Dislocated shoulder. Six broken ribs. Three cracked ribs. Cracked sternum. Fractured skull. Fractured wrist. Fractured cheekbone. Fractured jaw. Punctured lung. Heavy contusions to the face and torso. Collapsed trachea. Ruptured spleen. Internal bleeding. Sprained ankle. Left eye swollen shut. Broken nose. Broken ulna. Four broken fingers. Split lip.
After two and half weeks trapped a pained haze in the Intensive Care Unit, Sam had finally been declared stable enough to be transferred to the ICU Stepdown. It had taken three surgeries and probably a gallon of donated blood, not to mention diligent, ceaseless care from the St. John's medical staff to stabilize Sam Winchester.
They kept him supplied with a seemingly unending stream of morphine and several other pain-related drugs whose names he couldn't quite pronounce, and not just because of the swelling in his jaw. His pain was kept scrupulously dulled, so that what would have been a constant thought-stopping agony was reduced to a manageable background throb. Unless he moved.
Sam's injuries were not what troubled him, though.
He had been told several days after his eyes had finally cracked open that a man had been found dead in the old church with him. Sam's EKG had spiked audibly after than pronouncement as, for one horrible moment, he had thought it had been Dean. But no. The man the young policewoman described was undoubtedly Crowley.
That was what had triggered Sam's memory.
Somehow, the cure had not worked on Dean. Rather than purifying his blackened soul, it had strengthened him, healed him. Sam was at a lost as to why that was. He had blessed the blood, hadn't he? He'd injected them exactly on the hour, right? Was it because Dean had the Mark of Cain? Was it because he was a demon in his original meat suit?
Attempting to puzzle out these unanswerable questions only worsened Sam's ever-present headache. Of course, not thinking of them was equally difficult.
He distracted himself by piecing together his last moments of consciousness in the church.
The demon had somehow cut his ropes. He'd leapt up and grabbed Sam. Beaten him, flung him around the small room. Several pieces of wood splinters had been carefully pulled from Sam's side and back, he'd been told, so he was reasonably certain he'd broken at least a few floorboards during one of his crash landings.
He had been losing the fight. Badly. The demon had him. Sam had been so sure his lights were about to go out for the last time.
Part of him had welcomed that darkness.
But then the demon had been distracted, lured off of him. By Crowley. Sam vaguely remembered two blurry figures wrestling each other. Crowley had fought to protect Sam, tried to save him. And for that, Crowley had died. For him.
Sam did not know how to feel about that.
Crowley was evil – he'd proven that a hundred times over. He was a liar, faithless, a disloyal coward who only looked out for himself and only helped anyone if he was sure to get something good out of the deal. He was a goddamn demon, for crying out loud!
So why had he sacrificed himself for Sam? Should he be grateful?
Sam was under no illusions: Crowley could have zapped out of that church in a blink if he'd wanted to. And yes, it was entirely possible that the body now waiting in some morgue or other was empty of demon smoke – that Crowley had escaped and the paramedics who had examined the body just saw the dead New Yorker's meat.
Part of Sam actually wanted to believe that.
Which made the bigger, far angrier part of him cringe.
But he knew what he had seen. That red flash that had seared his retinas, he knew what that meant. That was Dean killing Crowley, for good.
Dean.
That was what truly caused Sam pain, not his broken body. That thought was what stopped him sleeping, and plagued his restless mind with vague, fear-filled nightmares whenever he did manage to drift off.
He was in this hospital bed because of Dean.
Dean had tried to kill him.
Dean had laughed while beating the life out of him.
Dean had laughed at Sam's pain.
And for the first time in his life, Sam Winchester had been truly, deeply, afraid of his brother.
No amount of telling himself that it wasn't really Dean, that it was just the demon inside him doing that, eased that deep, aching agony.
Dean was the demon. He wasn't just high on some ancient demonic power. He was a demon.
Somehow Sam had survived these past months without ever truly realising that. All he had been thinking about was who Dean was, how he would never commit any of the atrocities now stacked to his name. He'd thought of how devastating it must be for Dean to be trapped or captured by a demon curse, or whatever he had deluded himself into believing had happened. Dean hated demons as much as Sam did. Maybe more. And they both knew why.
A demon had killed their mother. And their father. A demon had stolen their lives and forced them to fight this endless, secret war. It was because of a demon that Dean had left Lisa and Ben. A demon had almost destroyed Sam right in front of Dean's eyes. He had tried so hard to save Sam from Ruby and Azazel. Hell, Dean spent his whole life trying to keep Sam safe.
And now Dean had become what he hated most. He had become his worst nightmare.
And Sam had let him. Worse, he had failed to save him. Sam always failed.
Shame and guilt threatened to engulf him. He fought to breathe, desperate for a full breath, but the bandages binding his damaged ribcage were too tight to allow it. Sam lay in the quiet room, half curled in on himself, tugging on the wires and tubes that held him together, desperately trying to suck air into his lungs and alleviate the crushing weight that was pressing down on him from all sides. Tears ran recklessly over his nose and down his cheeks, desperate to escape belonging to such a loathsome creature.
Sam had let his brother down yet again, in the worst way possible in their twisted, pathetic lives. He had failed him so completely that Dean didn't even call him 'Sammy' any more.
A fresh pang twisted his heart like a thorny vine as he realised the absence of the old nickname. It used to annoy him, but since leaving Stanford, the childhood name had been far more than a term of endearment. It had been a constant, unspoken reassurance, a promise that Dean would always be there, protecting him. Watching out for little Sammy.
Now he was just 'Sam'. Even though Dean had called him that about as often as he had called him 'Sammy', it seemed more formal now. Distant. As though Dean was telling him that he was gone now, truly gone. That all traces of the little boy who had carried Sam out of their burning home had vanished. Dean didn't call him 'Sammy' anymore because as far as he was concerned, Sammy was nothing to do with him. Dean had finally broken free of his ball-and-chain little brother.
Sam had never felt so achingly alone. He missed his father. His missed the mother he had never gotten to know. He missed Bobby, and Cas, and Jess, and Amelia, and Kevin, and Charlie, and Jodie, and Ellen and Jo. But worse than those bone-deep aching loses was that of Dean's. Sam missed his brother. He missed the friend he had grown up admiring, the protector who had sacrificed everything and anything to keep him safe, risked everything to keep him breathing. No matter how impossible the situation might seem, no matter what crap they were dealing with or what evil they faced, Sam had always known that as long as he and Dean were together, they had a chance. As long as Dean was alive, Sam would fight. As long as Sam lived, Dean would never leave him.
Except now.
Now, Sam was alone and hurt and overwhelmed in a town whose name he couldn't remember, and he wasn't even sure what state. Right now, he was afraid, and there was no Dean to force a grin and some lame pun or joke to make him smile, if only a little. No Dean to promise him they'd get through it, somehow, as long as they had each other.
No Dean, period.
Sam's heart ached, putting his other injuries to shame. He missed Dean. His mouth opened in silent sobs and he tasted his tears as they spilled over his lips.
He just wanted his big brother back.
What felt like hours later, Sam's heaving lungs finally stilled to be replaced by the gentle rhythm of deep sleep. For the first time since he'd woken up, he slept soundly, peacefully, as the salt of his tears dried on his thin cheeks.
The following morning, Sam awoke to sunlight streaming through the blinds to his right, filling the grey little room with warm colour. The door to his room stood open, and nurses, doctors, and visitors passed by in various levels of distress. The gentle thrum of hospital life buzzed outside his quiet room.
Sam pushed himself up slightly on his pillows, wincing as he tried to sit. He felt far better. His private breakdown the previous night seemed to have cleansed him. He was exhausted, utterly spent, but his mind was clear of the despair that had tried to suffocate him the night before. It had been replaced by determination.
The ordinary demon cure clearly didn't work on Dean, but nothing in the admittedly limited lore said it couldn't work on whatever kind of demon he was. Clearly the formula just needed adjusting.
The procedure would have to be carried out somewhere more secure than a mouldy old ruin of a once-sacred plot of land, that much was obvious to Sam. A few drops of holy water and a quick incantation and the Bunker's dungeon would work perfectly. And this time, he wouldn't skimp on the restraints. The collar and chain were far stronger than enchanted cuffs. Sam tried not to picture his brother chained to the bare floor like some abandoned animal.
That was his real problem: how to find Dean. He couldn't exactly hope for Dean to just drop out of the sky again. He needed to figure out how to summon him. Surely the Men of Letters had something about summoning high-ranking demons. There must have been someone during the thousands of years who'd needed to summon Cain and had jotted down whatever technique they'd used. There must be something he missed.
It was simple, really: get out of this hospital, fix the cure, bless the Bunker, summon Dean. Simply a bit of research, just like with every other hunt.
There was only one problem. He was running out of time. Dean would undoubtedly be furious after his double kidnapping, and with the First Blade in hand, that anger was unlikely to find any kind of constructive outlet. Unless, of course, Dean focused it on moving ahead with his plans to pretty much take over the world.
Sam covered his eyes with his less injured hand, taking as deep a breath as his bandages would allow. He didn't have time to look through the thousands of files and notes stacked throughout the Bunker. He'd already searched the most obvious titles.
He needed answers. Fast.
But from where?
If Cas knew how to solve any of these issues, Sam had no doubt he would have told him. Crowley might have had an idea, but he was beyond questioning. Bobby was dead, Kevin was dead. All he had left of him was a stack of Elamite notes, and he didn't know of anyone old enough to be able to read –
Sam froze.
He needed someone very old and very knowledgeable to read those notes and tell him how to save his brother. Cas couldn't read them, but then, Sam knew someone far older than Castiel. Older even than the archangels.
A crooked smile pulled at Sam's split lip.
He knew someone older than the very Earth itself.