Cherry Pie

Faith Healer

[Rayne]

It was a good thing that Sam was driving because I could not bring myself to even focus on where we were going. The dark trees outside my window rushed past in a hypnotic blur making it difficult to tear my eyes away from them. I knew I should have been mentally preparing myself to see Dean, but I didn't want to start crying in front of Sam, so instead I refrained from thinking about it all together. Besides, I knew that when the time came, I would be as strong and chipper as I needed to be.

When we found out about my dad's death, I was the only thing that kept my mom going. I would be the rock that she needed me to be during the day, and then I would retreat into my bedroom at night to let out all the responsibilities I'd been carrying around in the form of bitter, bitter tears. I did it then, and I could do it again.

"Rayne, we're here," Sam's voice broke into my reverie and it sounded like it was the second or third time that he had to repeat himself.

Glancing out of his window, I realized we were in fact parked outside of the hospital's entrance. "Are you coming in?" I asked him.

Sam looked like he was torn between being there for his brother and running as far away from the place as he could. Basically, very similar to the way that I was feeling at that moment. He finally shook his head. "No, I think I'll go check us into a nearby motel. You go see him, he might be awake by now."

"Okay, are you going to come back?"

"Yeah, maybe." He looked so tired.

"You don't have to, you know," I told him. "I'll stay with Dean for the night. I'll tell them I'm a family member or something."

"Sure, yeah, that'd be great," he said with practically no emotion.

I took his hand just like I did that time we went on the walk and he was telling me about Jess right before I got sick. That seemed like years ago now. I wasn't going to offer him words of encouragement or false promises of it getting better. I just said it like it was. "This sucks."

Sam turned to look at me, his brows scrunched into a troubled point. "It does. I'm...I'm glad we have you, Ray," he said. "Things would have been a lot worse if you weren't here."

Giving him a small smile, I squeezed his hand. "Well, I don't know how much worse they could get, but I'm glad I'm here, too. I'm glad you're here. When I met Dean, I got you in the deal as well, and I feel pretty lucky for that."

He pulled me into a side hug and I took comfort in the presence of the man who had become like an older brother to me. Sammy was good down to the soul and it nearly broke my heart to see him hurting like this. "It's room 315," he said, letting me go.

"Okay, I'll text or call you to let you know how he's doing."

~~~

Standing outside his hospital room was like leaning out of the open door of a flying airplane and preparing to jump without a parachute. In other words, every instinct I had told me to turn around and leave.

But I wasn't there for myself, and as brave and fearless as he liked to make himself appear, I knew that on the inside, Dean must have been terrified. So I went in.

It looked like he had shrunk several sizes since the last time I saw him. His face was an alarming shade of grey and there were dark circles under his eyes. Physically, he was the shell of the man I was saying goodbye to at the motel just a few hours ago.

When I came closer, however, and he opened his eyes to look at me, I could tell that it went a lot deeper than that. There was a rare vulnerability there that I hadn't seen before, masked by a layer of anger and defeat. I understood then that Dean had given up, and that was perhaps the scariest thing of all.