They booked eight doctor's appointments in Sioux Falls. One with Sophie's neurologist and then one with each of the available obstetricians at the Sanford USD Medical Center. She could have her pick. The soonest one was in seventeen days. They'd leave for Sioux Falls in two weeks. It wasn't that long, Dean continually reassured himself. It would be fine.
And it was fine. She was throwing up almost everything she ate and she'd had four migraines in 12 days. But it was okay. She didn't seem liable to drop dead on him any time soon, and Cas said the baby's heartbeat sounded normal. Though Dean couldn't begin to guess what Cas's frame of reference was for the normal heartbeat of an eight-week embryo.
Then - eleven days before they were due to leave - the nocturnal seizures started.
The first one Dean wrote off. She was under a lot of stress and the new meds weren't working as well. It'd been a few weeks since her last one and it'd make sense that she'd have seizures more often now. Sophie had startled awake when Dean came to bed late. She had mumbled something in Polish and then her eyes had rolled back and she'd convulsed briefly, albeit violently. Dean had rolled her onto her side, then when she came to he'd held her and cuddled her until he was positive everyone else was in their rooms. He'd helped her shower, reassured her it was just because she was over tired, and gotten them both to bed.
It was fine. Really.
It was when it happened the second time that week he started to panic.
It was three in the morning when Sophie shook his shoulder to wake him up.
"My head," Sophie murmured sleepily, pressing the heels of her hands into her eye sockets.
"Migraine?" Dean asked gently, placing a hand along the back of her neck and searching for the pressure point that usually helped.
Sophie shrugged.
"Don't turn on the light, please," she said.
"I won't baby," Dean assured her, "Let me go find something you can take."
He climbed out of bed and made his way to the infirmary as silently as he possibly could. He grabbed a bottle of Tylenol and some electrolyte solution he was pretty sure she couldn't vomit up. But when he got back to their bedroom she was seizing. Badly this time.
And he had to admit, he panicked a little.
He turned on the light, made sure she wasn't about to fall off the bed and then paced, with a white knuckle grip on the bottles of pills in his hands. He closed the door, locked it, put on the white noise machine. The last thing he needed right now was company.
Sophie had been…clingy…since she'd found out about the baby and then gotten so sick. She'd also been a little skittish around Sam and Cas since the unexpected baby announcement the week before. In fairness, Sam and Cas had also been acting weird ever since.
Dean didn't want to be managing other people's expectations and other people's personalities while he was trying to deal with this.
Because he had to deal with this.
She couldn't just wait for those appointments in Sioux Falls.
She had to sleep.
Or the seizures and the migraines would keep getting worse and the morning sickness would be just as awful as it had been and she'd keep losing weight and it'd start hurting her organs and hurting the baby and…
Dean froze and took a deep breath and sat down on the couch. Spiraling would get him nowhere. He looked back at Sophie then at his watch. She'd stopped convulsing now. Thank god.
He moved her onto her side and wiped the blood out of her mouth. The sheets were wet and for one horrible moment Dean worried her water had broken and she was losing the baby. Then he remembered something Sophie had mentioned in passing - years ago now - about how nocturnal seizures often caused bedwetting. He relaxed just a fraction.
He wrote off their bedding as a loss and wiped his bloody hands on the duvet as if to finalize it. He set the acetaminophen and electrolytes on the bedside table, grabbed Louie the lamb from where he'd fallen to the floor, and sat in bed next to her, waiting for her to wake up.
He looked up all the details for their local hospital - hoping it would be better than the clinic he'd taken her to last week. They had one singular obstetrician - an older man named Robert Daves. He'd take her there tomorrow.
He really should be trying to get her up to Sioux Falls sooner. If she had another seizure this bad she might need a real ER. He knew Sophie would argue about going up early, be reticent to leave the relative comfort of home. And he couldn't blame her.
And then he had a fantastic idea. He emailed Jody up in Sioux Falls - and asked if they could stay for a few weeks. Jody and Sophie had never met. But Jody had a maternal streak. And Sophie had been like a daughter to Bobby. Jody wouldn't turn them down. And Dean was positive that it would be better than staying in some crappy hotel. He sighed and pulled up the webpage for the Sanford Medical Center in Sioux Falls again, reassuring himself.
Even if he couldn't get her in with a real, good doctor sooner, at least Sioux Falls had a decent emergency department just in case. He shook his head to clear that thought. She'd be fine. She had to be.