Sorry for the delay. It's been snowing, and snow means skiing. Thanks for reading and for the exxxcellent reviews. Seth

Chapter Twelve

After Sam vowed to stand behind Dean in whatever decision he made regarding hunting, Dean's renewed determination lasted as long as it took for him to learn that walking on a prosthetic leg was a real sonuvabitch. He had really thought that once he'd mastered standing on one leg, learning to walk again would be a cinch. After all, Carl Brashear had done it, and he didn't fight demons for a living. At the moment, he hated Carl Brashear.

"Dean." Monica's stern voice broke though his internal grumbles. He swiped away the sweat from his brow and gave her a forced smile. "Gait walking, is slow and steady," she reminded for what must have been the hundredth time since his therapy session had begun. "An' if I see you letting go of those bars again before you're ready, you're done for the day."

"I'll never learn to walk on my own if I can't let go of the damn bars," he gritted out, purposely lifting his hands to hover over the wooden handrails. He took an awkward, shaky step, but the second he put his left leg down he teetered precariously. Grasping hold of the rails, he caught himself before he fell, and cursed under his breath.

"Tommy, can you get Dean's wheelchair, he's done for the day," Monica called out to her co-worker, and crossing her arms, she refocused her attention on Dean. His eyes widened in in disbelief when Tommy did as she had asked while she fixed him with a stare that would make most demons envious. "If you don't want my help, Dean, then just say so right now, and then I won't be wasting my time with you when others could benefit from it."

"I've done every damn thing you've asked." Dean's voice rose in anger as he slammed his hand down on the rail, garnering the attention of the other patients. "I'm working my ass off here, an' all I ever hear from you is that I'm doing it wrong."

"Well, if you weren't so damn stubborn, thinking you should be running by now, you'd probably be walking with a cane instead of holding onto those bars," Monica shot back, not backing down in the slightest even though Dean glared at her as if he wanted to rip her throat out. "And by cane I mean, no you aren't gonna graduate from those parallel bars to running sprints around a track."

"Cane?" Dean's gut clenched, hoping that he somehow misunderstood her. "I'm not using any cane."

"Then you'd prefer a walker?"

Now Dean's gut wasn't the only thing clenching. His upper teeth were pressed so firmly against his lower ones, his jaw ached. If she was trying to piss him off, she certainly knew all the right buttons to push. "I'm not using any damn walker either."

"Oh, then you plan on falling a lot?" She lifted a brow in clear amusement. "In that case, I better plan on teaching you how to do that properly very soon." Dean narrowed his eyes on her, pinning her with a glare, but she remained unaffected by his attempt to intimidate her.

"You're such a fuckin' bitch." The moment the words slipped from his mouth, and he saw the slight waver in her lower jaw, he instantly regretted it. Although, admittedly a womanizer, he still had a healthy respect for women and always tried to treat them how he believed his father had treated his mother. He opened his mouth to apologize, but she held up a hand to stop him from saying another word.

"Maybe I am being a bitch, but I've been doing this job for a long time, an' you're not the first person who's decided they could do it all on their own." She took hold of the handles on the wheelchair Tommy had brought over and positioned the chair in front of where Dean was standing. "You're fighting me every step of the way as if I don't know what the hell I'm talking about – an' you know what? I'm done with it."

Staring at the wheelchair for a moment, Dean's gaze traveled upward and locked on her. The firm resolve in her clear blue eyes spoke volumes. She had seen him as a failure and was giving up on him. "I haven't fought you – I've done every damn thing you've told me to do."

"Everything, Dean?" She let out a cynical laugh as she gestured toward the chair. "Alright," she pursed her lips and gave a curt nod, "take a seat, an' we'll see just how well you've listen to everything I've told you to do."

Reluctantly Dean did as she had asked. Monica crouched beside him and removed his prosthetic leg, followed by the thick padded cushioning and ply sock. Laying the items on the floor, she pressed her fingertips against his knee, and he involuntarily jerked away from her.

"I showed you how to massage and desensitize your leg, and told you it was important to do it every two hours for at least fifteen minutes throughout the day," she said with a condemning stare, not about to buy any excuse he might try to make as to why he hadn't done as she had prescribed. "I was pretty damn clear in saying it would interfere with your use of a prosthesis if you didn't. But apparently you know a whole helluva lot more than I do as you haven't seen fit to even try it."

"My leg's fine." Anger welled inside of Dean, hating that she was now treating him like a child who couldn't make decisions for himself. "I'm standing on it, an' would be walking if you'd stop reminding me how I'm doing it wrong every goddamn minute."

"No, you wouldn't be, Dean," she argued, raising her voice as she motioned to the parallel bars. "I can see how much pain you're in when you're standing for any length of time. I can tell by the way you're leaning heavily to the right that it hurts to keep any weight on your left leg. So lie to yourself if that's what you wanna do, but I'm not so easily fooled."

Monica heaved a weary sigh as she began to gently massage Dean's knee. Her features soften as he allowed her to take care of the one thing he had been unwilling to do himself. Every time he looked at the space where his lower leg had been, he was reminded that he was now less of a person. But if he didn't have to actually touch his knee, it didn't have to be real to him. And sometimes when he could feel the phantom pain in his missing foot, he almost could believe his leg was still there. To do as she had asked would be admitting to himself that he was a useless cripple who was desperately clinging to the hope that he could hunt again.

"I know what happened to you wasn't fair," she began in a soft tone that was as close to sympathetic as he had ever heard from her. "An' you probably hate me an' the whole damn world at the moment, so if it makes you feel better to take that anger out on me, go right ahead. I've been called a lot worse in the past." She grabbed a clean cloth off the chair beside the parallel bars and gently rubbed it over the bottom of his knee. "But I can't sit here and pretend like I don't see what you're doing." She took hold of his hand and guided it toward the lower half of his leg. He tensed as she placed his hand on his knee and covered it with her own. "It doesn't make you any less of a person, Dean. It doesn't take away all your accomplishments, and doesn't mean you aren't meant to do even greater things with your life."

Skin crawling at the feel of the rounded area where his lower leg use to be, Dean jerked his hand free of hers. "You don't know the first thing about me. I can't do great things like this." He splayed out his arms, gesturing at the wheelchair and his leg. "I can't even walk, so how the hell am I supposed to protect my brother like this?"

"So you're giving up?" She eyed him for a moment as if she couldn't believe she had wasted her time trying to help him. A cynical laugh slipped past her parted lips as she shook her head in disgust. "Damn, Hank was really wrong about you. He thought you were special, and you've certainly proved him wrong."

Dean scowled at the thought of the man who had saved his life only to leave him a helpless cripple, and wished with all his heart that the rescuer hadn't found him in time. "He doesn't know the first thing about me or how I can't do my job with only one leg. So I don't give a flyin' fuck about what he thinks of me."

Monica's blue eyes turned dark and turbulent as she glared at him. She abruptly stood and turned her back on him. "Right, cause you're the only one in the world who's ever had bad things happen to them. Huh, Dean?" Her voice rose in anger, and as Dean glanced around he noticed that everyone in the room was once again staring at them.

"Can you lower your damn voice," he hissed, his own anger now reaching the boiling point. "I'm sick of being a fuckin' sideshow freak for every damn person in this room."

"If you wanna stop being a freak then stop acting like one," Monica countered as she swung to face him. "No one here is judging you. No one cares what you do or how much harder you think you have it than anyone else. They're all in pain for one reason or another, an' are doing the best they can to overcome the obstacles life's set in their path."

"What? You want me to feel sorry for them?" Narrowing his eyes on her, he made a sweeping gesture around the room to encompass all the patients working on various pieces of equipment, and shook his head. "Well, I'm afraid I'm just fresh out of sympathy for anyone at the moment."

"Alright, Dean," Monica said with a tight-lipped smile, and motioned for the other physical therapists to resume working with their patients as she snatched his prosthesis off the floor and shoved it into his hands. Taking hold of the handles of Dean's wheelchair, she pushed him toward the entrance. "You don't wanna be here with them, that's fine. I'm not gonna make you do anything you don't want to do."

"I still have time left," Dean snarled, glancing over his shoulder at her, but she kept her sights firmly on the door. Slamming his right foot down hard against the floor, he braced himself as the wheelchair came to a skidding halt. "I said, I still have time left, and I'm not going anywhere until I'm walking."

"No," Monica snapped, "you were finished the moment you thought that your injuries took precedence over anyone else in this room. You want people to pity you, well congratulations, you got your wish."

With shoulders sagging, Dean took one last glance around the room, memorizing the looks on each and every face, and then lifted his foot off the floor. "Jus' take me back to my room," he managed to choke out through the thick lump that had formed in his throat.

Monica pushed the wheelchair out of the Physical Therapy Room, and headed down the long corridor, but instead taking a right toward the elevator she took a left turn, and continued onward through the children's wing of the hospital. She stopped at a set of double doors, and pressed the button to enter. Dean's eyes widened considerably when he read Hartford's Children's Therapy Center painted in red on the glass.

"What the hell are we doing here?"

"I call this my baby steps program designed especially for hard heads like Hank and you," Monica replied, and he could hear something akin to humor in her tone.

"I'm not going in there," Dean balked, not about to make a fool out of himself in front of little kids. "Take me back to my damn room now."

Monica came around to stand in front of Dean and crouched beside him. She looked up into his eyes, and he could see that her own eyes held no humor, but instead found profound sadness in them. "When Hank's wife died, she was not more than fifteen feet away from him, but with his leg trapped beneath a boulder, he couldn't get to her. He could hear her crying from beneath the snow, and see the fringe from her scarf, but there was nothing he could do to help her." She drew in a staggering breath as she wiped away the moisture that had gathered at the corners of her eyes. "Within a few minutes her cries died away, an' he could do nothing but wait until rescuers found him about twenty minutes later. He hated them for saving him, and he hated me for wanting to help him when he had failed to protect the one person he loved more than anything else in the whole world."

Dean's thoughts immediately went to Sam, and how he would feel if it were his little brother who had died and he was helpless to stop it from happening. His stomach flip-flopped out of control, and for the first time he stopped feeling sorry for himself and felt grateful that both he and Sam had survived.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I could pity you if that's what you wanted, Dean – hell you're practically the poster boy for pleasepityme(dot)com at the moment, so it would be pretty damn easy. Or I can try to help you if you'll let me. The choice is yours." Monica paused to take hold of his hand. His gut reaction was to jerk away from her, but to do so would be admitting he was exactly what she claimed. He gripped hold of her hand as if it were his only lifeline, and for the first time in his life, he put his well-being in someone else's hands. With a tender smile, she acknowledged the trust he had just placed in her. "Good, now let's go tackle those parallel bars."