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Her left side and leg thrummed with pain, her stomach churned with nausea, her head ached, her eyes burned and body cooked with fever, and to top it all off, the Doctor Who marathon playing on the TV was being interrupted for the premiere of some new show that Anna didn't care about. The remote was too far away for her to reach without getting up, which she couldn't do without enduring a hell of a lot of pain-- and that was if she could even manage it at all-- and for the first moment she could remember all day, there was nobody standing over her with a thermometer and a glass of water asking if they could get her anything or demanding that she let them check the wound in her side.
All day, she'd been short-tempered and tired as she lay on Jody's couch, sleeping off and on, and all the hovering had annoyed the hell out of her. But now Anna wished for some company if only so they could change the channel and then place a hand on her forehead and ask if she was okay.
As she lay in place, staring at the TV where that stupid new show was playing, Anna stewed a little longer. No, she decided. She didn't want somebody to come in and change the channel, because she didn't want to be here at all. She loved Jody and the girls like family, but she hated anybody to see her under the weather, especially when she couldn't do a damn thing for herself. She felt like a little kid, and it was just so embarrassing.
She wanted to go home, damn the pain of riding in the car for a few more hours. The bunker wasn't so far from Sioux Falls. But they'd stopped because Jody had been only fifteen minutes from the case she'd been hurt on, and fifteen minutes was approved by the ER staff, but three to four hours was not. Anyway, Jody was adamant that they stick around. She probably wouldn't have let them leave even if the doctor hadn't instructed them to wait a week before doing any real traveling.
Fed up with everything, Anna suddenly couldn't bear having to look at that stupid premiere on the TV. She squirmed a little, trying to roll onto her back. It hurt like hell moving anything below her neck, though, so she quickly gave up and growled out her frustration. Things couldn't have been worse. She threw off the blankets that had been layered over her throughout the course of the day as she'd shivered with cold thanks to her fever. There was no way she could sit up to get them back if she grew cold again, but Anna hadn't thought that far ahead. It didn't matter anyway, though, because she was on fire.
In front of her, on the TV screen, a red-haired woman walked down the street looking pensive. Anna glared at the close-up of the character's face. The show had been playing for almost fifteen minutes now, and she was still stuck watching it. The temptation to pick up her phone and text someone an SOS was real. But Anna resisted. The worst part about all of this was having to be helped with every little thing, not to mention the inconvenience that was to everybody else in the house. She craned her neck to see the remote. It was on the armrest of the chair just a couple feet from the end of the couch. But it might just as well have been miles. There was no way Anna could stand up and retrieve it when she couldn't even roll onto her back or raise an arm above chest height.
She was still roasting in her sweatpants and long-sleeved tee, sweating up a storm so that a few damp curls stuck to her forehead and neck and her cheeks were likely dyed a rosy red. She could barely keep her eyes open either, and all of it just annoyed her even more.
Anna wriggled and squirmed, trying to find a better position on the couch-- preferably one where she didn't have to look at the TV screen and the red-headed protagonist displayed there-- but it hurt like hell, and she just wound up gasping through a wave of nearly unbearable pain, the fingers of her right hand clawing at the cushions beneath her. And, of course, Claire chose that very moment to enter the room.
"Are you okay? You look like you're having a seizure."
"Shut up," Anna retorted forcefully. Claire started to walk over to her, and the thought of anybody trying to help her right now made Anna want to scream. But she couldn't do that for a few different reasons, so she resisted and instead just clenched her teeth and snapped, "Don't."
"I was just gonna help you get comfortable," Claire explained with a touch of calm and an equal touch of smart-assery. "You know, since you look anything but."
"Go away."
Claire rolled her eyes, but she seemed to be mostly undeterred by Anna's attitude. "Hurts pretty bad, huh?"
"No shit," Anna hissed.
"Sorry," Claire pacified with another poorly masked eye roll. She reached out to get the blankets from the end of the couch.
Anna glowered at her. "I'm fine," she insisted. "Can you just-" she swallowed as the nausea that had been relatively ignorable for the past hour suddenly reared its head. "Shit," she panted, squeezing her eyes shut and squirming. She wished she could curl up into a ball and shut out everything, but the second she twitched her knees toward her chest, not only did her nausea worsen, but a wave of pain crashed through her, starting in her thigh and moving up her side. It took everything in her not to puke all over herself and Jody's couch, and dear God, she would never live that down. By the time she came out of it and felt settled enough to open her eyes again, she had different company.
"Hey," Dean said gently. His face was close enough to her that Anna took a moment to be able to actually focus on it. "You okay?"
Anna didn't answer, just tipped her head slightly to the side. She could see Sam standing by her feet, one hand resting on her leg. Those stupid blankets were covering her lower half again, which was probably his doing. She swallowed, trying to quell the remnants of her nausea. Her head was swirling now, as if she hadn't had enough problems without the added disorientation, and her fingers and toes were cold and clammy.
"Anna."
She redirected her gaze to Dean and could see him still studying her. "M'fine," she mumbled, surprised by how unclear the words came out. It was weirdly difficult to speak. She blamed it on the fatigue that had plagued her since she was first wounded less than two days ago.
"That sounds fine," Sam deadpanned. He passed something to Dean, and Anna rolled her eyes when she caught sight of it. A fucking thermometer. Like that would fix anything. Or like it was necessary to tell that she was running a fever. She was sweating like crazy, and the blankets were driving her insane, and she couldn't even move her legs well enough to kick them off, nor could she bend forward enough to use her hands to get rid of them. So she was trapped in a cocoon of blankets. Great.
"You have the worst attitude of any patient I've ever seen," Dean joked, and laughed only harder when Anna gave him a withering glare.
Oh, you think you're a fucking comedian, do you, Dean? she thought bitterly. Let's trade places and see you keep laughing. Except no, because Anna would take getting hurt like this over seeing her family hurt like this any day of the week. She endured the swipe of the thermometer across her forehead and tried not to think about what the continued fever could mean. She'd seen big wounds like this one get infected before, but she'd never been the one to actually experience it. She knew it would be bad, though-- not only painful but dangerous. She hoped desperately that she wasn't about to learn what it felt like.
"It's not that bad," Dean promised, seeming to read the dread and misery on her face. But those words coming from his mouth pretty much meant it was that bad. Anna sighed, longing to feel the relief of cool air on her face. A moment of reprieve from the pain still burning up and down the left side of her body would also have been nice. "Come on, Rugrat. Get that look off your face."
For some reason, that only made Anna feel worse. She looked at the line between Dean's eyes and felt guilty again. She was seriously bringing down the mood. "Sorry," she mumbled, and followed it quickly with, "It's hot," so nobody had time to tell her there was nothing to be sorry for. "And the stupid show changed."
Her complaint left Dean smirking as Sam walked behind him to get the remote from the armchair and pass it to Anna before dropping to sit in the chair. "Why didn't you ask someone to change it?" Dean said lightheartedly. Anna shrugged one shoulder, and even that was enough to make her stitches pull just slightly. It hurt in a way that frustrated the hell out of her. Dean put his hand over her shirt where he knew the wound in her side started as if bracing her or perhaps giving her something warm and grounding to focus on. "You know it's gonna be like that for a few days, right?"
Anna nodded once. "I was there when we left the hospital, Dean," she couldn't help but add with a touch of indignant annoyance.
"Well, I beg your pardon," Dean said exaggeratedly. "You were pretty out of it at the time."
With a sigh that seemed to whoosh through her from head to toe, Anna wrinkled her nose in aggravation. "Can you get this stupid blanket off?" she requested.
"I'll do you one better and get you something for that fever. You're not due on painkillers yet, but we can give you some Tylenol. Sammy, can you-"
"I got it," Sam replied before Dean could finish asking the question. He pushed himself up and out of the chair and headed for Jody's kitchen where, presumably, there was Tylenol.
It was great that somebody was going to do something about how excessively freaking warm she was, but still, Anna closed her eyes and resisted the urge to groan at the thought of continuing to spend one more minute on this stupid couch in this stupid house watching the stupid TV play some stupid new show while her stupid body ran a stupid fever because the stupid wound in her stupid side was totally getting a stupid infection. There was no catharsis at the end of her aggravated train of thought.
"I can't," she said breathlessly, squirming just a little and then gasping at the pain it left her in, "do this... anymore."
Dean's hand on her side moved to the side of her face. "Hey, hey. You can too. Look here," he coaxed. Anna pinched her lips together and swallowed hard, nausea building in her stomach again. She didn't open her eyes. "Kiddo, I know this sucks. Trust me, I know. It sucks so hard there aren't words for how much it sucks. But, in a few days, you'll feel exponentially better."
"I can't do a few days," Anna insisted. Her voice came out weaker and more pathetically upset than she'd intended, but all the feeling in it was exactly what Anna had been wanting to let out since she'd woken up in the hospital in so much pain she'd barely been able to breathe.
"Then do a few minutes," Dean told her. He'd matched every ounce of her misery with an answering note of calm and soothing. Somehow, it both made Anna feel better and made her want to scream at him for talking to her like a scared kid... even if she was kind of a scared kid. Well, not a kid kid. "Don't worry about tomorrow. Hell, don't worry about dinnertime. Worry about right now."
"Right now, I feel like somebody's holding a cattle prod in an open wound on the entire left side of my body," Anna snapped right back. She knew she was being obstinate at best and childishly temperamental at worst, but for the love of all things holy, this was a bad day if ever she'd had one.
"That bad, huh?"
She wanted to open her eyes just so she could fix Dean with a withering glare and shout Yes, that bad! But she didn't. For one thing, even if she did manage to open her eyes without the room's dim light making her nauseous again, she would most definitely not then have the energy to shout. For another thing, Dean was being just about the most patient she'd ever seen him, and it wasn't his fault she felt like she did. She knew she didn't have a more considerate answer in her at the moment, though, so she just kept her mouth shut altogether.
"Here we go," Sam's voice surprised Anna into opening her eyes. She hadn't heard him walk in. "You're gonna have to sit up a little to take this."
The thought of moving a millimeter made Anna want to cry. "Guess this is it then," she said dramatically. "The fever's what gets me."
Sam gave her a disapproving look but also snorted at her melodrama.
"We'll do most of the work," Dean promised. "Just focus on not passing out."
Passing out, Anna thought blissfully. That sounds nice.
But she didn't. She endured the wave of hot pain that shot through her wound as the boys carefully lifted her so her upper back was against the armrest. She wasn't sitting up straight, but she would be able to swallow a couple Tylenol... after her injuries stopped screaming for attention, that was.
"Here you go," Sam offered and settled gingerly on the edge of the couch cushion by her legs to hand her the two pills. Anna was sure the movement to the couch would make the pain skyrocket again, but Sam managed to be careful enough that she didn't feel a difference, even when she was waiting for it. He passed her a glass of water as she popped the pills into her mouth, and Anna took a small sip, just enough to get the tablets down easier. She made to hand the cup back to Sam, but he gently pushed it back toward her "You should drink a little more. You're probably getting dehydrated with the fever and everything."
"M'unna throw up if I drink more," Anna warned and tried again to give the glass back.
"You won't throw up," Dean said, and moved from beside the armrest were her back was resting to crouch next to the couch again. "It's the fever that's makin' you feel sick, and a little more water isn't gonna make or break you. Drink some more," he instructed.
Anna listened, because she always listened when he pulled out that voice. It was best not to challenge that voice. It was best not to challenge Dean, period, but especially when he was doling out orders. Obediently, she sipped on the water until it was half gone. He'd been right. Her nausea didn't get any worse, but it didn't get better either.
"You look exhausted," Sam told her honestly as he accepted the glass back and used one hand to push sweaty hair off her face and tuck it behind her ear.
"Course," Anna quipped tiredly, figuring she owed them something a little more good-natured after all the time they'd spent since the hospital putting up with her shit. "I sat up."
Sam snorted and set the glass down on the coffee table. "Should we move her upstairs?" he asked Dean, who shrugged. "You wanna move, Ladybug?"
"You wanna knock me out first?" Anna retorted.
"You gotta at least lay back down."
"Bet," was all Anna said before she drifted to sleep in the middle of Sam's next sentence.
()()()
When she woke, she had been moved upstairs, and the room was dark. It was rather inconvenient that she would have slept away the rest of the afternoon-- though she did vaguely remember waking up long enough to swallow a painkiller earlier-- and woken up now that everybody else was probably sleeping. But she tossed her head to the side on her pillow and saw Sam sitting up on the second bed in Jody's guest room, his laptop screen illuminating his face in a blue glow as his fingers clickety-clacked along the keyboard.
"Time s'it?" she asked, then realized how dry her mouth was. She felt cooler than she had earlier which was a huge relief, and while her wound still hurt like hell, it was a little duller. Odds were she just needed to finish waking up and her body would be like Oh, she's awake! Crank the pain up to eleven! Where'd that fever go? Bring it back!
Sam's head flicked in her direction, and her instantly set his laptop aside as he met her eyes. "Hey, you're awake," he exclaimed, his voice soft. Anna didn't know if that meant most of the house was asleep and it was late, if he was only speaking softly for her sake, or if he was speaking that way simply because it was quiet all around them and it just felt like the right way to talk. Sam swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached over with one arm to switch on the lamp between their beds. Anna shied away from the light, blinking several times as her eyes adjusted to the light.
"Sorry, Ladybug," Sam apologized on a chuckle. "I know it's kinda bright, but I need to change your bandage, and it's hard to do that in the dark."
Anna groaned at the thought of that process taking place. It was never pleasant, mostly because of how long her wound was, stretching from the bottom of her ribcage to her hip and then starting again in her thigh and ending just above her left knee. It required so much moving, not to mention the embarrassment of being so freaking helpless that she had to have somebody else help her pull her t-shirt up or her sweatpants to her knees. It wasn't like anybody was really seeing anything-- she walked around without pants on at the bunker all the time, and whenever she worked out in the bunker's gym, she wore a sports bra and high-waisted leggings-- but it still made Anna feel undignified.
"Time s'it?" she asked again, because Sam had grazed right over her question. "'N s'there water?"
"It's only nine," Sam told her and reached down to a duffel on the floor. He came back up with a bottle of water and eased himself down onto the edge of the bed. He uncapped the water bottle and started to hold it out to her. "Hang on," he said in realization and set the water aside. Anna's eyes followed it longingly to the bedside table, but the light of the lamp had her flinching and looking back up at Sam with a question in her gaze. "You can't drink lying down," he explained and smiled sympathetically at her. "You'll drown."
Anna tossed her head back against the pillow with a second groan. Just when her wound was giving her a slight reprieve, letting the pain flow through her body in gentler waves. She knew there was no way around it, but she wanted Sam to know that she wasn't happy about it.
"Just close your eyes, and take a deep breath. In and out. When you open your eyes, you'll be sitting up," he promised her. He was meeting her eyes with genuine empathy-- he'd been in her place before, as had Dean, and Anna knew that, but it was little comfort to her most of the time. It made her feel a tiny puddle of guilt forming in her stomach for how difficult she kept being.
She nodded in agreement with his plan and closed her eyes, feeling him place his hands under her armpits to lift her. It was going to hurt, but if she could just keep her focus firmly on her breathing, maybe she wouldn't feel it nearly so bad.
"Here we go," Sam warned. "In and out."
Anna started to breathe in through her nose, counting to ten as she felt herself start to move. As she reached ten, she let the breath start to flow out her mouth, focusing again on counting to ten. This time, when she reached it, she opened her eyes. Sam was smiling down at her.
"You did great," he encouraged. It made Anna feel a little like a toddler but also a little like she was capable of making it through these few bad days Dean had told her about, so she didn't chew him out for the patronizing praise.
She blinked once, eyelids feeling heavy again. She'd just woken up, had done almost no work, and her wound hadn't even come to life and tried to swallow her in a tide of pain, so Anna didn't understand why she felt so tired already. But she'd learned from an early age that when your body is hurt, you're supposed to listen to it, trust it to know what it needs. The lesson sounded childish to her teenage brain now when she thought of it the way she'd first been given it as a little girl, but the point stood, frustrating as it was.
She didn't want to sleep, and she didn't want to lounge all day, but she also didn't want to move to have her bandage change or eat anything or have her temperature taken... she was stubborn and hurting and seventeen, and that was the long and the short of it. But she had to concede to all the mother-henning as well as her body's need for rest.
She couldn't at the moment, though, because she'd just finished sleeping for five hours, and once her wound had been cleaned and her bandages changed, Sam would probably want to feed her and pull out a thermometer, and Dean would probably come in when he found out she was awake, and maybe Jody too.
"Here you go. I'm gonna take care of your side first. Make sure you drink at least half of that," Sam instructed as Anna accepted the water bottle from him. She didn't think there was any reason for him to tell her that; she was so thirsty, she could easily have downed the entire bottle.
Sam gently lifted her shirt, and Anna held it in place with her free arm while taking a long drink from the water bottle. She had to come up for air after chugging a third of the bottle in one go.
"Take it easy," Sam chided, looking up at her with an amused snort, his hand hovering over the edge of her bandage. "You haven't eaten since this morning. You don't wanna make yourself sick."
No, she didn't. But the water felt so nice. Anna forced herself not to take another sip while she watched Sam peel back the bandage, revealing the long, red wound in her side. She turned her head away, just the sight of it making it hurt more than it had. She took a few more sips of water, trying to go slowly. She felt like her body had dried out over the course of the day, and the water was not only helping her feel a little less like a human desert, but it was waking her up.
"Stitches are holding," Sam offered, meeting her eyes with a kind smile. He reached behind him to the wooden chair and desk, and when his hand came back around to his front, he was holding her phone. "Here. Distract yourself while I clean it," he suggested.
Anna smiled lazily at the sight of her phone. She had to have a hundred notifications waiting for her. Sure enough, Kate had texted her thirty-four times, Ethan twelve times, and she had almost a hundred other notifications from Snapchat alone. She hurriedly opened her conversation with Kate and started reading the messages that had apparently been coming in for the last few days. She'd barely touched her phone in that amount of time, so she wasn't surprised, but she did feel kinda bad when Kate's texts went from the usual casual stuff to more frantic, worried queries as to why Anna wasn't responding. A final message, though, said she'd texted both Sam and Dean and gotten confirmation that Anna was okay. But Kate still wanted to know what had happened.
Hey. Sorry, Anna typed. I'm laid up. But I'm gonna have an epic scar. So not a total loss. She erased her last two sentences. Kate wouldn't respond well to her making light of an injury that could have killed her-- not that Anna had any intention of following up with Hey, so I almost died, but still. Kate could read between the lines well enough.
Hey, she tried again, and she hit send before drafting the rest of her message. Sorry it's been so long, she added and, again, hit send. This was the hard part. She didn't know how much Kate knew, how bad she thought Anna's injury had been. Should she say she'd been resting? Recovering?
"What'd you tell Kate?" she asked Sam and then hissed in pain as she finally took notice of the antiseptic he was dabbing along her stitched-up wound.
"Sorry, kiddo," he offered sympathetically. "Uh, I think Dean talked to her. I don't know exactly what he said." He reached into the First Aid Kit on the wooden chair he'd pulled her phone from and unraveled a length of bandage, laying it carefully along her wound before taping it into place.
In the meantime, Anna stared at her text conversation with Kate and tried to think of something to say. I haven't been able to get to my phone for a little while, she finally typed and sent.
She set her phone aside and looked down just as Sam finished taping down the bandage. "Alright," Sam said and stood up. "I'll look at your leg in a minute, but you need to eat something, and I told Dean I'd tell him when you were awake."
"Of course." Anna rolled her eyes. The hovering was a bit much, but food sounded good.
"Be right back."
Anna looked back at her phone. Kate was typing, then stopping, then typing, then stopping.
"Hey." Anna looked up in surprise at the cheery voice coming from the doorway. She hit the sleep button on her phone and set it aside when she saw Jody's face. She realized she'd barely seen her since getting here even though they were staying in Jody's house. "You look better," Jody told her with a wide smile and came over to her bedside.
"Oh," Anna said self-consciously and looked down at herself as if she would be able to see some sort of difference. "Uh, thanks. Not just for..." she trailed off, suddenly feeling awkward as her words failed her. She felt... bad, simply put. As much as she knew Jody cared for them, she also knew that Jody was a full-time sheriff and had two girls of her own living under her roof to look out for-- not that Claire or Alex were kids anymore, but they did still require some guardianship, and Jody tried to provide that for them as best she could. Anna knew Jody had a lot on her plate, and she hoped she hadn't agreed to take them in out of a sense of obligation or of not being able to say no when they were carrying a kid with ripped stitches and a hospital bracelet between the two of them.
"It's not a problem," Jody told her, and she seemed honest, but Anna didn't know for sure. She looked down at the blankets covering her lower half and tried to think of a more adequate way to say what she wanted to say. "Hey," Jody called, her voice going softer. "My door is always open for you three," she said earnestly. Anna should have known the look on her face would be enough for Jody to puzzle out her thoughts. The sheriff was good at reading people and seeing what they needed or how they felt in a given moment. "I don't regret for a second letting you rest up here. You do know that if they tried to take you outta here a minute before I thought you were ready, I'd lock the doors and windows, right?" She offered a mischievous smile, and Anna returned it with a sincere, playful one.
"Thanks, Jody."
"You're welcome." Jody patted her on the knee over the blankets. "Believe it or not, your brother helped make dinner. Chicken and mashed potatoes."
"Ooh," Anna breathed, delighted at the thought of a warm, home-cooked meal. "That sounds dope right now, Jody. Thank you."
"Yeah yeah," Jody waved off her gratitude. "So I know you're probably exhausted," she said. "But it's been a long time. You gotta tell me, how's life? You been on any dates? Got any new friends? A favorite class? I feel like I have no idea what's going on in your life anymore."
Anna shrugged her right shoulder, because shrugging her left would have hurt like hell with that side of her body in the condition it was. "I don't really do much," she said. "Outside of hunting and school. I mean, I went on a couple dates, but... I don't know. It's not for me, I guess. I never really enjoy it." She looked up to see how Jody was reacting, but she seemed unperturbed.
"It's not for everyone," she said kindly. "And trust me, I've had some bad dates. I know they're not always all they're cracked up to be."
Anna nodded once, feeling self conscious again, but now for a totally different reason. She didn't want to elaborate on what she'd said before, but she got the feeling Jody hadn't caught what she was trying to say. She'd been on a couple dates, and she'd felt excited at first, but it had felt almost like just hanging out with a friend except... the stakes were higher? And at the end of the night, she'd felt nothing, none of the usual teenage lay me crap. She supposed the kiss goodnight had been okay, although Dean had walked out and threatened to tear Ian's body into pieces, and that had put a bit of a damper on the mood. There hadn't really been a mood, though. Not for Anna. She'd wondered if maybe she didn't like guys. But she'd enjoyed her date with Ian. And later, when she'd gone on a date with a girl from school, Jayla, she'd felt similarly pleased with her experience except that she still hadn't feel like a teenager-- she still didn't feel like she wanted to pull all her clothes off while Jayla did the same. She just didn't want that. It had been a source of some concern for her in the last few months, but she hadn't told anyone, and Jody wasn't going to be the first person to know about it.
Instead of going into it, Anna switched the subject. "Yeah. I mostly have the same friends too," she said. "Kate and Ethan. And Kate's ex-girlfriend Arya. She acted like a prick for a while after they broke up, but she came around, and she's super nice now. I think she was just upset and didn't know how to deal with it for a while. Everybody gets like that sometimes. But we all hang out. Except you can't leave her and Kate in the same room together by themselves. It'll be kinda tense when you get back." Realizing she'd been rambling and maybe did have a life to tell Jody about, Anna wrinkled her nose. "Sorry. You probably don't care for a crash course in how to hang out with my three friends," she laughed.
"No, no, this is fascinating," Jody encouraged. She looked genuinely amused, her smile reaching her eyes. "I don't think I've ever heard of two teenagers breaking up and staying friends before."
Anna bobbed her eyebrows in a way that said there was some shit Jody didn't know about and said, "It was not instant or easy, I'll tell you." She thought about those first weeks after Kate and Arya's breakup and started to laugh, then realized by the look on Jody's face that she needed to either share with the class or be seen as crazy. "I was just thinkin'," she said. "Arya's like, crazy rich, right? I'm talkin' family vacations to the Alps in the middle of the semester rich." Jody raised both eyebrows in surprise. "After they broke up, she kept, like, flaunting it, because she wanted to make Kate feel bad." Anna laughed to herself again, then grabbed her side with one arm when the laughter made her wound protest. She didn't let it stop her story, though. "Thing is, Arya doesn't realize, but she flaunts it all the time without trying. So she walked around for two weeks telling Kate and me about her Dad's private jet and the expansive pool in the ground floor of her house, and we were so used to it. Like, basically nothing changed." Anna didn't know if Jody started laughing because she found that information funny, or because Anna was laughing so hard and it was contagious.
They quit soon, though, because Anna found herself breathing through a wave of pain so intense she nearly whited out when she accidentally hunched over while laughing. And, of course, both her brothers chose that moment to walk in. Anna came to with Jody's hand on her arm and the boys on her other side, Dean's hand on her head, gently holding it against the pillow at the headboard, and Sam's hand braced carefully against the wound in her side, the one he'd only just rebandaged and would probably now have to check to see if the stitches had broken. Oh god, she hoped the stitches weren't broken.
"Hey," Dean smiled down at her, but there were lines around his eyes that said he wasn't happy. "Jody says she lost you there for a sec. You good now?"
Anna took another moment to just breathe before answering. When she felt like she would be able to speak without sounding like a fish out of water, she said, "Can't even laugh."
"Just don't make laughing into an extreme sport and you'd be fine," Dean told her, removing his hand from her head and so she could lift it again. "It's all that flailin' you do every time you laugh."
"I don't flail," Anna argued, still a little breathless.
"All I'm sayin' is, laughing shouldn't be a whole-body activity. It's not a cardio workout."
Anna bit back a smile, but it was closely followed by a flinch as Sam moved his hand to lift her shirt and check for blood on her bandage. "Don't tease her when she's down and can't defend herself," Jody chided and stood up.
Anna wrinkled her nose at that. She could totally defend herself. She just needed her side to chill out and her lungs to stop pretending they didn't work and her head to stop swirling and then she would be able to come up with a great comeback.
"You didn't rip any stitches," Sam announced with an optimistic smile. "So, looks like something's goin' your way."
Anna shot him a bitchface. She had the feeling he'd just jinxed her. If her wound got infected or she ripped so much as a single stitch sometime in the next few days, she would blame it on Sam for saying something had gone her way.
Sam didn't even catch the glare she'd given him, though. He'd turned around and was picking up a bowl of food from the desk. Jody moved out of the way and let him hand Anna the food. The bowl was warm but not too hot, and the food inside smelled so invitingly delicious. "Room service," she grinned tiredly. "Maybe something is going my way."
Sam chortled. "Maybe." He and Jody left as Jody mumbled something about not wanting to crowd her.
"'Bout time you had a full meal anyway," Dean acknowledged. "Let me take a look at that leg." He pulled over the wooden chair from the desk and sat down in it. Anna used her warm meal as a convenient distraction so she didn't have to think about the fact that she could barely freaking move while Dean examined the gash in her leg, then disinfected it-- OW-- and rebandaged it. He helped her fix her clothes and the blankets, and he took her bowl from her and set it on the desk. "Here," he said and passed her the bottle of water she'd drank half of earlier.
Anna drained most of what was left before suddenly remembering what she'd wanted to ask her brother. "What'd you tell Kate?" she asked. "About what happened."
Dean frowned for a moment as if he couldn't remember at first. "I told her you were hurt but you'd be fine," he said. "That was... yesterday, I think." He sounded like he really wasn't sure. "Last few days have blurred together a little," he admitted when Anna gave him a puzzled look.
Anna nodded. That made sense. And his answer as to what he'd told Kate was about what she should've expected him to have said. She realized at the same time that Kate had probably answered her sometime in the last half hour or so while she'd been talking to Jody, eating dinner, and being totally mothered. She picked up her phone and blinked at the screen with droopy eyes for a second before she managed to remember her passcode. She typed it in more slowly than usual, and just as her phone's home screen loaded, Dean pulled it out of her hands.
"It's after ten, and you're hurt," he said when Anna made an indignant sound and looked up at him.
"I have to answer Kate!" Anna argued, but her voice came out sounding weak, because she was, in fact, exhausted. The last hour or so since she'd woken up had been the most activity for her since she first got hurt. Most of the rest of the little time she'd spent awake in the past few days had been spent lazily watching TV and submitting to the orders from her brothers to let them check her wound or change her bandages, to take her pain medication, and to drink this or eat that. She was feeling how much energy the last hour had drained from her. But, being stubborn as she was, Anna wasn't about to admit to that.
"You can answer her in the morning. For now, you're gettin' some more sleep."
Anna sighed, just one glance at Dean's crossed arms and raised eyebrow telling her she wouldn't win this argument. "Okay, well, I do have to do something before I go back to sleep," she informed her brother.
"And that would be?" Dean asked, his expression saying he wasn't impressed and thought she was still stalling.
Anna gave him a candid look. "I gotta pee, man."
Dean snorted and dropped his arms to his sides. When he moved to pick her up so he could cart her to the bathroom, he set her phone on the mattress, and Anna took the opportunity to slide it into the pocket of her sweatpants when he wasn't looking. She was sure her mission had been a success, but when Dean set her down beside the toilet in the bathroom, he held out his hand, palm up.
"Let me hold the phone for you," he said. "You won't need it."
Anna's face fell, but she had to concede that she'd been caught and Dean was the victor of this battle. She grimaced as she reached down into her pocket. Just that much movement hurt like hell. Much as she desired the privacy, she was secretly dreading the moment Dean left her to it, because he was currently holding her up, and Anna wasn't excited to test her weight on her bad leg. As it was, just being upright made her wound burn and ache.
She slapped her phone into Dean's hand and tried her best to ignore the smug look he was giving her. He dropped it into his own pocket, though, and then helped her get her left hand on the counter beside the toilet. "You good?" he asked.
Only when she nodded did Dean let go, and then he waited a minute to make sure she wasn't in too much pain or in danger of falling before he left. Anna had certainly felt the change when he let go, but while her body felt heavy and her whole left side was unhappy with this arrangement, she didn't feel like she was going to fall or pass out or anything. When the door clicked shut, she very carefully took care of business. Sitting down was excruciatingly painful, but she kinda had no choice, so she fought through the pain to get it done. It was honestly so unfair that she couldn't even use the freaking bathroom without having to put up with that kind of pain, but Anna kept reminding herself that in a few days, she wouldn't feel this way anymore.
She hurried through the process, because she was beginning to feel more exhausted, her body heavier, and she was getting lightheaded from all the exertion. If she dawdled too long while she was sitting down and her stitches tugging or standing up and having to hold up her own weight, she would for sure pass out. If she passed out, she would fall, and that would not be pleasant in the slightest.
"Dean," she called when she had herself situated and had washed her hands. She did appreciate the nice lavender scent what with her sweaty self smelling mostly like BO and all. She would have to convince Sam-- because he was more of a softie than Dean-- to let her try and take a shower tomorrow. It would hurt, but if she waited until just after her pain medication kicked in and snuck a cup of coffee via Claire first, she should be able to manage well enough to wash up and smell a little less like death.
For the time being, Anna clenched her eyes shut as vertigo assaulted her when Dean scooped her off her feet. She welcomed the soft bed beneath her when she was laid back down in the guest room.
"Night, Munchkin," Dean told her and gave her a kiss on the forehead.
The incident with her phone forgotten, Anna patted him twice on the face with her right hand, feeling affectionate in her sleepiness. "Night," she replied softly.
la fin