This is set at the end of Season 1, after "Provenance" but before "Dead Man's Blood". Because I heart S1, but not the Colt.

Wheelchair Detective
Part One:

"I want to show you."

Those words were not normal for the old man. He was the quiet sort, the type to follow the staff around and try to help out, like a little kid. Normally, he wore a pleasant expression, a good-natured smile, and he would greet the staff and other patients with a simple, "Hey."

He didn't even look like the same man, the aide thought to herself, all worried and determined at once. It was puzzling enough on its own, but she had long since learned to investigate when things didn't seem quite right.

"Show me what?" she asked, and reached out to take his hand.

He took it with great force, pulling her down the hallway, past his room. That, too, was unlike him. While she knew that he could be combative at times, like all of the patients on her hall, she rarely saw him like that. For him to be using any kind of force at all...

"Over here," he said, and pointed to one of the rooms. "There they are. Right there." He pulled on her hand again, pulling her toward the doorway.

"What is it?" the aide asked, attempting to disengage her hand from his grip.

He dragged her closer, then reached through the doorway to flip on the bright overhead lights. As soon as the room was lit up, he jerked away, obviously not keen on going in there. In the room were two beds, both occupied with sleeping bodies. The aide knew them both, and knew that the light would rouse and disturb them.

"They're sleeping," she reassured the old man, and turned the light off. "Don't you want to sleep?"

"Not sleeping!"

She was taken aback by his volume. Something had riled the old man up, and she wasn't sure what it was. "Tell me, then."

"Not sleeping," he repeated. "They've got a week. All of those men are dead. They've only got a week."

The aide put her arm across his shoulders, pulling him close. "It's okay. We'll keep an eye on them. They'll be fine."

He nodded, his eyes fixed on the darkened room. "Oh, okay. That's good."

But he didn't move.

The aide turned away from the room, hoping that they hadn't woken up the two men sleeping in it. "Are you going back to bed?" she asked, and tugged him back down the hall.

The old man looked a little puzzled. "Hey?"

"Come on, it's the middle of the night. Let's go."

By the time she had led him to his room again, he was back to his normal self. Well, as normal as the disease would allow him to be. He allowed himself to be taken to the toilet, took off his slippers when instructed, and was tucked into bed in only a few moments. All was well, and all was calm.

But the aide couldn't forget what he'd said.

***

"I told you," Sam said quietly, his tone sounding very reasonable, "there was no way to know the entire graveyard was haunted. So you can stop sulking."

"I'm not sulking. I'm waiting for my pain pills."

"You just had Vicodin at the hospital."

Dean glared at Sam. There was no reason why a younger brother should take that kind of tone with his awesome older brother. The awesome older brother who had, as a matter of fact, saved him from suffering, well, Dean's fate exactly.

"What?" Sam stared at Dean for a long moment, then rolled his eyes. "Look, it's two weeks. That's it."

Two weeks. On a shitty mattress that felt like it had a hole under his ass, sharing a room with a old man who smelled of boiled cabbage and urine, with random strangers who wandered in and demanded to see his equipment when they weren't exactly hot.

"I'm in a nursing home," Dean pointed out. "It's like two weeks in Hell." He sat back in his bed, shifting around in that stupid hole, trying to find a position that wouldn't hurt. "And I think there's something wrong with this mattress."

"You're fussing."

Dean shot another glare at his brother. "No, I'm in pain, and you're adding to it."

Sam shook his head. There was a chair next to Dean's bed, and he sat down in it. Dean was relieved, for two reasons. One, it meant that Sammy had relaxed enough to stop hovering over him, and two, it meant that Dean wasn't getting neck-strain from staring up at the giant mutant he had for a little brother.

"Fine," Sam muttered, finally losing that worried look he had on his face, the one he'd worn since Dean had woken up the previous day. He shot a look over at the cabbage man, and continued in a low tone, "Next time, you get to read the Latin, and I'll do the stupid macho stuff."

"Nah, your Latin's better than mine."

"Mr. Applebaum? Am I interrupting something?"

Dean turned to see a nurse enter the room, calling his thanks-to-Sam alias. Though he had to wonder about the name. When did Sammy come up with it, two seconds after he'd been asked for a name?

The nurse was of average height, was perhaps a little overweight, and had straight dark hair pulled back into a high ponytail. She also had a round, open face and bright eyes. He flashed her his best smile. "Nah, come on in. It's Dean, by the way. And you look a whole lot better than that admissions nurse." Who was a hag and a crone and was also, incidentally, a total bitch.

"Thank you," she said, with a smile and a hint of a drawl. "My name is Debbie, and I'm going to be your nurse today. Now, I heard you got in a wreck."

"More like the wreck ran into me," Dean replied. He glanced over at Sam, who was watching her, eyes wary. "You'll have to ask him what happened. Last thing I can remember was headlights." Which was true. It was also true that there had been a ghost driving the car, and that it had been aiming for Sam.

Nurse Debbie looked over at Sam, a question on her face, and Sam answered her. "The guy slammed into him and kept going. It all happened so fast, I couldn't get his plates. I'd like to press charges, but the police seemed less than positive about it."

"Well, at least you have insurance," she said.

That was a new piece of information for Dean. He looked over at Sam, raised an eyebrow, but Sam kept his attention on the nurse. "Yeah, isn't that lucky. A few months ago, we didn't."

"You guys got good timing."

"Look," Sam interrupted, "I'm sorry to get into business, but when is his physical therapy going to start? We have two weeks, and I'd like to have him walking by then."

She shrugged. "P.T.'s got to evaluate you first. Once they do that, you'll get a wheelchair and a therapy schedule."

"We have to wait for a wheelchair?"

Dean rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Sammy, chill out. I just got here."

"Dean..."

"Stop hovering, man!" he snapped. "Can't you find a library or something to occupy your time?"

And there, that did it. Sam got to his feet again and started looming. No one loomed better than Sam, and not just because of the whole giant mutant genes. He even had on the frowny face, the one that had made Dean laugh when they were little. It wasn't quite so cute now that he was grown up, and especially not while he was being an emo bitch.

Nurse Debbie cleared her throat and moved for the door. "You in any pain?" she asked of Dean. "I think I'll go and see what kind of pain meds you can have."

Annoyed, Dean sighed a deep sigh, the kind that bordered on teenaged girl. "Look, now. You scared the nice nurse away."

"Quit your bitching," Sam returned. "She's bringing your happy pills."

Dean lay back against his pillows and closed his eyes for a bit. Another argument. Ever since he had woken up, all Sam wanted to do was hover and yell at him. He wasn't sure why his brother was so pissed off anyway. It was a glancing blow, really, and the car could have killed Sam. A fractured pelvis was nothing compared to, you know, that whole death thing.

Sure, surgery sucked. A lot. And he was bruised to all hell. But that was what the happy pills were for, right?

"I'm fine," he said, lifting his head to look up at his brother. "Really."

Sam rocked on his feet, all full of tension and concern and the sort of thing that pissed him the hell off. He wasn't an invalid. It wasn't even like the rawhead incident. Bones fucking healed.

"I'm fine."

At that, Sam seemed to finally have enough. "All right. You're fine. Whatever." He huffed once, then walked out the door. Dean could picture him walking, shoulders hunched, mouth pinched, all the way to the entrance.

Dean lay back again. The pillows were crap, too, he decided. The mattress and the pillows and everything was all a bunch of crap. Especially the roommate.

God, he hurt.

Sammy.

He was sure that he had been pissy enough to run Sam off for at least a few hours. Long enough to think. More importantly, long enough for Sam to cool off.

Sam was strung tight, and there sure as hell had better be a reason beyond some brotherly concern for that. Dean noticed that the stupid graveyard was a little bit of a touchy subject. But Dean was going to be fine, so it didn't matter. Sammy was just sensitive. He'd always been a little too sensitive, but that's why Dean was the older brother. The boy needed time to himself, but would never get it unless his hand was forced.

There was a light tapping noise from the direction of the door, and Nurse Debbie stood in the doorway, a little plastic cup in her hands. Her eyes wandered to the chair, to the lack of Sam, and she raised her eyebrows. "Your friend left."

Dean shook his head. "He's been with me since the accident. I don't know if he slept or not." It bothered him that he couldn't tell, that Sam was keeping something like that from him. He pushed the thought away, grinned at her instead. "Looks like you got some of the good stuff."

"Oxycontin, five milligrams," she responded. "I brought it a little early. P.T.'s going to be down in a few. I thought you might like it before they start roughing you up."

Awesome. While he didn't think it would be all sunshine and daisies getting evaluated, at least he would get the wheelchair. At least then he could use the toilet unassisted. Peeing in a little plastic bottle was not high on his list of fun activities, though it was direct improvement from the catheter. Dean took the offered pill and tossed it back with some lukewarm water. "Thanks, I'm looking forward to it."

His bed was by the door, the other side of the room partially blocked by light orange curtains. The cabbage man had pulled it, right after Sam and Dean and the EMTs had arrived. Dean figured the guy liked his privacy, too. Just beyond the edge of the material, he could catch a glimpse of sunlight and greenery. Only a glimpse. Other than that, he was cut off from the outside, his world narrowed down to a six-by-eight-foot rectangle.

Shit, it was going to be rough. His best bet would be to blast through the therapy as fast as he could, hope that he got better just as fast, and then leave AMA in about a week.

Of course, Sam might have other ideas, but Dean was older and therefore right.

Nurse Debbie moved to the other side of the room, over to the cabbage man, and pulled the curtain the last little bit to fully block the window. Her voice carried, though, and so Dean got to eavesdrop on a conversation involving more bodily fluids than he cared to think about.

He was really looking forward to that wheelchair.

***

His nurse's aide was a black man named Alexander, and he was almost as tall as Sam and twice as wide. He was the one who brought Dean back from the therapy gym, and he was the one who really tried to get Dean to talk.

"I think you're the youngest guy we got in here," he rumbled from behind Dean's shoulder. Dean had to really struggle not to turn in his chair and find something to assault the guy with, because having anyone other than Sam behind him like that drew his hackles up.

"Yeah, man," Dean answered. "I think I am." Dean tried not to tell the guy that it was his pelvis and not his arms that were broken, that he could find and wheel his own way back to his room, but the truth of the matter was that he was tired. The Oxycontin hadn't killed all of his pain, and the strengthening exercises left him with an ache he couldn't ignore.

"Your buddy's back," Alexander continued. "He showed up not that long ago, demanded to know where you were and all."

Dean could picture him then, drawn up to his full enormous height, abusing the staff while simultaneously looking lost and alone. "He didn't threaten you guys, did he?"

"Naw," Alexander replied. "He calmed down when we told him you were in therapy. Besides, I could take his skinny ass down."

Dean laughed, and was debating whether or not he should tell the guy he'd bet on Sammy, any day of the week, when he got back to the room. Sam was looming again, but he looked down at the floor like a guilty puppy when he saw Dean.

"You need anything else?" Alexander asked.

"No, man. I'm good," Dean said.

The guy looked back and forth between the two of them, just long enough for Dean to figure out what he was thinking, and then added, "Dinner will be by in about an hour." Then he was gone.

The cabbage man was gone, too, and the curtain was pulled back all the way. It was about as private as it was going to be.

"Insurance fraud," Dean murmured. "Didn't know you had it in you."

Sam dragged his gaze up from the floor. "Yeah, well. I didn't have much of a choice. You were out cold. Had to improvise."

"You couldn't swing for a private room?"

"That would have been a little obvious. We needed to be under the radar long enough for you to heal."

Dean nodded his approval, then jerked his head to the door. "You used different last names for us, didn't you? I think they think we're a couple."

The corners of Sam's mouth twitched. It was almost a smile. "It's not the first time."

"You going to talk to me?" Dean asked, getting to the meat of the topic. "Tell me why you have this bug up your ass?" He was too tired to deal with the bullshit they were throwing back and forth. It wasn't what Sam wanted to talk to him about. There was guilt set in his shoulders, that was clear, and Dean hoped to hell it was guilt about something other than his hospitalization. That was Dean's own fault, not Sammy's.

Sam's eyes fell on the door. "Yeah. It's that stupid graveyard, Dean."

The job wasn't finished, he could see it in his eyes. And somehow, that was better, easier than anything else. Still a shitty situation by any means, but manageable. "I thought you said the incantation would work."

"I thought it would." He sighed, ran a giant hand through his hair. "It seems to have helped, though. I mean, no one else has been killed. Hopefully, it'll stay like that long enough for me to dig the entire place up."

Ouch. Salt and burn an entire graveyard? Without help? Without backup? Dean felt his mouth tighten up. "I don't like it, Sammy."

Sam shrugged, but there was something hard about it, like he was considering something he didn't really like. Again, Dean had the feeling that he was hiding something. "I'll dig it during the day," Sam said. "There's police tape up everywhere. I don't think anyone will go exploring." He shrugged again, and met Dean's eyes with his own. "Besides, I have two weeks."

Dean sighed, but there was nothing he could do to help. What was he going to do, jump the fence in a wheelchair? "I still don't like it." But he nodded to the window. "You've got a couple of hours of daylight left. You could probably get one done tonight."

Sam nodded, and took one long stride to the door before stopping. He turned to Dean, his expression almost embarrassed. "Do you need help getting back into bed?"

Dean ran over his foot with the wheelchair.

With Sam gone, there wasn't much to do. He would have liked to just get back in the bed and sleep, but moving from wheelchair to bed to wheelchair was a little too painful to manage more than he absolutely had to. Besides, it wasn't like he hadn't slept in less comfortable places.

The TV hung on an arm that swung out from the wall. Dean investigated it, hoping for some HBO movie or maybe Oprah, but the damned thing only had fourteen channels. He turned it to the news, turned the volume down low so it was a steady murmur, and let his chin drop to his chest.

***

Dean liked the idea of going for a walk. Of course, the walking part wasn't literal, but the idea stood. It was late, close to midnight, and on any regular day Dean would have been out drinking a beer and cruising for a little action – either a game of pool or a pair of nice legs, he wasn't too particular. It felt strange to know that Sam was holed up in a motel instead of with him. On the other side of the room, the cabbage man let out a mighty snore, and it was too odd sleeping there next to someone he didn't know, listening to breathing that didn't belong to his brother.

Sam had arrived shortly after sundown, freshly showered and smelling of cheap motel shampoo. Under it all, Dean could still smell the smoke, the gasoline, and the raw odor of upturned graveyard soil, or maybe that was just his memory filling in the blank spots. He supposed that was what made him feel so restless, to the point where he called in the nurse aide for help getting back up into his chair.

Alexander was long gone, and so was Nurse Debbie. The nurse aide that helped him was short, but strong. Her nametag said that her name was Blair. She wasn't even remotely his type, though her narrow face and slanting black eyes were pretty, but he smiled at her like she was. "Be gentle with me," he told her. "Normally I like things a little rough, but I think I should take it easy for a bit."

"You should stay in bed," she told him. She didn't rise to his flirting. Instead, she sounded concerned. And though he was bigger than she was, she pulled his ass out of bed and moved him over to the wheelchair like he was nothing.

"No, I'm a troublemaker. Can't sit still for very long."

"You'd better learn," she warned him, and he suddenly had a mental image of her corralling a horde of unruly brats with just a few words. "We don't have time to go chasing your butt all over."

"I'll be good," he promised. She smiled then and rolled her eyes, and didn't stop him when he made for the door.

Dean rolled down the hallway, trying to ignore the persistent ache below his navel. He distracted himself for almost fifteen minutes looking over a map of the building. It was built out of two squares connected by an L-shaped hallway. It had three entrances, one of them for employees only, the other two for the front of each square. He found his room on the map, where it occupied the bottom rung of the second square, and he found that the sub-acute unit where he was staying only contained two hallways.

He started back down the hallway when the pain became a little harder to ignore. At first, he had an idea of trying to go back to bed, to sleep off the pain and hope that he would be able to do a little more exploring when he got up. But then he realized that he could hear his roommate snoring from out in the hallway, so he wheeled on right past his room, all the way up to the front where the nurses were sitting at the nursing station.

He recognized his night nurse, Cara, an older woman with dark red hair and a sharp tongue, but he had seen none of the others before. There were two of them, an older woman with blonde hair pulled back into a bun, and a largely pregnant lady with skin the color of one of Sammy's vanilla lattes. The pregnant lady, aside from being pregnant, was exactly his type, so when he was noticed, he put his smile on again.

"This one seems to be a real piece of work," Nurse Cara told the others. "Dean Apple-butt, 511 door. I think I've seen him flirting with just about everyone."

"Not true," Dean protested, raising his hands in surrender. "I wasn't flirting with my physical therapist."

Nurse Cara looked him over. "No, somehow I don't think John's your type. Too short."

"Definitely not my type," Dean assured her, though he didn't think really hard about what prompted the 'too short' comment. He flashed another smile at the pregnant woman before returning his attention to Nurse Cara. "On the other hand, I do really like red-heads..."

Nurse Cara snorted. "Yeah, whatever," she said. "Why are you out of bed, anyway? You here for some drugs?"

"Yes, Ma'am," he replied, and put his hand on the bruises that covered his belly. "Son of a bitch hurts like hell."

"You watch your language," the blonde woman warned him. But, like the others, she was smiling.

Nurse Cara got to her feet, and made her way over to a large cart that he assumed housed all of the good stuff. She scribbled in a large binder, then bent and opened a drawer, popping a large white pill into a plastic cup.

The pregnant lady spoke up. "So, what happened to you?" she asked. "I heard you were in a car accident." Her voice was soft and concerned, and right then Dean figured he could have bagged her if their circumstances had been a little different. Like her being pregnant, and probably dating the guy that made her pregnant, and her thinking he was gay and involved with a fifteen-foot freak of nature.

"Hit and run," he replied, and then tossed back the pill and swallowed it dry. "We were just out walking, you know? And bam! Next thing I know I'm all busted up and they're talking surgery.

There was a small, polite cough to his left, and he turned to see a nurse aide. Like Cara, she also had red hair, but it was a lot browner, and she wore thick tortoiseshell glasses. She was also holding a tall cup in one hand.

"Sorry to interrupt," she said, her eyes on Cara, "but isn't Stacey working tonight?"

Nurse Cara shook her head. "No, I picked up for her."

"Oh," the girl said. She looked down at the white cup in her hand. "I made her tea."

"How are you doing over there?" the blonde woman asked. "Things been good?"

The girl shrugged. "Could be better, could be worse. I just needed to get away from the motion alarms for a while. We've got half a dozen of them climbing out tonight."

Nurse Cara snorted again. "See, that's what you get for leaving us. Traitor."

Dean raised his eyebrows. "Traitor?" he repeated.

Cara tossed a look his way and explained, "She used to work over here, until she decided that being kicked in the teeth by dementia patients is more fun."

"It is," was the casual protest.

"Really?" Dean asked, curious. "You like working with the crazy folks?"

She shot him a look then, the sort that Sammy would give him when he was being obnoxious. "Just because they have dementia doesn't mean they're crazy." She turned back to Cara. "Hey, you know how we had those two guys die this week? Michael, in 703, said that they were going to die. It was weird. He was very intense when he told me. I think he knew about Mr. King's death last week. Kind of funny that the two guys he said were going to die actually did."

Cara frowned. "Funny," she repeated. "So, you think you have a psychic over there or something?"

The girl rolled her eyes. "No, it's just weird. And then tonight," she added, her voice going quiet and intense, the kind of tone used for telling scary stories and urban legends, "he said that Grace had someone after her."

"Yeah, her husband." Cara's tone left no argument as to the sexual nature of her comment. It was obvious she wasn't falling for the creepy story. "Here, I'll take the tea, before you talk my damn ear off."

The girl handed over the cup with a smile. "You're just as bad as I am, and you know it." She looked down at her watch. "I should get going, anyway. I left Celia to deal with the unruly masses." She quickly disappeared around the corner.

Dean found that his mouth was dry, and it wasn't just from taking the pill. He'd lived through enough odd happenings and strange occurrences to recognize the signs of a hunt. "You guys have weird stuff happen a lot over here?" He made himself sound cool and detached, like he was a regular person asking a regular question.

Cara snorted, then took a sip of the tea. "All the time." She shrugged. "I don't know, a lot of places like these have strange stuff going on. And I've never seen a nursing home that didn't have its ghosts. Not," she added, "that we're haunted or anything."

"No," Dean said. "Of course not."

Which, he was pretty sure, was a damned lie.