A CHILL IN THE AIR
Oh, bog off real life ... why do you expect me to bugger about and EARN the salary I'm paid, when all I want to do is be left alone to write fanfic ... hey ho! *sighs*
Chapter 4
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Sam held his brother tightly, wrapping him in the biggest towel he could find and trying to mutter soothing reassurances, even though he was sure that Dean either couldn't hear or wasn't even aware that he was speaking.
Dean's shivering was becoming harsher, more intense, more painful; Sam could barely maintain a hold on him. "S'mmy … hur's so much … so cold … so cold …" the words had become a desperate despairing mantra. All that Dean could think, all that he could voice was the terrible pervading chill that was slowly consuming him.
Without even checking that he was fully dry, Sam half-dragged, half-carried Dean back into the main room and laid him down on the bed, pulling every scrap of linen that he could find on both beds over him.
Sam could see no other option; he knew Dean would hate him for it, but he didn't hesitate. Despite the lung-crushing, oppressive heat in the room, he lifted the crumpled mess of bedlinen and crawled under it, gathering Dean in as close as he could; wrapping him in long warm arms, and worming in as tight as he could so that there was not a scrap of space between Dean's back and Sam's warm chest.
The chill permeating Sam's body from his brother's suffering form pressed against him was overwhelming; a glacial cold radiated through his chest and he could feel himself starting to shiver. It was then the awful truth dawned; he wasn't transferring his body heat to Dean. Dean's chill was leeching into him and draining his own warmth.
He abruptly sat up. This just was not normal or natural. Therefore, Sam reflected angrily, it had to be supernatural; there could be no other rational explanation. He almost snorted with laughter at the cruel irony of his conclusion; how could anything supernatural possibly be described as rational? Is this how screwed-up their life had become?
The sound of that terrible teasing laughter that he still wasn't quite sure he had heard earlier rang in his ears, mocking and haunting him.
Rational be damned.
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Sam wasn't stupid. He knew hypothermia was no joke, and he knew there was only one logical outcome to severe and prolonged hypothermia. He had to try to figure out what this problem was, what had caused it, and most importantly; how to stop it.
However, despite his best intentions, he couldn't do that all the while he was trying to care for his desperately sick brother.
As he sat, his mind whirling hopelessly, he looked up out of the window. The storm had finally abated, leaving the snow-coated world outside still and soundless, bathed in monochrome shades of grey and white.
Sam dared to hope there was a chance the roads would be open again. That meant he could get Dean to a hospital. Could they help? Sam somehow doubted it, but at least their care would free Sam up to concentrate on investigating a cause and, he hoped more desperately than anything he had ever hoped for anything before, a cure.
He tucked the bedclothes tighter around Dean in a futile gesture of support; "I'm going outside to try to get you some help, dude;" he laid a warm palm over Dean's scalp, cringing at how unhealthily cool it felt.
Dean's weak nod of acknowledgement was lost in another violent tremor.
Cautiously opening the door, Sam stepped over the threshold into knee-deep snow. The bitter chill of the outside world compared to the sweaty, airless heat of their room hit him like a wall of glass, and gasped for breath as he waded clumsily through the crystalline drifts until he reached the motel's brightly-lit reception.
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He stumbled through the glass doors and crossed the small reception area in one desperate stride.
"My brother's really sick," passing over any social niceties, he blurted the words out to the young, bored-looking receptionist who stood behind the desk; "I need to get him to the hospital soon as possible. I know the road's been closed, is there any way I can get him there?" He hesitated, pleading now; "please, you gotta help me; he's really, really sick."
The receptionist's mouth dropped slightly and she stared at him in genuine horror. She would have welcomed any diversion from the tedium of a day standing behind the desk of a near-deserted hotel cut off from civilisation by winter's fury. However, she would have preferred a diversion that didn't involve a frantic giant looming over her panicking about a dying brother. That's all she needed; one of the guests kicking it on her shift.
"As far as I know the road is still closed," she replied swiftly and apologetically; "but I'll call Doctor Benson. He's our on-call medic and only lives a block from here; he can come and check things out. If he thinks your brother needs the hospital, I'm sure he can take you there; he's got an SUV just for circumstances like this."
She snatched up the phone, and Sam was momentarily buoyed by her sense of urgency.
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The knock on the door to the Winchesters' room was swift, heavy and very welcome. On hearing it, Sam yanked the door open and acknowledged the owner of the knock; a stout, elderly man, presumably Doctor Benson judging by his small black bag, standing huddled on the doorstep. The man's nose wrinkled as the powerful musk of perspiration which hung in the room's thick, stale air suddenly assaulted his nose.
He stepped past Sam into the room, and nodded a brief but polite greeting.
Making every attempt to explain the situation to the good Doctor, Sam knew full well that whatever he told the poor man would make absolutely no sense at all.
"He's so cold," he rambled frantically; "and nothing I do can warm him up. I've had the heating on full for almost two days, I've made hot drinks, hot baths, and he's still freezing." Sam could hear the pitch of his voice rising as he became more and more agitated; "and he's just getting colder," he added fearfully.
Doc Benson eyed Sam over the top of his bifocals, watching as Sam squirmed awkwardly under his watery ice-blue gaze, babbling complete nonsense. He knew the score; no doubt these two young bucks had been up to some kind of horseplay which had left Dean in this sorry state, and the brother didn't want any trouble. His face warmed into a sympathetic smile; he'd been a young man himself once.
"Okey dokey," he began; "let's see what we can find, shall we?"
He stood over Dean's bed. "Okey dokey, young man," he murmured kindly; "lets take a look at you."
Sam watched as Benson gently pulled back the knot of bedclothes around Dean far enough to take his patient's hand. Sam also saw his rheumy eyes widen behind his thick glasses as he took in a sharp breath at how deathly, icy cold the clenched, grey hand was.
Benson's demeanour suddenly took on a sense of urgency. Fishing in his bag, he hauled out a stethoscope and a thermometer, and embarked on a brief but thorough examination of his patient.
He looked up at Sam.
"Temperature's 93.5," he announced solemnly, rubbing the back of his neck.
Sam gasped. "It's-it's gone down," he stammered; "it was 95 when I took it a few hours ago."
"I don't understand this;" the Doctor looked up at Sam, puzzled concern written across his face; "he's at a stage of hypothermia where his body should be starting to close down. I would expect him to be losing consciousness, his bodily functions slowing down to critical levels."
Sam nodded hesitantly; if that's what 'should' be happening, surely it can't be worse?
"The thing is," Benson reflected, packing his equipment away; "I accept he's not very lucid right now, but I put that down to the intense discomfort he's suffering at the moment. He's also completely conscious, and his heartbeat and pulse are almost normal; in fact they're slightly elevated – again due to the discomfort he's suffering, I would say."
He crouched down beside his patient, wincing as his knees made a sound like splintering wood; "okey-dokey Dean, I'm going to get you straight to the hospital," he spoke quietly and slowly, his tone gentle and reassuring; "you are entering severe hypothermia although I have to say I've never seen it manifest this way, but we need to get you warmed up, and a hospital is the best place to do it."
Dean looked up at the Doctor's face through glassy, unfocussed eyes, which flickered across the room to latch onto Sam. He made no acknowledgement of the doctor's words, his frigid lips could no longer form the words.
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Responding without hesitation to the doctor's words, Sam bundled Dean up in the warmest clothes he could find and wrapped him in a blanket for the brief transfer to the Doctor's smart black SUV which stood waiting across the parking lot, sunk up to it's footplates in snow.
Instinctively knowing Dean was no longer capable of walking, he lifted him into his arms, cringing at the long groan Dean let out at the sudden movement and tottered toward the door, carrying his precious burden out into the freezing winter.
Even through the thick blanket, the sudden cold shock tore through Dean like the jaws of a wild animal, and he convulsed rigidly against Sam's chest.
Sam picked his way with infinite care, stumbling under the bone-cold, quaking weight he carried through the knee-deep snow, and casting a regretful glance at the half buried Impala as she sat helplessly immobile, half buried under a twinkling bank of snow. His relief was palpable as he approached the gleaming black SUV, with Doctor Benson standing beside it, holding a welcoming door open for him.
As he approached the car, a sharp breeze whipped up, flinging the white powder into a swirling frenzy around him; stinging his face, blinding and unbalancing him.
Not to be deterred, Sam lowered his head and plunged forward regardless, cutting through the flying ice-crystals which lashed and flailed around him like a living swarm, until he reached the car. He leaned forward to gently load Dean into the back seat, bundling him up tight where the blanket had worked loose and ensuring he was securely strapped in.
Once he was satisfied that Dean was safe and comfortable, insofar as that was possible, he stepped back from the car, and arched into a long stretch in an attempt to unknot his abused back.
Sam was glad he wasn't called upon to carry his brother often; Dean was one goddamned heavy armload. A rigidly cold, shivering Dean was an unyielding and painfully bruising goddamn heavy armload, and Sam figured that Dean's current predicament wasn't going to be helped none by having his brother in traction with a scrambled spine.
He stretched again just to be sure as he made his way round the back of the car.
Stumbling through the deepening drifts, Sam caught a sudden and familiar flash of blue flicker and sparkle across the car's gleaming black paintwork, but this time, there was something else; something more.
The hazy image that stared back at him from within the SUV's black flank was insubstantial, ebbing and flowing as if reflected in water.
It radiated malice, and Sam felt himself shudder involuntarily as the sheer malevolence that poured off of it drilled into his soul, filling him with a stone-cold, icy dread.
It was a face; crystalline blue, sharply thin and cruelly sinister.
As he stood helpless, mesmerised by the small glimmering eyes, as deep and as black as the spite in its callous smirk, Sam knew then what was ailing Dean.
And he also knew then that Dean was beyond any medical help.
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tbc