chapter 12

                                    

                                          
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Another  came in to do bed stretches with Cas and Dean excused himself, walking into the hall. He saw Tessa leaning against the nurse's station, examining some medication, and pushing her hair back. She was extremely beautiful, he thought. Even if she was tired she never showed it - and her smile always made her glow.
                          
She looked up as he approached, smiling a little and jotting something on her clipboard.
                          
"He doing his exercises?"
                          
"Mhmm," Dean said. "He doesn't like when I watch. It makes him feel weird."
                          
Tessa laughed lightly, shaking her head.
                          
"Why do you like him so much?" Dean asked, and Tessa shrugged.
                          
"I think you can tell me the answer to that, but, I guess it was because he was lonely. None of the nurses really - they didn't really talk to him. What he has, it's getting a kind of stigma and, well, people don't know what's happening here. You hear about these boys dying and they live a certain way and people get scared."
                          
"Yeah," Dean rasped. "I know."
                          
Tessa shrugged again.
                          
"He just wanted someone to talk to, mostly about you."
                          
Tessa gave him a look.
                          
Dean smiled vaguely and fiddled with a pen on the counter.
                          
"What's happening to him?"
                          
"A fungus, or a tumor...we don't..." she paused, weighing her words. "Dr. Ether doesn't really know. It could be anything and at this point. He doesn't think it's worth pursuing. Any more in-depth testing could seriously stress his system."
                          
"It's been barely two weeks," Dean said. "He was supposed to have more -."
                          
Tessa seamed her mouth shut, trying to remain professional.
                          
"These things just happen," she consoled as best she could, "but regardless of the timing, he's going to need you. Now more than ever. He's starting to become delirious, and his memory is coming in and out. When we were in there..."
                          
She stopped, covering her mouth, forcing herself not to cry.
                          
"Tessa you have to tell me."
                          
"Dr. Ether asked him what the last thing he remembered was, and he said he had dropped you off at the base."
                          
Sweat broke out on Dean's face, making it damp.
                          
"That was over ten years ago."
                          
"It's inconsistent. One minute he seems able to remember, the next, he isn't. We just don't know. Dean, you have to be able to handle it."
                          
Dean's fingernails bit into his palms.
                          
"I just want it to be over," he found himself saying, and then immediately he was ashamed of it.
                          
Tessa nodded.
                          
"That's totally natural," she whispered, "If you want, I can give you some tips...just to, make it easier for him?"
                          
"I would really like that," Dean rasped.
                          
They spent the next twenty minutes discussing it, Dean listening closely as she explained what was happening to Cas' body, how soon he wouldn't be sleeping as much, and eating less. She talked about the anxiety his breathing placed on him, about how important it was to keep him from overexciting himself.
                          
By the end of it Dean felt like if anything, he could do something. He wasn't totally powerless. He could help Cas. He could do the right thing.
                          
"Tessa?" he said suddenly as she walked away. She turned over her shoulder and Dean licked his lips for a moment before saying it, "Do you have any way to get a hold of a projector?"