A/N A lot of you have already guessed where this story and chapter are headed but we are finally getting there. It took us a hot second!
I love you all dearly! Thanks for reading and reviewing!
Chapter Four
When they reached the bustling ER, Dean was almost immediately shuffled off to take care of the paperwork while they wheeled Sam to the back.
Dean watched them go, his heart in his throat for no good reason except that it was hard to see his brother in the hospital, before resignedly returning to the front and collecting the needed forms from a harassed-looking receptionist. He had done this so many times in the past that he didn't have to think about what he was doing, and it left his mind time to wander.
They should never have reached the point where they were in the hospital because Sam had pushed himself too hard. Sure, he had been shaky this morning but it had been a big improvement from the day before. This, however, was in all ways several steps backward.
Why hadn't Dean forced him to stay behind?
There was no excuse for what had happened. He knew Sam better than anyone and if he had just paid a little closer attention then he would have easily been able to look through any front that Sam had been putting on.
He had just been so focused on the case and finding answers. That, and he supposed the still mending gap between them had some part to play. He'd grown accustomed to Sam dealing with his own problems and them not being as open with each other.
That was changing starting today. This could never happen again.
Dean sighed, rubbing at his forehead as he stared down at the forms.
The way that Sam had just collapsed in his arms was still haunting him.
Sam was fine, he was getting the help that he needed and Dean knew that, but it had scared him. He supposed that it brought back too many other memories of worse injuries and terrible outcomes like Jake stabbing Sam in the back or Cas breaking Sam's wall.
Nothing about those memories were particularly good, including thinking about Cas. That was still a raw and painful subject even though Cas was out of Purgatory—Thank God for that. He wasn't…Cas, though, and Dean didn't know what was going on with him. It didn't sit well with him and every time he thought about it, he couldn't help but wondered if he could have convinced Cas to leave Purgatory with him and Benny if things would have turned out differently for the angel.
Not even just for Cas, though, if he was being honest.
Sometimes, in the dead of night when he couldn't sleep, he wondered if he would have been as angry at Sam for not looking for him if Cas had escaped as well. If he hadn't been feeling so damn guilty about the absence of his friend and wondering if he was even alive, he might not have lashed out as hard and as fast as he had. Maybe he wouldn't have projected his own feelings of failure onto his brother.
He didn't know, and he wasn't sure that he liked the implications behind it.
By the time Dean had finished the paperwork and was allowed back into the small cubicle where Sam was, the doctor had already come and gone.
Sam had his eyes closed but opened them as Dean slid the curtain open.
"Hey."
He still looked horrible and Dean winced on his behalf.
"You feeling that good, huh?" he asked and Sam let out a long sigh.
"I'm okay, my head just hurts," he admitted with a grimace and Dean shrugged as he sat down on the chair next to the bed. He knew from his own experience that Sam was going to feel like he had the worst hangover ever for the next few days.
"Dehydration is a bitch. I tried to tell you that yesterday," he said not unsympathetically. "So…what did the doc say?"
Sam shrugged a little. "Nothing we didn't already know. Said I was severely dehydrated, and then gave me some glucose shots to bring up my sugar levels."
"Good," Dean said firmly as something eased in his chest. Sam was okay. "And how much longer are they planning on keeping you here?"
Sam shrugged again. "They want me to finish that bag of fluids off, but then I think that I'm good to go."
Dean nodded again and then leaned forward and made direct eye contact so that Sam knew that he meant what he was about to say. "Next time you feel like crap, don't let it get this far. We shouldn't have ended up in an ambulance over freakin' dehydration."
"You're pissed," Sam said and Dean sighed, rubbing a hand over his face.
"I'm not pissed. Really, I'm just…" He waved a hand, not even really sure what he was feeling. Frustrated, perhaps, but even then, he didn't know if that was directed at Sam or himself, but he wasn't pissed. "Look, man, you've got to take care of yourself. You can't pull stunts like that."
Sam made a face. "It wasn't like I planned the day out and was like, 'oh, I'll just go ahead and pass out in the middle of Central Park'," he snapped and it was easy to see that he was embarrassed about what had happened. Good, maybe it would teach him a lesson.
"All the same, you didn't faint out of the blue, and I'm sure that it didn't take you completely by surprise. Just…" Trust me. Let me in again, he wanted to say, but he wasn't sure that was even the root of the problem. It could have been that, or it could have just been Sam being a stubborn bitch. He didn't always know anymore.
"I'll do better," Sam said softly and Dean heaved an exasperated sigh. He didn't want Sam to feel guilty or use the reprimand for self-reproach either, not really, he just wanted him to not do it again. That discussion would have to wait for another day, however, when Sam was out of the hospital and feeling better.
"That's all I ask, dude. So," he rapped his knuckles lightly against the bed railing, changing subjects. "Do you remember much from the interviews?"
Sam hesitated, before shaking his head slowly. "It's a little foggy. I stopped paying attention," he admitted reluctantly. "But did you learn anything new?"
Dean shrugged. "Maybe. I haven't exactly had the time to play dot-to-dots. People weren't being too open. I don't think they trusted us, which makes sense considering everything. Reporters probably would have been the better route to go this time."
"Well, too late now."
"Yeah, unfortunately."
"When I get out of here, we can switch it up," Sam said and Dean snorted incredulously.
"Dude, if you think that you're doing anything but parking your ass in a bed for the next twenty-four hours at least, then you got another think coming."
The curtain at the end of the bed was pulled open and they both looked over as Sam's nurse—Doris—bustled in.
"Hey," Dean piped up, sitting up straighter as he grinned. "We good to go? Hand over those release papers and we'll be out of your hair before you can get the hairspray."
Doris, however, didn't look happy. "Not exactly. We want to run a second bag of fluids, as well as draw more blood for another round of testing," she said with what looked horribly like a sympathetic smile.
Something cold settled in Dean's chest and he shot a glance at Sam. "Another round?" he asked but Sam waved it away, looking instead at Doris.
"What, why? I thought I just had to finish that bag and then I would be good to go—it's what the doctor said. And I don't feel like I need the second bag, I'm okay to leave. I feel better already."
Liar, Dean thought but let it slide as he waited for Doris's response. Personally, he was more concerned about the second round of testing than when they got to leave.
"Dr. Lance ordered it, and I'm sure he had his reasons. The doctor does know better than you, honey." Doris wouldn't meet their eyes as she began to switch the almost empty bag of saline over for a new one.
"But why the second round of testing? What are you looking for? It was just food poisoning," Dean persisted, sharing a worried glance with Sam.
"Because," Doris said in a voice that suggested they were both being difficult, "Dr. Lance ordered it. So, sit tight, and he'll be in to explain soon, I'm sure. Now, if I could get to that vein, that would be great."
Sam didn't say anything as she drew his blood again, nor would he meet Dean's eyes.
Doris left, a couple of vials of Sam's blood in hand, and Dean rounded on him. "They already did blood work?" he demanded.
"Yeah, I didn't think much about it. They just said they were running some tests to make sure that nothing else was going on. That it was just food poisoning."
Dean didn't know what else to ask or say, and a heavy silence fell over them. His own stomach had tied itself into a knot and his breakfast was sitting heavily.
What could they be testing for? Sam was sick, but it was just a simple case of food poisoning mixed in with some dehydration and overexertion. Nothing that needed retesting for. Nothing…bad.
Unbidden and unwelcomed came the creeping thought. What if it was cancer? Or some other terminal and deadly disease.
Dean felt like he had been punched in the gut, and had to close his eyes. He didn't know how to face that. But that couldn't be right. Sam hadn't been sick before yesterday, nor had he complained about feeling off at all in the previous weeks. It had just sort of came out of nowhere and all at once.
Like it would with food poisoning.
Then again, he had heard stories about people going in to get something simple checked out, only to leave with a terminal diagnosis. That wouldn't happen to them—not to Sam—they had rotten luck sometimes but not that kind of bad luck.
Risking a glance over at Sam, he found him with his head turned away as he picked absently at the blanket, his brow furrowed in concentration.
He should say something, try and comfort Sam, tell him that this wasn't going to be a big deal and that they would figure it out. That it wasn't going to be something bad.
Dean opened his mouth, didn't know what to say or how to get the words out around the lump in his throat, and shut it again.
"Dean, it's fine. It's not that big of a deal." Sam was now looking at him, and this time it was Dean who couldn't meet his eyes.
But what if it wasn't? He couldn't…if Sam had cancer, or something just as bad…what was he going to do?
"Right, well, I wasn't pissed before but now I am," he snapped, and then regretted it. It wasn't Sam's fault; he was just trying to help. Reaching out, he thumped Sam lightly on the knee in a silent apology.
Sam didn't say anything else, looking away again. It made the knot in Dean's stomach tighten and he fidgeted in the suddenly claustrophobic cubicle.
"Maybe they mixed up your blood with someone else's, and it came back that you were pregnant or something like that. Would explain the retesting," he stated, trying to fill the silence and take that look off of Sam's face.
Sam's lips thinned out. "Right," he said dryly and with a look that said he thought Dean was an idiot.
Dean didn't think that it was so absurd. Mix-ups happened all the time, and if that was the case here then he could tease Sam for the rest of eternity. That seemed like a much more ideal result than anything else that he could think of.
The second bag of fluids also wasn't that wild, Sam had been pretty dehydrated. There was nothing wrong here, nothing to be worried about.
Dean looked down at his boots, not wanting to see Sam's purposefully calm expression that meant he was anxious. He wasn't even convincing himself that there was no reason to be internally freaking out, Sam had to be feeling the same but Dean couldn't stomach the thought of addressing it any further if it truly was nothing.
When he dared to look up sometime later, Sam had gone back to sleep.
"That's the easy way out, man," he said quietly, before slouching back in his seat and running his hands over his face.
Give him something that went bump in the night and he would be fine, but this…
If this was bad news then he didn't have a backup plan. Cas wasn't around or interested in helping them, and Bobby wasn't around to pull some last-minute thing out of his ass to save their sorry hides. Not that he might have been able to do much about something like cancer, but at least he would have been there.
Dean was going to be on his own to figure this out.
The curtain parting again brought both relief and apprehension as Dean looked up.
It wasn't Dr. Lance, however, or even Doris.
An older and tired-looking man in a suit followed by a woman in a pantsuit entered. Her long hair was pulled back into an elegant bun at the nape of her neck, and her lips had been painted with dark red lipstick.
If it wasn't for Sam being in the hospital and the police badge attached to the waistband of her pants, Dean might have tried to hit on her.
"Hello, Dean, isn't it?" the man asked, extending his hand. "I'm Frank Hayami, department head of the ER here, and this is Detective Ellen Stanton with the NYPD. Can we have a word with you and Sam?"
Dean slowly extended his arm, grudgingly shaking his hand. The grip was firm, but Dean stared past him at Detective Stanton, feeling a whole new range of emotions.
Sam probably didn't have cancer—the relief there was almost overwhelming—and the tests had more than likely been a ruse to keep them there until the police arrived. Dean didn't know exactly what they had done this time to get on the bad side of the law, but he could take some guesses.
Those also weren't happy thoughts, but it was still better than cancer.
"Sam's asleep," he said briskly. "Can you come back later?"
Hayami and Detective Stanton shared a glance, and Stanton shook her head slightly.
"How about we go back to my office? The three of us can talk there," Hayami suggested and Dean hesitated.
That meant that they were probably just interested in him and would leave Sam alone, which was good, but what would Sam think if he woke up and Dean was just gone? Would they bring Sam in for questioning if he tried to run for it right now or would it be easier for everyone if he just went with the flow and was arrested without hassle? Sam could break him out of any jail that they tried to put him in, but it wasn't bound to be a grand experience.
Or, he supposed that he could try talking his way out.
Damnit, he was rusty at it, and he wasn't sure that he was going to be able to.
"You're not in trouble if that's what you're wondering. I've seen that look before," Detective Stanton said with a smile even as she continued to steal sideways glances at Sam.
Right, like Dean was dumb enough to believe that. He looked once behind him at his sleeping brother, trying to figure out a way out of this. If he could get them to just leave for a few minutes then he and Sam could disappear easily enough. They would never find them.
"Is this going to take long? Could we talk later?"
"Maybe, but Sam will be fine without you," Stanton said firmly and there was no give in her voice.
Dean didn't know if he agreed with that, but he didn't think that he had much of a choice in the matter. Stanton was already pulling the curtain back and gesturing with her head for him to leave.
Reluctantly, he followed Stanton and Hayami through the winding ER, still trying to decide if he should just make a break for it or try to talk his way out.
Stanton pushed open the employee's only door, ushering Dean into a cramped area filled with offices and a break room, and then followed behind him, effectively blocking any escape route that he had been thinking about.
Hayami pushed open his office door and gestured them inside and then to a pair of uncomfortable-looking chairs.
"Please, have a seat."
Both Stanton and Dean shook their heads.
Dean remained standing, his arms folded across his chest, while Stanton half sat on the furthest corner of the desk. Hayami gave her a small frown but didn't say anything as he moved to sit in his cushioned office chair and leaned back.
"So," Dean demanded, taking the lead. "What's this all about? What does the NYPD want with me and Sam? We don't even live in New York."
Stanton nodded, fixing herself more firmly on the desk. "I wondered; your IDs weren't from here. You're from South Dakota, right?"
"Yeah." Or, at least Dean was fairly sure that was the state listed on their current insurance cards. If Stanton was trying to trick him into revealing something, then it probably worked. He hadn't exactly been planning on lying to the police when he'd been filling out forms.
"Nice. I went to Mount Rushmore one time, but I can't say I've been to more of the state than that."
Dean just restrained himself from rolling his eyes. The small talk was going to kill him.
"I don't think that you invited me back here to talk about mountains," he said pointedly and Detective Stanton nodded.
"No, that's fair. I wanted to talk to you about the Cobble-Hill thieves. Have you ever heard of them?"
Dean blinked in surprise at the abrupt turn in the conversation and frowned, thinking. "No," he said truthfully. "Again, we don't live here, we're just here to do some sightseeing. Sam's a nerd and wanted to see the freakin' library, so…"
"And this is the first time that you've been here, to the Big Apple?"
"Yes," Dean repeated emphatically. Well, at least it was the first time that Sam and Dean Cameron had visited.
Detective Stanton frowned, her lips pursed, and was silent a minute, thinking.
"What the hell is this all about?" Dean asked as he grew impatient. He hadn't stolen anything that cops would be interested in, hell, he hadn't even been to New York in a couple of years.
There was no way that he was connected with this group.
Detective Stanton cleared her throat, settling down more comfortably and Dean felt a muscle in his face start to twitch. He just wanted to know why he was here and what it all had to do with him and Sam.
"As part of their dissertation work, a group of PhD students and their professors at the University of Columbia were studying Amanita phalloides, a toxic mushroom more commonly known as the death cap. Two nights ago, their science labs were broken into and their whole supply was stolen."
She paused, and for a moment silence met her declaration.
Dean wasn't an idiot and he knew what she was hinting at but that wasn't…that couldn't be what they were testing for, right? Dean was here because of something he did, not something that had been done to Sam.
They were suspects, not victims.
"Why are you telling me this?" Dean demanded, even as his stomach once again clenched itself into a knot.
"Sam's blood work tested positive for Amanita phalloides both times we ran it," Hayami said, his voice gentle.
Dean froze, unable to respond. Not…death caps. Sam couldn't have eaten death caps, that was something that health nuts did on accident. Not them, they had been trained by John to recognize edible fungi. He could still hear his father's voice, could picture them together in the woods, while John pointed out a bunch of mushrooms.
Most toxic mushrooms won't kill you if you accidentally eat one, although they might make you wish that you were dead. The death cap, though, that one right there? That will kill you.
Dean licked his lips, trying to think around the buzzing in his ears. "Um…" he managed, trying to process what he was being told and what it meant. "But that's not possible."
Hayami leaned forward in his chair, looking concerned. "Do you wish to sit down?" he asked, pointing to the chairs once again. "I'm sure that this comes as quite a shock."
Dean didn't know what to say, he felt numb, his brain still fixated on the idea of death caps. When had Sam even eaten—but Sam had eaten mushrooms, just a couple of days before at the restaurant. Had those been death caps? How could they have been death caps? It was a restaurant, an honest-to-God nice restaurant.
He sought out Hayami's eyes, looking for reassurance. "Is Sam going to die?"
Hayami hesitated. "I'll be honest with you, Dean, I'm not an expert, not in mushroom poisoning. However, we are in the process of preparing a room for Sam in the toxicology ward upstairs and I believe that Dr. DeCary will be overseeing his care. He is an excellent doctor and will be able to answer any questions that you have much better than I can."
"This Dr. DeCary, he knows what he's doing? He's worked on cases like Sam's before?"
Hayami made a face. "I mean, I can't say for sure yes or no, but I'm guessing that he hasn't. Death cap poisoning isn't exactly unheard of, but it's not that common either. I can promise that he has studied with the best, that he's well-trained and smart. Sam will be in good hands."
Before Dean could ask any more questions, hell, before he could even really get his brain wrapped around what he had just been told, Detective Stanton cleared her throat pointedly. Dean turned back to her.
"What?" he growled, not ready or willing to deal with whatever she wanted to ask him.
"I'm sorry, I just need to ask you a few more questions, then you can go back to sit with Sam."
Sam. Who had toxins running through his veins. Who could be dying.
Dean turned stiffly towards her, wanting to be anywhere but here.
She searched through her pockets, pulled out a small notebook and pen, and then twisted to face Dean so that she could watch his expressions.
"How did Sam happen to come across the Death Caps?"
Dean shook his head tiredly. "I don't know," he partially lied. He knew when Sam had eaten them, he just didn't know the reason behind it. "Maybe the real question is what are a group of thieves doing poisoning my brother, huh? Who the hell are these people?"
Stanton sighed, tapping her pen against the spiral rim of the notebook. "I'll be honest, we don't know as much about them as I would like. I've been chasing them for five damn years, but I still know very little. That's partly why I wanted to talk to you, to try and get some answers as well. Is there any reason that they would have to hurt your brother? Did he have any enemies, even if it was back in South Dakota?"
"No. No, he doesn't have any enemies. He's a good kid, keeps his nose clean."
"We're just trying to see if this is a targeted attack," Stanton explained, apparently picking up on his defensive tone. "The mushrooms were a little out of their MO, and we are trying to find out if they are upping their antics to include violence, or if this was an isolated, targeted, experience. That's why I put the word out a couple of days ago to all the hospitals to be on the lookout for anyone coming in with what might appear to be mushroom poisoning and to test for Amanita Phalloides. You just happen to have been the first ones to come in, there may be more. There may not be. We are still trying to figure it all out."
Dean was fairly positive that this was an isolated attack, not that he was going to share that with Stanton. The idea of them being victims of chance, especially when their current hunt revolved around thievery, was laughable. Either the monster had good connections, or had been a lot busier than they had realized. Regardless, poisoned mushrooms didn't just end up on Sam's of all people's plates, and Dean was going to hunt down the son of a bitch that had done this.
"Is that all?"
Stanton shook her head. "Let's go back to the mushrooms. How did Sam come into contact with them?"
Dean's irritation was growing, but he pushed it back. He couldn't do anything to help Sam if they arrested him for obstruction of justice. He paused for a second before saying unenthusiastically, "We were eating at a restaurant and Sam ordered a dish with mushrooms in it. That is the only mushrooms that I can think of that he would have eaten recently."
That caught Detective Stanton's attention and she leaned forward eagerly. "And the name of the restaurant was?"
Dean hesitated, chewing on his lower lip. "I don't…I don't remember," he finally said. "We've been eating out a lot, being on vacation and all. I think that it was somewhere off of Time Square, though."
"Are you sure? You don't remember what the name might have sounded like? Or what it looked like, any defining features?"
"No. No, I'm sorry. I'm really bad with directions and names. That was a long day, lots of things to see, you know, and it all just runs together." Dean shrugged effortlessly.
Stanton frowned but didn't push the matter at the moment. "And is there any reason, any at all, that the Cobble-Hill thieves would want something from him?"
"Lady, do we look like someone that a group called the 'Cobble-hill' thieves would come after? I already told you; Sam hasn't done anything to be on their radar."
She pursed her lips together, frowning. "Well, I can't do my job unless you give me more."
"I don't have anything else," Dean said roughly, and he knew that he was being rude but he was finding it hard to care.
Stanton tried to share an exasperated look with Hayami, but he just shrugged, clearly unwilling to be part of it any more than he already was.
"Fine, I understand that you've just had quite the shock. If you think of anything…please, call this number. This is the first time that they have reacted violently, and we aren't sure what pushed them into it. We need to catch whoever is behind this so that it doesn't happen again." She dug into her pocket, pulling out a card and holding it out between two fingers for Dean to take.
Dean accepted it and tucked it into his pants pocket as he turned back to Hayami. "When will Sam be moved?"
Hayami huffed a half laugh, even as he shook his head. "They said twenty minutes, but realistically it might be closer to an hour. Sam's condition is stable, his vitals are good, and Dr. DeCary said for the moment to just continue to give him fluids."
That was all that Dean needed to hear and he stood, Hayami and Detective Stanton following suit.
"I'm so sorry about everything," Hayami said, offering his hand to Dean once again.
Right. He was sure that they would only be a good story to Hayami in the days to come. It wasn't every day that someone wandered into his hospital having eaten a death cap, after all.
Dean led the way out of the office and strode back towards Sam's cubicle, not caring that Hayami stayed behind, discussing something with Detective Stanton in a low voice.
Dean wasn't interested in whatever they were discussing, he just wanted to sit with Sam.
Somehow, being taken away in handcuffs no longer seemed like such a bad option now that he was faced with his little brother's possible death once again.
Why was it always Sam? Why couldn't it have been him?
Well…rebuked a dry voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like John, it could have been you if you had learned to eat your damn vegetables.
Dean had to stop short at the thought. Had his plate been spiked with toxic mushrooms as well? It made sense that if Sam's had, his would have been as well. Had Sam consumed double the amount of death caps because Dean didn't like mushrooms?
The thought made Dean feel physically ill. He didn't like it when Sam took shots that were meant for him, even unintentionally. It went against his every instinct.
Sam was still asleep when he got back, and he simply stared at him for a moment. He looked peaceful, he didn't yet know that deadly toxins were running through his veins, attempting to kill him.
This couldn't be happening. Sam looked better, not worse, than he had even an hour ago. There was more color in his face, and his vitals were holding steady. It all felt fake, like someone was trying to prank him. Any minute now Sam was going to sit up and start laughing at the look on his face, declaring 'gotcha!'
Trying to rub away his own growing headache, Dean pulled out his phone and sat down on the edge of Sam's bed.
John's lessons on mushrooms seemed so long ago, and Dean googled death caps with only a moment of hesitancy.
Clicking on the first link there, he began to skim.
Not all of it made sense to him, but certain words were jumping out, making his heart drop down to somewhere near his toes. Acute liver failure. Kidney failure. No known cure. Eating just one death cap is enough to kill an adult.
"What's wrong?" Sam's sleepy voice jolted Dean back to reality and he jumped, looking up from his phone.
"What?" Dean's brain was still stuck on liver and kidney failure.
"Seriously, you look like you've just been told that you're going to have to sell the Impala or something. What's wrong?" Sam repeated.
Sam wasn't even worried about himself, damnit, even though he should be. There wasn't an antidote, and they were just going to have to suffer through this and hope to God that he survived.
Hope. They had been reduced to hope.
"Dean?"
Sam cut his spiraling internal monologue short. The heart monitor behind his brother was ticking upwards, a visible expression of his concern, and Dean shook himself. He had to pull himself together. Sam needed him and he had let him down in all sorts of ways over the last few days, it was time to man up.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, tucking his phone back into his pocket.
"I feel fine." Sam waved away any concern for himself, focusing on Dean instead. "Did the doctor come back? Did he tell you something?"
Dean wasn't sure how to tell Sam what he now knew, and how had he gotten stuck being the middle man here? Wasn't it the doctor's job to deliver devastating news?
"Dean?" Sam repeated pointedly, his face creased in what looked like fear when Dean didn't say anything.
"It wasn't food poisoning," he blurted.
Sam blinked, and then took a measured breath. "What do you mean it wasn't food poisoning?" he asked in a carefully controlled voice.
Dean opened his mouth and then closed it again as he rubbed at the back of his neck. He should have been preparing to break the news to Sam gently instead of reading things that made it hard for him to breathe.
"Well, I mean, I guess that it is food poisoning, technically, but…Sam, it was death caps. Those mushrooms that you ate, at the restaurant with Monx...they were death caps."
Sam's face went a shade paler, even if he still looked confused. "No, that's crazy. What are you going on about, man?"
And then the whole story came spilling out, about meeting with Hayami and Detective Stanton, the Cobble-Hill thieves, and the blood test results. The results that said that Sam had indeed eaten death cap mushrooms.
Sam was quiet as Dean talked, but Dean couldn't help but notice that he had a shell-shocked sort of look on his face.
He gave Dean a weak sort of smile when he had finished. "I can say that's not what I was expecting, not even close. I was thinking more along the lines of cancer than poisonous mushrooms hand-delivered by a group of thieves."
Dean snorted. "Yeah, who knew? Man, I always thought that if we were to be featured in something it would have been the X-files. Not Murder She Wrote."
The humor felt flat, and Dean's smile slipped off his face as he ran a hand over it. "Sammy, what are we going to do?" With anyone else, he would have been embarrassed about the amount of emotion that had slipped into his voice, but this wasn't happening to just anyone else. "I can't—I don't know how to fix this. I can't fix it."
Sam snorted, giving Dean a reproachful look. "Of course you can't fix this, Dean. You don't have to fix it. That's just…" he paused, and then reached over to grasp Dean's forearm. His voice was softer when he spoke again. "We'll figure it out together. One way or another, it's going to be okay."
Dean shook his head, even as he brought a hand up to cover Sam's. "There is only one way that this is ending, Sam. I can promise you that."
"Dean," Sam said gently and in a voice that Dean hated.
He stood, suddenly filled with nervous energy, and looked around the small cubicle, at the machinery and medical equipment. It was not comforting, and the fear was acidic in his veins as it burned through him.
Pulling in a deep breath, he turned around to find Sam watching him. He looked small, laying there in a hospital bed with monitors attached to him. Small, and maybe a little bit scared, even if he was trying to hide it.
But Dean knew Sam.
Deflating, he sat back down. "I swear, Sam, we're going to get through this. You're going to be just fine, and this will just be a wild story that you can tell your grandkids one day. The time that you survived eating death caps, the most toxic mushroom to humans."
Sam shook his head, rolling his eyes, but he didn't look like he was silently freaking out anymore.
"So," he said, changing the subject, "You're not thinking that this is some sort of accident, right? Because I'm not."
Dean scoffed. "If this was an accident, then I'm as much as a teapot as Angela Lansbury was in real life. We came here on a hunt—a hunt, no less, that revolves around theft—and we just happen to be served a mushroom dish with stolen death caps in it. I don't think so. They probably tried to take out both of us but much to their misfortune, I have a healthy habit of not eating mushrooms."
The anger that sparked was easier than the fear, and Dean let it in, clenching his hands into fists. "The son of a bitch is gonna learn that it messed with the wrong hunters, I can tell you that much. I'm going to make it hurt bad enough that it's going to wish that it had never even heard the name Winchester."
They had gotten to Sam and that was going to be the last thing that it would ever do.
"Dean, calm down. There's nothing you can do right now so don't get worked up about it."
"Don't tell me to calm down! I'll calm down when I've shoved a knife so far up its ass that its—"
The curtain was pulled open and Dean snapped his mouth shut so fast that his teeth clicked and Sam smiled despite everything.
It was only the nurse coming to take Sam upstairs, and Dean moved out of the way, allowing her room to work.
He wasn't joking, though, not even close to it. Dean was going to hunt that bitch down and he was going to make it pay.
It didn't take long for them to get Sam settled, but it was another hour before Dr. DeCary came to talk to them. He was a middle-aged man with a bushy black beard, glasses, and a no-nonsense attitude that Dean could appreciate. He didn't wait for any small talk—a lesson Stanton could have applied—before plopping down to sit on the chair next to Sam's bed and saying, "So you're the man who ate the death caps."
"I didn't do it on purpose," Sam said, his face flushing. "It was at a restaurant; it wasn't like I was out foraging or anything."
Dr. DeCary nodded. "I heard the whole spill from the detective herself, and it seems like really bad luck to me. I do not envy you what's on the road ahead."
"And what exactly is on that road?" Dean asked, glancing in Sam's direction and taking comfort from the calm look that Sam returned. It eased his own nerves, if only a little.
Dr. DeCary took a deep breath before launching into his explanation. "There's a reason that death caps are called what they are. They cause over ninety percent of adult deaths related to mushroom poisoning but don't let that discourage you. People do sometimes live after eating them, so we aren't hanging up the towel just yet." He smiled at them, and Sam weakly returned it.
"So, there are three stages that you experience while dealing with Amanita poisoning. It starts out, as I'm sure you experienced, with digestive issues. It probably felt a lot like food poisoning with the vomiting and abdominal pain…" he paused as Sam nodded. "Not fun, right?"
"You could say that."
Dr. DeCary huffed a laugh before continuing. "All that works together to cause massive dehydration, which you will come to know very well as one of the main dangers of the death cap, which is why we are continuing to aggressively administer fluids.
"In the second stage, the victim stops experiencing symptoms and feels relatively alright. This, Sam, is where we currently are. If you had taken care of yourself today and not gone out to play tourist instead of hydrating…well, let's just say that we probably wouldn't be having this conversation just yet. You should be grateful, however," he added quickly as Dean shot Sam a pointed look. "The toxins are still in your bloodstream and are hard at work, but because you came in sooner rather than later this will give us a better chance of fighting back. With things like this, it's all about timing and how soon we can start treating symptoms. If you had come in during the third stage, we would have lost valuable time and that just might be the difference between a happy ending and, well, a not-so-happy one."
"What's the third stage?" Dean asked hesitantly.
"The third and final stage occurs about forty-eight hours after the second stage begins and sees a resurgence of the original symptoms. Only by this time along with causing mass dehydration, the toxins have had time to settle in and attack the liver, causing acute necrosis—or in a more familiar term, failure—of the liver. This in turn will lead to failure in the kidneys.
"The liver performs over five hundred functions for the body, and when it starts to fail Sam's health will decline quickly and we will start to see more serious issues and symptoms, but I can get more into that when and if we come to it. You should know, however, that as the third stage progresses that Sam might experience seizures or even fall into a coma. At this point, death becomes almost unavoidable."
Sam nodded slowly before asking, "How long until we reach that point? How long before…" he trailed off, rolling his hands uncertainly.
"How long before death?"
"Yeah, that."
Dean didn't think that he wanted to know as his stomach plummeted. Why had Sam asked that?
Dr. DeCary shrugged. "Everybody is different, I don't know for sure how fast the toxins will progress or how your body will handle the invasion. A rough estimate will put late stage three—if we reach that point and I really hope that we won't—at the beginning of next week. Tuesday or Wednesday."
Dean's heart did a funny little jolt and his stomach lurched upwards. "It's Thursday!" he croaked out.
"I know," Dr. DeCary said simply. "But I have hope. Once again, the true reason that most people die from the death caps, is simply that we are too late to do much to prevent it. If you had sought medical assistance in a couple of days, then we would have done our best, but we would probably have had to resort to putting you on a list for a liver transplant and simply cross our fingers that you survived long enough to get one."
Dean sat up straighter. "Can we do that? He can get a liver transplant?" he asked hopefully, brightening at that prospect. A liver transplant was a much better alternative to death.
"There is a waiting list that I will add Sam to as soon as I leave here, but that will, unfortunately, be a last resort. There isn't an exact timetable for livers to become available, after all, and there are hundreds of people waiting in New York alone."
Still, it was something else, another avenue for them to explore if things did get down to the wire.
Dean fell silent, digesting what he had heard.
"What are treatments?" Sam asked and Dean looked up again, listening intently to the doctor's answer.
"Good question." Dr. DeCary turned back to fully face him. "We are going to start treatments with very aggressive IV replacements of fluids and electrolytes in hopes of flushing the toxins out of your system quicker and keeping you hydrated. The sooner the toxins are out, the sooner your body will have a chance to fight back. There is no known antidote at this time, and I know that seems scary and that fluids seem pretty basic, but sometimes the basics are the best. I'm also going to put you on Octreotide. While that hasn't exactly been proven to help, it has never hindered recovery either and that is standard procedure right now. There is also a specialist in Los Angeles with whom I am trying to get into contact, and he might have more suggestions on what we should try."
"That's really all you're going to do?" Dean asked incredulously, rubbing a hand across his face and fighting to control his anger. "Just give him fluids and hope for the best?"
"I know that it doesn't sound like much, but I guarantee that we will be doing all that we can to save your brother's life."
Dean snorted but didn't say anything else, more for Sam's sake than Dr. DeCary's.
Dr. DeCary gave them both a sympathetic look as he rose. "I truly am very sorry that this has happened to you, and I will do all that I can to make this a happy ending."
Dean resisted the urge to say something bitter or sarcastic back and instead forced a smile as he left. The man was just doing his job, it wasn't his fault that he had to tell them that there was no antidote to death caps.
His smile dropped as soon as the door closed.
Why had they taken Monx up on his stupid lunch invitation? It had been a bad thing from the start. Dean should know by now that nothing in life was free and, that if it appeared so, it was just going to cost them twice as much later.
How did they get to be so dumb that they had fallen into this trap?
He turned to face Sam, and they stared at each other, neither knowing what to say. They had faced bad diagnoses before, but usually those had to do with infection or blood loss. Not slow-acting poisons. Not…assassination attempts, if that was what it could be called.
"I'm sorry," Sam finally offered.
"Why are you apologizing? It wasn't your fault," Dean said roughly, wiping both hands down his face. Why did people keep apologizing to him? Why wasn't Sam asking him why he hadn't insisted on bringing him in sooner? Or how he had failed to notice before Sam had passed out that he was in trouble? He'd also been the one to accept the lunch invitation, the one to have given Sam his mushrooms.
He should be the one apologizing.
"Dean?"
Sam sounded hesitant and Dean looked away. The oppressive and omnipotent fear of losing his brother was staring him in the face, it was all that he could see, no matter where he looked. It was going to overtake him and swallow him whole.
He wouldn't survive it. He couldn't lose Sam, not when he had just gotten him back. Not now, when things were starting to look good for them again.
Anger had become his go-to emotion and he let it pull him back from the ledge, giving him fire and purpose. Anger was good, anger would help him find who had done this to Sam. Would help make them pay the ultimate price.
"Right," Dean said, standing up. "I've got to go meet with Chief Schneider and see what he has to say. Then I might drop in on Monx because he's got something to do with all this and I want to know what. You stay here, rest up, and listen to the doctors."
Sam shook his head. "Do not walk out that door. We need to talk," he called after Dean, his voice tight.
The door was already falling shut behind him and Dean could easily pretend that he hadn't heard. He strode down the hallway, determination guiding his steps.
He had work to do.
A/N Just a side note, I actually did a lot of research on death caps and other mushroom poisonings for this fic. What is presented here is fairly accurate to what you would experience in real life (I mean, within reason. I did read a lot of things but that doesn't mean that I understand half of it). My family is in bewilderment about why the hell I know so much about death caps but literally nothing else.