A/N: First I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has reviewed this story - and especially those who reviewed the last few chapters. SorryI haven't gotten back to many of you and I really don't even have an excuse for not doing that!
Also sorry for how long this chapter has taken to post, but I had it almost completely written when my computer crashed and I was unable to recover it! That left me a little discouraged andI decided to work on some other stories for a while...
But here's the next chapter. I hope you like it!
John drove into the emergency entrance at the hospital, threw the truck into park and ran around to the passenger side. He swung the door open and carefully grabbed hold of Dean, placing one arm behind his back and the other one underneath his knees in order to lift him out of the truck. As he gently pulled Dean toward him, he glanced over at Sam and could tell just by looking at him that his youngest son was going into shock.
"SAMMY!" he snapped roughly, mostly to force him to focus on reality and not succumb to the shock caused by his injuries.
At the sound of his father's voice, Sam instantly jolted upright in his seat and fixed John with a vacant stare. The pallor of his skin and his dilated pupils told John that he had to get Sam into the hospital without delay; the longer he waited the more serious Sammy's condition was getting. But John had his arms full carrying Dean and he was still hoping that Sam would be able to make it into the building on his own.
"Sammy, we're here!" barked John forcefully as he secured Dean in his arms. "Get out of the truck!"
Sam instinctively followed his father's order but the glassy look in his eyes proved that he wasn't really aware of what was happening around him. John figured the best way to make sure that Sam made it safely into Emergency was to keep barking orders at him. If there was one good thing their unconventional lifestyle had done for the boys, it was teaching them to follow instructions without question. They both knew that, depending on their situation, their lives could very well depend on unfailing obedience and, for the most part, it had become as inherent as breathing for both of them.
John turned sideways so that his left shoulder was facing the interior of the truck. As Sam scooted toward him in the seat, John snapped, "Put your hand on my shoulder to keep yourself steady! Do you understand me?"
Sam's movements had a surreal quality to them, but his father's words found their way into his subconscious and he did as his father commanded. When he has stepped out of the truck, John carefully led him toward the hospital but each step he took was slow and uneven and John instantly recognized them as more symptoms of severe shock. He knew he had to get Sammy off his feet before he fell down and further injured himself.
"SAM!" quipped John sharply, hoping to jar his son to his senses again. "Stay with me, Bud! Keep walking one step at a time!"
Sam simply nodded and followed his father, keeping his injured right hand on John's shoulder. John struggled under the burden of assuming his oldest son's weight and trying to make sure that Sammy stayed with him. As he approached the entranceway, John noticed an empty wheelchair sitting just outside the hospital doors. He quickened his pace until he came up to the wheelchair and he used his foot to spin it around so that it was facing him. As it bumped against his leg, John ordered Sam to have a seat. Sam collapsed heavily into the wheelchair and John told him to wait there while he went to get someone to help him. Then he proceeded into the Emergency Department.
As he strode into the building carrying a still-unconscious Dean, John was met immediately by the triage nurse, who had called out for a stretcher as soon as she had observed him walking through the doors. Before he could provide any type of explanation about what had happened, two orderlies ran over with a stretcher and gently eased Dean onto it. Once Dean had been successfully transferred onto the stretcher, John turned to head back outside for Sam, but the nurse stopped him by placing her hand on his chest.
"Where are you going?" she asked with alarm.
John looked at her briefly before his attention was diverted to the two orderlies who were hurriedly whisking Dean through a set of double doors. He glanced back at the nurse and stated somewhat disjointedly, "My other son...He's still outside. I left him sitting in a wheelchair while I brought his brother inside. And he's gone in shock."
Obviously unaware that there was another person outside, the nurse immediately spun around and headed out the door. John was right on her heels as the two of them exited the building only to find Sam slouched forward in the wheelchair. The nurse immediately knelt down in front of him and checked his pulse. She glanced up at John and barked, "We need to get him inside, NOW!"
Without hesitation, John grabbed the wheelchair and dashed inside the building where he was once again met by various harried personnel. He was immediately nudged out of the way by a nurse who commandeered the wheelchair and pushed it into the unit where a couple of other nurses and Emergency personnel were waiting to provide medical assistance to Sam. As they wheeled him into the trauma section of the Emergency Department, another nurse directed John toward the admissions desk so he could provide them with all the required medical information.
John explained that he had been at home when he received a phone call from Sam saying that he and his brother had been in a car accident. He had driven out to the accident scene and because no one else was involved, he had not bothered to call for an ambulance, but had decided to drive them directly to the hospital himself.
He explained that Dean had been injured previously in a mishap at a friend's farm, when he had fallen against a piece of heavy farm machinery. John informed the nurse that he had stitched the wounds closed himself using the medical knowledge he had gained during his stint with the Marines.
"You do realize that he should have at least come in for a tetanus shot?" inquired the nurse disdainfully as she looked at him over the rim her glasses.
"He had one last year," countered John, more than a little aggravated. "And they're good for ten years." He just wasn't in any mood to deal with anyone who was going to question his unorthodox parenting skills.
"Still," added the nurse as she continued entering data into the computer, "We would have liked to check it out."
"Well, he's here now," stated John vehemently, "Feel free to check them out as much as you'd like."
The nurse stared crossly at John for a moment before she went about obtaining the rest of the information she needed to complete the initial portion of Dean's chart. Once she had all the information, she input Sam's name into the system and surprised to see a warning flash across the screen as his file was brought up. She carefully read the information that had been placed on the file by the last nurse who had seen him just a few short days ago.
She looked at John again as she said, "I see that Samuel was brought in by his brother with injuries on Tuesday night."
"Yes," confirmed John. He knew that this was going to add complications and he hoped that by answering the questions with accurate yet limited responses, he would be able to dispel many of the problems. "He'd been in a fight at school. His injuries were a result of that."
"There's a notation about some questionable bruising on his neck," stated the nurse.
"Look," acquiesced John with only a mild level of exasperation evident in his voice, "Children's Services has already talked to us about that. The boys were horsing around and it just got a little of out of hand." He paused briefly before he added, "And that has nothing to do with why he's here now. He re-injured himself in the car accident and he went into shock before I got him here."
"I see," replied the nurse. She didn't say anything else, as there was nothing in their system to implicate John in anything untoward with either of his sons. She'd fill in the information and include the previous file with the report she forwarded to the Emergency personnel and let a doctor take it from there.
When John finished at the desk, the nurse showed him into the room where Sam was waiting to see a doctor. Sam had been transferred from the wheelchair and was now lying in a hospital bed covered with warm blankets to help regulate his body temperature and alleviate the shock. A nurse had just finished taking his blood pressure as John walked into the room.
As the nurse turned to leave, John asked quietly, "How is he?"
"He's doing fine," replied the nurse with a smile. "We're dealing with the shock right now and we'll wait until he's stable before we start to treat his other injuries. He just needs to rest for a while."
John nodded and looked over at Sam before he turned back to the nurse and asked, "My other son, Dean. He was unconscious when I brought him in and they took him through those doors. How can I find out how he's doing?"
The nurse told him that she would check with the attendant at the desk and would be right back to let him know. John thanked her and the nurse exited the room. When John was alone with Sam, he approached the bed and looked at his son. But Sam was sleeping and John didn't want to disturb him so he simply assumed a seat across from the bed and quietly watched his son.
The nurse returned shortly thereafter and told John that Dean had been rushed to the Trauma Unit where they had stitched the wounds on his back and given him blood to replace what he had lost in the accident. He was currently in Recovery and should be transferred to a room in about an hour. John asked if he could see him and the nurse said that a doctor would probably be in to talk to him shortly. John thanked the nurse before she disappeared to attend to another patient.
After about ten minutes a doctor came in and introduced himself to John. He told him that he would take him to see Dean but that he had some questions that he would like to ask him on the way. John followed the doctor into the hall.
"I was wondering whether you could tell me anything about the wounds on your son's back," asked the doctor.
"He, uh, hurt himself in a farm accident," explained John. " I stitched the wounds myself, but he got into some sort of altercation at school and tore a few of them open again. I'm really not sure what happened tonight but I could tell he'd lost a fair bit of blood when I found him at the accident scene. I'm pretty sure that's why he passed out."
"Yes," confirmed the doctor, "He had lost a fair amount of blood. But there was something else that our initial lab tests picked up that might actually be another part of the problem. While the preliminary tests have ruled out drug or alcohol use, they picked up the presence of an unknown substance in his blood. We're conducting more tests to see if we can figure out what it is." He paused and looked sympathetically at John before he continued, "You wouldn't happened to know anything that might help us, would you?"
John knew that they had detected the Aswang poison, but he wasn't about to share that information with the doctor, so he simply stated that he had no idea what it could be. To the best of his knowledge, Dean didn't do drugs or smoke and he doubted very much that he had been drinking while he was out with his younger brother.
The doctor told John that they would be admitting Dean as soon as they felt he was stable enough to be moved from the Recovery Room. They would probably keep him for at least the next 24 hours but it might be longer depending on how he was doing and what they ended up finding in his blood.
They had reached the room where Dean was sleeping and the doctor motioned for John to precede him inside. John slowly walked up to Dean's bed. He couldn't believe how pale Dean looked and he wondered again what he had been up to that he had ended up endangering both his own life and Sammy's. As John watched him, that thought burned into his mind and he found that he was in danger of losing all empathy for his eldest son and was simply becoming increasingly annoyed.
He knew that it would be best if he just left the room for a while so he could calm down. He had been on edge on evening wondering what had happened to his boys and everything that had happened since then had only succeeded in increasing his anxiety. He had been ready to jump down Dean's throat for whatever he had been doing before he even knew exactly what was going on. And he had not had a chance to come to terms with the night's events and he realized that he was simply ready to blame Dean in order to get rid of some of his pent up anger.
So John took one more look at his oldest son before he turned to leave the room. As he walked into the hallway he glanced at the doctor and inquired about Dean's injuries.
"Other than the extreme loss of blood, he has a couple of bruised ribs and he's suffered a concussion. He has a fair bit of discolored ecchymosis throughout his body but they appear to have been caused at an earlier date." The doctor looked at John and questioned, "I'd say that most of those bruises look like they might have resulted from a physical altercation. Your son wouldn't happen to be prone to fighting, would he?"
John sighed before he answered, "My son is seventeen. He probably does lots of things that I'm not aware of. But he's always had a propensity to be a bit of a scrapper. I think it comes from moving around as much as we do."
The doctor nodded understandably. "The other thing that I am a bit concerned about are those deep wounds on his back. They're unlike anything I've ever seen before and I'd like to have a specialist take a look at them tomorrow, if that's okay with you."
John tried not to show his displeasure at the doctor's request; to do so would just arouse his curiosity. So he simply nodded and hoped that he'd be able to get Dean discharged before a specialist had a chance to take a look at him. This town wasn't big enough to have many doctors who specialized in various disciplines of medicine and John figured that they'd probably have to request that someone from the nearest city come out to see Dean.
They had arrived back at the Emergency Department and John turned to shake the doctor's hand before he headed into Sam's room. As he entered the room, John noticed that Sam was awake and seemed to be much more cognizant than he had been when he had left to check on Dean.
"Hey, Sammy," said John as he walked up to the bed. "How ya feelin'?"
"Okay, I guess," offered Sam. "Where's Dean?"
"He's just down the hall. I think they're going to keep him overnight."
"Is he really that bad?" asked Sam in alarm.
"Not really," stated John. "He just lost a lot of blood, that's all."
Just then a nurse came into the room and informed them that they were getting ready to reset Sam's shoulder. She was going to put some painkillers in the IV line and, once they took effect, they should be strong enough to help Sam deal with the pain. After his shoulder was reset, they would take him to the Plaster Room to replace his cast. As long as everything went smoothly and Sam didn't go back into shock, John could probably take him home in a couple of hours.
Both John and Sam watched as the nurse injected the liquid pain medication into the IV. It didn't take long for it to take effect and in only a few minutes Sam was having trouble staying awake again. The nurse asked John if he would mind waiting in the Visitors Station and they would come and get him when they were done.
John gently squeezed Sam's hand before he left the room. He wandered slowly into the waiting area and assumed a seat. He hadn't been seated long when the Emergency Room doors opened and two blood-drenched paramedics rushed through the doors with a patient on a stretcher that was also covered in blood. John only got a fleeting look at the young woman before they whisked her through the same doors that Dean had been taken about 90 minutes ago. It was obvious that the young woman was pregnant and for some reason, John thought that he recognized her.
As he tried to figure out how he could possibly know her, a police officer walked in escorting an obviously distraught young man who was also covered in blood.
John couldn't help listening to the man as he excitedly rambled on to both the policeman and the waiting medical personnel. His mostly incoherent monologue filled John with dread.
"It was a cat...but bigger...with gigantic wings...like a bat...and huge claws...it attacked her...tried to tear her apart...with its teeth..."