Something was missing, some vital piece that would let her wake
up, go back to a normal life, but she had no idea what it was or
where to find it.
So
every night at midnight, during the shift change on the ward,
she would slip out. It had gotten to be a game, seeing if she
could get out unnoticed and how long it would take the nurses to
come and find her. It was harmless, and most of the night
nurses catered to her need to escape. They’d come and find her
when the ward had settled down again.
A
huffed sigh drew her attention from the bay in the emergency
room where frantic doctors worked on a dying accident victim.
Blood and antiseptic scented the air. “You know you’re not
supposed to be down here, Jane.”
She
shrugged. She remembered, but only when they reminded her. As
soon as they took her back to her room, she’d forget again. It
always happened that way. This inability to remember
anything, even her own name, frustrated her.
She
hadn’t always been this way; she knew that even if she
couldn’t remember anything else.
As
the nurse led her away, she threw one glance back over her
shoulder at the man on the table and wondered how she knew he
was dying, without hearing anything they said inside the room.
++++++++++
Dean held his cell phone up so he could see the road and peer at
the lit number on the display at the same time. “Yeah.”
Rustling and thumping echoed over the phone and he imagined
Bobby digging through his cluttered mess of a house for
something.
“Bobby?”
“I’m here, I’m here.”
Bobby’s low voice sounded muffled, like maybe he’d buried
himself beneath one of the leaning towers of books or newspapers
scattered throughout the rooms.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He
heard a grunt, followed by a thumping noise, and then Bobby’s
voice came through loud and clear. “Fixin’ an engine.”
“Inside the house?”
“Supposed to rain.”
Dean nodded to himself. “Fair enough. What’s up?”
“Weird shit in the paper, the last week or so. From Jefferson
City.”
Dean forced his face to stillness, the name rubbing salt into
wounds still raw and bleeding. “What kind of weird?”
“Our kind. I’m sorry to send you, kid, but there’s no one
else. The hospital your Daddy died in – St. Mary’s? No one’s
died there in over a month. Not since you boys left.”
“St. Mary’s. You’re sure.” Dean heard his voice go flat.
“What’s going on?” Sam had been quiet, withdrawn, since they’d
pulled back onto the road outside of Lawrence, and now his voice
in the silence of the car made Dean jump. He waved at Sam to be
silent, curling his hand around the phone to listen. Beside
him, Sam sat up straight, turned to look directly at Dean for
the first time in hours, left hand still curved protectively
around his injured right wrist.
“I’m sure.”
Dean clicked the phone shut and slid it back into his jacket
pocket. He stayed silent while Sam shifted on the seat next to
him before finally speaking.
“This isn’t a good idea, Dean.”
“It’s a job, Sammy.”
“But now? And back in Jefferson City? Come on, Dean.”
Dean knew exactly what Sam meant, knew he was referring to
Dean’s outburst on the side of the road a few hours earlier. He
forced down the real reason he wanted to go; that whatever had
gone wrong at St. Mary’s was his fault, because he still lived.
“It’s a job, Sam.” And that was the end of it, as far as Dean
was concerned. Sammy never knew when to let things lie, though.
“Do
you think…?”
“No.” Dean shot a glance at Sam.
“Dean, if it’s St. Mary’s. It could be.”
Fingers tightening on the steering wheel, Dean turned resolutely
back to studying the road. “It’s not him, Sammy. We made sure
of it. Remember?” Flashes of salt and fire and that tightening
feeling in his chest passed behind his eyes. “It’s not Dad.”
++++++++++
They changed clothes in a rest stop bathroom just outside the
city limits – nicer shirts, jeans with no holes or stains. Dean
fished through the IDs he kept in the Impala’s glove box for
press passes and watched Sam throw on a sports jacket and
retrieve a battered notebook and pen from his bag.
“The New York Times?” Sam asked, eyes wide, when Dean
handed him one of the passes.
“Why not? The story’s already been done locally.” He grinned.
“It makes us important,” he embellished, then shrugged.
“Hopefully it’ll make people want to talk to us.”
Sam
shook his head. “You’re nuts, you know that, right?”
“You need to relax, Sammy, its more fun on my side of the
fence.”
Sam
just rolled his eyes and slid back into the front seat of the
Impala.
++++++++++
Sam
talked their way up from the hospital information desk to a
meeting with St. Mary’s administrator, using just their fake
press passes and his smile. Dean distracted himself while they
waited by flirting with Nadine Fulton’s secretary, one hip
perched on the edge of her mahogany desk.
He
looked up when the door to the inner office opened and Nadine
waved them back. “C’mon in, gentlemen.” She had a low, almost
raspy voice that would have fit right in at a jazz bar in New
Orleans.
“Look,” she said, jumping right in as soon as they were all
seated. “Get one thing straight if you want an interview with
anyone in this hospital. There are no miracles here. I see
headlines to that effect and we’ll sue.”
Sam
sat forward, hands clasped earnestly in front of him. “What do
you mean, no miracles? No one’s died here in a month, right?
Isn’t that a good thing?”
Nadine sighed and shook her head. “There’s a man in the ICU
who’s had four heart attacks in the last two days. The first
attack destroyed his heart; he should have died then, but every
time he dies, he wakes up again. Hell, the amount of morphine we
have to give him for the pain should have killed him.”
Dean shoved a cold chill away, exchanging glances with Sam. Was
the room colder or was it just him? Fuck he hated hospitals.
“Patients here… they’re not getting better, they’re just not
dying.”
++++++++++
They split up once they’d left the administration offices.
“The worst cases are likely to be in the ER and in ICU,” Sam
said.
“I’ll go down to the ER.” Dean jumped at the chance, wanting to
stay away from the ICU as long as possible. He’d spent enough
time there in July.
Sam
watched him as he walked away and Dean figured his brother knew
exactly why he’d chosen what he had. He was grateful Sam didn’t
call him on it. They’d had enough emotional moments on the road
yesterday. He just wanted to get back to what passed for
normal.
++++++++++
A
heavy silence lay over the ER, smacking him in the face when he
stepped off the elevator; a weighty thing that should have been
visible to the naked eye.
Dean drew his coat tighter around his body, shoving his hands in
his pockets, chilled. “No way this is natural,” he muttered to
himself.
He
found himself wondering if the choice to go with plastic,
mustard colored chairs in the waiting area was meant as an
attempt to keep cleanup quick and easy. There was bulletproof
glass in the barrier between the ER and the waiting room, and
the door was most likely triggered by a button at the nurses’
station, closing off the main room in case of an emergency.
He
skirted the edge of the waiting room, careful not to draw the
attention of anyone important, then stepped through the sliding
door and into the main room. Doctors and interns moved between
the curtained areas on either side of the floor and clinic rooms
at the back. Nurses double and triple checked supplies and
their low conversations held an undercurrent of despair.
Off
to the side a couple sat near one of the curtained areas,
occasionally peering inside. They didn’t look too worried, so
Dean figured their situation wasn’t anything serious. The gray
haired woman waiting by herself outside one of the private
clinic rooms was another story. She paced the floor in front of
the room with red eyes and sunken cheeks. From the way she
wrung her hands, whomever she waited on wasn’t in good shape.
Movement at the door between the ER and the waiting area drew
his eye and he turned to study the girl who stood there. She
hovered, eyes planted on the weeping woman and the room she
stood guard over. Curious, he drifted in her direction, coming
at the door from an angle so he could keep out of her line of
sight. Something about the way she stood there, peering in from
outside, made him think she’d vanish if he gave her any warning.
He
sidled up next to her. She peered at him from underneath long
bangs.
“That man should have died days ago,” she said.
“What?”
“The man in that room.” She gestured to the other woman. “He’s
arrested four times in the last two days, he’s not getting
better. They keep him drugged, otherwise he screams and screams
from the pain.”
“Why haven’t they moved him to the ICU yet?”
She
shrugged. “Not stable enough. They decided just to keep him
here.” She looked over at him, dark eyes serious. “I think
they want to transfer him out, hope he’ll pass on if he’s not
here, but his wife keeps hoping he’ll get better.”
They watched the woman and Dean was struck again by the thought
that she was standing guard, a sentinel against death. He
shivered again in the cold and turned to go find Sam.
++++++++++
She
watched him leave, wondered where his brother was.
She
moved inside the room, over to the window of the private room
where the man’s wife had left her station, taken up a post
inside, while he coded again, died again. Woke again.
She
wondered how she knew Dean had a brother.
The
name registered, filtered from her subconscious to her awake
mind.
Dean.
It
clicked.
The
name brought everything back, flung the door to her memory open
in one quick rush. She wondered if this was what it felt like
to be human, to be frail and mortal and breakable.
What she did, what all shepherds of souls did, was supposed to
be inviolate.
She
snarled, slapping one hand against the window glass in a sudden
surge of temper. The glass cracked, a web spiraled out from the
center of her palm to her fingertips.
++++++++++
“What’s here, Dean?”
Dean stepped back into the ER, Sam trailing along. He searched
the room; everything looked the same except the girl he’d talked
to was gone. Damn.
“There was a girl,” he started.
Sam
laughed. “Isn’t there always?”
“Shut up,” he growled, but there was no heat to it. “She looked
familiar, but I didn’t realize it until I was back upstairs.”
Sam
frowned. “Someone you saw while we were here before?”
“I
don’t know. Maybe.”
A
younger man, plain and brown haired, pushed through the door
behind them. He arrowed straight for the older woman, urged her
away from the little room and the man inside.
Dean heard him say, “Lets go get a cup of coffee, Mom,” when
they passed by.
He
watched and waited for them to leave the room, made sure they
were gone, then headed over to the old man’s room, pulling out
his EMF meter.
“Dean!” Sam hurried to follow him. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” He waved the EMF meter around for
emphasis. “I’m taking readings.”
“Here? Come on, Dean, the guy’s dying.”
“Yeah, and that’s why I’m taking the readings. That girl? She
said this guy has died four times in the last two days.”
Sam
sighed. “Yeah, alright. Just,” he glanced over at the ER
door. “hurry up.”
Dean rolled his eyes and tossed him a look that said, well
duh, before moving up to the room. The meter squealed as he
got close and he hurriedly shut it off. He followed Sam’s gaze,
watching as he peered around the door to see if they’d drawn any
attention, but no one was looking their way.
Dean turned the volume down all the way, then flipped the power
on the meter again. He held it up to the door, slipping inside
to scan the dying man.
Nothing. The meter didn’t light up even a little. He frowned
and glanced back at Sam, who shrugged, just as puzzled. He
scanned around the room, the machines, just in case, but still
nothing registered. It wasn’t until he again passed in front of
the window near the door that the meter pinged.
That was when he noticed the crack in the glass. Sam swung
around and peered at it from the other side. “Was it like this
earlier?”
“I
don’t know.” Dean gave him a wry grin. “I wasn’t paying
attention to the window.”
++++++++++
In
the end they headed upstairs to the fourth floor and the ICU in
the hopes of finding something more than a cracked window;
something to give them a little more direction. There was a
faint hint of something that the meter picked up near two
of the rooms and Dean shied away from it almost habitually when
he realized one was his old room and the other was where
his father had been found dead.
“Well, that can’t be a coincidence,” Sam murmured when he saw
the rooms.
Dean snorted. “And you went to college to learn to speak the
obvious?”
A sharp beeping echoed out into the hall from Dean’s old room,
loud where everything else had been muffled, and they both
jumped. Medical personnel converged on the room from all
directions, pushing Sam and Dean out of the way.
“He’s arresting again, get the paddles!” someone shouted.
Dean watched as they pulled in the crash cart and attempted to
resuscitate the tubed man inside. He staggered back slightly
when the image of himself laying on that same bed, in that same
position, flashed through his mind.
He wondered if he’d ever truly healed from the crash, if he ever
would. The scars that traced lines over his body had
healed, true, but he doubted what lay beneath them, unseen, ever
would. Ever could. He watched, silent, as yet again someone
else died again, and wondered if this, too, was his fault.
He should never have come back.
The hand that jerked him by the collar into the room behind him
caught Dean completely off guard. He stumbled backwards and
found himself inside, the door shut behind him, before he could
regain his balance.
He bounced off the bed and spun around, right hand reaching for
the gun shoved in the waistband of his jeans. “What the hell?”
“Hello, Dean.”
Dean frowned at the woman from the ER. “You again.” The last
thing he needed was to be tossed out for carrying concealed
weapons inside the hospital, but he loosened his shirt before
sliding his hand away from his gun. He clenched and relaxed his
fingers by his side, hoarding the adrenaline rush. “How do you
know who I am?”
He looked her over, not bothering to hide his appraisal. She
wore the green scrubs all the ICU nurses wore.
“I remember you. You lost your father.” She moved to stand in
front of him. “I’m very sorry.”
Dean tensed. Damn hospitals. Damn nurses who thought they
needed to bring up everything unpleasant, who thought all issues
had to be confronted. God he hated this place. Really, he
hated hospitals in general, but this one… this one made him want
to hightail it out of here and never look back.
He shoved down the memories of Dad that threatened to surface
and moved to step around the nurse.
“Wait,” she said, blocking the way out of the room. “I didn’t
mean to bring up bad memories, but I saw you in the hall and
wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Fine,” Dean growled, and moved around her toward the door.
“I’m doing fine. I need to go find my brother.”
“Dean.”
The door slammed open behind him and Sam blew into the room, all
wide eyes and frantic motion.
Dean jumped. Again. “Damn it,” he muttered. He was acting
like a girl, startling at every sound.
Sam huffed a relieved laugh. “What the hell are you doing in
here? You just disappeared; you scared the crap out of me,
Dean!”
“I was talking with, her.” Dean turned to point and froze. The
nurse was gone. He’d been facing the door and she hadn’t moved
past him. He turned back to face Sam, who stared at him with
narrowed eyes and brows drawn low.
“Talking with who, Dean?”
“Ahh, shit, Sammy. I think I’ve just been talking with whatever
the hell is causing all this.”
“It was a girl?”
“A nurse; said she recognized me from last month.” He frowned.
“She remembered Dad, wanted to give me condolences, or some such
crap.”
He took out the EMF reader and waved it around the room, but it
didn’t so much as peep. “She must not’ve been in here long
enough.” He pushed past Sam, out into the hallway.
Nurses and technicians moved in and out of the room across the
hall. Dean could see the form of the man on the bed, head
covered with a sheet.
“He stayed dead?”
“Yeah. That’s what I was coming in to tell you,” said Sam.
“What changed?”
“And why did she want to talk to you?” Sam added.
“What?”
“Look, people weren’t dying, and now they are. If it has
something to do with the woman you were talking to, then
sometime today, something changed. If she wanted to talk to
you, maybe there’s a connection.”
Right. Dean rubbed between his eyes, as if he could wipe away
the memories this place had left behind. “Well, come on.”
“And you know where we’re going, how?”
Dean shrugged. “I don’t. But I’ve seen her here and in the
ER. And she’s not here.”
They left the ICU and headed for the elevators at the end of the
hall. The woman stood at the entrance to the stairs. She
smiled at them and waved, then floated through the door.
Dean caught Sam’s eye and they both sprinted forward.
They slammed through the door, Dean pushing himself faster to
get ahead of Sammy’s mutant giraffe legs. The woman wasn’t on
the other side and the only way to go was down.
Sam leaned over the rail.
“See anything?”
“No,” he shrugged, “but she obviously wants us to follow her.”
Dean yanked out his Colt, the one Dad had given him when he
turned ten. Sam pulled out his favorite curved blade, the one
he’d had before he left for college, the one he’d hung onto all
that time. Dean hoped Sam was still as good with the blade in
his off hand as he’d been before he’d left for college.
“I still don’t know what you see in that blade, Sammy.”
“I like it. It’s different.”
And didn’t that just sum up Sam.
The stairs stopped in the basement.
“What the hell’s down here?” Dean grumbled.
Sam shrugged. “Maybe she died down here?”
“You ever hear of a spirit who stopped people from dying,
Sammy?”
Sam shrugged. “Well, if she’s not a spirit, we’ve got nothing.”
Dean snorted, pushed open the door to the boiler room. “Who
cares? Let’s salt and burn her ass and get the hell out of
here.” They swung into the room, splitting up and moving to
either side of the door.
She stood in the center of the room. Beneath her feet a design
Dean didn’t recognize had been drawn in chalk. Candles glowed a
sullen red, sputtering at the points of the design. Sam’s
breath hissed between his teeth.
“You recognize it?” Dean whispered to Sam.
Sam shook his head no.
“Hello again, Dean,” she said.
Beside him Sam murmured, “It’s never good when they know you,
Dean.”
She laughed and her form shimmered, seemed to vanish into a
whirling kaleidoscope of vapor and ash. When she reformed her
black hair had picked up blue highlights, shortening into a neat
bob. She had dressed herself in black, a camisole and jeans.
She looked like a prep school girl trying to go goth.
Somehow she’d succeeded.
“Do you remember me now?” she asked, taking a step closer to
him.
Dean raised the gun as she moved, aiming at her chest, then
staggered back when the memories rushed to the front of his
mind. He cried out, the gun falling form nerveless fingers,
hands reaching up to clutch at his temples. He heard Sam shout
his name, but it sounded distant, hollow, and Dean ignored it in
favor of the pain tearing his mind apart.
Images tore through him, movie stills of actions he hadn’t
remembered taking, snippets of conversations he didn’t remember
having.
Lunging at a VAGUE form hovering over a dying little girl.
“It’s your time to go, Dean.”
The shattering of a glass spilling water across the floor.
“Dean!” Sam’s voice pulled him free from the torrent, right next
to him.
He jerked away, clapping one hand over his ear. “Dude! Don’t
shout.” He winced. A sledgehammer pounded away inside his
skull. “Ow.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” He stood, careful not to upset his head. Sam’s hand
around his elbow steadied him and Dead allowed the help. This
time. It felt like his head might fall off. He looked over at
the reaper. “Tessa.”
She smiled at him. “Dean.”
“Who is she, Dean?” Sam had scooped up his gun and now held it
steady in his left hand, pointed at Tessa. They had both learned to shoot
ambidextrously. He had tucked the handle of his blade into the
front pocket of his jeans.
“Give me the gun, Sammy. You can’t hurt her with it.”
Sam frowned and passed it to him, but he retrieved his knife,
too.
“She’s the reaper,” he said, then laughed. “Sammy, meet
Tessa.”
Sam’s eyes widened and he stepped in front of Dean, shielding
him.
Tessa laughed. “Relax. I’m not here for either of you.”
“C’mon, Sammy, move.”
The
tension didn’t leave Sam’s frame, but he did step aside to stand
shoulder to shoulder with Dean. “Why haven’t you been taking
the souls of the dying?”
Dean looked at her, startled. Right. Not-dying people. The
whole reason they were here. Sammy always did make connections
at a blinding speed. Of course, Sammy didn’t have a pickaxe in
his brain, either.
“I
forgot.”
“You forgot to take the souls?” Sam asked.
“No,” said Tessa, “I forgot who I was. Seeing your brother woke
me, made me remember.”
“How does a reaper forget who they are?” Dean asked.
She
looked at him, looked down at her feet. “You know how.”
Sam
stared at the floor, then moved forward in a rush. “Oh god.”
“What?” Dean looked wildly back and forth between his brother
and the reaper. “What is it?”
Sam
turned back to him, stricken. “This is the stuff Dad asked me
to get for him. While you were still unconscious.” He gestured
at the floor. “The bowl, the herbs, the candles. All of it.”
Dean moved to study the design on
the floor. Yew, dittany, wormwood, Asafoetida.
Myrrh. Sam had book smarts, but
Dean had studied the supernatural, read Dad’s books, memorized
the lesson’s he had taught. “This is to summon a demon,”
he whispered, and a last image flashed through his mind.
Yellow eyes. “Your lucky day, kid.”
“Dad, what did you do?” Dean sank to the floor.
Tessa stepped up to Dean, grasped his jacket and pulled him to
his feet. “Let it go,” she said. “It’s done, can’t be taken
back. His sacrifice allows you to keep fighting. Isn’t that
what you wanted?”
“Not like this,” Dean whispered. He looked up at her. “Take me
instead. Bring him back. I was supposed to be the one who
died.”
“Dean!” Sam choked.
She
shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t take things back. No
do-overs, no refunds.”
“It
wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Dean said again.
“No, but that’s the way of things. Some must die so others will
live. It might hurt now,” she said, “but it was his choice.”
“Not his. It should have been mine.” Dean stood, anger giving
his strength back to him.
“Probably,” she nodded, “but he made the decision as a parent.”
“I’m an adult.” Dean glared at her.
“You’re still his child.” She smiled.
Dean forced down the tears that had been threatening since
Gordon Walker, since that stupid clown, since he’d seen Dad,
shirt stripped open, surrounded by doctors and machines and the
sound that meant he was never coming back.
“Remember his sacrifice, Dean. Remember what he did and why he
did it when the nightmares start up again. Remember that you
were important to him, that you were worthy to him.”
More memories he could never forget. Yellow eyes; his father
praising him, tearing him up inside. “Damn it. Stay out of
my head.” He shook his head, forced the memories back into the
compartment he kept them in.
“Did you take him?” Sam asked her. “Did you take our father?”
“No. I haven’t taken anyone since it gave your brother
his life back.”
“Sammy, we need to go.” He pushed his brother towards the door.
“Dean, wait.”
He
paused in the doorway and turned back to face her.
“Would you have left with me?”
Moment of truth. What’s it going to be?
Dean held her gaze for a long, frozen moment, aware of Sammy
standing next to him, tension stiffening his frame, glancing
back and forth between the two of them. “Yeah. I would have.”
She
nodded, smiled that girlish smile that had made him want to
protect her in the first place. Damned if it didn’t still bring
up those feelings.
She
stepped forward, one hand held out. Sam tightened fingers in
the back of his jacket.
“Here,” she said.
He
took the slip of paper from her hand, careful not to let his
fingers touch hers.
She
grinned, knowing.
“What’s this?
“A
name. What you’ve been looking for. The symbol is his.
Be careful saying that name out loud. You don’t want to draw
his attention any more than you already have.” She looked up at
him through long, black lashes. “I can’t help you more than
this, but I owe him – that demon. Consider this my payback.
And a thank you for waking me up again.”
She
drifted past them, and Dean noticed again that her feet never
quite touched the floor. How had he missed that before?
Apparently he needed to be more observant when he was dead.
She
looked back over her shoulder. “I’ll see you again,” she said,
and Dean knew it was a promise.
He
grinned at her, and winked, because hell, she was pretty. There
were worse ways to go.
“Dude,” Sam stared at him, incredulous, when Tessa had vanished
around the corner. “Will you flirt with everything?”
“What?” Dean grinned. “She’s hot.”
Sam
rolled his eyes and led the way to the stairs.
“Woah. Sammy?” Dean grabbed his jacket and pulled him around,
another memory pushing itself to the front of his mind. “An
ouija board? You used an ouija board?”
Sam
laughed and pulled free. He headed up the stairs to the lobby.
“What are you, twelve?
“Yeah, well. It worked.”
Dean thought about that. “Point.” He clapped his hand on Sam’s
shoulder. “Lets go get that hand checked out.”