Rob fell to the sidewalk.
By the time the girl was aiming the gun at Dean, he was already on the move. She shot at him, but the bullet only grazed his arm. All those years of experience with Hunting had given him a sixth sense about these types of things, and he acted swiftly. He rushed the girl and wrestled the gun out of her hand. They made eye contact, and her eyes turned black. Crap!
The Demon grinned, but before It could knock Dean into next week, Gail grabbed them both and popped them into the alleyway. She took her Angel blade out of her pocket and offered it to Dean, but he said, "Don't worry; I'm packing." He took a Demon blade out of his jacket. "Go. Get help," he told her. She winked back out to the sidewalk where Rob lay.
Dean stuck the Demon girl with the blade just as the black smoke issued from her mouth. Double crap! The bitch had smoked out. The human girl the Demon had been possessing fell to the ground, dead. Great. Just great. But he couldn't worry about that now. Rob was the priority. Dean shoved the Demon blade back in his jacket pocket and then ran down the alleyway toward the street.
The homeless man emerged from behind the dumpster where he had been hiding, cowering in fear. He'd been rooting around in the bin when that man and woman had suddenly appeared, holding onto a young girl. Then the woman had offered a large dagger to the man, but he'd said he had his own, and then the woman had disappeared. The man had stabbed the young girl with the knife he'd had in his hand, and some black smoke had come out of her mouth. Then she had fallen down on the ground as the man stood over her body, his knife dripping with her blood. Then the man had sworn loudly, put the knife in his pocket, and then took off.
Zeke stood there now, frozen in terror. What should he do now? Was the girl dead? She looked dead. He should probably go over there and check. But what if somebody came along and saw him standing over her? He could swear up and down that he hadn't been the one to hurt her, but Zeke knew how things worked in the real world.
Then he heard the sirens, and that decided him. Zeke turned around and hightailed it out of there.
When Gail had popped in and out, she hadn't even thought about the potential for eyewitnesses. She'd just been so panicked at the sight of Rob having been shot. She realized that she was shot too, of course, but the wounds must not be that bad, because she was still standing. Either that, or the adrenaline produced by the fear had temporarily overridden everything else. The gunshots had hurt her vessel, but right now, her priority was her nephew.
People gathered around as she knelt down beside Rob on the sidewalk. He was bleeding copiously, and he appeared to be unconscious. If only these people weren't around, maybe she could see if she could heal him. But Rob had bullets in his body now, and there was nothing she could do about that.
Then she heard the siren. She jumped to her feet and ran out into the street. Unbelievably, there was an ambulance, coming her way. She stepped in front of it and waved her arms, flagging it down.
Pete slammed on the brakes. He'd been driving leisurely down the street, asking his partner where he'd like to go for lunch, when he'd heard the unmistakable sound of gunshots. So he had put the siren on and floored the gas, and now here was one of the apparent victims, hailing the ambulance.
Pete stopped the vehicle just as Dean came running around the corner. Gail looked at him. "Is she - " Gail said, and Dean said, "Gone."
But there was no time for details. "Are you all right?" Pete asked her, but she shook her head, grabbing him by the arm. "I'm fine. Somebody else needs help. Come with me."
As Pete's partner opened the back doors of the ambulance, Gail led Pete over to where Rob lay. After a cursory examination of the boy, Pete hurried over to the ambulance and helped his partner bring out the stretcher. They got Rob onto it and put him in the back of the ambulance as Gail grabbed Dean's hand.
"We want to go with you," she told the attendants. "We're his parents." That was a trick that she had learned from Cas. Hospital personnel were much more inclined to allow you to be with your loved ones if you told them that you were related to them. She didn't feel one bit guilty about lying, either. Rob WAS her family.
As Gail and Dean sat holding hands in the back of the ambulance, Gail sent out the emergency call to Cas on their frequency, telling him to meet them at the hospital. The instant they'd gotten in the ambulance, Dean had asked the attendant where they were taking Rob. The man was working on the teen now as Gail and Dean sat on the jump seat, tight-lipped with shock. What the hell had just happened back there? It had been so sudden, and so out of the blue. Crowley said the Holy War was on? Why? Had he sent that Demon to target them? And if so, why now? Crowley and Cas hadn't even spoken since before Cas went to the desert, and there had been no aggression between them after that. None.
Gail squeezed Dean's hand almost painfully as the EMT tore Rob's shirt open to look closer at his wounds. It looked like there was a bullet in his chest above where his heart would be, and one in his stomach. She couldn't see a third, even though she was sure there had been three shots. But did it really matter? There was so much blood, and the boy looked so pale.
"Dean..." she wailed, and he put his arms around her, holding her. Oh, crap. This was bad. "He'll be all right, Gail," Dean muttered, because that was what he was supposed to say. But how the hell did he know? Once they made sure that Rob was taken care of, Dean was going to insist that Cas take him to the crossroads, so he could watch Cas carve the King of Hell into tiny little pieces. Why hadn't they killed Crowley years ago? There always seemed to be some kind of excuse. But the bottom line was that this was on all of them. Rob had to be all right. He just had to be. His dad was buying him a car.
"I'm sorry," Dean said out loud. Who was he apologizing to? Rob? Gail? Frank and Jody? Crap! Frank and Jody.
"We've gotta call Frank," Dean said, reaching into his pocket for his cell phone.
She put her hand on his arm. "He and Cas are already at the hospital." She looked at the EMT. "How is he? How long until we get there?"
"We'll be there in about ten minutes," he told her, and then he went back to work. Gail noticed he hadn't answered her other question, the really important one. Her shoulder hurt. She glanced down at herself. The upper right part of her top was soaked in blood, and there was a hole where the bullet had gone in. She shouldn't have looked. Now that she had, it really hurt. Where was the other one? Oh. There. In the top of her left thigh.
Dean saw where she was looking. "Did she get you?" he asked his Angel friend.
"Yeah, but I'll get fixed up once we get to the hospital," she told him with a pointed look, and Dean nodded. In his panic about Rob, he'd forgotten who her husband was. Gail wasn't gonna need a doctor.
"How about you?" Gail asked, and Dean showed her his arm. "Just a flesh wound," he replied. Gail sighed with relief. Well, thank goodness for that, anyway.
They arrived at the hospital's emergency entrance. Dean and Gail scrambled out the back as Pete and the other man took Rob out of the back and then wheeled him through the sliding doors.
Frank and Cas were just inside, and they rushed over to the gurney now. "Watch out, Sir," Pete said to Frank.
"I'm his father," Frank said loudly. The EMTs glanced briefly at Dean and Gail, but they kept on moving. There was no time to sort out relationships now. The young man on the stretcher needed to get to the operating room, right away.
"Please move," Pete said to Frank, who was trying to get a look at Rob's face. If he could only see his son's face, then he could be sure that Rob was going to be OK. But Cas put his hand on Frank's arm, gently moving him away from the rolling stretcher. "Let them by, Frank," he said softly. Frank moved aside and Cas touched Rob quickly, as the men rolled him past. Still alive. His wounds were serious, but Rob lived. Thank you, Father. If Cas had a few minutes alone with his nephew, he could dig the bullets out of his body and heal the bleeding wounds. But there might be internal damage to the boy's organs, and he would need to receive some more blood. Best to let the professionals do their jobs.
The EMTs wheeled Rob to the elevator, whisking him upstairs to the surgical wing as Cas, Frank, Gail and Dean all stood there, frozen. Then Cas's paralysis broke as he looked at Gail. Tears were streaming down her face, and her clothes were soaked with blood now. Cas rushed to her. "You're shot," he stated.
Under ordinary circumstances, Dean or Frank would have rolled their eyes, calling him Captain Obvious. But no one felt like joking right now.
"What the hell happened?" Frank demanded angrily.
"Dean, take Frank into the waiting room," Cas instructed their friend. "Gail and I will be with you in a moment." He took his wife by the hand and led her around a corner. When he was satisfied that no one was watching them, he winked her into a supply closet.
"Let me see," he said to her. He lifted her top and slipped her arm out of the sleeve where the wound near her shoulder was, and she winced in pain. "I'm sorry, my love. I'll be as quick as I can." He probed the area and dug the bullet out with his fingers as Gail whimpered. Then he healed the wound, and she sighed. He helped her put her arm through the sleeve of her top again, and then she undid her pants and Cas pulled them gently down to her knees. He did the same with the bullet in her thigh as she grabbed a towel from the shelf and gripped it tightly, wincing against the pain.
Cas kissed her thigh softly, after he had healed her. Then he rose to his feet as she did up her pants. "Are you hurt anywhere else?" he asked her, and she shook her head.
A moment later, they came back out to the waiting room, hand in hand. "Do you have a bullet wound, Dean?" Cas asked his friend.
"It just grazed me," Dean said, showing Cas his arm. Cas placed his hand on the wound, and it was gone instantly. "Thanks, Cas," Dean said, giving his friend a tight smile.
Cas and Gail sat down together on a small settee beside Frank. Gail put her hand on her brother's arm. "How are you doing?" she asked him. "Where's Jody?"
"She's coming back from Sioux Falls," he replied. "I didn't want her driving off the road somewhere if I called her and told her what was going on, or if Cas just suddenly showed up in the car. So I texted her to call me as soon as she got home. Liz is babysitting Angela."
"How bad is it?" Cas asked him. "Have any doctors been here to talk to you while we were gone?" When Frank shook his head, Cas rose. "I'll go get someone."
As Cas walked away, Frank looked at Gail. "Dean told me what happened," he said to his sister. "The second I find out my boy is gonna be OK, I'm going to have your husband take me to the crossroads, so I can have a little one-on-one with the King of Hell. And only one of us will be coming back from that conversation."
Gail frowned. "I understand how you feel, Frank. But, let Cas handle it. You've got a wife and a baby girl too, and Rob is going to need you when he wakes up."
Cas came back. "I spoke with a nurse. She said that every available doctor is working on Rob right now. Once he comes out of surgery, one of them will be here to talk to us."
"I'm sorry, Frank," Gail said to her brother as Cas sat back down beside her. "You know if there was anything I could have done for him..."
"Yeah, I know," he said soberly. "Dean told me how fast it all happened. But at least the ambulance was right there. He's gonna be all right. He's gonna be all right," Frank repeated. He had to believe that, or he was going to lose his damn mind. He wished Jody would hurry up and get home. He gave his sister a grim smile. "I'm glad you're an Angel, or I'd be freaking out about you, too. But how are you going to explain to them how you came in here, shot, and now suddenly, you're un-shot?"
"We'll just say the bullets missed us," Gail responded. "I doubt anybody really noticed us, anyway."
Frank's cell phone rang, and he took it out of his pocket, looking at the display. "It's Jody," he told everyone. He answered it. "Are you home, already?" He listened for a moment, his brow furrowing.
Jody had started to drive home, and she'd just pulled into a gas station to fill up when she got the text from her husband. She looked at it, curious. All he'd said was that she was supposed to call him as soon as she got home. Oh. Okay. He must have decided to pack Angela up and go somewhere. Whatever.
She and Nelly had had a couple of drinks together. During the first round, they'd made small talk, at Jody's insistence. She also didn't want to be one of those people who only talked about themselves and their medical status, to the exclusion of everything else. But then the talk had inevitably circled back to her, and her diagnosis. Nelly provided an ear while Jody went through a checklist of things she needed to do once she got home. Jody was trying to approach this like she would an investigation, ticking all the boxes. Tell Frank, get the kids all sorted out, pack for the hospital. "I don't know if he'll feel like it, but I'm going to tell Frank that we'd better get busy the night before I go in. It'll be his last chance to have two of them to play with," Jody had wisecracked. Nelly had laughed dutifully, but Jody's friend knew that her friend and patient was just putting on a brave front.
After the second drink, Jody had hugged Nelly and said she'd better head home before she was tempted to have another. All she would need was being pulled over for a DUI by one of her former colleagues. She'd told Nelly that she would call her soon, likely in the next day or so, to make the arrangements. And then she'd started the trip home.
Once Jody had received the text from her husband and she was back on the road, she'd started to visualize how she was going to break the news to Frank. SHE was going to end up comforting HIM, she was sure. Beneath his tough, wisecracking facade, Frank was a big, squishy marshmallow. He wasn't going to care about one less boob, but he WAS going to freak out about his wife's health. She would have to look up the statistics for the survival of breast cancer patients, and present him with those. Actually, seeing something like that in black and white would probably make Jody feel better, too.
Why did he want her to call him "as soon as" she got home? The phraseology was starting to bother her now. She and Frank were usually pretty casual about those kinds of things. You had to be, when you had two kids, and shared responsibilities. They usually knew where the other was, or roughly what time they could be expected to be home. But whenever they texted each other, it was usually an "I'll see you when I see you" type of situation. Call me "as soon as" you get home? That was unusual. What was going on? Or was she reading too much into it, because she had a huge, unexploded bomb to drop in his lap once she arrived?
Frank had no choice. Jody had pulled off the road and called him, asking what was going on. So he stammered out the news. Cas asked where Jody was, and while she was still on the phone with Frank, Cas popped over to the parking lot she had stopped in to make the call. Jody hung up the phone and dropped it on the car seat as Cas held her for a moment. Once she'd stopped shaking, Cas told her that he would get one of the Angels, maybe Chuck, to come down and drive the car the rest of the way to their house. Then he brought Jody to the waiting room of the hospital, and she and Frank sat down together, clutching at each other for support.
While this was going on, Dean had gone down the hall to get coffee for everyone, just to have something to do while they were all waiting. Gail went with him to help, because she needed something to do, too.
"Thanks," Dean said when Gail handed him a couple of bills for the vending machine. He smiled thinly. "I think this is the first time I've ever seen you pay for anything."
"Yeah, well, don't get too used to it," she retorted softly. "But, seriously, I just wanted to say thank you."
"For what?" he asked her, puzzled.
"If you hadn't gotten the gun away from her as quickly as you did, who knows how much more damage that Thing would have done," Gail replied angrily.
Dean shrugged. "Yeah, well...I wasn't quick enough, was I?" He looked at her. "Besides, we all need to be thanking you and Cas. I don't know how regular Hunters do it, without God and the Angels around to fix them up all the time." He fed the money into the machine.
"Maybe we should be instituting some kind of a Loyalty Card program," Gail quipped. "After 9 wounds, the 10th one is free."
They both laughed for a moment, but then they stopped. It felt unnatural to be laughing right now. Dean got himself a coffee, and then he asked her if she or Cas might want one. Gail demurred, but she offered to carry coffees for Frank and Jody, just in case they wanted them.
Cas had already brought Jody there by the time that Dean and Gail got back, and Dean pulled out his cell phone to call Sam. Then a nurse came to see them, and Frank and Jody rose nervously from their seats. But, the nurse apologized. There was no news yet. She was here to tend to the other victims.
"I'm sorry; we've just been so busy here today," the nurse said, approaching Gail. "I can take you now."
"Me? No, I'm fine," Gail told the woman. "The bullets missed me."
The nurse's forehead wrinkled. "But, your clothes are all bloody."
Oh. Right. Gail berated herself. She'd been so preoccupied about Rob that she had forgotten to clean herself. She thought fast. "The blood's not mine," she told the nurse.
The woman touched Gail's bloody shoulder. "Isn't that a bullet hole?" she asked sharply. "And, isn't that another one?" She pointed to Gail's jeans.
Oh, crap. Gail's mouth opened, then closed. She had nothing.
Cas sighed. He put two fingers on the nurse's forehead and modified her memory. Once she left the waiting room, Dean said, "Why don't you guys just do that all the time? Wouldn't that make things a lot easier?"
"Because it's a form of violation," Cas said soberly. "Just because we CAN do something, that doesn't mean that we SHOULD. That's a lesson the Archangels never learned. They always thought of humans as toys, to play with as they wished. Even Gabriel used to feel that way, if you'll recall. He's gotten much better since we rediscovered him in Area 51, but I know he still struggles with the notion, sometimes."
Frank had been just about to say something about not giving a rat's ass about the Archangels when a doctor approached them. "You're the boy's parents?" he asked, looking at Frank, and then at Dean. Frank did a double-take. "Remind me to find that funny later on," he said, taking Jody's hand. "WE'RE Rob's parents."
"He's in critical condition," the doctor said without preliminary. "We did everything we could."
"What the hell does that mean?!" Jody exclaimed. Frank gave her hand a gentle squeeze. She'd had the smell of alcohol on her breath when Cas had first brought her here. She must have had a brewskie with her old cop buddies. It was unusual behaviour for her, but it wasn't anything that Frank himself hadn't done before. Every once in a while he'd come home smelling of beer after dropping in on the Winchesters.
"It means that we'll have to wait and see," the doctor replied. "His wounds were very serious. That's all I can tell you for now."
"I want to see him," Jody demanded.
"I'll take you to the ICU," the doctor said. "He's not responsive at the moment. We've had to give him a lot of blood already, but he'll probably need more."
"I'll give you mine. As much as you want," Frank said quickly, as Jody cursed herself. She'd had to have those drinks, hadn't she? But, wait. They were getting ahead of themselves, here.
"We're not his birth parents," Jody told the doctor. "He's adopted."
"Oh," the surgeon remarked. "Well, if you'll all give us samples of your blood, we'll test all the samples, anyway. You never know. He's got an unusual chromosome I don't think I've ever seen before. I'd prefer to get a match, if possible."
Sam had walked into the room just in time to hear the latter part of their conversation. Cas had sent a message to Bobby on Angel Radio, asking him if he could help with transportation. He knew how much Rob meant to Bobby, as well. So Bobby had winked Sam here to the hospital, and he was currently taking Chuck to where Frank and Jody's car was. Then Bobby was going to come back here and join the vigil.
Sam had perked up as soon as he'd heard what the doctor had said about a match. As Frank and Jody followed the surgeon out of the room, Dean's brother turned to Gail. "I think you might be the key," he said to her.
Gail looked at him, puzzled. "What do you mean, Sam?"
"Isn't Rob your half-brother?" Sam said, and Gail's eyes widened. She hadn't thought of that. "Would that even work?" she asked Cas eagerly.
He thought for a moment. "I don't see why not. You're still in your original vessel. Therefore, if the two of you share a father, you might have that same chromosome."
Gail's face broke into the first genuine smile she'd had since the shooting. "And you thought I was just being stubborn, when I insisted on keeping my same vessel after that stupid panther attacked me! I guess it turns out there was a reason for all that suffering, after all. I'm going to get to help Rob get better, Cas. I'm going to give them as much blood as they need."
Cas frowned. "Let's not put the cart before the horse. First of all, your vessel needs blood, too. And secondly, we have no proof that you and Rob are related, only supposition."
"I'll tell you what," Sam said. "How about if we go to Cathy Scanlon's office, and check her records? Then we can be sure. I'm ninety-nine percent sure she knows, or even if she doesn't know, we can see if there's anything in her files that points to a commonality."
"That's an excellent idea," Cas mused. He looked at his wife. "How about this? You go with Sam, and I will stay here, in case Frank and Jody need my services."
Gail was eyeing him. "You'll stay here? Do you promise?"
He was looking at her calmly. "Yes, I promise." And, depending upon Rob's prognosis and the results of Dean and Cas's upcoming conversation, he might even be telling her the truth.
After another moment, Gail sighed. She could read her husband like a book. But she couldn't worry about that right now. She had to see if she could help Rob. She gave Cas a quick kiss, and then she and Sam walked down the corridor to find a private spot, so she could wink them away.
Jody couldn't believe it. The one in that hospital bed should be her. Actually, it WOULD be her, shortly. Rob had a breathing tube, a heart monitor, a blood bag, and an IV, all hooked up to his slender body. She could barely even see him in there. His face was so pale. She leaned down and smoothed the hair away from his forehead, giving him a gentle kiss.
"He's going to be all right, Babe," Frank said softly. "He's a fighter, just like we are." But then his voice cracked, and he started to cry.
Jody put her arms around her husband, holding him tightly. OK, this was it, now. That was all she could take. She was maxed to the hilt. How had her life turned into such a huge pile of crap, all within the last 48 hours? Who had she pissed off this badly, anyway?
Suddenly, the machine that Rob was hooked up to started to blink, and their son started to convulse. Medical personnel rushed into the room.
"He's seizing!" one of the doctors called out. "I need the crash cart, STAT!"
A nurse steered a stunned Frank and Jody out of the room. "You'll have to wait out here," she told them, and then she closed the door to Rob's room.
"Clear!" they heard the doctor yell from inside. Then, a moment later: "Again! He's not responding!" They heard the monitor start to beep, and then it emitted a steady, high-pitched sound.
And that was when Jody started to scream.
Cathy Scanlon's office door was locked, and there was a "Closed" sign in the window. Good, Gail thought. She hadn't really wanted to talk to the woman, anyway.
She grabbed Sam's hand and winked them inside. "You're the computer guy," Gail said to him, gesturing to Cathy's desk. "You do your thing, and I'll poke around in the back, to see if I can find any paper files."
Sam nodded his agreement, and he moved over to the desk to search through her computer. Meanwhile, Gail went to the back room and began opening file cabinets. This went on for a while, but she didn't see anything that could possibly pertain to herself, or Rob, or Vincent.
"Anything?" she called out to Sam.
"Nothing," he called back. "You?"
She had been about to respond in kind when she went to pull open the next drawer and met with resistance. It was locked. Hmmm.
Gail walked back to the outer office. "There's a drawer that's locked," she told Sam. "Can you look and see if there are any keys in the desk drawers?"
Sam turned to look at her. Then he raised an eyebrow. "Girlfriend, please. Remember who you're talking to," he said, putting on a funny voice, trying to get her to smile.
He was rewarded with a quick laugh. "'Girlfriend, please'?" Gail repeated, shaking her head. "Since when were you in the cast of Waiting To Exhale?"
"I just wanted to make you smile," Sam said to her, rising from Cathy's chair.
"I'll smile plenty once I know that Rob's going to be OK," she said fervently.
Sam picked up a ruler. "Show me," he said. She led him to the back room and indicated the drawer. "Stand back," he instructed, "just in case." Gail moved back, and Sam jammed the ruler in the crack of the drawer. Then he wiggled it around a bit. "Aha," he said softly. Then he tilted the ruler slowly towards himself. Once he had it at the angle he wanted, he pounded the ruler with his fist. It snapped in half, and a piece went flying across the room. "Et voila," he said as the drawer slid open.
"OK, I'm officially impressed," Gail remarked with a small smile, tilting her head.
Sam shrugged. "Simple physics," he said modestly. He reached into the drawer and grabbed a few files, handing them to her. Then he took a stack for himself. "The only problem is, the lock won't work anymore, now," Sam added.
Gail made a face. "Who cares?"
They went through a few files, and then Sam said, "Bingo. Baby Girl Gail. Father, Vincent, Mother, Abigail. Foster parents: Christina and Jim, Denver, Colorado." He held up the file.
Gail nodded, sighing. "So, it's really true, then. You know, a big part of me had been hoping all this time that he wasn't my father. That it was all a colossal mistake. But, maybe there's a reason for THAT now, too. Keep looking."
A moment later, Sam said, "Got it." He was holding up the file that had Rob's information in it. "It's here. Father, Vincent. No mother listed here, but there's a cross-reference to another file number."
"Are we sure that's even him, then?" Gail asked, quite reasonably. "Rob's a fairly common name."
Sam looked down at the file again. "Foster parents: Felicia and Mark. Gotta be."
"OK. That's good enough for me," she said briskly. "We'll take those two files with us. Here, help me put the rest back. Then we'll just close the cabinet back up. With any luck, she won't notice it's been tampered with; at least, not for a while." Gail rushed forward, shoving the file folders in the drawer.
Sam was bemused. "What's your hurry? Rob probably won't wake up for a while, from the sound of things."
"It's not only him that I'm worried about," Gail told Sam. "You're a smart guy. Why do you suppose I made Cas promise he would stay at the hospital? Dean told you what that Demon said when she opened fire, right?"
"Well, you know what?" Sam said angrily, his jaw clenching. "Crowley needs a good smiting. I've thought so for years. I wouldn't blame Cas one bit."
"No, Sam," she insisted. "There wouldn't be any winners in a Holy War, just lots of dead bodies. Besides, something about it just seems really fishy to me." She explained what she'd been thinking earlier, and Sam listened, then nodded thoughtfully. "You could be right," he said. "But, let's think about this for a minute. If Crowley doesn't want the Holy War, and Cas no longer wants the Holy War, then that begs the question: Who does?"
Gail pursed her lips. She had no answer for that question. "Let's go," she said, taking his hand.
"So, what happened, Dean?" Cas was asking his friend quietly. "Describe to me exactly what happened, from the moment you got out of the car."
Dean sighed. "I already told you, Cas. We parked, your wife fixed the meter - cool trick, by the way - we were walking down the street to the restaurant, hoodie girl says 'Excuse me' - "
"Hoodie?" Cas interrupted. "You didn't mention that before."
Dean gave a half-shrug. "OK. She was wearing a bright red hoodie. Like Little Miss Freakin' Riding Hood, or something. Whatever. Anyway, she asks us to help her with directions, we stop, she says she's got a map, she pulls a piece out of her pocket instead, and starts plugging away. And that was it. End of story."
"And you did or said nothing to provoke It?" Cas pressed on. He refused to call that abomination "her". His blood was boiling, but he had to get all the facts, first.
"No! I didn't even know the Thing was a Demon until I got closer," Dean replied. "I'm surprised Gail didn't know, though."
Cas frowned. He was wondering about that, too. As an Angel, Gail should have sensed what It was immediately. It was puzzling. Several things about the situation were puzzling him, in fact. "And what exactly did It say?" he pushed on.
"She said she had a message from Crowley; that the Holy War was on," Dean said, tight-lipped.
"And you didn't engage with this Demon in any way, aside from that?" Cas pressed his friend. "Are you absolutely sure that nothing else was said?"
"Of course I'm sure!" Dean said impatiently. He was exasperated now. It was almost like Cas was saying that it was Dean's fault, or something. Like he didn't believe him that nothing else had been said. "I didn't do a damn thing, Cas! None of us did! It was totally out of the blue. I swear, Cas. I swear."
Cas's eyes began to glow a bright blue. "I don't enjoy lying to my wife," he said in his quietest angry voice.
Dean's forehead wrinkled. "Huh?"
"I promised her I would stay here," Cas said, and his voice was almost a whisper now.
Then, Dean got it. "Look, man, as much as I want to see you wipe Crowley and the rest of those asshats off the map, maybe you should stay here, at least for now. I know that look," he said uneasily.
Frank and Jody came back into the waiting room. Frank had his arms around his wife, supporting her, and Jody was crying. Cas and Dean rose slowly from their seats. Then Sam and Gail walked into the room, just as Frank was opening his mouth to speak. But, for the first time in his life, Frank had nothing to say. Instead, he just burst into tears.
Raguel raised a glass to Rowena. "A toast, to the launch of Phase One," he said. "Tomorrow, we will kill a couple of Castiel's human pets. Then, we'll dispatch some of our Demon recruits to other locations. And then we will sit back, and watch the fireworks commence."
- END OF BOOK 30. -
