I don't own Supernatural, not one bit of it, so if you are planning on suing, please, please don't. I'm a recent college grad with negative money (I owe money) so please just let me use the brilliant characters.
Also, thanks for all the reviews, I love them.
-sn-
Dean was going to rip the clock from the wall just to silence the persistant ticking. Like he needed something counting the seconds, minutes, hours he'd been sitting and waiting. Bobby slowly paced the room as he nursed a cup of hospital coffee.
"You want a cup of this sludge?" Bobby caught Dean's eyes.
"No." He looked at the clock.
It had been three hours since Sam was taken down the hall. Dean couldn't get the image out of his head of his brother hanging in the gym.
"He's gonna be fine, Dean."
A doctor came into the room. "Family of Sam Adams?"
Dean glanced at Bobby who shrugged with a smirk.
"How's he doing?"
Bobby rested his hand on Dean's shoulder.
"He's stabilized. I want to get his O2 sats up and make sure there isn't any lasting damage. He got lucky."
"Can I see him?"
"Of course." The doctor led Dean and Bobby down the quiet hall, past rooms of still and silent people. Dean paused in Sam's doorway for a moment.
Sam had an oxygen mask over his pale face. A heart monitor beeped steadily above him. Dark bruises circled his neck and tape was wrapped around his chest. Lines ran pain medication and fluids into his arm and an oxygen monitor glowed at his index finger. Dean pulled a chair up to Sam's bedside.
He carefully slipped his hand under his younger brother's. Dean took a slow breath and watched the heart monitor for a few minutes, just to be reassured in it's rhythm. Sam shifted slightly and Dean looked over at him. His eyes were open, slowly he reached for the oxygen mask.
Dean caught his hand. "Need to keep that there, Sammy"
"Dean?" He muttered and coughed. He winced at the pain it caused.
"Hey, just rest. You doing okay?"
Sam nodded. "What happened?" He whispered and swallowed painfully.
Dean paused, not yet ready to remember and speak of the details. "The damn spirit tried to do you in."
Sam was missing a lot of what happened after he entered the gym and saw Jeremy. He remembered small things; Jeremy's eyes, the feeling of rope, the damp smell of the gym, the need to follow the way Jess and Jeremy went into death, but he didn't know why any of those things were in his memory.
"When can I get out of here?" He rasped and coughed again, pain tore at his ribs, throat and head.
Dean smiled. "A day or two maybe. How's your head?"
He shrugged and sunk further into the pillow. He was starting to fall asleep again, though he fought it briefly. The medication was stronger than his will and he drifted off again.
Dean felt some of the tension leave his shoulders. Sam was going to be all right, he was all right.
Bobby leaned against the wall. "I'm going to get your car to my place. I'll be back in a few hours."
"I'll be here." Dean slouched in the chair.
"See you later." He left the room.
Sam shifted slightly, but continued to sleep. Dean didn't mind sitting at his brother's bedside, bedsides meant recovery and recovery meant alive.
Bobby returned a few hours later with a sandwich and a cup of better coffee for Dean. He accepted it gratefully and took a drink.
"How's he doing?" Bobby sat in a nearby chair.
"All right, I think." He paused. "I thought he was dead when I first saw him there. Technically, he was."
"You two have more lives than a damn cat."
"Comes in handy, I guess." Dean smirked. "He asked when he could leave."
"Sounds like Sammy. At least you can put this job behind you."
Dean looked at his brother. "Not yet."
"Something still in that school?"
He shrugged. "I don't think so. Sammy knew the family of one of the victims. That's why he wanted to take this case."
Dean and Bobby sat in Sam's room through the night, they dozed with their heads rested back against the wall. Sam slept through it all, unaware of anything else. Slowly the monitors and medications were removed from him as he continued to improve. Each one marked a small victory on the way to getting out of the hospital. His blood oxygen was carefully monitored, but there didn't seem to be any lasting damage.
Sam woke as morning light pressed against the closed blinds. He shifted and felt the places that would be sore for a while. His neck was stiff and his throat raw. The pain from his fibs sharpened if he moved at all and his head still throbbed slightly. He sat the head of the bed up to see how sitting felt. Other than dizzy, nothing became worse.
Dean and Bobby woke a few seconds before a doctor came into the room with Sam's chart. "How are you feeling?
"All right." Sam's sounded like he was suffering form a severe case of laryngitis.
"You're doing well considering how you came in here fourteen hours ago."
"When can I leave?" He coughed slightly.
"I'd like to keep you until this afternoon."
Sam nodded and caught Dean's glance from across the room.
"I'm going to take you off the oxygen and see how it goes from there." He carefully removed the mask. "Let somebody know if you're short of breath or have any difficulty breathing. All right?"
He nodded again.
"Good. I'll talk to you later." The doctor left the room.
Sam reached for the glass of water on the nearby table. Dean stood and handed it to his brother. The water eased the rawness of his throat some. He handed the glass back.
Sam's oxygen levels dropped a little as time passed, but not anything that the doctors were concerned about. At three in the afternoon, Sam was released with a couple new prescriptions and strict orders for bed rest for the next few days.
He didn't allow himself to relax fully until he was in Bobby's van and they had left the parking lot. Sam wrote down an address and handed it to Dean.
He turned to his younger brother. "Sammy, you need to rest."
"I need to do this." He whispered. "She needs to know."
Dean had rarely seen the passionate determination that burned in Sam's eyes now. "Okay. Hey, Bobby, we're taking a detour."
Sam settled back against the seat and closed his eyes. He ran through conversations he could have, tried to find the words to say that could possibly comfort a mother who has lost everything that mattered most to her.
The van stopped and Dean touched Sam's knee. "Sam."
He opened his eyes and looked at the yellow farmhouse. He slowly climbed from the van and wished that he didn't have the news he came to deliver.
"We'll wait here." Dean got out and leaned against the van.
Sam walked up to the house. He limped a little, his ankle slightly sprained from his fall. He moved slow, a result of the pain he was in, but refused to acknowledge. He took a breath and knocked on the door.
A woman with soft, blond hair and deep blue eyes answered the door. She was in her mid forties and her eyes betrayed the grief she suffered and worked to hide.
"Sam." She smiled when she saw him and hugged him because she knew that he never had the chance to be hugged like that.
Dean suddenly realized that Sam never really had a mother, he always knew that, but seeing his brother welcomed like that, brought to light just how sad it was that Sam didn't remember her like Dean did. This woman was more of a mother to Sam than he and Dean's mother was.
"I think Sam needed this as much as she did."
Dean looked over at Bobby at his side. "It's always him, isn't it? He always ends up losing everything."
"Seems like it."