Fast Times at Nightingale Prep, for cherry916
Title: Fast Times at Nightingale Prep
Author: desertport
Recipient: cherry916
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~3,000
Warnings: Lots of blood, with off-screen violence at about the level we see on show.
Author's Notes: As always, thanks to the mods and to my prompter! This was fun to write, so I hope everyone enjoys it, especially cherry916.
Roxy was adjusting her blouse. Louise was straightening her skirt. The warm smile they shared turned into a startled meeting of wide eyes as the door crashed open, banging against the jam and bouncing back toward the frame. A man-no, two men-rushed inside.
"Hold on, Sam," one of them yelled.
Roxy, having abandoned her remaining clothes in a pile on the floor, rushed Louise back behind a desk. "What are you doing?" Louise said, trying to push past Roxy, who stood grounded in front of her. "And who the hell are you?" she asked, more loudly.
The two men looked up at the same time, seeming to only now notice the young women they had barged in upon. In turn, Roxy got her first good look at them, two bedraggled, dirty guys who were very, very tall and broad. She pressed Louise back closer to the wall, not letting her friend get around her, and felt her shoulder squeezed in return. The blur of brown clothing and long limbs resolved itself, and she saw that one of the guys was leaning heavily on the other, who stood solid and alert much the way she herself was.
Red liquid dripped onto the floor beneath them, making a noise like a leaky tap.
"Is this the nurse's office?" demanded the guy holding up his friend.
"It's after hours," Roxy replied stupidly.
"Do I look like I care?" He left his friend leaning against the wall, kicked shut the door, and turned around in a circle, taking in the room that had long been a familiar setting to Roxy. Nightingale wasn't large enough to employ a receptionist for the nurse, so there was only the one desk, facing the door, perhaps so that students couldn't sneak up on Miss Kravitch unawares. Roxy noticed she or Louise had overturned the rolling chair in their haste to back against the wall. To one side was a curtained-off alcove with four cots, the other a more open space with floor-to-ceiling cabinets lining the wall.
Roxy shuffled herself and Louise to the side as the man took two long strides and flung open the curtain, revealing the cots behind it. "Yeah," he said. "Come on, Sammy."
The other man-Sammy?-only moved away from the wall when his friend jammed his shoulder under his arm and supported him across the room. Given their size relative to the office, it took longer than it should have, the nameless man's long strides of before shortening to accommodate Sammy's halting pace.
They left behind bloody footprints, cheerful red streaks across the mottled linoleum.
Sammy collapsed onto the cot, curled on his side in a mess of baggy denim and flannel. He had brown hair that flopped across his face. Both hair and face were smeared with blood.
Louise gave Roxy's cheek a kiss and was finally able to get out in front of her. "What's the matter with him?"
"Bad cut," Sammy's friend said, not taking his eyes from the man on the bed. "You got stuff in here for that?"
Louise hummed an affirmative and went to the wall of cabinets. The man turned and followed her, and that was when Roxy saw it.
"Get away from her!" she yelled, stumbling over the fallen chair to reach him, not even sure what she meant to do, but knowing she had to do something. Maybe Louise could get away and pull a fire alarm.
"Whoa, there, Princess Leia," the man said, taking her shoulders firmly, but more gently than she would have expected. "I'm not gonna hurt either of you."
"You've got a knife on your belt!"
"Good eye. Still not gonna hurt you." He shook her very slightly, and seemed himself to really see her for the first time. Which was when Roxy remembered she wore only her uniform blouse and black stockings. Her shoes lay under her skirt on the floor by the desk. A blush rose all across her face, and the man hastily stepped back and turned to the cabinet, where Louise was pulling bandages and bottles off the shelves. He scanned her from foot to head, and his eyes stopped and widened at her bare, stockingless feet, toenails painted sparkly purple. "Out of the frying pan," he muttered.
A guttural sound, pain choked off, came from Sammy, and his friend snapped back to business. "I'm not going to hurt either of you, but I need you not to call anyone, okay? It's very important."
"Why? And why do you have a knife?"
"Who cares, Roxy? His friend's bleeding. Come on," Louise said. She had carried an armload of supplies to the cot and set them on a sheet on the floor. Clearly, Louise had the survival instincts of a lemming. Roxy made note of that for future reference, in case they were ever in another room where two big guys kicked in the door and invaded.
Sammy's friend was kneeling beside the cot with Louise, pulling gauze packs out of their packaging and looking at Sammy's face every other second. Roxy noticed how even curled up, Sammy's shoulders and legs didn't nearly fit on the cot, which Roxy would never have described as small. Before she knew what she was doing, Roxy pulled a second cot around to the foot end of the one in use and guided Sammy's feet onto it. They were heavy. He wore sneakers and his jeans had been well used even before the blood and a fair amount of dirt had ruined them.
The other man nodded at her. "Thanks. Look. My name's Dean, and this is Sam." Distracted, he lifted Sam's arm away from its protective curl around his stomach and eased back a few layers of flannel and cotton to get at the skin beneath. Dean grimaced, and Louise gasped. Roxy leaned over to see a wide cut across Sam's sternum, the entire area awash with blood. It smelled strongly, a little like her period, and mixed with potent sweat-scent. Only then did she notice the reddish hue of Sam's skin, and the beads of sweat all over him and soaking his clothes.
"Is he going to be okay?" Roxy asked.
Dean was rifling through the supplies Louise had brought over. He grabbed a brown bottle of disinfectant, unscrewed the cap, said, "Sorry, Sammy," and upended it over the wound on Sam's sternum. Roxy and Louise gasped, but Sam took it well, squeezing his eyes shut and his hands into tight fists.
"I'm guessing you don't have stitching supplies in that cabinet," Dean said, gently knuckling Sam's temple. "Hand me that pad."
Louise handed him a large sterile pad, which Dean used to wipe away a swath of the blood on Sam's chest. He then pressed the dripping cloth to the wound itself.
"Dean, I'm gonna kill you when this is over," Sam hissed, the first words he'd spoken.
"You try that, kiddo." Dean kept up pressure on the wound. "Well, what about something to stitch him with?"
Louise looked to Roxy, who had done inventory last. Miss Kravitch had praised her for doing a thorough job, so she felt confident shaking her head. "We don't do sutures at school. You have to go to the hospital for that."
Dean rolled his eyes, but almost since the door banged open Roxy had figured these two did not operate inside proper channels. They were probably criminals, now that she thought about it. She looked closely at Dean, took in his quick eyes and cropped brown hair, the tanned skin and almost overlarge leather jacket. What struck her most were the stress lines at his eyes and the corners of his mouth, the way he looked at Sam with terse care. It occurred to her that Sam might die.
"We have butterfly bandages," she offered, suddenly afraid more for Sam than for herself and Louise.
"No, the wound's too big," Dean said. "Do you guys have home ec? Are there needles and thread somewhere in the school, maybe dental floss?"
Louise paled, the color draining out of her dark skin. "Are you kidding? Okay, okay, yes. We have the family and consumer sciences lab upstairs. They have sewing supplies." She swallowed visibly.
"Go there and bring some back," Dean ordered.
"Dean, no…." Sam said.
"Aw, for crying out loud. Shit. I forgot. Okay, new plan. You and me-what's your name?"
"Louise?"
"Are you sure? Never mind. Okay, we're going to the fancy home ec lab, getting what we need, and coming back here. You-"
"Roxy!" Roxy yelped, a little terrified by his forceful manner, but beginning to feel he might not actually hurt them.
"We'll be right back. Lock the door behind us and be really quiet." At Roxy's questioning look, he admitted, "There's something out there looking for people to eat."
"Holy shit," Louise said, the first time she had ever sworn in front of Roxy. Strangely, Louise swearing was the most surreal part of this entire afternoon.
"If there's an animal, then it's not safe out there," Roxy said, reaching for Louise's hand across the cot. Dean looked between them, then at their joined hands. Something in his demeanor calmed.
"I promise to get her back safe, Roxy. I have a weapon, remember? But I can't waste time wandering around Shermer High here trying to find the right room. As soon as I get Sam fixed up, I'm gonna take care of your monster problem and everyone'll be safe again. But first I need you to take care of Sam while we're gone. You know any first aid?"
"I'm certified, and I've been shadowing Miss Kravitch since junior year."
"Then you're set," Dean said, smiling with teeth. "Let's go, Louise. See ya soon, Sam."
Louise didn't look like she quite believed she was actually following Dean, but she was walking with him to the door, casting wide-eyed looks back at Roxy, who sat by the cot keeping pressure on Sam's chest. Everything was happening so fast. Was there actually an animal out in the halls? How would it have gotten in, especially after the school day had ended? No one was supposed to be in the building; she and Louise were only here because they knew how to hide from the janitors who locked up, and there was nowhere else for them to be together.
"This wasn't how I expected tonight to go," she confided in Sam. He startled her with a brittle huff.
"Tell me about it."
She had always admired gallows humor, though in her experience up to now it had only been applied to tests she and her friends hadn't studied for. "Oh! Do you want some water?"
"Yeah. Lock the door first, though."
Roxy crept up to the door. It had already burst open once today. She opened it widely enough to poke her head through and looked both ways down the hall. Nothing but the usual club posters taped to the walls, most of the lights off. She'd never thought of the school after closing time as scary, rather peaceful and quiet, the perfect place for her and Louise until they gave in to the real world and went home for the night in opposite directions across the empty parking lot.
Had something moved at the end of the hall?
An instinct deep within her said yes, indeed, run now.
Roxy slammed the door closed and turned the lock, not pausing before she ran to the desk and shoved it into a barricade position before the threshold.
"It's here?" Sam called. Roxy pulled her gaze from the solid wood door to Sam. He was pushing up from his prone position, or trying to. A fresh rush of blood poured from beneath the loosened pad.
"You're reopening the cut," she said, running over. He submitted to her when she guided him back down, until the door shook on its hinges, like someone had thrown themselves against it.
The desk budged from the force, legs scraping the floor, but the lock held. Harsh breathing sounds made it into the room, a growl at the edges.
"Oh, my gosh," Roxy said, and pushed Sam back down when he tried again to rise. He went down easily enough to get her even more worried.
The door shook again, hinges loosening on the frame.
Dean had a weapon. He had promised to bring Louise back safe. Why had Roxy believed him? He was a handsome criminal who had broken into the school. He clearly hadn't protected Sam, and Sam seemed important to him, so how could he do better with a girl he'd just met?
As the desk moved a few more inches and the hinges lost a few screws, Sam grabbed Roxy's hand.
"It's a gargoyle. Don't… don't be afraid. Dean can't not hear that. He's on his way."
"How do you know?"
Sam opened his mouth, but a yell from the hall interrupted him.
"Hey, over here, you nasty son of a bitch!"
"I just know," Sam muttered. "He'll always."
"Sam?"
The forced entry attempt had stopped, replaced by confusing noises that Roxy eventually placed as resulting from a struggle. Was Louise nearby?
Roxy bit her tongue and listened for Louise, and sensed something else was wrong. What was it?
At her elbow, Sam had stopped breathing.
"Oh, dear," she heard a familiar voice say. It was her own voice, spoken before she straightened Sam out on the bed, tipped his head back, checked his airway, and administered CPR. She had kissed Franklin Jobs from Damascus High two years ago, and his lips had been cooler; later, the CPR dummy's mouth through the breath mask was completely unyielding. She struggled to keep Sam's head tipped, to blow air as hard as she could down his throat. She lost count of compressions each time she did a set and had to rely on her best judgment on when to switch back to rescue breathing. The crashing, skidding, banging, yelling from outside faded. The sea roared at her ears, a flush rising hot all across her skin.
She came to on a cot and looked up at Louise, who was hurting the bones in her hand. "Ow," Roxy said. She fumbled her hand out of Louise's grip, then caught Louise's hand with both of her own. "Are you okay?"
"You passed out doing CPR," Louise said.
The trainer had warned the class not to do that. "I'm not very good at it," Roxy said, considering what that meant for her future as a nurse. "Wait. Sam. And you're all red."
"Dean gave him more CPR and he started breathing again. What do you mean I'm all red?"
Roxy reached for Louise's face and caressed her beneath the eye with one thumb. She held her thumb up to show Louise the blood that had transferred onto the finger, then blinked at her hand, confused to see it too was all red.
"Ah. Yeah. We are all covered in blood. But I think Sam and Dean are the only ones bleeding."
"Gross."
"Yeah."
"Wow, you two are in some serious shock."
They both looked up to see Dean standing over them, also red, clothing and all. Somehow he looked less scary now than when he and Sam had barged in. If he was bleeding, she couldn't tell. The blood was all over him, like he'd showered in it. Dean lifted his hands easily and smiled, the first easy one she'd seen from him. Sam must have been okay.
"No worries, Roxy. That son of a bitch in the hall just bled a lot is all. You feeling better?" Dean produced two folded blankets and shook them open. Next he tucked one around Louise's shoulders, and the other over Roxy, from toes to neck.
"Is it over?"
Dean raised a hand as though to scratch the back of his head, and turned around in a circle, surveying Miss Kravitch's office. The desk stood a few feet in front of the door, asymmetrical to the rest of the room. The papers and pens all over it were now all over the floor, as well as shards of the coiled clay jar Roxy had made in art class and painted with Miss Kravitch's name in bright pastels. The hard candies once inside the jar dotted the pools and trails of blood, little plastic-wrapped specks. In their haste to get at the medical supplies, Dean and Louise had wrecked the orderly shelves, leaving bandages and thermometers and sheets everywhere. The cot alcove was also wrecked, and the door was a goner.
Dean noticed her scrutiny and grimaced. "You said you work in this office, Carrie?"
"Roxy."
"I know. Just with all the blood, right? Never mind. Look, you saved my brother's life."
"He said you would do that."
"He did, huh? I'll have to set him straight. Credit where it's due. Come on, Ringwald, Sheedy. We've all passed the Winchester litmus test for going to the hospital. Cardiac arrest for the win. We'll take you with us, okay?"
Louise and Roxy held hands to keep each other from slipping on the floor as they stumbled after Dean, who held Sam up much the same way he had upon entering, what seemed like hours ago. In the hall, a dark shape lay in twisted repose at the center of a thick pool of yet more blood. A gargoyle, Sam had said. Well, it certainly wasn't a man or woman.
Louise tapped her on the shoulder and nodded back at Miss Kravitch's office, their personal hideaway after the last bell rang. The two girls stared, morose and silent.
"There's my mom's shop," Louise offered. "She's always out of there by six."
"Works for me."
The End.
Author: desertport
Recipient: cherry916
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~3,000
Warnings: Lots of blood, with off-screen violence at about the level we see on show.
Author's Notes: As always, thanks to the mods and to my prompter! This was fun to write, so I hope everyone enjoys it, especially cherry916.
Roxy was adjusting her blouse. Louise was straightening her skirt. The warm smile they shared turned into a startled meeting of wide eyes as the door crashed open, banging against the jam and bouncing back toward the frame. A man-no, two men-rushed inside.
"Hold on, Sam," one of them yelled.
Roxy, having abandoned her remaining clothes in a pile on the floor, rushed Louise back behind a desk. "What are you doing?" Louise said, trying to push past Roxy, who stood grounded in front of her. "And who the hell are you?" she asked, more loudly.
The two men looked up at the same time, seeming to only now notice the young women they had barged in upon. In turn, Roxy got her first good look at them, two bedraggled, dirty guys who were very, very tall and broad. She pressed Louise back closer to the wall, not letting her friend get around her, and felt her shoulder squeezed in return. The blur of brown clothing and long limbs resolved itself, and she saw that one of the guys was leaning heavily on the other, who stood solid and alert much the way she herself was.
Red liquid dripped onto the floor beneath them, making a noise like a leaky tap.
"Is this the nurse's office?" demanded the guy holding up his friend.
"It's after hours," Roxy replied stupidly.
"Do I look like I care?" He left his friend leaning against the wall, kicked shut the door, and turned around in a circle, taking in the room that had long been a familiar setting to Roxy. Nightingale wasn't large enough to employ a receptionist for the nurse, so there was only the one desk, facing the door, perhaps so that students couldn't sneak up on Miss Kravitch unawares. Roxy noticed she or Louise had overturned the rolling chair in their haste to back against the wall. To one side was a curtained-off alcove with four cots, the other a more open space with floor-to-ceiling cabinets lining the wall.
Roxy shuffled herself and Louise to the side as the man took two long strides and flung open the curtain, revealing the cots behind it. "Yeah," he said. "Come on, Sammy."
The other man-Sammy?-only moved away from the wall when his friend jammed his shoulder under his arm and supported him across the room. Given their size relative to the office, it took longer than it should have, the nameless man's long strides of before shortening to accommodate Sammy's halting pace.
They left behind bloody footprints, cheerful red streaks across the mottled linoleum.
Sammy collapsed onto the cot, curled on his side in a mess of baggy denim and flannel. He had brown hair that flopped across his face. Both hair and face were smeared with blood.
Louise gave Roxy's cheek a kiss and was finally able to get out in front of her. "What's the matter with him?"
"Bad cut," Sammy's friend said, not taking his eyes from the man on the bed. "You got stuff in here for that?"
Louise hummed an affirmative and went to the wall of cabinets. The man turned and followed her, and that was when Roxy saw it.
"Get away from her!" she yelled, stumbling over the fallen chair to reach him, not even sure what she meant to do, but knowing she had to do something. Maybe Louise could get away and pull a fire alarm.
"Whoa, there, Princess Leia," the man said, taking her shoulders firmly, but more gently than she would have expected. "I'm not gonna hurt either of you."
"You've got a knife on your belt!"
"Good eye. Still not gonna hurt you." He shook her very slightly, and seemed himself to really see her for the first time. Which was when Roxy remembered she wore only her uniform blouse and black stockings. Her shoes lay under her skirt on the floor by the desk. A blush rose all across her face, and the man hastily stepped back and turned to the cabinet, where Louise was pulling bandages and bottles off the shelves. He scanned her from foot to head, and his eyes stopped and widened at her bare, stockingless feet, toenails painted sparkly purple. "Out of the frying pan," he muttered.
A guttural sound, pain choked off, came from Sammy, and his friend snapped back to business. "I'm not going to hurt either of you, but I need you not to call anyone, okay? It's very important."
"Why? And why do you have a knife?"
"Who cares, Roxy? His friend's bleeding. Come on," Louise said. She had carried an armload of supplies to the cot and set them on a sheet on the floor. Clearly, Louise had the survival instincts of a lemming. Roxy made note of that for future reference, in case they were ever in another room where two big guys kicked in the door and invaded.
Sammy's friend was kneeling beside the cot with Louise, pulling gauze packs out of their packaging and looking at Sammy's face every other second. Roxy noticed how even curled up, Sammy's shoulders and legs didn't nearly fit on the cot, which Roxy would never have described as small. Before she knew what she was doing, Roxy pulled a second cot around to the foot end of the one in use and guided Sammy's feet onto it. They were heavy. He wore sneakers and his jeans had been well used even before the blood and a fair amount of dirt had ruined them.
The other man nodded at her. "Thanks. Look. My name's Dean, and this is Sam." Distracted, he lifted Sam's arm away from its protective curl around his stomach and eased back a few layers of flannel and cotton to get at the skin beneath. Dean grimaced, and Louise gasped. Roxy leaned over to see a wide cut across Sam's sternum, the entire area awash with blood. It smelled strongly, a little like her period, and mixed with potent sweat-scent. Only then did she notice the reddish hue of Sam's skin, and the beads of sweat all over him and soaking his clothes.
"Is he going to be okay?" Roxy asked.
Dean was rifling through the supplies Louise had brought over. He grabbed a brown bottle of disinfectant, unscrewed the cap, said, "Sorry, Sammy," and upended it over the wound on Sam's sternum. Roxy and Louise gasped, but Sam took it well, squeezing his eyes shut and his hands into tight fists.
"I'm guessing you don't have stitching supplies in that cabinet," Dean said, gently knuckling Sam's temple. "Hand me that pad."
Louise handed him a large sterile pad, which Dean used to wipe away a swath of the blood on Sam's chest. He then pressed the dripping cloth to the wound itself.
"Dean, I'm gonna kill you when this is over," Sam hissed, the first words he'd spoken.
"You try that, kiddo." Dean kept up pressure on the wound. "Well, what about something to stitch him with?"
Louise looked to Roxy, who had done inventory last. Miss Kravitch had praised her for doing a thorough job, so she felt confident shaking her head. "We don't do sutures at school. You have to go to the hospital for that."
Dean rolled his eyes, but almost since the door banged open Roxy had figured these two did not operate inside proper channels. They were probably criminals, now that she thought about it. She looked closely at Dean, took in his quick eyes and cropped brown hair, the tanned skin and almost overlarge leather jacket. What struck her most were the stress lines at his eyes and the corners of his mouth, the way he looked at Sam with terse care. It occurred to her that Sam might die.
"We have butterfly bandages," she offered, suddenly afraid more for Sam than for herself and Louise.
"No, the wound's too big," Dean said. "Do you guys have home ec? Are there needles and thread somewhere in the school, maybe dental floss?"
Louise paled, the color draining out of her dark skin. "Are you kidding? Okay, okay, yes. We have the family and consumer sciences lab upstairs. They have sewing supplies." She swallowed visibly.
"Go there and bring some back," Dean ordered.
"Dean, no…." Sam said.
"Aw, for crying out loud. Shit. I forgot. Okay, new plan. You and me-what's your name?"
"Louise?"
"Are you sure? Never mind. Okay, we're going to the fancy home ec lab, getting what we need, and coming back here. You-"
"Roxy!" Roxy yelped, a little terrified by his forceful manner, but beginning to feel he might not actually hurt them.
"We'll be right back. Lock the door behind us and be really quiet." At Roxy's questioning look, he admitted, "There's something out there looking for people to eat."
"Holy shit," Louise said, the first time she had ever sworn in front of Roxy. Strangely, Louise swearing was the most surreal part of this entire afternoon.
"If there's an animal, then it's not safe out there," Roxy said, reaching for Louise's hand across the cot. Dean looked between them, then at their joined hands. Something in his demeanor calmed.
"I promise to get her back safe, Roxy. I have a weapon, remember? But I can't waste time wandering around Shermer High here trying to find the right room. As soon as I get Sam fixed up, I'm gonna take care of your monster problem and everyone'll be safe again. But first I need you to take care of Sam while we're gone. You know any first aid?"
"I'm certified, and I've been shadowing Miss Kravitch since junior year."
"Then you're set," Dean said, smiling with teeth. "Let's go, Louise. See ya soon, Sam."
Louise didn't look like she quite believed she was actually following Dean, but she was walking with him to the door, casting wide-eyed looks back at Roxy, who sat by the cot keeping pressure on Sam's chest. Everything was happening so fast. Was there actually an animal out in the halls? How would it have gotten in, especially after the school day had ended? No one was supposed to be in the building; she and Louise were only here because they knew how to hide from the janitors who locked up, and there was nowhere else for them to be together.
"This wasn't how I expected tonight to go," she confided in Sam. He startled her with a brittle huff.
"Tell me about it."
She had always admired gallows humor, though in her experience up to now it had only been applied to tests she and her friends hadn't studied for. "Oh! Do you want some water?"
"Yeah. Lock the door first, though."
Roxy crept up to the door. It had already burst open once today. She opened it widely enough to poke her head through and looked both ways down the hall. Nothing but the usual club posters taped to the walls, most of the lights off. She'd never thought of the school after closing time as scary, rather peaceful and quiet, the perfect place for her and Louise until they gave in to the real world and went home for the night in opposite directions across the empty parking lot.
Had something moved at the end of the hall?
An instinct deep within her said yes, indeed, run now.
Roxy slammed the door closed and turned the lock, not pausing before she ran to the desk and shoved it into a barricade position before the threshold.
"It's here?" Sam called. Roxy pulled her gaze from the solid wood door to Sam. He was pushing up from his prone position, or trying to. A fresh rush of blood poured from beneath the loosened pad.
"You're reopening the cut," she said, running over. He submitted to her when she guided him back down, until the door shook on its hinges, like someone had thrown themselves against it.
The desk budged from the force, legs scraping the floor, but the lock held. Harsh breathing sounds made it into the room, a growl at the edges.
"Oh, my gosh," Roxy said, and pushed Sam back down when he tried again to rise. He went down easily enough to get her even more worried.
The door shook again, hinges loosening on the frame.
Dean had a weapon. He had promised to bring Louise back safe. Why had Roxy believed him? He was a handsome criminal who had broken into the school. He clearly hadn't protected Sam, and Sam seemed important to him, so how could he do better with a girl he'd just met?
As the desk moved a few more inches and the hinges lost a few screws, Sam grabbed Roxy's hand.
"It's a gargoyle. Don't… don't be afraid. Dean can't not hear that. He's on his way."
"How do you know?"
Sam opened his mouth, but a yell from the hall interrupted him.
"Hey, over here, you nasty son of a bitch!"
"I just know," Sam muttered. "He'll always."
"Sam?"
The forced entry attempt had stopped, replaced by confusing noises that Roxy eventually placed as resulting from a struggle. Was Louise nearby?
Roxy bit her tongue and listened for Louise, and sensed something else was wrong. What was it?
At her elbow, Sam had stopped breathing.
"Oh, dear," she heard a familiar voice say. It was her own voice, spoken before she straightened Sam out on the bed, tipped his head back, checked his airway, and administered CPR. She had kissed Franklin Jobs from Damascus High two years ago, and his lips had been cooler; later, the CPR dummy's mouth through the breath mask was completely unyielding. She struggled to keep Sam's head tipped, to blow air as hard as she could down his throat. She lost count of compressions each time she did a set and had to rely on her best judgment on when to switch back to rescue breathing. The crashing, skidding, banging, yelling from outside faded. The sea roared at her ears, a flush rising hot all across her skin.
She came to on a cot and looked up at Louise, who was hurting the bones in her hand. "Ow," Roxy said. She fumbled her hand out of Louise's grip, then caught Louise's hand with both of her own. "Are you okay?"
"You passed out doing CPR," Louise said.
The trainer had warned the class not to do that. "I'm not very good at it," Roxy said, considering what that meant for her future as a nurse. "Wait. Sam. And you're all red."
"Dean gave him more CPR and he started breathing again. What do you mean I'm all red?"
Roxy reached for Louise's face and caressed her beneath the eye with one thumb. She held her thumb up to show Louise the blood that had transferred onto the finger, then blinked at her hand, confused to see it too was all red.
"Ah. Yeah. We are all covered in blood. But I think Sam and Dean are the only ones bleeding."
"Gross."
"Yeah."
"Wow, you two are in some serious shock."
They both looked up to see Dean standing over them, also red, clothing and all. Somehow he looked less scary now than when he and Sam had barged in. If he was bleeding, she couldn't tell. The blood was all over him, like he'd showered in it. Dean lifted his hands easily and smiled, the first easy one she'd seen from him. Sam must have been okay.
"No worries, Roxy. That son of a bitch in the hall just bled a lot is all. You feeling better?" Dean produced two folded blankets and shook them open. Next he tucked one around Louise's shoulders, and the other over Roxy, from toes to neck.
"Is it over?"
Dean raised a hand as though to scratch the back of his head, and turned around in a circle, surveying Miss Kravitch's office. The desk stood a few feet in front of the door, asymmetrical to the rest of the room. The papers and pens all over it were now all over the floor, as well as shards of the coiled clay jar Roxy had made in art class and painted with Miss Kravitch's name in bright pastels. The hard candies once inside the jar dotted the pools and trails of blood, little plastic-wrapped specks. In their haste to get at the medical supplies, Dean and Louise had wrecked the orderly shelves, leaving bandages and thermometers and sheets everywhere. The cot alcove was also wrecked, and the door was a goner.
Dean noticed her scrutiny and grimaced. "You said you work in this office, Carrie?"
"Roxy."
"I know. Just with all the blood, right? Never mind. Look, you saved my brother's life."
"He said you would do that."
"He did, huh? I'll have to set him straight. Credit where it's due. Come on, Ringwald, Sheedy. We've all passed the Winchester litmus test for going to the hospital. Cardiac arrest for the win. We'll take you with us, okay?"
Louise and Roxy held hands to keep each other from slipping on the floor as they stumbled after Dean, who held Sam up much the same way he had upon entering, what seemed like hours ago. In the hall, a dark shape lay in twisted repose at the center of a thick pool of yet more blood. A gargoyle, Sam had said. Well, it certainly wasn't a man or woman.
Louise tapped her on the shoulder and nodded back at Miss Kravitch's office, their personal hideaway after the last bell rang. The two girls stared, morose and silent.
"There's my mom's shop," Louise offered. "She's always out of there by six."
"Works for me."
The End.