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*****Part 3*****
Chapter 3
Sam felt his knees give out watching the blood drip from his mouth then coughed uncontrollably and painfully again, bringing up another spurt of blood and spraying the floor with bright, red droplets. Strangely enough, Sam thought about how he'd been punched, concussed, stabbed and shot before, but the sight of blood coming up from his lungs without any accompanying injury was more disturbing and frightening than any of those ever were. He shook from the effort it took to just stay upright until he felt himself sliding to the floor in exhaustion, he was just so damn tired and he was so cold his teeth wouldn't stop chattering.
“Shit, Sammy!” Sam felt his brother grab him around the shoulders and haul him up, leading him out of the bathroom and laying him on a bed so he could pull a pair of pants on him, for which he was grateful since he really didn't want to die in his tighty-whities.
After that, things got kinda blurry for him. One moment he was in the motel room and the next he was in the car while Dean drove erratically through the city streets. He wanted to tell him to slow down and not kill them both on his way to saving him, but his thoughts faded in and out, only the bone-chilling cold persisted unabated.
It wasn't until he felt the cessation of movement that he tried to open his eyes again.
“Help me out here, Sammy.” He heard Dean order as he pulled him out of the car then helped him to his feet. They were in a parking lot somewhere and instinct alone told him that he needed to put one foot in front of the other. He did his best to walk, but his legs were failing him, as if they had been made of rubber and if it hadn't been for Dean holding him up, he never would have made it past the doors.
OOOOOO
“Somebody, help me!” Dean yelled as soon as he burst through the doors of the hospital E.R, his arms tight around Sam as he half-dragged his semi-conscious brother in.
Seeing the commotion the young man made, a nurse and an orderly rushed over and helped take over Dean's struggle, lifting Sam onto a gurney brought over by yet another nurse.
“What's going on here?” A woman in a white coat rushed up, obviously a doctor by the way she took charge. As if in answer, Sam began coughing again and more blood came to his lips, causing Dean to wince at the sight of it's crimson stain contrasting sharply against his little brother's too pale skin
“You got to help him!” Dean rushed the words out in a near panic as he followed the medical team alongside the gurney as they pushed it towards a trauma bay.
“We'll do our best, sir...What's his name?” The doctor asked
“Sam, his name's Sam. ”
Approaching a set of double doors, the gurney went through with the med team, but a pair of hands belonging to a nurse held Dean back.
“It's best if you wait here, sir.”
“What?” Dean asked loudly and angrily. “No! I'm staying with him, he's my brother.” He demanded, but the nurse refused to back down.
“I'm afraid I'm gonna have to insist. You'll just be in the way....trust me it's for his own good...” she told him not unsympathetically. Dean ran a hand through his hair in frustration, but relented. She gave his a quick reassuring squeeze on the arm before she too disappeared behind the doors, leaving Dean alone to wait and worry.
OOOOOO
Sam was only semi-aware of what was going on around him as he lay shivering and floating in and out of sleep. Every now and then he would catch snippets of voices next to and above him talking rapidly as he was hooked up to machines, poked, prodded and stripped of his clothes.
“Temps at 104” He caught a voice say at one point, thinking to himself that that couldn't be a good thing.
“O2 Sats are at 89% and dropping, Doctor ” he heard another voice.
“We've got some massive hemoptysis going on here, I need and CBC and blood type and call for that damn CT for a scan already” A woman called out across the din, barking orders in a way that reminded him of Dean. That made him wonder where his brother was, he hadn't heard any of his sarcastic or smartass remarks since he came in.
“Dean?” Sam called out, prying his eyes open and looking for the one face he knew would always be there for him, but he couldn't see him.
Where was he?
All he could make out was chaos as people floated in and out of his field of vision. A panicky fear began to creep up on him, he didn't want to be alone. But then he felt a hand on his shoulder and he looked up into a friendly face, soft brown eyes conveying a sense of peace he couldn't understand and he felt himself relax unconsciously.
“It's alright, Sam...just calm down now, you're in good hands here and you're gonna be just fine.”
“Who are you...Where's Dean?”
“My name is Cassandra. Don't worry, Dean's waiting for you and you'll see him again soon.” Cassandra placed a warm and comforting hand over Sam's brow and he felt a lightness pass through him and everything around him seemed to glow from the warmth that enveloped him. His eyes closed involuntarily and as he slipped into sleep, he heard her voice floating into his mind.
“Just sleep now and rest....I'll be watching over you.”
OOOOOO
After what felt like hours, Dean realized it was nearing 4 am and he still hadn't heard anything about Sam. Before that, he'd been haunting the nurses station so much that they had banned him from bugging them anymore and sent him to the surgical waiting area to keep him out of their hair.
Being so early on the morning, he was the only one in the room with nothing to do except watch CNN as they replayed the headlines over and over again in an endless loop and drink what was left of the cold coffee from the pot sitting in the corner.
Damn! He should have stayed with Sam anyway and just pushed his way in to see him already. He should have made that doctor at the clinic give him a more thorough exam and demanded more tests when they went to the clinic yesterday. He should have listened to his gut and just taken Sam to the doctor the first time he coughed whether he liked it or not, then they wouldn't be in this mess now and he wouldn't have to be sitting here sitting on his hands as useful as a screen-door on a submarine. This was all his fault, he knew deep down that Sam had something worse than the flu, he should have been protecting his little brother better.
“Dean Miller?” He heard a woman's voice ask after she poked her head in and looked inside, seeing him wear a rut into the carpet from all of his pacing.
“Yeah?” he replied distractedly after he remembered the fake name he had given the receptionist.
“I'm Dr. Richards, you're Sam's brother, right?” He stopped his pacing then and rushed up to the same doctor that had come to help Sam when he first brought Sam in.
“How is he?”
“He's stable...he's running a high fever and all signs point to a serious chest infection.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, he's got pneumonia and the blood he was coughing was caused by a burst blood vessel. I know it looked frightening, but fortunately it wasn't as bad as it seemed, he only lost a few teaspoons of blood, but it's always a serious concern when we see any kind of bleeding like that occur in the lungs. We've stopped the bleeding with some coagulants, however, what's more alarming is his fever. It's atypical for it to be so high for such an infection and I'm not entirely convinced that it's just the pneumonia causing it. But, I'm optimistic that the antibiotics we've got him on will kick in soon and help bring it down, especially since he's young and healthy.
“But, he's gonna be okay, right?” Dean asked.
The doctor's hesitation set his hair standing up.
“I sure hope so, but he must have been ill for some time, has he been to see a doctor?” She asked with a hint of accusation which Dean bristled against.
"I brought him to a doctor yesterday and that dickhead told us it was just the flu." He shot back, frustration lacing his strained voice.
"Which clinic was that?"
"The one downtown."
"Ah...Dr. Newman, perhaps?" She surmised in bitterness and anger. Obviously, the Winchester luck had brought them to the worst doctor in all of Atlanta.
"Yeah, how'd you know?"
"I've had more complaints about that man....I'm know he's overworked at that clinic, but I swear sometimes it's like the guy got his medical license from a cracker-jack box. I've reported him to the AMA, but they haven't done anything about it yet."
This new information sent Dean's mind in action. Once again, it wasn't the monsters and demons that truly scared Dean, it was people. Sam wasn't the only one getting screwed over by that douch-bag, other innocent people might end up like his brother because that dick was too lazy to do his job thouroghly. If no one else was going to step up and set that guy straight, perhaps he needed to pay him a visit and give him a piece of his mind and maybe his fists as well. But all of that was a fantasy for now and would have to wait until he was certain that Sam was going to be okay.
“I need to see him” He told the doctor.
“We'll be moving him to a room soon, you can see him as soon as we have him settled, okay?” she turned to leave, but Dean had had enough of being jerked around by doctors and grabbed her arm before she could slip out the door.
“No. Not okay. I want to see him now. I've been waiting here this whole damn time when he needed me, so just tell me where he is, now!”
The petite doctor gulped, taken aback by the dangerous light in Dean's eyes as he was dead-set on seeing Sam and no one was going to stop him.
“Alright, follow me.” She relented.
Dean followed the doctor as she led him down the corridor to the E.R. Room where he was laying surrounded by machines, IV's and a couple of nurses, that quickly took there leave and gave them some privacy when they saw him enter.
Sidling up to the bed next to Sam's uncharacteristically still, pale form and seeing his eyes closed in a fitful sleep had Dean fighting a lump growing in his throat, threatening to bring him to tears. He had to admit that he hadn't felt this desperate in a long time, not since their father died and he wasn't about to let that same thing happen again. He wasn't about to be left all alone in this world.
Running a hand through Sam's sweat soaked hair Dean leaned in and whispered into his ear.
“You hang in there, Sammy or I'll kick your ass.”
