Tecumseh

By Tidia & MOG, May 2006

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Chapter 6/18

Even behind closed lids, Sam could tell the sun was beaming into the room. He resigned himself to the inevitable and opened his eyes. The sun slid into the room through the slats of the metal blinds and accentuated his headache.

‘Down to a dull throb,’ he thought.

He knew he was at a clinic with Dean and a friend of his brother’s, but the rest seemed fuzzy. The bed Dean had slept in was back to its unwrinkled state and Sam tested his voice before looking around.

“Hello?”

“Hello.” A tap on his right shoulder caused Sam to start and swing his head toward the source. A large, older Native American man sat on a small, wheeled stool, grinning at him.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Figured you knew I was here.” The man interpreted Sam’s confused expression and continued. “I’m Ben’s Uncle Frankie.”

Sam watched as the man flicked his wrist slightly and manifested a business card into his palm, before handing it to Sam. The young man blinked a few times and studied the card.

“W.D.?” he asked, looking at the suffix attached to the man’s name.

“Witch Doctor,” stated Frankie confidently, giving Sam a thumbs-up sign.

Sam stared at the man, then at the IV bag hanging next to his bed and finally, around the room. ‘What the hell is going on?’

Sam peered at the doorway with an apprehensive look in his eyes. “Is Dean here?”

A familiar face appeared in the door. “He just got out of the shower.”

Sam recognized the doctor from earlier. At least, he hoped the man was a doctor, the kind with an M.D.

“Aw, c’mon, Uncle Frankie, what have I told you about these?” Ben crossed to Sam’s bed in several strides and plucked the business card from the younger man’s fingertips. “He had these made when I graduated med school.”

Ben handed the card back to his uncle, while giving the man a reproving look. Frankie just grinned at Sam.

“I can make some stuff just like Viagra,” he said, raising and lowering his bushy eyebrows. A voice from the doorway prevented Ben from admonishing his uncle again.

“Frankie! Ben said you’d be around,” Dean entered, hair wet from a shower. He extended his hand to the older man.

Dean’s face lit up with a smile as the two men shook hands. To Sam’s eyes, Frankie held Dean’s grip a few seconds longer than his brother expected, as if studying him. Sam would have chalked it up to his own current disoriented state, if not for an odd expression that flitted across Dean’s face.

“I told you I’d see you again,” said Frankie.

Dean smiled again as he brushed off the awkward feeling and moved to stand on the other side of his brother’s bed.

“As I recall, your words were something like, ‘You’re too much of a…what was that word?”

“Pashewa,” offered Frankie, not even trying to hide an amused grin.

“Yeah. ‘Too much of a pashewa to not need a doctor again’.”

Sam looked from his brother to Uncle Frankie. “What’s that?”

“Wildcat,” Ben answered. He shook his head even as he showed a hint of a smile.

Dean made a face at Ben. “Yeah, well, I’m not the one in need of the doctor this time, now am I?” He looked at his brother. “Speaking of which…how ya feeling?”

“Horrible,” answered Sam, plainly. He was about to liken it to being thrown against a wall a few times, but realized that comment would most likely draw too much attention from the doctor. “I really don’t remember much of last night.”

Dean’s lips curved into a quirky grin. “You didn’t hurl in the car – that’s all that really matters.”

Sam rolled his eyes and massaged the back of his neck with the arm not hampered by the IV. “That knowledge will definitely help in my recovery.”

Ben cleared his throat, wanting to weigh in. “Well, you have a nasty case of strep. I gave you some steroids for the swelling, morphine for the pain, and an IV drip because you were dehydrated.”

Sam looked at the IV line in the crook of his elbow and regretted it instantly. The visualization initiated an immediate itching sensation at the entry point of the needle into his arm.

Ben followed his patient’s line of sight. “It’s gotta stay in for a couple more rounds of antibiotics.” He pulled a tongue depressor from a nearby drawer, ripped the protective paper covering off it and gestured for Sam to open his mouth. “Now let’s check that throat.”

Dean folded his arms and looked around the exam room.

“Ben, you need any work done around here?” Dean asked.

Sam sensed that his brother was looking to keep their current situation scam-free, while still finding a way to pay back his friend for his help.

The doctor tossed the tongue depressor away before replying. “I was hoping you had a job with health benefits so I could screw over your insurance company.”

Dean shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry to burst your bubble there, but ‘freelance reporter’ means no benefits. You’ll have to find someone else to price gauge for the sub-standard care.”

Ben stepped around his uncle, who had rolled himself toward the middle of the room, and crossed to the window to point outside. “Yeah, I haven’t finished landscaping the front. It’s all out there.”

Dean gave a quick nod. “I’ll have at it.” He glanced at his brother as he headed out, predicting Sam’s request. “I’ll grab your laptop.”

Sam waited until Dean left to ask questions. “So how do you know each other?”

Ben unlocked a stainless steel drug cabinet mounted on the wall and retrieved a clipboard hanging on the inside of the door. His attitude was casual as he made notes and answered Sam’s questions.

“You’re brother was talking big, I decided to take him down a few pegs.”

Uncle Frankie stopped his aimless rolling on the stool. “They’d both been drinking. They fought over a girl, who called the cops on them, and I had to haul their asses out of there.”

Sam knew Dean had a life of his own during the four years Sam was away at college, but it was strange hearing about such incidents second hand.

Ben stopped writing long enough to fix his uncle with a stern look. “Then he left us in a room with a medical kit and told us get to work.” He pulled up his left sleeve slightly. “Your brother cut me with a knife.”

Sam looked at the arm, but didn’t see any indication of a wound. “You had stitches?”

“Hey, he had a nice, straight knife slice to sew up. I was working with a laceration – jagged edges.”

“What did you cut him with?”

“A bottle,” the doctor mumbled, focusing again on his paperwork. He made one more quick note before locking the drug cabinet and tucking the clipboard under his arm. “Stupid shit should have been a doctor instead of a reporter, his stitches were better than mine – but don’t tell him that. I’d never hear the end of it. He’d send me damn postcards from the road reminding me.”

Sam smiled but his mind drifted elsewhere. To have a doctor and a lawyer in the family would be every parent’s dream. Sam ached at the thought of what could have been. His reverie was broken by Ben patting his leg.

“I have other patients coming in, so rest up. I’ll check on you later.”

Sam leaned back on the pillows before realizing Ben’s uncle had stayed behind. Frankie twirled slightly on the rolling stool, watching him.

Sam offered a friendly smile and tried to break the awkward silence that he felt. “So… you’re a witch doctor.”

Frankie rolled his seat forward to beside Sam’s bedside. “If you believe in that stuff.”

Seeing that Sam was a captive audience, he continued. “You’re on Shawnee land. We were moved here by the U.S. government from Indiana. I am of the same blood lines as Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, The Open Door.”

“Open Door?”

“Like to the Spirit World,” stated Frankie, as if it were a fact that everyone knew. “A mystic, a seer. At the crossroads of the Good Red Road and the Black Road. Jeez, don’t they teach you kids anything nowadays?”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “I’m really not that familiar with your culture. . .”

Frankie made a dismissing motion with his hand. “My nephew says he’s tired of hearing about this shit, but you look like someone that might. So, don’t interrupt me.” He poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher on the small table by the exam bed.

Sam hoped he hadn’t come across as rude. He decided he’d do his best to listen to the older man and not fall asleep.

“Tecumseh had prowess in battle, and his brother was a medicine man - known as the Prophet. They wanted to return to the customs of the Shawnee. In the battle of Tippecanoe, the brothers fought against the United States forces, and The Prophet fell.”

“What happened to Tecumseh?” Sam asked. He wondered why they didn’t teach this stuff in history classes. It would have held his attention more than memorizing dates.

Frankie shrugged his shoulders. “He continued on in the spirit of his brother - tried to unite the tribes, without success.”

“That’s not a happy ending,” Dean said. He leaned in the doorway, listening, laden down with Sam’s backpack and laptop.

Frankie breathed a laugh. “Most stories don’t have one.”

“He’s a patient.” Dean gestured towards his brother. “You’re supposed to cheer him up.”

Frankie stood and made a show of turning slowly in a circle. “Do I look like some sort of candy stripper to you?”

“Striper,” Sam corrected.

“No, no, when I get a sponge bath from a woman, she better be there naked with me.” The off-color joke garnered a laugh from the boys and Frankie winked at Sam. “Get some rest.”

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