A/N: As stated on my other stories, I apologize to anyone that left review that I didn't respond to. Some days, I just can't seem to get my sht together. Thanks to everyone that took the time to leave one, I really do appreciate it.

Chapter 6

Sam had been sitting in his little corner trolling around the internet for a couple of hours, not really finding anything of much interest as he was really just killing time. The last day had been a whirlwind of activity since he'd been startled awake by the first words his brother had spoken in weeks. He looked at his watch and tried to figure out just how long ago it had been exactly since that moment, and doing the math, realized it had been over seventeen hours after he'd only slept for a mere three hours before that. No wonder he was ready to drop at only seven o'clock in the evening.

He was about ready to shut down his computer and head in for the night himself as he was becoming increasingly unable to suppress one yawn after another, each one stretching his mouth further and further as it made it's escape from him when one of his brother's various doctors appeared before him.

"Hey Sam," the man greeted in a cheery tone with a smile on his face for the first time since he'd met him, the day he'd put all Dean's broken pieces back together and told him to just keep praying.

"Hey Dr. Horton, is something wrong?" Sam looked at him, not seeing any bad news written on the man's face. He was pretty familiar with that look, but right now, it just wasn't there.

"No, nothing. I just wanted to talk to you before I went home for the evening to let you know I heard about what happened last night, or rather early this morning, and took the liberty of having some x-rays taken while all the other tests were being run. Everything appears to be healing quite nicely and he should be out of that cast in a couple weeks. Now that he's awake and alert, we'll probably be able to release him soon. Julia will continue to work with him everyday while he's here to build his other muscles back up, but once that cast comes off he's going to need some pretty extensive therapy on his leg. I'm telling you this because I really want him to continue his therapy once he's discharged and not attempt to do it on his own. He could do more harm then good if he doesn't do it right, which could make the damage permanent, and judging by what Julia told me, I don't think he's planning on setting foot anywhere near this place once we let him out. Besides, it's all paid for anyway, so why not?"

Sam took in everything the doctor told him, each and every point being made describing his brother perfectly. Dean would try to rehab himself, probably while they were on the road somewhere or, more then likely, at Bobby's. He would never allow anyone else to help him; it just wasn't in his nature. Sam knew he'd have to make the decisions for Dean and make damn sure he knew they were not negotiable.

"Don't worry Dr. Horton, I'll make sure he continues his rehab here. Dean will do what's necessary, whether he likes it or not."

"Good. Julia will be happy to hear that. She is our resident 'pit-bull' and is looking forward to the challenge. We give her all the difficult cases because of it."

"Yeah, I gathered that when we met her. I'm sure she'll do a great job," Sam smirked. If their previous encounter was any indication, Dean will have most definitely met his match.

"She'll get him on his feet in no time. Good evening Sam, it was nice to give you good news for a change." The doctor shook Sam's hand before leaving for the night, giving him something new to think about now.

If Dean was released, they would need a place to stay, other then a crappy motel with hard, lumpy beds that will rent rooms by the hour when necessary, just to please their diverse clientele. He thought about looking for a place online since he was sitting there with Google already glaring at him and waiting for his command, but decided he was just too damn tired after a long and busy day. He shut the computer down and clicked the lid shut, tucking it under his arm as he stood to go back to the room they shared, pretty sure Dean had to be sound asleep by now. He really had looked exhausted too, after the day he'd had, and for him to even tell Sam he was tired spoke volumes.

He hesitated just outside the door as he grabbed the handle and pulled, opening it slowly and trying not to make a sound as he entered the pitch-dark room. He left the door open enough to let in the light he'd need from the hallway to make it to the other side without walking into everything in-between as he went, which would disturb everyone that was trying to sleep at the moment in the whole building, not just Dean. He crossed the room silently, pausing at Dean's bedside to make absolutely sure he was fully asleep before he turned on his own bedside light. Sam wasn't sure how he'd done it, but somehow Dean had turned onto his side in what looked like an extremely uncomfortable position from where Sam stood as his eyes were fixed on the back of his brother's head. His leg in the cast was propped up on it's usual pillows, but now twisted at an odd angle as his other leg was somehow sticking out almost behind it and bent at the knee, making him look like he was doing some macabre Emily Rose in church impersonation. Standing totally still in the barely lit room, he listened to what he knew should have been the deep, rhythmic breaths of sleep, but actually heard heavy, labored breathing coming hard and fast instead.

Taking the final few steps to the bedside, he saw Dean had somehow also grasped hold of the raised bedrail and pulled himself as close to the edge of the bed as his broken leg would allow, wrapping his arm around the railing tight and holding on to it for dear life. His face hung over the side as the rest of his body was twisted up in his blanket, leaving him half covered/half exposed and shivering slightly. Hearing the way he was breathing told Sam that something was wrong in a big way.

"Dean," he whispered next to his ear as he laid a hand softly against his back, fully expecting him to jerk away and bark some expletives about his personal space. The reaction he got was anything but that, Dean instead pressing his body harder against the touch. Sam could feel him shaking, instantly sending a whole new wave of concern through him.

"Ohhhh, I don't feel so good Sam, " Dean let out in a groan, his voice coming out louder with each word as Sam felt every muscle in Dean's shoulders and back tense in preparation for the heaving he was sure was coming.

Dean's stomach clenched up tight as a series of retching started and Sam realized this was not the first bout of vomiting his brother had had this evening. No, his stomach was already empty, it's contents probably on the floor on the other side of the bed right now. Sam rubbed his brother's back as he continued to throw up something that wasn't there until it finally realized nothing was going to come out and started to relax slightly. Sam felt it and grabbed Dean's shoulder, speaking to him in as calm a voice as he could get out.

"Just relax Dean, close your eyes so I can turn on the light."

"They are closed Sam," Dean choked out, his voice much louder then he'd meant it to be.

Sam reached above the bed and slowly lit up the room enough to see the unnatural shade of green his brother's face had become as he held his eyes shut tight, the grimace spread across his face filling Sam's heart with an overwhelming sense of pity for Dean. 'God, hasn't he been through enough yet?' he thought.

"Can you roll over Dean?" Sam asked, tugging gently on his arm in an attempt to lay him flat. Dean released his death-grip on the railing and let Sam roll him onto his back, making no effort to either help or resist. As Sam turned his upper body, Dean's good leg got jammed under his broken one when his hips didn't turn with the rest of him, eliciting a tortured cry as a sharp pain shot up his back. Dean didn't really know the full extent of all his injuries yet, but he was figuring them out one by one as they all made themselves known.

"STOP!" He screamed unnecessarily, since Sam had stopped moving him the instant the yelp escaped his lip. "My leg's stuck."

Sam saw what his brother was talking about as he looked at the leg pinned under the upper half of the cast and twisted in such a weird way that he was almost laying on his stomach and just didn't have the muscle strength to turn himself back over. Sam let go of Dean's shoulder and positioned himself at the other side of the bed, grabbing Dean's leg at the knee with both hands and carefully pulled it out until his brother's hips were straight and his upper body fell flat on the mattress.

Finally on his back and untwisted, he let out the breath he'd been holding since the sharp jolt shot through him from Sam's attempted correction of his body position. Sam unraveled the blanket and spread it out over Dean's body when he saw him shiver occasionally, not necessarily from the cold but from something else entirely. Looking down to the floor, he saw he'd been right in his earlier observation, thankful Dean had at least gotten himself turned over before he'd actually brought up what the nurses had called lunch. Sam reached for the call button but never go a chance to use it as Dean wrapped his hand around it and prevented him from summoning assistance.

"I'm ok Sam, don't call them," he begged, knowing full well what would happen if Sam did, and not wanting to explain what has just happened.

"Dean, you just threw up down the side of your bed and all over the floor. I have to call someone to clean it up, and clean YOU up," Sam told his brother, wondering exactly who Dean thought would be mopping up the mess. It didn't matter what Dean wanted anyway, because someone else made the decision for him.

"Everything alright in here?" A questioning voice asked from the doorway as a nurse stuck her head inside somewhat tentatively. Both brothers answered at the same time, but not in unison. A "NO" from Sam and a "YES" from Dean and she was in the room and at the bedside instantly, already sizing up the situation and attempting to check on the condition of her patient.

Sam decided he better do the talking because Dean had already started fuming. He was pretty sure anything that would come from his brother's mouth right now would be as nasty as the mess on the floor as the green in his face was being replaced by an interesting shade of red.

"I don't think my brother feels very well," he started to tell her, but unfortunately for them, Dean decided to express his feeling himself, not bothering to let Sam finish.

"Thanks Captain Obvious, I think she could have figured that one out for herself though. Tell me something, is it the same color as that crap you called soup earlier? I'd be willing to bet if you scooped it up into a bowl it would look exactly the same way it did when you served it to me luke-warm and expected me to eat it. Shit, my stomach was turning just trying to swallow that crap," Dean spewed out his anger at both Sam and the poor nurse that was just trying help. Dean knew what had made him so sick, but if Sam didn't know, he wasn't telling him. 'Blame it on the food, he'll believe that' he figured.

"Dean, would you please let her do her job. Don't take it out on her," Sam almost ordered his brother, staring him down and telling him with his eyes to just cut the crap now and quit prolonging the inevitable. Dean heard him loud and clear, letting his body go limp and fixing his eyes on the ceiling as the nurse did what she needed to do. She finished quickly and excused herself, telling them both she'd be right back.

"Dean, what happened? You were alright when I left, weren't you?" Sam asked, needing to know.

"I just got sick Sam, that's all. It happens when you eat the garbage they give you here," he answered, needing to shift the blame away from what the real cause had been.

"I have eaten the garbage they give you here Dean, it didn't make me sick," Sam responded to his brother's pitiful excuse as his brow started to furrow, his internal 'Dean Bullshit Detector' kicking fully in. He knew that tone of voice, it was the one that came out when Dean was trying to hide something.

"Yeah, well, eat that crap after you've been Sleeping Beauty for five weeks and your stomach is totally unprepared for an assault of that magnitude," he whined, probably for the hundredth time today.

Another thought crossed Sam's mind and he fully intended on getting an answer that actually sounded like the truth from Dean.

"How did you get so twisted up in your blanket Dean? And how did you get your legs and hips so turned around? You couldn't have twisted yourself up like that since you didn't have the strength to right yourself after," the suspicion was obvious in Sam's voice now and Dean knew he wasn't buying what he was selling.

"Well, I must have when I started getting sick, and I didn't exactly want to puke on myself," he explained what he thought would be simple logic. Dean was running out of excuses and thanked his lucky stars when the nurse came back in with two others, saving him from himself.

"Sam, would you mind waiting outside while we take care of things in here?" She told him, in a nicely asking sort of way, of course.

"Yeah Sam, wait outside will ya? Looks like it's sponge bath time!" Somehow it sounded like a better idea then Dean really thought it was, but if it got rid of Sam for the moment, he'd let them soak him in battery acid right now.

"Fine, but we will continue this later," Sam left as requested, grabbing his laptop as he went and trying to remember when he'd dropped in at the foot of Dean's bed in the first place. Dean was lying, and hiding something, and he knew it, and somehow he was going to call him on it.

He found himself right back where he'd been only minutes before, doing exactly what he'd been doing as if the last ten minutes had all been a hallucination. If he was tired before, he was totally spent now, and instead of booting up his computer, he just leaned his head back against the wall and let his heavy eyes close. He dozed off peacefully until he was shaken awake by the poor nurse that had taken the brunt of Dean's anger.

"Sam, wake up. We're done. Why don't you go back in there and get some sleep?"

Sam didn't need to be told twice and marched back into the room, ready to continue his inquisition. That was more important then sleep at the moment. He stopped short when he looked at his brother, his appearance a stark contrast to the one he'd seen last. With his lower lip stuck out far enough for birds to use a perch, he looked like a little kid that had his favorite toy ripped from his hands and stomped on under the schoolyards bully's foot.

"You feel better?" He started with, waiting for the trademark 'I'm fine'. It's not what he got.

"Sam, why did you have to tell her I got sick? She went and called the doctor when she left, did you know that? She told him I threw up and that my blood pressure was too high. I just got rid of this damn IV and now they went and stuck it back in. Why couldn't you just keep your big mouth shut?" Dean ranted, tears welling in his eyes and streaming down his face as he began, escalating to an emotionally-charged free flow by the time he'd finished. Tears rolled as Dean tried to take in breaths, his chest hitching with each attempt at breathing he made.

Sam was dumbstruck. He had NEVER seen his brother crumble into an emotional wreck before, and he really didn't know what to say. Then it hit him. He was going to get his answers now. He put a hand on Dean's shoulder and decided to go to town and see just how far he could get.

"I'm really sorry Dean. Can you tell me what happened?" Sam asked in a comforting parent-like voice, not wanting to startle Dean back into the reality that he was a man just yet.

"I don't want to talk about it Sam," he spit out between breaths, head hung low as the tears starting to ebb, but with the emotions still there, just waiting for another trigger to set them off again.

"Dean, look at me," Sam reached for his brother's chin and turned up his face to meet his, "Did you have another seizure, it that how you got all twisted up like that?" There, he'd said it, the question being on the back of his mind since he walked out of the room earlier.

Just when he thought he had the tears under control, they welled up again and made their way down his face right behind the last flood. He had no idea where they were coming from and no idea how to stop them. "How did you know Sam?" 'God, I'm such a woman' he thought.

He knew it! Somehow Sam knew Dean was hiding something and was desperate that nobody find out. He would have gotten away with it too, if he hadn't polished the floor with his stomach contents.

"Lucky guess. You know we need to tell the doctor, don't you?"

"NO SAM! YOU CAN'T!" he cried, almost sounding panicked. Sam new he had to get this situation under control now, before Dean started hyperventilating. He sat next to his brother on the edge of the bed and put a comforting arm around him in an effort to calm him down. It worked, almost instantly.

"Dude, get off me," he barked, eyes drying up the second he realized Sam was about to hug him as he shoved him away. Whatever it was that put a stranglehold over his emotions had just been broken as his head finally cleared itself so he could actually think. His breathing evened out as a feeling of normalcy finally came back to him, and now he needed to figure out what the hell was going on here.

Removing his ass from the bed at the quick shove he'd been given, Sam stood and looked his brother's in the red, puffy eyes as he, too, tried to figure out what the hell was going on. "Ok Dean, spill it. Why should I not tell the doctor about the seizure?" Sam tapped his foot on the floor impatiently, fully expecting this answer to be really good.

Dean bit his lip as his mind tried to bring up the memory he knew was there, the memory of the seizure actually fresh in his mind still. He remembered the voice, the woman's voice, telling him something, but it was still foggy. He pondered it for a few long seconds, then it finally came to him like someone had turned on the light bulb in his head. Memories started dancing around in there, some vivid, some still vague, but all still there.

"Because I don't think their seizures Sam. Someone's trying to tell me something. Give me the computer, will you?"

Sam's foot continued it's tapping on the floor as he stared at his brother, wondering what kind of scheme he was hatching to get out of this one. He huffed loudly, but handed it over silently and watched Dean boot it up and start looking through his brother's bookmarks, knowing he'd find exactly the one he was looking for. It didn't take long as his eyes fell on the newspaper article that had hit the front page of the local rag the day after the accident. The headline was bold, and explained a lot in just one short sentence.

FATAL CRASH KILLS SOCIALITE, CRITICALLY INJURES ANOTHER

Dean scrolled down through the article, not wanting to read the gory details but satisfied to see his name had been kept out of it, at least for now. He stopped at the picture of the woman that had been driving, the woman that had almost killed him, and immediately held his breath. He knew her, he had seen her in the corner after the last seizure he'd had. He had also seen her in the street after the accident, as she held onto him for dear life. That was her, and she was dead, but somehow, she was haunting him. What was it she had said, 'There are two of us now'. What was that supposed to mean? She also said 'Remember what you saw after the accident'. What had he seen after the accident, besides her in the street clinging to him like a scared child. He couldn't remember, but he knew he had to try.

"Care to share what's flopping around in that head of yours big brother?" Sam asked, mildly annoyed, but curious. He could tell by the look on Dean's face that he wasn't trying to make up a line of bullshit anymore.

"That woman, Trish Waterson, the one that hit me, I've seen her Sam. I saw her in the street when you said I was dead and I saw her in this room after the last… well… you know. She's haunting me somehow. She told me to remember what I saw after the accident. I saw her, and I think she was clinging onto me when they brought me back. Do you think I could have brought her back with me?" Dean was a little freaked at the prospect, but if it was the case, it was an easy fix. Salt and burn her, that should do it.

Sam was following Dean's train of thought right along with him, desperate for a reason his brother was having the seizures and still at a loss for the cause of the one blue eye Dean still didn't know he possessed. Yeah, he'd definitely save that piece of information for later, much later. It all seemed too easy, all made too much sense though, but maybe for a change it was. Yeah, right, he thought, but didn't dare say.

"I guess it's possible. It would explain a lot. She was an epileptic, maybe she induces the seizures in you to communicate with you. Maybe she just wants to be put to rest."
"Maybe we need to go salt and burn her ass so she'll get out of me and leave me alone," Dean matter-of-factly told Sam, fully intending on dragging himself from his bed and doing it himself if he had to.

"What do you mean, WE? You aren't going anywhere. I'll check out the place in morning and when Bobby gets back, we'll take care of it. In the meantime, you just stay put," Sam's mind was moving too, praying that Dean was right. "Right now, I suggest we both get some sleep, because I'm too damn tired right now to do anything else."

"Yeah, me too." Dean let his eyes drift closed as Sam turned off the light, both men hoping for an uneventful night.