Standing Outside the Fire

27

[Death's Door]

INT. VEHICLE - NIGHT

"Bobby?" Sam called. "Bobby? Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hold on."

"Sam, Frankie, is he dead?" Dean asked.

"I'm checking." He felt Bobby's neck for a pulse.

"Is he dead?!"

"Just drive, Dean! Bobby!"

Francesca shook Bobby. "Bobby, please. You need to wake up!" Her voice shook slightly as she continued shaking him.

"You gotta talk to me, Sam!" Dean cried.

"All right, he's breathing," Sam told him. "There's a pulse."

Dean entered numbers on his cell. "Keep him upright. Stop the bleeding."

"I'm not an idiot, Dean! I know first aid for a damn bullet to the head!"

Dean spoke into the phone. "I need the nearest trauma center."

"Hold on. Hold on." He glanced to Francesca. "We're gonna help him, okay?"

"What's the address?!" Dean glanced back a moment. "All right, Bobby, hang in there."

The vehicle skidded as Dean accelerated.

Francesca climbed over the seats and sat in the passenger's seat next to Dean. He took her hand and rubbed gentle circles on the back of it.

"Bobby!" Sam called. "Just hold on!"

EXT. FOREST - DAY

"Well, I guess we found Phil," Dean said.

Bobby frowned. "Wait a minute. Something's not right here."

"Yeah, no kidding. There's a corpse in a tree."

"Something bad's about to happen."

Francesca gestured to her gun. "Yeah, well, danger's kind of on the W2 - that's why we got the guns."

Blood dripped onto Bobby's hand. There was a bloodstain on Bobby's cap. He put his fingers to his head and saw more blood on his fingertips when he lowered his hand.

"Or something bad's happened already."

INT. OLD HOUSE - DAY

Bobby, Dean, Sam and Francesca entered. Bobby removed his cap and touched his head. There was a small amount of blood on his forehead.

"Balls," Bobby muttered.

"Y-you want to tell us what's going on?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, what's going on with your head?" Dean wondered.

"I got shot in it!" Bobby yelled.

"You what?"

Francesca frowned as she looked at Bobby. "We've been with you all day."

"Yeah, I think we woulda noticed if you took a bullet," Dean said.

"I didn't take one here. I-I took one out there, i-i-in the real world," Bobby told them.

"You lost us."

"Look, Bobby, you - you want to sit down, seriously?" Sam asked.

"No, there's something I gotta tell you," Bobby replied. "I-I... Dammit, I can't get at it."

"Well, it -it's okay, take your time. We're - we're right here."

"No, no, not you you. Real you. Out - out there, in the waking world. Numbers. Numbers. Where's paper?" He walked towards the table, on which there was a pen and notebook and wrote. "I didn't have time fore to tell you what..." he wrote '454895' in the notebook, "...they're cookin' up. You need to know." He put the piece of paper from the notebook in his jacket pocket.