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The ragged cough from the other room has Bobby on his feet and through the door faster than most would think possible at his age. Sam has been sleeping restlessly for almost an hour—the longest stretch since he’s been here—but it sounds like he’s awake and in pain again, if the wet hacking is anything to go by.
In the living room, Sam is struggling to prop himself against the arm of the couch. His breathing is laboured, rattling in his chest like he’s choking on fluid. He’s pale and shaking with pain and exhaustion. A thin trail of blood runs from his hairline into his eyes.
Bobby says, “Take it easy, Sam,” grips his arm and helps him up so he can breathe better. His hand is slick with blood when he pulls away. A quick glance reveals that all Sam’s bandages are soaked through, smearing red on his skin and staining the blankets and couch cushions.
“Sorry.” Sam gets the word out between strained breaths. He struggles to wipe the blood from his eyes, but his hands are bleeding too.
“Don’t you dare apologize, boy.” Bobby reaches for the first aid kit, pulls a chair up to the couch. Quietly, he takes stock of his rapidly dwindling supply of clean towels, gauze and alcohol wipes. “Not to me.”
Sam ducks his head, chastened, and Bobby sets to work cleaning and re-bandaging his wounds for the dozenth time, beginning with the shallow puncture marks at his forehead. “Hear anything from Dean?”
Bobby shakes his head, carefully wiping the blood from Sam’s face. “Not since this morning, before you passed out.”
He doesn’t miss the slump of exhausted defeat in Sam’s shoulders, the quiet nod of acceptance. The room falls silent except for Sam’s wheezing, thick with the coppery tang of blood. Bobby wonders if he’s aspirating it now, if the bleeding is internal too.
It’s nearing three days since Dean made his way up Bobby’s front steps in the middle of the night. He was half-carrying Sam, who moaned and trailed blood behind them. Makeshift bandages did little to stem the blood flowing from Sam’s wrists and feet, dripping from the crown of his head and sticking his hair to his forehead in wet clumps. Seeping slow through the back of his shirt in jagged criss-cross patterns.
It won’t stop, Dean said, more shaken than Bobby had ever seen him. I can’t stop it.
A curse, he said—one that would lift once he found the witch who cast it and brought back the cure. Dean already knew where she’d be, but Sam couldn’t travel and he needed Bobby to take care of him until he got back. Before he left, Dean muttered something into Sam’s blood-slick hair. Bobby couldn’t make out the words, but they made Sam close his eyes and nod tiredly.
Then he looked Bobby hard in the eyes, said Keep him alive. I’ll be back.
Bobby is starting to doubt whether Sam will make it that long. The bleeding is near-constant, and all the pressure and hemostatic powder in the world can’t stop it for long. Over the last day, Sam has gone grey and glassy-eyed. Bobby has trouble getting a response now when he speaks to him, like Sam is already somewhere else. Faraway and fading.
Sam flinches when Bobby brings an alcohol wipe to the wound in his left foot, hisses low through his teeth.
“Sorry.”
“S’okay,” Sam says. His teeth are clattering, probably a combination of shock and cold. Bobby will have to take extra care to get Sam warm when he’s done cleaning him up. “Sh-should just leave me in the bathtub. Easier for you. B-better.”
Bobby wraps the foot securely. “Why in the hell would you say that?”
When he speaks, Sam is barely coherent. “Have to die anyway. I’m. N-not right. Dad told Dean. Easier to do it now.”
Bobby sits up straight, sets the gauze aside and stares at Sam in disbelief. Sam is utterly expressionless. His eyes are dull. Blood is already creeping through the fresh bandages around his head, staining him a crown of red. He has already lost too much. Soon there will be nothing for Bobby to do but burn him.
“Listen. I don’t know where you’ve been hearing that, but I never heard a bigger load of horseshit in my whole life. Sam.” He reaches for Sam’s chin to make him meet his gaze, has to resist shaking his shoulders to try and get him to pay attention. “Look at me. Maybe you don’t know this, because we’re not the type to say it, but Dean and me—we need you. You’re the damn glue that keeps us together. And you’re a good kid—a better man than either of us. Shit, when we’re together we can hardly shut up about howproud of you we are. Are you hearin’ any of this?”
Sam blinks. They stare at each other silently for a long moment. Then Sam reaches out with one bloodstained hand, thick with gauze, and touches Bobby’s cheek. His eyes are distant. He says, “It’s okay. They already told me. I already know.”
Bobby realizes his cheeks are wet. He says, helplessly, “Sam.”
There are a few moments of silence between them. Then Sam jerks backward violently, arching and seizing against the couch. His eyes have gone wide and round and his face is sagging like a stroke victim’s. His head rolls senselessly, back and forth. He opens his mouth and a long, bubbling moan escapes. Pink foam froths at his lips.
Sam scrambles desperately at Bobby’s arm, incoherent. Bobby holds on, unsure of what else to do. His hand is guided, shaking, to Sam’s side. That’s when he sees it, high on Sam’s chest—a gaping puncture wound, pouring blood and sickly sweet-smelling water, lavender and frankincense and gory red roses.