Well, here's your it-hitting-the-fan chapter, though probably not quite what you may have been expecting. That's all I'll say, but I hope you like it. :) Please do let me know what ya think; I look forward to it. :) Thanks so much for reading!

Chapter 18

Dean was still on his feet and trying not to pace when Sam emerged from the bathroom, hair damp and a little pale but not looking so bad beyond that. Still…

"Dude, what happened in there?" he demanded.

Sam blinked at him for a moment. "Oh, uh, I just gagged on the water, that's all."

"You gagged on the water?"

"Yeah, as in the water from the shower went down my throat and I choked on it. It happens. I feel kinda stupid, but it happens."

It only took seconds to figure out he didn't buy it…but Dean didn't really want to think about an alternative. His conscious mind chose to pretend he bought it before he could think about it too hard.

"Uh, okay."

The grimace he caught from Sam as the kid turned away told him his brother knew he hadn't believed it—but no one seemed to be protesting the sudden silence on the subject.

Dean was tired; tired from the hunt, from the search for the demon, from this damn condition of Sam's. He just wanted it all to be over, but there was nothing he could do tonight. Right now, if he could get a decent night's sleep he would be happy.

Dean watched Sam sit down to take his treatment from the nebulizer, and move from there to put his oxygen tube on and get in bed. He seemed much too ready to go right to sleep. It just wasn't Sam.

Right then, he knew he wouldn't get that sleep tonight.

It took all day the next day to get down to Louisiana, and it was just past dark when they pulled into the first motel they found in Gonzales—originally named the Gonzales Motel.

It was right down the main highway of the town, unlike most places they stayed, but it was the first cheap place they'd found. The large Lowe's less than a mile away would have made them both happy men, if they were normal. As it was, they weren't normal, and the store was nothing more than a reason for another traffic light that annoyed Dean and provided amusement for Sam.

The Winchesters checked in, were informed that with the many Katrina refugees still around they were lucky to have found a motel with a vacancy, and went straight to their room. After riding all day Sam's chest ached, and he was glad to get out of the Impala no matter much the car felt like home.

He and Dean bothered bringing in only what they needed for the night, and went right to sleep. They wanted an early start on the case the next morning. That was why Sam wasn't at all expecting to be shaken out of a sound sleep only a few hours later.

The lamp between the beds clicked on, and he could see Dean's face. There was a smile on it for the first time since before they'd left Missouri. It was sharing space with something akin to absolute panic, but it was a smile.

"Sammy, come on! Wake up! Hurry!"

He blinked blearily up at his brother. "What?" he groaned.

"The people, with, uh, the list or whatever. They called. Since you've got that weird thing going on with your blood and it's so rare, you were like, first priority if they got a donor with the same anti-thingy," Dean explained, nearly out of breath already. "Well they just got one in. We have to be in Jackson, Mississippi in less than four hours. If you'd get your ass out of bed we can just make it."

Sam sat up quickly, ignoring the twinge in his chest. "What?"

"Did you not hear me? Move!" Dean barked, unplugging the oxygen generator.

He pulled the tube out of his nose and handed it over to be rolled up with the machine. "Wait, you're serious?" he asked anxiously.

"Would I joke about this?" Dean huffed, already lugging the generator towards the door. "Come on; get your ass in gear!"

Sam still wasn't sure he believed what was happening, but he moved. He went almost on autopilot, scrambling up to gather what few other things they'd brought in. Adrenaline kicked in and lent the speed and the ability to ignore his sore ribs, and within ten minutes they were back in the car and on the highway in search of the interstate.

It wasn't until they were well onto the freeway that the adrenaline wore off.

"Wait…a transplant? Really?" he said finally, as it sank in.

"Yes, Sam; what'd you think?" Dean answered, eyes glued to the road.

"No no, I know, but…I just wasn't thinking about it. I mean…" He squinted and focused out the window on the dark trees flashing by. "With the list so long, and the anti-gen and all, I guess I never really thought it would happen. I always figured if we fixed this it would be another way. A transplant…" As his breath hitched his heart pounded heavily in his chest, and it didn't help calm him when he realized that he might not have the same one in there by this time tomorrow night.

"It takes a while to recover from those, doesn't it?" he asked, to distract himself. "It would be a while before I could hunt again."

"It's better than losing you," Dean snapped immediately.

It wasn't until that moment that he realized how tense his brother was. Beyond the hope was the anxiety, which Dean was apparently not immune to. His hands held the steering wheel in a death grip. After his quick answer he seemed to realize himself how on edge he was, and visibly tried to calm down. It took a moment, but he settled back in his seat a little farther, and just barely loosened his grip on the wheel.

"Are you scared?" he asked a moment later, quietly. Finally he glanced briefly at his brother.

Sam swallowed and wrapped his arms around his chest. "Yeah." He hesitated a moment. "Are you?"

When Dean didn't say anything, he knew the answer.

Sam was admitted through the emergency room at the hospital in Jackson, minutes before the deadline they'd been given to get there. Apparently there were time constraints to these things. Even though Sam could only receive a transplant from a donor with the same strange anti-gen he had, evidently it had been recently proven that organs with the anti-gen would still be accepted by the bodies of patients without it. Nothing could be wasted. Dean had been told over the phone that if they didn't make it the donor organs would go to someone else.

There was an examination to go through before surgery, and they let Dean back but not into the room while they looked Sam over. He paced in the corridor, blinking in the bright lights his eyes were only slowly adjusting to after three hours on the road in a dark vehicle.

He expected the door to open quickly when it opened. He expected there to be a rush to get his brother from the examination room to wherever they would prep him for the procedure—then to the procedure.

Instead, when the door opened, it opened slowly. All of the medical staff that had been inside filed out and away, leaving only one inside, holding the door open. The young doctor motioned silently for Dean to come in. He obeyed quickly, pushing past the man to find his brother, and stopped.

Sam was sitting on the edge of the examination bed, jacket beside him as he re-buttoned his only shirt and stared silently at the floor.

The young doctor that hadn't left closed the door behind them.

Dean looked back and forth between them—the doctor and his brother. "What's going on?" He looked back and forth several times before he decided that he didn't want to know.

It was the doctor who spoke first. "Because of the cracked ribs that are still healing there's an infection and a low-grade fever. I'm afraid we can't operate under those conditions."

Dean spun on him. "Excuse me?"

"It's regulations, sir. There's nothing I can do."

"What do you mean there's nothing you can do?" he demanded. "What's so bad about a little infection and a barely-existent fever?"

"It makes him a risk; less likely to come out of the procedure."

"Come out of it? Are you kidding me? There isn't a person on this planet more stubborn than that kid right there. I bet you your ass he'd come out of it just fine," Dean answered heatedly.

"I'm sorry, sir…"

The apology didn't have the intended affect. It only made Dean angrier. Who the hell did this guy think he was? "We did not drive two hundred miles in the middle of the damn night for you tell us it was for nothing!"

"Sir, I don't make the rules—"

"Damn right you don't, but I suggest you do something about this!"

"I can't."

This couldn't be happening. The chance had been there. How could it be gone already? It didn't make any sense. He went back and forth with the man for another moment or so, unable to accept it and unable to beat back the rising sense of panic.

"There's nothing I can do, sir. There was a local patient here when you arrived that we had called in case you didn't make it in time, and they're being rushed into surgery as we speak."

"You don't understand," Dean hissed desperately, hopefully low enough to keep Sam from overhearing. "He needs this. There may not be another chance," he choked, cursing himself for the catch in his voice.

The young doctor sighed sympathetically, and grimaced. "I understand, and I really am sorry." He glanced toward Sam, who hadn't said a word since Dean walked in. "I am." He let out another breath. "Please…wait here. Another doctor will be in to give your brother a prescription for the infection." Then he pulled the door open quietly and gave them both one last apologetic look. "I'm sorry."

When the doctor was gone Dean managed to turn around, to look at Sam. It was hard. His brother was still silent, staring at nothing. Dean wanted to be able to offer comfort, or something—anything—but his blood was boiling. He knew if he tried he'd only make things worse.

The best he could manage was to shuffle slowly across the room to perch silently on the edge of the bed beside his brother.

Sam felt nothing.

He decided that maybe it was because he'd used up his emotions worrying and fearing on the way here. That seemed a reasonable enough explanation. Reasonable, too, seemed the fact that Dean was angry. True, he was masking it. He always did that at first. But Sam saw through it; it helped knowing that he would be angry too, if he could feel anything at all.

Neither of them felt up to going all the way back to Louisiana at five in the morning—not after that. That much was decided without discussion, and the faintest rays of sunlight were beginning to lighten the sky as they pulled into the first motel they found that was sufficiently outside the main hub of the city of Jackson. Dean pulled up in front of the office to run inside and check in, and then came back to pull around to their room.

Dean sat where he was once he'd parked, expression set in stone—until he let out an inarticulate shout and slammed an elbow into the window beside him. He seemed disappointed that it didn't shatter, and took out his anger on the steering wheel and seat behind him next. After only a moment he fell silent and slumped over the steering wheel, breathing in heavy moans.

Sam swallowed hard and blinked back sudden tears. "Dean…" It was the first thing he'd said since the trip to Jackson earlier that night, and it came out barely audible. He didn't know what to expect in response, but he never would have expected the answer he got.

"Don't start, Sam; this is your fault," Dean snapped angrily, pushing his door open to climb out.

Sam's mouth fell open, and he shoved his own door ajar to follow his brother out. "W-what? Dean?"

Dean stopped just outside the car, hands braced on the top as he glared over the Impala. "You're the one that wanted to hunt; I wanted you to stay at Bobby's."

"If I'd been at Bobby's I wouldn't have been close enough to get here at all!"

"Then you should have at least stuck to the compromise! You should have let Bobby come in after me alone! If you hadn't jumped the gun and come after me in that basement you wouldn't have gotten those ribs re-cracked and there would be no infection!"

Sam shifted nervously on his feet. "I-I was still healing from the first time. I could have gotten an infection just as easily even if they hadn't been re-cracked."

"You really expect me to believe that?"

"Dean, what's your problem—"

Dean motioned across the car at him. "This is my problem, Sam! I can't do this!"

His mouth went dry. "Do what?" he asked thickly.

"I can't watch you die! That's what you're doing. You're dying, right in front of me, every day, and I can't stop it. I'm losing it here." He gestured wildly back in the direction of the hospital they'd just left. "What if that was your only chance at that option? You know the possibilities of finding another way to fix this. What if we don't?"

Sam felt himself breathing harder in response to his brother's words, and it was becoming difficult to get enough air.

Well…at least Dean wasn't in denial anymore.

"I don't know…" he muttered miserably.

"We can't know!" Dean snorted. "At least in that retarded fantasy world I knew how it'd all play out. I knew I'd be happy one way or another. That was the whole point of the thing. Maybe I should have just stayed there."

"And let the djinn kill you?"

"Even some fake lifetime would have been better than this!"

Sam's breath caught. "Dean…"

His brother wasn't listening. "Maybe you're the one dying, but it's killing me, Sam." Dean's voice caught, and after he'd stopped he opened his mouth again as if to go on, but quickly closed it and looked away.

Feeling as if his energy had been drained, Sam leaned heavy against the Impala's side, desperately hoping that Dean was only mouthing off in anger.

"I should have just stayed," Dean repeated.

Sam shook his head in an almost automatic motion. "You don't mean that…" he protested weakly.

"What if I do?" his brother shot back quickly.

He looked up, tears blurring his view of damp, angry green eyes in the dim light. "Dean—"

There was no answer. His brother dropped one of the room keys on the hood and spun to escape into the motel. The door slammed behind him.

Sam stared at the key for a long moment before leaving it where it was and tugging the Impala's passenger-side door open again. With a muted sob he slid back in and shut the door again. He reclined the seat as far back as it would go—not far—and clumsily jabbed at the controls to lock the car's doors as the tears broke free.

With the car secure and dawn breaking over the roof of the motel in front of him, Sam curled up as far as his chest would allow and cried himself to sleep for the first time in years.

Dean couldn't remember a time when waking up felt worse. Before he even opened his eyes he remembered every word he'd said to Sam before storming off the night before.

He already regretted every one of them.

Sam.

He sat up quickly, searching the room for his brother, but there was nothing to find. None of their things had been brought in, and the other bed was still made. The clock on the nightstand told him it was already well into the afternoon.

Oh god, where was Sam?

Dean scrambled out of the bed and glanced around for his shoes, only to realize they were still on his feet. He hadn't taken anything off before dropping into the bed and zoning out to get away from…everything. He hadn't even turned down the covers. The bed was still almost as neatly made as the other.

He hurried to the door and all but threw it open, rushing out onto the sidewalk and twisting desperately to search for any sign of his brother. Then he realized the Impala was parked right in front of him, and the key he'd dropped on the hood was still there.

Dean slowly circled around the side of the car, and let out a pent-up breath.

Sam was curled up in the passenger's seat, back to the window.

Dean paced a few feet, unsure what to do. Finally he went back to the passenger-side door and knocked tentatively on the glass. Sam's shoulders hunching was the only response he got, but it told him his brother was awake. He tried the door, but it was locked, and he knocked on the window again.

Sam didn't move, and he knocked the third time. "Sam, come on. Please?"

It took a few more seconds, but Sam slowly stretched out and sat up.

"Uh, it's locked?" he said, tugging on the handle for emphasis.

Sam silently unlocked the door from inside.

Dean hesitated before pulling the door open and crouching at the opening. "Hey…"

"Hey," Sam sighed, not looking him in the eyes. He had one arm around his chest and the other braced on the dashboard, and with that and the grimace on his brother's face Dean got the distinct impression that sleeping in the car hadn't helped the ribs any.

"Damnit," he breathed. He didn't know what else to say, so without another word he stood and reached into the car to pull Sam's arm over his shoulders and help his brother out.

He almost expected the assistance to be rejected—after all, he probably deserved that—but Sam clung to him, leaning heavily once his feet were on the ground and letting out a consistent stream of 'oww's under his breath. Dean glanced back at the car once he'd kicked the door closed. "Bad idea?"

"Bad idea," Sam grunted.

Dean sighed and gently hauled his brother inside, not liking the way his breathing sounded. He went straight to the first bed—the one he'd already used, but that didn't matter; it was closer—and made sure Sam laid down. "Just stay there; I'll be right back." He quickly went back out and dragged the oxygen generator inside.

"Here." When he had the thing plugged in and on he handed Sam but the tube, but his brother didn't seem too happy about it.

"It's the middle of the day…"

"Yeah, but you didn't really use it much last night, so it's okay." Sam still hesitated, staring at it as he propped himself up on one elbow, and though Dean knew what his brother was afraid of, he held it out closer. "It's okay, really. You're just…behind, that's all. It doesn't mean anything. You're fine. Come on, take it."

Sam tried to pull in a deep breath and winced. Reluctantly he took the tube, and after a few moments of taking in the oxygen his breathing began to even out. Dean finally relaxed a little, and as Sam lay back again he took a seat on the edge of the bed.

"I'm sorry."

Dean let out a surprised bark of laughter. "You're sorry? Are you friggin' kidding me?" he scoffed. "I was…an ass out there last night."

Sam was staring at the ceiling. "You were angry."

"Yeah I was pissed all right, but that didn't give me any right to say any of that crap. This was not your fault any more than it was anyone else's."

"Except maybe that shapeshifter," he said, almost smiling.

"Yeah…except maybe the shapeshifter," Dean shrugged.

Sam nodded once and sat up slowly, still pulling in careful breaths through the oxygen tube. For a moment he pressed a hand under his nose, holding the thing in closer. Dean watched him, trying not to react, but when Sam quickly dropped his hand he figured he hadn't succeeded in keeping the pain from his face.

"Not everything you said last night was just because you were angry." It wasn't a question, and Dean grimaced and looked away.

"Sam—"

"No, Dean, it's okay," he said tiredly, staring at his hands in his lap. "Really. I mean, it's not like it was anything I didn't already know. I know how hard this has been on you…I've been in your position before, remember? And what happened last night couldn't have helped any."

"Not really."

"I know," he sighed.

Dean shrugged. "I just…don't get it."

"Get what?"

"Why it happened! I mean…hey, you remember that case from a few months ago, don't you? The one with the murdered priest who thought he was an angel or something?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Well…after that, what with what happened and how that kid died and all, I guess I was willing to consider that maybe there really is a God out there somewhere. Now I don't know what to think."

Sam swallowed. "Me either."

Now that was cause for alarm. "What? Come on, Sam; you've always believed in this stuff."

"Yeah, the basics, and I still do, I guess, but I don't get it either," he winced, motioning vaguely. "What's going on here? What about all of those coincidences, with Abby and the girl back in Mississippi? Was that supposed to mean anything or am I just crazy? Was there a point to any of this at all? To last night?" He stopped and let out a breath. "I just don't…understand," he said helplessly.

"I guess we can't know everything?"

His brother didn't seem to hear him, but it didn't matter. It hadn't been a particularly brilliant response, anyway.

Sam rested his elbows on his knees and let his forehead drop into his hands for a moment. "And, god, the fact that we got called in the first place." He sat up again, hands braced on the edge of the bed. "If we were right, you know what that means don't you?"

"Uh, you're gonna have to refresh my memory on that one."

"The anti-gen, Dean. If it has something to do with the demon, then it means that another of the children like me is dead. They're dropping all over the place, and we don't know why. What the hell does that mean?"

He was working himself up already, and running out of breath. Dean half stood, reaching across the space between the beds to clamp a calming hand on his brother's shoulder and coax him to lie down again. "Whoa, Sam, take it easy."

Sam reluctantly allowed himself to be pushed back down, and Dean returned to his seat. Silence fell, disturbed only by the whine of the oxygen generator. God, I hate that thing. He would have smashed the thing to pieces long ago if he hadn't known it was prolonging his brother's life.

Though that was hard enough to stomach of itself.

Neither of them said anything for several long minutes, and Dean couldn't help but realize that there was still one aspect of the argument the night before that they hadn't touched on yet even in passing—the last part; the part about the djinn.

He didn't think they would get to it, either, but it hung there. Something told him Sam hadn't forgotten it, either.

"We never called Bobby last night, did we?" Sam asked eventually.

Dean frowned, trying to remember. After a moment he pulled out his phone to check the recent dialed calls. "Uh…no. We didn't."

Sam's eyes closed. "Good. He doesn't need to know about this."

"No," Dean swallowed. "He doesn't."