Wow, that last chapter was my best yet in terms of reviews. I'm truly touched by the number of you who offered your thoughts on the story. So I wrote my little heart out in an attempt to get this one up for you all as quickly as possible. I made a promise to some of you that this would be the darkest chapter, and that it would start looking up from here - which meant I had to write a longer chapter in order to finish everything I started. Yes, this is the suicide chapter. And no, I do not write character deaths. Hope that's enough to keep you all reading. Once again, thanks so much for all your kind words and wonderful loyalty. You all rock. And now, we continue...
Two Hours Earlier
Options. He had multiple options, and Dean weighed each one individually, carefully debating on the pros and cons of each one as he sat on the closed toilet lid. His hands shook nervously as his eyes darted from one to the next, scrutinizing every angle to come up with the best plan for everyone. The hollow echo of the dripping water in the sink seemed to count donw the seconds until he made his choice. Drip. Option one. Drip. Option two. Drip. Option three... They all beckoned to him. Choose me, Dean. No, Dean, pick me! Every one had its good and its bad...well, its bad and its worse, he rationalized. And yet, the one thought that never seemed to cross his tormented mind as he debated his options was that, if he was thinking rationally enough to consider every angle, why was he even contemplating suicide in the first place.
But then, that was a Winchester for you. First his attention fell to the gun, heavy in his hand but natural, familiar. The curve of the handle seemed to fit him better than any glove ever would, the trigger smooth and shiny from years of use. And the realization that this would be the most fitting, the most Dean-like resolution to his problem sat foremost in his mind. He could eat a bullet no problem; one pull of the trigger and he'd be gone. But then he considered the noise it would make, and the fact that Sam would hear the gunshot immediately and come running. He couldn't let Sam find him still warm, blood and matter sprayed everywhere. No, a gun just wouldn't do.
In his other hand he held his favorite hunting knife, the eight inch blade shiny and polished and he turned away from the reflection that stared back at him. The knife would be equally fitting, he supposed; one slit up each wrist and he'd drain dry. Maybe do it in the bathtub with the water up to his neck; if the blood loss didn't get him he'd surely drown. And it would be an easy clean up too, just pull the plug and everything would drain away; the water, the blood, his life. But then again, he had to be sure he was dead before Sam ever found him, and how long did something like this take? Sam would probably freak out if he heard the water running and rush to make sure Dean didn't need any help. He'd done it every other shower Dean had taken for the last several days, why not this one? Besides, it was still too much blood and gore and he just couldn't do that to Sammy. Even in death, he would protect his little brother.
So blood was out; nothing violent. He had no rope, which meant hanging was out too. And as much as he hated to admit it, jumping from the window didn't guarantee death; only more pain and injury than he currently could handle.
And so his eyes fell to the orange bottle of pain pills, nearly full and so inviting. He took them only when the pain was absolutely unbearable, which was every day, but only once a day, so he still had plenty to do the job. That would be so easy, wouldn't it? Just swallow the entire batch, lay down and wait for them to take effect. It was quiet and painless and oh so neat, and if his memory served he was certain he had an almost full bottle of Jack in his bag to chase the chalky horse pills down with. So yes, that was the plan.
Sam would be okay with this...right? His debate was the pull, the one thing that might keep him here on this miserable earth, the one reason to live among thousands of reasons not to. It was a struggle, a fight literally to the death. But living would only make this about Sam, yet again, right? And this was about Dean. What Dean felt. What Dean needed. What Dean was going to do.
He rose from the toilet, shivering a little in only his boxer briefs, and left the bathroom in search of the booze. It was easy to find, hidden right where he'd left it under a stack of t-shirts on the left side of the bag, and he opened it up and took a long swig before doing an about-face and returning to the bathroom.
Slamming the bottle on the sink beside the pills, Dean sat back down on the toilet, still fighting the battle of wills going on within his mind. He looked down, seeing the situation that had brought him to this point in the first place. His leg lay unwrapped, hanging limply over the edge of the seat with the old gauze uncoiled and laying in a heap on the floor. The scar was still somewhat red, and his leg was swollen from the prodding he'd endured at the hands of Dr. Jennings, and yet it was still far skinnier than the other leg now, the muscle atrophy having set in. He reached out a tentative hand and rubbed at the stump, desperately trying to control the pain that flared up every day about this time. There was really only one way he'd found controlled it, and that was popping one of the pills and wrapping his leg in heat while massaging it. He'd come to expect it, he supposed, and if Sam really thought about it he would realize that this was the time of day he was normally most irritable.
But Sam was too busy formulating a plan to make Dean super-gimp, and had flat-out missed all the signs his brother had oh so conspicuously set out for him. This pain, not just the physical, but the emotional as well, was the reason for the pills sitting open on the counter, and the reason he sat nearly nude in the middle of the powder blue tiled bathroom. It was the reason Dean had brought along his gun and his knife and the contemplative desire to end it all here and now. But Sam was the reason for the debate.
He tried not to think about Sam, because dammit, how fair was it that the little shit could possess so much control over his life. It was his life for god's sakes and if he was done with it then no one should be able to tell him otherwise. This should be it. Done. Finito. Final.
And yet, all he could do was let his mind wander to Sam. The thought of his kid brother downstairs, mulling over how he could pull Dean from his slump, was just too unbearable not to consider. His brother tried so hard; even Dean had to admit that. And who was he kidding, he would have said the same things to Sam if he'd been in his position. He would have done the same things, made the same arguments. Hell, Sam was just a mini version of Dean when it came to over-protective, mother henning instincts. And why not? The kid had learned from the best there was.
Aw hell, who am I kidding? Dean grabbed for the orange container of pills and spun the top off, dumping several in his hand before he paused again. The mocked him from his sweaty hand, calling to him. Loser. Worthless. His hesitation lasted only long enough to make the pills moist with sweat, leaving behind a white residue on his hands as he dumped the five pills into his throat and swallowed them with a long gulp of Jack Daniels. The alcohol burned going down his throat and mixed harshly with the acid churning in his ambivalent stomach. It hadn't yet conceded to death by overdose despite Dean's desires, and it immediately began to fight its ill-desired contents.
Dean wasn't stupid. He knew full well that taking just five of the pills along with the Whisky would only succeed in making him sick to his stomach. But he hadn't yet committed to the act, just the idea, and this was merely the start.
Depression set in harder as his fallacious thoughts clouded truths. Who would miss him? No one. Well, Sam...maybe. But he would get over it. He'd pretty much gotten over Jess already. And he had Bobby and Missouri to help him through it, plus a whole slew of friends back in college if he ever decided to return there, and if Dean was out of the picture Sam would have nothing to stop him from returning. Sam had a whole freakin network without Dean. He would be fine.
And besides, Dean was nothing if he couldn't hunt, couldn't save people, couldn't protect Sammy. So Sam would just be better off, because right now he was just in the way. With him around, Sam would be determined to convince him that he could have the life he'd once known. Dean had no doubt that Sam would go out of his way to get Dean back in the hunt, and that just couldn't happen. It was too dangerous; he was a liability.
He'd never known anything other than the hunt, so there was no chance he could comfortably fall out of hunter's mode and fall into 'normal' life with a wife and two kids and a little white picket fence. He'd been a drifter for far too long to comfortably settle into urban living; no doubt he'd go crazy. And besides, what self-respecting woman would want him now that he was damaged goods? There was no way he could do that to someone.
Dean had begun feeling woozy as he sat there, falling deeper into his depression, and his vision swam, making it hard to reach for the pill container. His hands finally closed around the plastic container on the second try and he dumped another seventeen into his open hand, spilling a few more in the process. Another swig of the whisky to wash down the new pills, putting him a third of the way down the fifth, had him swaying dangerously and he nearly fell off the toilet seat as he made to put the bottle back on the counter. The container never made it, barely finding any base on the counter before tipping over and spilling to the floor, and it occurred to him that he might want to get to the floor too, or his own falling at some point might result in a loud thump that would undoubtedly make Sam come running.
So he grabbed for the crutches again, gripping the handle of one for balance as the other arm clutched the toilet, and he slid down to the floor in a not so graceful heap. His back rested against the side of the tub, head lolling and bobbing as he tried unsuccessfully to keep it upright. His vision went in and out of focus, seeming to cling to the latter more and more as time went on. He reached once again for his favored poison, weakened fingers clinging awkwardly to the glass bottle as he took another swig of Jack, now more than half gone.
"I'm sorry Sammy. I just can't do this any more," he whispered forlornly, as he looked once again at his ruined leg, hammering in the reminder of his despised new life. Another gulp of whisky was taken greedily from the bottle before he gave in to the weightless sleep that had started to consume him. The pain was finally gone, and with it, the emotional turmoil. He dipped forward, forehead clipping the edge of the toilet before he dropped lifelessly to the floor in a jumbled heap.
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That was when Sam awoke to Missouri's worried face. "Sam, something's wrong. I think you need to go check on your brother."
At her words the young hunter sprang to his feet, eyeing the older woman in a panic. "What happened, Missouri? Where is he?"
She shook her head. "Upstairs, I think, but I don't know what happened. I just got this really strange feeling and–"
Sam didn't wait for her to finish as he bolted up the stairs, taking them three at a time. Missouri followed, much slower but still quick for her aching body. She called out to Bobby as they went, urging the man to come inside and help them out.
"Dean!" Sam called frantically, ignoring the closed bedroom door and bursting through it in a loud bang of splintered wood and paint. He scanned the bedroom, taking note of the jumbled mess of clothes and weaponry on the bed, but no Dean.
"Dean! Where are you man?" Sam screamed, racing through the bedroom to the closed bathroom door and yanking it open with a mighty flourish. "Oh god, Dean." He paused for just a second to soak in the sight in front of him. There lay his brother, his larger than life big brother, collapsed on the floor in his underwear. One arm hugged the base of the toilet, the other was still slung over the lid. His complete leg crisscrossed over top of the stump. The remainder of his prescription was strewn across the tiled floor, sharing space with Dean's two favorite weapons. The gun rested beside the base of the sink cabinetry, as though placed there safely out of the way. And the knife lay just out of reach of Dean's outstretched fingers on top of his pile of discarded clothes. Sam practically tripped over his brother's legs as he clambered through the bathroom to Dean's side and turned him over.
Thank God he was still warm. "Come on, man, don't do this to me."
"Call an ambulance!" Sam screamed into the bedroom as he pulled Dean into his lap, fingers frantically searching for Dean's carotid artery. He let out a minute sigh of relief when he found the lethargic beat, weak and thready, but there.
"Dean please, wake up, come on," Sam begged, desperately slapping Dean's cheek and horrified when he got no response as Dean's head lolled limply away in response to the slaps.
"Sam, Missouri's calling for help. What happened?" Bobby stood in the doorway, his stocky body taking up all the space as he looked in worried concentration to the two Winchester's on the ground.
"I'm not sure, I think he OD'd," Sam replied frantically, one hand grabbing up a few of the scattered pain medication from the ground and tossing them furiously at the cabinetry. "Damn it! I never should have left him alone!"
Bobby dropped to his knees, eyes locking on Sam's. "Now's not the time," he admonished gently. "How's Dean?"
Sam looked back down to his brother, limp in his arms, blue lips against a pasty white complexion, breath coming out in ragged gasps of air. When he looked back up at Bobby no words were needed to express his sheer panic at the situation. He tried to kill himself. How do you think he's doing?
It was all he could do to draw up as much calm, soothing energy as he could muster, but somehow Bobby managed to do it for Sam. "Alright, let's get him downstairs; get him closer to the ambulance, give the paramedics more room to work.
Sam nodded and began scooping Dean up in his arms, working on auto-pilot. Bobby leaned in to help, but Sam grabbed Dean tighter, unwilling to let go, unwilling to give up any more link to Dean. Bobby backed off, understanding Sam's need to do this on his own, and moved from the doorway to create more room. One arm under Dean's knees, the other around his shoulders with Dean's arms slung limply around his neck, Sam hefted his brother up in his arms and skirted from the bathroom, noticing for the first time that his brother was so much lighter without a portion of his leg. It almost made him sick to his stomach and he found he had to concentrate solely on the task if he wanted to keep his stomach from churning. "He needs a blanket."
Bobby sprang to action immediately, grabbing one of the blankets from Dean's bed and snugging it around the unconscious hunter in Sam's arms before following the boys downstairs, meeting Missouri on her way back up with the phone to her ear. She stopped, turned back around, and led them to the couch in the living room.
"Sam, is he breathing? Does he have a pulse?" she asked, referring to questions the operator on the other end of the phone was asking and relaying double yes's at Sam's nod of the head. "She says to look at his eyes. Check his pupils."
After laying Dean on the couch Sam did as Missouri said, prying open Dean's eyelids to inspect his green eyes. "I can barely see his pupils," he cried back desperately. "They're just like tiny pinpricks. Is that bad?" The question might have been funny if Sam hadn't been so frantic, because it was one of the first things their father had taught them in First Aid 101: anything other than a normal pupil was potentially bad.
Missouri turned back to the phone, ready to ask what pinpoint pupils meant when they heard a loud rasping sound as Dean sucked in a final breath and then stop breathing entirely.
"Oh god, Dean!" Sam screamed, his tormented face looking from his brother to Missouri to Bobby. Somebody do something! Fix this.
"Where's that damn ambulance?" Missouri demanded in a very unconventional Missouri tone as Bobby sprang forward to help Sam.
"You know CPR," he assured the boy, nodding him on towards Dean's mouth. "Check his pulse first."
Sam did as he was told, shaking his head in panic for several seconds before Bobby concluded Dean would need compressions too and placed his hands over the boy's chest. "You can do this, Sam. You breath for him." Bobby began his compressions, whispering the count under his breath.
"One two three four..."
"Dean, come on man, don't you dare do this to me," Sam cried, hovering over Dean's face as he prepared for his own job.
"...nine ten eleven..."
"Don't you fucking die on me!"
"...fifteen sixteen seventeen..."
"You don't get to do this, Dean. You don't get off this easy. You're not done fighting. I'm not done fighting for you."
"...twenty-three twenty-four twenty-five..."
"This isn't the end of the fucking world, Dean. You can get past this!"
"...twenty-nine thirty..." Bobby glanced at Sam, offering an indication it was his cue to take over. Sam leaned down, offering his two breaths with as much a sense of responsibility as Dean had felt when he'd carried baby Sam from the fire twenty-three years earlier. Now he knew what it felt like to hold his brother's life in his hands and it sucked.
It felt like years had gone by in the five minutes and twenty three seconds it took for the ambulance to get there from the time Missouri had first called, and every emotional fiber in Sam's being had beyond depleted when the two paramedics gently moved him aside and took over the CPR. Their abrupt questions and barked orders come out only as muffled echoes in his brain and Bobby's frenzied answers barely registered. All he could think about was Dean, despondent, depressed, suicidal. His brother...his brother had tried to kill himself, very well may have been successful.
"I have to go with him," Sam insisted, barely recognizing his own voice.
The paramedics eyed him with uncertainty. It was against policy to take on passengers; too many liabilities. But this kid looked like he could pass out at any second, and then he'd be a patient himself. The woman who had called made the decision for them and they threw relieved smiles Missouri's way as Dean was loaded onto the stretcher.
"Sam, you'll ride over with Bobby and me. I don't want you to be alone at the hospital. Besides, I'm sure these nice people need every inch of space in the ambulance to help Dean. Come on, we'll be right behind them."
He wanted to protest, wanted to tell Missouri that no way was he leaving Dean behind. But then he looked over to his brother, saw the IV pushing fluids through his arm and the red marks on his brother's bare chest from where the defibrillator had to shock his heart back into rhythm, saw the ambu bag the female medic was squeezing in a slow rhythm as it provided his brother with his only chance of air, saw Dean's pale face and still body, and felt his knees give way. He didn't have the energy to protest.
Bobby's strong arms were there to catch Sam as he slumped to the ground and he heard his old friend's reassurance to the medics. "He'll be fine. Just take care of his brother." And then the stretcher frame locked into place and they wheeled Dean out the door.
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Sam sipped obediently at his third cup of orange juice, picking at the bag of pretzels until he caught sight of Missouri's watchful glare and actually popped one of the salty twists in his mouth despite his fear that his stomach would protest. After his collapse, Missouri had only agreed to let Sam join them at the hospital if he agreed to let her take care of him: no protests. And so he'd allowed her to force cup after cup of the sugary juice his way and he'd put just enough food into his mouth to appease her and he'd stopped pacing after she'd finally snapped at him that he would wear a hole straight down to the next floor if he didn't sit still.
His knee bounced spastically up and down in time to the rush of thoughts streaming through his mind as he once again recollected all the events leading up to the moment Dean downed a bottle full of pain pills to escape life. And every last thought, every last memory brought Sam back to one conclusion. Once again, it was his fault.
It was Sam who had insisted on the hunt through the woods, Sam who hadn't done enough research beforehand and led them in blind, Sam who had failed to get Dean out of the woods in time - and yeah, yeah, yeah, there was always that nagging reminder that Dean would have lost the leg anyway, but that didn't make it any less his fault.
All through the hospital stay, their three days in the hotel, coming back to Missouri's house; there had to have been something Sam could have done to make the pain less...painful. There had to have been something; something he could have said, something he could have done. He shouldn't have pushed so hard, shouldn't have insisted Dean go out in public so soon, shouldn't have pushed the therapy, shouldn't have allowed him to leave the hospital so soon, and he really shouldn't have left him alone this afternoon. Dammit!
"I knew he was going to do this," Sam whispered his revelation, staring down at his shaky hands.
Missouri and Bobby both looked over at Sam in shock at his claim. "Samuel Winchester, that's not true and you know it. You couldn't have known. Do not blame yourself." Missouri's hand reached out gently, settling itself firmly on Sam's two hands and pushing them down on top of his frantic knee, bringing a stop to the movements of all three appendages.
"You don't know, Missouri. You didn't see his face. He– he was so...lost. I should have done something."
"Sam–"
The young man looked up at Missouri, a lake's worth of unshed tears ready to fall at any second. "Please, just...don't. If I don't blame myself right now I'm going to have to blame Dean and I just can't put that on him." The words fell away as he finished the sentence, the last few words barely sounding past his lips, and Missouri recognized at once that there would be no convincing Sam any differently. It was a waste of breath.
Dean was Sam's hero; always had been, always would be. And in his eyes was fear. Fear that Dean had left him. Fear that Dean had chosen to leave him, had actually sat in that bathroom and conspired to take his own life to escape a life with Sam. And the only thing that he had to hold onto was the idea that maybe Dean hadn't made the choice to desert his little brother, but rather had OD'd based on some failure of Sam's to protect the man. Odd as it may seem, it was easier for the younger brother to accept his own failures to protect than to accept Dean's – because if Dean had failed to protect Sam then Sam no longer had a hero.
Missouri sighed and looked over to Bobby, strangely relieved to see that she wasn't the only one to come to that obscure revelation. They would suffer together, plot together, in an effort to change the young man's view of the situation without destroying his hero complex for his older brother. But that time was not now. Now, they had to find out about Dean.
Sam sprang to his feet before he was even certain that the blank-faced, scrub clad man making his way towards them was indeed Dean's doctor, and Missouri and Bobby weren't far behind in their assent. They hung back, allowing Sam to take the lead as the boy anxiously demanded, "My brother, how is he?" without even waiting for the formality of a name from the man in front of him.
"Dean Morrison is your brother?" the man asked, needing to validate relation to his patient before dispensing confidential medical information.
"Yeah, I'm Sam."
The doctor nodded his head towards Missouri and Bobby. "And they are?"
"About the closest thing to family we got," Sam insisted immediately, catching the reluctance in the man's tone. "They're fine, anything you've got to say...just...Dean, how is he? He...he's alive, right?"
The man nodded slowly. "Yes, Sam, he's alive. He's going to be okay."
For a second the world went silent as Sam took in the information. Dean was alive. Dean was going to be okay. Dean had a second chance...and so did Sam. His limbs began to tingle, as though they, too, had only been partially alive while waiting to hear about Dean and were now fully waking up again. But something stopped him from rejoicing too much and he eyed the doctor critically.
"There's a but in there..."
Sighing, the doctor - his badge read Galvin - motioned for the three to sit. "As you know, Dean's heart stopped and he had to be revived at the scene. He still wasn't breathing when he came in. We had to intubate him and perform a gastric lavage–"
At the blank stares he received, Dr. Galvin clarified. "We pumped his stomach. It's not a very pleasant process and he's likely to be very sore for the next few days. He's breathing on his own right now, but the tube is still in place. We'll remove that once he wakes up." He paused. "However, with the vast amount of drugs your brother had in his system, we have no choice but to assume he did so intentionally. He'll be placed on a 72 hour suicide watch starting now, and we'll be sending a therapist in to talk to him."
Sam nodded, oddly grateful for the therapist despite their inherent rule to never air their dirty laundry to strangers. Enough of what was happening to Dean was grounded in reality, in normal life, and Sam desperately hoped that talking out his feelings on this matter might very well help his brother. He surprised himself to discover that he'd crossed his fingers behind his back, hoping for luck.
"Doc," Sam stammered, nervously pushing himself to voice the nagging thought in his head. Sam knew enough about injuries and life and death that he couldn't just brush the thought aside. "He um...he stopped breathing for a while, and his heart stopped. Could that..." Oh man, I don't even want to say this. I can't even think it. "Could it have any um...any residual..."
"Are you asking if he could have brain damage?"
Sam nodded, relived that he didn't have to be the one to say it. He leaned into the comforting hand Missouri placed on his shoulder and waited for a reply.
"Brain damage is always a possibility in situations like these. We won't know for sure until Dean wakes up and can talk to us, but I'm inclined to think he's going to be fine. His reflexes are intact, his pupils are equal and reactive, and he really wasn't without oxygen for long enough to truly worry. All in all your brother is a lucky man.
Huh. Lucky. Sam could only smirk at the man, unwilling to consider his brother lucky at this point. Dean was many things, but lucky sure as hell was not one of them.
"Can we see him?" Sam asked hesitantly, no longer seeing a use for this man other than to guide them to his brother.
The doctor nodded. "They're settling him into a room now. I'll take you up there and you can wait outside until he's ready. He's still sleeping right now, but with the drugs out of his system he should be waking soon."
Sam, Missouri, and Bobby followed in a single file line after the doctor, working their way down the long hallway to a set of elevators and then down another long hallway three floors up. Now that the initial shock of the situation was over there didn't seem to be much to say, and so their walk was made in silence.
Dean was ready by the time they arrived. Bobby and Missouri hung back in silent understanding that Sam needed to go in by himself first, waiting in the hall and watching through the small window as Sam timidly made his way inside. He'd paused just inside the doorway, dragging in a deep breath as he prepared himself for the sight, and seemed to relax some when it appeared relatively normal. It was somewhat distressing to realize that, after seeing Dean that first night after he'd lost the leg, nothing else seemed close to being as bad.
He had an IV in his arm, rapidly pumping fluids into his depleted body, and several electrodes were stuck to his bared chest, monitoring his heart rate. There was a small bruise over his left eye from where he'd smacked the toilet on his way down. And the stem of a plastic breathing tube still protruded from his half open mouth, although no tube was attached and Dean was clearly breathing on his own.
The bluish tint to his lips and fingernails was now gone, but Dean was still far too pale for Sam's liking and Sam made sure to tell him so as he collected Dean's right hand in his own and sat in the chair beside the bed. "What the hell was that all about?" Sam bemoaned his brother's suicide attempt, focusing all his attentions on Dean's hand interlocked within his own. He couldn't look at him, couldn't accept what had happened.
"You should have talked to me, Dean. We could have worked through this, I know we could have. Taking your life isn't the answer." A lone tear fell from Sam's eye, breaking free from the ever growing pool of moisture Sam had been trying to hold back, and it dropped delicately onto Dean's rough hand, sliding across the outline of one of the tendons before drying out at his knuckle. With the back of his free hand, Sam swiped at his eyes, angrily wiping away the tell-tale moisture as he drew in a deep sniffle.
"I'm sorry, Dean. I should have seen you were hurting. I should have done something. I'm so sorry."
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It was Sam's voice that began to pull Dean from his slumber some two hours later. The feel of his body floating weightlessly through the air began to get heavier and heavier as he came closer to consciousness until he finally felt like a block of lead laying on a soft cottony cloud. He came to abruptly with a sharp cough and a choking sound that had Sam's head snapping up to see his brother gagging terribly on the tube stuffed down his throat. From what had become his usual hospital room post, in a chair against the wall on the opposite side of the room, Bobby looked up and took off immediately in search of the nearest nurse, demanding that she come quickly.
Sam hovered over his heaving brother, hands pressed firmly into Dean's shoulder's as he held the older man down against the bed, urging him to calm down and breathe around the tube, his brother's wild eyes beginning to scare him.
I can't Sammy. It's choking me. Dean wanted to cry, wanted to scream, but the only sounds he seemed to be able to make were the garbled gagging noises as he choked on the tube down his throat and he reached up with both hands to grab at the obstruction.
Sam's hold on his shoulder's quickly released and he felt his brother's strong grip lock onto his wrists and pull his hands down to their sides. "I need help in here!" Sam screamed to the now empty room and was immediately rewarded with the presence of a nurse, Bobby, and Missouri, who had been returning from a trip to the cafeteria when she ran into Bobby dragging the nurse down the hall.
Bobby immediately took up residence on the other side of Dean, wrestling one of the young man's hands away from Sam and taking over in holding that side down, as the grandmotherly nurse stepped into Dean's line of sight, eying him sternly.
"You've got a tube down your throat, young man. Don't try to fight it. The doctor is on his way and we're going to remove it, but you need to calm down. You're just going to hurt yourself by doing this."
The reprimand didn't seem to have any effect, and if anything Dean just seemed to fight harder, shaking his head from side to side in desperation as his stomach heaved in rhythm to his fast increasing heart monitor. He felt like he was about to throw up, and the cramping in his stomach was doing nothing to ease those feelings.
Sam finally appeared in his line of sight again. He continued to use one hand to hold Dean down, but the other hand now reached up to rest gently on his brother's sweaty forehead as soothing words came out of his mouth. "Dean, shhh, you have to calm down,"
Sam insisted, squeezing Dean's hand firmly within his own grasp. "Everything is going to be fine. The doctor's on his way up."
Dean finally began to calm down as he looked to Sam with big, fearful eyes. By the time the doctor had arrived he was breathing almost normally, and he listened intently as the man explained the removal process. Deflating the cuff deep inside the tube that held it in place, Dr. Galvin counted to three and pulled as Dean exhaled, eliciting yet another round of painful coughs and spasms that had Dean doubling over on himself in desperate need of oxygen.
The monitors frantically beeped their warning as Dean's heart rate nearly doubled and Dam could think of nothing to do except jump in and hug his older sibling, grabbing him tight around the chest and holding on for dear life as Dean heaved in breath after ragged breath of stale hospital air. When he'd regained some control over his breathing Sam made to release Dean and was surprised when the older hunter continued to lean in for support. Hesitant arms rewrapped themselves around Dean's shaking form as Sam continued to whisper soothing words.
Several minutes later, a cupful of ice chips was offered by one of the nurses and Sam eagerly accepted it, releasing Dean back against the bed so he could offer his brother some of the soothing relief. Dean ate several greedily before the thought even struck him that his little brother was actually feeding him, and then he roughly grabbed for the cup, spooning another several chips into his mouth. He finally leaned back against the bed when the cup was empty and his coughing had stopped. The nurses were gone, and he only just now noticed Sam, Missouri, and Bobby all staring at him with a mixture of fear and anger written across their faces.
He curled in on himself, arms crossed tight against his chest. My God, how do I explain myself. I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not supposed to be alive. "I'm sorry," Dean finally muttered, although the only thing he seemed to truly be sorry for was the fact that he hadn't succeeded in his mission. I truly am a loser. I can't even kill myself right.
Sam was terrified. This was his moment, his second chance to do right by his brother. He struggled with the fact that he'd blown the first chance, and number two had come along by sheer chance of fate. There would be no three. Yet all he could think to do, the only words streaming through his overtaxed mind were accusing. Now was not the time to yell and scream and berate; it would solve nothing. And so, Sam said the only thing he could think to say that wasn't an accusation.
"No Dean, I'm sorry."