A/N: Same stuff applies as in the first chapter. Oh, and unfortunately I neither own Supernatural nor Dark Angel. Just this.
A/N part two: Specific episodes of Supernatural mentioned are: a Dean-ism from "When the Levee Breaks." Specific episodes of Dark Angel mentioned are: none. There is an homage to House, though.
Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter XVII: Unrest of the Spirit
When Dr. Ian Harlan's phone rings him awake at two o'clock in the morning, he jolts out of bed, ready to hear the voice of the ER receptionist hurryingly demanding he come into the hospital due to a massive car crash or something. What he doesn't expect to hear is Sam Carr, a physician he'd call more an acquaintance than a friend, requesting that he get there ASAP for a patient Ian has no knowledge about. But, unfortunately, Carr brings up the favor Sam had procured from him months ago, and it's not like he can exactly refuse.
"Honey? What is it?" questions his wife, Amy, groggily sitting up in bed when she feels him get out of it.
He turns around to face her, pulling a shirt on over his head and grabbing a pair of pants. "I'm called in for an emergency surgery," Ian explains.
"How bad is it?" Amy asks concernedly, her delicate eyebrows pinching together.
Ian smiles. She'd always worried about the patients he had, no matter how large or small the incident, always followed up with him when he returned home. "Not bad," he replies, slipping on his shoes. "Just a routine arthroscopic for a ripped rotator cuff."
"But it's an emergency?"
"That's what Sam Carr said," Ian sighs, thinking of the evasive yet commanding tone Carr had taken with him. "He didn't say much about it, though."
Amy nods, getting out of bed to kiss him on the cheek. "Don't be home too late," she says, like she does every time he leaves for work regardless of the hour. "I love you."
He pecks her forehead, grabs his hospital badge from the bedpost, and heads out the door. "Love you, too, Ame."
Ten minutes later, Ian's silver, '15 Audi pulls into his assigned, faded parking space in front of Harbor Lights, no less perplexed about the "emergency" he'd been called in for. Shaking his head and wishing he'd pried Carr for more particulars before rushing over, he locks the car with a double beep and quickly walks into the hospital, curling into his jacket against the cold air.
He gives a quick greeting to the receptionist, who looks a little puzzled as to why Ian's there, and makes his way to the second Operation room, the only other detail Carr had confessed. As he enters, he takes in the three figures within, a little taken aback at the odd grouping, but focusing on Carr first. He hopes the brooding guy in the green shirt isn't his patient.
"Sam," Ian says, his face exuding question as he tosses aside his jacket. "What's the emergency?"
Sam clears his throat, and then nods at whom he'd noticed Ian studiously try to not look. "This is Dean, he's the one who needs the shoulder operation," Sam introduces.
Ian internally groans; it's just his luck that he's dragged out of the first deep sleep he's had in a long time just to be told he has to patch together a guy that seriously looks like he doesn't want to be worked over. But Ian isn't one to back down from a challenge, and he didn't get to be head surgeon by shying away from a sulking, irate patient.
"All right, then, Dean, why don't you tell me what happened," Ian asks, beginning to prep the equipment he'd need for the surgery.
"I'd rather not."
The cold detachment in Dean's voice throws Ian off for a moment, but he continues pulling on his rubber gloves nonetheless. "Ripped rotator cuffs aren't trivial injuries, tough guy," Ian levels, his gaze steady on Dean. "I make a nick in the wrong place or attach a tendon to the wrong part, you could say sayonara to movement in your arm, adduction, abduction, can't be sure of what'd be axed in things like this."
"Yeah, yeah, I got it, Dr. Hardy. Bad snip, Earth goes kablooey," Dean says, rolling his eyes. Both doctors look peeved for a second, before they frown, missing Dean's reference. "Wow, what'd you live under a rock?"
"I believe it's General Hospital," Logan offers helpfully, and the three others look over at him.
"The inner soapie Logan makes an appearance," Dean commends, chuckling to himself.
"This has all been well and good," interrupts Ian, wishing even more that he were back at his own house, and not stuck with a pop culture-referencing antagonist. "But if you don't mind, I'd like to get to work."
Dean shrugs one shoulder, suddenly devoid of the will to whip a comeback. It's clear to him that this surgeon doesn't want to be here any more than Dean does, and Dean knows how to recognize the fastest way out when he sees it. Right now, that's complying with the doctor's orders, although there's no way Dean's going to let him knock him out. Dope him up on morphine, fine, Dean's down with that, but if he can avoid losing consciousness under any circumstance, he's going to do so. He'd probably allow it if he were given back up by, say, his brother, but everyone in his immediate vicinity he doubts could hold their own against Stunt Bad Guy #3, let alone any real danger. Not that Dean anticipates any danger, but all the same…
"No sedatives."
Ian glances over at Sam, like he expects the GP to talk some sense into Dean, but Sam has figured out Dean doesn't appreciate opposition from almost the moment he met him. "Humor him," Sam suggests, both he and Dean looking at Ian pointedly.
Ian sighs, but takes an alcohol swab from a container in the cupboard and swathes a portion of Dean's arm with it, before taking up the abandoned bottle of morphine that had been used earlier and pulling out a bit more than Sam had. Without much of a bedside manner—and really, who could blame him?—he injects Dean with the opioid, and then walks over to the sink, waiting for it to take effect, and washes his arms up almost to his elbow. Sam dries them and puts plastic gloves over Ian's hands, and then pulls over the cart of various medical utensils he'd anticipated he would need for the surgery.
Logan, meanwhile, is standing awkwardly by, watching the proceedings. He's rather uncomfortable, given that both Sam and Ian are in their doctor modes now, going through the pre-op motions in tandem even though, as far as Logan knows, the two men hadn't had much of a correspondence before now. But, he muses, that's probably what all doctors have: this ingrained sort of adaptability that exerts itself when the need arises, the taught-to-death collaboration that prevents most clumsy maneuvers between physicians.
He would have watched some more, equally amazed, were it not for the huge-ass tools that Ian is preparing for Dean's shoulder, preparing to slice into the warm skin and produce a thick line of red. Logan isn't one of those queasy, faint at the sight of blood sort of prissies, but it doesn't lend way to making him want to watch an invasive surgery on a guy he doesn't even really like. So Logan quickly edges out the door, propelled in part by his own not wanting to watch the procedure, and in part by Dean's death glare that, regardless of any similarity it bears to Max's or Alec's—both having bestowed him with that sort of look so many times over he's used to them—makes him feel about seven.
The first thing he does upon leaving the operating room is walk the next hallway over, out of sight (and hopefully out of mind) of the two working doctors and one malaise patient. He heavily—and he means heavily—considers just booking it out of there, on the drive to T.C. weighing how he'll say "Oops, sorry, Max, nothing the doctors could do. Dean died. M'bad. So how about dinner?"
Somehow he thinks Max would take that badly.
So, instead of taking the easy way out, like he never seems able to do, he withdraws his behind-what-the-times-should-produce cell phone and dials Max's number from memory. Strictly speaking, her personal phone is solely for urgent cases—of the "T.C. is being bombed!" or "Joshua's been shot, Max!" type—but hey, Logan's pretty sure T.C.'s slow tonight, and anyway, Max did ask him to call her as soon as he knew anything…
Okay, so maybe he just doesn't want to talk to Mole. Sue him. It's not his fault the scaly bastard isn't a people-person. It's not his fault Mole (and oddly lots of other transgenics) seems to think he's like a seedy politician from planet Vulcan or something. Whatever.
Max picks up after barely a ring, her voice already in panic mode, as Logan expects it always is when someone calls her on that line. "Logan?" she asks, her voice rushed. "What is it? Did something happen?"
"Whoa, calm down," Logan mollifies, trying his best to imbue the soothingest of soothing tones to his voice. "Everyone's okay."
"You know this cell is for people lying in a ditch, right?"
Logan chuckles inwardly. Stage One: Freak Out. Complete. Stage Two: Bitchiness. In Progress.
"You said to update you when I got a chance," Logan says medially.
Logan can hear the smug smile in her voice when Max responds, "You're scared of Mole, aren't you?"
"I am not scared," Logan grumbles, thinking of he chain-smoking lizard decidedly unfondly. "I'm just…with reservation is all."
Max's silence is absolutely saturated with eyebrow raising undertones.
"Too bad I have all this information about Dean and no one to tell it to…" Logan feels the jibe is both too lighthearted in face of both Dean's injury and the whole war thing going on, as well as cattier than Logan would like, but if there's one thing Max responds to, besides violence, it's baiting.
"Spill," Max snaps finally. Logan smiles to himself. Hook, line, sinker. He adores the woman, honestly, but in some instances, even he'll admit she's predictable.
Logan looks in the general direction of the room he'd just left, like he can see through the walls and observe the surgery. "Sam Carr and this surgeon he knows are operating on Dean's shoulder right now," Logan relays. Max stays quiet, stoic, and Logan knows it's her default setting for allowing herself to absorb lots of probably terrible information without reacting until it's all over with. And Logan won't sugarcoat it for her. "They said it was bad, something about a severed rotator cuff and his humerus being almost through the skin, but it's reparable. He should be back to sulkily beating the crap out of things in no time."
It takes a second or two, in which Logan can practically see Max's mood change, but then she chuckles. "I'm sensing some latent hostility there, Logan," she smiles. "You're not seriously jealous of Dean, are you?"
He snorts. "Oh yes," Logan says sarcastically, "I'm extremely envious of a psycho killer with some not-so-repressed violent tendencies. He's my idol and I can't take it."
Logan knows his denial—which is legit, duh—won't change any preconceptions Max may have formulated, but at least he tried. It's unfathomable to him how Max could come to the conclusion that Logan's begrudging Dean because of some weird Freudian subconsciousness, but it's not the first time Logan's not been able to figure Max out. He'll let her draw her own workings. As long as Dean doesn't get it in his head that Logan's jealous and thus unyieldingly ridicule him (though that hope is pretty much just a shred; damn bastard's too perceptive for his own good), Logan'll be fine.
"So he's really okay?" Logan has to snap away from his sullen musings to get back into the conversation, and it takes him a moment to realize what Max is saying, but then his brain fills in the lapse of concentration.
"Dean?" Logan asks unnecessarily, before hurrying on in lieu of Max retorting something to him, "He'll recover. I've got a feeling the guy's immune system is too accustomed to being brutalized for him to really get the effects of injuries anyway. He's almost more stubborn than you."
Max laughs. "Well, we'll see about that," she replies teasingly.
Logan hears some rustling of papers on Max's end, and he guesses she's in the middle of some tedious accounting or something, and while he's got a shrewd idea she's grateful for the distraction of his call, he knows T.C. can't really afford to have slack in attention to their goings-on, let alone because of he and Max rehashing the fact that Dean will be just super over and over.
"You should probably get back to your work," Logan advises, resigning himself to sitting in one of the very uncomfortable plastic chairs while Sam and Ian hack away at Dean's shoulder. Max starts to say something, but Logan, predicting her words, interrupts, "He's fine, Max," and then hangs up before she can protest some more.
Not but three seconds after he does so, the scratchy hospital intercom whines, in a vaguely familiar voice, "Code blue in O.R. Three! Crash team and Dr. Connell to O.R. Three immediately!"
Logan's head snaps up to the reception desk, where the nurse has vanished, and is instead rushing up the hallway with a doctor, his badge reading Dr. Jack Connell – ER, the both of them heading to where Logan had retreated from a few minutes ago. Logan looks down at his cell phone.
"Or maybe he isn't fine."
Max stares at her own phone, half amused and half annoyed at Logan's brush-off. Not that she would've done any better to him, but that so isn't the point. However, despite her initial upset with him for dialing the number that she'd explicitly told everyone is only for dire emergencies, she's glad for the news he'd brought. Of course she hadn't been worried. Hell no. Max doesn't worry. She just…gets concerned for the people she has come to not possess pure hatred for.
Setting the cellular on the table, Max ponders for a moment before she gives into her catlike meddling, starting to pull on her boots and grab her gloves. She'd thrown her favorite black leather jacket haphazardly over the dilapidated and some-springs-exposed chair earlier, and, obviously not one to ever forget to wear it, she goes to pick it up.
"Not planning on breaking into the hospital, are you, Max?"
Max whirls around, her gasp of surprise barely held back. She flips on the standing lamp to reveal Alec, partially hidden in shadows, behind the door. She scowls, not so much that it's him, but that he'd startled her. Funny, but she'd never had anyone able to sneak up upon her before she'd met Alec. The bastard.
"What, you get your rocks off listening in darkness to people's phone calls?" she bites, shrugging on her jacket.
Alec chuckles, standing calm as you please with his arms folded across his chest. "Aw, Maxie, now why would you want to know how I do or don't get, as you so eloquently spewed it, my rocks off?"
"Oh, give it up, Alec."
"You wish."
"Was there something you wanted?" Max grates out, frustrated, gripping onto the doorframe with more force than strictly necessary. At Alec's lecherous grin, she addendums, "And don't even think of making that dirty."
His gaze retains the same amount of debauchery, but then dims as his face sobers, his hands moving to burying deep in his pockets. "Don't go over there, Max."
"And why the hell not?" Max retorts, inwardly cringing at the petulance coming through. "So what if I want to make sure he and Logan aren't killing each other?"
Alec laughs, cackles really, and ignores Max's affronted glare. "Okay, let's be real for a moment," he chokes out. "You honestly think Logan could kill Dean? Maybe with his prowess of viper-like rhetoric."
Max would like nothing more than to strangle Alec for his pointedly dogged remarks about Logan, and with Alec's slightly tensed stature and focused eyes, she knows he expects it. She won't, though, for one reason—
"Fine," Max sniffs. "I want to make sure Dean's not killing Logan."
"Dude has a busted shoulder, Max."
"Your point?"
"I gave him the busted shoulder, thanks very much. It's not to be taken lightly."
"Just tell me what you're getting at, Alec."
"You're putting us all at risk. You shouldn't go. Dean'll survive."
Max pauses, peering shrewdly into Alec's face. "You want to go, don't you?"
"Uh, yeah."
His tone is entirely unapologetic, and Max can see the earnestness in his eyes, but she just can't do it. With a genuinely remorseful sigh, she replies, "Alec, I'm sorry, but…I don't think that'd be the best idea right now. Dean's going to need as little stress as possible in his condition."
Alecs face is absolutely furious, mouth in a fine, white line. "You may be able to control the other people in T.C., Max, but you can't control me. It doesn't work that way. I put up with a lot of shit from you, but with this I won't."
Max digs her nails into her jeans, begging herself for composure. She's discovering some self-hatred for doing this. "Someone needs to stay here and man T.C. I'll find some other Xs to come with me to retrieve Dean. Please, Alec, just do as I say."
Alec simply stares at her, like he's just too enraged to do anything else. Max takes the opportunity with a wince, and leaves Alec in her office, already with some transgenics she can take with her in mind. Problem is, she knows that in any other circumstance, Alec would've been more than enough backup, but now that he isn't coming, she's going to need three others to help her. And that kinda hits home. In a way she doesn't have time to explore.
To say Ian was happy about performing an operation on this particular patient would be an outright lie. Not that Ian is ever exactly happy about performing operations, but usually he's pretty neutral about it all. Perhaps it would have been simpler if Dean Winchester were completely put under, like the majority of Ian's patients are, or if Ian hadn't been so rudely awakened to do so, or, you know, if Dean weren't so damn hostile about all of it.
So the guy wasn't exactly throwing punches, but he wasn't exactly a bucket of honey either. The best Ian had hoped for was that Dean would be a little more complacent after the dose of morphine he'd received. Most people were. After all, it is in the opium family. But no. Dean just had to not be most people.
The operation had started off fine, comparatively, and Ian was beginning to place it among not the easiest by any means, but at least not so terrible that he wanted to kill someone. Dean actually, Ian reluctantly admitted, was about as good as someone knocked out, in terms of kinesiology. He was as still as a stone, Dean was, which did make Ian's job that much more linear, and that worked for a while, before everything went haywire.
Everything had been going swimmingly, the preparations going on as cleanly as a textbook's, until Ian holds his hand out to Sam and asks, "Scalpel." He should have realized the warning signs when Dean's head, which had been before faced forward and unmoving, snapped over to him.
As with all procedures where his patient is awake, Ian chooses to go with the more calming approach by warning the individual any sensations they may feel; especially with the ones that presume being doped up on morphine equals no sensation at all. So, as per usual, Ian advises, "This may pinch a bit," and starts to press the blade through Dean's skin.
The only vocal hint Ian is given is the part whimper, part command of "No!" that Dean manages. Of course, it doesn't really register until Ian notices he's on the floor a good six feet away, his face hurting like a bitch, and his scalpel skidded at least ten feet from him. Ian shoots his eyes up to Dean, whose own eyes are wild, and whose shoulder no longer has the small nick that Ian had made, but rather a jagged, deep gash that had most likely been a result of the blade that had been in Ian's hand and scraped across Dean's skin when he'd punched the doctor.
"Sam!" Ian yells, looking over at his co-worker, having stepped back a few paces from Dean, whose breaths are coming in fast and uneven. "The alprazolam! Now!"
Whatever differences Sam and Ian have with each other are put on hold, whatever upset Sam may have with being ordered around by Ian (after all, they're the same level of doctors, just in different specialties) is suspended insofar as Dean's abrupt panic attack went on. Sam immediately grabs the glass bottle Ian had demanded and pulls out slightly more than the recommended dosage, stepping towards Dean to insert the benzodiazepine into Dean's bloodstream. Unfortunately, even Sam underestimates Dean's training and reflexes, heightened exponentially in his aggravated state, and Dean, in a movement Sam can't quite catch, snatches the needle and jabs it into Sam's own arm. The fast-acting sedative does just what it's meant to, and within two seconds, Sam's body falls limp to the linoleum.
Ian can't believe how a straightforward rotator cuff repair got out of hand so quickly, and by a seemingly meaningless trigger. The more remarkable thing is that Dean's not resembling someone whose brain went on the fritz and starts issuing signals to go massacre people. He looks more like…well, the only close analogy Ian can give is a cornered animal. Like Dean had reverted into a more primal form and is simply reacting—albeit violently—to stimuli he feels are threatening.
Regardless of what Dean's thinking or not thinking at the moment, though, Ian isn't quite sure his own health isn't jeopardized. So, Ian scrambles over to the wall of the room that holds the white service telephone connected to the intercom.
"Code blue in O.R. Three!" Ian commands into the speaker, anticipating Dean's just as likely to have a cardiac arrest as knock Ian out. This requires more specialty than Ian's got. "Crash team and Dr. Connell to O.R. Three immediately!"
Hospitals post-Pulse may be lax in a lot of areas, lacking funding and staff and all that, but if they kept anything, it's emergency response, at least within the hospital itself. And, thankfully, in this case they're even ahead of schedule. It's barely ten or fifteen seconds after Ian yelled into the phone that a crash cart, three nurses, and the head of the Emergency Room, Jack Connell, rush into the room and set to work.
"What happened?" Jack demands, already setting to do what Sam had tried, and pull out milligrams of the depressant.
"No, don't!" Ian halts, getting to his feet and preventing Jack from quite possibly getting himself knocked out just like Sam had. "Name's Dean Winchester, came in for shoulder surgery, started having a panic attack when I started in with the scalpel. Carr tried the alprazolam and got himself injected instead. It won't work that way, Connell!"
Jack's slate-colored stare is stern, always has been, but he nods curtly just the same, used to being in situations where he doesn't know all the details but has to trust the attending physicians or risk the patient's life, if not his own or others'. Inoculating Dean with the sedative would make his job that much more facile, but Jack rarely gets that luxury.
He glances to the three nurses and barks, "Smith, Wallace, arms; Harlan, Price, his legs!"
They all do Jack's bidding, even Ian, and force Dean down onto the bed. While Ian winces at Dean's shoulder, at the fact that they could very well be damaging the joint more than it already is, he understands that getting Dean's heart rate, breathing, and brainwaves back to normal is paramount right now.
Jack grabs his penlight and swipes it across both of Dean's eyes. "Pupils dilated, unresponsive!" he announces, and then, with the speed of immense repetition, hooks up heart and O2 stats monitors, glancing up at the reading. "HR 300 bpm, O2 deficiency!"
In normal instances, Jack wouldn't hesitate to put on an oxygen mask, hook up an IV, and administer a sedative, if not alprazolam then a similar drug. In normal instances, this would be just another day at the office, another faceless patient. But Jack can see this Dean Winchester isn't just another faceless patient, not by the disconcerted, even scared, expression on Ian Harlan, a doctor Jack draws up as unflappable. Add to that the fact that Dean not only overpowered Sam Carr in a huge way, but managed to inject him with his own hypodermic.
Jack relies on medicine for most cases, puts his faith in artificially manufactured help. He thinks that manual or sketchy methods are very rarely applicable, and that people that perform them are too soft to be in this profession, or at least in the ER. But he can see, halfway inexplicably, that Dean's problem is not so much biological as psychological. That this isn't some random illness that's afflicting Dean, but rather was set off by something Ian must have done, however small.
He sets down his penlight, and instead peers into Dean's face, keeping a safe distance but close enough to study the young man's features. "Dean. Dean, can you hear me?" he asks, feeling altogether stupid but hey, whatever may work. "My name is Jack Connell, I don't mean you any harm."
Ian does a double-take, almost loosening his hold on Dean's ankle and knee. "What the hell?" he exclaims, staring at Jack. "Seriously, what the hell?"
Jack silences Ian with a glare edging towards Dean's territory, and holds Dean's jaw firmly between his fingers, studying the man's face again. "Eyes are unfocused but constant," Jack remarks curiously. "Heart rate and breathing suggest high activity or stress, but there are no physical signs. Your patient is hallucinating something intensely vivid, perhaps a memory or projection of a circumstance. What you need is a neurologist, not an ER doctor."
"I thought it pertinent—"
"I'll give him a sedative," Jack interrupts, pulling out a different bottle of liquid and drawing it into a needle. With precision but expedition, he depresses the plunger into Dean's bicep, and within seconds, the rapid-fire beeping of the monitors slow, Dean's nearly iris-less eyes roll back into his head, and his wound muscles relax with the barbiturate. Jack looks up sternly at Ian, making the surgeon feel as if he's a lowly grad student again and Jack is the professor that's brilliant but everyone hates. "Now finish your damn procedure. Then get Dr. Pearson in here to take an EEG and perhaps CT scan. I'm sure he'll find this man's readouts fascinating."
Ian stands speechless, Jack gesturing the nurses out of the room. Giving Ian a meaningful glance, Jack motions for him to do his bidding. Ian scowls at Dean's prone, synthetically sleeping form, and then exits the operating room, with a final, seethed mumble.
"I knew I never should have bet Sam that woman had lupus. It's never freakin' lupus."