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grumkin_snarkChapter Title: Harbor Lights
Fandom(s): Supernatural, Dark Angel
Summary: In the end, it’s a complete accident that gets Dean Winchester out of Hell.
Rating: R (gen), see here for more explanation.
Word Count: 6,882
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I neither own Supernatural nor Dark Angel. Just this.
Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter XVI: Harbor Lights
Making their way through the sewer system was difficult, seeing as how much Max and Dean’s stubborn personalities clash, particularly in these such instances. She was insistent that Joshua carry him like before so that his shoulder wasn’t jostled as much, and he was dead set on that he didn’t want to be treated like a cripple and could walk just fine on his own two legs, thank you very much.
As a result, they compromised—with Joshua’s help, though neither would own up to that—by saying that since Dean would be doped up on pain meds post-hospital visit, on his return trip to Terminal City (supposing he decided to go back), he would allow Joshua to carry him then. With as much masculine dignity as possible, of course.
Dean had set a brisk pace for himself, and though it’s more a striding walk for Max than a pace causing exertion for her, she eyes his occasionally misstepping figure with anxiety. If he fell, and for some reason she or Joshua couldn’t get to him in time, he wouldn’t be able to brace himself on his hands, resulting in him most likely landing right on his shoulder. In a dirty, gritty sewer no less. Dean assures her—rather, he assaults her with—that this injury isn’t among his worst, but that doesn’t mean she wants him to fall and hurt it more.
Joshua’s walking in between the fiery two, trying to make sure they don’t kill each other before Dean can get in Logan’s car. Max, for her part, is quickly getting over her bending over backwards for him, and feels familiar frustration seep into her bones, frustration at Dean instead of for information on Dean. She had thought he and Alec (and Ben, she supposes) were as different as apples and oranges, but traits of Dean’s are starting to spill out that cause her to get an image of the spirited X5 clear in her mind.
The main one, then, being the seeming inability to not keep sending retorts and sarcasm at her, to just let her have the last, acerbic word like most people do. It doesn’t necessarily comfort her that Dean’s now apparently repressed that manic side of him that she’d seen in Command; the way he acts now gives her the sense that it’s how he would act normally, but now that she’s viewed the horrific states of mind Dean could be catapulted into, she’s just plain unsure about the whole business.
“I didn’t do it, you know,” Dean says abruptly, breaking his and Max’s unofficial I-can-stay-silent-longer-than-you-can-so-there contest.
She turns to look at him, her feet sloshing disgustingly in puddles of God knows what. “Do what?” she asks.
“The shit on my rap sheet,” he answers, face grimaced against his injury. Max is honestly astounded he’s not curled on the ground in agony. Then again, maybe Dean had repressed the pain just like everything else. He considers for a moment, and then revises, “Well, most of it. Technically the whole grave and fraud things are true, but it’s all been for the good of mankind and everything.”
Max raises an eyebrow, her pace still with Dean’s. “Messing around with graveyards and upsetting people that were laid to rest, not to mention scamming the shit economy is for the good of mankind? Do elaborate.”
Dean chuckles, shaking his head. “Never mind,” he cuts off, deciding against whatever he had intended to tell her.
If Joshua hadn’t been maintaining the barrier between her and Dean, she would’ve smacked the guy upside the head. “You can’t pull that crap with me,” she chastises sharply. “Not one thing has made sense about you throughout this whole fiasco, and I know you have the answers.”
Dean concedes, “Fair enough,” and then glances over at her, his eyes unreadable in the dark. “But honestly? I’m not sure I trust you as far as I can throw you, and with this jacked shoulder, that’s not very far.”
Max growls in frustration, just glad they’re nearing the end of the tunnel. “Dean, you do realize everyone in Terminal City, which we just left, is a genetically engineered killing machine who can maim or slaughter you more ways than you can count, right? If I wanted you dead, you would’ve been before you hit the floor. It’s just a good thing Alec reined in his temper with you.”
“Reined in?” Dean replies incredulously. “He nearly ripped off my arm.”
An eye roll later, Max responds, “Don’t be melodramatic. That is reining in, given that we’re Manticore. Although I will say for you that your knife throw was impressive.”
Dean remains silent, choosing to shut off any rejoinders he may have had planned rather than spit them at his inhuman counterpart. After a few more minutes of stiff air, he sees yellowy, artificial light valiantly attempting to pierce the blackness of the tunnels, and quickens his steps, a moment later hearing Max and Joshua do the same. Without checking behind him, he grasps hold of the rusty ladder there and pulls himself up, rung by rung, the short distance made longer by the fact that he only has one arm to assist him.
He grunts as he fumbles his way out of the manhole cover—which Logan must’ve taken off foresightedly for them; Max reminds herself to thank him for that, too—and slides away from it before standing up, albeit with more vertigo than he would usually have. Unable to completely forget the courtesies that even John had instilled in him from a young age (granted, John had taught it more the vein that they’d probably have to use it as a cover or guise to get information from someone, but it’s the concept of the thing that counts), he ambles back over to the sewer opening where Max is coming up next, and holds out his right hand to her with a one-shouldered shrug.
Her eyebrows retreat upwards as she looks from his hand to his face, like she can’t believe he’s actually offering his help, and it’s not like she’s the partially handicapped one, but hey, she’s not going to refuse the chance to get a little less grime on her if she doesn’t have to. So, hoping Dean’s judging his remaining strength right, she grasps hold of his warm hand and is pulled upright, admittedly quicker than she’d anticipated.
She nods her appreciation at Dean, and then glances down below to where Joshua hasn’t yet started climbing. “I think we’ve got it from here, Josh,” she says, glancing at Dean who at least doesn’t appear like he’ll go homicidal any time soon. “I’ll be down in a bit. And thanks, Big Fella.”
Joshua smiles at her, and then backs away into the tunnels, his heavy footsteps echoing on the metal. Max turns around, peering through the slightly foggy night for Logan. She spots his run-down Aztec a few yards away, Logan sitting in the driver’s seat with his laptop open on his knees, Max assumes because the heat is running as well as, most likely, his program of tracking sector police cars and motorcycles by way of their GPSs.
Walking over with Dean in step beside her, she taps on the window, Dean unable to restrain a laugh at Logan’s flinching from the unexpected knock. Max glares at him, again wishing she could hit him, but still not knowing if he has a head injury or something. She does promise to herself to smack him once he gets healthier, though.
Logan sets his computer on the seat beside him and opens the car door, and then stands against it as he shoots a wary glance at Dean before his gaze returns to Max, the temperature in it substantially warmer. “Hey,” he says, giving Max a small smile.
Then, with as much normalcy as he can manage under the circumstances, he turns to the man next to her, for some reason he doesn’t know having to quell the disappointment that Dean has a fair bit of muscle and some height on him. Not that he’d exactly expected a clone—or whatever Dean is—of Alec’s to be scraggly, but it’s a slight ego hit nonetheless.
“Logan Cale,” Logan introduces, his hands shoved firmly in his jacket pockets.
“Dean Winchester,” Dean replies, and then continues more scornfully, “But you knew that.” He catches Max’s frown and clarifies, “Yeah, heard that conversation, too, by the way. I’m assuming this is the master cyber-geek Logan you got my records from.”
Max rolls her eyes, by now too accustomed with jibes towards Logan from most of the people in T.C., chiefly Alec, so Dean’s she presumes are cut from the same cloth, in that he doesn’t necessarily mean it as a true insult, rather a mild condescension. Hopefully. “So,” Max addresses Logan, “have you talked to Dr. Carr about this? I mean, I don’t think enough people have equated Alec to being a transgenic, but…”
“Actually, I did,” Logan answers. “I didn’t tell him about Dean’s, er, questionable history” here, Dean growls lowly, but Max disregards it, so Logan goes on, “so hopefully Sam won’t think anything of it, beyond the whole Alec thing.”
Dean jolts at the name of Sam, and Max snaps her head towards him, her body immediately tensing. After all, it was Sam who had been a large part of Dean’s hallucinatory pleadings, and Max really hopes she hadn’t sent Joshua away prematurely. But Dean’s expression returns to the careful mask he’d had before, and Max lets her muscles relax a bit. Logan notices the exchange, but wisely stays quiet, trusting that Max knows more about Dean’s tendencies than he does.
“You’ll call later with an update?” Max inquires, once again having the desire to go with them to the hospital.
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll call every two minutes to tell you if my breathing’s irregular or if he thinks I’m going to go postal,” Dean interrupts caustically. Regarding Logan, he jeers, “But, you know, I can totally just hang out here for however long you two lovebirds are gonna take. My shoulder’s feeling awesome.”
Max sighs, but nods at Logan to tell him to get going. For his sake, she doesn’t want to piss Dean off more than is advantageous for Logan’s health. Logan quietly bids her goodbye, and then gets back in his car, Dean slumped in the passenger seat. Max glimpses a brief flash of agony in Dean’s face as he attempts to pull on his seatbelt—he promptly decides that’s a bad idea—but then it’s back to closing off everything. She’s unhappy about all of it, but she can’t do much, so, waiting until she sees the red taillights turn out of view, she heads back into the sewers, hauling the manhole cover back in place and shoving the route into pure darkness again.
Logan’s teeth are gritted as he catches Dean glaring at the speedometer again. It has to be at least the fifth time, Logan’s counted, and he’s already sick of it. He’d thought the favor to Max wouldn’t be so bad; Dean had been a smartass to him initially, but he’d sat noiselessly enough in the car. Logan’d been okay with that. He’d just get over to Harbor Lights Hospital as fast as Bessie would allow, drop Dean off with Dr. Carr, wait as far away from the guy as possible, brief Max on how everything’s going, drive Dean back, and he could get on his merry way.
But no. Dean somehow managed to get under his skin by saying absolutely nothing. For one, he had instantly put his hand on the radio dial, rolling through the few stations until he landed on one that played as close to real rock as Logan had heard in a long time. ‘Course, Logan had never really liked rock in the first place, and really, everyone knows you don’t play with the radio in another man’s car; but on the other hand, he hated it less than, you know, being dead. So he allowed that round to Dean.
Then there was the speedometer thing, like Dean was annoyed at Bessie’s incapacity for going fast. Max had, on a few occasions, bitched about the same thing, but at least hers had been somewhat in jest, and she’d dropped it soon after. Dean, on the other hand, was clearly not feeling any humor towards it, and the man’s mood was getting blacker and blacker by the second. Logan clenches his hands around the steering wheel, cursing the red light he’s forced to stop for.
He hears a chuckle from the seat next to him, and pointedly ignores it. “Am I making you uncomfortable?” Dean questions, shifting in his seat, presumably to get as much weight off his shoulder as possible.
Logan refuses to look at him.
“Oh, come on, Logie,” he riles, purposefully putting a booted foot up on the dashboard, leaving a smear of mud on the upholstery. “High blood pressure’s not good for you.”
Irritated, Logan finally turns to look at Dean. His handsome face is plastered with a cheeky grin, his eyes crinkled, just like Logan can see Alec in a few years (and wow is that weird, to essentially see Alec at around Logan’s own age) but there’s something else there, something that stutters Logan’s annoyance. He’s not sure what, just that for all the ribbing sarcasm that’s plain in Dean’s expression, there’s a certain…bleakness in Dean’s eyes. They’re the windows to the soul, Logan’s heard, and in his experience, having an accurate read of someone’s gaze proved to be fairly effective in judging truth, no matter how much the person in question considered themselves to be a conman or emotionally masked.
In Max’s, he’d always seen earnestness, the desire to do good, even early on when she was supposed to be all about number one; in Alec’s, beyond the joking and the Manticore visage, he’d rather surprisingly seen someone who was haunted by his misdeeds he’d carried out before he knew what was right, someone who actually did want to help others beside himself, seek redemption. In his own, he knows, he sees some of the same, in that he truly wants to assist the broken world in any way he can and to lend aid to anyone who wants to help him do it.
He’s seen a lot of emotions written in people’s eyes, their intentions and wishes. But he’s never before seen such pure, unadulterated desolation, like it takes everything to even perform basic functions, to talk or breathe or walk. But he sees that in Dean’s, and it, figuratively speaking, knocks him on his ass. Makes him wonder for a second if Dean’s vexing of everyone around him is really just a cover for…something. Logan doesn’t know what, but he does think that maybe he’s misunderstood Dean just a little.
But before he can muse anymore over the enigma that is Dean Winchester, he’s startled by a coarse honk from behind him. He looks up, sees that the light has turned green, and quickly presses the gas, Bessie groaning through the intersection. He feels Dean’s expectant scrutiny on him, but heads it off, assuring him that he’d just blanked out for a second. Dean turns back around, staring out the dirtied window at the sordid landscape.
Fifteen minutes later, the hospital comes into view, and Logan pulls into a parking space, stepping out of the vehicle and briefly wondering if he should offer to aid Dean with something, but Dean’s already got the door shut and is striding toward the hospital like he knows where he’s going, so Logan quickly locks the Aztec—it doesn’t really matter, unfortunately, since if someone wanted the car, it’d be only too easy to take it, but by now it’s just habit—and hurries to catch up with Dean, walking them both to the back entrance of the facility.
Dr. Samuel Carr has been privy to many things during his lifetime, having the privilege (or is it such a privilege?) to know and remember the world both pre- and post-Pulse. He was already high enough on the doctoral food chain so that when the EMP flashed over the U.S., he wasn’t one of the thousands, millions even, that lost their jobs. That was a curse in disguise, in some ways, though, because with the homelessness came the increased hoards of people needing medical assistance.
Many a hospital had been forced to shut down due to the disaster, and insurance rates had skyrocketed, dousing people in debt, mortgage, and pretty soon after, bankruptcy. At first, facilities had still required viable medical insurance and such paperwork, but after a while when it became apparent practically no one had it, they’d had to resort to admitting as many as they could, accepting insurance cards even if the cards didn’t necessarily look legit, or else risk being swarmed.
It’s a messy, immoral way of doing things, but it makes everyone sleep that much better at night, and as long as they’re still getting paid—Sam still isn’t completely positive on the schematics of that one, or if he wants to know, but it suffices for funding his basic livelihood, so he hasn’t disputed it thus far—the hospital personnel doesn’t say much.
For his part, Sam’s guilt is staved off whenever Logan contacts him with something. Just knowing that he’s able to at the very least sate someone’s unease with a snippet of good medical news allows him to not possess as much culpability. That isn’t to say that oftentimes Sam is totally and utterly perplexed by the results or patients he ends up consulting because of Logan, but in any event, better his job be out of the ordinary than boring or, worse, soul-damaging.
Hearing a knock, Sam closes the old edition of Gray’s Anatomy he’d been reading, and gets up to pull open the service entrance. He sees Logan first, the man’s face tight behind his glasses, and steps aside to let him through. His curiosity still fully in effect, he allows the second man to pass, and as he meets the doctor’s eyes, Sam’s eyebrows raise ever so slightly. He’d never treated Alec directly, but he’d certainly heard about him, and, moreover, a while ago Logan had given him the records of any X series he’d had just in case one of them came to Sam in need of covert mending. Then there is, of equal importance, the fact that Alec’s face had been plastered on the news right next to Max’s and a few other transgenics’.
Now that he takes a few moments to study the other man, however, he realizes that he’s got a long night of confusing inquiries and probably few answers ahead of him. It’s Alec’s face, kind of, but older and more…Sam’s not sure, but war-torn seems an accurate enough adjective. Given the patients Logan had introduced him to in the past, it’s an acute speculation.
He holds his hand out, for some reason feeling a little uneasy around the Alec lookalike. He doesn’t appear particularly bloodthirsty. “I’m Dr. Carr,” Sam offers, in hindsight unnecessarily. “But you can call me Sam if you wish.”
“Dean Winchester,” says the other man, and Sam doesn’t miss the tight clenching of his jaw as he shakes Sam’s hand firmly. “And I’ll stick with Dr. Carr.”
Sam tries not to frown at Dean’s insistence—most people welcome the opportunity to not feel as though their doctors are complete drones—but he isn’t a psychologist, and with what Logan had very transiently debriefed him, he’d be too occupied with his real expertise to ponder moonlighting for another scientific field.
“Well,” Sam says succinctly, all too aware of the tension already starting between the three. “Follow me, please.”
He leads them to a vacant Radiology room (anticipating he’d be taking an x-ray of Dean’s chest), telling the nurses at the front desk that he has a private patient coming in, and that he’d previously taken care of the paperwork. It isn’t a total lie: Dean is a patient coming in privately, and Logan does have the required paperwork (it’s forged, undoubtedly, but those details aren’t pertinent) if the need arises to present them. In any case, he gestures for Dean to sit up on the examining table, and locks the door behind him.
“Logan tells me your shoulder is dislocated,” Sam begins, eyeing Dean’s tee shirt that he can see, despite the dark jade color, is stained black, the cause of which Sam has no illusions isn’t blood.
“You could say that,” Dean snorts, as if the preliminary diagnosis were an understatement.
“All right, well, let’s see the extent of it,” Sam says, already wheeling over the x-ray unit. “Just remove your shirt there, and I’ll take a look.”
Obviously in severe, but withheld, pain, Dean awkwardly maneuvers his shirt over his head, abruptly preferring that instead of Logan here, there’d been Rade (he kinda likes her repartee) or even Max, both people Dean had already met. Logan he still isn’t sure on. The guy seems a little too yuppyish for his liking.
Seeing Dean’s cringe as the cotton of the shirt starts to come into contact with his wound, Sam moves to guide it off, hedging that Dean would like his shirt being cut through less than he would Sam assisting him. Dean does honestly appreciate the clinical nature Sam is taking with him, not showing any outward signs of discomfort or staring, apart from the preliminaries. Dean’s had quite enough gawking in the couple days to last him a lifetime.
Goosebumps rise on Dean’s arms once he’s liberated of his shirt, the air conditioning in the hospital either cranked way too high, or maybe their ventilation is made simply of letting in the outside air. Seattle would certainly be frigid enough, especially at night, to act as coolant.
In the harsh fluorescents of the operating room, Dean’s shoulder looks even more grisly than it had back in Terminal City, and Sam just barely stops a wince. He’s seen a lot in his time as a doctor, and Dean’s injury isn’t exactly the most heinous he’s had, but it ranks up there. He tries to keep a calm demeanor about the whole thing, but truthfully, inside he’s doing what Logan is—grimacing.
The proximal head of Dean’s humerus is nearly poking out of his skin, the flesh struggling to hold in what’s supposed to be intact. The entire left upper portion of his torso is one big bruise, dark purple splotches staining the tanned skin from his left scapula up over his shoulder, across his chest, and up and down his ribs. There’s a gash, Sam notes, slicing diagonally along his shoulder blade, but it’s been precisely stitched and cleaned up, for which Sam is glad—he’ll have enough of a time righting the rest of Dean’s injuries.
There’s another thing Sam sees, however, that gives him arguably more pause: Dean’s chest. The bruising conceals it almost completely, to the point that Sam doubts Logan would be able to see it from his position despite being just seven feet away, but it’s in full view to Sam. Broad, raised, crisscrossing lines mar the skin over where his heart is, scars that look thoroughly out of place on Dean. Not just that, but they look…deliberate. Like…no, Sam doesn’t even want to go there. He definitely doesn’t know Dean well enough to ask him about it, and given Dean’s attitude so far, he sincerely doubts Dean would offer up any explanation besides a fist to the face.
“Sam?” Logan prompts, and Sam guesses he’d been silent for too long.
Sam takes his eyes from the gruesome barrage of scars and clears his throat, conferring with Logan mostly, considering Dean looks like he would just as soon reset his shoulder himself and be done with it. “It’s a hell of a dislocation,” he declares rather unnecessarily, keeping the chest wound to himself. (For now.)“And it would’ve helped if it’d been iced properly before coming in; the swelling and bruising is severe. I would like to take an x-ray as well as an MRI of the shoulder, though, to see what kind of nerve, especially the axillary nerve and posterior artery, or muscle damage was done internally, as I’m certain there is some going on.”
“Don’t you have to report that kind of crap?” Dean interjects skeptically. “How is that a good thing? Isn’t there a different, less conspicuous way to do this?”
“As it so happens,” Sam says levelly, “there aren’t any appointments for the MRI lab this time of night, so I can get you in without too much trouble. As for another way, it is possible to detect abnormalities in muscles around the shoulder joint, such as torn rotator cuffs, by using an ultrasound, but that doesn’t get as complete a picture as an MRI will. As I said, with an injury this expansive…I would much prefer it if I could see a more advanced radiological image.”
“This is ridiculous,” Dean grumbles. “I’ve had dislocations before, fixed some of them up all by myself. MRIs take, like, over an hour, don’t they? It’s way too overkill just for this.”
Sam meets Dean’s eyes for a few moments before showing an expression of partial relinquishment. “Well, it’s ultimately up to you,” he allows. “But, especially with what you just said about having previous shoulder traumas, it would be even more advisable to go through with a comprehensive exam.”
In the following quietude of the room, the grinding of Dean’s teeth together in his mouth is heard, and both Logan and Sam await his response circumspectly. Logan especially has a feeling of trepidation, suddenly very aware of the fact that Dean is an expertly trained, paramilitary force to be reckoned with. Whereas Logan is, in all truth, paralyzed, and Sam is a physician, trained solely in medicine. Chances are at about ninety-nine percent that if Dean wants to escape, and harm either or both other men while at it, he’d succeed within seconds. And he gets the sense that Max would be…less than pleased with Logan if that happened.
Luckily, though, thirty seconds later, Dean exhales heavily and nods, brushing a hand distractedly through his short hair. “Fine,” he musters out. “Just be quick about it, doc.”
Sam mentally sighs in relief, not so much at that Dean didn’t get violent, but rather that he agreed to inclusive testing. For all Sam’s perceived calmness about Dean’s state, he really is still unsettled about it. The power to which Dean’s shoulder must have been subjected…well, it wasn’t caused by any run of the mill scuffle, that much is for sure. He stops his imagination right there before he envisions situations that he would quite rather not.
He’s just thankful that Dean wasn’t thrown—or hit, or whatever—the tiniest bit more that would thrust his bone completely through the skin. Sam’s not versed very well in surgery; he wouldn’t be able to hide that one. He’s hoping enough as it is that any internal disfiguring to Dean’s shoulder won’t require it.
“Lie down,” Sam instructs, and Dean moves to do so, but can’t prevent a small, nearly undetectable whimper from escaping. Sam berates himself for not thinking of the pain it would cause for even the slightest movements, and more than that, he’s immensely surprised Dean’s made it this far without absolutely crying in agony. Quickly walking over to one of the cabinets in the room, he takes out a small bottle of morphine, unwraps a sterile syringe from its container, and draws out ten milligrams of the liquid. Glancing once at Dean, then at Dean’s shoulder, Sam goes back to the bottle and pulls out another five milligrams.
He sets the container in the cabinet, and then strides back over to Dean and sticks the needle straight into his bicep, sending the analgesic coursing through his bloodstream. A few minutes later, Dean nods to Sam, and then lies down as he’d been previously requested. Without further deliberation, Sam hands Dean a lead apron to place over the rest of his torso, and then turns on the radiograph and adjusts the radiation settings before manipulating the arm over Dean’s shoulder.
“Okay, hold your breath for a few seconds and don’t move,” Sam commands, returning to the x-ray console. He presses a button, and the heavy sounds of the machine whirr as it snaps a picture of Dean’s bones.
The image appears digitally onto the computer, and Sam shines it onto a larger screen. Dean’s injury looks even worse in black and white, the simplicity of the x-ray showing in sharp contrast Dean’s humerus jolted a good many centimeters out of its socket and into the surrounding tissue. But, for all its macabre detail, it does allow Sam to figure out how he’ll reset the bone.
Dean’s expression is placid, less taut than it was before, owing indisputably to the strong opioid suppressing his pain receptors, and Sam positions his hands on either side of Dean’s wound, briefly prodding so he gets a sense of where the socket boundaries are. Then, with a swift but exact jerk, he forces the bone rearwards and back into its casing, the rounded, broad shape of Dean’s shoulders restored to their proper dimensions.
Dean begins to rotate his joint to test the mobility, but Sam grips onto his forearm. “I still don’t know what musculature is affected,” he says sharply. “After the MRI, I’ll get a better sense of how much would be prudent to allow you to move your shoulder around.”
“Whatever,” Dean grouses, lowering his feet onto the floor. He’s not pleased exactly with how the hospital visit is turning out—Dr. Carr’s way too officious for his comfort zone—but he is glad to have his arm not feel like it’s a separate limb, lifelessly hanging out in places it most definitely shouldn’t be.
He brushes past Logan, who’d been oddly silent throughout most of the proceedings, for a purpose Dean hasn’t figured out (not that he really cares that much about the cyber-hacker), and follows Carr out of the Radiology room, down a hallway, down another hallway, and then into an as-yet-unlit lab with the large, cylindrical machine that would dictate whether Dean would get to leave the stupid hospital—he hates hospitals, always has—within the next hour, or whether he’d be stuck for substantially longer while Carr decided what to do with his screwed up tissues and whatever else.
Dean just hopes his muscle has healed over enough from the not-so-long-ago bullet that a possessed Henricksen had shot into him. Dean still isn’t entirely certain of how much damage his body retained since his stint in Hell; his outward appearance is for the most part just as before, but who knows if all the internal injuries are the same? He really doesn’t want Carr’s, or even less Logan’s, questions about how he got shot. Though, Dean muses darkly, Logan would probably assume it was a casualty of some killing spree he and Sam had committed or something.
Sam. Dean attempts not to flashback to the multiple times Sam had had to stitch, bandage, splint, or relocate his various injuries, flashback to the multiple times he’d had to do the same for Sam. They’d been just fine not visiting hospitals; Dean feels like an unmitigated, full-on, never-gotten-laid pansy with all this attention and scans and morphine and everything. He vows to not tell anyone about this. Ever.
Okay, well, maybe the shoulder thing, ‘cause he’s got to admit that if you’re going to fuck it up, he’s done it in spades. He may tweak the parameters of the event a little, but it’ll be mainly true. He’ll just leave out the professional patching up and go with the good, old-fashioned, blood, sweat, and dirt remedy instead.
Sam tells Logan to wait in the interpretation room as he and Dean progress into the actual examination one. Noticing Dean is still wearing his jeans, Sam grabs a pair of scrub pants from a cabinet and hands them over, explaining that the metal fasteners on the jeans could interfere with the magnets in the MRI and distort any images. Likewise, he has Dean give him his silver ring, setting it on the sill of the two-way window. Dean feels strange without it.
“Have you had any metal screws, nails, or dental work done recently?” Sam asks, prepping the machine.
“No,” Dean answers, stripping down to his boxers with a little difficulty due to his still-hurt shoulder, and pulling on the loose scrubs.
“That’s good,” Sam admits. “Makes things less complicated.” He gestures next to the retracting table, and instructs, “Just lie down there, and I’ll need you to stay still throughout the whole procedure. There’s an intercom inside the machine that connects directly to the room where I’ll be, so if you need anything just speak up. It’s also fairly closed-in in there; you’re not claustrophobic, are you?” Dean glowers in response. “Right. This won’t take long.”
Once Dean is uncomfortably flat on the table, Sam positions coils over his shoulder, presses the button that starts up the equipment, and steps back into the adjacent room as the MRI withdraws the table. Logan had taken a seat next to the one Sam would need, despite himself fascinated by the procedures. He’d himself had MRIs done for his paralysis, but he’d never been in the computer room during it, to see the images in real-time movement.
Within a few moments, a picture of the muscles, tissues, and blood vessels in Dean’s shoulder appears on the screen, the angle shifting continuously. Logan watches, but can’t quite make out what he’s seeing beyond that it looks vaguely like the thick, corded muscles of, lo and behold, a shoulder. Sam, on the other hand, is studiously taking in the scans, his expression one of both comprehension and regret, the moving grayscale pictures showing him exactly what’s wrong internally with Dean’s chest.
After about forty-five or so minutes, Sam stops the flow of scans and cycles through them to check if any are too blurry to make out. None are, most likely, Sam thinks, due to Dean’s near sedation-still lack of motion during the procedure. He gets up from his chair and enters the exam room again, hitting the button that releases Dean from the chamber. Almost instantly, Dean sits up, walking across the room swiftly to retrieve his ring and change from the scrubs into his jeans.
Sam takes Dean and Logan back to the x-ray room, and projects the dozens of MR images on the screen. Neither of the other two men can read exactly what the pictures represent, and look to Sam expectantly.
“The bad news, Dean, is that your rotator cuff is torn, completely separated from the bone,” Sam delivers, pointing at a few of the pictures. Dean squints and tilts his head to try and see what Sam had indicated, but gives up after a second or two, trusting that the doctor at least could see the tear.
“I assume there’s good news to this?” Dean prompts.
“Comparatively,” Sam answers, and then gestures to a few more images, none of which Dean or Logan can make any more sense of than the last. “The good news is both that there isn’t any nerve or blood vessel damage, and that the mini-open surgery to repair the tear is fairly simple and without complications.”
“Surgery,” Dean repeats, like the word tastes of ash on his tongue. “Dude, I already allowed an MRI. Hospitals and I are not friends, and I’d much prefer it to not go through this shit. I’ve done fine without operations for minor injuries, and this is just another instance of it.”
Sam’s displeasure with Dean’s outburst is blatant on his face. “This isn’t a minor injury, Dean,” he insists. “You’re lucky you didn’t completely lose all use of your shoulder. A little more force and full immobility could very well have been instigated. As it is, two of the four muscles in your rotator cuff were severed. I assure you, the process takes only a few hours, and if it’s of supreme importance to you, we can arrange to have a conscious operation, to not put you under full anesthesia.”
“And how would you keep that one under wraps?” Dean accuses. “I mean, it’s one thing for you to double as a GP and radiologist, but you’re not a surgeon too, right? How are you going to explain all this? Considering most people either think I’m some test tube freak taking over Seattle or Ted Bundy reincarnated, I doubt a surgical team being brought in would be conducive to me staying under the radar.”
“It’s a fair point, Sam,” says Logan helpfully, in a strange mix of seeing substantial merit to both men’s arguments.
Were he Dean, he’d want whatever care to his shoulder to be done without argument. However, he does fully appreciate the desire to stay out of the limelight. Hell, it was practically his core reason for becoming Eyes Only. He just hopes Dean won’t get mad enough for this all to come to blows. Then it really would cause unwanted commotion.
“Serial killer?” Sam can’t resist questioning, glancing to Logan. That’s a constituent he wasn’t informed of.
Dean smirks darkly, with a side order of deprecation. “What, Professor X here didn’t tell you?” Dean sneers. “Why, I’m the infamous grave desecrating, multiple homicide-committing, illegal munitions-acquiring, fed-impersonating, escape felon Dean Winchester. Back from the dead, so to speak. Actually, you, doc, should remember.”
It takes a second, but then a look of recognition dawns on Sam’s face as he looks at Dean with a new persona in mind. It’s one of those things where it takes a trigger to access a particular memory, and Dean’s done so. Sam’s just old enough to where, unlike Max, Alec, and even Logan, he remembers the entire chronicle of the Winchesters with pure clarity, each time they were disseminated on the news, even the mentions of their missing father who Sam recollects setting in his mind as a terrible human being—not just because of the crimes it was posited he perpetrated, but because of what he inflicted on his children.
Sam was in his very early thirties when news reports tapered off, as well as the blend of relief and nervousness the public adopted at hearing the Winchesters had by all accounts stopped their activities. It was even speculated that one or both of them had died through some elaborate and untold series of events. He himself never really had an opinion on the whole thing, entertaining the detached nature that people generally do about news stories, in that he sincerely doubted he’d ever have anything to do with the sensationalism, nor be affected by it, so why be that concerned? The whole business sounded fishy to him, and he decided it’d be better just to ignore it. So he had.
Well, color him emended.
“You’re looking…young,” Sam says carefully, the same confusion he’d felt thirteen years ago resurfacing. Especially coupled with Dean’s “back from the dead” comment, not to mention his general appearance and the unorthodox nature of Logan’s call.
“That’s it?” Dean inquires, sounding truly surprised. He’d expected more…freaking out, he supposes. Not blasé comments on his countenance, of all things.
Logan shares some of Dean’s surprise as well, peering at Sam like he’s waiting for the fallout. But for the life of him, Sam can’t quite manage full-on spasticity or a reaction thereof. In all truthfulness, Sam hadn’t judged Dean as the murderous type upon meeting him—before finding out he was Dean Winchester, the Dean Winchester, obviously—and in spite of a few, well, misconstructions, Dean has been compliant enough. Of course, the news broadcasts had portrayed Dean as charming and cunning, but neither of those tags really seem to fit the man Sam is treating.
Besides, even if he is treating a serial killer, it’s not like Dean has harmed him thus far, and it isn’t like the FBI—what’s left of it, anyway—has the capacity to launch a manhunt for Dean, a criminal they’d long since written off as unsolved. Plus, Sam’s armed with, what, a scalpel and a man who isn’t trained in fighting? He couldn’t really do anything even if he wanted to. The way he reasons, if Dean really had wanted to execute him, he’d probably have done it by now. Sam’s already mystified enough with the transgenics and their anatomies and motivations; contemplating Dean as a clone is one thing, but to consider anything else beyond that like, say, necromancy, is way, way above Sam’s pay grade.
“Yes, that’s it,” Sam affirms, his gaze steady. “Look, I never really formed an opinion about you or your brother when it was all hot publicity, and I don’t have one now, whether you really are, as you say, Ted Bundy reincarnated, or if it’s all just some huge, blown out of proportion misconception. Honestly, I’d prefer just to not read too much into it and simply go with either you’re just a random acquaintance of Logan’s whose shoulder’s busted, or, if you really want to be special, a transgenic clone.
“Regardless, you still need surgery, and there is a surgeon here, coincidentally, that is at worst neutral to the transgenic cause, if not for it. So you wouldn’t have to worry about him spouting off to Channel 8 about the newest development, if that’s what your concern is.”
“What, and this guy’s just available at anyone’s beck and call to come repair some random person’s shoulder?” Dean retorts suspiciously.
Sam chuckles good-naturedly. “Dr. Harlan owes me a favor,” he says, and leaves it at that.
For the second time that night, Dean hesitates for a minute, and then gives up, surrender settling over his body. He looks over at Sam.
“Call him.”
Next
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Date: 2010-01-07 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-07 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-08 02:31 am (UTC)Thanks for another awesome chapter!
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Date: 2010-01-08 07:08 am (UTC)Thank you muchly for your comment!
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Date: 2010-01-08 05:26 am (UTC)How you have thrown all the characters together and just everything about it! I can't wait until we get Baby Brother Winchester (Or not so much anymore) thrown into the equation as well!
Please update soon!!!
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Date: 2010-01-08 07:10 am (UTC)Sam'll be an interesting guy to write for. Poor boy's got a hell of a lot of angst in him, too. (Damn those Winchesters!)
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Date: 2010-01-11 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-27 03:55 pm (UTC)