A/N:
In memoriam Kim Manners who did an extraordinary job working on Supernatural. May he rest in peace. He will be sorely missed. And my heart goes out to his family and friends.

Enkidu, I hope you don't mind sharing your Birthday fic.

Damage Control 101

'
'What the–' he felt like diving through a swamp. Not only was everything inky black but wherever his consciousness tried to emerge, he had to struggle for every single inch of progress, and he felt weighted down with lead.

"I think he is slowly coming to." A voice declared somewhere miles away. The tone was hectic and seemed to float around in the murky pond surrounding his head.

There was also some strange kind of white noise in the background, everything just a little too fuzzy to make sense of. A dull ache began to pound mercilessly behind his skull, making its way through his whole body, growing in intensity. He wasn't even able to pinpoint what part of his body hurt, or what didn't.

"Sir, can you hear me?" The voice was back.

Annoyed, he tried to shoo the offending hands away. Suddenly they were all over his body. And how many hands were on him to begin with?!

"Mr Plant? Sir? Can you hear me?"

Even more hands, and not all of them gentle.

When he opened his eyes to mere slits, staring ahead with blurry vision, he was greeted with a dumb smile. "Mr Plant, do you know where you are?"

An unintelligible mumble made it past his vocal chords. He tried again and again but the words remained sealed within his mind, not that he knew what he was trying to say in the first place.

And then lightning struck when realization hit him, making him bolt upright. 'Sammy!' Unfortunately his feeble efforts at sitting up ended in a meagre attempt at raising his head off the soft surface beneath him and more hands holding him down.

"Sir, you need to stay calm. You are in a hospital. We are trying to help you."

He wanted to fight harder; it shouldn't have been a problem to shake those hands off but in fact, it was. Finally he resigned himself to letting his head sink back, muscles slowly relaxing from the sheer exhaustion of simply lifting his head.

"S'my," Dean rasped almost inaudible, then a little firmer and clearer he repeated the name when he had the distinct feeling he was being ignored.

"Who is Sammy? Someone we should call?" the woman – a nurse? – asked. Her eyes were gentle but also held a world-weariness he had rarely seen before.

"No." More air than sound but the meaning came across. After a short pause to gather his strength, "the guy… with m-me."

Nervous glances were exchanged between her and a bulky man – a doctor deciding by the scrubs and lab coat – but no answer was forthcoming. Something was wrong, very wrong, and he needed to find out what had happened to his brother. NOW.

Once again he tried to get his act together and sit up; yet, just as before, he was immediately stopped with ridiculously little effort. Damn his current weakness!

"Mr Plant, you need to lie still. You have a ruptured spleen; you are bleeding internally. We are going to operate as soon as we have sufficiently assessed your condition." This time it was the doctor who addressed him.

"No… no surgery… before I k-know… m'brother," Dean protested weakly.

"The young man who was with you is your brother?" the nurse asked incredulously.

He gave her a minute nod, his last reserves quickly depleting, darkness already creeping back in from the edges of his vision.

She looked deep into his eyes, evaluating the best course of action, then sighed. "Alright, I'll try to find out."

Leaving his field of vision, the nurse stepped through the door into the adjacent emergency room, taking in the hectic atmosphere while doctors and nurses frantically worked on their patient, bagging him and desperately trying to stem the extensive bleeding on his right leg.

One of the attending nurses hurried over when she saw her colleague standing in the door.

At her inquiring look she learned the clipboard version of the young man's condition. "He's loosing too much blood and his vitals are all over the place."

"His brother was asking for him. We are about to take him to the OR for a ruptured spleen."

Her younger colleague turned wistful eyes towards the examination table. "Tell him he is going to make it," she whispered.

"Is he?"

The following silence told her everything she needed to know.

A sudden commotion from the next room alerted her and she rushed back through the swinging door.

"Shit, his blood pressure is bottoming out!" The doctor cursed under his breath and started barking orders. "We need to take him to surgery NOW!"

From the distance she locked eyes with her fading patient, giving Dean a reassuring smile just in time before his heavy lids drooped and he surrendered to unconsciousness.


to be continued…